Day 349- Undergraduate Woes

Dear Mr. President,

I really have to admire the students in the UK demonstrating against rising University fees. I don't support acts of violence and I do hope that no one is hurt, but these youth have a right to be upset by their government's decision. While petty and spiteful individuals with experience in the American system of higher education might get some satisfaction seeing our British counterparts forced to face the unreasonable burden of educational expenses that we've been struggling with for a generation, I don't think gloating is particularly productive for either nation. The fact is that American students should have been protesting tuition hikes decades ago. The British students taking to the streets now may not get their way, but at least they won't look back and wonder why they capitulated without a fight. Here, the system has failed us, continues to fail us, but we remain largely silent.

I'm lucky, this year. I qualified for excellent financial aid- not because of a drastic change in my financial circumstances, but because I finally became old enough for the government to stop expecting my parents to support me. A system such as this-one which willfully disregards the economic realities faced by most students and their families- cannot stand for long. A society is stronger and healthier when its people are educated. I don't think that making it more difficult for many and outright impossible for some to access higher education is a socially, fiscally or morally responsible policy.

I appreciate that under your administration paying for college has gotten easier for American students, especially those from low-income backgrounds. Unfortunately, economic conditions and the poor priorities of those who write the Federal and State budgets have led to decreases in funding for public Universities across the country, forcing staff and spending cuts that decrease the value of the education provided at these institutions even as tuition steadily rises. Britain is joining the US in our struggle to balance the desire to offer the best educational institutions in the world and the inability of individuals (or, increasingly, governments) to pay for it. A British friend and I were discussing this today and he pointed out that the money raised by the increase in University fees might help British Universities hire better educators and provide more resources for those attending. Some good might possibly come of this, but it will inevitably be at the expense of the poorest students who will no longer be able to access these resources at all. In the end we both sympathized with the angry, rioting students who'd just seen their educational hopes and dreams lost to the recession.

As I glimpse the light at the end of the dark tunnel that is finals week, I have to say I'm more grateful than ever for the assistance I'm receiving this year. I know I could not be in school without it. I can't say for sure that our country will benefit in equal measure once I get my degree, but I do know that without it I would feel stuck, lost, unable to live up to my full potential.

So as I watch the news from the UK and hope against hope that students there don't end up struggling the way I did as a younger undergraduate student to pay their expenses, I can't help but wonder if those of us who aren't struggling to pay our tuition ought to be doing more to help advocate for those at home and abroad who are.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 340- A bad compromise

Dear Mr. President,

I'm sure you'll be getting no small amount of hell from the left over the tax-cuts-for-unemployment deal you made today with Republican leadership. I won't add to it. Not because I don't think this was a show of weakness, a terrible decision given the economic climate and a bad political move to boot, but because I wasn't in the room.

I actually wasn't in any number of rooms, as I'm sure this negotiation took place over many days on many levels in many, many rooms. I don't know what was said, what was offered and what was threatened. I can say I'd have done it differently, but I don't know, for sure, that my solution would have worked any better than yours.

I won't add to the criticism, I will say only this; I am disappointed. I feel let down, I feel ignored, I feel as though you caved in to demands you might have stood up to. I, and other liberals who voted for you, are owed an explanation. Who are we to hold accountable? What blue-dog democrats backed down? What possible justification do so-called fiscally responsible Republicans have for this massive increase to the deficit? Where were we beaten and where were we just too afraid to fight back?

It's been a long week for me, already, and it's only just Monday. Taking a break from finals week madness, I tried to follow some of the reactions to this deal. The usual name calling is all around, as is plenty of voter's remorse and more than one "I told you so" from fellow liberals. One comment came from a man whose unemployment insurance is going to be extended because of this deal, and all he had to offer was gratitude.

Maybe it's because I'm tired, maybe it's because I can accept the limits of my own knowledge, or maybe it was the gratitude of this man, but I just can't share in the fury on the left tonight. It was a bad deal, a bad day. All I can do is tell myself that tomorrow will be better.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 323- In-flight entertainment, death panels and superheroes

Dear Mr. President,

While listening to my favorite song off of the new Kanye West album on continuous loop, I've been surfing internet news stories to find an appropriate topic for today's letter. While a number of stories caught my attention, nothing about them seemed significant enough to become subjects of a letter to the White House. What do you care about Superheroes patrolling the streets of Seattle? Or a couple getting married in the minutes their flight entered Canadian airspace? Or the way budget cuts in Arizona are resulting in low-income patients getting kicked off of lists for organ donations?

These stories so have something in common, and that, I think, is important to you. Or at least it should be. The theme today is about what happens when Government fails. My city government has failed to keep people safe. It's own budget cuts have prevented the manpower and training necessary for proper law enforcement. And so citizens with military and martial arts backgrounds are donning capes and masks, climbing in their KIA and fighting crime for free.

