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?

Democrats need 180 degree reverse!

Our majority vote was cancelled! The neutralizing of the 2006 and 2008 majority vote occurred when Obama selected Rahm Emanuel ( think ultimate insider responsible for dissing Howard Dean, selecting Blue Dogs and a staunch supporter of AIPC) and Geithner & Summers (think the guys who engineered the financial crisis). Obama owns these selections. These choices put the administration of "hope and change" in the middle of politics as usual (think political decisions controlled by the desire to stay in Washington until you are as old as Strom Thurmond). With huge donations from medical corporations and the banks/Wall Street our empowered Democrats forgot who put them in the majority. They proceeded to anger the voters on both sides by catering to the banks and ignoring the needs of the people. If Obama and the Democratic members of Congress can see past their personal interests to the extreme need to create jobs and knock the banks and Wall Street down to manageable size they may have a chance to hold onto their jobs and actually help the nation. If they don't do a 180 reversal the collection of gun carrying, "No New Tax" groups will have their way. Screams of "you are stealing my freedoms" and "Socialism" and race baiting come from ignorance but the underlying anger is understandable. We either reverse course or end up with a very mean spirited group of sadly confused violent people in charge of our country. What is it going to be???