Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont writes in OpEdNews about The State of the Union Bush Forgot to Talk About.
According to Sen. Sanders, since Bush has been in office the true state of the Union has changed dramatically in conrast to Bush’s SOTU:
-Nearly five million Americans have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Amazingly, the poverty rate is higher today than it was during the last recession in 2001.
-Median household income for working-age Americans has declined by almost $2,500; and overall median household income has gone down by nearly $1,000.
-8.6 million Americans have lost their health insurance.
-Over three million manufacturing jobs have been lost, including more than 10,000 in my State of Vermont.
-Three million workers have lost their pensions, and about half of American workers in the private sector have no pension coverage whatsoever.
-The annual trade deficit has more than doubled, and the national debt has gone up by $3 trillion.
(read article)
President Bush has never to my knowledge mentioned his notorious signing statements in any of his State of the Union addresses, but today David Swanson writes about Signing Statement Silence by the media, regarding four important provisions in the most recent Defense Authorization Bill that Bush signed with a statement authorizing his right to violate them:
Yes, a signing statement announcing the right to violate a law, and the actual violation are two different things.
Yes, a signing statement should be meaningless.
But the Supreme Court cites them and the Bush-Cheney administration acts on them.
(read article)
Meanwhile, in the real Union, the one we all actually live in — there were More Than 2.2 Million Foreclosure Filings on Nearly 1.3 Million Properties Reported in the US in 2007.
It must be nice to live in Bush’s world, whichever planet that’s on.
Ah yes, that world where everyone is an investor and no one works.
And in this world it looks like we’ll get the choice between candidates who are right wing and even further right. I think today’s “mainstream” Democrats would’ve been to the right of the moderate Republicans who were around when I was younger.
Comment by Eric Mayer — 1/30/2008 @ 4:40 pm
Eric, one mustn’t forget The Ratchet Effect of a two-party political system, that seems designed to keep The People divided and bickering amongst each other while the ‘goods’ are divided up among the owner ‘class’ of the “Ownership Society”, (graphic here, much more income than even the top 1% that primarily benefits the Top 400 families, possibly even fewer).
I’m not clear that this is as much a failure of the Democratic party, or a success of the right, as much as it simply reflects the country-directional desire of our true owners. You see, slavery was never abolished, that’s only what they wanted us to believe during our indoctrination years. Today, each and every day, everyone, including the richest of the uber-wealthy, buy their freedom. Freedom, as it’s been defined, and as we are all required to play, is measured in disposable dollars, or what is left over after paying needed bills.
The Republic, as it’s so often claimed that Ben Franklin warned us about, was lost some time back. I suppose we can all hope that Congress grows a spine, but you know what they say about “hope”, don’t you?
(Answer: “hope is for suckers”)
Comment by Ken — 1/30/2008 @ 6:11 pm