Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America. Show all posts
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Factoid of the Day
Did you know that in Finland, only 4 percent of children live at or below the poverty level?
Finding Fault, Placing Fault is Not A Path To Solutions
Does not matter where you look, there is one simple reality...America is broken. There seems to be a lot of finger pointing going on as this group and that one looks to place blame, to find fault. The now generation, kids just getting out of high school and college who are looking for jobs that just do not exist want to blame the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers want to say, "not our fault, we played by the rules, and just want what is ours, the government saying they spent all our money, cannot meet their obligations." Those who are involved in the "Occupy Wall St" movement want to blame the one percent who keep getting richer, while those in the Tea Party are upset about TARP and Obamacare, want to talk about personal responsibility rather than collective responsibility.
Fact is, all this fault faulting, all the time spent placing blame is not solving the basic problems that we all face in the UNITED States of America. There is not one example I can find where the energies spent in assigning blame, finding fault in another has solved a problem. It is said America has become a litigious society, and we are...broken down to its simplest essence, a litigious nation is one obsessed with placing blame, finding fault in others, rather than searching for and finding solutions, rather than taking some personal responsibility, rather than realizing we all contributed to problems that we as a nation are facing today.
We all can agree that Social Security is broken...does it really matter who broke it? Question should be, what can we do (individually and collectively) to fix it for those on it, those about to be on it, and for those future citizens who will be on it decades from now? Imagine all our politicians in Washington DC setting aside partisan politics, putting aside their personal agenda (getting re-elected) and sitting in a room together looking for, and exploring solutions. Imagine the media supporting these efforts, and being the catalyst for a national conversation centered around finding solutions, paving a path to the future. No finger pointing, no sacred cows, but instead everyone focused on one question, "What needs to be done to save and preserve Social Security?"
All for one, and one for all. Shared responsibility, shared pain, and when the ship is turned around and heading into a prosperous tomorrow, shared gain for one and all.
In one of our local papers the other day, there was an article on the decline of our bridges here in Sullivan County. The article listed several reasons for this decline of our public infrastructure including shortage of staff, work crews down to less than half of previous levels from what they were say five years ago, as well as a lack of funding. There was a price tag associated with bringing those bridges back to a point of being safe, quotes from people busy wringing their hands as they mused, 'What are we going to do?"
How about looking at the simple facts on the ground. The bridges need fixed. The price to fix and repair all of our bridges, including the replacement of several of them in danger of collapsing is around $16-20 Million dollars. Furthermore, to repair and replace those bridges, keep them in good shape requires a larger staff than the county currently has. Working with round numbers, we have 80,000 citizens in Sullivan county, and it will cost around $16 Million dollars to repair all of our bridges working with the low number. That is a cost of $200 for every man woman and child for our county to have safe bridges, for our county to stop the decay in its tracks, eliminate the worry that one of our bridges could collapse with one of us on it.
Sure, none of us relishes having to cough up $200 for every member of our household, but all of us would love to have safe bridges today, rather than say waiting another 5-10 years for either the state or federal government to come up with the funding to make those repairs, not to mention that by the time the money is found, the price tag for repairs is going to be much higher.
Our county taking on such a public infrastructure restoration program would bring with it a lot of benefits that could go a long way to offsetting the costs incurred...being pro-active is always a good thing. We would be putting out of work people back to work. We would be improving our image outside of the county, and with proper publicity focused on this locally grown solution to a serious problem, we could possibly attract the attention of companies looking for a place to call home, and those companies locating into our county would bring with them new jobs, additional tax revenues. Consider such an investment an investment in our future, putting our money into actions today that will provide a better community for our children tomorrow.
Remembering some of the sayings I grew up with, "You have to spend money to make money" and "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Like it or not, our nation and its communities are broken, and we need to stop talking about the problems, and instead start focusing all of our time and energy on the task of finding solutions, and a lot of times, finding solutions means some short term pains for long term gains. As out mothers have always told us, "You have to take your medicine." We individually and collectively need to take our medicine, have to make the hard choices today to create a better tomorrow. We need less finger pointing, and more efforts focused on the task of finding solutions, locally and nationally.
Fact is, all this fault faulting, all the time spent placing blame is not solving the basic problems that we all face in the UNITED States of America. There is not one example I can find where the energies spent in assigning blame, finding fault in another has solved a problem. It is said America has become a litigious society, and we are...broken down to its simplest essence, a litigious nation is one obsessed with placing blame, finding fault in others, rather than searching for and finding solutions, rather than taking some personal responsibility, rather than realizing we all contributed to problems that we as a nation are facing today.
We all can agree that Social Security is broken...does it really matter who broke it? Question should be, what can we do (individually and collectively) to fix it for those on it, those about to be on it, and for those future citizens who will be on it decades from now? Imagine all our politicians in Washington DC setting aside partisan politics, putting aside their personal agenda (getting re-elected) and sitting in a room together looking for, and exploring solutions. Imagine the media supporting these efforts, and being the catalyst for a national conversation centered around finding solutions, paving a path to the future. No finger pointing, no sacred cows, but instead everyone focused on one question, "What needs to be done to save and preserve Social Security?"
All for one, and one for all. Shared responsibility, shared pain, and when the ship is turned around and heading into a prosperous tomorrow, shared gain for one and all.
