Are We Better Off Than We Were Four Years Ago?

I don’t know about you, but I am very sure I am better off than I was four years ago. And I’d like to explain why.

I feel very lucky to have a President who is fighting for education, health & welfare. A President who not only wants us to honor our Veteran’s, but who insists we care for them as well.  I am reassured that we have a man in the White House who wants to protect my rights as woman, as well as the rights of every child to an education, and the rights of our seniors to a secure retirement.

That is not to say I look at this Administration with rose-colored glasses. There are policies I question. And honestly, I take as much criticism from my liberal friends as I get from conservatives. My liberal friends call me an apologist, conservatives call me ignorant.

It seems at times both sides are unwilling to accept that our President is a good man doing the best he can with the resources at his command and despite enormous obstacles and intentional obstruction. How can we move forward when we have a Congress that insists they are successful only if our President fails? How can we have a debate on policy when one candidate can’t make up his mind what he actually stands for?

As for this question of “are you better off”? Well yes actually, I am better off. Four years ago the bottom fell out of our world when the economy cracked after years of unfunded wars and unnecessary tax cuts. In what felt like a heartbeat we went from recession to collapse, and now we see the start of the recovery. Four years of fighting for every piece of legislation, every dollar for stimulus, every reform, every policy initiative, and the republican’s dare to ask if we are better off?

No thanks to you is my answer. Far from blaming our President I heap my scorn on the GoP and their extreme “tea” “party” caucus. Those elected “darlings” who held us all hostage and who cost us our AAA credit rating. Those would be the members of Congress who are enjoying their free health care and pensions but voted against it for the rest of us. Including Paul Ryan, who not only wants to take away Medicare, but who insists we MUST keep giving subsidies to oil & gas, but forgets to mention that his wife’s family makes millions from leases to the industry.

And let’s not forget the role state legislatures have played in this. From reproductive and voting rights to education and environmental protections, republican controlled state houses are wrecking havoc on our lives. These same people who proclaim regulation of business is too intrusive want to force a woman to have a trans-vaginal ultra-sound as a means of regulating her choices. We can’t tax profit generating corporations, but by god we can get rid of those greedy teachers and their pensions. Forget about police & firefighters, conservatives want to sell our National Parks to the highest bidder to deforest and drill baby drill.

Why bother to invest in renewable energy? Really, one solar company went out of business, forget all the spills, accidents and explosions, the dozens of dead and wounded by oil & gas extraction, Solyndra failed, our President picked a “loser”.  Therefore all such efforts must stop immediately.

Republicans would have us believe it is better to continue to throw our money down the well and literally fracture our economy along with our planet rather than invest in renewable energy. Why is that? How is that logical? While I’m asking questions, how is that patriotic? Or even conservative?

How would that help us on this quest to be “better” off? The way I see it investment in renewable energy, replacing our aging grid and moving toward real energy independence is the path to real better off-ness. We invest in American technology and manufacturing, retraining and construction to build a new grid. We can lead the world in building a sustainable economy based upon renewable resources. What kind of economy can we build on diminishing resources? Certainly not a sustainable one.

So that is another way we are better off. Our President is calling on us all to fight with him to end the $40 billion dollars in subsidies to oil & gas, to invest in renewable energy. To join him in an effort to increase our national security and prosperity. Now that is what I call patriotism.

We are also better off in terms of our investment in education. The latest scheme the GoP has concocted is to redistribute our local taxes to private corporations. While they have been busy taking away pensions and health care from teachers and defunding budgets, they have been trying to convince us that private corporations need to come in and take over school districts. This is the only way they can get their hands on our local school and real estate taxes, with yet another voucher program. How is that going to help us be better off?

I don’t understand this constant conservative carping that if a program is publicly funded it is “bad” and if it makes one of their cronies rich it is “good”. I don’t think that is what the Founding Fathers intended when they said we had a few inalienable rights. I’m thinking they were more inclined to think the definition of “better off” included education, health, welfare and environmental protection for everyone, not corporate “persons”.

So yeah, when I think about it, I am better off than I was four years ago. And I would like to thank Mr. Romney for asking, just so I could be sure.