I think I posted this in the wrong forum last night. So here is the re-run

[electricray]

Sorry if you've heard this one. I am working out a frame and I hoped to get a little advice on honing it. Thanks.

This is a post for freepers, lurkers, and all else who find solace in ideas such as cuts to social programs to fix New Orleans.

I have figured out the solution to all of our funding problems in this country and it is sooooooo simple I don't know why no one else thought of it. Every American that has insurance on anything needs to cancel it. Take half of the money and send it to aid in Katrina recovery efforts. See now isn't that a great idea? What's the matter, doesn't that seem like a bang-up plan? Do you like my idea?

Well, as a matter of fact, niether do I. All smart-assery aside, I would never ask anyone to give up their safety net. So why on earth would right-wing America be asking 40 million poor Americans to give up theirs? Cutting social programs to fund this rebuilding process is the exact same thing as dropping your auto insurance to pay your rent (a situation many working poor face every month).

The sad fact is, most Americans can no longer afford the ladder up to the trapeze, let alone the safety net. Government programs giving the poorest Americans a starting point just above rock-bottom have been inching closer to that rock-bottom for decades now. It is abhorrent to me that we consider dropping them even further on the heels of a demonstration of epic proportions that we need these programs more than ever. I saw the income inequity in this tragedy and I couldn't help but think that we as a country needed to provide more to these people. The right-wing saw these people and apparently thought they weren't suffering enough pre-Katrina.

Why is it that there are Americans who will blame poor Americans for their own poverty, hunger, illness, etc, and yet look me straight in the eye and tell me that we went to war to liberate the Iraquis? Why couldn't we concentrate on liberating our own oppressed? There are people in this country who have no voice. There are people in this country who are tortured, harrassed, threatened, raped, and murdered every day and their only crime was trying to live a dream that really doesn't exist anymore. The only insurance these people have is the social contract that they were born under. A contract that the current administration is doing its level best to erode.

We are all Americans. When one of our own dies before they reach their true potential, we all suffer. The moral fiber that tells us Saddam Hussein gassing his own people was unforgivable is the same moral fiber that should tell us that our people should no longer needlessly suffer. I personally think that the American people would have been much more receptive to the help than the Iraquis have been thus far.

I don't consider myself poor, but I still fall into the category of needing government help if everything falls apart. I am still one disaster away from povery, as are most Americans. I do have life insurance (finally) but it takes a lot of hours at a well-paying, union job to pay for it. The bottom line is that we all pay taxes when we work and one of the returns that we get on those investments (for some they are the only investments they have) are assurances that America will always see us as valuable and respect us as Americans. Without those assurances, we cease to be a republic. Without our republic, it is every man, woman, and child for themselves.

So the next time you request a reduction in social services just consider what it would be like to have to cancel your insurance just to pay for necessities. Then consider how great it would be if the boss would just give back a little of his tax cut so you could keep that insurance and still get all those necessities so important to all of us.