The Sneed Blog Presidential Endorsement

Someone famously observed that if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you got. However, knowing what to do isn't the same as 'doing' what to do. The first question when things go wrong should be what can I do differently? When I worked at the middle school, the guidance counselors, many of the teachers and some of the administrators, had the slogan plastered on their doors, bulletin boards, etc. Regretfully, they were unable to see that their actions caused their mediocrity. We have grown up in a country that operated on the principle that hard effort brings its own reward. Work hard and you will be rewarded. To a large extent this is still true, but slowly, that notion is being reshaped. It is as if Adam Smith's invisible hand has many of our citizens by the throat. It seems to me that more and more the people at the top have shifted from the idea that everyone can share in prosperity, to the attitude that prosperity means getting as much as you can, in any way you can. The examples of this notion are everywhere around us. Whirlpool Corporation which just announced the layoff of 5000 workers and the closure of plants in Tennessee and Oklahoma, paid its CEO Jeff Fettig, $12.94m in 2007. He will make that much again this year. Can anyone serious argue that you can get a better CEO for $13m, that you can for say, a million or two? Where is the shared pain for the guy at the top? And Jeff Fettig is one of the good guys in the CEO world. At the other end of the spectrum is Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. This character was paid $22M and sold $121m worth of stock while the industry was melting down. His blatant wealth grab is an obscenity. Thousands of little people working in the mortgage industry had their lives savaged while Mozilo collected his riches, aided by friends in government. And this plunder extends far beyond the mortgage industry. Yesterday, one of the cashiers at work told me that her husband had been laid off from his job as a mechanic for a small car lot. She says that they have enough money to pay their rent on Monday, but after that, she doesn't know what they will do. The sellers of high priced items like cars, rely on credit to smooth out their cash flow needs. When credit dries up, payrolls cannot be met. People like this are relegated to dead end retail work, because blue collar jobs have been slashed for the last 25 years, in order to drive up profitability. Since the 1980s American industry has improved the lives of workers everywhere but in America. American CEOs and other high-level folks have grown rich, while the working class has been left to fend for itself. Government has let us down, industry has let us down and it's time for a change. Barack Obama's opponents trumpet that he is a Socialist, that he has unsavory connections, that he lacks experience or that he is a *allegation goes here*. It simply is past the time where any of that matters. People want change and he's the guy who was smart enough to figure that out first. John McCain is a centrist, running in a party that has become dominated by the far right. He is a decent man, dedicated public servant and an American hero. But challenging times demand new ideas. So, when people go to the polls on Tuesday, I think they will vote to change what we are doing, in order to change what we are getting. In normal times Barack Obama would not be my cup of tea. He is a bit too inexperienced and a bit too far to the left to suit me. These are not normal times, so I am supporting Barack Obama for President. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky