I listened to the President the other night. I have read and heard the many comments about his plan for jobs. People are so mean. I think his ideas are good. His first move in improving Education in this country should be restoring the Education budget with emphasis on using the funding for HIRING TEACHERS, not equipment, not buildings, not software, not administrative personnel, and not paraprofessional aides. While it is true all schools need all of these to function, they do not need anything more than they need teachers. You must have someone who needs to learn (students) and someone who can teach those who need to learn (teachers). All the other things are designed to make school better and the job of the teacher easier.
I heard what he said about roads and bridges. Fixing these are not just what we should do for the economy, it is about safety. While I feel that asphalt has played the lesser known, but nonetheless highly responsible role for global warming, it is better (if we must have it) to have it placed safely for the people who ride on it daily. Bridges have to be safe. We have seen what happens when they are not. We must have better airports and flight systems. They must be safe and flights must not be crowding the airspace. How we will do this I do not know. People all want to go to the same place at the same time, due to convenience. If people have business in Chicago, they don't want to land in Bloomington and drive in. We have become believers of "Time is Money" and that is how we have designed our world - to save us time, thereby saving us money. With this "Age of Technology," is it still important to have our businesses in major cities? I don't know. Maybe giving a tax break to the company who decides it is okay to move 75 or 100 miles away from a major city base would encourage a spread that would take the pressure off major airports. Maybe then smaller airports would be utilized at times. Maybe the answer lies in just not routing every flight through a major center. I live in Mobile. Why do I have to fly to Dallas/Ft. Worth or Atlanta to get a flight to Orlando or Birmingham? Just a thought....
I feel he is right about the trade agreements. I sent him a letter expressing just this thought. We cannot continue to have American companies manufacture in foreign countries to escape fees, regulations, and unions while American families go without jobs. While we do understand the CEO's and Board's desire for money, the salaries they are paying should be funding American households, not Indian, Mexican, or Chinese ones. The last time I looked, other countries do not pay income tax to the United States. No wonder our country is losing money left and right. Bring back manufacturing to the inside of our borders. Put Americans back to work in factories making money and paying state and federal taxes. Hmm? What a concept! If I can think of it, it must not be hard.
I know there will be many congress members and senators who feel they will vote against this plan simply because it was written by our President. Why? Because he is Democratic and/or because they don't like him. What they need to remember is that the "bail out" of the 'big boys' did not work. It was never designed to and it was initiated by another party's administration. We all said, "why not bail out us, the little guy?" Well people, this is the best way and probably the only way we will get our government to do so.
Sign the damn act. Act like we are one country and get behind our leader. He is our leader right now and no amount of arguing by the Legislature will change that. If our neighborhood had a natural disaster and a school, hospital, or our only store were destroyed, we would work together to rebuild it whether we liked each other or not. We would do this because it is to the benefit of all. Well, one hell of a natural disaster of sorts has hit our country in the form of a severely faltering economy. We can fix this by restoring jobs to American citizens. We do this by working together to rescind current foreign trade agreements and bring manufacturing back inside our borders. We do this by agreeing with the plan. It is not about "who" came up with it. It is about "We The People" and the future of our country, The United States of America.
