Alethinos Paradoxos’ blog

Today Senator Barack Obama was parading around like he had just won an Olympic gold medal.  He was in the public and on television beginning a media blitz.  But, what are the other two candidates from the major parties doing?

Senator Hillary Clinton’s camp was busy writing a letter to Senator Obama.  What, was she finally going to bow out gracefully?  Of course not!

It begins with pleasantries such as things about what an historic and exciting campaign it has been and so on (the sound you just heard was the sound of me sticking my finger in my mouth mimicking what it looks like when one gags one’s self).  Then comes the shovel and the shoveling.  Then comes some dribble about the principles of the party being that citizens should be allowed to vote and that those votes should be counted.  This letter goes on and on and sounds so silly and insincere that I can hardly stand to read it.  This letter is addressed to a P.O. Box and is to Senator Obama.

Here is what really happened:  The letter is an attempt to generate some kind of good press with all of the bad press Senator Clinton is getting right now.  The Hillary Clinton camp distributed the letters publicly, long before it ever could possibly reach the P.O. Box or hands of Senator Obama.  The wording of the letter is clearly not intended to persuade Senator Obama to do anything, the intention obviously a publicity stunt.  The worst part is even without all of the details you probably assumed all of this on your own.

This whole stunt seems a little desperate and childish doesn’t it. 

Dear Senator Clinton’

We can all hear, just say whatever you want to say to the senator and to us out loud.  What’s with the stupid letter? 

Wishing you would drop out to remain respected;

Alethinos Paradoxos

P.S.  I think it may be time to bow out gracefully, you are starting to seem desperate and you are beginning to look more like a sore looser than a great and determined political mind.

Wow, maybe her letter is not so bad after all, that feels pretty good.  This letter writing thing is okay.  Which leads me to the next tasty tidbit. 

The next question?   Drum-roll please?

The question is:  “What is the Senator John McCain camp doing?”

Answer:  “Writing letters to Senator Obama, of course.”

Next we get news of a letter from a certain Mark Salter.  Author, coauthor of books with Senator McCain, and long time employee of John McCain. 

Let’s backtrack a little.

In an interview earlier, Senator Obama said that Senator McCain had “lost his bearings.”  This explains why “Mark Salter, Senior Advisor” (exactly as his name appeared on the letter) starting by saying something about this being an attempt to point to Senator McCain’s age.  When I heard this my first thoughts were:  “Is Mr. Salter, “Senior Advisor,” implying that the only people who “loose their way” are people who are old.  I can honestly say that I did not even consider age when I heard the comment. 

The letter attempts to condemn those sorts of attempts to say things that elude to something that you cannot say directly, but if you can get into the minds of voters will affect how they vote.  I agree totally.

Then it happened.  By “then,” I mean in the same letter to Senator Obama.  Mr. Salter goes on to say that Senator Obama is specially protected by the media and the public because he has a “protective barrier” which “declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race.”  Hold that thought…

Then comes a couple of paragraphs about “Hamas” and how the political adviser to the leader of Hamas thinks Senator Obama could bring change and would make a good president.  The “kicker” comes with the statement, “The McCain campaign has never suggested that Senator Obama supports Hamas' agenda, but…”  Did you notice what word I stopped at.  Senator McCain may not, but clearly his “Senior Advisor” is about to.

Then he goes on to evoke the names of every scary person on the planet only leaving out “Freddy Kruger” and “Jason” probably because they do not really exist.  He used the names of “Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” “North Korea's Kim Jong II, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro” in discussing who Senator Obama has stated he meet with to try to make deals with our enemies. 

Okay, have you been keeping score? 

1.      Senator Obama has something about him that makes him especially protected from questions, discussion, and debate.  What exactly is that something he is getting at?

2.      Senator McCain or his camp would never try to say that Senator Obama supports Hamas (is this a good place to type the letters “LOL”).  Why then does the word “Hamas” appear five times in six successive sentences.  Hmmmm?

3.      Also, I cannot see any hidden attempts to bring up the past rumor that Senator Obama is secretly Muslim here.

4.      Then came all the scary names:  “Iran,” “North Korea,” “Kim Jong,” and “Hugo Chavez.”  No hidden messages here.

Let’s see, why would Senator Obama get a special “protective barrier” around himself that nobody else gets.  Hmmmm, what’s different about Senator Obama?  Wait a minute?  Could it be?  I think Mr. Salter, senior advisor to Senator McCain may have just pulled out the race card and slammed it on the table.

