Is The American Dream Over? [Update]
By SusanUnPC on April 28, 2009 at 1:30 AM in Current Affairs, Health Care, Obama's Broken Promises, Obamatopia Mirage
Forgotten People Update: “91 protesters arrested at White House“: “The protesters [in wheelchairs!] are calling on the president to support legislation that would give people with disabilities in need of long-term care alternatives to nursing homes.” (h/t American Girl in Italy)
Is “the American dream” over? For most Americans? For you?
John McLaughlin asked the question of his panel the other night on his PBS program, The McLaughlin Group. Eleanor Clift, the Obamabot on the panel, had the rosiest outlook. McLaughlin ended the discussion with this:
I think it’s permanent. I think the party’s over. And there’s probably a big hangover.
The Washington Post had a profoundly moving story of the struggles of two Obama supporters.
Call them dreamers or fools, but they really hoped, I’m sure, that Obama would make a difference in their lives and the lives of those they help.
Trust me when I tell you that, after you read their story, you’ll find it impossible not to empathize with them, or to respect them, particularly 60-year-old Edith Childs who is so generous and kind to everyone she knows who needs help.
From “A Hundred Anxious Days“:
On Day 4 of his presidency, the Solutia textile plant laid off 101 workers. On Day 23, the food bank set a record for meals served. On Day 50, the hospital fired 200 employees and warned of further job cuts. On Day 71, the school superintendent called a staff meeting and told his principals: “We’re losing 10 percent of our budget. That means some of us won’t have jobs next year, and the rest should expect job changes and pay cuts.” On Day 78, the town’s newly elected Democratic mayor, whose campaign was inspired partly by his admiration for Obama, summarized Greenwood’s accelerating fragility. “This is crippling us, and there’s no sign of it turning around,” Welborn Adams said.
On Day 88, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that South Carolina had set a record for its highest unemployment rate in state history, at 11.4 percent. Greenwood’s unemployment is 13 percent — more than twice what it was when Childs first started chanting.
“We have a lot of people who live in cold houses, with no jobs and no food,” Childs says.
Hundreds of them call her, and the most desperate travel to Childs’s single-story house on Old Ninety-Six Highway outside of town and knock on her front door. A retired nurse living with her husband on modest savings, she makes $725 a month for serving on the county council and uses that money to pay other people’s bills: $240 for her brother’s electricity, because he can’t find a job; $300 for a young family’s rent in a two-bedroom apartment, because they have a 5-year-old boy and no income; $168 for a friend’s water bill, because the county threatened to shut it off. When the $725 runs out — and it always does — Childs dips into savings and tells Charles she spent the money on a new outfit. …
If only Edith got $725,000 per month, instead of $725, she could buy into Geithner’s toxic assets plan and have the government add taxpayers’ money at six to seven times her investment — around $4,350,000. Even if Edith’s deal doesn’t pan out, she’s only out that one-month’s investment of $725,000, and doesn’t owe the nation’s taxpayers a dime. But that’s for the big players. Not the little people like Edith and those she’s helping.
Read all of “A Hundred Anxious Days.” You may feel irritated at times, but you’ll also feel just plain sad that these people really thought he was “the one.”
by Ronald Scott
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