Generation Bailout
Posted by: Naomi
Under the hot lights of the debate set, the next president articulated his vision for America. Will the next president be the candidate who threatens things will get worse if he isn’t elected, or the candidate who looks straight into the camera to viewers in their homes and offices, and tells us in his own words that things can get better? The election seems to have taken on a new and frightening tone: hope for change verses the fear of change.
Senator Obama has run on the most authentic platform I’ve seen. No matter who leads this country through the next four years, Obama has changed the world, just a little, forever. Partly because he’s shown us that race doesn’t have to divide us anymore, but mostly because he has shown us that the American dream still exists. He is proof of it.
The American dream was something they told us about in school when I was growing up. We wanted to see the American dream so we combed through pages of a history book and caught black and white glimpses of Ellis Island. We learned the dream was a part of history, it didn’t seem to touch our present lives. The older I became, the more I began to feel that the dream was left at Ellis Island as a final resting spot. My great grandparents came through Ellis Island. They were Jewish. They were Polish. This country didn’t always embrace them, but they embraced this country. The dream was theirs.
We can vote to keep things the same, or we can vote to make them better. I know change is overwhelming at times, but the truth is that things will change no matter who we elect. Americans need to decide what kind of change they want. Senator Obama mentioned that children around the world don’t look at America the same way anymore. Children in the United States don’t look at America the same way anymore either.
McCain’s platform would cause most Americans to spend more on health care, and some employers to stop offering health benefits. He wants to tax health insurance, rather than make sure that every American can have it, and in fact, he would make it harder for them to get it. McCain would continue to give the big cuts to big oil, while my generation, (which I now call the Bailout Generation) pays for Bush’s mistakes, the same mistakes McCain agreed with him on 90% of the time. His plan would make social security an impossibility for my generation and for our children. He would keep sending us and the next generation to die in a war that we can’t win, and that we spend billions on each month.
If the fear of change is the winning ticket then my generation will be the Bailout Generation. We will be bailing America out financially and we will be bailing America out at war. But the truth is, we don’t want that. That isn’t enough for us. We want our American dream back. Please carry this message with you in your thoughts when you go to the polls this November.
1 Comment(s)
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
I really really really want to see some ads coming out about taxing health benefits. That is huge. McCain claims there will be tax credits to offset them, but those credits are not indexed to increases in premiums so people will see big tax bills in addition to higher costs and increasingly inadequate coverage. Plus, he touts taxing the benefits as a way to raise $3 trillion in revenue on his own website.