Sunday, November 2, 2008

What Will Tomorrow Bring? A Boomer Calls For Fairness

It's Sunday evening, November 2nd and we as a nation are rapidly approaching the end of what has been a far to long Presidential Campaign. If the rest of America is like I am, they are tired, exhausted, ready to have it all over with. No more pundits telling us what to think, no more maps, no more polls, no more senseless attack ads as our phones signal yet another Robo Call coming in. Bruce Springsteen (the Boss) sings about change as the Obama family takes the stage in Cleveland, Ohio. Most agree, most are anticipating a Barack win on Tuesday, are expecting Obama to be our President Elect come November 5th.

One thing is certain...we are on the precipice of change. The question is, what kind of a change are we about to see, and is it possible to get enough Americans on the same game page to make that change a positive experience for American families, a coming together of America as a nation as we move into even greater days ahead, or will those changes tear apart our nation at the seams as our divisions pull us even further apart. Red verse blue states, conservative verse liberal, lower and middle class against both the elite and illegals, the boomers declaring war on everyone that expects us once again to sacrifice in the name of everybody else.

Leave no doubt, America is a divided nation, a nation that has been infected by some horrid diseases such as greed, corruption, and even illegal immigration. No matter who is elected, one thing is certain...both Presidential candidates are expecting those who live on Main Street to make great sacrifices for a better tomorrow, and it is those sacrifices, how they are crafted, how they are presented that will unite us as a nation, or tear us apart.

I can only speak for myself, can only give voice to my own heart, can only address Barack Obama as one Boomer, but it is my belief that many across this once great land share my sentiments, my passions, and my angers. As one of 75 Million Boomers, as one person in what is the largest voting block America has even known, I am tired of being treated as a second class citizen who is always being the one doing the sacrificing, always being told it's not our turn. No longer am I willing to SACRIFICE so that the next generation, or illegal aliens, or people of color can have their opportunity...I want my turn, and more importantly, I want just what is due me, nothing more and nothing less. I don't want to pay for a Wall Street Bailout when Wall Street Trashed my 401K, and I don't want to Sacrifice my Social Security income to say Social Security for my children, and their children...I don't even have children, so why should I starve to save something for those I do not even know?

Let me try to put this seeming selfishness into proper perspective.

I was four years old when John F. Kennedy was elected president, I shook his hand in Louisville Kentucky. I grew up as a child with Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Desegregation, LBJ, Robert Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement that brought with it Affirmative Action. These eyes have seen and lived a lot of history, watched assassinations of our leaders, watched protests as blacks demanded equal rights, watched protests as Americans demanded the end of a wrong war, and watched as my parents and their parents adjusted to a different world where words like nigger were no longer appropriate, a world where their children (me)went to school and shared classrooms with people of a different color.

In the 70's, and for part of the 80's I can remember first hand applying for jobs, being told they could not hire me because affirmative action required that good union jobs were being given to minorities...I was a young man, I'd had nothing to do with the sins of the past, but I and others like me were asked to pay the price to level the playing field. Not asking for a medal, but am asking for some honesty...many of us in the Boomer generation paid the tab for Affirmative Action, are in some ways still paying that bill.

In the 80's, we watched as Illegal Aliens swelled our ranks, lowered our wages, and stole our jobs. We listened to, and believed Ronald Reagan when he called for us to accept an Amnesty, took him and our Federal Government at their word when they promised us it would be the last such Amnesty. We accepted the cost of absorbing millions of illegals, then as now, many of them from various Latin countries.

We played by the rules, accepted without question the sacrifices we were asked to make in the name of a better America. We paid the price for Affirmative Action, we paid the price to absorb millions of illegal aliens into our economy, and we did as our elders and our leaders asked. We paid into the Social Security System, accepted a huge increase in what we had to pay into that system. We embraced the concept of 401K's and Individual Retirement Accounts, and faithfully invested our income into these vehicles as we invested in America while putting away for our own Golden Years.

