YAF Alumna Katie Kieffer's new book on Obama's empty promises to millennials. If you're looking for a good summer read, we recommend this book!
An Excerpt from the Introduction of Katie Kieffer's book
Dear Barack Obama,Let me begin by borrowing one of your favorite phrases. Let me be clear: I am a young American and I am writing on behalf of my generation. We are the Millennial Generation and we are 95 million strong…You promised us jobs, hope, and change. In the end, you followed through only on the "change."
You duped Millennials…not once but twice and implemented unconstitutional decrees that robbed us of the opportunities that we deserve. We are the first generation of Americans to be financially worse off than our parents. Your puerile policies and pomposity have rendered it nearly impossible for us to achieve the American Dream.
You chatted it up with our favorite hosts like Fallon, Leno, and Stewart; you seemed like a nice, regular guy and Millennials trusted you. You saturated social media with false hope. You endorsed voyeuristic YouTube videos by Hollywood celebrities targeted at college students for your presidential campaign.
With the aid of your teleprompter, you traveled the college-campus circuit, promising us that you would help us find jobs when we graduated and that you would make college more affordable; you encouraged us all to go to college and twisted our arms to take out massive loans. Meanwhile, your administration was profiting off our backs.
Law school students acquired colossal debt and passed the bar exam only to end up working as coffee baristas; Ivy league graduates applied for third-rate jobs just to get by; and youth abandoned their dreams as nurses, doctors, and surgeons to take mind-numbing but higher-paying office jobs within the government.
You told us that you were reforming health care and making it more affordable, but you did not tell young medical students how hard it would be for them to care for their patients or make a profit as physicians under Obamacare. We thought you were being "transparent" when you told us we could keep our doctor and our health-care plan if we liked it; we didn't realize you had your fingers crossed behind your back.
You promised to create 7 million new jobs and to help entrepreneurs of my generation become "the next Steve Jobs." Then you hardly worked on the economy at all; you spent nearly twice as much time on the golf course as you did in economic meetings.
Meanwhile, my generation of highly educated Americans was underemployed and drowning in the student debt that you advised us to take out. Our credit was terrible; we couldn't buy homes and we often had nowhere to turn but our parents' basements. We put off marriage, and many of us will delay parenthood for so long that we may never see our own grandchildren.
You sent young men and women into hopeless battles where they had their limbs blown off by savage brutes and earned an epidemic of PTSD. When these brave troops returned home, you withheld their benefits and imprisoned them unjustly- sending them spiraling into suicidal depression.
You rendered my entire generation defenseless and vulnerable to terror and violence; you attacked our Second Amendment rights; you threatened to hunt us down with lethal drone force; you allowed young Americans to die in easily preventable terror attacks.
Your administration lied to my friends about guns in order to buy their votes. You did not just mislead; you are culpable for setting us against each other and creating an aura of distrust that clouds our relationships; you are accountable for promoting gun regulations that left us susceptible to mass violence in our schools and workplaces.
You were the Executive Con Man of one gigantic pyramid scheme where young people hustled to knock on doors…in both 2008 and 2012 only to be forgotten by you…you prioritized getting down in a dance-off with Usher; jetting off to play eighteen holes with Tiger; and eavesdropping on journalists with Holder.
You shirked responsibility for the misery you imposed on my generation. Your economic, social, and national security policies have left both literal and metaphorical bloodstains on your hands for killing the hopes, careers, and dreams of young Americans for your own political gain.
Your administration's lies and incompetence anger me on my own behalf and on behalf of my friends. You have done such extensive damage to my generation that I decided to share and expose our story. You are now accountable to us. I expect you to read this book; I believe you will find it quite eye-opening.
Sincerely,
Katie Kieffer
Excerpted from LET ME BE CLEAR Copyright © 2014 by Katie Kieffer to be
published June 24 by Crown Forum, a division of Random House LLC, a
Penguin Random House Company
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