by Jennifer Lawson-Zepeda
Obama’s State of the Union Speech
Although I won’t vote for him…
I have to admit that President Obama struck a refreshing tone of strength in his state of the union speech. He pointed out in clear language that Republicans are an exclusive club who are doing their best to maintain their exclusivity.
Certainly, when GOP candidates like Mitt Romney hide their tax returns until their popularity spirals in the polls; and are forced to release them, only to look as though they are forthright, they have lost the battle. And then, when they only release two years worth of returns and hide the rest, it is even more disgusting.
Romney has proven his 22 million dollars earnings and his 13.9% taxes (while the rest of us pay up to 28%) backs up Obama’s statements. And when Romney then talks about beefing up military spending that will increase his wealth exponentially — by allowing his capital venture company to purchase steel companies for profit making…well…it turns the American Dream into a nightmare for the masses.
Venture Capitalists Represent Me?
Tell me how a venture capitalist represents my dreams in the White House? While the wealthy write off real estate losses as property values decrease, Joe America watches his house depreciate and knows his retirement monies are going down the drain with the price of his house falling. Not to mention his spending power.
While the venture capitalist (like Mitt Romney) or history consultant (like Newt Gingrich) are earning the majority of their income through long-term capital gains investments and paying as low as 5% for those earnings, Joe American pays FIVE TIMES the amount they pay. And then, they still insist they should pay nothing in taxes. How does that work? The rich don’t pay taxes at all? Huh?
So they vote to maintain these special secretive perks. Perks that only help those they rub shoulders with, not perks that filter down to mainstream America.
Yet, they have the nerve to go to middle America and shake Joe America’s hand, doing the supreme act of pretending they understand what Joe America is going through. Offering solutions in tax language that confuses Joe America, twisted in rhetoric that makes it sound good to the poor schmuck with barely a high school education in small town America.
KKK for AmeriKA
Never mind that the GOP Ku Klux Klan mentality snubs their nose at more than half of the citizens of this country. They write emails in Spanish to try to gain the Latino vote, while eagerly rubbing their hands together with dreams of deporting the very families of the people they beg to vote for them.
Never mind that their Tea Party ethics promote people who infer that blacks are on welfare, using food stamps, and living off the money of whites. Or candidates who name their estates “niggerhead” or might as well refer to all blacks as “niggers” by the way they demean them otherwise. BTW, how many blacks are in the Tea Party besides Cain?
Never mind that their literature comes from places like the white nationalist rag, the National Vanguard. Written by stunning little charcters like William Pierce — the past leader of the white separatist National Alliance organization; and magazine covers issues from a White Nationalist perspective. A man who when he was alive, insisted Aryan youth needed white power music to bind themselves to racism.
The Legacy of Bush
Let’s look at the America that Bush left us, shall we:
- With a vast nation held together by centuries old infrastructure that needs to be redone
Obama’s central point should have been that since America’s founding, government has built much of the public infrastructure that makes American capitalism possible. And since the progressive era, it has been government’s efforts to humanize and stabilize capitalism that has ameliorated the savage cycles of boom and bust that have fueled chaos and revolution overseas. It is today’s Republicans, Obama should have said, who have forgotten this core truth about America. Because they forgot it during the Bush years, they helped plunge the U.S. into the worst recession since the 1930s. And because they keep forgetting it, a Republican-controlled Washington would doom America’s chances for a true economic recovery.
- With spiraling economics, stock market crashes, and foreclosures from sub-prime loans
It seems as though the debt-ceiling fight, which Obama described as a “fiasco” in his address tonight, convinced him once and for all that the only way to effectively deal with Republicans was show them that he was willing to talk tougher and push harder than they were.
- With huge tax breaks for only the most wealthy to correct
He made a case for letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire and for imposing the “Buffet rule” – doing away with tax rules that allow millionaires who make their money from investments to pay an income tax rate that’s lower than the one paid by people who earn a fraction of their income.
After all, Newt Gingrich, Romney’s chief rival for the GOP nomination, is actually proposing that the capital gains tax be eliminated altogether – a move that would drop the effective tax rate of Romney and others like him close to zero.
(Source: Political wisdom assessing Obamas State-of-the-Union address/ )
Back to the Future?
Should we really be thinking about bringing back the very people that created these problems? Isn’t that like throwing the baby into the bathwater?
I see that Romney offered a review criticizing the President’s State of the Union address.
Who would have guessed that he would be concerned about the content of that. After all, wasn’t Obama talking directly to HIM about the wealthy paying their fair share of taxes? One might think so, since Obama released this speech on the same day that Romney released his taxes, no?Or was it Newt, who wants to remove Capital Gains taxes altogether, so his friends pay NO taxes?
Romney, whose personal wealth has been on display this week after he released his tax records, did not address a central argument of Obama’s address — that economic fairness demands that wealthier Americans pay more to help stabilize the economy and reduce the debt.
Now why wouldn’t he address that? Go figure!
For more, visit Jennifer Lawson-Zepeda’s blog!
As I mentioned here on my own site, on Tuesday night what I really saw was a man begging to keep his job.
We really shouldn’t make any mistake – Obama doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get that we’re bringing home a bunch of troops who are now mean, angry, and unemployed. He doesn’t get that the kids who are now out of college are drowning in debt. He doesn’t get that half of America is about to be foreclosed, while he’s dallying with a hall-pass for the nation’s banking-criminals.
