2008 - A Year In Review (Epilogue) - Part 1

I am writing this article on a long journey from Kansas City to San Diego which involved a delayed take off from Kansas City resulting in late arrival to Houston giving me no time for lunch (did I say I couldn't eat breakfast either), not to mention that I won't be reaching San Diego until 3:45pm.

Anyone who has changed planes in Houston (IAH) knows that the terminal assignment is outrageous. Just to get from Continental Express to Continental takes about 20mins for a young person like me. Think what would happen to a single woman with 2 kids, or our elderly who desperately want to catch their flight so that they don't get re-routed to Alaska and back before they finally get to their destination. Trust me, if we don't take action against our Airline Industry right now, 3 yrs from now, you will be bailing these idiots out as well.

When I am hungry, I tend to forget all my personal worries and focus on our world issues. It's good to miss meals sometimes; reminds you of the fact that there are atleast a billion people on this planet that cannot afford a single meal/day.

We are the privileged....and look what we have done.....


Life right now is a pretty sad state of affairs. From a 30 foot view, we are responsible for this mess. We are responsible for allowing out leaders to continue lowering the standards that were once set so high by our forefathers. We are letting this nation, and therefore the entire world sink into a very sorry state that will be impossible to pull out of, if it gets too late. We need to wake up before it is too late.

The pessimist in me tells me it is already too late. We have the highest debt ever. Our banking, mortgage, insurance, health care, automobile and airline industries are all falling apart, all at the same time! I call these the "AXIS OF EVIL" in our country.

Each of these industries require MANUAL INTERVENTION and triple/quadruple review system so that we never get ourselves into what we have right now.

We need "whistle-blowers." We need someone to say "Time Out. Close Shop"

These companies and their quarterly goal meeting criteria have ruined the quality of life in this nation. I would love to pass a law that provides maximum jail time for CEO's that knowingly took their companies and this nation down a path we cannot come back from.

The optimist in me says that there is still some time and that we need to really start thinking out of the box if we want to remember this as a great nation and a great world it once really was. We have to CHANGE if we want to pass on to our kids and grand kids a world that is safe to live in, a world that is free of terror, epidemics, natural and corporate disasters.

I have had a lot of opportunity to think about the year 2008, which in history may go down as a year of bailouts, or a year of "things this country should've looked into a long time ago", or a year of "I can't believe our leaders are taking our tax-payer money and pouring it into a bottomless abyss."

The smarty pants in me can come up with 100 such one liners for this, but I don't want to digress to much from the topic at hand.

Let's rewind back through last year and recap some of the poor decisions this country made to save "the average American."

I want to start with the most disappointing.....

To be continued...