Change You Can Believe In?
Exactly one year ago today Barack Obama became President of the United States of America. I don’t envy any president as I feel it is the most difficult job in the entire world. The amount of daily pressure must be incredible.
But I wonder, as a candidate Obama ran on the ideal of change. It was a message that clearly millions of people bought into. We are exactly one year into his presidency today; so far… is there change you can believe in?
I will try to steer clear from national politics on this blog for the most part but I am interested in your thoughts of the job performance of our 44th President in his first 365 days. Please leave some thoughts. I really am striving to have this blog foster conversation, but please be respectful.
Personally, I am glad to see some of this change will probably not happen. I am talking specifically about health care. While I believe a health care plan is critical to the survival of our great nation, this was railroaded through a Democrat controlled congress by purchasing the needed votes from a House that willingly prostitutes itself. We as citizens have no idea what this plan would have done for us, expect raise private insurance rates in the short term.
As for the economy, Obama inherited this mess. This problem was primarily caused by Allen Greenspan who aided and abetted the offering of bad mortgage plans (immediately after 9/11 Greenspan thought it would be a good idea to offer every Americanan opportunity to own their own home regardless of qualification to help ease the pain of the tragic event) The Bush adminstration,of course was a sleep a majority of there terms, allowing this to catapult into a disaster.
It's difficult to swim in a lake of crap because the last thing you want to do is breath.
Not a fan of the “change”.
In his 365 days in office, i have felt the change first hand!
I first changed our business models to chase this changing economy, then i changed our geographic area of service to accommodate the changing customer base, then i changed the amount of staff (laid off 63 people in 2009 – thank God he extended the unemployment benefits time to 2 years vs 1).
My resent changes have led us to put 5 of our 6 regional competitors out of business with our great marketing and aggressive sales tactics.
I vowed to outspend the recession and “stimulate” the economy ourselves an expand and purchase equipment as we dominate the market. The exciting change really came when our operating lines of credit were frozen and banks decided to require 100% collateral and personal guarantees (not a problem if my home values weren't $500K upside down almost overnight). I guess customers don't like the “change” either, cause even though we are only one of two businesses left in our industry – our sales are still 91% off of last year, without any competition.
Yesterday i laid off the rest of our staff and started the closure of one company and i continue to shut down the other company i closed in October.
I am down to one business which is celebrating our 12th year this month and i just gave two weeks notice to 6 guys this morning.
I love this Country, this State and this City, but the “change” is killing all of it. I look forward to the future because I am an optimist, but the 73 W-2's I just mailed out for 2009 really bum me out – i only have 9 of those 73 still employed.
Is there “change” i can believe in? Yes I believe its all changed.
By the way, we have worked with a major bank, who received a huge chunk of the bail out money, for 4 months now on a home modification loan (we have never been late or even missed a payment yet) and the answer is NO. The writing is on the wall and they would rather put a million dollar home into inventory than use Fed money to help us with this “change”.
Thank you both for your comments. It is bad out there, there is no doubt about that. I am wondering though 2009 was really bad because of the new administration, or was it more related to the events leading up to 2009?
Barry: Thank you for providing a forum for discussion on this important issue. Like you, I don't envy the job the president has. Barack Obama certainly didn't step into the office under ideal conditions and I am keenly aware that most of the decisions he makes on a daily basis are “beyond my pay grade.”
However, my view is that America has received exactly what she asked for with Obama. He ran a campaign that was all style and no substance. He had no significant political experience and the experience he did have indicated that he was the single most liberal Senator in Washington. Granted, the economic conditions he stepped into were awful and the policies of the Bush Administration are partially to blame, but Obama has, in the course of 12 months, driven this country into an economic hole that our grandchildren will be paying for. The corruption that has accompanied the health care bill has been astonishing, not to mention the substance of it. The health care bill he supports allows for taxpayer funded abortion. He appointed a revisionist justice to the Supreme Court who is committed to keeping Roe v. Wade the law of the land. He seems bound and determined to expand the role of government so that it impinges on virtually ever facet of our lives.
What I have yet to understand is that Evangelicals jumped on his bandwagon. They got behind a man who unambiguiously promoted policies that are in clear violation of not only Biblical principles, but the laws of nature. This speaks volumes as to the health of the Evangelical church, which has been fed style over substance since the Second Great Awakening, then to the revivals of Aimee Simple McPherson, to false gospel of Robert Schuler, to the Seeker-Sensitive movement, and to it's logical consequence, the Emergent Church.
