Balance the Budget -- if you dare

Mark Udall, one of our ostensibly DEM senators, recently sent me his periodic newsletter which attempts to cow-tow to the wishy-washy undecideds in my wanna-be-RED state of Colorado. You can tell he was not speaking to me because he was pitching his work on a so-called budget-balancing amendment while our state sucks $$$ from K-12 education, higher education, and workers of all kinds (is Wisconsin just the beginning?).

Anyway, I told him this:

If you really cared about fiscal reform, you would've tried harder to block the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the top 1-2% of this nation's wealthy. Because of your weak efforts when push came to shove about two months ago, your newsletter seems disingenuous, at best. The real solution--one that really is For The People you represent--would include more of the following:

Stop defense overspending, tax people fairly, bring troops home, stop the madness of glorifying** the use of minority youth in our crazy foreign wars, and THEN see how easy it is to balance the budget.

Before you attack me for maligning the military (which I didn't), by 'madness' I mean: waving the flag at sporting events, having lines of uniformed people at those events, at music concerts, while simultaneously repeating 'brave men and women.' Yes, they ARE brave; but if this were really the Land of Opportunity, is "foreign-soil, life-threatening military career" the opportunity these people would be choosing?

Senator, PLEASE take steps to provide equal opportunity for all and then let's see what happens--I assure you, the budget will be balanced. Perfectly.