OBAMA Citizens blog

Every American’s Duty.

We are faced with challenges including global warming, and energy, but the immediate challenge is to survive in the face of global economic chaos. Blame aside, our problem has become the globe’s problem. With the focus on profitability, our things are now made overseas and our system has lost it’s viability. With exceptions, America has become about distribution and advertising and law and other services rather than the making of things. Thus we have run out of money as it has gone overseas leaving us in debt. We must act now to reverse this the only way possible (short of selling what we have in remaining resources.) We must return to making all the things we are now purchasing from other nations.

We will not tariff as it would violate the treaty on trade. But there is nothing to prevent we the citizens from acting on our own. You know this to be true: We MUST buy GOODS from our OWN (local if possible) companies if they are to exist in a world they cannot compete in (…today.) Things made in other nations are done so by the most modern methods known to man and are priced very low, so it is our duty to our fellow citizens to elect to not purchase then in favor of purchasing a more expensive, and even lower quality American made product. Otherwise, America (land, stock in our corporations, buildings, stores etc.) will be owned by the people in other lands.

It is also your duty to make something, grow something, learn something, teach something.

As an American in this time of pending financial meltdown, you must buy locally made things from local people. America, this means buying American, or doing without, lest you face the consequence of your work and resources not supporting you as well. Neighbor to neighbor exchange goods (NOT JUST LOCAL SERVICES!) Sew a vest, make a pie, make a bowl, build a table, do anything which adds to the bounty of the planet, and take it to your neighbors or local market and exchange it for theirs, …using currency if you wish, or barter if need be. Use the internet and offer it to the world as well.

Help save humanity by growing something we all need. A tree for wood, a cow, a wheat field, a row of corn or some tomatoes will reduce polution from shipping. When the hundreds of millions of us this, it has a real effect. Stop wasting time, energy, on an unused lawn or field, and turn it into something productive. Mowing lawns causes a great amount of pollution so unless you actually use the field or lawn, attempt to convert as
much of it as you can into a productive crop.

Learn something new every day. Educate yourself by finding tutors and teach anyone who asks. We need especially to bring our population up to speed in mathematics. Learn calculus, or work toward learning it by learning algebra geometry and trigonometry. With math can come an understanding of physics, which is about how things behave, and is underlying to understanding just about everything. We should all have the equivalent knowledge of someone who has a doctorate degree or two, or even three.

We must turn away from our games and televisions and use this time for more important things. Carve out an hour or so for making things, for learning or teaching.

Spend wisely. Everyone should have tools and supplies they can use to contribute to the total productivity of the community. Think in terms of helping to make your local community more self sufficient, by owning the things which make things. Add space to your living area for crafts, machining, sewing, or doing something productive.

We must sacrifice some of our luxuries in favor of becoming more productive. Everyone should have a home based business of their own or be a partner in a small company, or own stock in local industries. Automation may soon eliminate manual labor, so prepare for it by becoming an owner, rather than expecting to always be a worker. Learn computers and automation and apply them to your own work.

Don’t drive unless you must, and then preferably in a vehicle which does not pollute. Car pool, take the train or bus or boat. Plan your local trips to accomplish many stops rather than making many trips. Stop burning fuel just for the fun of riding something.

The world population has increased beyond capacity so refrain from having a big family, but know also that this means threat the little things we do as individuals now add up to giant problems. When 6 or 7 billion people each pollute a tiny amount, the total becomes significant. If we each grew only one pound of food for ourselves it would save the fuel needed to transport 6 or 7 billion pounds of crops to market.

It’s not up to elected officials to save us, although they can help. Encourage them to make grants available to anyone wanting to buy tools and equipment and supplies and begin making goods. Grants to start our manufacturing again, one shop at a time.

Tell your representatives and senators to rescue us by helping us to start again.
Grants for all! Grants to start manufacturing again. Grants to buy American.

What’s wrong with the current version of the good old USA in my opinion?
What would I want Obama to do if elected?

The answer to the first question is that we citizens have grown lazy in our controlling our lawmakers and managing our own affairs. We have allowed the wrong laws to be made, bought the wrong products, and managed our time unwisely.

The problems we face are known to all of us and publicly stated by Obama and McLain.

