How can we offer a helping hand if we’re wasting time pointing fingers?
When 9/11 happened, American’s pulled together and the only issue was helping the victims. It was quite some time down the line before the political machine was fired up and the blame game began. Well here we are just days after the hurricane, New Orleans is destroyed, people are still stranded and the finger pointing has already begun. This is absolutely disgusting. I saw a picture of a woman sitting next to her husband’s corpse; she didn’t want to leave it behind but had no way of moving it. People are starving in what once was a popular tourist city and I’m already hearing the attacks against the President begin.
Someone posted a series of quotes from earlier articles that showed how money earmarked for shoring up the levies were diverted to the war effort in Iraq. This collection of quotes made the Bush administration look horrible. A friend of mine saw this post and responded with one of the most interesting comments. He is a staunch Bush supporter so hearing him come to the defense of the President didn’t surprise me, what did was how he did it. He said that if you really want to assign blame you would have to go back to Calvin Coolidge. The levies in New Orleans have always been a problem waiting to happen yet Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton all failed to address it but were lucky enough not to have a class 5 hurricane hit. Also, the city could have used its own funds to do the work, but they decided to build a basketball arena to lure the NBA instead.
The truth is that the country and the city have been gambling for years and finally ran out of luck. But people will see this tragedy as a way to further their own political agendas. In reality though, we all do this. We cast our vote not for the good of the country, but for the good of our own pocketbook. There’s a reason why most of the rich people in American are Republican and most of the poor are Democrats; the Republicans believe that the rich should keep their money and the Democrats believe it should be used to help the less fortunate. If you have $20 in your pocket, you don’t want someone to take it from you. If you don’t have any money, you want someone to give you a $20. There is a lot of gray area in between but that is a very general distinction. We vote for the issues that effect us personally and give very little consideration to the ones that don’t. How many of us can honestly say we would have approved a tax increase even if it was specifically earmarked for the levies in New Orleans? Who’s to say that if John Kerry were in the White House he wouldn’t have diverted the same funds to one of his preferred projects?
Now the last thing I want anyone to take from this little diatribe is a belief that I support the actions of President Bush. I think he has waged a personal holy war that has caused irreparable damage to the nation in terms of foreign affairs. I did not vote for him and would be very happy to see him out of office. Before you go and start getting the feeling that I then voted for Kerry… nope, wrong again. In truth I think at least half the blame for what Bush is doing has to be laid on the feet of the Democratic Party. No one can convince me that John Kerry was the best candidate they had. His campaign was basically ‘I’m Not Bush’ and I’m sorry, I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils. The Democrats had a winnable election and then fell asleep at the wheel. If the two-party system in this country cannot come up with two strong candidates for the job then we need to change the way people are elected. And I don’t mean the whole ‘Gore won the popular vote’ garbage we got after the previous election. If Gore was such a great candidate then he should have won by a landslide and a few hanging chads wouldn’t have mattered.
I’ve got some ideas how we could fix the political mess here… eliminate parties and primaries based on those parties. Everyone is thrown into a general primary and then the top two candidates, regardless of party, have a run off in November. We don’t count by state nor release the voting information until all the polls are closed and all the votes across the country are then counted and a winner is chosen. No Electoral College, which was only useful when communication across the country was limited, and no more having a president not elected by a popular vote. What I believe you would end up with are two strong candidates with opposing views on important issues and then by the voting of the people we would see what the country really wanted.
That’s just one of my ideas to improve the country. I’m sure I will share more of them over time. But right now I think the important thing is to focus on the people in need. So if you are reading the blog, take a minute and swing by the American Red Cross website and make a donation. Its times like these that Americans can show what we are truly made of… and I hope what we show is that we are a nation of caring people helping our own and not a group of opportunistic cutthroats who will use tragedies for their own purposes. I know that the former looks a lot better on a business card than the ladder.
When 9/11 happened, American’s pulled together and the only issue was helping the victims. It was quite some time down the line before the political machine was fired up and the blame game began. Well here we are just days after the hurricane, New Orleans is destroyed, people are still stranded and the finger pointing has already begun. This is absolutely disgusting. I saw a picture of a woman sitting next to her husband’s corpse; she didn’t want to leave it behind but had no way of moving it. People are starving in what once was a popular tourist city and I’m already hearing the attacks against the President begin.
Someone posted a series of quotes from earlier articles that showed how money earmarked for shoring up the levies were diverted to the war effort in Iraq. This collection of quotes made the Bush administration look horrible. A friend of mine saw this post and responded with one of the most interesting comments. He is a staunch Bush supporter so hearing him come to the defense of the President didn’t surprise me, what did was how he did it. He said that if you really want to assign blame you would have to go back to Calvin Coolidge. The levies in New Orleans have always been a problem waiting to happen yet Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton all failed to address it but were lucky enough not to have a class 5 hurricane hit. Also, the city could have used its own funds to do the work, but they decided to build a basketball arena to lure the NBA instead.
The truth is that the country and the city have been gambling for years and finally ran out of luck. But people will see this tragedy as a way to further their own political agendas. In reality though, we all do this. We cast our vote not for the good of the country, but for the good of our own pocketbook. There’s a reason why most of the rich people in American are Republican and most of the poor are Democrats; the Republicans believe that the rich should keep their money and the Democrats believe it should be used to help the less fortunate. If you have $20 in your pocket, you don’t want someone to take it from you. If you don’t have any money, you want someone to give you a $20. There is a lot of gray area in between but that is a very general distinction. We vote for the issues that effect us personally and give very little consideration to the ones that don’t. How many of us can honestly say we would have approved a tax increase even if it was specifically earmarked for the levies in New Orleans? Who’s to say that if John Kerry were in the White House he wouldn’t have diverted the same funds to one of his preferred projects?
Now the last thing I want anyone to take from this little diatribe is a belief that I support the actions of President Bush. I think he has waged a personal holy war that has caused irreparable damage to the nation in terms of foreign affairs. I did not vote for him and would be very happy to see him out of office. Before you go and start getting the feeling that I then voted for Kerry… nope, wrong again. In truth I think at least half the blame for what Bush is doing has to be laid on the feet of the Democratic Party. No one can convince me that John Kerry was the best candidate they had. His campaign was basically ‘I’m Not Bush’ and I’m sorry, I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils. The Democrats had a winnable election and then fell asleep at the wheel. If the two-party system in this country cannot come up with two strong candidates for the job then we need to change the way people are elected. And I don’t mean the whole ‘Gore won the popular vote’ garbage we got after the previous election. If Gore was such a great candidate then he should have won by a landslide and a few hanging chads wouldn’t have mattered.
I’ve got some ideas how we could fix the political mess here… eliminate parties and primaries based on those parties. Everyone is thrown into a general primary and then the top two candidates, regardless of party, have a run off in November. We don’t count by state nor release the voting information until all the polls are closed and all the votes across the country are then counted and a winner is chosen. No Electoral College, which was only useful when communication across the country was limited, and no more having a president not elected by a popular vote. What I believe you would end up with are two strong candidates with opposing views on important issues and then by the voting of the people we would see what the country really wanted.
That’s just one of my ideas to improve the country. I’m sure I will share more of them over time. But right now I think the important thing is to focus on the people in need. So if you are reading the blog, take a minute and swing by the American Red Cross website and make a donation. Its times like these that Americans can show what we are truly made of… and I hope what we show is that we are a nation of caring people helping our own and not a group of opportunistic cutthroats who will use tragedies for their own purposes. I know that the former looks a lot better on a business card than the ladder.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home