"WE WILL RECOVER"-WHO EXACTLY IS "WE"??

Finally the long anticipated words for America's recovery were uttered by our President..."We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger then before."

Those were the words of our new President to a joint session of Congress.

Who exactly is the "WE" he is referring to in this speech? It did not come across clearly to me at least.

Maybe he was talking about people I do not know, politicians maybe, or their relatives or people that they all know.....I must have missed something...who is the "WE" again?

I listened intently to the entire speech, since as an employer and business owner, I was very interested in knowing all about the "WE" thing.

I too am eager to see the recovery and the "rebuilding" thing he mentioned. I wanted to feel good and upbeat and I wanted to start to cheer on the President and his proposals to help ME and our country.

I waited....I waited....I waited and I listened. I did not even go to make myself a sandwich so as not to miss any part of what he said.

As I waited, started hearing things that did not make me want to cheer, but rather make me want to throw my shoe at the TV set. "What is he talking about?", I thought to myself.

He wanted to "invest" on my behalf in energy ?

He wanted to "invest" in health-care ?

He wanted to "invest" in alternative energy and conquer the global warming crisis?

These investments, he explained were necessary to ..."restore America's economic strength...".

Huh?

What does that mean ? How are these "investments" going to restore what ?

I kept asking myself how are these "investments" going to impact me ?

No answers were forthcoming and at the end of the speech, I knew nothing more than I heard previously. I wanted to cheer, I was all ready to cheer the recovery, and cheer for our President as his number one cheerleader, but he gave me nothing to cheer about. NOTHING!

I did not want him to invest my money, seeing how well the government has invested it so far such as those great investments in AIG, GM, Chrysler, CITI BANK, FANNIE and FREDDIE, etc....you name it and their investment strategy gives no comfort.

I would not hire them to invest for me based solely on their track record of losing on every investment so far.

Remember, they are mostly lawyers and politicians that do not know the difference between DOW JONES and Bobby Jones, so trusting them to invest for us is probably the dumbest thing that we can do.

Just yesterday at the President's economic forum, Larry Summers was shown falling asleep while attending that meeting (asleep at the switch so to speak).

These apparently are the folks that will be "investing" for us.

I can safely say that none of these investments are going to do anything for me, for my company or for my employees...correct that; the apparent increase in unemployment benefits now mandated to states that accept the stimulus money will give my laid-off employees some more weeks of payments than they could have had previously.

The laid off employees can now wait a little longer for the recovery to kick in, while they collect the unemployment benefits.

They can also marvel at the new electronic health records available at the free clinic (since they can hardly afford the COBRA payments), and watch and wait for fuel to be made from potatoes, swine dung, and bird excrement-the new bio-fuel technologies that billions are allocated for.

Too bad all these technologies have not yet been invented, and none of them will be working at those new technological plants right after their unemployment insurance payments run out.

Oh yes, the final key ingredient of the recovery will be that all possible employers and their management, will be taxed more-that will surely speed up the recovery. Tax the wealthy, that is the secret to the recovery. Tax those last 5%, who pay most of the taxes now...make them pay for the recovery. Everyone else, according to our President, will get a "break".

The top 5% however, will be punished. The US based corporations that sometimes produce almost all its profit abroad, while maintaining a fleeting remnants of their US business, will be punished. High salaries will be punished by mandating lower salaries. there was even a movement in congress to cap all salaries !

So the only "WE" I could gather out of this plan was the part about how my part of the recovery was that I could expect to pay more in taxes, pay more for the services that will be government mandated and also that "health-care reform" and more government regulations (which apparently were not sufficient so far) was next to stimulate all us employers.

I did not see any assistance to my employees, to my business or any hope for improvement in the future, as it stands now. How can there be a recovery when nobody that is capable of creating the recovery is being motivated to do so ?

There is a saying..."I never got a job from a poor person..." So how is this going to work by punishing the job providers?

How exactly is this recovery going to work for the "WE" he keeps talking about?

Maybe WE need a new word here...perhaps such as "very few"; "select"; those in select secret societies"; "those who do not want to work"; "special relatives"; "certain endangered mice varieties in Nancy Pelosi's district"; "sea otters"; "whales"; "polar bears"; "those who can not read contracts for financing $400,000 houses that they can not afford.".

Why can I not be a "WE" that he described? Why am I cursed to be a success in America, and then be punished?

I want my share of the pot taken from those top 5%! I want to be poor, I want to be in "crisis" so that I can get to be part of the "WE". It no longer pays to be "rich" or aspire to be rich, I guess.

I almost forgot, the last part of the speech stated that America will emerge from this "crisis" "stronger than ever before".

How exactly is that supposed to happen, after the employers are discouraged from making money, and if they do they have not the fruits of their labor to look forward to, but rather higher costs, more regulation and taxes??

Oh boy, "....and this is only the start..."said the President.

Frustrated, and Puzzled
New York