Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are locked in a to-the-death-of-someone-else contest to see who can smash the biggest poor-folk can against his respective forehead. Unlike most of those contests, this is going to leave marks on others, the most helpless, the poor, and on the protections that the government has taken on itself over the course of the decades, as the country has grown, as the complexity of the society and citizenry and its demands on the government have also grown. These cannot be turned back like the hands of a clock, like the simplistic idiots among us would prefer. It would not save money, it would only transfer more money from protections to the wealthy, who I think we should agree, don't really need more of the same.
So, Mr. Romney, you feel the need to Pander, to Protect the Pentagon, Protect the Powerful; literally, an embarrassment of riches to the richest. Give until it hurts, but only hurts the most easily injured, the weakest in society, yes, Mr. Romney, there is more to living in a society than counting the pennies in the budget. The bottom line is not the only one. Maybe from your exalted spot it's hard to see, but there are a lot more. Let's begin.
There is the part about being born into it, about being unfortunate, about putting your lives into someone else's hands, the part about all members being permitted to get some enjoyment out of it so those of us not in the position that you are, that of being raised up through minimal physical struggle and risk of your own to a position of power and wealth, can live a few moments fewer of Thoreau's lives of quiet desperation. Just a few. (Oh, wait, that's right, Mr. Romney, you weren't raised up, you were born into. Sorry, my mistake.)
Far greater Presidents than you could ever be have concluded that there are many aspects to living in this society that the government needs to and does have the right and the will to take care of, including, but not limited to, protecting wild areas; protecting elderly; the poor, not to guarantee a permanent underclass, but to keep them out of it; to protect consumers of goods, holding producers of food and other consumer items sold in this country to standards of safety; of leveling the financial risk playing field; because if these things weren't mandated by the federal government, backed by regulations and enforced by fines that actually hit where it hurts, these public protections would be sheared off like a poorly-mixed concrete bridge deck after it has snapped off and the rusty rebars show.
The federal government has rightfully taken it upon itself to be a larger entity in order to enforce these protections, rather than a smaller entity to be a tool of Big Business and the Big Military Industrial Complex. That battle has sadly now been lost with the support and consent of this very pro-business, ideologue-pushing Supreme Court.
But your wealth-grabbing budget guarantees that, from prior to the cradle to beyond the grave, from possible good fortune to setbacks, especially setbacks, which, as if they were character flaws won't ever be forgiven, average Americans won't ever be able to relax; that the middle class my parents knew and took for granted would always be a solid part of American society, is swiftly disappearing, destroyed by the flagrant greed and grasping that is human nature at its worst.
Unregulated power and greed, when put into a position to regulate itself certainly is not going to, so it needs to be controlled by some outside entity that it admits is more powerful than itself. That entity could even be voters, except for the fascination that lots of money has for the financially unendowed. Because of the cupidity of those people, because of the mental laziness and stupidity of those who would be led, because of assorted other voting difficulties (looking at YOU, Fla,) and outright fraud, the voter thing begins to fall apart. People are entranced by celebrity, by haircuts, and by bumper-sticker/slogans. Once attracted, they are easily led into narrow paths, to defiantly defend their stances against all facts, reason, logic, or even their own financial self-interest. Whistling past the graveyard, spitting into the wind.