What I want to hear in the State of the Union Address ...

Q:  What do I think would help to take the sting out this lousy economy?

A:  JOBS!!

"Sting!!"

@Copyrighted Photograph,  2010.  All Rights Reserved: Isabelle Black Smith.

Looking forward to the State of the Union address. Hope it winds up being more than past rhetoric or some pep rally speech. I want to know what President Obama is going to do to bring overseas jobs back here to the USA. A detailed plan on bringing jobs BACK to the USA would impress me.


What do you most want to hear?



1/26/2010  Well, it was ... not surprisingly ... largely a "Pep Rally" speech after all.  I found it rather ironic that the President started his speech by talking about the need for both sides of the aisle to work together ... not just sit together.  Where was this same spirit during the last two years of his administration??  When Republicans were not only NOT invited to the table, but where excluded from the room entirely?  When the Healthcare Reform Law was crammed down our throats whether we wanted it or not?  The latter aside, I am hopeful that members of our new Congress, the 112th U.S. Congress, will find a way to work together in order to accomplish the hard work that needs to be done in order to put our country back together again.

Next up? Green Jobs ... How many promised Green Jobs ... promised at the start of the last two years ... are present and thriving today?  Green energy and green jobs are a noble goal to shoot for, but we aren't there yet with the technology ... not to the point where we can rely on 80% Green Energy.  Penalizing the little guy (you and me) via cap and trade policies for having to continue to rely on existing technologies isn't going to change the latter fact.  I do, however, agree with the notion of discontinuing subsidies for oil companies in the here and now.  Use this money to fund viable options for large scale green energy technology research.

The President didn't really address bringing jobs back to the U.S. either ... a lot of talk and hyperbole, but he avoided the tough issues.  We are going to have to make doing business here in the U.S. attractive to companies who have decided to ship jobs overseas.  That means heavily taxing imports to make products made here in the USA more attractive to U.S. consumers and more costly to companies making their products overseas.  It means lowering the corporate tax rates, so that doing business here in the USA makes sense to these companies once again.  And quite frankly, Mr. President, churning out more people with college degrees isn't going make American companies want to hire more U.S. employees.  Bottom line is that the same employees in other countries (e.g., India and China) cost these companies less.  It has little to do with education, experience or expertise; the bottom line is the almighty dollar.  And in that line of thought, excessive government regulation is also costly when it comes to doing business here in the U.S.  I'm not saying do away with all regulation: just take a fair and balanced approach and eliminate unecessary or excessive regulations.

Most important of all ... In order to reach our "Sputnik moment", Mr. President, we need to get our country back onto stable ground.  That means addressing the 4 billion dollars A DAY that we are paying on just the interest for our current national debt ... that's 1.46 TRILLION DOLLARS in interest per year!!!  Addressing our ridiculously out of control national debt is going to take more than a "spending freeze" ... It will take a spending freeze and massive spending cuts.  Investing in our future needs to mean getting a handle on this national debt and starting to dig our country back out again before we are burried alive.  Tough economic times --not to mention the ongoing weakening value of the American dollar due to mounting debt--require hard choices to be made in the here and now.