Kowtowing To Special Interests in Presidential Election...What About us White Voters?

Let us be clear....last week Obama gave out back door Amnesty to some 800,000 plus illegal aliens in the name of politics...he pandered to a special interest voting block.  Turn on any network news show, and you will hear about this special interest group or that...just now CNN ran a report on the important role that "Latino Mom's" will play in this election, and why the candidates should be paying more attention to them and their concerns.  Business owners, the uber rich and religious special interests all get attention.  Latino's and their various camps get special attention, so forth and so on, and story after story talks about the special role each of these groups can/will play in deciding who wins the White House this fall.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a block of voters who are being taken for granted...WHITE PEOPLE.  In the last Presidential Election, over 70 percent of votes cast were cast by white voters...so where is our attention, and why aren't the politicians pandering to us, listening to our concerns.  The gays saw "Don't ask don't tell" abolished, saw Obama state publicly that he supports gay marriage.  The Republicans are extending and deepening the recession by holding up any legislation that would increase taxes on the rich, and Obama tossed out an executive order that back door defacto passed the Dream Act, and yet there seems to be NOTHING for the largest voting block in America, and someone needs to ask why.

Obama and Romney rarely come to New York for anything other than fund raising, making appearances at events that cost $40,000 a seat...what about an event for us average Joe's and Jane's where we could sit down and talk with the candidates over a burger and a beer at say $25 a plate...oh wait, silly me, the American Electoral process is controlled by BIG MONEY, manipulated by big corporations who are after all people too...just ask Mitt, he'll tell you that it's true.  We the people have been usurped by a new phrase, We the well heeled, the uber rich having access, while the rest of us find ourselves accepting edicts from on high that most of us do not support.

People from all 50 states elect a president, people from every walk of life, and from every ethnicity elect the president, yet the largest voting block in America, the white voter, is being ignored, our interests taking a back seat to the interests of small special interest groups...just because keeping taxes low on the uber rich is good for the uber rich does not make it good for us average folks, and granting Amnesty to 800,000 illegal aliens may be good for the Latino voting block, but is it good for the MAJORITY OF AMERICANS, and is that Amnesty what the largest voice in America wants? 

Perhaps it is time for the white voters to find our voice, time for us to demand a place at the table.  It is simply unfair to have a situation where elections are won and lost on the edges, unfair for the fringe to move their agendas forward at great detriment to the larger whole because politicians know they can take the white vote for granted, know it will split its voting block along given fault lines, and so can be ignored, taken for granted...maybe it is time that we form a super pac, time for us to choose one man for president, go to the voting booths, and write that name down, ignoring both Obama and Romney, throwing down the gauntlet that says, "No longer can you take our vote for granted, no longer will we the true majority be ignored.

Let us throw the two party system into disarray, let us push a third candidate into the spotlight, a candidate who will speak our voice while putting both parties and all politicians on notice...ignore us, take our votes for granted at your own peril...let us end the days when a small handful of states and a few special interest groups get all of the attention.

Obama Touts New Jobs...Really? How About Touting New Taxes?

Obama is on Air Force One whisking his way back to the White House from his Asian trip, touting new jobs coming...not so fast. If you read the fine print, he says new jobs are likely to happen if the trade deals are approved. There is a world of difference between the president saying, "These new trade deals WILL CREATE JOBS" and the president saying, "These new trade deals are likely to create jobs."

We all remember TARP, and the promise that said bailout would create jobs...we all remember after the fact the story changed. We were told that TARP saved jobs, kept the Great Recession from worsening. Both of these examples are classic DC Doublespeak, pundits and politicians finding ways to make empty promises, and when they fail, trying to convince us that those promises were fulfilled.

We have a do nothing Congress, both Republicans and Democrats acting in obstructionist ways, we have a deadlocked Super Committee unable to find consensus on over a trillion dollars in cuts and savings in our Federal Budget as the November 23rd deadline to have a deal approaches, and somehow the President's remarks today about likely jobs seems a falsehood as the words roll off his lips. How can we as a nation believe anything today that our politicians have to say?

How about some straight talk for a change? Our collective governmental debt (local, state and federal) is over 100 Trillion Dollars. Our public and private infrastructure is in a shambles, and we have people falling out of the middle class into poverty at alarming rates. Simply stated, our nation is going in the wrong direction, and it is time for some serious changes.

1.5 Trillion dollars in cuts or revenue increases over a ten year period...the amount the super committee is charged with finding is not enough to fix things. The committee knows this, the Congress knows this, and our President knows this. At every level of government, we have gotten ourselves caught in an interest trap as more and more money is needed to pay interest on loans from the likes of China. In our private lives, such a scenario puts us at risk of personal bankruptcy, puts us in a situation of needing to make significant changes in our lives to get out of debt and back on track. With collective governmental debt of $100 TRILLION Dollars, isn't it time every elected politician at every level of government start facing certain truths, and being brutally honest with his/her constituents?

Here is a SCARY Fact...we have 300, 000,000 Million people living in the United States of America, and owe a collective governmental debt of $100 Trillion dollars which means each man woman and child would have to come up with (ballpark) $333,333.00 dollars to reduce our debt back to zero. A average family of four (Mom, Dad and two kids) would have a collective family tax debt of $1, 333,332.00 ($1.3 Million and change). Simple math would tell you a family paying off that debt at a rate of $50,000 a year would be out of debt in 26 years (that is assuming there is no INTEREST on that debt).