Christ has clearly established the city of God and the city of man, so I don't look to the civil government to be the place where Christian ethics is going to be instituted. But at the same time, I don't think Christians ought to check their faith at the door in the voting booth. My prayer is that there would be renewal and revival in the church so that we would believe, think, live, and vote in ways that reflect the beauty of the gospel and distinct Christianity.
I saw a sticker on the back of a car today that said “Are you getting tired of hope and change yet?” As a conservative I am obviously disappointed. He led us to believe that there would be unprecedented bipartisanship. But there seems to be the opposite. The opposition party has not had much opportunity to help in creating legislation. There were great promises of transparency and now they are having closed door meetings. As the president I was hoping he would be the leader who would guide the congress but he seems to be letting the congress be the leaders most of the time. Or he just agrees with everything they are doing and the way they are going about it. He has not followed through on so many promises he has made that I am finding it very difficult to believe anything he has to say now. I guess I am just disappointed. I was thinking that perhaps after yesterday’s election some of our elected officials might take notice of the large number of people who are feeling disappointed also. It has only been a day but I sure have not noticed any difference in attitude or behavior yet. I was not pleased with the amount of spending from our last administration. The reckless spending of the last 12 months really has me concerned about the future of our great county and the impact it will have on our children and grandchildren. There are so many better ways of accomplishing what needs to be done. Unfortunately it seems like none of them will be given any consideration until after the election in November 2010.
We are in the mess because of prior decisions and events. However in my opinion the methods being used to “fix” the mess are very flawed and ineffective.
i like how short of a memory people have. to say that obama just ran on change and hope is forgetful at best, and downright deceitful at worst. obama did make specific campaign promise, things like: health care reform; closing gitmo; leaving iraq; economic stimulus; etc.
have any of those been accomplished? no. but then again, how much has been completed in the first year of any president's term? do we really think that any of our previous 43 completed any of their major promises after one year?
however, health care reform is happening, and it is a fairly conservative health care bill. as for bipartisanship, it has happened. remember, the democrats had a 60 vote block in the senate, have control of the house and should they have just wanted to be partisan and ram a health care bill through it could have been done. shocking, in know, but instead they did work with republicans and make concessions. and, let's not forget that we have had gov't medical services for around 40 years. extending health care to others isn't such a radical idea.
gitmo is moving towards being closed as we have been moving prisoners to federal supermaxes, have reevaluated who was being detained, and moved away from barbaric, un-American and un-Christlike torture methods.
economic stimulus – we are moving out of the recession, and the stimulus efforts, you should remember, began before obama was elected. his policies have continued on, and several companies, like Ford and some of the banks, have completely repaid the money they were loaned. the simplistic claims that we were moving towards socialism are ignorant of what socialism is. had we actually moved economically towards socialism they wouldn't have been loans, they would have been complete gov't takeovers. the gov't would be providing the services for the benefit of the people. do we have a national bank? a national car industry? a national military force? oh wait, the answer to that last one is yes, but we conveniently ignore that a national military has always been a socialist element of our country, among others, and that all governments have a balance of capitalism and socialism.
Ed what interests me is that Barack Obama seems to not only be having problems with the opposition party but his base as well. To the republican's, he is so incredibly liberal. To progressives, he is taking a lot of criticism for not being liberal enough, working to hard towards bipartisanship and conceding too much. As for me, I am pretty sick of most of it. I am growing tired of the two party system and really feel that I don't want to be panted by the democrat or republican brush.
What I know is that we are a country that is still very divided on ideology.
I find it very hard to believe that Republicans had any part in writing the health care bill. I do believe that they would have passed it sooner if the Democrats could come to some agreement among themselves. It finally got through the senate because they paid off two senators with millions of our tax dollars in pork for their states. No wonder these deals were made behind closed doors instead of on CSPAN like our president promised during his campaign.
As for a capitalistic military I am not sure how that would work. I do not think I have heard of any country that has one. The writers of our constitution did provide for a national defense in the constitution. They left out a national health care system though.
I am not sure why closing Gitmo is really necessary. I am not sure what the barbarism is that you are referring to. Very few terrorists have ever been water-boarded but those few did give a great deal of information that stopped terrorist attacks and saved many American lives.
Just look at what damage socialism has done to the economy in Great Brittan. Do we really need to become more socialistic here? Socialism tends to spread the misery around more than spread the wealth around. Look at the economies of Europe in general. You see very little economic growth. Look at the innovation that has come from the capitalistic system in the United States. You do not see much innovation in socialistic economies. Moving our economy in a socialistic direction will only make our nation poorer and ultimately weaker in the future. It is the last thing we need in the middle of a recession.