Let them eat dog bisquits

Dear President Obama,

Here is a short, sad story about our strange economy. Yesterday I went to fancy, specialist dog biscuit bakery. That is all that this bakery makes. This is the first time I have gone to this bakery. I asked the lady at the cash register "has your business been affected by the recession?". She said "I haven't seen any falloff in business. I don't believe our customers, in this part of town, have been affected very much by the recession". She added "many of them work in the medical insurance and corporate fields". Out of curiosity I asked her if this was her only job. She said "no this is a part time job, but I'm looking for a second job, so I can my rent. I lost my house. I'm living with friends now. My full-time job here was cut to part time after the recession started.” One of the two young ladies behind the counter he said, with some frustration "well, I was affected by the recession. I lost my school grant and my job." I asked her was she making a decent salary here. She said “well, minimum-wage, but I am working two jobs to pay my rent". The other young lady said "me too, I'm making minimum wage. I had to move in with my folks.” This situation almost brought tears to my eyes. Here were three people barely getting by on low salaries and no security. These three women were selling expensive specialty dog biscuits to a part of our society "not affected by the recession". This chasm between the middle class and the upper income business community suggests our capitalist economic system has damaged our democracy. If the wealthy can afford fancy, specialty dog biscuits while the people who are selling the biscuits are barely scraping by then the priorities of our society are skewed toward a small percentage of rich and powerful.

Mr. President for you it really should be "it's the economy stupid". We need a crash program with you leading, not pushing from behind, for jobs, jobs, jobs. We didn't elect you Mr. Obama to figure out a way to keep Democrats in their jobs. We elected you to help the millions of people across this country who have been savaged by the greed and lack of regulation of America's businesses, banks and corporations. It used to be we all believed that the Republicans stood for big business and the Democrats stood for the worker. What happened? Please tell me Mr. President in what election did the corporate lobbyists elect you?