First Post September 20, 2008

I decided that a separate blog was warranted for my observations about politics and our culture.
I love this country. I think it is and can be "the land of opportunity". I have worked with Europeans, middle easterners, Eurasians, South Americans and others. They don't necessarily agree with our politics or our culture, but they do generally admire the opportunity that is available in this country.

That opportunity is not "free" and it takes application, hard work and "sweat equity", good luck and the will of God to succeed. Success is, however, a real possibility. And yes, it does also require education. Some careers require more than others and in this increasingly competitive world, some college is probably mandatory. But there are exceptions to the rule, and in some careers, such as "entertainment" too much education could be an impediment.

What disturbs me about our country and our culture is the social and economic engineering that our politicians are willing to promote and advance, with no certainty of what the exact outcome will be. Some changes take decades for the consequences to fully appear and many are not trivial. It is unfortunate that our politicians are seldom willing, able or capable of managing these changes for more than an election interval.

A case in point, is the wholesale selling of the "service economy" to the American public in the 1990's. It sounded good, and if it didn't politicians worked overtime to make it sound good. Even "Hizzonor" Mayor Daley of Chicago went on the public record and said "we don't need manufacturing any more". Frankly, at the time this frightened me. I had a lot of questions. Such as: if manufacturing is passe' then what jobs will replace them? Are our citizens fully prepared for this "new economy" and if not, then how do we get from here to there? Are our schools teaching curriculum's that will permit American workers to learn the necessary skills and prepare our children for this brave new world? If not, have we designed and implemented and budgeted the necessary education programs to get us there? What about those who are unable, unwilling or incapable of adapting to this change? What jobs will we prepare them for and how will we get these people to a place where they can be a viable part of society?

I also was very skeptical as our political leaders have done a poor job to date of managing change. So here they were, promoting it!

Now, I had been very skeptical of President Clinton. In terms of the domestic economy, he didn't do all that poorly. Probably would be rated a "C" in my book. On the other hand, he had a penchant for wetting his finger and raising it into the air so he could determine which way the political wind was blowing, and then moving in that direction. He also picked his spouse to head the most significant change agenda he had campaigned on, and that was "health care reform". She bombed and while I was disappointed, I wasn't too surprised by this. Ms. Clinton after all was a relatively inexperienced newcomer. That was my problem with President Clinton. He should have picked the absolute best people to do this job and he didn't. So here we are in 2008, a few $trillion under the bridge and health care in this country is a joke. Far too expensive and far too ineffective. And the politicians have successfully changed this into an agenda about health insurance. So we can all get the same mediocre care, but someone else should pay!

In defense of President Clinton, as a former governor of a state with a relatively small economy, I don't think we should be surprised that he was constantly checking the political wind. That was possibly a shrewd mechanism acquired in his success as the governor of Arkansas. But that approach is totally inadequate when leading a diverse and fractious country like ours.

President Bush, another product of state leadership, has demonstrated his faults time and time again. A penchant for spending money, poor judgement and leadership in the war in Iraq. He and his administration have been completely absorbed in the "war on terror" and then in Iraq. When he was elected, I told some associates that he was a "spend and tax" Republican, as in, he would spend the money and his successors would raise the taxes necessary to pay the bill. He has proved me correct in this.

As for the "service economy" people today are very unhappy with the loss of manufacturing jobs. Very few sectors of our economy are growing. Well, when we went down this road of "service economy" what did we expect? That we would all become "web site" designers? In the 1990's there were naysayers who said we would all wind up working in a fast food restaurant. That was a bit melodramatic. However, we may still get there! So what economic sectors have prospered in the last 20 years? Apparently finance and banking, and health care. For the most part, that is it!

Energy has become a problem. This too, escaped our politicians. No nuclear plants, no wind generators off of the shores of the political haunts of the north east, no improvements to transmission and distribution infrastructure, no national energy policy of any kind, except "NO" to everything! But a few doomsday predictors have done well and have prospered. Former Vice President Gore is a notable example.

Here we are in the soup of our own making. Another 20 years squandered. GM is asking for help in developing high energy batteries for automobiles so we can drive electric cars. However, the politicians argue about the issues of interfering in the "market driven economy" or "free markets" and we are told there is no money available for this type of endeavor. Nor is there an electrical distribution or generation system capable of supporting such a transformation. The government argues about "drilling" for oil. I understand the multi billion dollar pipe line carrying oil southward through Alaska won't have enough oil to pump in a few years to even fill it! We send hundreds of billions of dollars to countries for oil and complain about ever "mounting deficits"! But we have no political will to solve these problems. However, at present we can bail out banks, brokerages engaged in all kinds of speculative activities. And I mean bail out to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, perhaps a trillion dollars or more. The government is also gearing up to bail out homeowners who got loans they could not afford for homes they could not afford!

It's OK to interfere with the economy to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, when it is for the powerful banking and finance lobby in the east. But GM and the electric car is a different matter.

Politicians are debating this and talking about the unfairness of bailing out "Wall Street"and ignoring "Main Street". The conversation they have is that some of these entities are "too big" to fail. Apparently, sub prime and other prime mortgage holders and "homeowners" who made really poor choices are too small to fail. So it will be up to me and the other hard working, saving and not spending every darn nickel, never mortgage our future forever members of the middle class, to take on the tax burden of paying for this.

Meanwhile, the politicians say "don't you worry, we won't raise your taxes". Who are they talking to? All I have to do is check the http://www.opensecrets.org/ website and I can see who the McCain and Obama donors are. It's obvious who is buying access to the candidates and a lot of them are in finance, etc. Besides, history in this country over the past 20 years shows that the "rich" are definitely getting richer.

So should I be concerned about the direction of this country under our political leaders? I think so and I most certainly am! I am also concerned that with these ill conceived government plans, we will lose the opportunity so many generations of Americans worked, fought and died for to hand to us, the current generations. So that is what this blog will be about.