Priorities

What does it say about our elected officials when they postpone voting on aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy and continue to scare seniors and disabled individuals who rely on Social Security and Medicare to concentrate on overturning legislation that may actually help the people who need it most?  The attitude of "I've got mine, I don't care about anyone else" seems to be prevalent in both parties.  They make more money than most Americans would ever dream about, have more vacation, sick and other paid time off than other businesses can afford to give their employees and still they are not satisfied and want more sacrifices from the rest of us.  They persist in marching to their own drummers and doing what they want to instead of listening to the people who elected them.  They talk about the governments of other countries and the corruption that saps money from the people but fail to see anything wrong with them taking campaign contributions from special interest groups and then voting on legislation that directly impacts those groups in a favorable manner.  If that is not corruption, then I don't know what is. 

The last time elected officials of either party actually listened to the voters was probably back in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration.  Different times, you say, yes but politics is politics is still politics and we still elect people in the same manner as then.  Yes our times have changed and yes we fighting different enemies abroad but we still have some of the same problems at home as then.  Hunger, unemployment, discrimination, etc.  Eisenhower established the highway system that we now utilize but no president since has funded the upkeep of these highways sufficiently to keep them from deteriorating to the point of failure.  Instead we wait until they do fail and then spend a lot more money to build something from scratch than if we had funded the maintenance on a regular basis.  Highways are not the only part of our infrastructure that is deteriorating, our electrical grid is woefully inadequate, our sewers and water systems are only slightly better.

Yet we persist in sending money overseas to aid other countries in their time of need and turn a blind eye to the needs of our own people.  The other nations of the world will not come to our aid if we fail.  In fact, some of them would probably be happy to see America fail.  You cannot buy friendship with aid no matter how humanitarian it is.  Congress talks about people on Social Security being free-loaders but what about the nations that we send aid to?  They are not required to pay it back or even to use it for the purpose for which it was intended.  In many cases, it goes to line the pockets of government officials instead of to the people.  Even if we send food or medical supplies, we have no guarantee that they will not be sold on the black market for profit.

While I realize that we live in a global community and must think and act globally to survive, we must also remember that if we fail from within the next hostile takeover will be our government by one of our so called friends.