President Obama has stated that it is time for American leadership to step up and he has picked the one time when the Right certainly have no right to complain about putting America to work solving its dependence on foreign oil economic imbalance in three years.

All it takes is the political will to spend on the economy while saving the banking system. The best and perhaps only way for a modern large economy to work is not so much trickle down as a sort of reverse trickle – or more correctly by “assimulative growth” – growth that absorbs and supports its own as well as taking on new ground. It is the point of winning a war, to be able to improve a worsening situation.

And this is an economic war of sorts, the banking system is poised like a blocked drain may cause part of a city to flood whilst leaving others dry battling against the forces. Only by expanding upward does it become obvious that our resources are limited by our number.

Only by rewarding the creativity and workmanship of his citizens to act as a force, to meet the demands of citizenship and help the wheel of wealth turn the right way again – for a time – can the Government is better not to simply dish out cash. But to use the oil to make productivity of Americans create their own wealth again by reducing the need to trade for oil. If Barack Obama has the community building skills to achieve this, then the Republicans should support it or lose any credibility they think they have.

It is the best news for the World at large, for years.

See also: Al Gore’s Blog

Letters from school children to Mr Obama published in the NY Times included this:

Dear President Obama,

I am small, quiet, smart. I love to swim and play basketball. My mom and dad are from the Dominican Republic. I am going to the Dominican Republic next year. I think you should try to change the world by building shelters for the people who live in the streets. It’s the beginning of January, and it’s cold. Good luck being the president.

— Pamela Mejia, age 11, Boston

Something tells me President Obama will read this letter.  Something tells me it is a very good idea.  People keep saying “clean up the streets”.  This 11 year old smart girl is pointing out that the homeless are people.  It is not that they dirty the streets, but how would you like to live out of rubbish bins and sleep in cold hard places you can hide in?  It is that homeless people suffer that makes it worth while to give them shelter.  Slavery was abolished, but a homeless person has no shoestrings upon which to change their state.

It is one of the more extreme instances of enabling people to do more, rather than protecting the wealth of the very wealthy from risk.  The kind of reconstruction that Mr Obama is considering could be game changing for American society in the same way that any liberation is.  By shoring up the lives of the many and not enabling the very wealthy free reign to essentially gamble or the bankers to over-leverage our money at extreme and definite risk.

The world does not need mega oligarchs to run things.  It needs the productivity of its greatest nation.  Another letter suggested “free university for all”.  These 9 year olds understand the price of freedom is to support progress.

Barack Obama hints that he does not really care to upearth the Bush presidency. He is justified, his entire stance is that of a break with “The Past”.

There is nothing to learn from the Bush era. There is already more literature and investigations into “what went wrong” than required. A Federal investigation is only going to tell us just how guilty they are. If the America will is to override its sense of responsibility for the effect on the rest of the world of the needless Iraq war and what can only be described as consequentially similiar actions by Israel in its dealings with Hamas. Preventative war for what one fears that the enemy will do next. In other words Israel have acted out the Bush Doctrine already.

It may not be in the interests of the USA itself to mull over how it went wrong under the non-leadership of GW Bush and his cohorts. Impeachment would have been justice. But letting him cause more damage with some kind of positive retaliation is agreement that the Republican party are within their rights to highjack the constitution.

If Obama is right with that, then the economic problem we are facing must be terrifyingly worse.

See also:

NY Times