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There has been another letter floating around the internet in the past couple of weeks. It begs a response. Below is a copy of the original “Dear World” followed by my Dear USA.
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Dear World,
The United States of America, your quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for its 2001-2008 service outage.
The technical fault that led to this eight-year service interruption has been located, and the parts responsible for it were replaced Tuesday night, November 4. Early tests of the newly-installed equipment indicate that it is functioning correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional by mid-January.
We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage, and we look forward to resuming full service — and hopefully improving it in years to come.
Thank you for your patience and understanding.
The USA
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Dear USA
Thank you for your efforts. In spite of the corruption of the U.N. and the showboating of Hollywood, you have done amazing things these past eight years. I hope in the rush to find the faults and fix them you don’t abandon the great work you have begun. After years of neglect, you have actually changed USA policy and sent real help to Sub-Saharan Africa, worthy of your role as the “quality supplier of ideals of liberty and democracy.”
Thank you, USA and President Bush, for PMI, your Presidents Malaria Initiative. It has helped bring the malaria rate in Zanzabarian infants from 20% to under 1%. It has helped to locally produce enough mosquito nets for every child under age five in Tanzania. These are just examples of the great good it has done.
Thank you, USA and President Bush, for PEPFAR, the Presidents Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. In 2003, only some 50,000 Africans were receiving medication for Aids. Today, over a million and a half receive such medication.
Thank you, USA and President Bush, for your many Mellennium Challenge Corporation investments on our continent. This program has provided micro loans and school scholarships to help us earn our way out of poverty and to educate our youth for a better future.
Though we thank you, USA, we hope that your new President, Mr. Obama will both continue the policies of his predecessor and further help us to help ourselves.
We apologize for not making our appreciation better known to you, but we have had a hard time getting the ear of your press. They don’t seem to think it worth their time to write about Africa.
Thank you for your patience, understanding and help.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Dear Mr. Obama,
I am more conservative than you are. I voted for Mr. McCain. I will do what I can to act as loyal opposition. I will point out where I think you go wrong and will congratulate you when you do things right.
I honestly hope you will be an outstanding leader and four years from now will give me reason to vote for you for a second term of office.
I like that you are positive and confident. Both are good and worthwhile traits for a leader.
You are an excellent public speaker. That is an asset than can carry you far, as it already has.
When you take office, like Mr. Bush immediately after 9-11-01, you will be facing an economy that needs confidence more than it needs a bailout.
You have a very big and very important job to do.
My Thanksgiving wish for you, Mr. President-Elect is this:
I hope that you will abandon the politics that got you where you are today and become the leader you have the capability to be.
Be a pragmatic manager, not a politician. Hire the best. Demand the best. Prove to the world that you are the leader of the strongest, most innovative, most caring and most resilient country on earth.
If you make your decisions with an eye to ensure your reelection in four years, we are all in trouble.
If you surround yourself with Washington Insiders and leftovers from the last Democrat administration, we are all in trouble.
You will never have more power than you have right now. Use it for change: not for more government; for better government.
I wish you well.
Your fellow citizen,
Tom Vail
President Elect Barack Obama will make a big mistake, if, as reported, he nominates Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.
She carries with her all the baggage of Bill Clinton’s tactic of appeasement and his negotiations with rogue states when he was in office. Will she be able to shed that smell?
If Mr. Obama really does want to deliver change, why would he nominate Clinton when her views on the Iraq conflict are almost the same as George Bush?
In fact, wouldn’t it be better if Mr. Obama nominated George W. Bush to be his Secretary of State?
He is more respected on the world stage than Hillary, who outside the USA is known as President Clinton’s wife. He has a hundred times the experience that Hillary has in foreign affairs. He will never run against Mr. Obama in a future election. He needs to do something to build a legacy that is positive. He already has all the connections he needs in all the hot spots on the globe.
Mr. Obama and the Democrats may not like George Bush but they have already won that war. Instead of destroying or wasting this valuable experience, why not use the spoils of the victory for something positive?
Arrived home at midnight last night after a very relaxing vacation. For my efforts, I accomplished a lot of things: Gained weight (too many malasadas and too much lilikoi pie); read three books (two good-one bad*); avoided all the post election rehash/second-guessing (it’s over – let’s get on with life); saw the visits to this site drop precipitously.
The first one means I have to get back to eating responsibly, not a big deal.
The second was the result of one book read each way on the plane and one read when the weather was poor and I was lazy. I loved “Plato and a Platypus Walked into a Bar.” ”Playing for Pizza” was a fun, quick read. I read “Can We Do That?” and highly recommend you not waste the time.
I did not miss the news or the second guessing about the election, at all.
