By Ronald Dailey
Alexandria resident
As I near my 79th year, I have seen America at its finest and over the past 30 years, sinking to its lowest. I have witnessed the usery laws and the anti-trust laws suspended by Ronald Reagan open the door for big business and big money to do anything they want and watch the greed of a few thousand people run this country into near bankruptcy.
Too many like me have seen the GOP taken over by absolute greedy people who think they know what’s good for America and have sold a lot of good people on the idea that government doesn’t know how to govern but big business does and needs no rules or regulations to keep them honest.
In 1980, our national debt was $960 billion. Reagan, after berating Jimmy Carter for running a deficit of $461 billion in four years, proceeded to add just under $2 trillion in eight years. Remember how he thought it was a disgrace to let Iran overrun our embassy there without any threats of war to them? Then when the trouble broke out in Lebanon, sent Marines over to help keep the peace and a suicide bomber killed 241 of them and wounded, I don’t know how many, and pulled out with no retribution.
George Bush Sr. then went through nearly $1.5 trillion to free Kuwait from Saddam but, unlike his son in later years, did so the right way in getting help through the United Nations.
Bill Clinton never had much of a chance, the way for eight solid years of trying to get something on him to belittle his presidency, the GOP finally settled for impeachment for an affair that is not an impeachable offense. His last two years he finally did get Congress to listen and brought both years in with surpluses.
Now the debt is $5.5 trillion when George W. Bush took over and was warned to watch out for Osama bin Laden as he was going to try to attack us and completely ignored that warning and had no idea what to do when 9/11 happened. So he sent a trickle of troops to Afghanistan to flush out bin Laden and opened season on Iraq when they had nothing to do with that attack. In six years, he never vetoed any spending bills and every office of government was made impotent by his appointments of all favorable to business appointees. After finally running out his time, he left Obama with a $12 trillion deficit.
President Obama had no more than taken the oath of office than one of the GOP radio spokesmen said that he “wanted Obama to fail”! This set the precedent of the entire GOP to want him to fail no matter what happens to this nation. We desperately needed cooperation to find the answers to keep from going into a total depression. “No” was all the GOP had to say. They didn’t care about America, only that Obama fails.
The GOP told people that government cannot run anything. Just because Medicare worked doesn’t mean that health care would. The private sector can do better than government. Just look how we nearly ran it in the ground the past 30 years and still got our big bonuses even after losing billions and letting the taxpayers bail us out.
The Supreme Court (controlled by the GOP) just ruled it is OK for business to pour as much money as they want into elections and that made it legal to own our government. Keep religion out and business in. If Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address today, it would end like this, “.. and this nation of the business, by the business, and for the business, shall not perish from the earth!”
Remember how you voted and how things have turned out and then look in the mirror. I don’t know how things will turn out but I know this. Big business now owns us and if you think they care about you, then God help you because they sure won’t as it may interfere with their bonuses.
