POLITICS AND NATURE

The stimulus bill is being worked on in the Senate and, as I understand it, will be headed for a vote early next week, maybe Tuesday. Last night with three Republicans voting in favor: Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.

I heard John McCain say this was an irresponsible bill and nothing of the kind had ever been passed before. How quickly he forgot his campaign suspension about 5 months ago. Bi-partisanship is not much in vogue in Washington D.C. these days. And there is no reason to think that it should be. It is important to have opposition.

I am not overly optimistic regarding these massive packages coming out of Congress. But, I have hopes that it will work. I don’t have a problem with government action. In fact, I believe there are a great many things we need to do socially and politically which fall outside the realm of private industry.

I also think a real and substantive dialogue over the role of government is vital to the health of the nation.

There has been so much talk about infrastructure and how our society needs to focus on the crumbling, aging, roads, bridges, schools etc. and private industry does not have the capacity or the will to spend money. This is what we pay taxes for.

We are in a period wherein people think the nation does not have social responsibility. At the same time, we have a strong and lasting wariness regarding government and authority.

I would personally advocate for a civilian conservation corps like what Roosevelt put into place. These people would gain jobs, experience, they would buy stuff, and we would not have to be so overly concerned about these organizations which are too big to fail.

There are a great many think tanks advocating revisionist history which denies any benefits of FDR and the New Deal. This is ideological and people should not be fooled by the ideas. FDR didn’t find an economic panacea but his administration did do a great deal of good. Balance and understanding are essential elements of coming out of this period of uncertainty stronger and better than we were before.