The Past Isn't Invisible

As much as you'd like to blame President Obama and the Democrats for the current recession, consider that the past isn't inviisble and that the vast majority of the problems we're facing and the Democrats have tried to solve over the Republican opposition started with President Bush with the two Bush tax cuts when Bush and Congress took a budget surplus and spent it and more for the corporations, financial markets and rich.

And remember the problems of the economy, global and national financial market, and housing bubble started under Reagan and acelerated under the second Bush presidency. In short, you can't erase or forget 8 years of Bush and Republican economics which created this mess we're in and two years is just a beginning to get us turned around and going in the right direction.

And this raises the question you should consider when votiing. The past isn't invisible and it will return if the Republicans are in charge again. Consider what they did before and consider what the're offering. It's the past, again. They're offering to go back to the Bush-era before everything collapsed and promising it will be like that, just more of the same problems for the middle and lower classes and more money for corporations and the rich.

Do you really think they're going to help you? Did they before? How many lost jobs under Bush? How many saw their home value collapse under Bush? How many saw their healthcare refused or lost under Bush? How many saw their retirement and savings account almost disappear under Bush? How many saw their jobs lost overseas or just lost because the company decided you're too expensive?

This is their past. It's stll there and not invisible? And notice how the Republicans are running campaigns against anything Obama has done but using the money under the Obama stimulus money to create jobs. Many of those new jobs they say aren't being created by the stimulus money are being created by the stimulus money because they applied for and got the money from the Obama administration's stimulus program.

And the TARP to bailout Wall Street? Well it succeeded and more so, returning an 8% profit for the government. Yes, a government program made money for the people and will make more as the government eventually sells the toxic assests in the coming years for a profit. You wanted government to think and run like a corporation and they did, and more so with a higher rate of return for us the people. Our money returned with interest.

And now the Republicans are running on the Democrats successes. Why? Because they want their past under Bush to be invisible. And that's what they're hiding from you and what you should see and see them. They're the emperor with no clothes for their policitical values. Their past shows who and what they're for, and is it you? No, it's not, that's what's not invisible. Their past. And that's what you should look at when you judge them.

Don't listen to their promises and rhetoric. Look at their past. It's not invisible, it's what you lived through under Bush and especially experienced when it all collapsed under the Republican "free market" economics. That and your experience isn't invisible, so see it and then see what the Republicans are still saying. Don't let the make their past inviisible for some promises they're offering now.

I won't argue the Democrats are good, they're not. They've shown the lack of will and backbone to do everything they should and could for people. They caved into threats by the Republicans. They catered to them for dilluting the bills they passed which could have been better. But at least they're working on solutions and going in the right direction, albeit badly and poorly. And where would we be with the Republicans in charge?

Consider that and that their past isn't invisible. It's all there for you to see and judge under the Clinton and Bush (1994-2006) years. Is that what you want? Is that what you think will solve our problems? More jobs lost overseas, higher deficits than any presidential administration, higher trade deficits, lost earnings and savings, lost healthcare and health insurance, lost home investment value?

I won't argue we're in for a long haul recession, which will probably last well past 2012 and into the latter part of this decade. The solutions aren't easy or quick as the Republicans suggest or want you to believe. They can't create jobs overnight? And if they could, with who's money? Do you really think the corporations will create jobs here at higher wages and employee costs when it's cheaper in China?

How much of our goods are made in China? How much of the rest made outside the US, like Mexico, Vietnam, India, etc.? Do you really think they'll change that trend? Do you really think they're consider you with their version of healthcare reform which is just a return to the past and we know that's not invisible. We know what happened. Is that what you want, always worrying about the letter from the health insurance company one day saying they're rejecting your claim or worse dropping you?

This is what this election is about, the past which isn't invisible and we know and the future which we don't. Do you want the fear of the past or the anxiety of the future. There are no good or easy answers here, just what we know and what we don't. Except we know the future can't be worse and has all the potential and promise to be better. If we choose it.

And that's what this election is about. The Republicans and their visible past and the Democrats and their hopeful future.