Monday, May 14, 2007

Are You Better Off?


As we are entering the season where the focus shifts to the next election, we see a group of Republican candidates espousing the ongoing war and comparing themselves to their view of the perfect President Ronald Reagan.

As progressives maybe we need to quote Ronald Reagan from time to time in addressing the issues of today. Reagan asked a famous question during the debates of the 1980 election season that brought him to prominence. This question applies today as well.

Are you better off today than you were six years ago? Do you feel that your job is secure now that gas prices have risen well above three dollars per gallon and predictions that they will reach four dollars seem very real?

Are you better off today with the President having the country bogged down in a war in Iraq with no end in sight? Have you gained any benefit from the war in Iraq, or has it cost this country in ways we will never recover?

Are you better off with the majority of the world turning against us and those in the Middle East planning to bring the United States down? Are you safer with the choices that this President and his Republican allies have made in foreign policy?

Are you better able to afford college costs for your children under the economy of George W Bush? Are you confident that your children will be able to afford a home, or raise a family with the direction our country is going?

Are you confident you and your family will have affordable health care in the future, or has the decisions of deficits and war brought that confidence to an end? Are the forty seven million Americans without health care better off today than they were six years ago?

Are the thirty seven million low-income Americans living in poverty better off today than they were six years ago? Are the twenty six million Americans receiving food stamps better off or do they face a Food Stamp program in peril?

Are we better off as a nation to have many of our privacy rights taken away? Are we confident we can trust those in government to protect our identities and our privacy or will we continue to see computers disappear, personal records compromised and our privacy in peril?

Are we winning any of the wars this President has started? Are we better off to coax a war with Iran? Have we seen oil prices fall from the take over of Iraqi oil? Do we have more allies today that we had six years ago?

These are but a few questions that as an American you can ask. These questions go to the basic principle of life in America today. As you hear the Republican candidates espouse war and claim the moniker of Reagan, ask your self the Reagan question. Are we better off today under Republican leadership than we were six years ago.?
Cartoon copyright credit to Stephen Pitt Cartoons stephenpittcartoons