Worst – he doesn’t get that he’s failed.
-W
I can’t get over how many Republicans and others are still in support of the tax breaks for the wealthy. Even those who don’t qualify for them and are laboring under the weight of their own falling down lives. It’s not as if we are asking them to be taxed MORE. But rather that the BREAKS end. There is a difference.
Nice write up Jennifer.
I’m tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. If it’s evil, i won’t vote for it, period. I’ve spent my whole life as a political activist and all it has gotten me is a run-down trailer and a lot of abuse. There could be no stronger statement as to just how people feel about our decadent government than to simply not show up at the polls. No matter who they vote for, the corporates are already lined up to make sure they have a puppet, so your vote doesn’t make a damned bit of difference.
Karla, I am feeling the same way. I have felt strongly about voting my whole adult life and yet here I am, I cannot accept putting my voice to something or someone I don’t believe in.
I think the machine changes whomever gets into office anyway. All their ideals are thrown out when they realize just how little they are actually able to do. It is those we never see who run this place.
I tuned out right after the “my fellow Americans” line because I knew right there that this is just more bullshit to be spoonfed to the public – I’m not an “American” (I just happen to live in territory the U.S. state entity claims) and I don’t give a flying fuck about this thing called “America.”
Oh, and W.D. – Obama *does* get it, he just doesn’t care: he’s just another faux populist looking to get the public to trust him as he fucks them over again. The Obama you were sold on during the elections doesn’t exist: that Obama was the result of a well-run media campaign and nothing more…
If anything Obama said meant anything, then by his speech, he might be the one to vote for. Unfortunately, he has a record of saying one thing and doing another.
Obama is the reason I am voting for Stewart Alexander of the American Socialist Party in 2012, as a protest vote; and because I really do like his ideas. I don’t expect him to get elected, but my vote will say something along with others I know.
I think Mr. Obama is doing a great job…. I think most citizens “don’t get it” ….
I get it, Rich. I get that he’s trying to enact some change — to a point. I get that he’s accomplished a few things that I approve of. I get that he chooses not to address many other things he promised, because of his concerns over bi-partisan opinions of him and earning another term in office.
What I don’t get is how a man like this can promise so much and outright avoid attempting to satisfy his promises.
I should get it, based on John F. Kennedy and how much he promised Latinos after he nursed the Viva Kennedy campaigns; and how little he helped.
I should get it after Lyndon Johnson promised Dr. Hector Garcia he would address injustices directed at Latinos, and later ignored them for the sake of keeping peace with his racist cronies.
I should get that in spite of Obama being a minority himself, he doesn’t seem to care about a HUGE portion of his constituents, in spite of romancing us for a vote.
I get that Obama is trying to repair relations with a number of countries, like Russia that hit a low point during the Bush hate-rhetoric days.
What I don’t get is that he hasn’t gotten it yet that Americans want our troops back home. He hasn’t gotten that we don’t want to continue paying for this endless war in an array of countries, while many of us suffer at home from underemployment or unemployment.
I don’t get why he doesn’t understand that our own country has a long way to go in healing from his promises that our country could make an FDR-style turn away from supporting the elite corporations and then, he bails these very people out.
What I don’t get is that he isn’t tougher on the private sector that refuses to create jobs, in spite of HUGE profits.
I don’t get why Obama allows Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig votes on legislation aimed at keeping the elite, rich.
As Obama said in 2008:
“We are up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government–that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we’re not going to let them stand in our way anymore. Unless we’re willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change.”
So why isn’t he changing this? THOSE are things that I do not get.
Like I said before Jennefer, he’s a faux populist – once you realize that he never had any intention of bringing meaningful change to Washington all those things you “don’t get” vanish in a whisp of smoke.
If we go to war with Iran, we better start ducking and covering, because i have an uneasy feeling that will be the day all hell will break loose.
I doubt that Karlsie – the Iranians don’t have any missiles capable of reaching Western shores and the other majors power (Russia and China) won’t commit to certain suicide by launching their nukes over a conflict with Iran (although a conventional conflict isn’t out of the question, though that would likely be regional in scope).
I doubt very seriously that China or Russia would be the first to deploy nuclear arsenal. They are governed by a modicum of sanity. I’m not sure i can say the same thing for the NATO countries rolling in their war machines along Mideastern borders. In a conventional war, the Western bloc is outnumbered in terms of foot soldiers. I think Russia and China are simply waiting to see just how much the West is willing to empty out all its youth resources to stage a war it can’t really win except through the deployment of advanced weaponry. Neither Russia nor China is willing to allow the West to bully them into submission. With the entire South American bloc- including Central America – telling the US to stay the fuck out of their affairs, i think there is an opening through our back door.
I doubt that anyone will initiate a nuclear conflict unless one party launches first – and I strongly doubt that they will do so over a regional war (one major power would likely have to invade the the homeland of the other for that).
And regarding a conventional war between the Russians, the Chinese and the U.S./NATO empire – personally, I hope they all rip each other a new one abroad so that insurrections by local interests at home can destroy them all from within: imagine if you will the first time in centuries a world with no superpowers – without them the smaller states they prop up will collapse and the common man would be able to set up a brand new set of social contracts without their meddling…