What about evoking such names as “Hamas” and “Hugo Chavez,”  could that be the fear card.  Oh, how childish the Clinton and McCain camps have become.

It is good to know that we may have found the lesser of the evils; at least Senator Obama would not sink to this level.  Writing a silly letter, disguised as a letter directed at talking some sense into another candidate, hoping the public will hear about it and be swayed by its hidden messages. 

Oh my, how not true that is.  Senator Obama’s camp responded to Senator McCain’s letter with a short response.

Beginning with “Clearly, losing one's bearings has no relation to age…” the response takes a turn to the retaliatory.  There are descriptive words like “bizarre rant,” “distract,” and “attack..”  Talk about a third George Bush term, about continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies, and failed strategy in Iraq. Then there’s “it's not the kind of campaign John McCain has promised the American people that he would run.”

Are these children and their playmates really the best candidates we can drum up from this entire country?  Come on!  All these people and there is not one more, somewhere in all these people that is better than these three?

Is this what any of these three would look like as president?  It would be like putting a four year old in the Whitehouse as president.

I see that in looking for the lesser evil, we are going to have to dig real deep.

Yesterday Senator Hillary Clinton lost in one primary and barely squeezed out a win in another.  What this means is that her winning the popular vote just moved from incredibly impossible to a little more incredibly impossible.  This also moved her chances of winning over the remaining super-delegates highly unlikely.  Why are we still seeing all of this again?

Can we put an end to this finally.  I am ready to see Senator Obama limp into his contest with the lost Senator McCain.  I say Sen. Obama is limping (and probably bloody in a metaphoric sense) because of the terrible fight he has been in.  I say Sen. McCain is missing because, well, he’s missing.  He has been hiding out most of this time occasionally surfacing to say stupid things (I suppose Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama had plenty of friends, family, and supporters to handle that for them)

Senator Clinton was deep in the rhetoric over the past few days and not quite as deep in the money.  I think she is in deep trouble as of this weeks events.

Of course this vote took place on the same day all the economists teamed up to say the “Gas Tax Holiday” that her and Sen. McCain have been pushing is a stupid idea.  That means it probably did not have much time to settle in with yesterday’s voters, but by next week it will be deep in the psyche of all of us who own televisions or read newspapers.

Sen. Clinton has vowed to go on, like a good captain, strong, teary eyed, and holding the wheel as the ship sinks. 

Now, more statistics are starting to show up that clearly show that if Sen. Clinton does not win the popular vote and cannot get the super-delegates to vote her in as the candidate of choice they will refuse to vote for Sen. Obama, and may even vote for Sen. McCain.

Here’s a newsflash Hillary Clinton supporters:  It is so close to impossible for her to win at this point that I think Sen. Obama could shoot several of the super-delegates that are supporting in front of the media and still squeeze out a victory over Sen. Clinton.

But, from the standpoint of a spectator who does not belong to either party this is great.  The two Democratic gladiators are going to pummel each other before the winner gets thrown to the lions.  What could possibly be as exciting?

Then you have Rush Limbaugh who has been rallying Republicans to come together and vote in the Democrat’s primaries just to cause chaos.  Add this all to the chaos of any appearances of Former President Bill Clinton and the sheer excitement of an appearance of a certain Mr. Wright and you have excellent reality television.  What greater pursuit is there than sitting and watching other individuals go through excruciating and taxing circumstances just for our entertainment.

This is all fine and dandy until we come back to reality and realize we are all going to be stuck with one of these three for the next four years.  Then suddenly we realize that  we are all the next cast of the reality show that will be for the rest of the world to watch.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

If you watch, listen to, or read the commentaries on the primaries taking place every couple of weeks, the news has drifted into a public battle of race, age, and gender.  I have been struck by the amount of news that basically states that Senator Hillary Clinton is winning over middle class, whites (the exact words that the media seems to be comfortable using), older “white” voters and is campaigning to win over women.  The other side of the coin is that Senator Barack Obama is winning over African-American voters (in the media known as “black voters”) and new, young voters.

This race may not be what has split the party, but no matter how you think it got there, I think it is safe to say that, the party is split and it is being made obvious to the whole planet. 

The last few days of news has brought lots of stories and discussion about the possibility that events of this primary season are negatively affecting the party as a whole.  Some say that the events of the last few months are not negatively affecting the party.  Again, that may or may not be the case, but the party has a huge negative point at this minute:  The party is divided. 

