A Response, in Part, to the First Lady, Michelle Obama

A response to part of the First Lady Michelle Obama's DNC Speech. Here is the relevant part of her speech.

"So when it comes to rebuilding our economy, Barack is thinking about folks like my dad and like his grandmother.

He's thinking about the pride that comes from a hard day's work.

That's why he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help women get equal pay for equal work.

That's why he cut taxes for working families and small businesses and fought to get the auto industry back on its feet.

That's how he brought our economy from the brink of collapse to creating jobs again – jobs you can raise a family on, good jobs right here in the United States of America."

Mrs. Obama,

I have great liking and respect for yourself, your husband, and the values you have set for your family, from what I can tell of it by the media coverage. While I don't agree on every issue, I find President Obama to be a far better choice as president, in my view, than other alternatives. Do you understand what it is really like for the working class people of today, rather than of your parents and his grandparents days, how out of reach those dreams seem?

You speak of "the pride that comes from a hard day's work." which is a real and admirable thing, but I cannot help but wonder if you know of the despair? Of sitting down after a long, exhausting day at work, and knowing that the income produced by the work you have done is not enough to take care of your family, that no matter how many hours you manage to scrape up at work, if you were to work until your body simply broke down, it would not be enough? Then trying not to cry about it where your children can see?

To pray that the baby doesn't use too many diapers so that you can keep that $20 to pay the rent with before you have to spend it to buy another pack? To cry because you dropped the gallon of milk, and food stamps do not come in for another few days? Do you know what it is like for those of us who live in the trenches of working class poverty, trying to claw our way out? Do you understand our struggle?

You went on to say in your speech,

"They simply believed in that fundamental American promise that, even if you don't start out with much, if you work hard and do what you're supposed to do, then you should be able to build a decent life for yourself and an even better life for your kids and grandkids."

And "I see the concern in his eyes...and I hear the determination in his voice as he tells me, "You won't believe what these folks are going through, Michelle…it's not right. We've got to keep working to fix this. We've got so much more to do."

This paints an image of a compassionate, caring president, of a man who actually wants to make sure Americans do not suffer. I cannot help but wonder, as much as the later statements would seem to indicate it, if yourself and the President really understand how out of reach these goals seem to many impoverished Americans? How it feels like the harder we work to try to get ahead, the further behind we become? How many of us are disheartened and disillusioned that the government cares for us at all, or is really smiling and lying while handing corporate America bail outs and buddy deals that screw us over further?

We can take out student loans and debt, even at low interest rates, but the scary reality is that many do not have jobs and graduate with loan payments they cannot afford to make. The reality is even if you find a low paying job these days, they demand erratic schedules non conducive to family life or taking college classes, if you attempt work and school, and often offer no benefits or insurance not worth buying,  along with too few hours to live off of along with a schedule that makes finding a second job a Herculean task. 

I guess what I am really asking, Madame First Lady, is what is the real plan to fix this? When will the President get hard and fast with Congress, and be honest with the American people? We have seen him reach across the aisle again and again to get smacked down, and keep smiling and dealing with it in an attempt to be the bigger man and maintain civility, but there comes a point when civility must give way to an open declaration of hostility, and honest condemnation of an opponents dirty and underhanded tactics. If re-elected, will the President call upon our Congressional leaders to be honest, and call them out, publicly, in the media, maybe in the form of daily Internet updates, for their obstructionism and refusal to do what is in the best interests of the the American People? 

I full acknowledge that part of my family's financial troubles are result of our own mistakes and miscalculations. When things were good, we thought they would stay that way, and did not plan accordingly. When things got hard, we thought that the difficulties could not stay that way for long. 14 months of unemployment changed that view, and now three years of struggling to get back onto our feet, back to where we were, and the results of our scrambling simply to survive crippling us as we need a chance and opportunity to get ahead. We started our family young, without finishing our educations first, assuming that it was something we could do at our current income level, before that vanished. 
We do not share the only blame for our hardships though. A system that has set us up to fail, with no jobs providing hours or pay enough for a living income, a "Safety net" system that punishes our efforts to get ahead by dumping us back in the dirt, and simple bad luck, have done much to hurt our personal recovery efforts. We watch as those who run the companies we work for demand more and more of us for less and less, while our efforts bring them greater income and ourselves simply greater heart aches. We have done so as the threat of being unemployed is both subtly and openly held over our heads. We watch as laws are passed to limit our personal freedoms, but the laws that attempt to limit the freedoms of corporations to treat us as refuse and replaceable parts are castrated and turned to so much page filler. We have come to the realization that a large part of our income disparity is the result of lack of government limits and controls on Big Business, the result of deregulation. The government has gone after information peddlers and illegal distributors of songs and programs, but let the corporate thieves who ruined our economy and continue to rape and plunder what little is left to middle and working class Americans, run free with a slap on the wrist and/or small (to them) fee, if anything at all? Does the President promise to fix this, to work on it to the best of his ability?

The real purpose of this is to ask, I guess, do you really understand how bad things are for those of us down here in the working class trenches, struggling to survive on what little we can get, both in pay and hours to work? How hopeless it all seems? And as the window to his mind, as his partner and help mate, can you really assure us that if re-elected, the President would remember us, and turn to help us, not corporate America, in his next term?

An Introduction, or Why this blog Exists.

As my dear beleaguered husband will tell you, much of my ranting is of a political bent. When not working, getting my "nerd on," or herding my children and handling the issues and topics related to them, much of my spare time (hah!) is spent reading. A good portion of that reading time is spent on political columns and news, hence the ranting. And occasionally, rather than bend my poor husbands ear or make him sit and discuss issues with me, I'll actually write down what I am thinking and feeling.

I've long felt the need to bring all of my various rants, thoughts, and reactions to one location, in order to better organize and access them, but had not yet done so. Today I met an actual, makes his living that way, political blogger, one who has reached great fame and respect in his field, and while I have no hope of imitating him or his success, it caused me to want to re-read some of my rants and reexamine some of my thoughts. It is there that I ran into a problem though. My thoughts were in a half dozen different places and while many of my rants were notes on Facebook, the new layout made it a ten minute hunt to locate them (though for those who are more Facebook savvy, it may have taken less time). Frustration with this made me decide to go ahead and congregate my posts all in one place.

Now, I hadn't done this before for many reasons, as I had stated. One of those reasons is that I am Lazy, another was that everything was presumed safe and accessible on different places (old blogs, Facebook, etc), and a third was fear of gaining negative reactions from my friends and family, or potentially worse, no reactions at all.

The third, fear of reactions or lack there of,  is what has really kept me from this idea for at least a couple of years. After all, who will care about the political leanings, interests, or musings of a poor, sometimes college student, working class, married mother of soon to be four? Assumed ignorance on the subject, poverty, and lack of education would lead it to at best be a laughing stock. What credentials did I have to write on any of this? And then I realized, I would read a blog written by someone like me. I'd be interested in seeing what that person had to say, I cannot be a complete anomaly among my kind. I would read it especially since the middle and working classes are some of the most under represented folks in America. Everyone assumes they know what the guy who changes their oil or who works at the factory is going to think and believe. It's taken as a given that the girl who took your order at the restaurant or cashed you out at the gas station isn't too bright and therefore her views aren't really important.

The truth is, those views ARE important. The working and middle classes are a diverse group, one that is very much ignored unless it is being pandered to by those who assume to know what they believe and what they want,  Despite all this, I've decided to go ahead and go forward with this experiment. If nothing else, I'll be able to look at the evolution of my own writing style.