We need to prioritize people over politics and stand together for SLO families

“On May 16, 2025, Moodys downgraded the United States credit rating, making it the last major rating agency to strip the United States of its Aaa rating. This downgrade is more than a technical market event; it represents an emerging consensus that the United States mounting debt burden has shifted from an abstract risk to a strategic constraint on U.S. power and leadership.” [https://www.csis.org/analysis/moodys-downg…]

Washington refuses to make the cuts necessary to protect the American people. Our defense budget is ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. If they want their obscene defense budget, this nation’s wealthy need to tax themselves. Their only other choice is to cut the defense budget. They do neither. Instead, they cut social spending. They take the very food out of the mouths of our senior citizens, our children, they threaten the support millions of low income Californians rely on to attend community colleges and universities [ https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/art…], they threaten public education, they sell off our federal land and offshore areas, they expand surveillance and start foreign wars. If that won’t do it, they borrow hundreds of billions of dollars that the working class and poor pay for through reduced services and higher taxes.

Defense spending is not defense spending, it’s a money wash. It takes our dollars and puts them in the hands of shareholders. From liberals to conservatives, they may talk a good game, but their entire identities are tied up with their “net worth.” Ergo, the poor and their basic needs must be crushed under foot. The only difference between the two is such that one side smiles as they do it and the other side waves the flag.

Our defense budget is destroying our country. (I say this as a veteran too)

Michael:

This is the problem, you want ideological purity. What if a person actually liked or disliked aspects of both parties? What if they simply voted their conscience? This is the trap of the two party system. You can only vote for one and they are both beholden to corporate interests.

Yes, I can say I did just change my party affiliation to Republican. Yes, I voted for Trump even when I was a registered Democrat. If the Democratic candidate would have uttered the very words Trump did, “I’ll end the war (Ukraine) in 24 hours,” they would have had my vote and millions of others. Instead, their Commander in Chief, Joe Biden, through their Ukrainian proxies, were literally launching MLRS and ATACMS rockets deep into the Russian heartland and therefore threatening a nuclear exchange. What choice does a peacenik have? Don’t blame me, blame your Democratic party.

You must not really understand how close we still are to nuclear war. That should be our number one priory and we can reduce the threat of nuclear war by engaging in multilateral arms agreements, ending NATO, and slashing defense spending 75%. In plain English, we need to turn our swords into plowshares ASAP.

When your party defends our borders, returns industrial manufacturing to the US, and at least makes noises at ending wars, I and millions of others, might actually return. FDR would be rolling over in his grave at what his party has become. It’s an object of mockery.

Steve Felten:

At this point, the last thing I want to do is get within a hundred miles of a “progressive group” like Indivisible let alone join it. If it isn’t their members, it’s their leadership, getting themselves in a boatload of trouble and making themselves and the values they purport a disgrace. The rhetoric coming out of these “progressive groups” is insane. Further, the last thing I will ever do, is condone the burning of the U.S. flag as the more extreme members of these “progressive groups” have engaged in. They need to clean their own houses before trying to attract people like me. Prior to the formal takeover of Germany by the Nazis, their predecessors were the Freikorps, composed of criminals, angry veterans, ethnonationalists, and general rabble. This could be the description applied to the “progressive” lunatics in LA dropping chunks of concrete on federal agents, burning the flag, and threatening passersby. I was born and raised in California, but going outside and being around people no longer feels safe, just go to Costco and take a real good look around. Look at some of the things printed on shopper’s shirts, look at expressions of hostility you may receive for no other reason than having a short haircut, being male and Caucasian. Or entire society has become degenerate on all sides. I’m no fool, my late parent’s generation made some real mistakes with our country and there is little desire to fix it. Our economy is total garbage. I would be surprised if we had a 1929 style stock market crash, what will happen instead is continuous money printing and the rapid erosion of purchasing power. This is great for those in power, our destruction isn’t dramatic, just slow enough to pass the buck. Meanwhile, more and more people are using the food bank, sleeping in their cars, or on park benches.

If a plan or recovery was based on the platform of the Democratic Party, it would encompass government regulation, taxation that would provide for a welfare state, progressive taxation, and respect for unions. The problem is, our industrial base was offshored (thanks to Boomers) so we can’t tax corporations that don’t exist nor support private sector unions. The only way to pay for a humane social safety net when what remains of a taxable private sector has basically been able to go on a tax boycott is to tax low wage workers and reduce benefits. This would be called a Ponzi scheme in any other circumstance. Who doesn’t want a robust welfare state? I certainly do and not to just get “free money.” I’ve never personally been a recipient of any form of welfare except as a child when my mother would occasionally get government cheese that could sit on the counter and never go bad. The rich run our country and your democratic party do nothing more than express soothing rhetoric as the rest of us become more and more downwardly mobile. I work two jobs, seven days a week and between my wife and I can get anywhere. The dollar is complete garbage thanks to corporate bailouts both parties signed off on despite an overwhelming response by the public in 2008 after calling their senators and imploring them not to bail out banks (Capitalism: A love story). Our politicians of both stripes are my class and ethical enemies. They are sociopathic, power hungry, desperate, self-hating, fawning, transparent, and sycophantic losers and Trump isn’t the only one.

