Revisiting Shared Sacrifice

Last April I wrote this article on the at-the-time democratic party slogan for shared sacrifice.  On this gloomy March morning, in a week where we have had yet another school shooting, gas prices are on the threshold of becoming the highest ever, and presidential candidates are on a repeated debate on woman’s reproductive organs, I felt it was the perfect time to repost this.  I look forward to hearing your additions, thoughts, vents or any added commentary you have…

The talk from the Democratic Party right now is “Shared Sacrifice”. What they mean is shared sacrifice for both parties on Capitol Hill but how does that translate to the rest of the country? The bigger question is while they are debating what sacrifices both parties will make, why aren’t they really taking into what the American public is willing to sacrifice?

Of course, the lower and middle classes are constantly sacrificing. We are the ones that continue to suffer when paying higher gas prices. We are the ones affected every time there are tax changes and don’t even bother to question the sacrifice that everyone affected by the two hundred and forty tornadoes last week have to make while they wait for assistance. Sacrifices that come with no notice, with no control, with no explanation constantly affect us and we make up the largest part of this country.

I feel that “shared sacrifice” should be a campaign for the entire country; not just the Democratic Party for a sales pitch. Shared sacrifice is something we can all adapt to while living our everyday lives. We have all become greedy and in order to get to a place of productivity and balance again as a society, we are going to have to let go and compromise a little bit. Take what has been happening in Wisconsin and many other states over the last four months for example. The people of Wisconsin said yes, we will make compromises to what needs to be done to balance the budget. As we then saw, that did not matter to Scott Walker and the very wealthy Koch brothers. They went on to change the format of the bill so that it wasn’t even associated with the budget and they could vote legally, without the fourteen democrats in Illinois, to get rid of collective bargaining rights. Who in this situation was not willing to have shared sacrifice? Certainly not the group that continues to sacrifice.

As we are already getting the jargon from many “wanna be” candidates for the 2012 election, I want to see someone take responsibility for what they have done wrong, and make a real plan where we will all a part in fixing our countries situation. Everyone from the poor to the rich, all on board, then we will get some major changes in the right direction. Our government has got to start working with its constituents and all adapt a “Shared Sacrifice” way of thinking. The democrats at least had the words correctly, now we just need to get those words into physical action, not just whispered off the lips of one party on Capitol Hill.

Last October, Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert held a ‘Rally to Restore Sanity’ on the mall in Washington D.C. During this rally, Jon Stewart mentioned how we, in our everyday lives work together and compromise. He uses the Lincoln Tunnel to get his point across. This is the only video I could find that had the images of the cars flowing from nine lanes of traffic into two to get through the tunnel. Thank you mantypants on youtube for this video. Now here, I will let Jon Stewart add to my point.

A Word or Two from Mike Lofgren

Today, as I was looking through what was happening on truth-out.org, I came across this article by MIke Lofgren discussing the climate of both political parties, putting blame and truth on both of them for where our country is and the direction that it is headed in.  If you need a little history about Mike Lofgren, then you would like to know that he was a Congressional Staffer for 28 years.  He retired from his life on Capitol Hill after looking objectively at what is happening to the GOP as well as our government  in general.  I took the time to read the article twice to make sure that I wasn’t missing any extremely subjective views and I feel that he does a great job of just being an observer and placing fault on both sides. I do suggest reading the footnotes first because it will place you in a state of just reading the article opposed to try to negate what he is saying. 

Here are two excerpts that I really enjoyed to help give you an idea of what you will be reading if you are thinking about it.

  • Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class – without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking

 

  • It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors’ looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At “Washington spending” – which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade’s corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

 

To view the entire article, click here.  Please let me know your thoughts after you read it.  The purpose of posting this is to motivate thought on the climate of our national community.  This is necessary especially on a national holiday that celebrates rights that ironically, have been taken away in numerous states this past year. 

Doing the Research to Find Our Voice

In the last presidential election, record numbers of first time voters in my generation were out, in the voting booths, partaking in their democratic responsibility.  It was amazing to see this many young adults getting involved in what is happening in our country and what direction that we want to see it go in.  Well, what do we do with the very large group of intelligent, motivated and productive group, of all ages I might add, that don’t vote and may never vote for extremely specific reasons that are justifiable and relevant.  While I was in Vegas helping Tara move back out there for school, I met one twenty eight year old that held those exact feelings.

Remember Christina and Joel from Mansfield, CT I stayed with in April?  Well they have now returned to Las Vegas and when I met them for lunch, they introduced me to Joel’s cousin, Lindsey.  We were getting into stories about her volunteering at an orphanage in Bolivia and then we got onto the topic of voting.  She has never voted and really has no plan to vote.  She isn’t lazy, un-educated or naïve, she just doesn’t feel that she has all the knowledge to make the correct decision she wants to on the candidate she feels would do the best job.  We can’t ostracize her for this opinion because it is true, how do we get all of the correct information to make the decision for the candidate that we want voted in? 

Today we get media fed everything.  What we want to eat? Who we want to wear? And, of course, who will do the best for our local, state, and federal government?  With all of that feeding, how do we use our instincts, intelligence and downright gut feeling on the things we actually want?  It is interesting to wonder about what we want as this presidential election becomes more visible in our horizon. I also ask, how do we motivate people to look for the reasons why they vote one way or another.  I am not saying one way is right or wrong, as long as we are voting people in for the reasons we want.  That is what it is, isn’t it? Our voice.