Your administration has failed the gay men aboard that flight, who cannot have their union legally recognized in their own country. You've failed to make this a front and center civil rights issue, to shame the opponents of same-sex marriage for imposing their hateful system of so-called values on the rest of the country. And so two citizens who want to commit to one another for life took to the skies, entered Canadian airspace, and wed.

And when governments fail, sometimes, as demonstrated by (but by no means confined to) the state of Arizona, citizens have no other option but early death. It is a tragic and unacceptable fact that in this country people die all the time from treatable conditions because they are too poor to afford treatment. It is a failure at all levels of government, and, while I should find solace and inspiration in the stories of those taking (criminal and social) justice into their own hands, I can't help but think about the cities cutting police officers (or unable to hire badly needed new ones) who don't have their own roving band of caped crusaders, or the gay couples who can't fly to a place where their marriage will be recognized. And while poverty will always exist, (and will, unfortunately, carry with it a much shorter life expectancy,) while people will always get sick and many will die when they might have been saved, that the wealth that might offset this disparity is concentrated in the richest 1% of our population is a difficult fact to ignore.

The government, as you are so fond of recalling President Lincoln reminding us, should only do for the people what they can not do better for themselves. I think the government is generally better at law enforcement. I think the government could bestow the basic rights same-sex couples deserve. And I think the government can ease the suffering of the poor and uninsured. But so many of us are still waiting for you to step up and show us how it's done.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 299- I-1098

Dear Mr. President,

Tomorrow I'm going to see President Jimmy Carter. While I assume that it will involve less screaming and cheering and sleeping on the ground than your rally here last week, I'm going to be prepared, all the same. Tonight my mother dropped off my ballot. Aside from voting to re-elect Patty Murray and Jay Inslee, Washington voters are facing a number of important initiatives. I-1098, a proposal sponsored by Bill Gates, Sr., proposes a state income tax on those making more than $200,000 a year. Since I make about $20,000 a year, you can imagine I'm pretty enthusiastic about this.

Washington State has the dubious distinction of having the single most regressive tax system in the country. While those making under $20k pay on average 17.3% of their income in taxes while the richest 1%- those making more than $537k, pay just 2.9%. I-1098 will work to improve this discrepancy and provide the state with much-needed revenue. I think, also, that there is a moral obligation for those who have money to help out those who do not. Call me socialist, call me a class warrior, call me whatever you will, but if I made $200k instead of $20, I would have no problem paying the taxes to make sure the roads, schools, police and other state services are fully funded. We are all served by these institutions, and holding on to the cold comfort of private wealth in the face of so many others struggling just to get by strikes me as the worst kind of callousness. (Washington State readers of my blog- please vote yes on 1098.)

I'm going to cut this letter short so that I can finish voting and get to bed. Thank you, again, for coming to Washington to help get progressive voters to the polls. For a reliably blue state, we're struggling this year to pass the measures and elect the candidates that our state will need. Thank you, sir.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

PS

All readers: If you have your ballot, fill it out and mail it in! If you live in a state without early or mail-in voting, please make a plan today for how you will vote on election day. Yay for voting!

Day 297- Israel and the rest of the world

Dear Mr. President,

Eric Cantor has proposed separating US aid to Israel from the rest of the foreign ops budget. Israel already receives an obscene amount of aid, especially in comparison to the rest of the world, and Cantor's proposal is clearly an attempt to safeguard that funding while Republicans seek to cut or abolish aid to other countries all together. Funding a wealthy country's brutal occupation (and insulating the taxpayers of Israel from the true costs of their government's policies) is clearly a high enough priority that Cantor and other Republicans have realized they can't go after foreign aid without safeguarding Israeli aid.

Your administration has already promised $3 billion a year to Israel in aid- a decision I have objected to often enough to accept that we're never going to see eye to eye. However, I believe that you, like me, want to see the aid we send to other countries for agriculture, infrastructure, health and education projects increased, or, at the very least, maintained. If Cantor is successful at disentangling the Israeli aid from the rest of the foreign ops budget there will be nothing to stop Republicans who would see it cut. Foreign aid represents about 1% of our budget and places us well below most developed nations in terms of the amount spent as a percentage of GDP. Jeopardizing this funding further by distancing it from the most politically acceptable segment of our foreign ops budget will not improve America's image abroad, it won't help us to reach the millenium development goals and it absolutely will not make American's safer. As much as it disgusts me to admit this, the stigma against backing off on our support for Israel does help protect the rest of the foreign ops budget. And while I have no problem admitting that I would be happy to see our aid to Israel reduced and even outright suspended, I do not wish to see the rest of the foreign aid money affected.

