It Is Complicated

While cleaning out my closet after the painting fiasco I came across my soapbox.  It was a little dusty, so I cleaned it off and now that it looks so shiny and sharp I must stand on it for a bit.  Go get something hearty to drink as I would like you to be polite and listen through to the end... I am waiting... Go on, I won't fall off this thing.  I do have a lot to say.  (If you do not live in the U.S. you can go finish your laundry now and come back another day.)

Liberals are happy that we have a president who is cool and intellectual and who will not start a war if he can negotiate or spy his way out of a situation.  Conservatives want a president who has their back 24/7 and is not afraid to say so.  They like the fact that Rick Perry carries a loaded gun when he jogs.  You can never be too ready to kill something.  It would be so easy if we could always tell the good guys from the bad guys and if all we needed was a Sheriff.

The problem is that this is not the issue that will get us out of our mess today.  There is not a president that we would elect from either party or even an independent who would not go to war and protect us if necessary.  The defense department is ready to defend us at any cost and reminds the leader of the free world of that everyday.  Of course, I believe that starting some of these wars at any cost could lead to the destruction of the planet since a lot of hot heads are waiting for an excuse to defend their country against the "Imperialist America" and they now have the means to do so.  War is never a solution only a regret.  It is complicated.

But what about our internal enemies?  The real battle is that between the haves and have nots.  And I wish it was just the simple picture that the 1% versus the 99% argument seems to try to make.  It is not.  Jobs cannot grow without substantial compromise to the environment,  to workers health, and to reduction in regulations.  There are just as many CEO's (percentage wise) who care not one bit about their workers safety, job security and health, and who cheat each day as there are workers who put out the minimum at work, game the system, steal from the job and scream discrimination when they are fired. There are those in the 99% who will only take the job they were educated for and there are those who are so lazy they live off their relatives and what welfare they get ( I am related to someone who does this.)  Mitt Romney, whom Newt Gingrich  Perry called a "vulture capitalist," was doing the job he was paid for and doing it very well and it appears legally.  He worked for the stock-holders and he made them money.  It was not his job to create jobs.  It was his job to reduce costs, labor being a big one.  And we could argue all night about how patriotic it is to game the system and keep your money off-shore to avoid paying your full taxes.  But he played by the capitalist rules.  It is complicated.

All the rest of us who are in the majority in both classes have to decide if we will trade a little more polluted air and water for warmer or cooler homes, cheaper food, cheaper clothing and products and the ability to keep one more job in the families of the 99%.  This decision is very hard, because those of us who make it will probably not see or be affected by the increased pollution.  It will most directly impact those we do not know, and our unborn. 

We have to decide if we will pay more (in taxes or direct costs...it makes no difference) so that everyone can get health care in the wealthiest country in the world.  Or we could lobby our Congressperson to pass a law that says hospitals do not have to take in accident victims or dying people if they have no health insurance.  I wonder if those who took the Hippocratic oath would turn the dying away if it wasn't against the law?  I wonder if we could sleep at night with people lying hopelessly at the doorsteps of hospitals as happens in many third world countries currently?  Or we could compromise our freedoms and require everyone who can afford it, to buy health insurance, so at least we do not have to pay for them!  It is complicated.

I believe that anyone who is financially secure should not take social security, but I am only financially secure as long as Wall Street does not allow their greed to bring the stock market to it knees once again.  This can only happen with strict regulation of financial markets by government bureaucrats.   I will be dependent on Social Security if these regulations are not held, but I am among the 99% when it comes to having a voice in lobbying Congress about the banking and investment industry.  My voice is tiny until we have financial election reform and EVERYONE gets an equal voice.  If you think anyone, including the Koch Brothers or Greenpeace, lobbies just for your interests, boy are you so very wrong.  I also believe that the age should be raised on Social Security to keep it solvent as our life length has changed since it was created, but I did not perform heavy lifting, work at furnaces, or perform other hard physical labor into my late 60's and I have no injuries from that.  So this also is complicated.  I do not think Social Security should be abolished.  It works.  It has kept society secure.

With a nod to that crazy old anti-Semitic running for office, I believe that foreign aide should be reviewed, but as public television reported recently, 94% of money put out by USAID comes directly back to American companies and contractors. Thus, it seems we also game this system, and reducing foreign aide could reduce jobs in this country.  Much of our foreign aide is hidden through Defense spending and dare we review that?  There is a reason that the Washington, DC area and surrounding suburbs are more recession proof and it is not because they house government workers.  They house lobbyists and those contractors they work for who get paid in Federal dollars. 

And, of course, we cannot forget the call for smaller government.  County? State? Federal?  I was a bureaucrat for many years and through much more than a decade we created smaller government by attrition.  It is not the best way to reduce labor, but as people left or retired no one took their place, and if the job was important, it just went on the back of someone else who did it half as well, overburdened as they were by the prior year's attrition.  This is why no one answers your phone call, or if they do, they seem inattentive.  When we finally got down to a skeleton crew and it began to impact service we were allowed to hire contractors.  Mine was not the rich Defense Department, and therefore, our contractors were somewhat like slaves.  The money went to the lowest bidder which meant the contractors made less money, got far fewer benefits, were laid off at will and we slowly developed a culture of them and us.  Not the best atmosphere for service to the taxpayer.  There is a better way to reduce government.  The Department of Commerce, the one of the three(?) that Perry wants to abolish, claims that its job is to improve the economy and help create jobs.  Ironic that we would cut that department, is it not?  Actually, this is one of the few areas that I agreed with Perry.  Commerce has grown into a mess and could certainly be reviewed and re-organized under other departments, although I am betting that Perry and I would probably disagree substantially on the details.  And Perry is not really a detail man anyway!

I believe that the majority of us, rich and poor and in the shrinking middle, do want pretty much the same thing and we care about our brothers and sisters when we see them as the human beings they are; so we better tread very carefully in this finger pointing and name calling.   Neither skin color, religious affiliation, nor the size of the house you live in tells us about your honesty, willingness to work hard, or moral character.  Only how you have lived your life and how you now live it everyday tells us that.  (And if you claim that your God thinks you are special and tells you things clearly and directly, like who or if you should run for office, you are a very scary person to me.)

(P.S.  Yes, I know that Perry is no longer running for office.  But with all the 'colorful' GOP candidates this year, I could not exclude him from this one post.)