Empathy

Rahm Emnual, the noble statesman, picks his spots and fights the truly
worthy battles, the stimulus package and healthcare. His next
assignment should be to battle the national debt. Let him make
government more efficient, cut the waste and reign in uncontrolled
treasury excesses.

Your sense of government is troubling. There are 38 czars! You
required empathy in the Supreme Court nomination yet created a void of
empathy in the economic branch. Your economic teams operate with the
impunity of George Bush’s Defense Department invading Iraq. PBS makes
them out to be the Robert Rubin’s cabal.

I never fail to remind you how poorly Geithner is doing. He operates
like a czar, yet his sole supporter is you! He has no support in
Congress, among White House staff or the public. His plan to address
the credit crisis at the banks has not worked (I offered a timely
constructive alternative). The investment market place is not headed
to the sound foundations that you promised. A wage czar over the
private sector is an absurd sense of government. Turn your wage czar
on the government especially the military and the empire of czars.
You should be privately vetting candidates to replace Geithner

I think an empathetic White House would not ignore the plight, for human
dignity, of a person who is unemployed but is willing to work. You
are ignoring human suffering, the rising cost of the necessities of
life is not an arcane economic term “the cost of living” but the cost
of surviving! Like many successful people, you deny your past when
your mother was on food stamps. America is more than surviving, it can
afford to embrace human dignity.

You need an economic plan for main street.
Let’s do something to get American kids to exercise. In-line skating
and bicycling are great activities that can even save gas. So public
works for bike and skate lanes would be good. Ice skating is a great
activity and the rinks can be used as in-line skate rinks in summer so
build some ice rinks. This idea is so good even your daughters can
get excited about it.
Basketball is also great, church and school gyms should be modified to
allow public access after school hours.

How do you finance the rinks and gyms? Partner them with Starbucks,
McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s. Rinks and gyms could be operated
by chains. You have to work on laws to address litigation for
personal injury because unfortunately these activities can break
bones. A screwed up society has made skating, biking and pick-up
basketball legally unappealing.

Mass transit is important for main street. Have a plan where
companies gain when they subsidize or pay for bus lines that service
their street so their employees use the bus to get to work. Encourage
companies to work with public transit to make it worthwhile to involve
public transit to transport employees.

Public works, that help Americans change the way they eat, would be
healthy. Greenhouses built on the roofs of government buildings.
Grow tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and strawberries. Use pubic lands
for urban farms. This was done in the thirties.

There is a real loss of sense of government. The big financial
companies can bully the government because government isn’t strong
enough to enforce laws like anti-trust. Government has spent the
people’s money bailing out failed companies not hard working people
who may become unemployed or lose their house. Government, at
30,000 feet, says there is no inflation but when you live on the ground, the
cost of surviving has increased while income has declined. The future
is bleak because of the national debt and unemployment. You talk as
if unemployment is some kind of economic term, ever think that in
three years you could be unemployed?