The End of the Year, the Beginning of New Things

Throughout this year we have had some new things and some of the same old things. There were rays of hope, moments of disappointment and certainly reasons to be hopeful for the coming year. As we head into the New Year we have many possibilities before us and options to choose from. We aren't sure of all the choices and options to befall us in 2012, but there are some things getting closer becoming clearer if not more concretized.

This year the continuing disappointment of many Americans in the economy's slow growth and the massive debt incurring stimulus effort's thus far ineffectiveness have weighed on many of us. Both really failed to get off their feet and have been uninspired for the most part. Americans are still fretting over jobs, worrying about payments and nervous about the future for our kids, as individuals and as a nation.

We started the year out as always hoping for more cooperation between parties and less of the political fighting and polarization that so characterized 2010. But Washington seemed less interested in what was good for the people than it did what would be good for the political parties and the individual politicians. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president during the Great Depression he tried everything he could think of to jump start our economy.

That included some of the measures put forward today like a stimulus effort. But unlike the stimulus effort of today he spent more time focused on putting Americans back to work than lawmakers on Capitol Hill have during this Great Recession. The same back to work kinds of programs have been replaced with the will to fight the other side with 'I can do more of nothing than you' ego driven matches. And that is not just from one side of the political spectrum or individual.

Our entire political works just like in 2010, were once again gummed up by what at times seemed more like bickering ambitious twits hell bent on seeing their ideas reign supreme at the end of the day, instead of humbling themselves before the Gods of our current dilemma. They chose to forego the idea they were working to save a country and its people from hardship, and instead they chose chicken and brinksmanship over and over and produced few results given all the talk.

Almost half of all our politicians in Washington are millionaires making them far removed from where we are. In the past such Congressmen have taken upon themselves the burden of trying to help the rest of us rise to a higher standard of living. Now, like many of the higher ups employed by most of today's wealthy corporations, they seem as if they could care less about the rest of us. Their concerns appear to be more self-centered at times. And when we do rise up to speak, instead of listen they try to stamp us out as fast as possible, as with the Occupy Movement which was doing the very things Congress so lauded when such things occurred in the Middle East and North Africa. No doubt there is a disconnect between big government in Washington and everyday Americans on the home front.

The numbers don't lie. As ABC reports "The average American's net worth has dropped 8 percent during the past six years, while members of Congress got, on average, 15 percent richer, according to a New York Times analysis of financial disclosure. The median net worth of members of Congress is about $913,000, compared with about $100,000 for the country at large, the Times' analysis found.

This wealth disparity between lawmakers and the people they represent seems to be continually growing. Nearly half of Congress - 249 members - are millionaires, while only 5 percent of American households can make the same claim. Even among the super rich, members of Congress fare better than other wealthy Americans. While the net worth of the richest 10 percent of Americans has remained stagnant since 2004, lawmakers' net worth has seen double-digit growth, the Times reports." (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/as-americans-get-poorer-mem...)

People with that kind of money and financial security and in the kinds of positions members of Congress often find themselves in can always choose to use their good fortune to help Americans or to further their own interests. It's not as though they need the money or are struggling at home. They choose to be unwilling to come to the table in a time of real emergency. They choose to play chicken with our lives, our jobs, our homes, the education of our kids and more. If their own fortunes were literally on the line each time they were to debate a piece of legislation on the floor and that fortune was tied to how well the rest of us were doing, do you think we would be seeing such recklessness and patent disregard for the outcome?

Things got so bad and out of touch this year our national credit rating was downgraded for the first time since we started getting a national credit rating, not because of our debt but because the agency that downgraded their assessment of our national credit rating lost confidence in the current Congress' ability to come together and solve our issues.

Our money has been wasted on things like expensive private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. A report compiled by the Project on Government Oversight found "the federal government approves service contract billing rates that, on average, pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the full compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services. Given that one-quarter of all discretionary spending now goes to service contractors, a reassessment of the total federal work force, with a focus on contractor billing rates, could save taxpayers billions of dollars annually." (http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/reports/contract-oversight/bad-business/c...)

We just approved thousands of contractors to stay in Iraq in a security capacity and it will cost us billions per year. These contractors have been found smuggling prostitutes into Iraq (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/29/us-military-contractor-us_n_991...) and throwing sex parties where prepubescent boys are dressed up like girls to dance before old men and are then are auctioned off for sexual molestation and rape to the men (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/213720) all of this and more on the taxpayer dime. Yet Washington wants us to pay them and pay them double.

While politicians have refused to cut defense spending as though God sent it to them instead of it coming from our hard earned pockets, there are military golf courses on which millions are spent - annually in some cases - just for maintenance costs alone. (http://www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com/golfcourses.html) Even though Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the Iraq War was an unnecessary war, which we have been forced to spend billions annually on, and has blasted the thinking in getting involved in large land wars in this day and age (http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/node/16753), we almost tossed out the Bush timeline to keep troops in Iraq just to ensure wealthy oil companies became even wealthier. That is simply not good enough or up to the standards of our great nation nor the expectations we currently have of our leaders.

Let's have hope for the future of our nation and believe strongly things will get better and put it into action by voting for people truly interested in getting us further ahead as a nation instead of making decisions that seem to consistently knock us backwards. Let's try and elect people with skin in the game as opposed to those behaving as though they play the game for the thrill of media attention and power plays on behalf of their team - that being their political party as opposed to the American people. This year let's hope the nation is able to move forward instead of being hindered by what goes on in Washington. It is never foolhardy to have hope, misplaced though it may be at times.

To read about my inspiration for this article go to www.lawsuitagainstuconn.com.