Take a closer look

Chris Christie is not a good governor.

Yes, to be fair he did a good job handling the disaster of superstorm Sandy.

But also to be fair, that just means that he was doing his job.

You know what else Christie did to New Jersey?  He canceled the commuter tunnel to New York which cost the state more than $300 million, thousands of jobs and millions in business revenue.  He also cost the state more than $400 million in education funding.  He cut $1 billion from education spending, increased taxes on the poor and disabled by cutting property tax rebates, funneled tax dollars to corporations to support charter – not public – schools, and basically is a bully to anyone he doesn’t like, particularly teachers.  Apparently he doesn’t like public school teachers, or union members, but maybe that’s the reason.

He also vetoed a minimum wage increase which have helped hundreds of thousands of people, created thousands of jobs and put hundreds of millions of dollars into the economy.  New Jersey is currently near the bottom in economic growth.

So yeah, Christie did what he should have done to help the state after a natural disaster.  To quote someone on the Internet, what does he want, a cookie?

Being governor is hard, but you have to spend a lot of time and money to get that job so if you don’t want to do the hard work, don’t run for office.  It really is that simple.

Doing good in one case and so bad in many others does not help the state.  He may look good from far away across the country because he looks strong and committed to New Jersey, but up close Christie is not a good governor.

When reform isn’t reform

So Harry Reid, and some Democrats, apparently want to keep the filibuster blockade in place in order to use it as a campaign issue for Democrats in 2014.

Isn’t it great when politics is placed before country?  The Republicans do it with the abusive use of the filibuster and Democrats are doing it by letting the Republicans do it with the abusive use of the filibuster.

In case I wasn’t clear, I think this is a ploy to get votes for more Democrats by letting Republicans make themselves look bad.  After Reid’s repeated claims that he was serious about reform, that’s the only thing I can think of to explain this move.  Just reverting to the 1970s rule of a talking filibuster wasn’t exactly a radical idea, but apparently even that is too much to ask for right now.

Maybe it’s enough to help, but with gerrymandering and electoral vote games, any gains in the Senate in 2014 will be much too little and way too late.

It’s not all about me

I use my family as an example because I know the details about us, but this isn’t all about us, it’s about anyone and everyone who is in similar circumstances for whatever reasons.

Our specific situation is unusual, but there are other people who are in bad shape financially because of disability as well.  We’re a minority, there are millions of us, but we’re a small percentage of the population.  So if anyone has a threshold of suffering that needs to be crossed before they can’t sleep at night, rest easy.

Except the disabled aren’t the only ones who will need a social safety net.  My wife and I would have been OK if we had been able to keep working.  We can’t save for retirement now because of health issues.  But there are a lot of people who don’t get sick, work their whole lives and still aren’t able to save for retirement because they just don’t earn enough.  It isn’t just when things go wrong that people need help.  This may be the richest country in the world but that doesn’t make everyone rich.  If you’re doing fine financially, good for you, but there are people who need help. 

They don’t need help because they did something wrong or because they’re lazy, they need help because the poor and working class live paycheck to paycheck and wages for the middle class have been stagnant.  Sometimes there just isn’t enough left over to save enough to retire, or save anything at all.  Even with the programs we have now some people will keep working until they die.

We should be talking about improving what we have, not trying to cut it because it’s expensive.  What’s a human life worth, anyway?  What’s a little dignity worth?  Why is compassion not worth the expense?

I’d like to think we’re better than this.  Maybe it’s time we showed it.

Of course I worry about my wife and myself, but we’re not alone.  We help others when we can.  I don’t understand why we can’t do that as a nation.  We’re not just individuals, we’re a community.  When did we forget that? 

Maybe Sandy can remind everyone.

Crushing the future

Let me see if I understand this.

Obama is entirely responsible for the current state of the economy, including all of the debt, which will crush all the grandchildren of America.

Bush didn’t leave any debt for anyone, not even Obama, to deal with and no grandchildren will be crushed by Republican debt because, um, Republican debt magically evaporates?

Have I got that right?  Because that’s what some of the campaign commercials are telling me.

Optionally disastrous

I mentioned the proposed changes to Social Security and Medicare, and you might be thinking that these changes won’t hurt them because it’s just a way to offer people options of how to save for retirement.

First of all, even if the proposed changes worked, my wife and I are both under 55 and can’t work.  There’s no way we can save enough for retirement.  If you’re 54 years old could you save enough for retirement in 10, or even 15 or 20 years?  If you can, good for you, but most people in the country can’t.

Social Security and Medicare weren’t created because everything was working great for seniors.  Seniors were sick and living in poverty, that’s why those social service programs were created.

But the changes would destroy these programs.  They work as they were designed, with some minor adjustments, but these changes will push millions of people out of them.  Reducing the base of people paying into them will run Social Security and Medicare into the ground very quickly.

Social services aren’t there just for the fun of it, they exist because it’s simple human decency to make sure that people don’t die sick, in pain, and starving.

Any talk of a grand bargain is talk of abandoning seniors because they just aren’t worth it to the people who run the country.  It’s just profit over compassion.

Career dissembler

I do have to admit that Romney is campaigning like a corporate CEO.  Not that that’s a good thing, mind you, but he is doing it.