Dear $250kers

Dear $250kers,

Now that you don’t pay your fair share of taxes, and roads will go unpaved, public schools will continue failing to attract talented teachers due to non-competitive salaries, police departments layoffs will go the way of fire houses ushering an era of volunteer police officers, libraries will close, corn farmers will abandon their fields, soldiers in Afghanistan will go without helmets, while all that happens please do me one little favor.

When you sit at your board meetings, looking over the company budget, please choose to give me a raise from $60k to $90k (at the very least) because now I have to pay tolls on deteriorating roads to get to your company’s office and do your company’s work.

I now have to pay private school tuition for eighteen years just so that my child will be competitive for a college’s admissions board, then I have to buy four to six years of that college’s tuition because there is no more pesky wasteful spending on education grants.

I have to pay Amazon’s prices, shipping & handling to read the books that Benjamin Franklin foolishly thought should be freely accessible in big wasteful government spending libraries.

I have to pay for a private security company to patrol my streets.

Please, increase my salary for the 40 to 60 hour work weeks, five to six days, 50 weeks a year, while you make money lounging poolside off capital gains investments.  Yes, I work damn hard for my money and now need more of it so that I may buy food without high fructose corn syrup added only to subsidize corn farmers who would actually have a lucrative alternative fuel market if, you, the $250kers at the top of oil companies allowed ethanol research and the reproduction of alternatively fueled cars.

I’d also like to avoid consuming high fructose corn syrup, not so much to preserve my girlish figure but more so to avoid type 2 diabetes which is a rather expensive disease what will cost me the daily insulin supplements, glucose meters, regular doctors’ appointments, and not to mention that because you $250kers continue to restrict company healthcare insurance while also increasing dividends for your insurance and pharmaceutical company stockholders (your fellow $250kers), for whom you championed against affordable government options to healthcare and ensured that by (now) not paying your fair share of taxes, those government healthcare options will become nothing more than desperate and grossly under-serviced healthcare options.  So I really need a higher income to pay the hospital expenses I’ll incur and pass on to my children at the end of my life.

Oh and one last request before I die, could you please increase my child’s salaries when entering the workforce? As he or she will likely have children patrolling your draughted oil fields in the Middle East but as you don’t pay your share of the tax burden anymore, the army can’t afford helmets.  I’d like a salary to pay for their helmets as they put their lives on the line for your bottom line.  40% of your income was too much to ask, I get that but the solider gives 100% of his or her life – isn’t that entirely way too much ask?

You, $250kers who only make up 3% of the United States population but possess 80% of the wealth, keep your wealth and leave it up to the 97% of us who are diving up only 20% of the wealth to the foot the bill for the military that protects you.  So let’s make a deal, you continue avoiding taxes, just pay me what I deserve for the decades of hard work I’ve given and the blood of my children who I’ve given to protect your interest overseas.

Don’t pay taxes, fine but at least pay me.  Deal?
Thank you sincerely,
The Rest of Us

Fear, Fear Go Away Come Again Another Administration

I admit my heart held an increased anxiety and apprehension as I watched Obama’s speech the night he was elected.  I am afraid and I voted for him!  So, I hate being afraid.  My fear doesn’t arise out of worrying that I won’t be able to buy an eighth gun, or make a tax free $250,000 by clicking a few buttons executing stock trades or that socialism will snatch my extra million that I was going spend on a new yacht and use it toward someone making $11.50 an hour to curb the costs of their life-saving heart transplant.  I’d be loathed to harbor those fears and yet, I am fearful. 

 You see, I live in Cleveland and I am desperately searching for a new career as the past eight years since I graduated from college have left me unsecured and in much debt.  Yep, I’m the lucky one who graduated from college the very same year Bush was elected, so I think my life is a picture of the results of his administration. 

I own no home because I refused to pay or rather borrow more than the house’s worth.  I don’t own a car because I refuse to take on big debt considering my low salary and lack of job security.  I’ve never made more than $27,000 a year even though I have a bachelor’s degree from a school ranked 31^st among the world’s top 500 universities, 33^rd on the national ranking and ranked 1^st in my specific field! Yet, I have no career for all that education and hard work. 

I lived in New York on September 11^th and waited with my heart in my hands for my friends who worked on Wall Street to come home.  So I take it personally that Osama bin Laden walks free, all the while Halliburton has made a pretty penny on infantry secured oil contracts.  

I’ve had to file for unemployment, and last year I had to put my student loans in forbearance.  Now, all the years I’d paid them down has been obliterated because of the interest that has grown during this forbearance. 

I had to put off paying for a wedding and most painfully having children because my fiancé is in the exact same situation as me. So I’ve really lived the effects of the Bush administration. 

Therefore, I’m baffled as to exactly why so many people think the conservative policies are not ones to fear.  I did everything by the book, straight As, National Honor’s Society, went to a great college, studied aboard.  I graduated and worked 16 hour days, six days a week, trying to build successful career.  I did everything everyone says is needed to succeed in this country and yet I’m drowning!  Okay, so I did study the arts even though I have a high aptitude for chemistry and physics.  To correct that mistake, I’m preparing to pursue a masters-degree in a science field but was horribly dismayed when a friend who studied chemical engineering, graduated in 2001, could not find work.  So he went directly to grad school getting a master in chemical engineering only to work extreme hours for little pay and little job satisfaction.  Big surprise! The science fields in the past eight years have not enjoyed growth, job security or satisfaction. 

When Obama spoke after being elected, the only thing I feared was that the change he champions won’t undo the damage that’s been done.  Among these articles and stories of people buying guns is preparation of the Obama administration I would really like to know what I should do in preparation of the Obama administration.  Should I study environmental sciences because he boasts funding alternative fuel research?  Should I join the Peace Corps to gain tuition credit as I take on loans for a masters-degree?  In talking about the bail-out Obama and Democrats say they want to open the credit market but I don’t need or want credit.  I need a higher income.  I could re-start my career by opening a small business but without projecting revenue and profit, should I take out small business loans?  Once Obama was elected everyone said racism was over, so should I go back to the executive who didn’t promote me, despite the glowing recommendations from other executives in the company?  The last person that reluctant executive promoted was a white male so should I go to him now and tell him that racism is all over, he and I can have a drink celebrating the promotion that I now have earned through hard work and merited with my talent?  Or should I start going to my family who now has all the prosperity that racism robbed generations of my family and ask for the same thousands of dollars cash graduation presents that my white peers used to kick start their careers?  I am afraid, because I don’t know how to utilize Obama’s administration to really change my life and give me the future I’ve dreamt.  If anyone knows how to do this please, please let me know.  Or just tell me what you’re doing to change all the hope of this campaign into the reality of an administration that will give you a prosperous life. 

My dreams are still alive but the past eight years have put them on life-support.  Does Obama really have the miracle cure to enable me?  Will I really get a chance to make something real happen from all my drive and determination?  If so I don’t want miss it and I guess I’m most fearful that I will.