The reason for these problems is that we the people have created them, trading short term joy for the security of the future. A selfishness we have enjoyed together doing such things as buying inexpensive items made in other countries, thus stretching our personal buying power at the sacrifice of destroying the jobs of fellow USA citizens. Or the selfishness of buying personal, pleasure, sport, or home items which serve no function toward making us better in our work.

It’s not the economy, it’s our attitude. And I’m guessing it’s fair to say that we all know this is true. We like to kick back and watch the tube etc. and we neglect our own education.

So I would tell Obama that he needs to propose a change of attitude for all of us.

Tell us it is our fault for not paying attention, but that we can fix it if we work together.

Tell us how to change our attitudes.

Tell us to get busy making things. Everyone learn to make something as a hobby, or at least learn to do something as a process or service.

For our fate is clear, and of only a few possible paths.

Labor is becoming of less and less value. With more automation and more world wide workers competing, this may become even more extreme.

We should plan to either be an owner of the businesses, or expect to become a financial ward of the state.

In the socialist extreme, we would all own everything jointly and our government would then be the giant owner of all businesses. Participation in government would be participating in running everything our USA owned. With Uncle Sam’s moves this past month we are rapidly headed in that direction.

I would prefer that Obama steer us away from this socialistic utopia. It’s like putting all our eggs in one basket.

I would rather Obama steer us toward each of us being able to own our own little piece of
the economy.

Make loans to small startup companies …government guaranteed.

Make education at the University level free. (Via internet.)

Encourage everyone to become part artist part scientist and to take on the challenge as individuals of making something in a completely automated way.

Our nation must learn automation and electronics and mechanics well enough to compete on the world market without actually using any human labor.

We the citizens need to sacrifice our time making things which can not compete with foreign goods of the same type and quality, and bite the bullet. Government needs to help us by placing limited tariffs on these small industry goods until we are able to compete (by using automation and robotics.)

We need to do this to learn again how to make things for ourselves. Only this time we will need to be even smarter than our ancestors and use computerized automation rather than just human labor and a simpler mechanized automation.

We need to own the automatic machines ourselves rather than buying goods made on similar machines in other countries. This means we need to have the capital funding available for citizens to use in purchasing machines rather than finished goods. In todays money this may mean making a quarter of a million in funding available to every citizen who wants it.

This may change our monetary policy. USA dollars are for USA citizens to use, period.
If our money was near worthless on the world market, we could still value it highly
between ourselves.

I would ask Obama to stress working at home, and doing little more driving than was
necessary for a decade. Then put it to the industry to resolve the problem of pollution and wasted oil immediately. Provide funding if needed, but get our transportation system
back on solid ground now, not a decade from now.

Eliminate the IRS and replace it with a state collected tax on every transaction. A portion of this to go to the USA government, and other portions to state, county and city governments.

Nationalize the education funding system so all schools have near similar access to the same sort of educational resources. Fund schools more equally.

Nationalize the dangerous illegal drug trade to make drug trafficking worthless and to be
able to help and council the users to help them become productive citizens again. Make our prisons a place reserved for only those people whom we deem have proven themselves to be a danger to society physically. Eliminate the death penalty, and make prison a place people do not come back from unless their case be overturned. Find another way to handle thieves other than locking them up with other similar criminals.

What is a dollar? Currently we should all recognize that it is defined by congress as based upon our minimum wage, not a certain weight of gold or silver etc. Congress should make this plain and fix the value accordingly. It may be that this can be accomplished by giving every citizen an equal number of dollars (bills) each year. This might replace the social programs, especially if it is assumed that the citizen will work for this if possible and thus supply the governments (locally too) with a ready pool of workers, and even a few extra they could assign to small businesses to help them get going.

I would ask Obama to change many of the laws of the past few decades. Turn the clock back and encourage the break up of large companies producing multiple unrelated products. We need more competition and yet we need to help or even protect the underdog of the moment
as competitors out do each other in rapid succession. Ease the patent restrictions to allow the small company to compete with the big ones, and to ensure that all ideas may be registered for free. Severly restrict patents of large firms and their ability to dominate over small companies.

