Finally Hope and Change Has Arrived

By Teresa L. Chaskin

It seems since the actual inauguration, the parade and the balls, it was like the pumpkin had been turned into a coach on January 20^th. I kept thinking is this real? I could hardly stopped thinking if I pinch myself to see if I would wake up out of a dream. The next morning I went to the grocery store to buy a souvenir newspaper and everyone seemed so pleased. It seems like we have left the darkness and we are entering into a new era. Every time I'd hear the word president I would be jarred and turn the station. This is still a habitual response until I hear President Obama's voice.

We still have a lot of things that will have to be fixed and I know we will overcome what has been done in the past 8 years (not to mention the Regan/Bush 1 years). By rebuilding our infrastructure that will create good jobs where people will have money to spend which will stimulate the economy.  While moving to green energy we can have our energy grids designed to handle our green energy. We can also give tax breaks and tax incentives to those in the private sector that participate in our moving to green energy.

 We also need to help by appropriating money for re-tooling our factories including where our automobiles are being built. We can also have tax breaks and tax incentives if they do re-tool their factories to move off of oil and on to renewable clean energy. We need to give the automobile companies the incentive for building electrical, hybrid, ethanol (not from agribusiness but from cellulostic plants) and etc. This is what I would consider a proper bail out of the auto industry. There are so many forms of energy we can use to suit each state in this great nation. We need to give corporations tax breaks and tax incentives for converting their buildings to green energy also.

The money we would be saving if we use non-carbon high-speed rail transportation like we built the infrastructure our highways decades ago. Think how this would reduce the emissions we use by replacing a lot of travel, and distribution of products for speed rail transportation instead of using airplanes.

We also can make sure everybody is insured for health care. We need a national healthcare review board set up to oversee that our health care is of the highest quality and cost effective.  We need re-importation of approved drugs and equipment from industrial countries. We can have a bargaining power to purchase drugs in bulk at a low cost like the V.A. does. There must be caps on what our system is being charged for to medical care, insurance companies or the government, whichever the consumer prefers. With all of this we can save money especially if each person can go to the doctor for health maintenance to stay well instead of our paying such high costs for people going to the emergency room because they have no insurance or they ca not afford the costs for healthcare. We need to also make it the law that anyone who is insured that doctors will make the decisions on their patients health care and not insurance companies as they are doing today because profit to them is the bottom line.

Funding for National Institute of Health had been cut drastically over the past 6 years and to fund NIH and other research programs will create a lot of research jobs, which will create new inventions, and this would really stimulate the economy as we are moving to the 21^st century.

Representative Obey's bill includes construction funds to renovate existing universities and institutes and build new ones. There is the necessary funding for NIH, the Science Founding and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute and Standards and Technology, and the hurricane damage that was done to NASA. All of this is also part of our infrastructure that has been neglected for too long.

As we are moving towards setting up an educational system that will be competitive with the rest of the world we would be encouraging our youth to learn because it would be interesting. We can use computer programs as an aid in teaching similar to video games but as a learning tool. This could be a very good way to stimulate our students desire to learn and do their homework. With a top notch education our youth could, not only find good jobs but they could also create good jobs as well through their creative ideas.

We can have an exciting future, but as President Obama says we all must participate in the movement of change.