The Locomotion of Change

The change has already begun.  Right from the beginning, the new administration is keeping its promises, whatever those may be.  Many people balked at the Obama campaign before the election for the lack of details on a few topics.  A campaign that touted change for the better is not a new thing around these parts was the competition’s retort.  Truthfully, politics, DC and false promises go together like Larry, Moe and Curly.  What is different about the show these days, is that people are not laughing at the cliche any more, but getting critical instead.  Movements and decisions with the national welfare in mind are already being made and it seems that there will be plenty more.  Now the people are going from doubting to nods of assent.

For a while many people have been worried about the future of print in daily news delivery, there may be a solution now: there will be news to print.  If the headlines of war mongering and death to poor grammar and even worse critical thinking skills will be replaced.  It seems the new headlines actually have news.  There are no glam photo sessions of this president, just tag-lines and newspaper content.  In two days there has been a tidal change in the quality and moral direction of the subject matter .

Tim Geithner’s name emerges from text that tells the story of the administrations stance on Chinese currency manipulation.  Our trade deficit with them is substance enough, yet since stances were not being taken (cowtowing is more like it), such an important topic did not get the proper media.  Can you hear the crickets (not the whining)?  After a 60-34 senate confirmation no one is talking about back taxes or domestic help.  Ahh…just as it should be.

There are stories about the closing of the Guantanamo military base to curtail or reallocate current Defense spending.  This is an opportunity in many ways.  Communications with Cuba can be opened, the trade embargo can go to the wayside and more peace can exist in the world.  A smear on American integrity equal to Abu Graib and a vestige of the cold war era will be swept away to make room for better relations.  There are so many positive aspects about opening up relations with Cuba, the majors being: a new market for American goods; a travel destination (chaching!) that combines old world culture with UNESCO protected countryside; a new source for importing raw materials like sugar and cobalt.  So Cuban exports may not solve our current economic dilemma, but it cannot hurt.

The kicker, to round off this trio of current domestic news items with international twists, is the permission for stem-cell research to be performed on humans.  So this is not exactly a treasure chest of federal monies, but it is an astral leap compared to the last administration.  Federal monies are better served in other federal programs right now, ones that will give a more immediate jolt towards stopping this slow churning locomotive of economic depression.  Once we stop that steam breathing demon we can all get aboard and go for a much, much better ride.

This thread is just the beginning.  This is change.  It is only the first week, but already there is a renewed spirit matched with action.  Up markets, up people and a feeling that good things are on their way up too; this bodes for a better future.  This new well-spring of news is the tapping of an aquifer that has always known to be there, as it has been tapped a few times in the past, yet for some reason became an El Dorado.  Now the national GPS has put a way-point on it and will keep going back, so as to keep this new engine of change a’going.

An Inauguration for the Ages

Sitting here in Dunkin Donuts, in a town that resonates middle class America.  As I watch the TV and the beginnings of the day of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama there is a welling in my chest.  This is monumental.  It can be felt and we may not be sure exactly why, yet innately, we all do know.

The world is at a crossroads between the way of the few or the way of the many.  This is a turn down the way of the many.  In one of America’s biggest economic slumps, where the news about commerce, war and people is in the doldrums, the morale still swells.  There is something stunning happening today, as if we are all becoming better people just for being a part.

Reflecting back on the elections and my conversations with those who voted Republican, the votes were cast along party lines.  Where those with certain agendas maintained their loyalties because that was the right thing for them to do, for their minds and, mostly, their wallets.  Yet even though Obama took the election, there are very few, even those who voted for another candidate, that feels like they have been wronged or the improper person is about to take office.  Everyone that I have encountered, putting blatant racists and the top .01% of the wealthy aside, feels like this is the right step for the nation.

