Dear Senator Obama:
I voted for you this morning. I did so in the hopes that you will live up to the promises you made regarding "Change."
I had no doubt about the choice I made this morning, as I waited in line at the Lindenhurst Snails Firehouse on Heling Boulevard, a quarter mile from my home. I was the 24th voter in my Election District (110th E.D.), which, I hope, is one of thousands cast in my town. Sadly, we are represented in Congress by Peter King (R-NY). I voted for his opponent, Graham Long, largely because of King's unwavering support for George Bush policies, and because you're going to need all the votes you can get in Congress to effectively fulfill your vision.
It pleases me that you have articulated a vision for our nation in print; that you have developed a lasting and enduring record to which we can refer should you waver from it. If you are sincere in this Senator, then I want what you want. These are my top five issues you promised to address, in no particular order:
- Tax cuts for the middle class
- Health care reform
- An end to the Iraqi occupation
- More government investment in infrastructure and education
- A more regulated financial market that keeps Corporate America from the rampant speculation that put us in the mess we're in now. And while you're at it, please find a way to restructure the disastrous bailout deal that provides zero accountability for those investment banks that are literally feeding at the U.S Treasury trough.
Presently, I am not happy with your vote to provide retro-active immunity to telecommunications companies that spied on Americans at the behest of the President without a warrant. They knowingly violated a Constitutional right and you let them slide.
Not am I pleased with your vote for the Wall Street bailout. If Naomi Klein's recent article in Rolling Stone magazine doesn't convince you that Corporate America has no intention of making good on their promises in exchange for our help, then I will make a point of letting you know that this is the case. Sir, I am adamant on this point. Please close the trough.
Finally, I am also not enamored with you decision to continue President Bush's Faith-based initiative to provide needed public services. While I view the public assistance provided by the religious faithful as a good thing, then they should have no problem doing so under the aegis of a government program that prohibits religious proselytizing of any kind. Finding God should not be a pre-requisite to being helped.
Senator Obama, please know that with my vote you will have my support. Indeed, my support is conditional, but know, too, that you have it. I place my trust in you, not just for myself, but for my children. Unlike me, they have yet to realize the American dream as articulated in your plan and what's worse, they are captives to the votes I cast this day.
Please don't let us down.
Sincerely,
John Nieves
Lindenhurst, NY
I want to enjoy the excitement and hope of today and tomorrow BUT - you are absolutely right!!
ReplyDeleteI would write a very similar letter - adding in that I'm not pleased with his luke warm stand on gay rights.
John, I'm with you all the way and with Obama all the way too! I visit from Dianne's blog Forks Off the Moment. :)
ReplyDeleteGood on ya, John. Thanks for taking the time to write this letter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that you identify as being important to the future of our country and our global neighbors. I too was disappointed with some of Obama’s votes. I was especially surprised that a constitional law professor would support FISA.
I would add that I do not support "the good war" in Afghanistan or Georgia or Pakistan, or anywhere else the power brokers are planning to extend their military adventure. I would like our days of empire and imperialism to end. I would prefer to see the 50% of tax dollars which are now dedicated to the "defense" budget (but as we know, inflate oil interests and contractors’ revenues) go instead to education, health care, infrastructure, building a green economy, etc.
Well said. Thanks. Its all very heady and exciting. I'm glad you articulated your conditions.
ReplyDeleteAlecto - Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDiane - thanks for the link on your site. I agree that Obama needs to do a better job on the issue of gay rights. As it is now, I believe he stands against gay marriage, but supports civil unions. He's walking the political fence on that one.
maryt - thanks for stopping by. Right now, I'm enjoying thoroughly Obama's victory, but I'm cautiously optimistic about the next four years. He has a helluva lot of work to do undoing what's been perpetrated on us over the last eight years.
gabrielle - I agree to a certain extent with you on Afghanistan. So far, we've used a sledge hammer to kill a cockroach. Finding Osama Bin Laden should be considered police work done by the FBI through Interpol with intelligence provided by the CIA. Where I agree with you is that we should not be occupying Afghanistan nor should we be engaging Pakistani troops on their borders.
As for the defense budget, we need to decide how much of a military presence we need. If it's Obama's policy to keep it at current levels, it's going to cost us. We also have to consider the cost of providing real benefits to the returning troops and their families and perhaps holding contractors like Haliburton and Blackwater accountable for the federal money they received to determine if they fulfilled their contractual duties. If not (and we know they didn't) the government needs to find a way to recoup those funds.
tan - thanks for stopping by and commenting. But I am only reflecting my post-election concerns because Obama's task is daunting.
