More about Traitors

The last (almost) eight years has seen our government... that body which is
given its power from We The People and which serves at our pleasure, not
serving us. It hasn't worked to represent us, nor has it solved any of the
myriad problems facing us. Indeed, the historic low approval ratings that
Congress has earned make President Bush seem like a rock star. And that is
because they have failed year after year to decrease our dependency on
foreign oil (which is really the cause of so many other problems) by either
increasing domestic production and refinement or by pushing hard for serious
progress for on alternative, sustainable and renewable fuel. I don't mean
ethanol. Ethanol is not much better than oil, because it still burns oil,
but also uses up so much of our farm produce that it creates food shortages.
Indeed, the fixation that the world has with ethanol is beginning to
encroach upon valuable rain forest resources that we can't afford to lose.
We are not going to quit this addiction (and that's what it is) until we
actually learn to stop burning things to make our cars run. What we need is
the courage and the foresight to challenge ourselves to start a revolution
that ends the oil era. We need a moon shot for the new century. In response
to the Soviet's launch of Sputnik, John F Kennedy challenged the nation to
win the space race by landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to
Earth by the end of the sixties. That's what we need. What made it easy for
America (and America's politicians) to take the challenge seriously was the
paranoia... the supposed threat that the communists would drop bombs, or spy
on us from orbit. That's the threat that we have now, even though
particularly the left refuse to recognize it for political reasons. Our
strongest oil-producing ally in the middle east is Saudi Arabia, a kingdom
that has no respect for its citizens, and is one of the largest exporters of
terrorists in the world, and is itself threatened by even more radical
neighbors. So it doesn't matter what happens to the price of oil. We need to
get off of it. And if we must stay on it for a while, we'd better learn to
live off of what we can make ourselves.
Our government has also failed to learn some basic lessons of economics. Tax
cuts are necessary to protect the basic health of our business sector by
giving employers the means to hire and increase production, thereby lowering
prices, even as it helps working class people to keep (and spend and save)
more of their own money, which helps businesses to prosper. Supply side
"Reaganomics" really do work. It has been proven time and time again that
tax increases actually result in an overall loss in tax revenue by reducing
the average income of American workers, while tax cuts have in fact the
opposite effect by giving employers more hiring and production power and
giving consumers higher income and more spending power. But this really only
works if those tax cuts are matched with fiscal responsibility. Every tax
dollar that goes into the government has to treated like a valuable
commodity, because if it isn't spent doing the legitimate business of the
people, then it'll have to be replaced by a dollar that is spent correctly.
Asking the taxpayer for more money to pay for pork projects would be like me
demanding an extra paycheck because I spent the first one on computer games.
If I got away with that, I might be helping the local Best Buy to stay in
business, but it'll be at the cost of the bookstore I work at. I can't even
blame this on just the Democrats, much as I'd love to, because the
Republicans held all three branches of government for six of the last eight
years. The Republicans lowered our taxes wonderfully, but didn't have the
guts or political will to enact the spending cuts necessary to balance the
books.
Traitors? Well.... let's see. If I stand by and watch my neighbor's house
burn down without calling for help, aren't I just as guilty as if I roasted
marshmallows over the burning embers, or even started the fire myself? I
think so.