Thursday, June 12, 2008

It's my Vote and it WILL Count!

This election year is truely remarkable. However, the more things change the more they also stay the same.
Firstly, a few words about our candidates. I am very proud to see an american running for the highest office of the land. But of course you say; only an american can run for office. The issues that face this great nation are equally great and americans seem to have gone beyond the notion of race to vote for individuals who will bring about change. This is as it should be. I am prooud that americans from all walks of life and nationalities support Senator Barack Obama. We have accomplished a great deal as a nation in this. The dreams of many civil liberty leaders, as well as many citizens are being materialized despite the fact that racism is still all too alive and well. What an exciting moment in history when race does not matter as much as we may have all thought. Secondly, I think its been quite a year for women. Yet this doesn't surprise me as much, for women have been a staple of the accounting profession for years now. Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton has shown grace and strength and in time a women will be president of this great nation.
None of this is really new, we have voted for african americans and women for high offices and they typically have done very well in their careers. Why should we expect anything different. I hope the trend continues as diversity makes this country great and it will continue to make this country great in many years to come. Surely we can accumulate any amount of statistical evidence to support all kinds of notions for or against whether race or gender matters and in the end its all about the issues. The only reason race or gender matters now is only because this is a first.
As a hispanic minority I have often been rather confused by how people refer to me as a latino, a Puerto Rican or an American. Why broad brush me as one culture? I am of course all of that but I am an American first and foremost as this is where I was born, raised and educated and where I live, work and raise my family. Yet I have come to love my latin heritage, culture, music, language and everything else that goes along with being latino. In fact to nationalize my latin culture I am today less Puerto Rican and perhaps more Cuban simply because I live in Miami and am married to a Cuban woman. But on any given day I might feel close to a Colombian, a Venezuelan or a Mexican. Tomorrow I will meet a midwesterner and the next I will meet with a Bostonian. I can relate to all of them, and I love it. I do business in English and in Spanish. My parents were right, I am the future in a global sense and I am an American.
Perhaps this year is not about race or gender in elections. Perhaps not as much as the media has reported. My guess is that by November it will be the real issues. The economy, fossil fuels prices, the war in Iraq, social security, the trade deficit, the value of the dollar. Bad foriegn policy and missed opportunities by miopic leaders and business who only plan for the next day instead of the next decade are all to blame. For some time I have said that we are on the verge of some kind of social revolution in this country. You can not continue to live an elitist life and not worry for the middle and lower class. It does come back to undermine you. Yet what I am beginning to see is not so much a revolution in terms of civil rebellion but rather a generation that is starting to look at the world economy, culture and scarce resources on a wholistic sense. With more highly educated individuals on this planet than has ever existed and scalable technologies each of us will start to create new ways of thinking that will create wholistic solutions for our country and perhaps the world. It's a situation where the needs and wants of the one will create momentum in the masses to change for comprehensive solutions to many life problems. This bottom up approach has far reaching implications.
On the war in Iraq, this was a devasting failure. This country reacted to a threat that did not merritt the reaction. We should not have taken that action. Having said that, now that we are there we can not simply give in too easily. We can not throw in the towel. Seeing that democracy through is the right thing although we can not do it indefinetly. What we do not know is how and how long?
On Fossil Fuels, we need all kinds of alternatives. Nothing we have today would replace fossil fuels entirely. We need gas, biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen cars, solar electricity, thermal enerygy, hydro electric, wind generators, hybrid cars, Co2 reclamation, nuclear power etc. etc.. There is no one magic solution. We need it all and we need it now. Of course we need less fossil fuel. We can do this in 5 to 10 years. Its doable with no more pain to the economy that what we are already feeling. The real failure here is that auto makers have failed to take a position early on and government was asleep at the wheel in mandating milestone changes over the last 20 years. We talk things to death in this country instead of making it happen. Shame on us. We could take lessons from Brazil. Again this is old news. We were hear in 1974 and the Japanese have since then capitalized on shortsighted automobile manufacturers. Here we go again.
On the economy, we need to regulate the way credit is administered in this country. This is not so much of the products offered as it is a lapse in judgement about how credit policy was administered in a prolonged period of low interest rates. Again our politicians and regulators were asleep at the wheel while loose credit policy was weilded without concern. Absolute power and greed lead to corruption and abuse. If I had $1 for every ad I get in the mail for credit advertisements, credit cards and mortgages I could pay off my debt. This is an old story.
Our trade deficit, We have let China off too easy for way to long. However, I am recently impressed with their open policy and the response to earthquake victims. They are an evolving country and an economic power that needs closer attention. Dispite our trade imbalance I would prefer this scenario than having to invade that country as we did in Iraq to supplant our view of denocracy on them. Seems like capitalism and the desire to be a world economic giant together with the US demand for Chinese made products that are affordable are doing very nice in their democractic conversion in the long run. A more affordable alternative. If we could only have Iraq produce more oil and make them trading partners with the US. Forget about seeing the light of democracy, I wonder if they can see the dollar?
On foriegn policy, we have much to do. America is too American Centric. Among the many nationalties that I deal with none display a sense of their country being the center of economic power and might as the US does. This despite many are very fierce nationalists. Our failure in foriegn policy mimics our own national failure in accepting race and gender in positions of importance. It is reflective of our nearsightedness even today in accepting work life balance. It is reflective in that we are failing to address the needs of the middle class and poor citizens. It is reflective that we the nation of democracy still have many tensions tied to nationality, race and gender. We do not at times practice what we already know. Diversity and the understanding of cultures and social classes dictate the appraoch we take to form strong allies from developing countries. Because of our shear size and might we bully our way through delicate issues. At times even when we feed the poor and help the sick we do the right things the wrong way. We fail to understand the dynamics of culture, race, religion and the fundamental priorities of people in foriehn countries. It has been said 911 occured becuase of poor intelligence in our country. Perhaps nothing speaks more to how centric we are than the admission of that statement. It's not like we didn't know who are enemy was, or that this was a new enemy. We just underestimated their potential and their will. Nothing new. This has happened again and again in history.
The real story of this election year is that many of our problems are tied together. We have a perfect storm of issues that need to be addressed. Let's try to tie these up. The war in Iraq has in part to do both with oil and terrorism. By shifting to alternative sources of eneragy of every kind and creating mandates to theis end we can reduce our consumption and involve our military less in the middle east, while at the same time assist in helping our economy to be more efficient and energy concious. By reducing our consumption of fossil fuels and conserving energy we will limit the amount of green house gases immited into our atmosphere and slow global warming. By limiting the war effort, reducing consumption of fossil fuels and alleviating green house gases and providing affordable fuel alternatives we begin to address economic issues and strengthen the dollar. This in turn will lead to ideas to continue to spur the economy and address social security, healthcare and other social and economic issues.
Yes, I know that it looks neat and simple. It will be anythng but that. But we have to have the vision to forge ahead. We need to stay focused. We need to be innovative and we need to put our next generation to work on planning out the future.