Wait, everything isn't automatically happy fun candy? You lied to me, internets, you lied!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, I've got plenty o' concerns. Of course I'm not naive enough to think the imperialism will end anytime soon, just that it'll be less belligerent and but run by a dude with a functioning brain.
The fact that a black dude for pretzeldent and a convicted felon - I'm assuming he'll win the damn thing - can be elected on the same day shows just how bizarre our nation is.
I am just glad that, after eight years, we have a President who speaks English.
ReplyDeleteBut he has this big ears.... like what is up with that?
You're right....there is a long way to get home....to where America needs to be, but, gosh darn it, it is a start!!!
PS.... Lindenhurst? Sounds like a place just full of socialist-do-gooder types!
Randal - I don't know about you, but I believe everything I read on the Internets. ;^).
ReplyDeleteLike you, I think Obama's a step in the right direction, but just a step. Given the issues he has to lead us through, he may very well take a step back.
As far as electing convicted felons (and un-convicted ones), it's nothing new in the U.S. Think Huey Long, Boss Tweed, or a more modern day example, Rudy Giuliani. The scams these guys have pulled off make Ted Stevens crime pale in comparison. Seriously -- ask Rudy about his relationship with Motorola and how their radios may cost the lives of hundreds of firefighters on 9/11. Now there's a crime.
okjimm - I'm with you on putting an end to the eight-year nightmare. And, yes, Obama is quite eloquent in his elocution of the mother tongue.
But I see you caught my wiggle ears comment over at your site. Hey man, I'm just saying. If Obama can do that with his ears, it would be fucking hilarious (oops... did I just curse?)
And Lindenhurst is as far from socialist as a town can get. First it's the new name of the town which was changed from Breslau during WW1. It's also known a Swindlehurst because of the propensity its elected officials have for raiding the town till. Do gooders? Lindenhurst? heh.
Well put. I'm back to the same place I was day before yesterday: cautious optimism.
ReplyDeleteThanks Bubs. Same here. Obama's got a lot on his plate.
ReplyDeleteWell done. I hope he stops with the faith based bullshit, because a bunch of churches just told every queer in America that they are officially second class citizens. Ok, they've been saying that for a while, but banning gay marriage after 18,000 people got married and the state didn't fall into the ocean? I'm afraid that my sense of euphoria died when I saw the Prop 8 results.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Rahm Emmanuel for Chief of Staff? He's the one who scuttled Christine Sebelius and actively sought millionaire (often former republican) candidates for congressional seats, knifing true progressives in the back. He's not our friend.
Another interesting thing that happened yesterday was that the Milton Friedman School of Economics was dedicated in Chicago. Talk about ultimate redundancy. It's time for all that stuff to be gone but it's entrenched - the Chicago Boys are still kicking.
ReplyDeletePiNYC.. I saw the results of Prop 8 in Cali, too, and I was bummed by the results. We may have elected a black president, but the progressive tide has yet to hit shores of the LGBT community. But please e-mail me the deal with Rahm Emmanuel. I'm guessing that he was the one who shot down Gov. Sebelius's Vice Presidential nomination. I just did some research on it and that's what I could turn up. I also saw that he's pretty cozy with AIPAC. Yet another brow-raising concern.
ReplyDeleteSusan.. I suspect the timing of that event is no coincidence. Nothing with them ever is. What's happened in our country over the last eight years is the refined result of years of the Chicago Boy approach to emasculate political power by removing it's authority to regulate commerce. Nothing short of a return to a feudal system would please these bastards. "Drink up Bitches" is what our friend Fairlane likes to say, and it appears that that's what many misinformed Americans - left and right - seem to have done.
SPARTACUS: You know I'm someone who rarely drinks it. I was seeing red a day and half after the election. I felt like I'd been robbed of something I was really looking forward to with the Rahm Emanuel appointment. He's a beast. He's AIPAC and more. He favors a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Iran. Obama has genuflected before AIPAC way too much himself. I know that 6,000,000 of my aunts and uncles didn't die so that Israel could be Wingnut America's Middle-East imperialist gangster. I can't be. I will not accept it even if I'm the only one of my kind pissed off and offended.
ReplyDeleteAnd he's a hawk on all other foreign policy, too. You know how dovish I am. I'm all about agreements and bargains and fair trade in place of fighting.
He's getting a C- from me based on that. On Latin America. On Russia. And on escalation in South Asia.
