Getting It Right - "A Year of Change"

2009 will undoubtedly be a year of change for us all.
By Sid Riley
This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"Will it be change for better…..or, will it be change for the worse? Time will tell."
Well, 2009 is here! During campaign rhetoric this was touted at the beginning of a time of change. We have just changed our calendars. In a few weeks we will change Presidents and White House Administrations. With the world’s economic condition being one of "Global Economic Cooling", I would not want the task of running the show for the next four years.
Although I personally detest the growing stem of socialism in our society, our economy, and our government…which is the approach Obama apparently believes is best for our nation, I am forced to also remind myself that the majority has spoken (via the election), and we are ultimately all in the same boat. For that reason I resolve to be as positive and supportive of our new President as possible as he straps on the harness of running the most powerful nation in the world (I think we may still be slightly ahead of China.).
I fear this will be a year which will test the mantle of our society. If we work in unison to attack our problems and shore up our weaknesses our prospect for success will be greatly improved. However, if we continue as a force divided by loyalties to self serving elements instead of being united by a common devotion to the same nation, our suffering and pain will be long and torturous. We must cast aside our differences and build upon our commonalities, without recourse or criticism of the other camp.
Decades ago an angered Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev banged on the podium at the United Nations stating that his country would eventually see the United States destroyed from within. He was referring to the potential problems a capitalistic society will experience from abuse of freedoms, greed, and political corruption. Are we evolving to the eventual truthfulness of his prediction?
Democrat or Republican, black or white, majority or minority, gay or straight, liberal or conservative, far religious right or far left zealot….we must all remember we are all AMERICANS! We must all work to expedite the restoration of a healthy, well managed economy within our nation. We are in an economic war.
I believe the Mid-Eastern enemies of the U.S.A. are using our thirst for their oil as a means of manipulating and harming our economy. The unrivaled spiral of oil pricing during 2007 and most of 2008 caused a historical and disastrous transfer of wealth out of our society to their part of the world. These soaring costs triggered a chain of related cost increases for the American citizen which included the cost of electricity, cost of government, cost of food, and the cost of anything which had to be transported.
Through manipulation of oil pricing they can influence our elections, and weaken the framework of our economy. It is more harmful to America than having them fly airplanes into our skyscrapers. It is a form of attack.
These costs struck at the heart of a majority of struggling American homesteads, who were already working from week to week, paycheck to paycheck. As a result of the increased differences between family income and family expenses, failures began to escalate. This caused huge increases in mortgage foreclosures, personal and business bankruptcies, a decline in retail purchasing, and thus the downward roller coaster ride for our economy was initiated. Like a snowball rolling down a hill of new fallen snow, the problems grew, and grew, and grew.
Our collective task at this time is to slow and finally stop this downhill economic ride. We must use the resources we have at hand to restore confidence in our basic systems and institutions, to create meaningful incomes for American families based on needed, productive, long lasting work, and to create an economic climate for our industries in which they are able to successfully compete with the rest of the world. Philosophies based on personal greed, party gains, passing the blame, pushing for wasteful "pork" projects, clinging to unnecessary, ineffective programs and other items which weaken and diminish our economy must be identified and cast away. In 2009 the "year of change", it is the manner in which our society and our government functions that must be changed the most. If we can accomplish this task, we can save our country and will undoubtedly be "Getting It Right".
Rudiments- Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning:
● Our astute legislators in Washington D.C. are in the process of designing programs for stimulating our sagging economy and restoring prosperity and growth. The course of action they are proposing is to initiate massive programs for rebuilding the aging infrastructure across the nation. On the surface this approach might make sense, but there are problems.
♦ The reality of what is about to occur came to me over the holidays. Just before Christmas the local J.C.D.C. arranged what was intended to be a secret meeting of representative of local city and county representatives in order to initiate planning for requesting stimulus monies for perceived "needs" in their area of control. In other words, they were told to go out and look for anything that might qualify them for getting their hands in the pot of this "tsunami of money" that was about to come.
♦ What this really means is the Federal Government is going to take a trillion dollars of our great grandchildren’s tax money (they have already squandered all of the taxes we or our children will ever pay), and filter it through every state, county, and municipal bureaucracy for anything they can think of for doing some rebuilding and temporarily putting some people to work.
♦ Every bridge, sidewalk, curbing, public building, street, water system, sewage system, in the country is subject to being torn up and replaced with shiny, new construction. The smell of "pork" emanating from our shores will cover the planet. Unless each project is very carefully evaluated, controlled, and justified by an independent, virtuous administrative process, it will become a "feeding frenzy" of waste as every bureaucracy tries to get it’s portion…whether they need it or not.
● In my opinion the public projects should all be pointed at infrastructure projects that significantly add to our ability to compete in the world market, aid struggling industries, and lead to long term jobs creation.
♦ One suggestion I have would be to invest in the rebuilding and modernization of our national railway network. Due to lobbying activities by the airline industry over the decades our nation has become totally dependent on air travel for public transportation across the nation. This system is now over burdened, ineffective, and has become a national "experience of misery" when one has to use it for travel.
♦ We desperately need a high speed, modern rail network north and south, east and west across our nation that integrates with air travel, and provides an option for the traveling public. Rebuilding this system would take years, would provide hundreds of thousands of jobs, and would leave the country with a better infrastructure for use by the public and industry for decades into the future. It would also save significantly on national fuel consumption.
♦ This type of project is much better than the wasteful ripping out and replacement of still usable sidewalks and bridges by inefficient bureaucracies as they play the same old "grab it and spend it" money games. We need to all notify our representatives in Washington and encourage them to take a more worthwhile approach to solving the problems within our faltering economy. Help them make good decisions at this critical moment…and you will be "Getting It Right".
● Franklin Delano Roosevelt - "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is also bad economics." (Quote provided by Dave Nicholson)