How Low Can They Go?

The political goings-on in Washington these past few weeks truly have been unprecedented within the lifetime of anyone alive today.

The budget outline submitted by President Trump a few weeks ago, followed by the failed attempt to take away health insurance from millions of Americans, represent policy-making that seeks to assert to an unprecedented degree the priority of government to benefit the extremely wealthy.

The great Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, who served on the court from 1916-1939, succinctly summarized the precipice at which our country now stands and the abyss into which we are looking:

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Fortunately, we have leaders in Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker, Senator Ed Markey, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who have been extremely vocal in expressing their opposition to the Trump-inspired policies that threaten to widen the chasm between the haves and have-nots in our society.

As we listened to President Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and others tell us how much we need to give tax cuts to the very rich, while eliminating programs such as Meals-on-Wheels for poor senior citizens, it made us more sad than mad.

If often has been said that the greatness of a society should not be judged by how much wealth it accumulates, but how it takes care of its most disadvantaged.

We’re not sure where we’re heading with Trump and the Republicans in charge of things in Washington, but we are feeling that it will not be a very good place.