On social policy, you read my mind on the LGBTQ community and Obama. While he did a great job reaching out and unifying everyone else, he was way too much of a religious prude to make the slightest effort to reach out to them. And they still gave him the benefit of the doubt, which they had, too, but still. He's got a lot of growing up and manning-up to do in that area. If he can make common-cause with all those Wingnuts, it's crazy that he's so SQUEAMISH about a natural consituency for him. I get furious about this. I can't imagine life without gay and lesbian friends who share my interests and hobbies and what he does is more than disrespectful. If not for that, I'd give him a solid B+ on civil rights. That earns him an INCOMPLETE. He's a D-on civil liberties. A D- on criminal justice. I could almost flunk him for his views on that as a Democrat. He's barely a D for compassion for the neediest. He's a D- on health care.
Meanwhile for such a right-winger, he has no sense of economic conservatism and I'm very conservative on that. I don't mean I'm like Bush, with steal everything that isn't nailed down, kill the poor, pro-pollution, no-regulation. No. I'm a real conservative. I'm his opposite on those issues. But I'm for freer markets and much more fungibility and accessibility for everybody. With rules and transparency.
I'm also for a flexible neo-Keynesian fiscal policy but definitely leaning toward the tighter more balanced budget side. And I'm for monetary neutrality not free finacing. That's basic conservatism. The Wingnuts have drained the word of all its meaning.
I guess I'm a conservative in the mold of Dennis Kucinich, Hugo Chavez, and Barry Goldwater!
ReplyDeletePresident Obama doesn't even seem to have any views on economics or any desire to put in the time. This makes no sense at all because he's so intelligent and these concepts are familiar to him, I'm sure.
Bottom line: I like the guy but I'm not with his ideology.
HERMANO: I forgot to say how brilliant this letter is and how well it captures my feelings but with more optimism. I liked what you did here also:
ReplyDeleteA more regulated financial market that keeps Corporate America from the rampant speculation that put us in the mess we're in now.
*** "And while you're at it, please find a way to restructure the disastrous bailout deal that provides zero accountability for those investment banks that are literally feeding at the U.S Treasury trough."
Spartacus, it's way, way worse than even the grim way you describe it which is stark enough next to his vacuous words.
I've read the language of the big one which passed. It's not only the banks feeding off the Treasury which they are at a total budget busting level. It's also the TREASURY becoming the NATION'S LANDLORD, acquiring almost 1/2 the real property in the country for pennies on the dollar and with no plan to help any struggling homeowner. In fact, it's a plan for the opposite. The Treasury has become PRIVATIZED for the winning trades and SOCIALIZED for the losing ones. They are evicting people by the 1000s every day for non-payment of those con-job loans. Meanwhile, there's a whole wide world out here with huge piles of USD and we'd all like to buy some of the debt instruments and are happy to bear all the risk with no collateral and NO EVICTIONS for the privilege of buying very good discounted securities. But the Treasury is too greedy for that. And of course too xenophobic.
Worse still is that the language completely erases GAAP and the PRINCIPLES OF CORPORATE FINANCE. Accounting and finance now mean whatever the Treasury says they mean on an ad-hoc basis. For one bond, they can say the equity holders have first dibs on the assets. For another bond the preferred convertibles have dibs. No rules whatsoever. They can basically PAINT IT BLACK -- blot the sun out of the sky. Or they can draw in three suns the next day.
Obama bullied the Congressional Black Caucus into changing their minds on this?????
Well said, Johnny! I feel more optimistic, because I feel that Obama listens carefully to other opinions and is capable of getting things accomplished. However - it is NOT a coronation.
ReplyDeleteI can't help feeling as though the American people just got Rooked, Again.
ReplyDeleteIn reality, the majority of Obama's stances are exactly the same as the Wingnut's.
I made an error. It wasn't Kathleen Sebelius, I meant Christine Cegelis, who was running for the congressional seat formerly held by Henry Hyde (Ill 6, I think). His role in scuttling Cegelis by handpicking Tammy Duckworth to run in a district that she did not even live in, after Cegelis not only came close to unseating Hyde and built up the local the local democratic party (which had be dormant, at best, for years) is pretty well known. He's a scumbag.
ReplyDeleteFAIRLANE: One of the 1000 reasons why I'd be a terrible political consultant is on display here. I've tried to make a Ronald Reagan argument to loyal Democrats.
ReplyDeleteDespite that the Reagan years were almost a social democratic golden age compared to today, I'll have to try another argument, almost as difficult because I'll us FOREIGN examples.
I know you, Fairlane, like Kucinich's ideas but find him too wimpy in personal style. How about Chavez, Correa of Ecuador and Morales of Bolivia. You can't possibly find them wimpy in any way, can you? You'd put them far to the "left" of Obama, right? Maybe to the "left" of Kunicinch? Yet, they have a generous social sector but an overall economic philosophy which is very conservative: balanced budgets, strong sovereign currency.
