THE VIEW FROM HERE

On Wednesday mornings at ten o’clock a group of local residents,
and augmented by Cloverdale attendees, meet to discuss current
events. This group originated years ago with historian Dr.
Christopher O’ Sullivan known to his many friends here in
Healdsburg as Chris.
I am sick and tired of hearing what the President didn’t do:
what he should have done; what he could have done and how he had
not full-filled every wish and dream of every self interest group
in this country. So I asked my group of cohorts a simple question.
What would you do to make things better if you were to replace
President Obama today? It is a question I think we should all
consider before we criticize the guy who is stuck with the job of
getting us out of a mess he did not create. Have we all forgotten
John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you, but
what you can do for your country?”
I was a teenager during the Great Depression. I saw the
Hooverville’s and the soup kitchens of that period. I remember the
struggles of Franklin D. Roosevelt to get any kind of social
legislation passed and how years later Truman was humiliated by the
press because he asked his young daughter’s opinion about a
political matter. Now history has changed their image. Our
hindsight always seems to be better than our foresight.
Recently the CEO of Starbucks in an interview on TV suggested
that large companies and corporations with hold their political
contributions and spend the money instead to create jobs. It
doesn’t take a mathematical genius to observe that if people have
jobs they have money to spend and business benefits. He noted that
only “nine million workers are making things in the United States”
and it is time we started manufacturing more of the goods we now
import.
The results of our group’s informal survey was indicative of how
human emotion seeps into the reaction of even the most informed and
well read among us. A majority preferenced their remarks with some
sort of statement indicating they wanted the president to be more
aggressive or forceful in his leadership. When challenged by others
in the group who pointed out Obama has always positioned himself as
a unifier they generally concluded given the circumstances of our
constitution-section 7-article 1,(All bills for raising Revenue
shall originate in the House of Representatives…) that all he
could do is present a plan. It is up to the House to pass it. In
short they were fairly consistent in the fact that if they were in
the President’s shoes they would do what he is doing, try to get
our economy moving again; create jobs through improving
infrastructure, health care, education and the environmental needs
as well as support small business, close loopholes and raise taxes
on the very wealthy. All of which Warren Buffett would agree with
and he is very wealthy.
Lucie Jensen is a Healdsburg resident.