Some straight talk...America is not becoming a debtor nation, America IS A DEBTOR nation, and it is time we address this dangerous truth. Lets end the drum beat that says "No New Taxes", and let us stop pushing the ball down the road for the next generation to deal with. Let us start electing politicians at every level of government who are ready to make the hard choices necessary to save our nation, instead of sending millionaires and billionaires to represent us in the halls of Congress. Let us elect officials who are not afraid to speak hard truths.

In 2010, our GDP was $14.53 trillion. Even if we could put every penny of that GDP into paying down our total local, state and federal debts, we are looking at seven years, and we all know that cannot happen. We have saddled ourselves, our children, and probably their children with a debt that will take decades to pay off...facing that reality, how can Republicans continue to beat the drums of "NO NEW TAXES"? America will be the great county it was when we pay down our debt....to pay down our debt, we have to cut spending, and increase revenue (taxes). It is that simple, and that is a truth that no one seems willing to voice.

The Roller Coaster That is The Dow The Fault Of Congress

Down triple digits for two days, then up triple digits, then down again triple digits...what will today's opening on Wall Street bring us, and is there anywhere that we as Americans can feel safe in putting our hard earned dollars? More importantly, is much of what is happening in the economy today more about systematically stripping away the Baby Boomer generations wealth and assets for future generations rather than us as a nation surviving a sluggish down turn in the economy? Has our government, and the Uber rich decided the promises made to 79 million Baby Boomers simply to costly to keep? Has it become politically expedient to put the retirement safety nets that we as Baby Boomers have paid for on the chopping block in the name of reducing the federal debt, and more importantly is there a target painted on the backs of every Baby Boomer in America...all seventy nine million of us?



A great deal of Wall Streets roller coaster ride in the past few weeks can be attributed to the actions (or lack thereof) of our elected officials in Washington DC as relates to the raising of the debt ceiling. The Republicans are insistent that there be no new taxes on the job creators, and that the federal deficit must be addressed through entitlement reforms...most specifically, they want to reduce Social Security and Medicare payouts to America's seniors....those on the rolls now, and those about to go on to the rolls(79 million Baby Boomers). Most young people are more than ready to embrace this plan which will cut these benefits back, as they believe it is unfair that they will be forced to pick up the tab for our retirements. That belief and the desire to cut our EARNED BENEFITS is simply wrong sighted, stinky thinking that should not be allowed to continue.



Go back to 1983 and the Greenspan Commission who's report saw Congress enact legislation that increased what we as Baby Boomers paid into the Social Security System, and decreased our benefits significantly...IE, the retirement age in that legislation was moved back from the age of 62 to the age of 65, and the percentage of money taken out of our paychecks was greatly increased. It was also around this time that we as Baby Boomers were sold on the concept of putting money into our own retirement accounts. The basic concept sold to us by our government was, "accept these changes, put money into your retirement accounts, and between the two of those retirement income streams, your Golden Years will be lived comfortably. We bought into the deal, accepted the cuts in our Social Security, accepted the increased costs, and started putting money into our 401K's.



Despite these changes, Congress realized as early as 1996 that the monies being collected from our paychecks would not be enough to meet future financial commitments to retirees unless those collected monies were in some fashion invested into the private sector...despite this reality, nothing was done to invest the money, but instead Congress robbed the Social Security Trust Fund, leaving worthless IOU's in the till, simply ignoring the bubble they knew would burst. Now the time has come to pay the piper, 79 million Baby Boomers have or are about to retire, and just as happened in 1983, Congress realizes they have a serious problem in the immediate here and now, can no longer kick the ball down the field to be dealt with at a later date.



Medicare and Social Security is a benefit we have prepaid for. It is like our car insurance, our home owners insurance, a policy there for when we need it, and according to the rules, our premiums are PAID IN FULL through forced payroll deductions. Is it now fair to come to us as citizens who have played by the rules and say, "We are going to cut your Social Security benefits, reduce the health benefits you have access to through the Medicare program"?



The average American lives to the age of 78...the Social Security reforms enacted back in 1983 effectively saw our collecting of benefits cut from an average of 16 years to 13 years based on the average life expectancy. Pushing the retirement age back another two years to the age of 67 drops that number to 11 years. Does not take a Mathematician to figure out the 1983 overhaul to Social Security slashed our benefits by around 20 percent, and that the changes Congress is wanted to implement now slash our benefits in totality by almost 1/3, while both the new proposals and old see us paying a lot more into the system while getting a lot less out of it. Is it fair to reduce the federal deficit by robbing seniors of their entitlements and their dignity?



Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...it's time that our United States Congress sets aside their party line bickering, time for them to get down to doing the peoples business, including meeting their obligations to our citizens. The Republicans steadfast refusal to allow taxes on the uber rich combined with their efforts to tie debt reduction to the lifting of the debt ceiling crashed the market once again, destroying our 401K's in the progress. They raised the debt ceiling so that America could meet its financial obligations to foreign nations (like China and Russian), but when it comes to meeting our nation's obligations to its own citizens (79 million Baby Boomers) they want to escape their moral and legal responsibility to us by passing a law that will rob us of our benefits...that is wrong, and cannot be accepted. If we as American citizens can be expected to accept the pain necessary to cover our moral and legal responsibilities to foreign nations, surely we as a nation also have the same responsibility too fulfil the contractual obligations we made to our 79 million Baby Boomers?



Let us as a nation deal with our debt problems, let us take the steps necessary to live within our means, but in reducing our debt as a nation, let us not turn our back on citizens who have earned their Social Security and Medicare benefits, have paid for them in full over the course of their entire working lives.



Editorial Opinion of Sherwood Martinelli