I have been befuddled by how comfortable the media has been in reducing the campaigns to the group that seems to vote for the candidates.  Now we can all think of Sen. Clinton as the candidate of middleclass “white males” and “older white” voters while Sen. Obama as the candidate of African Americans and new voters.  But, in thinking about it, although these facts are uncomfortable, they are true and this is news.

The problem is not the reporting, the problem is that the Democrats are comfortable with this as a whole.  It does not matter if the party split yesterday, over this primary season, or ten years ago, it is still split and the gap between the different factions is growing. 

The problem has the potential to move from a large crack in the party to a completely broken party in the near future. 

If Sen. Obama wins, the middleclass white males will feel disenfranchised and may not be in as much of a hurry to vote for him simply because he is a Democrat.

If Sen. Clinton wins, by the overturning of the popular vote by superdelegates, or by getting the states that Sen. Obama did not campaign in to count, a large part of the African American community will feel cheated by the candidate that represents middleclass, “white” America.  Has the party not thought through how overriding the popular vote of the people or including the votes of states that the first African American candidate did not campaign in (in accordance with instructions from the party) would speak to the African American populous. 

In polls the voters have made it clear that if their respective candidate did not win, they may vote for a Republican, Independent, or at the least no longer affiliate themselves with the Democrats. 

Both middleclass “white” and the “black” voters are major demographics that have been the base of the party for the past few years.  One of these groups is likely to be alienated in the next few months.  Then what?  How about the young voters that are voting for the first time?  Alienate them and you have succeeded in alienating the future!

I suppose the party has counted on being to get the two candidates coming together after some sort of solution is reached and running together as presidential and vice-presidential candidates.  This would be the case normally, but this current unusually prolonged  primary season and the nature of the “firsts” represented in the candidates, has allowed more time for voters to get their heart set on their candidate and to foster more dislike for the opponent. 

The end of the party seems to be coming faster than the end of the primaries.  If I were a Democrat (and not a complete independent) I would think that this has to stop now, because this one presidency is not worth risking the destruction of the party.  As an independent that thinks the party system is broken, I think if the one party explodes in front of the entire planet it will force the government and the country as a whole to look at revamping the party system.

Today several respected economists came out publicly in opposition to the Gas Tax holiday proposed By Senator John McCain and later used by Senator Hillary Clinton to boost her campaign against Senator Barack Obama who opposes the idea.

Presidential hopefuls Senator John McCain and Senator Hillary Clinton have been pushing this Gas Tax Holiday in theory giving the American public a few month reprise from the High gasoline prices.  The plan involves eliminating the approximately nineteen cent federal gas tax and the approximately twenty-five cent diesel tax beginning Memorial Day all the way to Labor Day.

You may remember that when this idea was first proposed I posted a blog where I stated it was a bad idea.  I mention this because my view was not based on being an economist (because I am not one) but on simple common sense.  The truth is that if we come up with any idea that takes millions, billions, or trillions of dollars out of the national budget, the money has to come from somewhere to replace it (in this case we are talking about somewhere in the area of ten-billion dollars).  Nineteen cents is not worth some huge debt that shows up later to be paid for by taxing us.  The two dollars I would personally save a week is not enough for me to be willing to create a ten-billion dollar hole in the budget.

Today two-hundred top economists, four of which are Nobel prize winners, signed a letter completely rejecting this ridiculous idea.  This is the kiss of death for this stupid idea. 

Hillary Clinton has been trying to say she was the candidate most likely to turn the economy around and the polls have been growing in her favor in this area.  When I first heard her endorsement of this idea, I immediately knew she was not the economist she has been trying to sell herself as.  When she decided to put her stamp of approval on an idea about the economy that came from a candidate that states clearly that the economy is his weak point I realized she was capable of being just as ignorant as Senator Barack Obama was in associating with a certain Mr. Wright. 

Senator McCain has stated repeatedly that he is terrible with the economy (How can we take you seriously as a candidate at this point in history if this is the case?) so this is no surprise.  The surprise for me is that Sen. McCain and his campaign would decide that the place for him to come out of hiding and make his big stand was going to be on the battlefield of the economy.  I have to ask myself:  “Who though this would turn out well?”

Sen. McCain seems to end up in trouble every time he speaks publicly and the Republican party is sinking fast because of how unpopular the current presidency is.  If McCain is the current captain of the sinking Titanic why would Sen. Clinton jump on board the sinking ship. 

I do not give Sen. Obama as much credit as it would seem he should get for opposing the idea.  It would normally give us the idea that he is better in touch with the economy, but that is not the case. 