But mostly talk to America. Tell us we must turn off our TVs, and stop buying anything made over seas even if it means having only one tenth the buying power. Tell America to
get a hobby and do something or learn something or make something rather than relax for
a few hours each day. Tell us we must invest our money in business, by buying and holding stock in American firms or partnering silently with local businesses or investing in tools and materials and machinery and equipment.

Tell us that we need to make robots and an elevator to space. We need to buy world resources and sell manufactured goods back to the world.

Treat us like we are worthy of knowing top secrets with your honesty about things. We must be informed to act wisely in choosing leaders to represent us. We should as good citizens be networked together.

You will want to read what the Teamsters have posted at their site concerning Columbia and Free Trade status. Folks, we need to save our jobs while there is still time.

We urge EVERYONE to CLICK HERE and visit their site and make your voice heard.
The have set up a means of emailing the following to your congress folks:

I urge you to publicly denounce the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement (FTA) today. This job-killing trade deal is yet another example of the flawed trade policy of the Bush Administration. Fortunately, the Fast Track rules for this agreement were eliminated thanks to Speaker Pelosi and the U.S. House of Representatives. However, there has been talk of some horse-trading over this bill, whether it be for reformed Trade Adjustment Assistance or a new economic stimulus plan. Deals such as these in exchange for a vote in favor of the Colombia FTA are simply unacceptable.

I know that a lot has been said recently to “sugarcoat” this trade agreement and make it seem like the U.S. will profit greatly. However, the Colombia FTA is not a “fair” trade agreement, and it will not increase jobs for American workers. In fact, this deal just provides more incentives for American jobs to be outsourced to Colombia where the labor is cheaper and exploited. At a time when our economy is taking a serious hit and fuel and food prices are skyrocketing, Americans cannot afford to lose more good-paying jobs.

Proponents of the Colombia FTA also argue that tariffs on our exports will be considerably lowered. When you look at the facts though, it is obvious that our manufactured goods are not going to be bought up in any sort of appreciable amount. How could they when the only people able to afford these products, the Colombian middle class, make up a small fraction of the population?

It is true that U.S. agribusiness would benefit, but with some pretty adverse consequences. Colombian farmers will not be able to compete against our subsidized exports, possibly forcing them back into coca production and increasing Colombia’s drug trafficking problem.

Actually, the reality of the Colombia FTA, like previous FTAs, is that very little of this trade deal is about tariffs and market access. The Colombia FTA contains hundreds of pages of rules and giveaways to benefit the CEOs of the multinational corporations that are promoting passage of the FTA.

The one thing that cannot be “sugarcoated” no matter how you look at it is that the Colombia FTA would be rewarding a government that has done very little to bring justice to the over 2,500 trade unionists killed in the country since 1986. More than 50 members of Colombia’s Congress are currently in jail or being investigated due to ties with paramilitary death squads responsible for these killings, including President Alvaro Uribe’s own family member and political ally. One must wonder why this deal was even negotiated in the first place, and why human rights violations of this horrific caliber are being accepted as the collateral damage of a business deal.

Instead of trade agreements that destroy jobs, promote drug trafficking, and reward violence against workers, the American people deserve trade agreements that create jobs and hold other countries accountable for their actions. Please make your opposition to the Colombia FTA known today, and if it ever comes to the floor for a vote, please vote ‘NO’!

I personally don’t think Obama should hide from this. The American People need to realize to what extent their Country has acted on many occasions arrogant. We have done very great thing for the world and we have done some very bad things too. It is time we all realize that there are others in this world and what we do effects us all. I have traveled to many places in the world and I believe people are all just the same as us. We want health we want comfort, and we want our children to grow into a better world.

If Americans ever traveled the Mid East they would be shocked to find out how the average person lives there. Poor with no mobility, living in squaller, with the ruling classes oil money grinding them down on a daily basis. They see us as the reason their lives are in shambles because of our U.S. dollars supporting their Royal Families. Despair breeds desperation and disillusionment and that is how you get young Saudis to jump on a flight and fly themselves into buildings.

The great lie is, “they hate us for our freedom”, The right winger’s motto. They hate us for what we have done to their region is more the truth. We are blinded from this because as a population we have never been taught anything but the embellished good propaganda.

