It really comes down to the public

Until recently I thought that it came down to politicians to mislead the public into believing that this plan or the other would do the trick. It used to think that 2010 was a year of a very important election.
I thought that Democratic Party has lost a golden opportunity to level with the American people about the real picture of the country.
Don’t get me wrong there is still a clear choice. On a one hand we have a group of people who say that we, as insurmountable as the problems and the present status seem, if we stay the course we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. The other side believes in the same medicine for every illness: tax cuts.
I always say if doctors would prescribe every illness with the same medication, not only we would need them but we wouldn’t need the pharmaceutical companies as one would supply us with the one miracle medicine that would cure us.
But reality is different, and that applies to this as well. To make matters worse they encourage companies to export jobs to China, India and other Asian nations. A friend of mine believes that exporting jobs is good. He should tell that to all the people who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks (99ers), and these people include PHDs, masters, etc., who have lost their house, their savings, and their livelihood. Our real unemployment is close to 20%.
So in that respect I think the choice is simple.
But my conclusion is that people don’t want to hear the facts. They behave like brats. They think that they are entitled to gas at 2.75 a gallon, pay low taxes, buy houses that they cannot afford, be the police of the world.
Let’s start with taxes, the Obama administration should tell the American people to grow up. Gasoline at 2.75 is unreal, because the moment that we add the cost of the Department of Defense to that, and the subsidies that the oil companies receive we are looking at probably the same amount that the rest of the world pays or higher, 6 or 7 dollars a gallon. Why do I mention the D.O.D. in this? Simple, we invaded Iraq because they have oil, not because of the weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein or any other excuse. If Iraq had just dust, like Sudan has, we would have never moved a finger.
Pay low taxes, another lie. By the time we add the federal income tax, state tax, social security, medical coverage, co-pays, etc., we are paying more than the Europeans and Canadians do.
And I don’t think I have to talk about housing as we will continue to see values deteriorate as far as the eye can see, especially when we are looking at possibly 3 million foreclosures in 2010.
The solution, in my opinion, is simple but unpopular. I don’t like to be deceived. In order to balance the Federal Budget, we should cut defense in half, roll back the age of retirement for social security, eliminate the cap for taxation of social security, eliminate the Bush tax cuts for everybody, not just the top, pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly raise taxes if need be. We either do this now, or we can fool ourselves for years to come, until there will no longer be a United States.

Peter A. Diamond

Peter A. Diamond was given the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics. To most of us he is not a renowned figure. He was the professor of the head of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernacke.
Mr. Diamond was nominated to fill one of the vacant seats in the Federal Reserve. Unfortunately some of the members of the minority party in the U.S. Senate that has hold hostage this country for the past 4 years have decided that they will not allow President Obama’s nominee to be confirmed. The main one leading this fight is Senator R. Shelby from Alabama, saying that Mr. Diamond is not qualified for the job. I guess Mr. Shelby thinks that he is qualified to decide who is best suited to be one of the board members of the Federal Reserve.
This is the same party and its new spin off the Tea Party that is giving us some unqualified, unprepared candidates that may very well win their races, during a time where people want to take revenge with their government officials for the downturn that they are living. I will not say that they are right or wrong in their anger. What I can say is that we should look closely at this candidates and what they propose: privatizing Social Security, in my book that sounds like doing away with the most successful program in American History, privatizing Medicare and Medicaid, same goes for this program, privatizing the V.A., dido, and we can go on.
This party is also proposing rolling back what they call “Obamacare”. That means re-instituting the clause that allows insurance companies to reject kids with preconditions. That sounds like a humane position. But we should never forget that the insurance companies’ bottom lines come before the health of its insured.
They are running on the pledge to America which is cut taxes for the wealthy, deregulation to banking and increase of military spending. That sounds like the Bush-Cheney dogma that sets us back 10 years.
A friend of mine has told me more than once that I try to figure out people, although I try not I guess it is my nature, and I fall victim to my own temptation probably because after 25 years it worries me seeing this great nation falling behind the rest of the world in every single aspect from education to infrastructure to technology. Having grown up in Argentina and being a neighbor to Brazil the thing we always found amusing about Brazilians was that whatever you would talk about with them they would always answer the same “O mais grande du mundo”, which translated is the greatest in the world, which was a fantasy because they had zillions of problem including 60% of population living in poverty. Now living in the United States American people remind of those Brazilians as I was growing up.

This past summer

I have not been writing much this summer, and there are several reasons. For starters I went earlier this year to Argentina than I usually go. Instead of going in August or September like I prefer travellin I decided to go in July. I’m glad I did, as I think that it was a productive 2 week visit to my parents.
I then went to Chicago, together with my wife and son, to drop off my daughter as she had been invited to a conservatory. We then went back two weeks later to pick her up. Both the first and second times were very good, as the weather was great and it gave us the opportunity to go to the two tallest buildings in the City of Chicago, the John Hancock and the Sears Tower. The latter has 4 cubicles that were mounted on the side of the building, and, as they are made of type acrylic, you are actually outside of the building on the 103 floor, and whether you look up, side or down you have no concrete blocking the view. It is both exhilarating and scary, depending on your personality. I had a hard time at the beginning but I got used to it after a few minutes. You just have to avoid looking down as much as possible.
We also decided, as we were coming back from picking up our daughter in Chicago, that we would go for during labor day weekend to Cleveland to the Museum of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We had been there in 2002. There is a lot to see, and the location right by Lake Erie is great, together with the fact that it is like a Glass Pyramid.
I have been very busy as well, as people are coming to the realization that with interest rates as low as 3.875 % and prices at their lowest in many years , it would be foolish not to buy a house. There is no doubt that many people are losing their homes, but for those who are able to they know that they cannot let this opportunity slide by.
Of course that something’s gotta give. And it has. I have not been able to get together with the person I was discipling for almost two years until my trip in July. I have spoken to him since I came back but I have not had the time to get together with him. Once this wave passes we will surely go back to our weekly conversations.