Truth - Al Franken [124]
Just as importantly, we required that America’s corporate citizens accept the responsibilities of citizenship. If they do business here, they would have to pay their taxes here. It was only fair. No more fake headquarters in the Bahamas. If some tax-dodging corporation really wanted its headquarters to be a PO box, they could rent post office boxes here in America. “American post office boxes,” the President told The Tonight Show’s Conan O’Brien, “are the finest post office boxes in the world.”
The crowd loved it. And so did the American people.
Day 5. Sunday. The President rested. You might not realize that the President’s political beliefs are rooted in a profound religious faith. That’s because our nation’s leader doesn’t make a big show of it.
Day 6. Monday. What better day to fix American public education than on a Monday? With a touch of gentle irony, Ted Kennedy and I introduced the “Let’s Stop Leaving Children Behind Act,” which guaranteed small classes taught by well-paid teachers with plenty of up-to-date books, state-of-the-art computers, and “safety scissors” that lived up to their name. And thanks to federally funded bonuses, teachers fought to get a chance to teach in the nation’s poorest school districts. The results were immediate. By Tuesday, kids were reading better, enjoying school more, and staying in school longer.
Day 7. Tuesday brought a flurry of activity. In rapid succession, the President signed—by hand!—the “End the Stupid Drug War Act,” the “Secure Loose Nukes Like We Should Have Ten Years Ago Act,” the “You’d Think Stem Cell Research Would Be a No-Brainer Act,” and the “End Malaria Act,” which really did end malaria, saving the lives of 2 million children a year.
On Days 8 through 99, we passed initiatives both great and small. We ended the Star Wars program and redirected the funds to provide body armor for our troops. We reformed the election system, in one fell swoop mandating paper trails on electronic voting machines, making Election Day a national holiday, and allowing people to vote by Instant Messenger, which pushed youth turnout to even higher highs. We also tackled global trade, protecting worker rights at home and around the world; international terrorism; and poverty. It was a heady time.
Then, on Day 100 of the first one hundred days, the President announced that, thanks to improved funding for scientific research, NASA had determined conclusively that the comet was going to miss the Earth and crash harmlessly into the moon.
The remainder of the President’s first term was devoted to addressing unforeseen problems arising from the legislation passed in the initial exuberance. The President was able to fine-tune, overhaul, and in some cases abandon (Instant Messenger voting) legislation without fear of being called a flip-flopper. People were tired of that.
Today, as the President approaches the end of an equally accomplished second term and prepares to move on to the Supreme Court, America is inarguably a better place. Those of us who stood up during the Dark Time can look back proudly, not just because we won a victory for our party, but because we did something with it.
When Republicans had control of the whole government, they had the chance to pass their own solutions to American problems. But what they did showed what they really cared about. Themselves and their cronies.
I’m glad my party cares about something bigger than that.
Liberals believe that government, at its best, is the way we come together to tackle problems we can’t solve on our own. I’m a liberal, and as it turns out, most Americans are liberals, too. A lot of them had forgotten they were, until President Bush tried to mess with Social Security.
My brother (your Great-Uncle Owen) and I grew up in suburban Minneapolis. We always had three squares a day, and a roof over our heads. A man named Bill O’Reilly, who was a popular conservative television commentator, grew up in a house a lot like ours,