Thank You Maureen Dowd

I know a lot of you frequently read Maureen Dowd's column in the NY Times. Just in case you missed this one, go ahead and take a peek. It is depressingly funny.

I must quickly add to the column link by saying that I walked into an eye opening conversation over the weekend. We were at a party for the girlfriend of one of Nat's coworkers and at one point I walked into a conversation between a Coast Guard reservist, a pediatrician, a food industry person that went to the Cordon Bleu in Paris, and a commercial real estate lawyer. The reservist is a republican, while the other 3 are self proclaimed Democrats.

When I walked into the conversation, the lawyer was defending Obama, while the other 3 were attacking Obama for being "too liberal" and for wanting to tax the wealthy too much. The pediatrician was strongly lamenting how she hated writing her quarterly tax checks to Uncle Sam, while the reservist kept on talking about how he is tired of giving "hand outs" to the lower income folk, while saying the problem with people in the US is that there is a feeling of "entitlement."

While I have heard some of these statements before I was surprised to hear them from registered Democrats. The comment about Obama being "too liberal" stroke me as a joke at first. Too liberal? Really? Apparently Obama's fault is that he talks too much about wanting to change things. In other words, Obama's problem is that he looks at the future and talks about a better nation. That, my friends, is not acceptable since he will not be able to accomplish any of the things he talks about.

Obama is also too liberal because he wants to increase taxes on the people that make way more than the average American ($38,651.41 in 2006). Yes, taxing %40 of your income stings. Yes, government programs can be wasteful. Yes, people abuse government programs. But the thing is, if you tax 40% of the income to someone making a million, they still have $600K. I am no expert here since I make below what the average American makes, but I think most people can live fairly comfortable with that much money. Plus, in exchange for $400K in taxes you get to live in a great country with great social programs like the military forces that keep the country safe, fire and police protection (yes, they are both social programs!), subsidized postal service (go live in a developing country that has no working mail and we can talk about the USPS), public schools, and so on. Don't we all think we are better off having governement provide some of these services? Do we really think that if the government did not tax that nice people would take over and provide these services?

As for the comment of "hand outs" and "sense of entitlement", I have two things. One, I think people that grow up in wealthy families can take for granted how much easier it is to do things like go to school, high school and college, since you don't have to worry about putting food on the table because your folks are working minimum wage jobs. You can call it a "hand out", I call it giving a hand to people that have fallen on hard times so that some day they can in turn give a hand to someone else, perhaps by raising their income and paying more taxes to support social programs for those in need.

As for the sense of entitlement, I think people should feel that if they live in one of the wealthiest nations in the world they should be entitled to, perhaps, a decent education. Why is it a bad thing to feel that if you live in a civilized nation that you should be entitled for your kids to go to a decent school? How about health care, should we not feel entitled to not dying because we cannot afford to save our life? I am not saying that because I feel entitled for something I am going to stop working any harder.

I always thought that one of the great quality about this country is that people cared for the improvement of the nation above the individual. It was this notion of nation before person that pushed USA ahead of all nations in the world. Yet, when I hear people saying that a candidate is "too liberal" because he is idealistic, it just kills me. I can only hope that I lost something in translation.