Here we are, just hours away from deciding what is going to happen for the next four years. Well, I guess more or less we could be voting for who big business is going to try and buy for the next four years.
Listen, let’s be honest, we haven’t had much luck with presidential candidates that had a business background. George Bush JR couldn’t even run an oil company in Texas. That’s like being a failed drug dealer who lives next door to Lindsay Lohan. Another one would be a failed steroid dealer who lives next to Lance Armstrong. Then again, it is widely speculated that Bush used insider information when it came to selling Harken’s stock (the company that was once Bush’s failed Arbusto Oil).
Hey, we also had Herbert Hoover, who graduated from Stanford with a degree in engineering, and he built an international mining empire. Not bad. However, as a president, Hoover was perhaps the biggest failure of all-time. He cut taxes for those who were doing well, in hopes that it would spur job growth. All it did was create the great depression’s growth. Remember when Candidate Mitt Romney said middle class was $250,000? Herbert Hoover and family kept on like an aristocracy. Every meal had to have formal attire, and had to be a seven course dinner. All of this whilst his citizens stood in soup kitchens, and begging for work.
There was another president who boldly claimed that it was wrong to tax millionaires, and gave them a giant tax cut, perhaps one of the biggest in US history. He bragged about small government, and spouted outdated maxims on a frugal government. What it did do was spur the great depression, and bring an end to the Calvin Coolidge reign in the White House. H.L. Mencken summed the Coolidge presidency like so “Nero fiddled while Rome Burned, Coolidge only snored.” That was a play on the fact that Coolidge like to sleep, to the point when informed the danger that the KKK was presenting, Coolidge slept on his options.
Hey, that beats the man who Coolidge took the place of. Good old’ Warren G. Harding, a man who famously once bet the entire White House china in a card game. Oh, and then was that nasty Teapot Dome scandal that came to light after Harding’s death, and saw Albert Fall become the first cabinet officer in US history to go to prison.
And I could go on about Ronald Reagan, who saw nothing with selling weapons to the highest bidder (and getting those under him to take the fall, not bad for a man who was nearly a member of the communist party), but hey, why strike out against the man the Republicans who in Christ like regard.
And I’m not going to knock George Bush sr. He had his flaws (like giving birth to junior, and vomiting on Japanese diplomats) like any man. However, once he was away from the office, he became almost Jimmy Carter like. He worked with Democrats on social issues, and became buddy-buddy with Bill Clinton. We also had Chester A. Arthur, a man who used the spoils system, and turned his back on same when he got into office, signing into law the Pendleton Act. Although there was that nasty run in with the Chinese, whom he tried to limit on their immigration, that was an awkward moment.
However, when you look at cold hard facts, the declines this nation has suffered through more times than not, occurred when a Republican was in office. And I’m sorry if facts offend certain people that planned on voting for Mitt Romney. Listen, I know that our say is limited, even more so to the Citizens United case, which allowed corporations to donate unlimited funds into the coffers of politicians. But let’s look at one simple undeniable fact.
Mitt Romney made his fortune, for the most part off of Bain Capital. Bain Capital made its mark buying under performing companies, shredding the workforce, and showing higher profits, even though many times, they simply shut down companies, and took the tax write off when they listed it as a loss on their tax returns.
And we won’t even go into how dangerous the idea of attempting to overturn Roe V Wade. This is something they might be able to accomplish because a few justices are going to be retiring during the next four years. A reversal of that historic landmark decision would bring us back to the days of when women would routinely die in back ally abortion clinics. Hey, let’s not forget that many of these deaths would be the result of poorly trained doctors with limited education.
So, there it is. Either vote President Obama back in office, let him continue his FDR attempt to fix the mess he was left by President George Bush jr. Obama wants to fund Pell grants, wean this nation off its gas and oil addiction, and bring home troops from countries they don’t have to be in anymore. Or, you can go the other route. You can give a vote to limit women’s rights, to give the rich tax breaks they don’t need, all the while bringing on another depression. And let us not forget, cut everything , give billions (yes billions with a B) to the pentagon, and expand American occupation of other nations. By the way, that means more young men and women dying in war.
It’s your decision. It’s that simple.
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