State of the Union

Our President Barack Obama, will address the nation tonight in what could be considered a State of the Union address. With all the turmoil that is surrounding our nation both internationally and domestically, I thought I'd post this little article by noted author and champion of the underprivileged Dr. Anne Wortham.

Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas. Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness.

By Anne Wortham

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century.

I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. I would have to believe that "fairness" is the equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

If you think America is a nation made up of hard working and self sacrificing individuals who believe they can overcome life's challenges if just given the opportunity, then we have to stand up and demand our rights back from a government that sedates us through it's continued growth of entitlement programs.

"Yes We Can," has always been the mantra of the individual, not government. Wake Up America!

Freedom

Most people believe freedom is a wonderful thing and while that is most certainly true, freedom without responsibility often creates chaos. We all remember the saying growing up that everyone has the right to free speech, but yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre is irresponsible.

A free market system works in the same way. Big business creating competitive advantages through unfair business practices and big labor unions creating uncompetitive wage agreements are no less irresponsible as the individual yelling fire in a crowded movie theatre.

These predatory practices, by the individual, companies or labor are the reason our country has laws and legislation. The problem lies in that all to often, the individual ends up being the only one that has to pay the price for their indiscretions.

Big business and big labor both have powerful lobbies to influence our elected officials and consequently an ill-informed electorate pays the price with lost job opportunities or higher prices for the goods and services they purchase.

We as individuals can no longer just blindly trust our elected officials to be statesman and do what is in the country's best interest when they pander to the short sighted politics that may in the near term benefit their local constituency but does long term damage to the economy and eventually hurts the country as a whole.

Many states just like individuals spend beyond their means and when economic hard times arise, they are ill prepared to fend off financial hardship. But unlike the individual, states can exert extreme pressure on federal legislators to procure federal tax dollars to help bail them out. This double standard is unacceptable as federal assistance comes from every citizen in the country.

This helps explain the dynamic of how big government continually grows. Our federal legislators act irresponsibly and get federal assistance for states, big business or big labor due to lobbing interests they have and when the individual taxpayer sees these massive bailouts or sweetheart deals they say what about me? So what do many of our elected officials do? They bailout the irresponsible individual as well.

Two wrongs never made a right, but this is exactly what many elected officials do because they only creed they live by is to get re-elected. Irresponsible behavior on whatever level, should be made to pay the price. If a individual commits a crime, they pay a price right? But our elected officials operate under the guise that they know better and compose legislation so complex that they only can understand it with the help of massive staffs. They often justify this legislation by claiming to correct the imbalances created by anyone but themselves.

The end result is you have many elected officials bartering away the rights of every American in order to placate their own special interests. With 435 members in the House and 100 in the Senate, you can readily see the utter mess that can ensue when our elected officials act primarily in their own interests instead of the country as a whole.

Serving in government should not be a profession, but a selfless act of service to ones country similar to service in the military. You run for office for a set amount of time and then go back to being a private citizen. Limiting terms of all elected offices should be the mantra all concerned citizens rally around. Change in the legislative process has to come in order to reverse the obscence growth of government entitlement programs that while sounding high-minded are so bereft with waste and bureaucracy that inefficiencies are the rule, not the exception.

Guarantees

When you purchase any product, it is comforting to know there is a guarantee. Of course if the product was of such high quality, the guarantee really doesn't come into play except on rare occasions.

Now let us say you purchase a product with a fancy guarantee but it doesn't perform as expected and you want a refund? No problem right? Well not exactly. If the manufacturer of that product doesn't have the capacity to back up the guarantee, you are out of luck. But you say wait a minute, I can sue the manufacturer. Now while that is most certainly true if the company doesn't file for bankruptcy and you have the resources to hire a lawyer, but if they do file for bankruptcy then what? How are you going to recoup your investment? This brings to light the real value of guarantees.

This assumption of a guarantee being valid led many of our private lending institutions to find themselves in the same situation as the individual in our previous example. Many of the banks that lent money to homeowners operated under this assumption when encouraged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower lending requirements to prospective home buyers becuase they would be guaranteed by the government.

As in the previous example of the manufacturer defaulting on their guarantee of the product you purchased, the government guarantee against default of risky mortgages has produced a similar outcome with the exception that every taxpayer is on the hook for this guarantee. In fact, individuals and prospective homeowners took out loans that only under rare circumstances were given IE; individuals that didn't have a regular monthly stream of income because that income was in the form of commissions, and these ARM's were being issued like peanuts to an elephant.