Was disappointed that no comments were made on JSV’s excellent suggestion re energy as a national security measure. We may come back to that but for now, I will let that go in favor of other topics.
Am back to regular posts as of now. Sorry for the layoff but it was fun, relaxing, and reminded me of the need to just reflect on the beauty all around us.
Here is the comment that JSV added to my post: New Republican Leader, Hilary’s Strategy for 2012, Nukes in Iran….”
Here’s a topic that I’ll be pursuing over the next year on a non-partisan approach to energy policy:
Theory: rack and stack the DoD budget. Take the “least valuable” $X billion/year. Look at what that same $50 billion/year could do in terms of domestic, renewable energy generation. Now weigh the “national security” value of that $X billion spent on defense vs. that $50 billion spent on domestic generation. Which provides more “national security” benefit? My theory is that, whether the value of X is 5, 50, or 200, the national security value of domestic generation will outweigh the value if spent in the DoD budget.
What are the bottom-of-the barrel DoD projects? As in, if we cut $50 billion/year from their budget, what goes? Talking to my friend who does financial analysis for the Air Force, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project would be near the top of that list.
What are the top-of-the-heap ways to spend the money on domestic, renewable generation? My hunch is that feed-in-tariffs, tax credits for home/small business solar/wind/heat pumps/geothermal/improved insulation would be near the top of the list. $50 billion/year would allow 500,000 Americans each year to spend $100,000 on a solar PV system that would make them energy self-sufficient (and could charge their electric car/scooter). Or it would allow 500,000 Americans currently using home heating oil or natural gas heating to switch to a 100% renewable combination of solar/geothermal/heat pumps. The list goes on…
Thoughts?
I think that phrasing domestic, renewable generation incentives in terms of national defense value per dollar COMPARED to the national defense value of that equivalent spending through the DoD is a very non-partisan way to move forward with sensible energy leglislation…
To help with this reallocation discussion, I thought the following would be helpful so we are all starting from the same spot. First is the FY2009 US Budget overview (to read this, it might help to go to View in your browser and increase the size of the text):
Next, also from the National Defense Budget Estimates for FY2009, is the summary of the DoD Budget:
One other note: Of the 2.1 million people employed by the DoD for FY2009, fully 33% of them are civilian employees.
Dig around and see if there is any fat in this budget that you think could be used for JSV’s suggestion and then post a comment here.
Thanks.
JSV (Energy Independence Blog) has suggested a very interesting topic for discussion. He basically asks us to imagine how we would use a percentage of the Department of Defense budget to reduce our Energy Dependence as a strategy to improve our National Defense. Read his proposal here and then comment to this post with your thoughts.
These and other topics are on my list……but not for posts today, or tomorrow.
It’s vacation time.
I will likely not do more than a couple of posts in the next 14 days while I suffer through warm weather, too much good food and less than the usual intellectual stimulation. I do plan to get back to posting once a day starting on the 21st. Between now and then, I may take time to do a couple of quick posts. In the meantime, if you will post comments to this post with your suggestions for topics, that may kick start me upon my return.
Thanks, Tom
President Elect Obama has just completed a grueling 20+ months of campaigning. He deserves a vacation. What does he get instead? Now he has to find another gear. The work is just starting. Here is a short list of things he must do in the next 75 days:
1. He has to bone up on the politics of the world – immediately. Russia has already moved its first pawn, missiles to the Kaliningrad District. Pakistan is on life support – and they have nukes. Iran can’t wait for the U.S. to pull out of Iraq so they can move back in. Afghanistan was a hornets nest for the Russians, will be for us, but Mr. Obama has promised to make it his war. Europe’s economy is in far worse shape than the U.S. and Mr. Obama will need to convince them to join in any war on terror when they have too few troops and too few euros to want to help……. (the list is long and the complexities many).
2. He has to appoint his staff and his cabinet. Most of his staff choices can be simple job changes from campaign positions to the West Wing. The cabinet positions are a stickier wicket. For every appointment he makes, he will disappoint 3 or 4 others. If he is to succeed, each of his appointments will need to be the most qualified person, but, he must choose the one that brings the biggest constituency (or alienates the smallest). The choice must look like the best person without looking too partisan. In short, he will use up a fair amount of his ‘honeymoon cash’ before he even takes office.
3. Much like Mr. Bush after 9-11, he is inheriting a broken economy, or at least a broken financial/credit system. He must prepare a strong plan to heal the economy. He must tighten up mortgage lending but that will mean people losing their homes. Like Mr. Bush, there is almost no way to win with the economy. Most of the moves Mr. Obama needs to make will alienate one of his biggest constituencies: the working poor or Wall Street (yes, Wall Street was one of Mr. Obama’s biggest benefactors in the election campaign). The good news is that our economy is still better than almost any other on planet earth. That’s why Euros, Yuans, and virtually every other currency has been running to the Dollar for safety causing their values to drop 5% to 25% against our currency. The bad news is that a strong dollar cripples our ability to compete on the world market. The other bad news is that economic problems, especially in the third world, will foment unrest.
