State of the Union 2011

As we listen to the State of the Union from President Obama, and the two rebuttals from two republicans (first time in history that the opposition presents two different speeches), we can see the differences between a conciliatory president with new proposals and the position of the republican party to offer the old and ineffective theory that tax cuts and less government, even at the expense of our kids education and losing our competitiveness to the Chinese, Indians, Koreans, Japanese and Europeans, where education is viewed as not only an investment but also a tool to win.
This country was not built on tax cuts, it was built on investment. The GI today would be viewed as an expense, but it created the biggest middle class the world had ever seen. The race to the moon would be considered an expense by the republicans today but, in the words of President Kennedy “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth”. We should do exactly the same with fossil fuels. It is the time to do away with oil.
But in order to do that we need to invest. And the government and the private sector need to have a partnership in order to do that.
One way is to eliminate the tax cuts for the oil companies. They make huge profits and can survive on their own without our help.
We do not have good access to the INTERNET in comparison to Asian and European nations. Sure, we have access in metropolitan areas, even though that comes at a lower speed and a higher cost than the rest of the industrialized nations, but in rural areas people still have problems with connectivity and access.
As a parent sending my daughter to college I can see the high cost of education. This makes it more difficult to win as a nation compared to other countries where education is free.
A friend of mine says that he wants things to go back to the way they used to be. So do I.
Back then the United States was the number one creditor of the world; today it is the number debtor of the world. Back then the wealthy used to pay 90% of their income in taxes. Isn't it surprising that this country started its decline in 1981 with Ronald Reagan. Republicans talk about redistribution of wealth when the wealthy are being taxed, but during the Reagan administration we saw the biggest redistribution this country had ever seen, cutting taxes from 70 % to 38%, and tripling the national debt in 8 years. These are the same republicans who talk about Obama’s unemployment rate and deficits and were not only silent but also doubled the national debt during the Bush administration, leaving us with an economy at the edge of the abyss. During the Clinton administration 22 million new jobs were created, during the Bush administration we had a loss of 5 million factory jobs.
These people think that we have the same memory as they do, but when this country sees the proposals of people like Rep Ryan from Wisconsin, head of the Budget Committee in the House, of dismantling Social Security as we know, and putting our retirement in the hands of the same people that gave us the crash of 2008, Wall Street. During that crash people lost between 50 and 75% of their retirement money, and now we want to give them the most effective program that this country has ever come up with.
The next two years will give us some idea if the people of this great nation have learned anything.