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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (67808)	1/22/2003 8:28:13 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Whoa. I hope it helped to get that off your chest. Hello. John, I enjoy your posts here, so I'm trying to figure out just where to grab a handle so we can talk. My dad was a Msgt in the USAF. I went to school on the GI Bill and now through very hard work am under attack by the likes of you on of all things a class issue. You'll have to help me here. I don't see how discussing the Bush family's views of class puts you under attack. Can you offer me something more? Maybe your ancestors messup up this country and you should volunteer your family to be on a list to give up slots, but this upsets a lot of Americans to no end. A registry for white anglo protestants living in the US before emancipation (or before the civil rigts act) sounds about right. Interesting thought. But I'm not certain what issue that addresses. I'm not interested in addressing issues of past discrimination; rather present discrimination. I don't know whether you saw it or not but the most recent evidence is the Harvard study which noted the degree to which the US has resegregated public education since, I think, 1975, but I don't recall for certain. It's that discrimination, that denial of opportunity, I see affirmative action programs designed to address. If you have something else in mind, something you think I'm proposing, please let me know. I would be happy to discuss it. My neighbors and their wives are under attack because they choose to drive SUV's. Your supposed populist views will completely piss off the middle class and anyone above it or hoping to rise above it. No wonder the dems are losing the Soccer mom vote - they drive vans and SUV's. The car pool to school requires one (5-8 seatbelts please). Ah, well, now that one I can address. We presently own two cars--a 96 Toyota Camry and a 92 Honda Accord. It's time to get a new car; the Camry has almost 100,000 miles on it because of my work commutes during that time (180 miles out and another 180 back, each week). So we are looking at Toyota Highlanders, newish model SUVs that are built on car chassis rather than truck chassis. In fact, as I understand it, they are built on the new Camry chassis. So, if they come, in the dead of night, for the SUV owners, Jesus in one group and some other folk in another, I forget just which one, they will get us and you. As to this horrible widening income gap - start looking at absolute statistics and not relative. I don't care how much richer some people are than me - as long as I like where I am and where my kids are going. Strangely enough, both my wife and I feel precisely the same about our situation. For me, the widening income gap consists of two issues. The first is a welfare issue. A great many incomes and, I think though would have to go back and check the reports and don't plan to do it right now, a growing number are simply static to down, as the cost of living rises. Same money, of course, buying fewer goods. Folk on the brink of poverty, falling into it. Folk just above that cut, dropping down a notch. Second, that's occurring as public services are increasingly pinched--public schools, public services of all sorts. And, third, that's further pinched because we've now dropped almost all of the safety net provisions of the welfare state. I could go on. Sure there is a huge income gap between farm workers in WV and Bill Gates, but lets really define poor - would millions of people be coming through our borders each year if this was still Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath era America? Absolutely agree with you on this one.