The truth is, the reason for his knowing this was a bad idea was because in the state that he represents currently, Illinois, they tried a similar idea and it failed miserably.  He simply knew it would fail because he was there the last time it failed. 

Again I say that I think that none of the three of these candidates is in fact a “good” choice.  I feel it is simply a matter of which one is the lesser of the evils.  In the case of the “Gas Tax Holiday” I score it this way:

Senator John McCain  -  Minus one-half point (only a half because I already knew he was terrible in terms of the economy)

Senator Hillary Clinton – Minus two points (this was such a stupid move on her part for so many reasons I think only taking two points away is being generous in trying to be fair)

Senator Barack Obama – Plus a half point - (he didn’t have any knowledge either way about the economy, he just got lucky)

As a side note, the Democrats, as a party, are working on drafting a proposal to help individual American’s at the pump without being such a stupid idea.

This weekend the frenzy of debate between the Democratic presidential hopefuls ratcheted up again.  The rhetoric is back up to speed as Senator Obama switched to the attack and Senator Clinton was on the defensive.

Senator Barack Obama was on the attack in the press this weekend most notably stating that Senator Hillary Clinton’s Iraq policies are “too much like” President Bush’s Iraq policies. 

Sen. Obama has been skillfully dancing through questions about his friend Mr. Wright in an impressive manner.  The truth is that the damage has been done and even if it is going to be turned around, it will take a few weeks.  Of course there is the possibility that a certain Mr. Wright might resurface and again lose his mind publicly.

Senator Clinton now has been tied to a gimmick in the form of this gas tax holiday.  Sen. Clinton has done fairly well in the polls and in the public recently.  She has seemed to realize that whenever she goes on the attack against Sen. Obama her popularity drops fast, so she has taken a kinder more generic tone in her debate about who is a better candidate and why.

It is going to be interesting over the next couple of days as we head into two more big primaries (haven’t they all been).  For the past few weeks Sen. Obama has been dropping in the polls and Sen. Clinton has been gaining ground.  The tone is about to change for the next couple of days, but I suspect that any major switch in the direction each candidate has been going the past few weeks, will be slow and will not be seen clearly for two to three weeks.

Then there is the groundhog candidacy of Senator John McCain.  Just like a groundhog or a gopher he pops up here and there and then disappears underground.  I am not sure this is the best way to campaign against a pair of media-hogs such as the Democratic senators.  If all that the people have been hearing about is the Democrats much of what the Republicans could say negative about the candidates has been beaten to death, the only interesting news left is going to be the negative news about the player; Senator McCain and his new vice president candidate.

There is an old saying amongst the acting community that can be translated two ways.

No Publicity is Bad Publicity!

There is a story making the rounds right now that claims that a certain Mr. Wright, who was formerly the pastor of the church that presidential hopeful Barack Obama attends, counseled a couple in his church to help with their marriage and then married the wife of this “counseling.”

Senator Barack Obama squeezes by in the primary in Guam this weekend. The senator squeezed by with a mere seven votes.

In looking at this I see what has been happening all along. There is a lot of press and stress. Then there is anticipation and prediction. In the end, the voters determine the democratic candidates to be equal, yet Sen. Barack Obama comes out just slightly ahead. How does this keep happening to Senator Hillary Clinton.

As I sort through the various conversations and interactions I have had throughout the information blitz of this campaign season, I am left wondering what is driving the voers to vote in this race the way they are voting.

Is it the true belief that this is the best candidate that the country has to offer?

Is it that none of the candidates are truly good prospects for the presidency and we must hurry to pick the least of the evils in the hopes of keeping what is about to happen to a low threshold of pain for the rest of us?

Is it to ensure that the unpopular actions of our current president are not repeated?

Is it to keep the Democratic race tight and running in the hopes of dividing their party so the Republicans can win easily?

Is it simply because a person likes the race of one candidate over another?

Is it simply because a person likes the Gender of one candidate over another?

Is it not liking the candidate particularly but supporting one party or the other?

In my recent comments and in listening to much of what is discussed in the media, I am convinced that many people vote for all of the wrong reasons and that many of the candidates and in reality both of the major parties count on that fact.

The truth is that I feel the race is so tight right now because all of the candidates are all so great, it is because all of the candidates are so average. They are not really bad candidates, all three are just average candidates with really average ideas and plans.

If my fears are the truth and we are simply settling for the lesser of three evils and hoping to minimize the future damage.

