Letter 2 America for June 6, 2014

Dear America,

A couple of days ago, I heard a portion of a speech given by Michelle Obama about veteran homelessness.  She noted that we pass by these men and women almost without notice...that they "sleep in their cars, or in a shelter or next to a subway vent."  "We should be horrified," she said, "because that's not who we are as Americans."  Of course it is.  I respect Michelle Obama for her efforts in what I consider to be noble, or at least admirable causes, but as to veteran homelessness, the indifference with which the problem has been met is palpable.  And it isn't just veterans who are homeless.  It is not just veterans who cannot afford the healthcare they need.  It is not just veterans who have to wonder where there next meal will come from, and it is not just veterans who find themselves and their families without shelter or food because of lost jobs.  The fact is, the extension of unemployment insurance for the long-term unemployed has been stalled in The House of Representatives since January because of John Boehner's and the Republican Party's politics, and in The Senate--which passed an extension bill in March that was retroactive--a new bill that is only prospective is being fashioned in the hope that Boehner will change his mind.  As to unemployment generally, despite the fulminations of House Republicans, several jobs measures have been sent to them and they have been tabled for political reasons while efforts to reduce taxes for the well-to-do without any budgetary offset continue unabated despite the complaint that any public welfare bill must be paid for with budget reductions.  Then of course there is healthcare in the form of the Affordable Care Act.  The Republicans have waged a successful rhetorical campaign against the law that continues to be persuasive to more than half of Americans, and they did it not because the law is objectionable, but because they didn't think of it...or rather because they thought of it as an alternative to something better during the Clinton administration, but they never really wanted universal healthcare anyway.  And as to food on the table, they have cut the food stamps program based on all kinds of pretexts, not just for poor veterans but for the poor everywhere.  Tea Party organizations have been known to complain that food stamps represent more than 80% of the expenditures under the agriculture bill that was stuck in congress for so many months, which is as much of a red herring as saying that the defense budget is a hundred times what the agriculture bill authorizes.  Neither ratio is relevant to the merits of either program, but to those who are looking for reasons to cut programs for those in need, it may be a specious rationale, but it is better than none at all.  So as to homeless veterans, their plight demonstrates exactly who we are as Americans, and on that point, Michelle Obama is a Pollyanna at best.  But perhaps that isn't a bad thing.  Pollyannas put a luster on what they see, and sometimes their enthusiasm is contagious, so we can hope that Ms. Obama's will be.  But for our nation to deny that the plight of veterans, the uninsured, the poor, the homeless and the hungry don't demonstrate who we are as a nation would be to tell an unconscionable lie.  The plights of those people are exactly who we are, or at least who we have become, and it is our shame in lieu of the national pride that people like John Boehner would have us feel.

So here's a theme that I must plead guilty to raising too many times, though until there is a change, not times enough.  In this country we have the vote as individuals.  We can change things like those about which Michelle Obama admonished her receptive audience.  But bemoaning the problems in and of itself usually accomplishes nothing in today's American political environment.  She was gentle about it, but sufficiently assertive that it should have been to some effect, but such speeches have not led to change with regard to the legislation on all kinds of remedies for the plights of millions of Americans that languish unconsidered in the House of Representatives.  It is particularly odious that John Boehner makes spurious defenses of his obduracy and that of the Republican Party...his party...on the news every other night but no one calls him out for it.  Recently, a Hispanic journalist asked Boehner about his refusal to even allow a vote on immigration reform and Boehner launched into an irrelevant diatribe on "Obamacare" because he had no defense for the intransigency of his controlling party in The House.  But the irrationality, the lack of any relationship between what he was saying and the question he was asked, got almost no mention thereafter, which means that he got away with it...or did he.  That is what we will find out in November, and we should all be thinking about that election every day when we see what our politicians are actually doing about the problems that afflict so many of us--when we see how our politicians are actually telling us and the whole world who we are.  When Boehner demonstrates his callousness as he did when asked about immigration reform, every one of us should make a mental note of it, and of the fact that no Republican anywhere distinguished himself by objecting to Boehner's evasive disingenuousness.  When there is news of an alternate bill to help the long-term unemployed that is necessary because the original bill has been sabotaged over and over again on one pretext or another in Boehner's House, we should all feel our outrage and make another mental note.  And when we are embroiled in contentious discourse with those who think, like Michelle Obama, that "that isn't who we are," we should recall those mental notes and refer to them.  They are not just the shame of conservative, Republicans.  They are the shame of all of us if we don't do something about it in November.

Your friend,

Mike