THE ASSAULT ON AMERICA’S SENIOR CITIZENS
By Michael Connelly
MIchaelConnelly.Viviti.com
They have been called America’s greatest generation and they deserve the accolades they have received. These are the Americans who are now in their eighties and nineties who survived the great depression and fought a valiant war on two fronts in Europe and Asia to save the world from being dominated by dictatorships that abhorred freedom. Many of them went on to fight in Korea to stop the spread of Communism that also represented a major threat to liberty.
My father and mother were two of the members of this generation and they are both gone now, but the one thing they had in common with the other people of their age was the desire to make sure that their children never had to go through what they did. They believed in the American dream and they lived it. Yet, now those who still survive are watching in horror as they and their children, the baby boomers, who are also reaching the status of senior citizens, are being kicked to the curb by the Obama Administration and the Democrats who control Congress.
I am one of those baby boomers. I was born in 1947 on the campus of Iowa State University where my father was attending college under the G.I. Bill. For the first year and a half of my life I lived with my father and mother in a Quonset hut on the campus that had been divided into small apartments for veterans and their families. After my father graduated he found a good job and my younger brother was born.
We were raised to be patriots, to believe in the United States of America, and defend it and the Constitution of the United States. I ultimately took a solemn oath to that when I was sworn in as a U.S. Army officer in 1971. My late wife and I passed this allegiance to our nation on to the six children we raised including our four sons who are either military veterans or are currently serving on active duty in the U.S. Army.
We also fulfilled our contractual obligations with our government that required us to pay our income taxes and pay Social Security and Medicare taxes that would provide us with some financial security and health care in our senior years. Yet, now those of us who fulfilled our obligations are finding out that our government feels no such allegiance to us. This month I will be 63 years old and by the time I reach 65 the cuts in Medicare under the Obama health care plan will cause me to lose many of the benefits I was promised.
In addition, those already receiving Social Security will soon learn that for the second year in a row they will not receive the cost of living increase they are entitled to. American seniors will also be subjected to health care rationing under Obamacare that will cause many of them to be at risk of a premature death. This is being dumped on top of seniors who have already seen their private retirement accounts ravaged by a failing economy and their taxes being raised in a number of areas. They are looking at buying less food and altering their lifestyles while big unions, failing corporations, and outlandish public employee pension plans are bailed out.
The question is who else will benefit from this assault on America’s senior citizens? The answer is simple. There are two groups, the elitists in Congress and the government will continue to receive top notch health care as will the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in this country who will get free health care, free education, free housing, and other government benefits.
Thus, I raise this as a call to arms to my fellow baby boomers. This is not the America our parents fought for and in many cases died for. On November 2, 2010 we must stand up for ourselves, for our children, and for America and make our voices heard. We are free Americans, not subjects of an elitist President or Congress that has labeled us as expendable!
Michael Connelly