Response to the Daily American's Tom Segel!

I'm not sure whether you are mentally unbalanced, or historically illiterate or just plain silly. I keep on seeing articles by people like you in various rags, like the Daily American, that pop up on my computer. Your allegations are ridiculous and your conclusions are moronic. Socialism, which I do not support, is not the issue. Progressive thinking has not hurt our society, and its advancement has allowed many to enjoy the bountiful fruits of this country.

Big business survives quite well in America, did you ever see the Wall Street Journal's review of corporate compensation?In 1970, corporate CEO compensation was 43 times the average income of their employees. By the year 2000 it had reached 1000 to one! So they are pretty comfortable along with many of their stockholders. But still it seems that people like you have made a career out of opposing “reform” from time and memorial.

Reform was needed in Upton Sinclair's day, and Francis Perkins's day, and certainly up to the Great Society and today. You may have forgotten your history, but I haven't. Bad water, bad food, bad medicine, bad railroads, and horrible working conditions like the Triangle Shirtwaste Fire, killed and maimed hundreds of thousands. But you must relish the drinking water from the Love Canals, the smog permeated air in LA, the garbage in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, and all of the degrading nuclear material in storage sites. If it were up to you big business apologetic acolytes, and the anti-regulators, we would all live in environmental disaster areas.

But your children don't need an “even playing field!” Your daughters don't need opportunity to have their own bank accounts in their own name, or the right to vote, the right to work in the job or industry they choose, or the right of birth control or the right of choice. No they should be barefoot and pregnant! Besides all of that, former slaves from the former Confederacy should still be working as tenant farmers, riding on the back of the bus, fighting our wars, not being able to vote and having to go to “Jim Crow” schools, bathrooms, and drinking fountains. Personally I am opposed to affirmative action that allows a functional illiterate like GW Bush to get into Yale as a legacy. But the right wing believes that taxes are taking their money. Well my money paid your salary while you were doing PR for the Marine Corp. I have nothing against National Defense and support it completely. But what I don't support are the billions of dollars of pork barrel give-aways to the “military-industrial complex” that builds and sells unnecessary systems to keep local economies flourishing. But what have we learned with our military, the Humvees were not armored, flak jackets and body armor were not available, and the thousands of wounded have not received the best of care. I am all for rooting out Al-Quaida, but how come Afghanistan is being ignored as a back-water operation and the porous borders with Pakistan have allowed hundreds and thousands of Taliban back into that country?

What does this all have to do with Democrats, progressives, liberals and their so-called socialist friends? Very little! The Congress had been basically controlled for decades before Reagan by a philosophical majority of Southern conservative Democrats and northern Republicans. Since Reagan the GOP has controlled the White House for 16 out of the last 24 years and there was ample opportunity to roll-back so-called “liberal” programs! Ironically it was George Bush that started the cutback in the defense spending from the Reagan trillion dollar deficit years. The GOP has controlled the Congress for about 10 years now and they have the responsibility for the well-being of the military. If anything these conservatives would have rolled back all of these “reforms” but they knew they would be out of office on their butts if they tampered with Medicare etc.! It is this administration that has undermanned the effort in Iraq, fought the war on the “cheap,” has abused the National Guard and the Reserves, and has bogged us down in a morass that may be un-winnable!

I assume that after 26 years in the military you are middle-class. Well any middle-class conservative is self-delusional. The GOP and conservative record for the middle class has been one of smoke and mirrors. So wake up, know where your bread is buttered and understand that all of your benefits and safety nets that may protect you and your family, in the future, were courtesy of the pointy-headed liberals not the “big-wigs” in corporate America and upper classes in their estates!