February 4, 2009

• Obama’s Best

  So far I haven’t been too impressed with the changes Obama has been making. Sure some of them make sense but they were just obviously expected and not worthy of the fanfare. The pay discrimination law is good stuff but hardly ground shaking.  And surely the abortion and torture proclamations were obvious to any outsider. And it’s not like he hadn’t said he was going to close Guantanamo Bay for ages. Though he should have demanded it be closed IMMEDIATELY and not caved to all this “It’s gonna be sooo hard, not in my back yard, BS”.

  The Salary Freeze on Administration Members making over 100K is like a trivial and pointless symbolic gesture. And that’s coming from me who believes strongly in Presidents using the power of symbolism to change the hearts and minds of Americans.  The problem is… 100K a year!?!? Come on! How many normal people can relate to that!?!? Does Obama not realize the Median HOUSEHOLD income is around 50K. That’s the entire household. We’re talking about just one person making 100K.  That’s disproportionate to the point of stupidity.

  If President Obama wants to make a gesture that would show solidarity with the American people he would at LEAST cut the salaries of ALL government employees to match the Median Household income. Then, that would create a strong personal incentive for people to actually work to increase that median income which means increasing the salary for regular working people like you and me.  He should at least provide a voluntary program where people can opt in to make their salaries match the median and make a strong example by being the first to opt in himself together with all his cabinet members, chief of staff, and other senior most administration members.

  Or better yet make a pledge not to earn more than Minimum Wage until this Economic Crises is OVER. That would by a symbollic gesture worth making headlines. And of course congress and anyone in a position of power in Business or Government should do exactly the same thing. The salary freeze as conceived is insignificant posturing.

  Obama’s statements, or lack there of, on the conflicts in the Middle East have been worst than irrelevant. He’s doing a decent job of avoiding all the real issues while sounding nice to everyone. Though of course if he wanted, he has the power to start making real change TODAY, by stopping his backing of the concept of justified unilateral aggression by anyone and supporting addressing grievances rather than ignoring them. And he can stop vilifying legitimately elected governments in the process.

  The stimulus of course, who knows right? My suspicion is that it’s way too small and non-ambitious enough to substantially change around our culture in a manner that gets us on the right track. But maybe it’ll help or maybe it won’t. I’d rather he’d done a much more ambitious larger, long term plan including everything he’s doing plus a LOT more tax cuts (real cuts, not refund check bs), debt elimination, bank restructuring, new investments, CEO and executive firings, investigations into wrong doing, etc. But instead he decided to compromise on what he thought he could get passed with the most support in order to be able to use that support to fight bigger battles down the line.  An interesting strategy but I think it’s far too slow and conservative. Things will get much worse. hopefully people will still follow him then instead of blaming him when the Stimulus isn’t as successful as we might like.

  Lastly there’s Obama’s move to try and push back the conversion over to Digital Broadcasting. Again, I think it’s just a bad idea. All the money already invested is going to waste! And how many times are they going to push it back? At some point the deadline HAS to come.  I understand that the voucher program was bungled horribly and a lot of people will be without television. But it’s far easier just to let the change happen and then you’ll identify the people who can’t get TV much faster and much more accurately. You won’t be giving out boxes to people who don’t need it at all. Because they’ll know right away. And then give them a stupid converter box. Geez. It’s NOT hard. It’s true Congress and the last administration screwed things up with this, but that’s no reason to compound the problem further by pushing the deadline back again. It’s been far too long a wait for this shift. That bandwidth needs to be opened up so new innovation can be built upon it. That will promote the economy even further.

  So what’s Obama’s best move so far? Perhaps it’s ironic, but it turns out the Best move of one of our best Speaker Presidents ever was in fact a speech. Well not even a speech really just a series of comments he made about Wall Street Bonuses. Here’s what he said:

  “One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street Bankers had given themselves twenty billion dollars worth of bonuses, the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004, at a time when most of these institutions are teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don’t provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads, that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful. And part of what we’re gonna need is for the folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility.“

  It’s just words right? But for once they are the right words that actually can change things. Before I heard this statement I heard articles on the radio and read them in the newspaper wherein the commentator would quite sincerely state without questioning or condemnation something along the lines of “Wall Street believes that bonuses are essential to retaining the good talent they need to get back on track.” 

  Such statements are absurd.  If bankers don’t get the bonuses and choose to leave by all means let them. It’s not like the country is rolling in the job opportunities for them or that their “amazing” success records working for companies on the verge of a violent horrible demise is going to look so good on their resumes. Honestly these bankers can afford a cut in Bonuses simply by virtue of the fact that their salaries and pay are going to get cut NO MATTER WHAT. Just like everybody else’s. And honestly, for many of them, it might be the institution will be served BETTER if they left. They probably ought to have been fired a long time ago. Clean house and start over with a new work ethic and new principles guiding the directions of these companies and determining the character of the kinds of people they hire to work for them. That would make sense. The whole insane Bonus system itself is a part of the problem and should be done away with in favor of more consistent and fair salary schemes in line with what most Americans get in terms of paychecks.

  Thankfully ever since President Obama made these statements, nobody has dared raise the specter of the absurd argument that “bonuses are necessary”. And for that reason alone I think it’s the best thing our new President has done thus far in his short Presidency. More to the point I think it is a step in the right direction of changing the culture of the country by changing the mindset of a population that thinks that unbridled greed in the natural order of thing. It’s a lesson we desperately need to learn and I hope President Obama’s words have reached people and started us on that path to greater knowledge and morality.

  Let’s hope this is the first of many good lessons to learn from our new President yet to come.

  • 9:18 am
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