THE WAY I SEE IT...
OURS IS BECOMING AN UNCIVIL SOCIETY?

I constantly see urban landscapes marred by taggers who have no compunction against leaving scars on the city and walking away from the mess. They leave a mess for somebody else to clean up. It reminds me of another kind of mess a couple of years ago that was left for a bright, energetic, open -hearted and open-minded young president to clean up. I like Barack Obama. He is an intelligent, civil man. He is one of us. It worries me to hear his political enemies like Mitch McConnel declare that their first goal is to see that President Obama is kicked out of office two years from now at the end of his first term... But first priority! I can understand Republicans wanting a Republican in the office... but I’d like hear McConnell and Boehner say something about bipartisan cooperation with the Obama Administration to help the nation extract itself from wars begun by the former administration... and to begin reasonable recovery from the tremendous cost in money and loss of lives that those two wars have cost.

Listening to the Tea Party leaders crowing yesterday and today over the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, I kept waiting to hear about their plan for addressing what’s left of the mess left to the Obama Administration two short years ago by the eight year administration of George W. Bush. In yesterday’s crowing there was no acknowledgement that the economic house of cards had begun to fall in the last months of the President Bush’s second term of office. Nothing is being said about the slow but sure recovery from the worst recession in years. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, himself not a card-carrying Tea Partier, is still the leader of a minority in the Senate; but he insists that “the American people” have spoken, and that Republicans will take immediate action in response to “the people’s” demand for smaller government, lower taxes, the abolition of the recently established Health Care program, the protection of American families and the American military from homosexuals, and finally the expulsion from the People’s House on Pennsylvania Avenue a person who, according to many Tea Party people, may not even be a legitimate American citizen.

I am waiting to hear Tea Party plans for making life better for Americans. What about health care? What about unemployment? What about the continuing outrageous practices of unscrupulous movers and shakers on Wall Street and in financial institutions all over American who brought us to the meltdown of 2008? What about the shrinking middle class and the growing group of Americans living in poverty while the richest segment of the population grows larger and wealthier? What is the party of NO’S plan “to get America working again”? What is the party of NO’s plan to address the needs of older, sicker Americans if they eliminate Medicare? What is the Tea Party’s plan for Americans approaching retirement if they are successful in eliminating the Social Security program... and will somebody please explain to me what Bible these most conservative American Christians are reading? It can’t possibly be the same one I read which details in exact language what the person for whom the religion is named says about our responsibility for the poor, the meek, and the afflicted. Surely it’s not the same one I read which describes what the moral person who has everything does for those who have less than we have or nothing at all. Senator-elect Rand Paul explains Republican economic philosophy: “We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people...” So he says we should definitely not increase their taxes. Don’t bother telling me that the solution to curing what ails us can be described in three words: “No More Taxes.” Show us some other part of the mysterious plan the Tea Party folks have been saying they have.