Congratulations President Barack Obama
The new president took the oath of office this morning promising a "New Era of Responsibility." Within that responsibility he included government saying that the question is not whether government is too big or too small but whether it works. If it works he intends to move forward, if the answer is no, he said, programs will end. This view of government is one that should be pursued at all levels and one that has frustrated many who have tried. I wish our new president good luck in pursuing the goal of government accountability.
The president also spoke of the building block of our country the "risk takers, doers, and maker of things" who create our prosperity. He praised the faith and determination of the American people and the individuals who must take up responsibility for themselves and the nation. This emphasis on the individual is a good sign. For it is these individuals who make up the risk takers and doers he praised.
A Southern California Test of Obama Promises
The president elect has promised change, we all know that. He’s promised to get beyond old disputes and divides. And he’s pledged to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and stimulate the economy. That all sounds great, but I’ll believe these promises when I see them. And there’s a perfect place for Southern Californians to test whether Obama means any of this.
It’s called the 710- aka the Long Beach Freeway.
For a half-century, the 710 has been unfinished. It was supposed to go all the way from the Port of Long Beach up to Pasadena, where it would connect to the 210 Freeway, allowing drivers and truckers to skirt downtown LA on their way northwest (to the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley or even the Central Valley). But the highway stops 6 miles short of the 210 in Pasadena, dumping drivers onto the surface streets of Alhambra. Why? The power of one very well organized special interest: the residents and city fathers of South Pasadena.
What Budget Crisis?
Humans have been around for tens of thousands of years. And yet, as recently as a thousand years ago, there was a broad consensus — even among the most highly educated — that the world was flat. The problem with "consensus" is that it becomes groupthink. If an idea has no challengers, it becomes difficult to disprove and those who speak against the established orthodoxy are always marginalized.
There seems to be a consensus in California that we have a "Budget Crisis." But if "crisis" is defined as a situation where impending disaster is a probable outcome — think Cuban Missile Crisis – then the notion that California is in the midst of crisis needs to be challenged.
On the Eve of This Historic Inauguration
It is the night before the big inauguration, the night before one of the most anticipated transitions of Presidential administrations in recent history (regardless of what box is checked on your voter card). Amidst the madness, excitement and confusion that is this inauguration, I have had the hottest seats in town all night – the hotel lobby.
Whether it was seeing an infamous national political commentator sipping Merlot and talking to a Mid-Western Representative in the hotel bar by Union Station or overhearing a celebrity in a hotel lobby by Judiciary Square talking about how he donated money for the first time in a hotel lobby by Judiciary Square, the after-parties in the lobbies across Washington, D.C. have proven to be the place to be seen and heard.