I'd suggest that if any American of either gender with a touch of feminism look not to Hillary Clinton but to President Michelle Bachelet of Chile. No, she's not Cindy Sheehan. Yes, she also holds those same economic views and has no problem with wealth creation. But her "story" is too crazy for me to try to tell. Sure, Wingnuts were beast to Obama during the US election. Michelle Bachelet's father was part of Allende's government-for-a-day and she herself was held in a secret military prison for a few years during the "dirty war". No, being a White Upper-Class Chilena Francesa didn't stop the Pinochet's paramilitaries from doing whatever it was they did to female political opponents in the secret prisons back in those days.
She's boss now, though, and is the most progressive leader they've had since her father was elected.
Johnny, That was a great letter.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize you were in King's district. ack!
spartacus, you wrote:
ReplyDelete"Tax cuts for the middle class"
Not happening unless you accept that the deficit will surge. Cuts are impossible to fund if your second request is undertaken.
You asked for:
"Health care reform"
If you are asking for a Universal Healthcare Plan, then the first change that must occur is a change to citizenship. No more open doors to America. The countries offering taxpayer-funded plans boot freeloaders out. France is especially aggressive about deporting people who are ripping off the French taxpayers by obtaining services to which they are not entitled.
You asked for:
"An end to the Iraqi occupation"
If Iraq is smart, it will seek a deal in which the US military maintains a presence as it does in Germany, Japan and Korea.
Meanwhile, as the battle focus shifts from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the cost of those expanded efforts will rise, offsetting some of the savings from reduced activities in Iraq.
How much will monthly military expsenses decline?
Does it matter if Osama bin Laden is killed or captured? A clown living in a cave that is probably in Pakistan is a small threat. His death or capture will change nothing in the minds of a hundred million muslim fundamentalists who seek the destruction of the US, the West and Israel.
You asked for:
"More government investment in infrastructure and education"
Why? Contrary to the unfounded belief, our infrastructure is in good shape. Every public road receives some level of maintenance and repair. Some need more than they get. But our bridges and highways are in good shape and not many need more than their regularly scheduled attention.
Meanwhile, when it comes to contrived make-work projects, we already have too many. I don't know where the "Bridge to Nowhere" was meant to carry traffic, but more projects like it would appear if more taxpayer money were thrown at the "infrastructure."
The Minnesota bridge collapsed because the contractors working on the upgrade overloaded the structure by piling steel and construction stuff on the bridge during the overhaul. It fell down when rush-hour traffic stressed it beyond its limits.
As for education, well, vast problems would disappear IF many union rules were nullified. The schools would vastly improve IF schools had more power to put a stop to disruptive student behavior. And schools would improve if parents were more involved with their children's education.
More money is not the answer. NY City now spends more than $15,000 per student per year. Despite a 50% increase in spending since the start of the decade, results have remained almost steady. Hence, the solution lies elsewhere.
You asked for:
"A more regulated financial market that keeps Corporate America from the rampant speculation that put us in the mess we're in now."
How about some laws with teeth that penalize borrowers for putting false information on No-Documentation Loan forms?
The Subprime Loan business had been a sound business until borrowers discovered there were no penalties for borrowing money you could not repay.
Worst case? You turn over the house keys to the lender and walk away.
When a borrower has no skin in the game -- a downpayment -- then losing a house is nothing more than a pain in the neck.
There were some cases of outright fraud committed by unscrupulous subprime BROKERS. But that's always been illegal. Most problems have resulted from the dishonesty of borrowers.
You asked for:
"And while you're at it, please find a way to restructure the disastrous bailout deal that provides zero accountability for those investment banks that are literally feeding at the U.S Treasury trough."
How do you know the current plan is bad? What plan makes more sense?
At what speed can the world's largest economy recover?
Here's the bad news: No one knows what to do. There are a lot of seemingly sensible ideas in the air. But there is no way to know which is the best.
Lastly, the stock market is a forward-looking predictive entity. It is now predicting that Obama will prove bad for the economy.
I wish it were otherwise.
Thanks again everyone -- even you no_slappz -- for commenting (with a special thanks to Kelso and Dianne to linking me on their sites). For one, I'm happy to see that the comments on this thread are not one-sided. I think it's healthy to have these kinds of debates, even in the blogosphere, because our republican democracy depends on opinions and ideas rendered from reasoned minds. I'm also happy to see that the tenor of the comments stayed away from the second-grade Mcdoodypants name calling.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to responded to each of your comments separately, but I really haven't had much time to read and comment on your posts much less write my own. For this, I apologize.