For the first time in my life I am living in an area that is under a boil order because our water has been contaminated because of a water main break. The entire city of Ft. Myers is under a boil order. That is affecting over 80,000 people. Lucky for me I do not live in the city proper so we do not get our water from the Ft. Myers Water Utility even though I have a Ft Myers mailing address. It does make me think that maybe we need to update our infrastructure in this country. As we have been making war for the last 20 years other countries have been improving their services and infrastructure leaving us behind. The longer we wait the bigger that bill is going to be. I spent 4 years listening to people scream America first and during that time not once did I hear any of them talking about our infrastructure. Improving our infrastructure would really being putting America first instead of just talking about it. For the last 40 years we have been giving the rich tax breaks, increasing our military spending and ignoring our own countries infrastructure. Look at what life was during Eisenhower and look like what life is like now. In my opinion the two big things that changed from the 50s to today is cutting taxes for the rich and increasing our military spending.

When I was growing up my father worked and my mother stayed home. I had a good youth that was fun and informative. Every evening we would have dinner together as a family where we would talk about the current events of the time. My father was a republican but that was a different party than what it is today. Did we not have a lot, no but we had enough. I cannot complain about growing up in Wisconsin in the 50s and 60s. Life did begin to change during the 60s with the Vietnam War. The innocence of the 50s was gone. It seems that we have been at war with someone ever since. I know that we haven’t but how we have been spending on our war machine it sure feels like it. I think now we spend as much as the next 7 or 8 countries combined. That is a lot of military spending. Too much. I wonder how much better off  we would have been if we spent as much as the next 4 countries combined and put the rest into investing in America.

We spend on the military, cut taxes on the rich and then say we can’t afford to improve our infrastructure. We are fast approaching the point where we cannot afford not to. When they were cutting taxes for the rich they were not putting America first they were putting America last. As we were cutting taxes for the 1% and fighting a 20 year war other countries were investing in themselves. We needed to be investing in our crumbling road system. We needed to be investing in our entire transportation system. We needed to be investing and encouraging Green Technology. There have been some in Congress sounding the alarm like Bernie and AOC but not enough of them. The party that has screamed America First in reality is the party that has but the American people last and the country last. They say that it is illegal immigrants are the problem which I will tell you is an outright lie. They will say anything to take the attention away from the real problem and that is that too many politicians have sold our country out to line their own pockets. Not all the people that they have sold out to live in the United States some are actually foreigners. Before you say, “they all line their pockets”, I will say “yes”, but one party is worse than the other. One party does not even want to fund the IRS so they can prosecute people that cheat on their taxes. Can you believe that? A political party that is ok with cheating? Sorry, but the Democrats are not the party that cheats. Just catching the cheaters would send billions directly to the bottom line.

For the longest time I have wanted Congress and the President to put America first. Every time someone has tried they have gotten fierce pushback from the right just like they are doing right now. They scream communism and socialism and hope that you do not know what those two things really are. They scream that socialism will take your freedom away when healthcare reform would give the individuals in this country more freedom than they ever had. Yes, we need to be putting Americans first and the United States first and the Republican Party is not the party to do that. The 1 percent that support them do not care if you live or die. They only care is that they get richer. They don’t care that climate change is not a hoax. They will keep on screaming it as long as there is a profit in it.