I think that there are a number of improvements that might be made to the amount of money we spend on projects abroad, and the way that money is spent. Given that my own views are so far outside of the mainstream, I don't expect, realistically, to ever see them in practice. And so expediency compels me to compromise. If we must continue spending $3 billion a year funding Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, we should at least also continue funding the education, infrastructure and health projects in developing countries around the world, as well. Dividing the appropriations imperils the funds that would go to nations unable to lobby congress as effectively as Israel. I hope that you do all you can to see that Cantor's proposal does not go into effect.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 227- Defense spending

Should we really be up in arms over a temporary projected shortfall of about 100 Navy and Marine strike fighters relative to the number of carrier wings when America's military possesses more than 3,200 tactical combat aircraft of all kinds? Does the number of warships we have and are building really put America at risk when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, 11 of which belong to allies and partners? Is it a dire threat that by 2020 the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China? Defense Secretary Robert Gates

Dear Mr. President,

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has proposed cuts to the defense budget that would amount to a savings of $100 billion over five years. This is, predictably, leading to more than a little hysteria from conservatives on the hill. Senator Saxby Chambliss (demonstrating exactly why the Senate has gone from somber, dignified statesmen to cartoonish, angry old men who are difficult to take seriously) actually claimed that the White House is "willing to sacrifice the lives of American military men and women for the sake of domestic programs." As though cutting 100 billion of a 3.5 trillion budget is going to cost lives. As though lives are not depending upon essential domestic programs. I'm not sure I ever had much respect for Mr. Chambliss, but he certainly isn't demonstrating the kind of tempered wisdom that I'd expect from a member of the US Senate. (Yes, I managed to keep a straight face while typing that last sentence.)

Concern for the deficit is perfectly reasonable. The necessary cuts to spending must be applied across the board and the defense budget should be no exception. There can be no incentive for a more peaceful world when so much of our economy and our federal budget is tied up in the tools of war. Al-Queda pulled off 9/11 with 19 plane tickets and 99-cent box cutters. In this world, there is no amount of money that can ever make us completely safe. We have to have a smarter and more modernized military, and that is exactly what Secretary Gates is proposing. We have to look for alternative ways to defend ourselves; all the weapons money can buy won't do us half as much good as better diplomatic relations, stable global allies and more education at home and abroad. We simply cannot kill our way to a more peaceful world.

I applaud Secretary Gates' efforts to curtail the reckless defense spending that has plagued the federal budget for decades. In a time when congress cites budget issues as cause to hold up funding for treating 9/11 responders' lingering health problems, extending unemployment benefits that sustain individuals and families through the recession, or even ensuring that all Americans have access to affordable healthcare, how can we justify spending so much money on an outdated defense strategy? The way we spend our money reflects our values as a society, and, clearly, those need to be reexamined. Mr. President, please don't allow the hysterics from conservatives to prevent Mr. Gates from implementing these necessary cuts.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 72

Dear Mr President,

Revising the requirements laid in in No Child Left Behind, is an essential step to making students college and career ready. I think our system places too great an emphasis on standardized testing, but I recognize that, absent hard data, it is difficult to point to successes and areas needing improvement in our schools. As a student, I took the WASL, the ITED, the levels tests, the Hi-cap test, the PSAT, the SAT, 3 AP tests and the ACT. I don't mean to brag or anything, but I rock at standardized tests. Unfortunately, this skill isn't exactly something I can put on my resume. I also had amazing teachers; one took students interested in education and had us intern for a week in the classroom. Another created a scavenger hunt that took us all over town using GPS and practical cryptography. One had us pick books without cliff notes available and write our own. These were all experiences that helped me develop important skills, and used practical experience to give us a better understanding of the concepts we were required to learn. None of them appeared on a standardized tests.

I suppose my point is that we can require testing in reading and math skills every year, but my guess is we're going to do more to improve our test-taking skills than anything else. And, don't get me wrong, having test-taking skills is not a bad lot in life. But I think, rather than being tested every year, my educational experience would have been most improved by a longer school year, teacher who were more adequately compensated (and, in some cases, better prepared to teach their subjects,) and a community that recognized the value of higher education. I don't think that all of those are things the Federal government can necessarily provide, but certainly steps should be taken in this direction. The preliminary suggestions from your administration for improving education look promising, and I hope that they are better received by the public than health care reform has been.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 32-

Dear Mr. President,

The news of your cuts to NASA's moon program has me oddly sad. I agree with the decision, the program sounded as though it had serious flaws and your budget increases NASA funding as a whole. Still, the child in me who always wanted to see outer space is a little sad that a moon colony won't be happening any time in the near future.

