Road Map to 2012

Okay so here’s the deal.  I will give you the keys to the brand new Rolls Royce of your choice if you can complete one simple task.  But if you cannot complete the task you will be tossed out on your ear and the opportunity will be given to someone else.

The task is simply that you must drive a car, any standard car from the easternmost tip of Long Island to the western end of the Santa Monica Pier without using paved roads.  And you must complete the trip in 12 hours.

Clearly it is not possible to drive from one end of America to the other in 12 hours on paved roads, let alone dirt ones given our current technology.  So any sane individual would conclude the task is not only silly but ridiculously unfair.

However a similar task is given to every law maker we vote into office these days.

We tell these men and women that they must fix whatever it is that is broken in the country and do it within a year and a half.  We then allow others to stand in their way.

And the penalty for failing to complete the task is the same as in the car scenario, they will be tossed out on their ears and their opponents, the ones standing in the way will be given a shot at completing the impossible task.  And the cycle will continue biennially on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Last month we saw many Democrats tossed out of Congress and the President’s approval ratings drop because that majority party could not right all the wrongs that were put in place over the previous 8 years under the Bush administration.

Of course the main obstacles the Democrats had to put up with were roadblocks placed every few feet by that minority party.  And instead of crashing through the barriers as many wished they had the Democrats demurely attempted to drive around them.  And for that strategy they paid a steep toll.

And therein lay the main problem in the American political system today. The party in power is asked to drive cross country but do so without a full tank of gas.

Earlier today on one of the ubiquitous cable television political shows a pundit inadvertently laid out the Republican plan for the next two years.  He did so while discussing the efficacy of a Sarah Palin run for the White House in 2012.

Forgetting the fact that the woman, who could not even complete one term as the Governor of Alaska is not Presidential caliber the question was merely, could she win.

The answer was short but spoke volumes.  “If the unemployment rate in America is still above 8.5% in 18 months then Sarah Palin or just about any Republican will beat Obama.”

Well there you have it sports fans the country should brace itself for the continued "No" tactics of the Republican Party as they maintain their efforts to keep many of us out of work.
In fact they could hope for a landslide in their direction if they can keep the rate above 9%.

In other words if you get jobs they lose theirs!  That's quite an incentive, no?

And if you don’t think they can do it you haven’t been paying attention for the past few years.

With a majority in the House and continued growth in the Senate vis a vie the skittish meek Democrats they have more control over what happens in America so, job seekers fuggedaboutit.

It is clear that Congress is either out of touch with the needs of the average citizen or just does not care.  Most of the Republicans and many Democrats realize that their campaigns are funded by the wealthiest 1 to 2 % of the country. These people also use unique and devious methods to send money to 'friends' of their causes.
And while the other 98% do vote they have shown a talent for being manipulated by clever and misleading ads.  Ads paid for with the money from that small but influential group of nameless faceless corporations and individual billionaires empowered by new rulings from a Supreme Court hand picked by the Republicans.

They say ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease.’

But it is also said that ‘money talks, nobody walks.’

Or as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, “A full wallet groans louder than an empty stomach.”

And in DC those fat wallets are screaming!

At midnight on January 1^st we will have a new Congress taking the wheel of our nation's economic car.  Does anyone really believe they will get to Santa Monica by noon?