Friday, November 13, 2009

A Voice From Middle America: A Letter to the President

Mr. President,I didn't vote for you. Maybe you will stop reading right there. But then again, maybe this once you should listen. The reason I didn't support your campaign is because I thought you were too inexperienced, too liberal and far too swayed by narrow political groups. But you won anyway. That's the way it is in America, the guy with the most votes wins. And being an American, I celebrate that idea. Although I didn't like your ideas, I honestly had hoped you meant what you said and that you would succeed.

But as time wears on and your administration progresses, it has become obvious not only are you inexperienced, but that you are disdainful of many Americans who are suffering under your regime. I say "suffering" because what else do you call it when effectively over 17% of the population is unemployed or underemployed?

I'm a middle class, college educated 53 year old woman. I have never asked for a handout. My husband and I worked all of our lives to buy our own home, raise our own kids and simply live. We don't have time to start over. Yet the economy keeps my husband marginally employed through a commission sales position that frankly hasn't paid much because nobody is buying in this economy. I look with trepidation at the moves made by the school district where I teach. With shrinking property values the tax revenue that funds the district is shrinking. Jobs are going to go away. At 53, just where am I supposed to find a job, Mr. President? It would take three years to retrain, and by then I would be 57. Who is going to hire a 57 year old entry level employee? No rational company will hire someone at that age and train them knowing they would not be there for more than a few years.

And what of my kids? My kids worked full time all the way through college. What little they got in help was in the form of academic scholarships. There were not special programs to pave their way, no mentors to make sure they succeeded. They have some education loans, but not as much as most grads. But even after six months, my son is stuck in his college job as a fastfood manager because there are no jobs for him even as a college grad. (BTW, remember "fastfood"-many liberals categorized those jobs as ones Americans wouldn't do in justifying illegal immigration.) Now faced with dwindling job prospects at the age of 23, my son is moving back home. My daughter is moving into a spare bedroom at a friend's house. Even though they paid rent on their own through college, the economy is such that they cannot afford to pay rent and their college loans. They are deferring marriage, kids, jobs because of an economy that seems only to serve the government infrastructure. The rest of the market is flat. And with the pending additional burden of a health insurance penalty, even what few entry level jobs are out there will go away. What do you expect these kids to do...wait a few years? How many? Five, ten, fifteen? And in the meantime the favoritism of affirmative action will insure that even if my kids qualify for a job that they will have to wait behind others based on nothing more than race.

While you and your handpicked cabinet of liberals and the Congress seem content to eviscerate the economy piece by piece, do you not understand that the relentless implementation of more corporate taxing ends up being a tax on all of us? Maybe when you were in law school, you missed this point, but corporations are NOT alive. When you tax a corporation, whether it is for transporation or manufacturing or energy use or profits, those costs are rolled into the cost of the product. And that means that we, the American consumers, pay that tax. It just passes through like grass through a goose. So for all your self-congratulatory talk about "taxing profits" and "penalizing corporations" you are really only penalizing US, the American people. We are the ones suffering with fewer jobs and higher prices.

In the month of October your administration racked up a deficit equal to the entire last year of President Bush's administration. Your party screamed at his spending. Yet looking back now, it seems as if this Congress and this administration is a runaway monster bent on wrecking the economy. I have to wonder why you are doing this. Do you want us all to abandon our homes to move into federal housing? Do you want to break down our individuality by imposing a rule of law that is so unconstitutional that even some of your own party would oppose it? For the entire summer you alternately ignored and dismissed the fear, the anger and the dismay of so many American over the penalties that will be imposed by your healthcare bill. When even New York writers, not known for the conservative views, startle at the penalties and costs of this bill, then is it not time to step back and stop and refine it to a bill that approaches the central problem of the hardcore uninsured without bankrupting the rest of us for a program that offers far less than we have right now.

Mr. President, I still am not a key supporter. There are too many mysteries in your past. You seem to dislike the people who live between the two coasts. You don't want to entertain the ideas that come from outside your own limited circle. And you seem driven to tax the middle class in order to buy votes. I'm sorry if you are offended by this letter, but quite honestly from what you have done so far, you seem more interested in shoring up your personal agenda than in helping the whole of the nation. And that means you are not a statesman, nor are you wise. It just means you are another politician who has been bought by a controlling majority of rich liberals. And that means the rest of us will lose again, even though we've already lost so much already.

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