I do not yet endorse any of the three candidates and will not a I continue waiting in the hope that there will be a miracle and an awesome and independent candidate will come out of nowhere to represent the hopes of the people will emerge as the sudden superhero of the presidency.

If this person does not show up, as it is starting to seem, then I will have to chose one of these candidates and I will have to vote for one of them and that will simply be what I consider a vote for what is perceived as the lesser evil.

This choosing the lesser evil has been getting eviler and eviler. I mean the mere idea that I should vote for a person because he or she can bowl or drank some shots with some “average” people, or played basketball, etc. Seriously, what an insult to all of our intelligence.

If that does not work, offer to take a few cents our of our gas price and secretly charge us later to cover the billions of dollars lost to lower our gas a few cents and save us a few dollars in the few month period mentioned. In other words, bribe me.

Why should we be forced to endure this? Why are more people not insulted? These candidates are not normal, average people. I am not really convinced that a normal, average person should be given leadership of what is arguably the most powerful nation on the planet and it’s people. This is an above average job that will require an above average person.

Maybe the race and the polls are so close between all three candidates because they all are just as bad as the others and it barely matters which one wins. My search for the lesser evil has led me to believe in a new concept: “Equal Evil.” This is when one is looking for the lesser evil and finds that no option bring the lesser evil. At this point the evils are all the same.

I hope that none of this is true and I have just been thrown off by the various candidates attempts to seem like the average normal person and one of these candidates is actually a very above average individual who is truly capable of running this country.

The polls have been drifting in the direction of Senator Hillary Clinton, but she has another problem, the superdelegates have been drifting Senator Barack Obama’s way.

Just as the polls began to reflect the past few weeks of bad press that Sen. Obama seemed to be a magnet for, another perceived Clinton family ally, Former Democratic National Committee chairman Joe Andrew, publicly switched his support in Democratic primary from Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama.

In looking at and listening to the various polls over the past few days, I began to wonder;  “What if the entire situation completely reverses and Sen. Clinton manages to pull of the popular vote and Sen. Obama overturns the popular vote with the votes of the ever so mysterious “superdelegates?  Is there the potential for as much of a collapse of the Democratic Party?” 

In looking at the passion (often communicated as anger or rudeness) of the more vocal of Sen. Clinton’s supporters, I would have to say at least as much potential. 

The truth is that such a landslide of a turn in the popular vote is not as likely as the current polls suggest as they reflect the shift that took place with all of the bad press Se. Obama picked up during the Pennsylvania primary but none of the events surrounding the reemergence of a certain friend of his named Mr. Wright.

The problem with these polls is that in most cases it takes time to collect and compile the data and by the time this data is presented to the public it is a week or two behind.  In a race where things are happening so fast and the public opinion is shifting so fast the polls have rarely reflected what was going on in the week we are seeing the results.   That is why the results have been so surprising every time we have heard them.    These polls are sort of a crystal ball that can see into the past, but cannot see the present and in reality have little bearing on the future.

I suspect that Sen. Obama’s speech this week, completely distancing and in reality divorcing himself from a certain Mr. Wright (I refuse to honor this man with the title “reverend”) probably helped him in the public view particularly with his rare showing of emotion, but with this election year, who knows. 

The truth is however, that if Sen. Obama keeps eroding Sen. Clinton’s superdelegate support, her miraculous resurgence will be reduced to a blip on the radar screen of history. 

I have found it intriguing that right about the time Sen. Clinton started to make a comeback some of her seemingly guaranteed superdelegate supporters suddenly began shifting their support to Sen. Obama.  What is going on behind the scenes with the Washington insiders that we are not hearing about?  I am left wondering with many questions:

Is there something about Sen. Obama’s electability that the insiders can see that the rest of us cannot? 

Is Sen. Obama’s camp making some sort of deal behind the scenes that we are not hearing about? 

Is Sen. Obama more clearly the better choice for some reason that is not yet clear to the general population? 

Is there some terrible problem with Sen. Clinton that the general public does not yet know about? 

Are the scare tactics and public attacks on those who have defected or threatened to defect to the Obama camp starting to “turn off” her supporters?

The next two or three primaries probably really are the big ones.  I know that every primary for the past two or three months has been billed as “the big one,” but Sen. Obama could put away Sen. Clinton’s chances by simply winning those states and getting some major superdelegate supporters.  Sen. Clinton, on the other hand, could build a huge case for her statements that Sen. Obama is not electable by winning several states in a row as soon as some bad press came out about him. 

