I was initially prepared to attack the SOTU address, but let's face it, that's too easy. I had even taken some time away from grading papers to write down some of the lines that particularly irked me, but I've thrown the notes away. The rest of the world has taken care of that. Finally.
Bush's approval ratings tell the story. Worse than Carter during the hostage standoff. Worse than Nixon just before he resigned. Why it took this long for so many Americans to see in Bush what half of us saw in 2000 I'll never know. Why that half couldn't pick up a few more percentage points in 2004 absolutely baffles me, but, finally, here we are. I'm not sure why the change has come now. Nothing's really different since 2004 for sure, and I'd argue that nothing's changed significantly since 2000. Still, here we are, finally.
So rather than attack the address itself, I'd like to try to explain why I still bother voicing my opinion about what I think this administration has done for the country. Based on what the Republicans applauded, and what the President has claimed among his priorities, a few themes, common to Republicans, but specific to Bush keep popping up in my frightening vision of the future of our nation. They can all be summed up under the heading Social Programming.
That's right, that evil trend usually attributed to Democrats is appearing more and more to be the goal of the Bush administration. The only difference is, Dems achieve social programming by including social programs in the budget and then fighting for their approval in congress, the way our constitution lays out. Bush, however, is implementing his social programming vision through the tax code and through other changes primarily loosening our laws on corporations. For instance, Enron hides behind it's status as a corporation in order to, over a period of years, suck cash out of their shareholders' pockets, and only when the immensity of their crimes becomes painfully obvious, does our government finally enforce any form of accountability on the CEOs who paid themselves billions as a result of their illegal activity and the corporation under which those individuals hid. Or when oil companies, who also continue to post record profits, still don't pay the royalties to American citizens for drilling on public lands AND continue to receive tax credits during their most profitable years. Or countless other tax breaks and federal protections only available to big business and the CEOs who suck record amounts and record proportions of cash out of them while ignoring the pleas of the labor force whose efforts make it possible for those profits to continue, and whose own pay has been reduced to an embarassing fraction of their CEOs pay.
What I really don't get is why Bush seems to think that holding middle class agents accountable, as in the NCLB act, makes so much sense, but holding huge corporations to the same degree of accountability as most citizens isn't important? Are the CEOs of GM and Ford held as accountable as a first year teacher making $25,000.00 per year? Have they paid a proportionate amount of their income in taxes? But back to the idea of social programming and why this particular program frightens me so.
At the rate we're going, America's middle class will disappear in another decade or so. The 90% of us who represent the household income bracket that built the nation are rapidly finding ourselves in a tougher and tougher spot. I consider myself pretty comfortable, but like most of the people in my income bracket, which is to say, like the vast majority of Americans, one major medical emergency involving my kids, me, or my parents would be enough to do me in financially. Instead of eking out a meager (albeit by my standards, a comfortable) living, one brief lapse in the routine would drop me from functioning middle class Joe Six Pack to Homeless Joe Six Pack. Between the mortgage and the insurance premiums, I don't have enough to spare to put back more than a very temporary buffer or safety account, let alone anything approaching a safe retirement account, or educational account for my kids. (and did you notice which corporations I HAVE to make my priority?) So, like the vast majority of Americans, I hold my breath each pay period and struggle to maintain the delicate balance that keeps me out of bankruptcy and foreclosure.
Like the vast majority of Americans, the Bush tax cuts have done nothing to improve this situation. Same for the effects those cuts have had on the overall economy. In fact, I'm closer to breaking that balance now than I've ever been. As more and more Americans, many of whom began this millennium at the upper end of the middle class, falsely believing that they were more insulated from losing the balance, slowly but surely join me at the lower end of that spectrum, the problem becomes more and more apparent.
Still, that hope that one day we too will be the benefactor of those tax cuts that favor the top 10% pushes us to believe that we should keep on keeping on. We somehow believe that that top 10% will expand to let us in and we'll finally be on the receiving end, rather than the losing end of tax policy that bows to corporate America instead of the citizenship of America. But that's just it, Bush tax policy never does extend that 10%. Sure we get some scraps thrown our way, but they do little more than keep the futile dream alive and keep us throwing our money at the corporations who then throw enough of it to Washington to keep the law and tax code just the way it is.
So let's play out this scenario... this trickle down theory. As we in the middle class slip closer and closer to losing that desperate balance and more and more of us fall to bankruptcy, medical emergencies, foreclosures, etc,... as the gap between the rich and the poor in this nation continues to approach that of Apartheid South Africa (only with inferior health care), when will it finally end and what will America look like at that point?
Never mind that it was on the backs of the middle class that this nation was built. Never mind that it was their blood spilled in wars where they were the ones who couldn't buy their way out of the draft. Never mind that they are the police and fire and military and garbage collectors who toil daily to protect and maintain our way of life. Never mind that it is by their labor, their time away from their families, their wrongful deaths in dangerous work places that the rich get richer. Forget all of that. The real question is what happens to America when the middle class drops down into the poverty level where we're headed today? What happens when we disappear financially?
Once people like me finally fail to maintain the delicate balance, (and at the rate we're going, it is just a matter of time) who will be left to pay rising insurance premiums in exchange for less and less coverage? Who will be left to pay interest to finance companies who own all of our property? Who will pay for a drug company's research costs in the FIRST year of a new drug's sales? (can you imagine if the neighborhood bakery tried to get the cost of their new ovens out of the first year's doughnut sales? Only unlike doughnuts, we can't go without life-saving drugs) Who will buy gas? Who will pay taxes? Whose money will make the rich richer then?
If we extend this scenario, it looks more and more like Bush's vision of the future for America is one of corporate communism wherein the federal government functions as little more than keeper of "the company store," skimming their share off the top and passing the rest on to "the company" as we, the labor pool become "another day older and deeper in debt." So what happens when we're all indentured servants of the company and we've finally turned over all of our cash to them? Do we then adopt China's policy of importing everything and exporting only slave labor, keeping the economy alive only by falsely valuing our currency? Our current rate of deficit spending seems to indicate that it's part of the plan. Is that the vision of America we have for our grandchildren? Where the storekeeper doles out what we need, equally to all?
I always thought that communism, like social programming, was something only extreme lefties believed in. I guess it just depends on which side of the take you're on. I never studied economics beyond the required intro class and though I had a college roomie who was a graduate student in economics, our discussions did little to help me understand where else Bush policy seems to be leading us. I'd like to find out how wrong I am... how I've been interpreting all the observations from my own circumstances, and the similar circumstances of most of my friends, neighbors and co-workers so wrongly. I'd like to have that magic wand waved over my worries and be granted the understanding that my feeble little mind requires in order to embrace a better vision of the future with Bush at the helm, but I just don't see it. Enlighten me.
Later dudes,
Luth
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