Open Letter to The Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States

I watched your State of Union address as well as the response from the Republican Party. Your message inspired me to compose this letter to identify and resolve what I think is the problem with political reform in America.

I listened to a friend of mine, The JRil Show on Blogtalkradio and he vowed to not watch what he termed the “monday morning quarterbacking” that going on with pundits who have never ran anything in their lives that ever compares to the size and scope of your responsibilities try to tell you how to do your job. He also railed against, and I agree, the notion that the leadership of the GOP could brazenly complain about your inability to rescue in a year a disaster that it took 8 years of their leadership to create.

Along that end I honestly believe that in order for you to go down in history as one of greatest Chief Executives to ever hold the office of the Presidency, you must make the remaining three years of your first term about poverty. Not crime, not even Terrorism, but poverty. If Katrina and now Haiti did not teach us anything it should have illustrated the abject poverty that exists even in the developed world. Haiti may have been the poorest country in the western hemisphere but people fail to acknowledge that according to the International Monetary Fund, Haiti is number 132 in Gross Domestic Product. Meaning it has a larger GDP than such countries as Nicaragua, Kyrgyzstan and Laos. In fact, among the world's poorest countries, Haiti is relatively nice. There are people in Africa that would swim the ocean to get to Haiti, at least Haitians have water.

I believe that a partnership forged between you, and not necessarily every Democrat, and poor people would guarantee you a second term. What must be sacraficed is a message about how safe we are. The only real threat against U.S. interests either here or abroad comes from lone individuals slipping through the inevitable cracks in our security protocols. That will happen no matter who is in the White House. Remember, 9/11 happened to the Honorable George W. Bush and he was no slouch in inhibiting personal freedoms for security purposes. He was about as vigilant as could be and his Administration totally missed it. You can say this though, that was a one trick pony, that will never happen again. Not to that degree at least.

Here's the thing though, a mistake has been made in our conviction that Terrorism is at its heart a religious movement. There is a common misconception among the populace, even if to be politically correct most won't say it aloud, that Terrorist are forged in the fire of religious indoctrination. This is true to an extent, but what can't be diminished is the effect of abysmal poverty on his worldview. This country did a curious thing beginning after World War II we began in earnest the virtual support of many a country's food suppy. We dropped metric ton after metric ton of aid upon developing countries. What we also dropped was a free market economy along with the tools to reach that economy, i.e. cell phones, televisions, satellite transmissions, etc.) We showed the poor of the world exactly what life in the first world is like. We showed people who almost never see or eat fresh produce whole stores brimming with it. We show them life with more than one pair of shoes and they all match. We show a man who supports his family on $21.00 a month how to renovate their bathroom for a mere $50,000.00 when this man doesn't have indoor plumbing. We show a shower with 8 full body showerheads to a village with no running water not even to drink.

We, in effect, show the people of the world the life that they can never have, no matter how inventive, no matter how persistent. We assist poor people in their belief that we care little for those who are not like us. We provide poor people with the same access to information that we have and wonder what the recruitment tools are that terrorist groups use to influence the young. People all over the world know that the U.S. wastes over 100 Million pounds of food each year. We leave more food on our plates each day than the average poor child eats in a week. We televise this madness to people all over the world each day.

Poverty and our response to poverty will be Issue #1 for this decade. Not just the poverty that exists in the developing world but the poverty to be found within the borders of this country. Before we can lead the rest of the world, we must deal with our own shortcomings. In America 35.9 million persons live below the poverty line of which 12.9 million were children. 3% of America's children experience hunger every day in the richest country on the planet. Therein lies the real issue, its always been that way for poor people in America and by that I mean minorities. What is happening in America now is that more and more of the majority are being trapped in this whirlpool of credit debt, crushing mortgages, job loss and lost confidence in our elected leadership no matter the party. That's your new audience. The households that live paycheck to paycheck. Those individuals who in a spate of coincidental events can be the face of the new homeless. Just as some surmise that the wing flap of a butterfly can produce a hurricane a world away, some families are a car wreck, a bad infection, a sick child or parent, a plant closing or a house fire away from financial ruin, even with insurance.

If you reach out to those people and try to be the first President to address the inequities that exist right here in America, you create a peculiar political environment. You in effect say to your opponents that a vote against you is a vote against poor people whether working or not. There are more people in America that are on the borderline between lower middle class and upper lower class than is realized in the political discussion. This potential voting block can go to the leader who listens to their plight and responds in ways that actually helps them not just talks about it. Doubling the Child Care Tax Credit is a good example of this. It puts money in their hand that hopefully they'll save but also a portion of it will be put back into the economy necessitating the need to expand the business that provides the products they want to buy, which incidentally does a little thing like create jobs.

Respectfully

Kenneth Pitts
kenneth.pitts@rocketmail.com