It’s been fairly successful for the President to put forth seemingly benign and well-meaning proposals some of which like Obamacare conned a nation largely because we failed to recognize his sales formula: Use American values to garner sentimental support for his personal agenda ignoring the context surrounding that agenda.
It is the absence of context that has been this President’s biggest failure and it has been the inability to effectively illuminate seemingly benign policy as malignant for American citizens in context that has been the biggest failure of Republicans.
Take environmental issues such as the President’s Solyndra fiasco. Republicans ended up appearing anti-environment rather than CONTEXTUALIZING the $535 million government dollar loss.
Instead of publicizing in January 2014 that the, “Food Stamp Program Overpaid $2 Billion in 2013,” Elliot Jager, http://www.Newsmax.com/US/food-stamps-overpay-agriculture/2014/01/01/id/544671/#ixzz3JiPFmgf5, Republicans might have highlighted the additional fact noted in the same article that “The government also underpaid food stamp recipients to the tune of $500 million because of mistakes by case workers or the clients themselves.” $535 million wasted on Solyndra, $500 million in help for families eligible for food stamps not paid that could have been.
It’s the absence of context that makes the President seem benign while Republicans seem cruel. In reality, the differences between them are far less.
We need more dialogue about comparisons, priorities, and truthfulness (unlikely, I know) but mostly a new way of thinking about Democratic marketing.
Sure, the environment is important, but spending money on failed attempts at funding solar energy firms when we have high unemployment and food stamp programs are being slashed that impact the very survival of some families seems ridiculously out of touch, elitist and ultimately idiotic.
It is the same lack of vision and failure to consider context that is evident with Obamacare.
The President wanted to “reform healthcare.” Great, most of us wanted that too in addition to world peace and happiness. Obamacare is the vehicle put forth for that.
But the President ignored key attributes of our healthcare crisis important for citizens including the basic uncontrolled FEES we pay for healthcare services compared to the rest of the world and the fact that these exorbitant fees don’t translate into better longevity.
After all the US is 42nd in life expectancy (50th according to some). Obviously requiring health insurance purchase with or without federal help in such purchases without addressing the unaffordability of needed medical care and treatment was elitist, and ultimately idiotic.
Instead of providing this context, Republicans decided to characterize the lukewarm attempt of Obamacare to standardize what private insurance companies offered as “socialism.” They idiotically decided to defend INSURANCE companies and the free market of providers charging whatever they want, the very factors that we know contribute to the crisis as an answer instead of addressing the stupidity of a plan that ignores the FEES charged by providers regardless of who’s paying those fees.
So we ended up with 1,000 pages of how we can cut the services available to citizens and/or get people to pay for more of those services rather than any reform. Instead of focusing on what we’re paying, the law and the discussion focused on WHO was paying, which was NOT the issue for consumers going broke from the cost of medical care and treatment in this country.
And now immigration and the problem of illegals. Wanting the millions of lawbreakers to be allowed to live “out of the shadows,” isn’t bad per se as part of the President's "benign" goals, but in the context of prioritizing amnesty to illegals, defined as the act of granting an official pardon to, as a priority at any cost the policy is out of touch, elitist and ultimately idiotic in the context of our current society.
Idiotic and elitist because the over-simplifying and prioritizing of an action or path that ultimately DEPRIORTIZES CITIZENS is not kind or American but stupid and elitist. The President is not running a charitable foundation where we donate money and trust he hands it out to good causes. He is running a COUNTRY.
It is the context of giving SUPERIOR rights to illegals over our own citizens or those lawfully seeking citizenship that is a problem.
The President promises to these lawbreakers, “if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you're willing to pay your fair share of taxes – you'll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily, without fear of deportation.” Only felons will be excluded, if the use of false IDs and the records of other countries even allows for the accurate identification of those individuals.
Well meaning? Actually brutally cruel and a betrayal of American trust if you look at the proposed treatment of illegals compared to our citizens.
In our society young and old citizens are prosecuted for and suffer the consequences of using false IDs, suffer ineligibility for loans and jobs because of past misdemeanors, suffer enormous fines for not paying our back taxes and residents of one state must establish residency in another state in order to get in-state tuition.
Granting SUPERIOR rights to illegals, those who have chosen to avoid being entangled with our system is the ultimate sacrifice of citizens in the name of “kindness,” that really simply prefers other countries’ citizens over our own.
In a time where our context is that we refer to people who spent a lifetime contributing to social security and Medicare as moochers collecting an entitlement in their older years, where we accuse the chronically unemployed of being slackers and reduce their benefits and food stamps, where we ignore the millions of Americans without health insurance because they’re too poor to qualify, in that context the President is CRUEL, crueler than we acknowledge.
Many of the new recipients of amnesty will piggyback their superior treatment as parents of those who already obtained amnesty through the President’s last executive order because naturally now that the “kids” up to age 30 were given amnesty we can’t separate families so their parents get it too. One Executive Order enabling the next.
The Republicans will likely be idiotic as well again ignoring context. But CONTEXT, the society in which we live is the only way to illuminate the hypocrisy, unfairness and disloyalty of the President’s “kindness” approach that is really the grant of SUPERIOR rights to illegals.
If your child wants to go to a state university in another state and pay in-state tuition, he or she must establish residency even though you’ve been a good US citizen for years. Not so for many amnesty folks.
If you seek college aid and scholarship your financial records and your child’s are open to scrutiny…Not possible for off-the-books amnesty folk many of whom receive scholarships.
If you have a misdemeanor conviction you are ineligible for many federal loans, not so for illegals gaining amnesty even though by definition being here unlawfully is a misdemeanor.
And finally the President and his Obamacare fetish. Remember it is enrollment season and there are concerns about those figures.
Go to the website HealthCare.gov, “Coverage for Lawfully Present Immigrants,” which the President’s new labeling of illegals seems to include…After all it’s all about getting enrollment numbers up for Obamacare. Temporary residents are eligible for Obamacare and subsidies and those who are granted “withholding of deportation,” are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP.
Instead of arguing about what to do with the illegals here, argue what not to do and prioritizing their legality by giving them superior rights to citizens is not fair and not kind.