In one of our local papers the other day, there was an article on the decline of our bridges here in Sullivan County. The article listed several reasons for this decline of our public infrastructure including shortage of staff, work crews down to less than half of previous levels from what they were say five years ago, as well as a lack of funding. There was a price tag associated with bringing those bridges back to a point of being safe, quotes from people busy wringing their hands as they mused, 'What are we going to do?"
How about looking at the simple facts on the ground. The bridges need fixed. The price to fix and repair all of our bridges, including the replacement of several of them in danger of collapsing is around $16-20 Million dollars. Furthermore, to repair and replace those bridges, keep them in good shape requires a larger staff than the county currently has. Working with round numbers, we have 80,000 citizens in Sullivan county, and it will cost around $16 Million dollars to repair all of our bridges working with the low number. That is a cost of $200 for every man woman and child for our county to have safe bridges, for our county to stop the decay in its tracks, eliminate the worry that one of our bridges could collapse with one of us on it.
Sure, none of us relishes having to cough up $200 for every member of our household, but all of us would love to have safe bridges today, rather than say waiting another 5-10 years for either the state or federal government to come up with the funding to make those repairs, not to mention that by the time the money is found, the price tag for repairs is going to be much higher.
Our county taking on such a public infrastructure restoration program would bring with it a lot of benefits that could go a long way to offsetting the costs incurred...being pro-active is always a good thing. We would be putting out of work people back to work. We would be improving our image outside of the county, and with proper publicity focused on this locally grown solution to a serious problem, we could possibly attract the attention of companies looking for a place to call home, and those companies locating into our county would bring with them new jobs, additional tax revenues. Consider such an investment an investment in our future, putting our money into actions today that will provide a better community for our children tomorrow.
Remembering some of the sayings I grew up with, "You have to spend money to make money" and "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Like it or not, our nation and its communities are broken, and we need to stop talking about the problems, and instead start focusing all of our time and energy on the task of finding solutions, and a lot of times, finding solutions means some short term pains for long term gains. As out mothers have always told us, "You have to take your medicine." We individually and collectively need to take our medicine, have to make the hard choices today to create a better tomorrow. We need less finger pointing, and more efforts focused on the task of finding solutions, locally and nationally.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Tuesday September 6, 2011...Join Starbucks CEO in No Labels Telephone Town Hall Meeting
Putting this Press Release in the Mountaindale New York news blog not because Starbuck's CEO is right, but because our government at this point in history is wrong for America, and wrong for our workers and I will listen to anyone with an alternative thought. We cannot just stand by and let partisan politics coupled with corporate greed destroy our nation's middle class, and that reality, that simple truth makes me willing to grasp at straws, though it looks like you have some centrists from both sides of the aisle wanting to reshuffle the same deck and present it as a new deal for America's working class.I have some serious problems with Howard Schultz, including his own efforts at lobbying Congress, buying politicians through campaign donations, but as I said, always willing to give someone a listen...if you are an American Middle Class citizen tired of the same old same old inside Washington DC's beltway, join the conversation on Tuesday evening. Sure if nothing else it will be entertaining.
For my money, think America would be a lot better off is we elected some average every day Americans, rather than sending to Washington more millionaires and billionaires. Trust me, you can never expect a person with that many zero's in their net worth statement to represent your interests if you are earning less than $100,000 a year, so stop sending them to Congress. Most of the people in No Labels are, simply stated, a part of America's pampered class, and in many cases, actually a part of the problem. But, never hurts to grasp at straws, though this group looks just like the rest of them, laden with special interests, and the money that special interests are willing to toss at such groups.
A Conversation With America
Submitted by No Labels Blogger on September 1, 2011
Join Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and thousands of concerned Americans in a telephone town hall Tuesday (Sept. 6) at 7:30 p.m. EST to discuss how we can stop the hyper-partisanship plaguing Washington. Three weeks ago, No Labels joined Schultz in his drive to encourage other business leaders to sign a two-part pledge:
1. To withhold campaign contributions until Washington reaches a fair, bipartisan deal on our country’s long-term economic future.2. To hire workers. American businesses can make a positive impact on our economy through a commitment to doing everything possible to accelerate job creation.
Since then, Schultz has heard from thousands of Americans across the country who are beginning to lose hope in the American Dream. It is time to restore that hope. Click here to join Schultz for Tuesday’s telephone town hall to discuss how we can set in motion an upward spiral of confidence in America.
Lets examine the players in Tuesday chat.
No Labels Co-Founders ...careful folks. there are some SNAKES in the grass in the list of founders. For starters, can we say Joe LIEberman?
John Avlon One has to wonder how wise this man in when he agreed to be the Chief Speechwriter and Deputy Policy Director for Rudy Giuliani's failed 2008 Presidential Campaign. Let's all be honest here...if it were not for September 11th, 2001, Rudy Giuliani would have left office a disgraced man. Stop your moaning everyone...he moved his Mistress into the Mayor's Mansion.
Robert S. Kaplan
Lisa Borders...seems to have a penchant for knowing which side of the bread she can get buttered.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
In summation...this looks like one group of pampered silver spoon babies trying to wrest control of Washington politics from another group of pampered silver spoon babies, but I will be there on Tuesday to listen in.
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