read my lips, briefly

No tax cuts, Obama! The country is not in trouble because citizens pay too much in taxes. The country's in trouble because, among myriad reasons, most tax revenue is allocated to the military and other government spending programs that do not benefit the majority of civilians. And a $1,000 kicker check is not going to help T and I do much of anything, except pay one month's rent. Which we do already. $1,000 will not help a child go to college. $1,000 won't even pay for a trip to the emergency room for a sprained ankle. And any $1,000 we get is going straight into our joint savings account for the house that is becoming an increasingly fantastical life goal.

This is a time to be brave, Mr. President-Elect. You have a MAJORITY in Congress. You won the popular vote. I appreciate and generally applaud the way you embrace discourse and compromise, but there's no value right now in compromising with Republicans over tax cuts for big businesses or in doling out more cash to the Wall Street firms that seem to have a hole in their bucket.

I don't know how to fix the economy, okay? But I do know that pandering to the people, institutions, and methods of the last 20 years is a mistake, because it is precisely these agents and policies that have led us to this really pretty awful period in US history.