The government guarantee to the banks issuing these ARM's were of little value, because the guise under which these loans were given used unsound lending requirements. The government's instance on lowering lending standards to advance the politically expedient pandering and exploitation of it's citizens in order to enhance their own re-elections, is every bit as reprehensible as a manufacturer making an inferior product and not backing up their guarantee.

Many in government come into office with high ideals and often overestimate their own importance. With this mindset they then rationalize that if they don't pander to the broadest part of the electorate they won't be re-elected to continue delivering more and more preposterous legislation.

This is a great argument for the imposition of the same rigorous standards that apply to a product's safety and the legal ramifications that follow with private industry to our elected government officials.

The insistent meddling in our economy by elected officials that have questionable experience to do so under the guise that they know better than the established, tried and true, sound business practices is absurd. Is there a place for government regulation? Of course there is, as improprieties will occur if business amasses to much power, but remember this. Those with deep pockets are always going to have the where-with-all to influence our elected officials and the more tax dollars that the government controls, the bigger the prize lobbyists have to go after.

If a business operates in an inefficient manner, they go out of business unless they can influence politicians. Big business and big labor can often do this, but what about the small businessman and the average Joe lunch pale? Sorry, no soup for you the little guy. Reduce the size and scope of government and you reduce the influence by the powerful on it's elected officials.

We have laws on the books and a court system to interpret them to handle those that break the law. The problem lies when the elected officials that create the laws, can be influenced by the same people they are meant to safeguard it's citizens from.

The Check Is In The Mail

I'd like to ask you all a question. If you had to write a check to pay your income taxes, could you do it with no money in the bank? Well you actually could but there would be hell to pay right?

Well that is what are government is doing by printing money to fund much of it's misguided and wasteful spending.

Now I know you can take out a loan to cover your check, but what if you are not credit worthy enough to qualify for the loan? It's tough being you then isn't it?

Of course these restrictions don't apply to our government and there is something inherently wrong that.

The theme that should be guiding every American is that government is made by the people, for the people.

When the rules that apply to the government which is meant to represent us are not the same rules that we the people are required to adhere to, we should be very suspect of the elected officials in charge of passing laws the everyday citizen has to live by.

So stand up and let your congressman know, you are sick and tired of the double standard.

Lobbying Influences

Whenever a pool of money is under the care of people that only pay lip service to the charge they have been given to be good stewards of, special interests are going to have THEIR way in how that money is used.

This is why our founding fathers designed a bill of rights and constitution with checks and balances to provide and maintain the pursuit of freedom for all it's citizen's to succeed or fail within the rules of law. This system of governance can only succeed however if it's citizens have a healthy skepticism of the largess of it's government. Rules of law, the meting out of justice and the defense of our liberty and safety, are usually reasonable expectations of government. When the government intrudes in our economy however, we have to exercise extreme caution. The shifting of assets through legislation can provide those with significant financial interests and resources in our economy to exert tremendous pressure on our legislators.

Capitalism is a rough and tumble system that provides great reward for those that can assume risk. It can also be brutally fair in it's dispensation of that reward and failure. Of course when this system is skewed to reduce to risk of some and not others, fairness flies out the window. This is so often why well meaning legislation ends up adding layers of government bureaucracy while at the same time making it more expensive for the individual to comply with. Of course large companies don't like this either, but they usually have the legal and financial resources to absorb many of these extra costs. It is so important to scrutinize every piece of legislation, but the average citizen has very few resources and even less time to do this when the sheer size of these bills make it difficult for even the legislators that vote to know what's in them, let alone their unintentional consequences.

Our founding fathers were weary of this and consistently wrote about the dangers of the government becoming so large that it would become a self-serving institution. Regrettably, this is where America finds itself today.

I seriously doubt the framers of our constitution wanted it's elected officials to treat their government service as a lifelong occupation and this is where the rub lies. The self perpetuating nature of government bureaucracies and the legislators that cow-tow to the lobbying influences that keep them employed.

Our government has to be responsive to the concerns of it's citizens to be sure, but it doesn't work very well for the average Joe who can only influence it's politicians at election time. The government was designed to work for the people, not the other way around. The sheer size of our government today makes it virtually impossible for the everyday citizen to have much influence.

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I hope this site will inspire, educate and allow you the chance to interact with each other in the direction of our country.