Tuesday, October 30, 2012

My Vote: Why I will vote for Barack Obama, Part Three - The Rest

The United States of America is not a corporation. 

She has been called a city upon on a hill by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.  But what does that mean?
Lincoln once said that he was "for both the man and the dollar; but in case of conflict, the man before the dollar."   I think that sums it up for me as well, we need to be above the fray. We must be the example.  Yes, we are the land of economic opportunity, but we are also the land of equality and people must come before profits. 

This is the America that I believe in.  We are the richest nation in the world, even amidst these tough economic times.  We have an ethical, a moral and an American obligation to care for our sick, our poor and our elderly.  Why?  Because we are a civilization, not just an economy. We are more than an affiliation of sovereign states.  We are more than a vehicle for free-market capitalism. We are America and President Obama gets that and that is why he gets my vote.

In his time in office he passed the most comprehensive healthcare reform in a generation.  Is it perfect? No.  But its failure is not that it goes too far, not that it is a government take-over of health care, it isn't, but that it is just a first step and necessarily imperfect.  But a first step it is, none-the-less, and President Obama had the guts to take it. As a result, we are on the path to more affordable healthcare and access to it for every man, woman and child regardless of preexisting condition of the health or financial variety.

When President Obama took office we were fighting two wars and spending billions per week on them.  That's right, per week, look it up.  He ended the war in Iraq and is winding down the war in Afghanistan as well.  Oh by the the way, on his watch the organization that attacked us on our own soil, al Qaeda, has had its leadership decimated, and has seen Osama bin Laden killed.

America is the land of opportunity for all people, regardless of race, sex, religion and sexual orientation.  America is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Agnostic and Atheist.  The President realizes this and treats people with tolerance, in prose and policy.  He repealed a blemish on the greatest military on in the world-Don't ask, Don't tell.  He was the first sitting president to advocate for marriage equality.  The right to marry whomever you love is a fundamental right, guaranteed by the Constitution.  President Obama affirmed that.

He has improved our schools with his Race to the Top program, he's decreased student loan costs by eliminating the banks as cost-increasing middle-men, and fought to ensure equal pay for women in the workforce.  President Obama has fought to ensure that all Americans are equal, not just with his words, but with his actions.

From an energy perspective, our domestic oil production levels are at extremely high levels and has more rigs drilling for oil and gas than the rest of the world combined.  But more importantly, he is turning our country, despite big-oil and backward thinking people digging their heels in fiercely, towards cleaner, less expensive renewable fuels of the future.   

FDR noted The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.  Our skyscrapers are unparalleled, we are the womb of billionaires and visionaries, entrepreneurs and artists, but we are not America if we turn our back on the poor, the sick and the elderly.      
    

    



   

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