The second tsunami of illegal aliens started in the Clinton years, and instead of protecting us, the American Worker, our government sided with Big Business, embraced the concept of a One World Economy, embraced the concept that cheap wages were a good thing for bottom line profits, and therefore good for America...they were and are wrong. Loans were made to people who could not afford them, and a recipe for disaster was mixed, and once again the crisis we as a nation now face, the cost of fixing it has to be born, and it is obvious that both McCain and Obama think we Boomers should once again tighten our belts, pull up our boots and suck it in for the good of the nation.

To quote OBama, "Not this time!" We are not willing to have our Federal Government force us to continue working for an extra three, four, even five years in the name of saving Social Security...HELL NO, it is time that our Federal Government PAY BACK THOSE IOU's in the Social Security cookie jar. If you can force taxpayers to pick up a one trillion dollar bill for the bailout of Wall Street, then you can repay what you as a government have stolen from us Baby Boomers.

You want to overhaul the health care system, want to have health care for all...NOT if you are intending on using our tax dollars to provide health insurance for those who are here in American Illegally. Half of those uninsured are illegal aliens and their children...WE WILL NOT SACRIFICE to give them benefits they do not deserve. Hell no, not this time!

World Class educations...where is OUR WORLD CLASS EDUCATION? Give us that same opportunity, let us teach in our Golden Years in exchange for that World Class Education we never had a shot at. Don't ask us to pay for something we ourselves are not going to be given access too! How many blacks and other minorities got a chance at a world class education thanks to Affirmative Action? How many whites were denied that same opportunity because (lets be honest) we were the wrong color, even though our family finances were no better. Many of us BOOMERS paid that price for affirmative action, and now we want OUR EQUAL RIGHTS, WANT OUR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY. We are not going to stand still while Big Business and our Federal Government once again steal our dream, this time giving it to illegal aliens...Hell no, NOT THIS TIME.

You speak of GOOD PAYING JOBS...what good are those jobs if you allow corporate America to SHIP IN WORKERS through A) the H1 Visa program, and B) through unchecked illegal immigration coupled with rampant hiring of illegal aliens. We are not willing to accept AMNESTY (a pathway to citizenship), are not willing to see our Federal Government provide AMNESTY for 12-25 million illegal alien criminals. The gravy train is over, and if we are going to accept the sacrifices you need us to accept in the name of saving our economy, and our nation, it is going to come with a cost and the first DEMAND WE HAVE, is the DEPORTATION OF ILLEGAL ALIENS, the imprisonment of all those who hire them, imprisonment of those who aid and abet them in remaining in America, such as the Catholic Church. If you want a NEW DEAL with Main Street Americans, then we get to be FIRST IN LINE, rather than always being the ones to sacrifice in the name of some other interest group.

Affirmative Action...NO MORE, that slate needs to be wiped clean, it is time to end reverse racism, time for all citizens of America to have equal opportunity, regardless of race, creed or color...Affirmative Action is a wrong sighted, racist system that must come to an end. Martin Luther King's dream is realized with Obama's presidency, and it is unfair to continue penalizing White's for the color of our skin. We want A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD, and that reality can only be realized with the elimination of Affirmative Action.

Change is coming, and that change can be good or it can be bad. Good change will see America rise to new heights as we lead the world through the 21st century. Choose wrongly, continue to oppress and depress the middle class, continue to kowtow to illegal aliens, and you will see revolt in the streets, a civil war fought with modern days weapons in the streets of America as tens of millions are slaughtered on the altar of CHEAP WAGES and Corporate Profits. The time has come that we have a government that takes care of WE THE PEOPLE, the people being those people who are LEGAL CITIZENS AND IMMIGRANTS OF AMERICA. We the people means we put a moratorium on all immigration for a period of five-ten years while we retrain and re-employ our own citizens. If our government continues in its efforts to bankrupt and eliminate the middle class, we will see war here in America as brother kills brother and Main Street burns to the ground.

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