Yes, I voted for the Republican party and will do so again until the Dems return to FDR’s platform. And yes, Michael Moore is right, many of us voted for Trump because he is the human hang grenade we tossed into the lap of Washington DC. It brings me great pleasure watching him and his administration tear down the failed social experiment my Boomer relatives attempted to shove down the throats of the more conservative members of my generation. I used to be a leftist, not any more. My commie mom brought me to church in LA in the 80’s to listen to Desmond Tutu, I have listened to Angela Davis speak in San Diego county in the early 2000s, I subscribed to The Nation magazine, and so forth. I still listen to left leaning media, only to basically keep an eye on the various ways you people are burning down our country.

We live in what Chris Hedges describes as an “interregnum,” the period between what was and what will be. There is serious political violence going on because electoral politics has failed. The CEO of United Health Care was gunned down in the street, Trump was almost assassinated on live TV, members of his party stormed Congress, people are driving cars through political marches, and to top it off, our economy has collapsed. I refuse to help bring in the world you desire, the one “progressive groups” are trying to bring in. This would be a world where it is ok to burn the flag and injuring federal officers is celebrated.

What I would like to see is a world where, yes, we have a robust social safety net paid for by taxing concentrated wealth, where our borders are secure, where those that don’t belong in the U.S. are given a first class ride out, where protecting the soil, earth, and its fecundity is one of our top national interests, where a public works program is created that puts millions of Americans to work building and repairing our roads and building high speed rail, a world where those that are a threat to domestic tranquility are identified and put away as well as their criminal networks, an end to government spying, and public education from kindergarten through university is free (as it was for Boomers). This is the world I want and know will never happen in my life time.

If you will excuse me, I need to prepare dough so my family can eat this week. Thank god it’s still possible to get a 25lb bag of flour at Costco for about $7.50. I would rather eat a pile of excrement than take so much as a dollar of public assistance. This is an old time value, there was a time where “going on the dole” was an act of extreme shame, as it should be. Screw the government and all their apologists.

The defense department needs to be as worried about their budget as seniors and low income people are about cuts to social spending. The defense budget, so far, is sacrosanct and grows larger because the purchasing power of the dollar grows smaller. In a way, it doesn’t grow larger, the dollar just keeps buying less and less. It’s the same reason 125 year old, wooden shacks in SLO sell for 900k. The dollar is dying.

“It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber”

I’m a veteran and say “ELIMINATE ALL DEFENSE SPENDING NOW.”

This is the solution to all our problems.

Peter/Paul:

You telling anyone to “work harder” is pretty funny when your handle has the word “rob” in it. Further, what would would you have me (and millions more) do? Work a third job? I already have two. If you actually bothered to read my posts rather than simply start foaming at the mouth, you would have seen that I (and millions more) stated that I have never taken any public assistance. Some of us still believe in a day’s pay for a day’s work. I’ve never been unemployed my entire life and from the age of about 15, bussed tables to help pay the rent my alcoholic mother struggled to pay. What were you doing at 15? You were probably enjoying the kind of life I dreamed I had. Do you know what it’s like to go hungry? I sure do. I’d say more about your sheltered perspective, but unless you lived it, it won’t mean nothin’. Why waste my breath?

Just to clear away any disinformation, communism, socialism, and capitalism can be described as the following:

Communism: No private sector, a planned economy, state ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Socialism: Has a private sector that is highly regulated and taxed sufficiently to provide a generous social safety net with strong public institutions.

Capitalism: Private ownership of everything, no social safety net, little (corporate) taxation, any social support must be acquired from the market or charitable organizations. If you get old and dont have a pension? That’s your fault. Get sick and are poor? Either die or pay the 100k you need to fix your broken arm out of pocket. Can’t afford food? Go hungry. Pot holes in the road? Buy the asphalt yourself. Need to go to school? Pay for it yourself, send your kids to the local private school run by a religious cult, or just let your children become illiterate. Sound familiar, folks???

Smith:

We can slug it out during the midterms, if we even make it that long. And then, if your side obtains a majority, it’ll just be gridlock with the current situation locked in place. At some point, the public will just take it out on each other in the streets. The flag burning we just saw in LA from members from your side is just a warm up. Those are your friends and comrades, your party is actually courting flag burners. I wonder what your grandparents would say. How’s it feel? All so the price of your lettuce does t go up a nickel. Pure genius, sir. Let’s recap, your party, through Joe Biden was bombing the interior of Russia and invites with open arms FLAG BURNERS. Your party has forgotten to take it’s meds.