4. He has to learn to work with and unite the Democratic Party. And he won’t have the unifying hatred of George Bush to hold them together. Congress is made up of 435 strong egos. Just because the majority of them have a “D” behind their name, does not mean they will be easy to lead. How does he keep the NEA happy and raise education performance? How does he improve the economy and give more power to the unions?
5. He needs a strong plan to solve our problem of energy dependence. If he uses the Nuclear option he loses half his party. If he uses coal, he loses the environmentalists. If he kills corn ethanol as he should, he alienates the farm lobby. If he allows offshore drilling or drilling in Anwar, he loses three quarters of his party.
6. He wants to create a universal health care plan. There is no money for such a plan and it can’t be raised by increasing taxes only on the top 5% of earners.
7. His plans to redistribute wealth will eventually threaten most the true contributors to the society.
8. Oh, yes. He has to write an amazing Inaugural address. He needs to inspire the nation like Kennedy or Reagan. At least this is a job he has proven he can do. The others may be on the ‘earn-while-you-learn’ program.
I wish him well. He needs our well wishes and we need for him to succeed.
Just returned from a meeting (Oregon Winegrape Growers). On the drive home, I heard my first election results including the fact that Mr. McCain had given a concession speech. I had a feeling something like I do when the 49ers lose a football game.
First, I congratulate Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden. They ran a smart campaign and won handily. That is good. The close result that I was predicting would not have been good for the country. When my team loses a close game and there was a bad call or seeming bias by the referees, it is harder to lose. I obsess about the call or the refs, not the result. This does me no good. It doesn’t change the outcome. It doesn’t lead me to reassess my team and look for opportunities to learn from the defeat.
I was disappointed. Disappointed in that I had hoped for a split government. I believe that total control of the government can be a narcotic – not good for the body even though it may feel good for a while.
I was encouraged. Encouraged in that my team can stop living in the past. It now needs to decide who it is. It needs to decide what form it will take in its new role as loyal opposition.
What do I hope will come of this?
I hope that the Republicans will be good losers – that they will work harder to stand up for their traditional principles. I want to see them fight for smaller government. I want them to work to prevent the excessive, some say uncontrolled, spending at the Federal level. I hope that all Americans, Red and Blue will support our new President and help him to heal wounds and unite us again. I hope they will tell Mr. Obama when he is wrong.
Most of all, I hope that I have been wrong all along about Mr. Obama. I hope his term as President allows him to fulfill his promise as a leader. That will be good for all Americans.
It is down to the last day. Tuesday we vote. I failed miserably at providing an issue a day with my planned “30 Days – 30 Issues” series. But there was the opportunity to discuss lots of the issues.
So what is the single issue that will be your reason for voting for or against either of the two candidates?
I think that for those on the right, it is fear of socialism. I think most voters on the right believe that’s the direction our government will go with a President Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress. It makes no difference to people on the right if Mr. Obama is bright or if he promises many wonderful things. What counts is our freedom. Most people on the right don’t want to see government grow and freedoms diminish. So the right is voting out of fear. Not as many are voting for Mr. McCain. Most are voting against Mr. Obama. So for Republicans, the single most important issue is FEAR OF SOCIALISM.
For those on the left, I think it comes down to a repudiation of the past 8 years. It is almost a “get even” vote. For many on the left, I think the vote is more an anti-Bush, anti-Republican vote than a pro Obama vote. Unlike the McCain supporters, though, I think there are a lot on the left who believe what Mr. Obama promises. They are voting for Mr. Obama as much or more than they are voting against the past. So, for Democrats, I think the single most important issue is CHANGE. That may be change in the negative, meaning not George Bush or not Republican. Or, that may be change in the positive, as in a new vision of government as Mr. Obama describes it.
My personal vote is a combination of voting against Mr. Obama, and voting for what used to be Republican principles, like small government, the constitution as a legal document not a living thing, states rights, lower taxes, etc. I will confess that I don’t believe electing a President McCain will get me smaller government, more states rights, or lower taxes. It could, if a President McCain has the will and the guile, prevent bigger government to some extent. It could cause taxes to rise less than under a government where both legislative and executive branches are controlled by Democrats. So what is my reason for this vote? The single most important reason is to stop our country’s drift to bigger and more intrusive government. Call it fear of Socialism if you like.
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