BANKRUPTING AMERICA

President George Bush has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in bankrupting America. His goal has been to "starve the beast" or in other words bankrupt the government so that the government will be forced to give up all its social programs. The conservative Republicans have been incensed by Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930's. They want to destroy everything he started. They want to do away with Social Security and Medicare. They want to prevent national health care. They wanted to also do away with all the regulations that were set in place to prevent another depression. They have totally deregulated Wall Street; they allowed Wall Street to self-destruct. The greed on Wall Street has been so intense that no one could be satisfied with normal increases in their investments. They had to make millions overnight, every night. Consequently they totally destroyed themselves. Unfortunately they took all of us down with them, just like Enron, only worse. Republicans are still making a last minute desperate effort to get as many people off Medicare as possible and into privatized Medicare Advantage programs. The poor people who are being told to trust Bush's reorganization of Medicare do not even know what is happening to them. Although why anyone would trust Bush for anything is beyond my comprehension.

Ironically, the destruction to America has been so severe that we are going to be forced back into Roosevelt-like reforms. We need to set up WPA programs to get people back to work, possibly on the infrastructure which has been totally neglected and is in need of tremendous repair. So many people are without health care that we need to set up a national health care program. We will have to re-write all the regulations to save Wall Street from itself and to save us from Wall Street. Well, George Bush is ready to retire now and plans to hire scholars to prove that he has the been the best president America has ever had. He has certainly been the best at destruction. It is hard to believe that so much damage could have been done. Of course, he had the entire Republican Congress for six years to rubber stamp everything he wanted. The past two years there have been a few more Democrats in Congress, but not enough to accomplish anything. Perhaps after Obama is inaugurated he can make some real changes and make some real accomplishments. But it will take a long time to repair all of this damage. And we may never be able to repair all of it. Obama is taking Lincoln and Roosevelt as his models and sincerely trying to restore America. We will all have to hope, have faith, and help as much as we can.