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PROSPERITY:
Economic Policy | February 18, 2006
PRIORITIES
By
Douglas Drenkow, Editor of "Progressive
Thinking"
A
Posting in "OpEdNews,"
"BarryTalk",
& "Comments
From Left Field"
“Put
your money where your mouth is.” That’s how you tell the
straight-shooters from the hypocrites. And see where someone’s
priorities really lie.
By
that standard, I’m afraid our current leadership is misleading America.
Although the list of examples is endless, just consider the following:
Taxes
are cut for the wealthiest Americans while the budget is cut for veterans,
students, and the most vulnerable among us on Medicaid.
Pre-school
is touted, quite rightly, as vital to early childhood development and,
thus, later success in life, even as there is an epidemic of pre-school
programs falling victim to shortfalls in funding.
Jobs
are going overseas and yet we fail to fully fund the education and
training of our workforce at home, to keep us competitive in the new
global economy.
Human
beings are suffering preventable illnesses and dying preventable deaths in
the richest nation on Earth because there are too many vested interests
standing in the way of some sort of national healthcare system, which most
citizens demand.
Thousands
of victims of the worst natural disaster in our nation's history — exacerbated by trying to do flood-control on the cheap
— are being cut
off from temporary housing vouchers, thousands of trailers they were
promised left standing unoccupied, six months after the floodwaters
receded, despite the president's promise on national TV to do everything
required to attend to their needs.
CEOs
of multi-national corporations make more every month than each of their
front-line workers could make in a lifetime.
The
Interior Department is preparing to give billions
of dollars in federal tax relief to the very same energy companies
that are making a hundred billion dollars a year in profit — the greatest
net income in the history of the world — off of each and every last one
of us gas-pumping, house-heating, bill-paying Americans.
Lawmakers
are lavished with luxury vacations to golf tournaments and resorts around
the world with money from slush funds amassed by lobbyists representing
the very interests the legislators have sworn to govern.
Millions
of dollars are being spent nationwide on voting machines that are
vulnerable to hacking at best, rigged at worst — political allies of the
owners of the voting machine companies, up to and including the president,
pulling off wins that defy the exit polls and defile our democracy.
Our
troops are denied the armor for their bodies and vehicles that they need
to survive, even after this national scandal is brought to light.
Military
contractors are being paid millions of dollars in Iraq for trucks that
don’t work and services they never even render to our troops.
Attempts
to repeal the "widow's tax," which penalizes the survivors of
those killed in combat by reducing their benefits, are thwarted by the
congressional leadership.
And
up to a half trillion dollars that should have been invested in our people
and infrastructure right here at home are being spent — along with
thousands of lives and even more limbs — on a war based on a pack of lies
and half truths that should have never been fought and that has no end in
sight.
America
is still a great nation, because of the good spirit of its people. But if
we don't wish to have history judge us unkindly, we had better demand
better of those we empower.
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