After a soujourn campaigning for Barack Obama in California and Nevada, reality has set in again. Republican's have shown little inclination to act in a bipartisan fashion to help President Obama get our country back on track again. We have been down this road before. Clinton ran into a Republican buzzsaw when he also tried to get Republican's behind his attempts to make America a better place to live. None of this should be surprising. On our most recent trip to Las Vegas we stopped to visit Hoover Dam and at the visitor center got to read some of the comments made by legislators in that time who fought against building the dam saying it would cost to much, and would only benefit the Western states. Now Republican's are trying to rewrite the U.S. history of the Great Depression saying that the policies of FDR did nothing to stop the Depression, all evidence to the contrary. All one has to do is look at the GDP growth from 1933 to 1939 to see that FDR's policies made a major improvement in our economic well being.
In his book "Audacity of Hope", Obama made his case for a new spirit of bipartisanhip and an end to the culture wars of the 1960's, which he felt were so damaging to any spirit of cooperation today. Sadly his hope for a better political climate will not work as long as our Republican members of Congress feel their districts are safe for them. The good news for the rest of us who want to move America forward is that the demographics are not working in the Republican's favor for future elections. Young people are now voting and for Democrats in big numbers. Minorities are also voting for Democrats in larger and larger numbers. The Republican base made up of older white American's from conservative states are growing less in number. Unless the Republican's change their underlying philosophy and message, they are doomed to spending decades as a minority party.
They still seem to be in denial about their message as evidenced by the election of RNC Chairman Michael Steele who is as unrepentent as his predeccessor as just as silly. His claim that our government only produces "work" and not "jobs" is ludicrous; he bases this incredulous statement on the belief that only the private sector can produce permanent jobs. It hasn't dawned on him that permanent jobs have gone the way of the DoDo bird - there is no such thing anymore, public or private. Job security went away when Wall Street CEO's discovered they could increase their pay every time they laid off workers, which in turn increased the share price in their company stock, which gave them nice bonuses for increasing the stock price. In 1990, 90% of Fortune 500 companies had official "no layoff" policies. Ten years later only five of them did. Steele and his party are out of touch with what is really happening to the middle class in this country; they need work even if the jobs are not permanent. In 1931, the Hoover Dam project provided jobs for 5000 workers for five years. Yes they were not permanent jobs but they provided a good living for half a decade, and left us a national treasure that harnessed the Colorado River and provided millions of kilowatt hours of electricity for four Western states. I bet there are millions of American's right now who would love to have a guaranteed high paying job for the next five years.
Barack Obama and the Democrats understand this and are fighting to make these types of jobs available. If we can create 4 million new jobs in this country, that will jump start our economy big time and help the rest of the world. Best of all it will restore the confidence of American's who have lost faith in our leaders, especially in the business sector. President Obama will get us out of the jam we are in, if we give him a chance. He may have to rely only on his own Party to help him and the vast numbers of average American's who are rooting for him to succeed.
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