Take medical care as one example. I had insurance for myself and my family including my daughter who is in college. Has the new health care law made a difference? The answer is not one iota. She will carry my insurance for the next three years that she is in college regardless. Perhaps when she goes to graduate school the law may make a difference. But what if she is a teaching assistant? Will the law make a difference? I don’t know. Are medical bills way to high? You better believe they are, and that is despite carrying excellent insurance. Is Medicaid still cutting back benefits? You better believe Medicaid in Maryland is reducing benefits. Are the uninsured still flooding emergency rooms? They sure are. Okay seniors are getting an extra $250, big deal. Will that tiny amount of money make much difference in Montgomery County Maryland? I doubt that the money will make any difference. So the answer is to the health care bill making a real difference in people’s lives is not much of one. Is the new law a major accomplishment? Yes the new law is as Joe Biden said "a big fucking deal."
Take education as another example. Montgomery County has one of the better school systems in the nation. The system is not perfect, but no system is. Every year more schools are failing the mandated "No child left behind" testing. Why? The standards get tougher every year is the reason. Does this make a difference? Raising the standards makes no difference other than making teachers teach to test as opposed to educating students. Has Arne Duncan made a difference? The answer is that Arne Duncan and the administration’s education department has not made a damn bit of difference. The county is short money and across the board cutbacks are a fact of life. So the school system will suffer. More decisions will be made at the state level as more schools come under state control. Education will only get worse. The bottom line is that under the democrats education is getting worse. Have democrats made a difference? Yes, conditions would have been worse under republicans, but what kind of argument is that?
Consider the economy. President Obama in the video in the above diary says the economy is getting better. Growth is at an anemic 1.6%. The growth rate does not hire the people entering the job market; much less hire those who are unemployed. Yes this is better than before the stimulus was passed, a major accomplishment. For those of us who are unemployed, has this made a difference? The answer is the stimulus has not made a damn bit of difference for the unemployed. Will the stimulus make a difference in the future? No one knows, but right now and until November no one is guessing the stimulus will lower unemployment. Are mortgages still failing? Mortgages are still failing. Is the deficit still rising? You better believe the deficit is rising and unless people are hired the deficit will continue to rise. Has financial reform made a difference? The difference is small one in credit cards, but not a big difference in people’s lives. Have we dealt with China’s currency issues? Yes, we made a minuscule amount of progress with China’s currency issues, but not enough to make a difference.
I can go on and on. Lord knows what is happening in Afghanistan. Who are we at war with there? Pakistan is a mess. Global warming continues unabated. The nation’s infrastructure continues to deteriorate. New Orleans is a big mess. Tropical storms and hurricanes continue to form at an alarming rate. Mineral’s management service continues to be a mess. The agriculture department has done nothing to find racists in the department and deal with them. Congress will not provide funding to pay black farmer’s for a suit they won. Don’t ask don’t tell is still the law of the land. Iraq still has not finished forming a government. No one has dealt with torture. Corporate power in Washington DC has only grown, not shrunk. Republicans are anxious to investigate the administration and perhaps bring impeachment charges. The social security lock box is wide open, at least to the commission President Obama appointed. Settlements continue on the West Bank. The Gaza strip is still a mess. Palestinians are still being pushed off their land and are not allowed to build homes. Yeah, there are going to be peace talks, but really what has changed other than each side in more intransigent than before.
Yes there has been change. Yes the change is in the right direction. But, the US has not yet started to move in the right direction. The US is still slipping back to where society is a
prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them, and falling to the ground where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one’s seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.
Yes the republicans want to take us back to the world of Edward Bellamy’s world of 1887 more rapidly. The direction is wrong.
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