Did they ever teach you in school or anywhere else that if we would have had a choice to drop the Atomic Bomb on Germany or Japan Truman and his council agreed that the first choice would have been Japan. Why? Because they were not White. Truman felt the Japanese were subhuman and he felt Americans would not stand for the use of such a weapon on White Europeans. It was skin color that may have been the deciding factor. The Whites probably would have gotten a pass.

The American Indian wars raged in this country for many years. It was genocide pure and simple and economics is the only reason they were not wiped to extinction. When the bean counters in the Federal Government figured out it was costing over one million dollars per Indian life taken, the reservation became the chosen method to deal with the indigenous population. You see to man an army against them was just too costly. It was dollars nothing more, just money.

How about our polished covert work in South America in the 60’s and 70’s and Viet Nam in the same time frame. The Cuba population has been enslaved and made to live indeplorable conditions since the 60’s because we refuse to sit down and work things out with a country 60 miles from our boarder. The Cuban Americans became a voting block for the Republicans and tool to be used.

I will not speak to our current situation abroad, but I can almost bet 40 years from now this story will in noway resemble or even recognizable when it comes to the facts. The effort to rewrite this period of history has been underway since it began. If we continue the mind set that we are currently engaged in, your grandchildren will never be taught what really is happening now.

Obama’s Pastor said some things that are scary to the uninformed White American. I do not condone all that he has said, but I do know there is a lot of truth in his words. We have been very arrogant at times and when it comes back to haunt us we become indignant. The Republican Talking Point for this, “is the blame America first”, statement. This absolves us of any responsibility in the hand of fate that befalls us.

I feel Barack’s position in this matter is clear and concise. The Pastor is from another generation. A generation where Blacks were not even guaranteed a vote until the 60’s. Just barely one hundred years earlier they were slaves in this country. Barack has proven himself to be a man of good judgment. He has taken the correct teachings from his Mentor and rejected those that are at odds with his beliefs. This sounds like an intelligent man to me.

You are now witnessing the Corporate Powers and the Main Stream Media at work. They are protecting their agenda and their economic interests at the expenses of our freedom of choice. Barack and our will to change the hands that govern us is a threat to the comfy position these people find themselves in. You see the “boomers” are not going to hand the helm to the younger generation with out a fight. They will do anything to keep control and now it looks as if they will even go as far as trying to divide us along racial lines. Hillary”s camp has been attempting to Ghettoize Barack from the beginning and now she has the Press helping her.

Free your mind from the fear peddlers. Think for yourself. Do not let them guide you into the light. This is the first time in my life that we have had the chance to take control of our government. The internet is our power. We now can communicate with each other like we have never been able to in the history of mankind. It would be ashame waste it at this juncture. This Country need new drivers with new maps because the ones we have now have gotten us really lost.

Watch this George Carlin video thing will get even clearer.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/?review=1#url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMqJvhmD5Yg

Facts:
Only 22% of graduating College kids can find Iran on a globe. Less than 16% can place all 50 states on a map of this country. 3% can tell you when Iraq became a sovereign nation, less can tell you how it became one. 1% can tell you what democratically elected Mid East Ruler the AMERICAN CIA overthrew. No wonder we can’t take the truth when it is spoken by an angry Black Minister. I don’t prescribe to all he has to say, but there is a lot of truth in the rhetoric. You want the Truth, You can ‘t handle the Truth……..or can you?

Rob

Hi folks, Welcome to the OBAMA Citizens’ blog. We are here because we want to be involved with cleaning up politics and saving the country.

Seems pretty noble eh?

Not really. Government controls just about everything. We don’t want our government to in turn be run by the major corporations, because corporations are concerned with their own immediate profits more so than the welfare of people.

People, should control government.

Participation in a democracy is about as important as important gets.

Participation requires some knowledge on how to participate.

An informed public is a must, and currently we are concerned by noting the use of subliminal racist propaganda. We want to get the truth out.

We must ban together and put the brakes on the influence that big business has on our voting.

Blogging and linking to other sites is a starting point. Leave a comment please. Leave us a link to your site and your email address too, or tell us about a video or other website, it’s all good.

Sign our petition!

Join us.

Make your voice heard repeatedly.

Signed,

The OBAMA Citizens webmaster