The Spring Transition Blues

Another short weekend vacation finds us up in Traverse City at the grandparent’s house. Mid-April Spring-like weather was interrupted by a passing winter storm that brought around three inches of snow to parts of Michigan. Again, this Mother Nature being seems greatly confused about the climactic patterns on display in the Midwest. This quivering is creating a great deal of emotional “funk” in what would normally be a mutual feeling of relief towards the change of seasons. The environmentalists have lauded this misfortune on our countries impact on the environment in the form of Global Warming and Al Gore had predicted this impact in his film ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’

Hopes of a great winter snowpack refilling watersheds that drain into the Great Lakes, which would raise the mean lake levels to something approaching normality, have also been dashed by the numerous warm spells that evaporated off the majority of the season’s snowfall.

NPR stated this morning that a barrel of crude oil has risen to $113, with the latest increase coming due to the US dollar slipping even further against other international currencies.

Thinking about these issues and getting frustrated at their outcomes, I have to ask:

· Where are the stellar scientists and intellectuals that have saved this great country from certain demise in the face of similar challenges?
· Where are the outspoken politicians trumpeting causes for the betterment of America?
· Where are the economists that find hope for our people by stabilizing business and financial industries?
· Where are the “Captains of Labor”?
· Where is the American Worker?

We are circling the edge of the recession pool and are poised painfully close to a fall into the deep end of it.

The once strong limbs of industry that made this country stoic have been replaced by ego-centric politicians bent on pouring tax dollars into a failing attempts towards stability in oil-centric regions and depleting the Dollar’s value due to a shared disgust within the international community, and industry executives feeding their addictions towards financial gain with the sacrifices of labor created by outsourcing of the very jobs held by their own manufactured product’s target consumers.

Our “industry” is like a dog eating itself to death from the tail on with the thought that the action itself will craft a short term gain for investors and reward top execs with massive bonus payouts. The precedent created from these actions incents the few and maims the many.
“Yeah, my 401k is doing well, but I don’t have a job to pay into it…” You tell me what the better situation is?

While we send billions and billions to a country that has surplus coffers of its own which well exceed double our annual aid, our perceived arch-enemy in Asia, has bought so much US debt that we may very well be owned by the giant that our own cost-cutting outsourced manufacturing practices created in the first place.

· Where did the pride of our abilities to be self-reliant disappear to?
· What happened to the powerful creatures that we loved to hate but still built our country into the world leader we once were?

The Rockefellers, the Henry Ford’s, the Eisenhower’s, the people who inspired others to do great things?

Have we all been too captivated with our High Definition televisions, iPods, Internet web-surfing, and tabloid crafted celebrities to notice that we lost our focus on the simple foundations that are required to champion our society as an economic powerhouse?

It used to be that peoples from other countries would strive to become an American and bring their great influences in arts, the sciences, and education to contribute to our great society, yet, today, it seems that these same people come here to get an education, make some money, and return to their home country without ever setting roots here.

We are now viewed as a place of monetary acquisition rather than an asylum for those that want to build something great by their own contributions, commitment, and accomplishments.

Maybe my slanted viewpoint on reality is creating a corrupted opinion on our current state, but I feel we must be concerned about the many details that seem to be indicating a shift in our national standing. The slipping Dollar, sub-prime mortgage foreclosures and bank’s declaring bankruptcy from them, housing slump, increased fuel costs, looming recession, energy crisis, and dropping figures from Wall Street.

Am I blind? Am I tainted from living in one of the hardest impacted states?

jp