It is a complete and utter shame for our country when the most vocal and aggressive dissent comes from a bunch of idiots that base their reasoning (or lack thereof) on lies and mistruths. I am, of course, talking about the ultra-conservatives who have been protesting President Obama’s public health care plan, citing it as the coming of a communist/fascistic/socialist state. This is obviously a ridiculous and an out-of-date paranoid Cold War mentality being applied to the 21st century. While these half-insane, half-moronic dissenters scream about how Obama is a Marxist, there is another clear and evident problem that has been brewing in regards to this administration: the economy.

Obama has clearly not learned the dangerous lessons of the economic philosophy that has led us to the current state we are in. A philosophy which basically states that the market is always right, and that having any government regulation will only hinder its potential in doing so. This is the domestic economic policy that has driven every presidential administration from Ronald Regan and up to (and probably including) Barack Obama. With last year’s financial crisis having crashed down upon us, it should have been a clear indication, even to the Republicans, that the hands-off style of government deregulation that were set in place by Reagan nearly thirty years ago doesn’t work.

However, with an economic team that mirrors Bill Clinton advisors, like Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner, President Obama is clearly continuing an economic policy that will contribute to the growing inequalities in our society; as well as institutionalizing a policy where it is okay for the federal government to bail out financial institutions that are ‘too big to fail.’ Not only will this give Wall Street and big business more power in this country, while political power diminishes-but also exacerbate this idea of there being ‘Two Americas.’ We must not allow these people in business and government who have been so diluted in how the economy should work, that they can’t see how they have been wrong despite the glaringly obvious past events. Albert Einstein said it best: ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.’

For everyone who voted for Barack Obama on Nov. 4, 2008, and saw him get inaugurated later that January, it seemed quite clear based on the news coverage and overall mood of Washington D.C. that there was going to be widespread change in America. However, as both the decade and 2009 come to a close, I see no change in sight. You can always count on the Democrats, even when they have as much power as they do in Congress and the Executive (branch), to have a policy of inaction that will eventually lead us to ruin.

As College students who should be able to understand these complex issues, we must rise up and protest the continuation of a failed economic policy that truly affects all of our lives, especially for when we graduate from college and find it even more difficult to get a job.

Charlie WeeksSenior Television Radio Film major