Monday, January 3, 2011

Dear Mr. President,

Calvin Coolidge, back in the twenties just before the Great Depression, famously said, “The business of America is business.” I always thought that was just a Republican philosophy, you know, laissez faire, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, union busting, all that kind of thing, but nope, there it was in the secret WikiLeaks cables report in the New York Times this morning. How the government lobbies on behalf of Boeing and other big corporations around the globe. Maybe they always have, I don’t know, but now, in addition to spying, the diplomats are expected to be lobbyists. Even the president gets right in there and applies pressure, grants “concessions” and perks, the old quid pro quo thing, in order to sway a foreign government to buy Boeing. Or Caterpillar. Or whoever. All this coupled with the bailouts and tax cuts for the rich so they could have their annual million dollar bonuses - Merry Christmas! - the failure to hold anyone accountable for anything, the inability or unwillingness for real financial and political reform and most recently, your freeze on government employee salaries for the next two years - no Merry Christmas for them! - seems to me to be the Republican agenda, not the platform of Hope and Change and Transformation. And just this morning, following your example, the new democratic governor of New York announced a state employee wage freeze for a year. Ten billion a month for war, not a penny for the people. Hard to tell a Democrat from a Republican these days. I think you guys are all in the same party, the Republicrats. At first I didn’t see why all you politicians got your knickers knotted over WikiLeaks but now I do. All those secret back room deals, the quid pro quos, the hypocrisy, the pettiness. Now I get it, why you’re pulling out all the stops to shut them down and find some crime to charge Julian Assange with. No one likes their dirty laundry aired in public, but Mr. President, secrecy is the enemy of democracy and holding Pfc. Bradley Manning in solitary confinement in a Marine brig for more than seven months is cruel and unusual punishment. Is torture. Is evil. Is an abuse of power.

Free Bradley Manning!