Obama Comes to Town

Later today the President of the United States will be in my town, Elkhart, Indiana. A visit from a President, especially a sitting one, is almost always an honor. No matter your politics or personal feelings about the individual. As proof, a great number of our largely Republican voting neighbors in the County waited 12 hours or so outside over the weekend to get a chance to have their 2 tickets to the event.

What brings our newly seated leader to town is not something to celebrate. Elkhart County had the highest increase in unemployment for the month of December in the entire country. Now standing at an almost staggering 16%. Not surprising when you consider that the bulk of the jobs lost were in the RV industry, which in a world where not to long ago gas was $4 a gallon and now the economy is in the doldrums people do not have money for extras and toys. Many of the other jobs are manufacturing jobs that support the RV industry or the struggling auto making industry. Kind of a perfect storm in an area that had in the not so distant past been noted as a place that had per captia as many millionaires as anywhere. People are in rough times and they are looking for answers.

Barak Obama is using his visit to our city/ county as a backdrop to push his "stimulus" plan forward. He will no doubt mention his visit later tonight when he returns to Washington to address the entire nation on the plan. A plan that almost all who have looked at it objectively agree cannot truly stimulate our hurting economy. A trillion dollars. Can't fathom how much money that is? Then check out: What You Could Buy with a Trillion Bucks and you might get a feel for it.

We have placed in authority men and women who largely, whether Democrat or Republican, have not governed with basic common sense. We need to pray for our leaders. Their job is immense and very difficult. At the same time when they do not act in our best interest we need to fire (read vote out) them and hire someone who will. Insanity can be defined as continuing to do the dame things the same way and expecting a different result. Our debt based economy/ society is not working. Spending trillions to promote the continuation of that is insanity. More to come on this soon as I now hear that beyond this spending bill is a proposal to give the banks more money... yeah that worked well.