It is so painful to listen to the news these days. Not only is all the euphoria gone, but people are falling over each other to be the first to pile on the new president and say what's wrong with the latest plan. After 8 years of no planning, no discussing, and no interest in feedback, 8 years of disposing of more than 4000 of our finest young people, not only for no reason, but for deliberately falsified reasons, after 8 years of destroying families in Iraq and Afghanistan, after 8 years of trashing our environment and the world's, our economy and the world's, our international reputation... I could go on...
The point is, how dare the Republicans, who stood by silently while the surplus was turned into a record high deficit, scold the new president for increasing the deficit? How dare they ask for more tax cuts and less spending on schools, health care and infrastructure, when their tax cuts during wartime had led to the deficits they are now criticizing? The economy was in recession all last year, and the former president did nothing to deal with it. When it became obvious to everyone that we were in crisis, he sent his Treasury secretary to the microphone to announce that we were going to give 700 billion dollars that we did not have to the bankers who contributed the most to the crisis. And why bail out automakers who fiddled while Rome burned, kept making hummers while global warming worsened, and now are crying for help to avoid failing. The government gave them millions--now they're laying off thousands and closing factories. Just one suggestion--auto factories could be retooled to build mass transit--trolleys and train cars. Why is all this human and property capital being allowed to be wasted?
We have elected a new president who is gathering as much information as possible from as many different sources as possible. With all the incompetence, failure and corruption we have witnessed during the last 8 years, how about giving this new guy more than a few weeks to see if his plans might work?