Dear President Obama (Education)
Dear President Obama (education):
Hope this blog finds you and your family is great health. Yesterday was the presidential inauguration. Due to my workload I was not able to watch the event on the web from a computer or television set while in progress. Watched the highlights on the 10:00 PM news. Would like to congratulate you on your new position. Hopefully you will bring some CHANGE as promised during your campaign.
I fully understand the prestige of becoming the first African American president of the USA. Your name will be recorded and remembered by history. I do have a hard time understanding how an individual would spend so much time and so much money (in campaign donations) to get such a tough job that pays $200,000 US Dollars a year. Most Naive Americans believe or want to believe on promises. I rather stick to the facts. The honeymoon will be over sooner than later due to the huge amount of issues our country is currently experiencing. The economy is in shambles, and so far, the Naive American has not learned of a reasonable plan to improve it. Perhaps you have a few aces hidden up your sleeve.
During the past fifty years or so, there have been so many issues, situations, decisions and conditions that have taken our economy to were it is today. Unless there is a dramatic set of CHANGES induced and enforced during the next few decades, there is little hope for success. Please mark my words today Wednesday January 21, 2009 so in four years this Naive American will not take the excuse that “hindsight is 20 / 20″.
Yesterday, evening I was watching NOVA on the local public television station. They showed a rerun. The title was “Dimming the Sun” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/. When a group of scientists from different disciplines come up with corroborating theories and facts then there is little that politicians, preachers, actors or newscaster can say against it. In America we are all entitled to opinions, but the facts will always prevail. We have a serious climate 
condition / situation at hand, which might cause the extinction of civilization (including all Naive Americans) as we know it in less than 100 years. Chances are that you and I will not be around to see it (so should we care?), but your kids and my grandkids might experience it. Global warming and pollution are issues that need to be addressed and solved in the very near future before they reach the point of no return.
Yesterday on the news I watched you and your wife saying farewell to President Bush and his wife Laura from the White House. They were boarding a helicopter on their way to their home in Texas. It struck me that after eight years Mr. Bush just took of like nothing happened. Could you imagine what could and should be going through his mind? Because of the decisions of his administration, which include all the decisions made by him, his cabinet, Congress, Senate, and the rest of active politicians, how many Naive American lives were lost due to wars, how many Naive Americans were injured, how much money had been lost due to embezzlements by companies managed by Naive Americans and just Naive Americans, how many Naive Americans lost their homes, … etc, etc, etc. By the way Mr. President Obama, you were part of the problem because you were a Senator in the State of Illinois during the Bush administration.
To top it all, the Teachers Union in the State of Minnesota has been running an ad on TV. It came on while I was watching the news. As every Naive American knows, all states in the union are pretty much broke. Cuts in the budgets must be made at all levels in an attempt to reduce or eliminate deficits. The spoke person (I believe it is the Teachers Union president) in this ad goes about making the statement that in order to maintain the “top quality education levels” in our state, we need to let our representatives know how important is education for all of us. As the ad comes to a close it displays that such union is 70,000 strong. Now, why do you think the ad would provide such information?
If you take 70,000 teachers, most of them married and with families, this union might represent between 140,000 to 600,000 votes. Given that career politicians want to be reelected, the ad is threatening them (not the Naive Americans who have no real power) to get them what they want. K-12 education in our country has been collapsing for decades. Statistics show that the US is ranked 14th in the world. This Naive American would like to know if teachers would be able to recite the names of the 14 developed countries that are ahead of us. Nets time you visit a school, ask at random any teacher. They might not be able to recite the names of all 50 states.
In conclusion, the US has deep and serious problems. Words are not going to change a thing. We have economic problems, Naive Americans are stealing money right and left, Naive Americans have become lazy, and we have problems with the climate. Naive Americans do not want to study, Naive Americans do not wish to put a full hard day at work, American industry is almost gone, etc, etc. etc. We are in need of a CHANGE. This Naive American would like to know how in the world are you going to CHANGE Americans?
Yours truly;
The Naive American
