How high's the water, Mama?
Well, it's two-feet high and risin'
If you’ve ever lived on a flood plain, you know what it’s like when the water’s rising and there’s nothing you can do but wait and watch to see how high it will get. We’re there and our democracy is being flooded by entitled billionaires who seem to be completely comfortable wrecking the system we’ve built up over almost 250 years. They think they’ll just snap their manicured fingers and Jeeves will bring them a new system on a silver tray.
That’s what today feels like … but it’s not true … there are things we can do before it’s too late.
Last night, I spent two hours on Zoom with the backbone of our country: thousands of public service employees now out of a job or dreading the email that comes in the night telling them the life they had planned just got washed away. These are the people who monitor those rising waters for lethal contamination; who answer the phone when you call to see how to get help getting black mold out of your house after the waters go back down, who rebuild the bridges that you took to work everyday, who help you figure out what to do about that car that wound up on your roof.
Public service employees are the people we don’t see until they’re not there. The fact that you don’t even have to think about them is a sign that they are doing their job effectively and efficiently. For most of us, life would be chaotic without them … for billionaires like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, it’s different. They could afford to hire an army of helpers to get them through the day.
However, even billionaires couldn’t afford to build the roads and bridges needed to drive from Mar-a-Lago to the harbor where their yacht is docked. Or, take care of the vital records of 340 million Americans. Or, pay to develop a cure for the disease they don’t have yet but could be waiting just around the corner. Or, keep airplanes from colliding in mid-air. Or, safe-guard our collection of nuclear weapons. Or, monitor the world for new disease threats.
Billionaires hate regulations and tell us we should hate them, too. One of the agencies they truly hate is the EPA. (Sounds foreign and distant, just letters, probably full of FAW … fraud, abuse, and waste.) Actually though, it is a $10 billion agency of about 15,000 people doing some of our most important work to keep our air and water safe. Small change in the billionaire scheme of things.
The tale of the burning river
EPA actually came about as an Executive Order from Richard Nixon in 1970. At the time, living in many big cities was a chronic health hazard. You may have heard of the Cuyahoga River, which empties into Lake Erie at Cleveland. It was oh so convenient for businesses and farmers to dump their waste into it … after all no one was regulating it.
Periodically for a hundred years, the river caught fire. One blaze in 1952 did a million dollars worth of damage. It was not a river you wanted to swim in or even live around, but it did one good thing … it was such a horror that it brought attention to the need to regulate it … and that brought about the EPA. Thank you, President Nixon.
These days there are kayakers and people fishing in the river. Species absent for over a century have made a comeback and in 2019, it was honored with the “River of the Year” designation by American Rivers.
A lot is also being done in the name of the national debt. Their plan to solve the issue makes no sense.
Many of us hate debt and a national debt of $36 trillion is scary. The current Republican administration acts like it is their holy duty to reduce it; however, they seem to think that we have to wreck everything to fix it.
Graphic Note: Three presidents added almost $23 trillion, wildly out of line with the other four. Let’s think about why:
W. Bush dealt with two recessions (2001 & 2008), implemented a tax cut that added about 1.5 T to the debt and marched forward to other administrations, and led us into a war after 9/11 which added about another trillion. Interest alone became about a half a trillion during the Bush years.
Obama inherited the fallout of the 2008 recession and added about 2 T due to the stimulus relief actions taken to end the recession, as well as about 4.1 T in tax cuts carried over from Bush, plus there was an increase in military, healthcare, and social program spending.
Trump, of course was very good … maybe the best … at increasing the national debt, almost beating in four years what Obama did in eight. And how did he manage such a towering record? He cut tax for the wealthy (about 1.9 T, also marching into the future) and dealt with COVID (about 3.6T).
And what about Biden?
While the graphic shows only the first two years, Perplexity reports that his final results may be closer to 8.4 T, consisting of continued impact of COVID, but mainly additional spending on infrastructure and stimulus programs, resulting in about 17 million new jobs (read … an increase in future revenue). Additionally, his policies resulted in strong GDP growth and a reduction of inflation from a 40-year high of 9.1% in 2022 to end around 3% by the end of 2024.
Now Trump wants to do the tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy thing again … and reduce tax audits for his rich buddies … and put a whole lot of people out of work.
Government accounting is way over my pay grade but I do understand the basics of debt and nothing he’s doing makes sense to me.
If you agree, show up, stay informed, and speak up. Make some posters and show up at rallys, town halls, and protests.
FREE PRINTABLE RESISTANCE POSTERS no one can do everything everyone can do something
There are rallys, town halls, and protests happening all over the country. Attend if you can, and, if you do, posters can help you transmit your message.
Click here for more information and to get the pdfs for these posters.
Good for you, Joyce! Those posters are strong. It's all pretty horrifying. Don't you wonder what Bhutan did to get on the hate list? Possibly, propose that happiness is more important than profits?