Tell CNN, No Propaganda + AWP Doings + Poem: Yusef Komunyakaa

I'm at the AWP Conference in Denver, and have been listening, learning, reading, thinking, writing, meeting, greeting, signing, notetaking, photographing, reconnecting, remembering, laughing, buying (too many books), acclimating, eating, sleeping, draggling, and walking--lots of walking, through, as I count it, five distinct neighborhoods of the Mile High City. I have several entry stubs I plan to post soon, but let me note before I do that or complete this entry that, to shift gaits (as opposed to gears--recall, I've been walking):

Once again, CNN is considering participating in a scare campaign to gut Social Security. They are planning to run IOUSA, a testeric deficit-fright documentary funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. Recall also that when George W. Bush was president, Vice President Dick Cheney famously stated that "deficits don't matter." They never do when Republicans are running the country, into the abyss. Now that we once again have a Democrat in the White House and Democratic control of Congress, the deficit frenzy is approach and surpassing the same pitch as it did in 1992, when Bill Clinton was in office. (Yes, it happened then.) Clinton left the country with a surplus, which Bush-Cheney promptly burned through like kindling, before amassing a $1 trillion+ deficit to underwrite unfunded tax cuts, his wars, and so much else. Unfortunately, Obama seems both prone to listening to the Washington echo chamber and to splitting the difference at every step, meaning that he appears to have bought into this frenzy. CNN, trying its best to mimic Fox News (and shedding viewers in the process), is also striving to do its part. But let's join the Campaign for America's Future and tell CNN, nope, you aired IOUSA once; we don't need this propaganda disseminated anymore. We have more than enough pressing problems, and while the deficit isn't the least of them, it's also not the most important either.

Since Obama and the Democrats will not make the basic argument--intuitive though it is, and economically sound--that the more people who're employed the more quickly the deficit will drop, because employed people PAY TAXES--the rest of us will have to make to everyone who is unaware of this basic fact. There is no need to gut or slash Social Security, or privatize it using casino financial system typified by Wall Street and much of the global economy. Medicare will undergo necessary restructuring as a result of the recent health insurance reform bill. So, please, tell CNN, no thank you. Please also urge others you know to do the same as well.  We all owe the USA, but the deficit scare project isn't the answer or one we want them to contribute to.