It was fine until the democrats got control of congress (you know the outfit with control of the purse strings?)
Interesting. I am sure Dems share some responsibility, after all they gave Mr. Bush pretty much everything he asked for. And the President does have veto power.
As to the second and third job thing. I am simply following the lead of my more conservative friends who keep telling me people need to stop whining and get to work. As a liberal Democrat I have been saying all along that we need to invest in our infrastructure, our schools, our people. But, we'd rather spend our money on wars and CEOs. Too bad they took our money and blew it up.
I suppose the point is that we got ourselves into this mess and now we need to get ourselves back out. To me this means stop and/or seriously reduce our spending, increase out taxes, repay our debt, andget creative in the workplace. I don't draw lines at spending cuts: I think we need to reduce pretty much everything, but especially the Defense Department and Health and Human Services. In the first case, we need to reexamine what we need a massive military and massice array of large scale warfare weapons for in an age of limited combat engagements. In the latter we need to look at how to reduce medical costs, pharmaceutical costs, and physician costs. Not how to cut people from the rolls which just as a people drain on the economy: we need healtyhy people with healthy attitudes. Perhaps with a national healthcare system, employers would not feel the burden of providing healthcare, costs pewr unit in production would go down and we might be in a better position to compete globally.
When I was a therapist I suggested to clients who were not working that they might consider baking and selling cookies, or washing cars, or doing home cleaning services. Jobs which are essentially independent and entrapreneureal. There were always reasons, of course, why these clients could not do this, but I tried to plant the thought that they had some responsibility in making their own lives better.
Be well!
