Michael Grunwald writes, “It’s a bit galling to hear Republican leaders warn that Obama wants to spend money borrowed from our children when their own appetite for pork and tax breaks helped double the debt during the Bush years, but their hypocrisy does not make them wrong.”
All of us who are looking for a way to change things for the better will do well to understand the point that Grunwald makes. It is business as usual that got us in this mess to begin with, and business as usual is not going to get us out of it. We the People have elected our President and Congress, but what will transform our government from here forward is a new attitude on our part with regard to participation and accountability.
There may have been something similar for the Bush White House. I have to admit that I don’t know. But the Obama White House is providing a meaningful tool to all of us who understand that ours is a government of, by, and for the people only when we get involved. I believe Obama’s promise of more transparent government which makes it all the more important for me to look into what its doing and inform my elected representatives of my opinion.
As Andrew Young observes, “I’m constantly reminding [people] that [Obama] never once promised, ‘Yes I can.’ He has always said, ‘Yes we can.’ He has never set himself up as a savior of the world. He set himself up as someone who articulates and represents and can hopefully lead us to be the best America that we can be.”
I think this is a nice step:
ReplyDeletehttp://recovery.gov/
Some thoughts on the stimulus package.
ReplyDeleteA cry went out from the towns’ people. The lake level is falling! What should we do? A wise old man said, ”Wait until the rains come and it will fill up again. In the mean time, let’s use less water”. They cried louder. “We can’t wait! We can’t wait!” Then the town leaders said. “We will fill up the lake”. The people cheered. The leaders formed a long line and bucket after bucket was poured into the lake. The people cheered, “They’re filling the lake! They’re filling the lake!” After billions of buckets of water had been poured into the lake, the leaders held a celebration congratulating each other on what a great job they had done, and then they handed the townspeople a bill for their efforts. The townspeople were grateful to have such wise and caring leaders.
Later a wise old man made the observation that the leaders had been filling the buckets from the far side of the lake, and then emptying them into the near side. The townspeople accused him of having a bad attitude. He was just being critical. Why couldn’t he appreciate the good intentions of the leaders in solving their problems? They had cared so much and tried so hard to fill up the lake. He pointed out that after all that effort, the lake was at the same level as before, and that now they had a huge bill to pay. The town’s people laughed at him, then went back to the celebration.
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A family had the great idea of growing their own food in a garden. This would allow them to save on their grocery bill. After several years, they examined their expenses. They decided that they were spending too much money on fertilizer. “Let’s buy a calf and use the manure for our garden, and when it gets big enough, we will slaughter it for food. What a great idea!” Each year they got more manure as the calf got bigger. As the calf reached maturity, it was decided not to slaughter it, as it was really putting out the manure now. Soon, they had so much extra manure it was piled everywhere. They decided to reduce the size of the garden to accommodate the extra manure.
One day a wise old man was passing by as the family was putting more manure onto the pile. “That’s quite a pile of manure you’ve got there” he said. The father proudly explained how much money they had saved by not spending money on manure, and showed how much extra they had been able to accumulate. The wise old man then asked how much they had spent purchasing the calf, feed, and vet bills. The father said that in the excitement of getting the free manure, he had not considered the cost to acquire, feed, and maintain the animal. The old man said it was a shame to spend so much to get such a poor return, just to get free manure, or to put it more succinctly, bulls..t!