Think about it!

Please help us elect better leaders!

Ted Folkert

October 20, 2014

Considerations before we go to the polls to mark our ballots:

• A leader who tried to be honest and forthright:

“Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, five star general, commander of the Allied Forces on June 6, 1944 – D-Day in WWII, and president of the United States from 1952 to 1960.

• A well-respected editorialist:

“It’s hard to make sense of these tragic encounters in which healthy young people, not much older than children, are lost for reasons that, at best, remain obscure.” Bob Herbert, former NY Times editorialist and author.

• Example of senseless loss of lives and unnecessary devastation:

By 2014 nearly 6,800 hundred American service men and women had been killed in the 2 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and tens of thousands had been wounded, physically or mentally. More than half of the 1.5 million troops that have been discharged have received medical treatment at VA facilities and have been granted benefits for the rest of their lives at an estimated cost of $600-900 billion. The costs of these wars will probably exceed $5 trillion.

• Lesson learned by most and ignored by some:

Madison, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, and Reagan-all insisted on wartime tax increases-George W Bush insisted on tax reductions and excessive spending. Tom DeLay, former majority whip for the Republican controlled House of Representatives, insisted that “nothing is more important in the face of war than cutting taxes.” (DeLay was later convicted and sentenced for money laundering)

• Thumbing one’s nose at the lower and middle class:

To a crowd of wealthy supporters: “this is an impressive crowd of the haves and the have-mores.” George W Bush.

• Example of speaking the truth and ignoring the consequences:

“People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here is the painful part, they’re right. The system is rigged.” Elizabeth Warren, United States Senator.

• Considering our progress as a society:

The image we claim to project as a prosperous middle-class society with the highest standard of living in the world is an attempt to hide the fact that one third of our 300 million people are at or below the poverty level. One in five of American children are poor, as are one in three of black children.

The Department of Agriculture reports that nearly 5 million Americans live in households designated as “food insecure”.

The stories of the difficulty of high school and college graduates in finding careers with compensation sufficient to support a family are endless and saddening. The enormous student loan burden that most of our children end up with after graduation is a lifetime burden. The result of all this is young people staying or returning to the homes of their parents, forgoing marriage, and forgoing child bearing. These debts cannot even been dismissed in bankruptcy, a law handed to the greedy banksters by our fearless leaders. All of the major corporations can be relieved of their debts through bankruptcy without any stockholder being held responsible but our students who have been defrauded by greedy lenders cannot dispose of their debts and get on with their lives. Unbelievable!

And all the while the well-off are enjoying the luxury and opulence awarded them by privilege and favorable taxation, willingly basking in their lawful avoidance of paying their fair share of the cost of providing the services required for maintaining a just and prosperous society.

• The brunt of the problem:

We desperately need to be dealt a better hand. We need to shuffle the deck of cards, vote the dishonest card shufflers out of office, change the deck, and make everyone play by the same rules.

Since the Great Recession, brought on by the avaricious Wall Street swindlers and their accommodating elected officials from Bill Clinton to the present day, 95 percent of all income gains have gone to the top one percent of Americans. Our leaders chose to sleep with the banksters and abandon the working class. This situation is devastating for our economy and is preventing creation of jobs for the working class, those of us who actually make the economy work efficiently. The game is rigged. Elizabeth Warren is right. The game is rigged. We need to unrig it. We need to shuffle the deck.

Although those who are willing to go to any possible measures, no matter how harmful, to gain power, we must determine, among those running for office, who will support our needs in protecting our economy from additional harm. And we need to help them get elected. We need to identify those self-serving lackeys who support the rich and powerful in their quest for an aristocratic government and we must help them be removed from office before they can complete their objectives. Otherwise, there will be no improvement of conditions for the poor or for the middle class and the movement to aristocracy will become complete, leaving the masses with no opportunity to achieve a rewarding life.

• The challenge we must accept and pursue:

Let’s focus on improving our U.S. Senate and House of Representatives with candidates who will support policies that will improve our economy and future opportunities for all citizens. This means tax laws that enhance progressive taxation that will provide funds necessary to rebuild the decaying infrastructure of our country while creating the jobs to rebuild our stagnant and recessionary economy.

And it means electing those who will support the only path to creating election laws that will allow the voices of ordinary people to be heard – as someone called – “the very essence of a true democracy.” That path we must take is a constitutional amendment to prevent the Supreme Court from handing all of the power to govern and control our nation to the rich and powerful individuals and corporations. They have done serious damage to our republic and we must stop them in the only way we can. Previous presidents stacked the court with corporatists and we need to stem the tide.

Think about it!

Help us elect better leaders, please!