He does seem to see a connection between production and wealth as he is proposing huge public works projects that will upgrade the countries infrastructure of roads and public buildings. This is an improvement over what we have witnessed in the past seven years of spending public money to destroy the same in other countries on the other side of the world. However, the question facing Mr. Obama is the same as that which face Mr. Bush; "From whence will the money come to support the grand scheme?" Already we've seen that making debt easy for the government, banks, and the general public devalues our currency and throws business into a fight over controlling an ever-growing supply of currency that is ever-diminishing in value. Adding more spending to a federal government budget that has already crossed $1 trillion in deficit spending for this year will not correct this economic disaster.

"Change" has become the single trade word of Mr. Obama, as it was for the last Democrat president. However, when we look at the new administration's plans for centralizing power, the only change we are really looking at is the name and the face of the man sitting in the Oval Office.

America's real problems, however, are moral. Every elected official who violates the oath of office to honor the limits of the U.S. Constitution is no better than the husband who keeps mistresses in every part of town. The corporate executives who, for their own personal gain, extol the virtues of a global economic system, but converts the world's most productive and self-sufficient working middle class into a mass of selfish, unimaginative, and helplessly bankrupt consumers are worse than treasonous. They are murderers of a civilization and social order.

The contempt that political and industrial leaders are showing for what was once the American working middle class is causing frustration and despair in our neighborhoods and communities. That contempt is producing youth who are ambivalent for their future or their personal well being as they are seeing their parent's fail to find or provide the social and economic stability that past American generations knew.

We have not done well by considering marriage and family with the same flippant contempt that our politicians and corporate captains have considered the nation. The pompous windbags who have contributed so mightily to America's demise can, and have, destroy America's public institutions, but the destruction of the American family is a real danger to us all. We have to live with the nihilistic barbarians who are being produced in homes with no structure or, what seems to them, any hope for the future.

This is where Mr. Obama can have a real and effective influence on America. The weekend after the election, Michelle Obama, who is attractive, intelligent, and admirable told America through the UK Timesonline, " My No 1 job as First Lady is to be First Mom ."; In her commentary Mrs. Obama explained, “Our girls are the centre of Barack's and my world. They're the reason he ran for president - to make the world a better place for them and for all children."

For his part, the President-elect said this past Father's day, "But if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled - doubled - since we were children. We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and twenty times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it."

The Obama's, regardless of the pressures he will face as president, can set a model for how a family holds together in the face of betrayal, manipulation, and personal attacks. While he should not be expected to open his family life to public display, should the Obama family prove to be the president's haven during times of great turmoil, that family will provide the country a much greater service than has the political and corporate system that has done its part to crush our hope.

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Bob Strodtbeck has been writing commentaries for a news weekly circulated in a community 10 miles north of Orlando, since 1993. He currently lives in Orlando.  Bob is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Bob Strodtbeck can be reached at: strodtbeckr@bellsouth.net

Published in the December 15, 2008 issue of  Ether Zone.
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