"Obama Saved Michigan and My Family" - Democratic Underground

impik

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Nov-18-10 01:02 AM
Original message

"Obama Saved Michigan and My Family"

Beautiful DK diary:

I know I'm going to get whacked for this.

But I don't get it.

I really, really don't get it.

When George Soros suggests that Obama may not be a good investment and the media goes on about how Obama isn't manning up...I don't get it.

As a person whose life was personally enriched because of Obama's policies, I seriously don't get it.

This year my family got an astonishing tax return from the Earned Income Tax Credit. We're talking a fixed car. We're talking a significant about of paid off family debt. We're talking several months of staying in a home...or a YEAR's worth of groceries to feed the family. Or a year's worth of health insurance premiums.

I'm not talking about a few bucks to buy some beer. I'm talking about an amount that made a REAL difference in my family's life in 2010.

So when people are upset about Obama, I SERIOUSLY don't get it.

I don't get it.

You know...the Industrial states were facing a very real meltdown. The domestic automotive companies that people LOVE to hate very literally uphold the industrial supply chain for everything from toasters to bread to Toyotas, and Obama chose the politically damaging pathway of rescuing GM, a company that everybody fucking HATES. And because of that, Michigan did NOT COLLAPSE.

You know...TOYOTA was freaking out about the prospect of a GM collapse because it would mean their supply chain would be broken for the better part of a year. And you know if TOYOTA was anxious for the US to rescue GM, it was serious. That the MILLION person unemployment collapse in the US that was said to follow a GM termination would actually have happened.

I was freaked out in 2008. My friends were freaked out. The whole STATE held its breath expecting to just slide off a goddamn cliff with the collapse of GM. And you're looking at a state with a lowest estimate of 13% unemployment right now. It would have been worse. It would have been a LLLLLLLLLLLLOT worse...

But for the Obama administration who took it on the chin for this state. He "manned up" and did what was RIGHT. Not what was popular. Not what would help him. He SAVED Michigan. He SAVED hundreds of thousands of jobs and families and what did he get for it?

Jack shit! People screaming at him from both sides.

But goddammit, he helped us.

And when he made 9 billion dollars in Federal loans available to small manufacturers in 2008, I KNEW he GOT it. He GOT it more than anybody else in America. That the US supply chain was a massive interconnected web and if any other part of it was to survive, he needed to preserve even the very bottom of it. While everybody saw the Fed rescuing GM, they missed the part where the Federal Government rescued the small manufacturing plants peppered throughout America.

When NOBODY else was giving out loans to these small time manufacturers to help keep people on their payroll, the Federal Government DID. OBAMA did!

And when Americans lost their jobs and their previous employers told them they qualified to keep their insurance benefits through COBRA.....for $1200 a MONTH, the Obama administration subsidized COBRA so that regular people...REGULAR PEOPLE, people I KNOW, regular people could actually keep their insurance and pay for their kids to see doctors.

And we're talking just a few MONTHS into his presidency. I personally KNOW people whose asses were saved by this administration. Personally.

And $10 million for clean up of Muskegon Lake. And an unprecedented $400 million for Great Lakes restoration, plus an allocation each year for the next five years. Unprecedented. And enforcement of ballast water restrictions to keep invasive species out of the Great Lakes.

And $1 billion in Michigan alone for advanced battery manufacturing plants, one of which is coming to Muskegon to hire over 700 people! SEVEN HUNDRED FAMILIES!

snip...

For me, this guy has personally touched and enriched my family's life and kept us and tons of others from slipping off the edge. I cannot comprehend how others feel it's reasonable to bash this guy. Without his policies, my own family would have been screwed.

I just don't get it.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/18/921524/-Obama-Saved-Michigan-and-My-Family