By next Tuesday, when we will be watching the next primaries, the effects of Sen. Obama’s speech on Monday will have settled in.  Was it strong enough and soon enough to stop his eroding popularity, or did it have little effect.  That is the biggest indicator that we will all see next week.

If you want to know where we really stand as a country on the candidates today just wait a week or two and look at the polling results.  Of course, by then, those results may not matter much, but at least your will know.

MoveOn.org has fired the first shots at the presumptive Republican candidate by running anti-McCain ads. The adds have quotes from both Senator McCain and President George Bush and are designed to get voters thinking about the election of Senator McCain as an extension of the troubled Bush presidency.

Senator McCain is in a catch twenty-two. He has gotten in trouble every time he has spoken publicly, but while he has been laying low waiting for the destruction of the Democratic Party (which seems eminent) he has been a sitting duck for an ambush such as this one.

It is amazing to watch the greatest opportunity he could have ever had slip out of his hands like this. I mean while the Democratic candidates are absolutely destroying each other, what better time to get into the public eye and be the one above the fray. Talk about missing an opportunity.

Now the battle has begun with an ambush and Senator McCain is going to start on the defensive.

Senator McCain is going to have to get into the public and start doing something noticeable pretty soon before the Democratic party begins the reconstruction process after the Democralypse or he will go down as one of the biggest losers ever.

A rolling stone gathers no moss and a stagnant candidate gathers no votes!

During the first quarter of this year the economy grew a whopping .6% (of course I am being facetious and that is incredibly small growth) which means that technically we are not in a “recession” as a nation. Wow! What great news! What is the word that describes a state where that is true and the economy is still miserable?

As far as economists are concerned a “recession” is when the GDP (Gross Domestic Profit) or economic growth decline for two consecutive months. If this is sustained for a long period of time then this is considered a “depression.”

As far as the general populous is concerned, a “recession” is when the overall economy is bad for any period of time and a “depression” is when this is the case for a prolonged period of time.

The real issue at hand here is that because the general public and the government are speaking in different languages (really just using the same words but differing definitions) the fact that government officials are insisting on making it clear that there is not a recession serves only to aggravate the situation. The impression that the general populous receives is that the government has no idea what the people are going through.

By design, the indicators used to determine if the nation is in a recession or not are can only make that determination after the problem has been sustained for a quarter of the year. If you look at this in terms of the current “downturn” or whatever it is properly designated, this indicator could say there is no real problem and common sense would say otherwise.

This indicator is a good indicator for government insiders and economists but is a terrible indicator for the general public. Also the word “downturn” is almost an offensive term as it seems to minimize the challenges of the people of the nation. It sounds so much like “this is a bump in the road,” which is a terrible irritant if you have just paid for dollars a gallon for gas, you are about to loose your home and join several of those who have lost their homes in your neighborhood, and your local grocery store is rationing rice etc.

To me, this terminology says: “We understand that large percentage of you are suffering terribly, but overall at least half of the population will be able to bounce back sooner or later.”

This is a great outlook if you look only at numbers and what the end result is, but as soon as one looks at the people involved with any level of compassion this is not okay.

I personally did not vote for politicians to simply balance books, I vote because I want people in office that care about my family and that American people. Using the existing indicators that are used by our government to determine if and when a response is necessary to save our economy creates a situation where our government is terribly late in being reactive and not at all proactive.

The current system takes a bad situation, and tells the world that the government is out of touch with the American People which can only serve to lose the consumer confidence and make the situation go from bad to worse. Then, months and possibly years later, when the current indicators finally determine that the problem has been sustained long enough to warrant a response, the sudden response and media blitz creates a certain sense of panic and again aggravates the situation.

Clearly the current indicators only work in a limited capacity and something else is needed. Maybe there should be an indicator that tells us when an indicator is not helpful or does not do enough. What happens when an indicator repeatedly indicates too late?

For example, imagine a jet that had radar and electronics that could only sense other aircraft in the air after they had collided and could not show you the other aircraft prior to contact. Wouldn’t the pilot be better off looking out the windows of the plane rather than relying upon this indicator? This is basically how the current system works. Our government would be better off just looking out of their windows and ignoring these indicators.

What can we do to change this?

I propose that there should be some kind of “Economic Pain and Suffering Index” that measures how much of the population is actually having a tough time making ends meet.

Something of this nature would indicate trends and possible turns in the economy early enough that preventative measures could be taken prior to there being undue stress upon the people and the nation as a whole and would clearly show that the government is not as out of touch with the American People.