Americans need to stop thinking of our government as a money making entity, like a corporation or company of some sort. The United States of America does not have to answer to shareholders or an investor’s board. America does not need to show a profit on it’s financial reports or guarantee dividends to anyone on a quarterly basis. In case everyone has forgotten, the sole purpose of a government is to protect the welfare of it’s citizenry. So, in these financially fucked times, the government should be expected to address the needs of the American people and maintain a standard of living in this nation that we can be proud of. We should not be concerned with whether or not they spend a shit load of money in this stimulus package (or in the following packages that will inevitably come) because that is what the fuck the money is in their hands for. Taxes are collected to service the communal needs of our people & holding back grant money or welfare funds or any other entitlement cash in the name of fiscal responsibility is unacceptable. How can we consider our nation among the greatest in the world when we allow the working class to become paupers & virtual serfs? How can we be proud when we allow our nation’s children to receive sub-standard educations or sit back while our system of higher education becomes the province of the wealthy because average folks can’t afford to continue their schooling? Is this really the “land of the free & the home of the brave” if we allow the wealthy few to run cowardly from their social duty crying foul, when they have been sitting pretty for the past eight years, benefitting from Bush’s tax cuts, from no-bid contract deals, from reduced regulation and other such bullshit? I’m sure you can agree that allowing our nation to slip into economic depression and then abandoning the masses in order to protect the wealth of the few is a detestable and shameful course of action. How is the GOP’s stance on the stimulus package any different? With that having been said, I leave you with some thoughts on the subject from some of the planet’s greatest minds:
“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” -Mahatma Gandhi
“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish” -Mother Theresa
“Love conquers all things except poverty and a toothache.” -Mae West
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” -Confucius
“The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.” -G.K. Chesterton
“I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.” - Robert Kennedy
“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” -Aesop
“Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.” - Edward R. Murrow
“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially for the lower classes of people, are so extremely wise and useful that to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.” - John Adams
“States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.” -Noam Chomsky
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