So Long, Grover

Mitt Romney was interviewed recently by Fortune magazine in which he laid out his "vision" & areas he will likely cut or eliminate in order to achieve fiscal balance. The areas he highlighted were indeed interesting: Subsidies for Amtrak, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities were areas slated for elimination. Astonishing. No mention of defense cuts which takes the lion's share of the national budget or taxing the rich which can raise billions in revenue. Instead he plans to go after Grover & his pals Bert & Ernie, Oscar & Big Bird over at PBS (the government spends $444 million a year on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the parent organization of PBS);  working-class Americans who use the government-run Amtrak (which  received $1.56 billion in federal funding in 2010, with $1.3 billion in stimulus funds) & the artists in our society whose collective genius & contributions are inestimable (the National Endowment of the Arts lists the current level of federal funding at approximately $146 million - Romney wants to wipe this tiny funding off the books! He should be reminded of Pres. Kennedy's speech at Amherst College in 1963: "Our national strength matters, but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. The artist, however faithful to his/her personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state".) 

This is sheer lunacy. With vote rigging & disenfranchisement   geared toward delivering the White House to the GOP (& their billionaire sugar daddies) in this election cycle, darker days may be ahead. Not to say that Pres. Obama is the perfect choice - he is not - but given the way money has polluted our political waters and shut the door on more viable & credible third party presidential candidates  (like Jill Stein), Pres. Obama is the lesser of the two evils. Indeed, this lesser-of-two-evils in our so-called democracy speaks volumes as to how low we have sunk.

Let's hope that Grover doesn't go the way of thousands who were fired by Romney during his tenure at Bain...


OneLove


:::MME:::