Presidential Election Year

It’s presidential election time in the U.S. and one of the most annoying things to me is all the political ads. Most aggravating is the amount of money being poured into the ads! Can you imagine the good that could be accomplished by directing those monies elsewhere? There’s numerous places in our society and country they could be directed that would be much more beneficial than advertising on television, radio, internet, and print.

Thomas Friedman

Reading Thomas Friedman’s Op-Ed piece of 21 July 2012 entitled, The Launching Pad, Friedman asks, “Is there an integrated set of policies, and a narrative, that could animate, inspire and tie together an Obama second term?” Friedman goes on to elaborate on how he believes Obama could develop or create a narrative of how “America should be for the 21st-century world what Cape Canaveral was for America in the 1960s.”

Friedman realizes we aren’t going to have another era like we’ve had in the past but he proposes that the people have to be the creators of thousands of launchpads that will hire 5 other people per pad or business. It makes sense to me in so many ways.

Below are two individuals who have started something on their own out of their own passions, and need to provide for themselves.

One is the Nuclear Corner Kitchen in Abingdon, Illinois creators of the best tasting pies of a variety you won’t find anywhere else.

The second is Adonai Community Support Services in Aledo, Illinois with the goal to provide Veterans free support services through effective resources and usable information. These are just two individuals that I know of who have within the last six months or less begun their “launchpad” construction. I would hope they become so busy they find the need to employ others.

There’s much more to Friedman’s article than the small piece I wrote about above. But part of the message that comes through to me is that it’s really up to us and not the elected officials who get bought out, or the government programs that are in place or get put into place and become bogged down with red tape. It’s a roots thing. Get back to the roots of the founders of our country and all the folks that followed who dreamed, sweat out their dream and created a reality. Hopefully, the future reality will be brighter than the present. I believe it will based on the two individuals I spoke of above and writers like Thomas Friedman.