Will Obama and GOP Presidential candidates get serious about our problems?

By John Blythe

Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend the California Republican Party convention in downtown Los Angeles and I was able to meet Texas Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul. While there are some foreign policy issues that I disagree with the Congressman on, many of his domestic policies in particular our economic issues I do favor and it was a privilege to listen to him speak and motivate the Los Angeles crowd especially when it comes to our enormous financial problems in this country.

Unfortunately, many of the other Republican candidates do not seem to understand the full complexity of our country’s economic conditions. Why should they? For the most part, they’re all owned by the corporations and the media. You have Fox News giving attention to Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, while MSNBC, owned by General Electric, gives enormous favor-ability to President Obama and his re-election campaign.

For the better part of two and a half years, we have heard time and time again from President Obama addressing job growth. Well fortunately, little has happened. The “green jobs” initiative is proving to become an absolute failure, particularly wit the recent Solyndra collapse. Unemployment is around 9.1% and millions more are still unemployed and no longer receiving government assistance; furthermore, there is growing speculation over the global economy and major concerns that the United States’ monetary and fiscal policies will trigger another recession.

There are some very disturbing facts about the current crisis. In addition to the $14 trillion national debt and over $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities, it would be nice to hear President Obama and the GOP Presidential candidates discuss other issues that are impacting our already growing financial problems; here’s a short list of statistics, such as:

– State and local governments debt has reached more than 22% of U.S. GDP and all of the 50 states combined are short $3.2 trillion of what they need to meet their pension funds.
– State governments across America are having to sell off buildings to investors just to pay their obligations.
– One in every seven Americans has ten credit cards.
– The disasters from the BP oil spill, tornadoes in the South East and the flood damage on the East Coast have cost billions of dollars, while FEMA is becoming more strapped for cash.
– 45 million people are on food stamps and the U.S. Census Bureau found more than 45 million people are living in poverty.
– USA Today reported in April that the U.S. Bureau of Labor found only 45.4% of Americans held a job in 2010.
– Oil companies bring in nearly $200 billion in pre-tax profits, yet they receive more than $4.4 billion in tax breaks.
– Price of gasoline in the last year has gone up by 30%.
– Because of the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, there is a prediction we may go back to the gold standard.
– One out of six Americans are on Medicaid.
– The growing securities derivatives speculation on Wall Street which is largely unregulated, could burst, according to Warren Buffet.
– Housing market in its worst shape since the Great Depression; prices have fallen by more than 33% from the peak of the housing bubble.
– The IMF is worried that the European debt crisis could cause a global economic collapse.
– An average of 50,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost per month to China since 2001; our trade deficit with China is 27 times larger than it was more than 20 years ago.
– College tuition has gone up more than 900% since 1978.
– The collective debt of government sponsored lending agencies including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Sallie Mae is more than $6.3 trillion, with tax payers on the hook.

This is just a tip of the iceberg of growing concerns Americans should know about, with relation to the U.S. economy, but rather seldom, do you hear President Obama or the so-called “front runners” of the GOP race, address these problems. And if they do address these problems, they tap dance around the issues and come up with failed policies on how to fix them. How can you fix something that simply cannot be fixed?

Part of the problem in addressing this crisis however is the ignorance of the American people. They either choose to believe what the mainstream news media tells them, or they’re simply not interested and blinded by partisan views. The truth of the matter is, Washington D.C. continues to fill the American public with lies and distortion and feeding it to the mainstream news media.

Yet the American people continue to re-elect the same morons to represent us.

By the 2012 election, does anyone in this country sincerely believe President Obama or any of the GOP candidates will get serious about our problems? And I’m talking about ALL OF THE PROBLEMS… No spinning, no tap dancing, no failed strategies…

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it is unlikely any of them will get serious by next year.