I'm thinking back to middle school, debating with a friend over the morality of funding space exploration, at all. She asserted that, so long as there were earthly needs to be tended to- hunger, literacy, health care, medical research- spending billions to travel through space was near-criminal. I may have conceded the logic of this argument, but my sentimental side would insist that people need inspiration, as well. That we learn about our world through direct observation, and always need a new frontier to explore.

Has my thinking matured much since then? It's difficult to say. But in this day and age, when the number of unemployed, the number of uninsured, the number of uneducated are overwhelming, it is difficult to argue for the perpetuation of a project with few quantifiable benefits. I hope that, if the economy improves, we'll find money again to return to the moon. I don't know if a society's strength indicates the quality of its artistic and scientific achievement, or if it is the opposite, or some of both, but it would be a shame to win the space race only to spend the future observing the heavens from afar.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 12- Why I love push polls

Dear Mr. President,

My mother, who has been a Democrat as long as I've known her, was surprised to receive the "2009 Obama Agenda Survey" from RNC chairman Michael Steele. She was kind enough to share it with me, knowing I, too, enjoy a good laugh. It has me musing on the things that make me a Democrat. The thought that Democrats don't send out surveys this absurd (or, if we do, that we at least have a more professional editor,) is particularly comforting.

An example question:

"Do you agree with Barack Obama's budget plan that will lead to a $23.1 trillion national debt over the next ten years?"

My response options are "yes", "no", and "no opinion". First of all, the 2010 budget is 2.381 trillion dollars and 140 pages of information so dull I can't stay awake to read the table of contents. Do I agree with all of it? I don't even understand all of it! If I did, how could I have a one-word opinion about something so complex? How many people, looking at this survey question, have read enough of, or even about, the budget to be able to answer that question intelligently? Even if given a week to study, and an unlimited word count with which to respond, I could not feel confident about answering that question completely, so the idea of checking a box next to "yes" or "no" is laughable. Do the people this survey was intended to reach not recognize that they are being manipulated to provide meaningless statistics to support equally meaningless talking points? And don't even get me started on the wording. I may have had no love and little respect for President Bush, but I always referred him as such, and Chairman Steele should know better than to sign his name to something that doesn't respect, at least, the office of the Presidency.

Last night I watched the 60 minutes report on the revelations Game Change provides about the 2008 campaign. A friend had expressed his shock at Steve Schmidt's treatment of Sarah Palin during the interview, which made me curious to see it. I thought it was courageous. Clearly, Mr. Schmidt is not worried about his own reputation. Anderson Cooper obliquely calls him out on putting politics ahead of patriotism by selecting some one Schmidt himself sees as obviously unqualified for the VP nominee, but Schmidt can always just call that "gotcha journalism." What's truly brave about his interview is how fearlessly he risks his future as a campaign director. I know if I were a Republican running for office in 2010, I'd want some one who at least waits for the concession speech to finish before he find the nearest camera and starts telling the liberal media elites how it was all my fault that we lost. Seriously, is this man what passes for a professional political operative these days? Has he never seen an episode of West Wing?

As a Democrat and die-hard Tina Fey fan, I'll admit I was sad to hear that Sarah Palin will be joining the Fox 'news' team and unlikely to pursue the 2012 Presidential nomination. As much as I appreciate a race with some elements of suspense, the sight of you and her on the same debate stage would make for an entertaining evening. The erstwhile governor of Alaska represents everything that is wrong with the GOP. She's an insubstantial reactionary who talks in soundbites and bumper sticker slogans. "We've got room in Alaska for all of God's creatures- right next to the mashed potatoes!" Seriously, does she know she ripped that off from some one's T-shirt or does she think she made it up?

Palin or no, the Republicans don't have a serious contender for 2012. Yet. They seem to be counting on Democrats to provide the tools of our own destruction, by angering their base enough to get them to organize against you. Now, I can't claim to have done much to help you get elected. I voted, wrote a blog on Daily Kos, and spent a few hours calling voters in Washington and Montana. This time around, even if I'm not the most impressed with your presidency thus far, even if you accomplish absolutely nothing for the next 3 years, I swear to God, if the RNC keeps sending this anti-intellectual BS to my mother, I'll go door-to-door in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida for your re-election. And I hate Florida. Which, I suppose, is to say that, between being their own worst enemies and eating their young for a chance to meet Anderson Cooper, the Republicans may have more in common with Democrats than any of us would like to admit. As much as I'd like to see the congressional Democrats take a few pages from the Bush-era playbook on party unity and efficiency, I'll comfort myself with the fact that we control the House, the Senate, the White House, and they're giving new meaning to the term "sore loser" and sending out push-polls that reek of desperation.

All joking aside, I'd really like 2012 to be about more than just beating the Republicans. If I promise to spend the next 3 years learning more about the budget, do you think you could promise to spend them making 2008's victory mean something more concrete? I'll probably need better material for the swing states.

Respectfully yours,


Kelsey