An Open Letter to Democrats in Elected Office.

I elected you to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  My cousin just shipped out for Afghanistan.  I elected you to end the tyranny of the Guantanamo prison and denying people due process.  We still hold people there indefinitely without bringing charges.  I elected you to give us universal healthcare.  We get an essentially Republican bill that, while it does many good things, falls short of that promise and which they still manage to completely demonize you for and leverage into a big electoral win.

And now, the latest outrage.  I elected you to stand up for the middle class in a world where the rich are getting richer and the middle class is wilting.  I elected you to fight government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation in a world in which our richest companies have set record profits while laying off workers or off-shoring positions, writing laws that politicians sponsor (literally), and don’t pay any taxes. I elected you to level a playing field in which Warren Buffet’s secretary pays a larger % of her total income in taxes than he does.  I elected you fix government spending by being a tax-and-spend liberal in a world of don’t-tax-but-spend-anyway Conservatives.

Now, you have an opportunity to continue tax relief for the middle class which is so severely squeezed by ever rising prices and stagnant wages, while asking the rich to be great patriots and give back to the country which has given them so much to help us restore our fiscal sanity.

And what do you do?  You give in.  You cave.  You throw up your hands and just reflexively give in to the whatever Republicans want. 

Why in God’s name do you not simply put a bill on the floor that permanently extends the Bush tax cuts for the middle class and doesn’t address the rich.  Let the republicans take a stand against extending tax cuts for the middle class and see how it goes for them.    If they want to introduce the bill to borrow $700 Billion so that millionaires can continue paying taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries, LET THEM!  Go on the major networks and say “Hey, there’s a bill that will extend tax cuts for the middle class but those Republicans are holding it up because their good buddies, the millionaires who ran the government under Bush, don’t want it.  You’re taxes are going to be RAISED by REPUBLICANS because they want to make sure RICH PEOPLE don’t have to PAY as high a tax rate as their secretaries do!”  You’ve been dealt a winning hand.  Why are you caving?

I can’t take it anymore.  You’ve lost me, guys.  I just can’t watch.  It’s too painful.

I suppose I need to figure out how to get by in a world where my country is run by big money for big money, where the middle class pays for bailouts so the richest Americans can do EXTREMELY well, and where these same richest Americans send American jobs overseas so they can get even richer by not having to pay the lowly and neutered American Worker.