Biden The New FDR?
Ever arrive to an east coast airport from Europe? On the way into town you pass homeless encampments, graffiti everywhere, trashed low-cost housing buildings and young men aimlessly hanging around on street corners. What a mess. You’d think our country has no pride. Yep. But, we have over 600 billionaires.
We don’t want to tax ourselves to build and maintain a successful country where we take care of each other. That would be the dreaded socialism. You know, education, healthcare, infrastructure, housing, etc. Conservatives believe that such spending is criminal.
A recent opinion piece in the WSJ (4/29/21) put it this way:
The progressive hits keep coming from the Biden Administration, and the latest is the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan introduced in the broad strokes on Wednesday. It’s more accurate to call this the plan to make the middle-class dependent on government from cradle to grave. The government will tell you sometime later, after you’re hooked to the state , how it will force you to pay for it
This is dog whistle for: every man for himself / big gubment trying to steal my money / if you can’t care for yourself, that is sure as hell not my problem / you are on your own – that is the American way.
Letter to the editor, NYT, 4/30/21
Let’s see: The Republicans were OK with the trillions President George W. Bush spent on America’s failed military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were OK with the trillions lost from President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy. But they’re apoplectic at President Biden’s ideas to spend trillions to restore American vitality and bring our society in the 21st. century.
Trillions to secure America’s future strikes me as a good idea. Trillions lost to failure does not.
We always hear about people not voting in their own self-interest. Funny, the 1% can’t seem to understand why having a thriving middle class and ridding us of poverty might be in their self-interest. Hey 1%ers (and Mitch McConnell), you might want to remember the French, Russian and American revolutions.
Finally, “Let them eat cake” just won’t cut it.
For the first time in decades, I’m starting to feel a twinge of optimism.
I would feel GREAT optimism if we could just get rid of that stupid invented-to-protect-slavery filibuster. Come on Biden. That’s supposed to be your big strength: working with lawmakers, compromising, whatever you need to do to get them to bend your way. I totally adore all the legislation and programs you are proposing, but you HAVE to dump that stupid filibuster. — Maybe making DC a state will be the way around it. I know you can do it. Go Biden. The first genuine progressive we have had in the white house for DECADES!!!!
To quote Vincent Hallinan’s comment about the stance of the 1%: “Fuck you Jack, I got mine and I want more.”