Barack Obama instills a sense of duty, a sense of thoughtful patriotism reminiscent of our forefathers that has been absent in many of the last presidents.  If this man does not solve our problems he would still stand to be one of the greatest tenants of the White House ever.  If this man would lead our country into war, one could hypothesize that it would be for the right reasons, that people would even enlist to support our nation.  This man would make Mark Twain proud of his government again, because it would be equaled with being proud of one’s country.

Sitting here waiting for my car to get fixed, I feel like my national soul is coming out of the shop.  This day is uplifting and brings about a feeling of being vechlempt.  Tears well up and may fall upon these often dry cheeks and the reasons may not be known why.  Perhaps you know why, perhaps you empathize with the feelings that are running hot right now.

583 miles away from the packed National Mall I rose from my pink an orange table for the taking of the oath of the Office of the President.  Our new 44th president, the hope for a proper guiding light, is now in position.  This bodes well for the majority of people in the world.  There is very little bad news today, aside from Ted Kennedy’s seizure, except for the injustice to John Stewart.  What is he going to do for material without Bush in the White House?

After eight years of one of Lucifer’s minions and his Howdy-Doody doll running amok in this world, we finally have tenants in the White House that, we can be almost sure, will be able to get their deposit back.  And early on we are getting the picture that even gods have tarnishes.  Similar to the first week of Governor Patterson of NY, when he quickly spilled the beans on extra-marital affairs after taking over office from a corrupt pervert.  We have a candidate that is coming clean early, while still in the safety shadow of predecessor’s blunders.  As Obama’s cabinet is confirmed there is extra attention on the now Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, former head of the NY Fed.  He forgot to pay $34,000 in social security and medicare taxes from self-employment payments, and he failed to monitor the immigration status of a housekeeper that had worked for him.

For one, I doubt this guy does his own taxes.  Two, he knew via a 2006 audit that he erred in 2001-2004 in his taxes (at least he’s consistent) and had already paid back half of it.  Three, the pay was from work he was doing for the IMF, a fairly respectable agency.  Four, he is the best qualified individual to hit the ground running (despite that MythBusters proved this physically would not really help you get up to speed faster) to assist in brokering the most adequate and comprehensive financial bailout and recovery plan that is needed, at a time when it is really needed.  Who better to help rewrite some of the oversight and regulatory copy then someone who intimately understands government and markets.

And lastly, number five, anyone who has had domestic help knows how when you have good help you don’t let them go, illegal or not.  And if the government learned to use some low-wage labor every once in a while, we may not have such a hefty tax burden.  I do not even know how this tangent started, but it could not be stopped and it is all relevant to today.  Though we may expect the most from these public servants, they are still human and can fault as such, and calling them out on it is part of our public duty.

Still, there are so many questions.  Will we be able to overturn any ’safety’ measures taken by the last administration so that key figures can be held accountable for, oh you know, say minor infractions like making large decisions that negatively impact the well being of the nation.  Going against the Geneva convention; deliberately falsifying evidence so as to justify invading nations with the obscured premise of oil; for repealing some of the most basic EPA regulations to payback the favors of big business; to make shady transactions between the government and private companies that are oh so altruistic in their ‘rebuilding effort’ in war torn nations; being consciously blind of the vagaries, fraud and corruption running rampant in the financial industry as it ran further off the leash from the Fed and SEC.  There are so many of these blatantly irresponsible misuses of power that it’s best to just forget about it.  The power of attraction should not be wasted for that, but for the good that is karmically coming our way.

2009 is a new start, not just for the nation, not just for a new president, but also for many out there looking for jobs.  This current economic debacle is going to reorient our economy, our investments and our lives.  Many of those in manufacturing may decide for a brighter future and accept job traning for another career.  Many of those who indirectly defrauded people out of their pensions will hopefully go to jail and get fucked, thus opening up positions for people with a greater conscience.  Many people may start to see the world more as ‘our’ place than as ‘my’ place.  May this infect us all for the sake of our economy, for the sake of our environment and for the sake of the generations to come.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways.  – Corinthians 13:11