AMERICA'S POLITICAL ZOO

The next presidential election may be the most important in our lifetime, not because of the "characters" involved. All of them at both sides of the isle, leave much to be desired, but because of the perspectives they propose for our future; whomever we choose will try to impose his view and we the people lose in both options. The political environment has come to such a polarized, one track minded status that there seems to be little room for negotiation and, what is worse, little space to actually "do" anything.

We have to understand that our dilemma is no longer to decide whether this great nation will follow Keynes or Friedman; after a long period of arbitrary interpretation both economic "liturgies" have been exhausted and have brought no salvation anchor to our ailing economy. Actually, it is a wise mixture of both that could take us back to "business". But those bureaucrats we elected to build our future are more interested in serving their real masters and gaining as much ground as possible for their interest groups than doing the job we hired them, and pay them handsomely, to do in the first place. Insatiable greed seems to be the name of the game and while one breed of politicians is busy trying to alter the very DNA of America's capitalism and make a pinata out of the most powerful nation on earth, the other seems to have fallen into a catatonic state of complacency and barren mind philosophy, steadfast in citations of our founding fathers, and memories of better days. Their present appears to be so boring and opaque that they continue to cling to the memory of their last hero: Ronald Reagan.

Former speaker Pelosi talks green, trying to shove one and many green projects down our throats while she barks about having the private jet she's so eager to fly in as frequently as possible; then waves a flag with the picture of Sandra Fluke as if paying for some elite liberal activist, Georgetown student's avid sexual drive could help the poor. And there go the conservative pundits and fall in the trap helping her make a case out of this as if there weren't real issues to talk about.

Yes this is an important election, but beyond who we choose to lead the nation what is to be decided here is whether we the people will continue to witness helplessly the dismembering of our nation by a greedy gang of politicians or whether we will hold them accountable for their mistakes and excesses; while it needs to be understood that the have nots in this country would probably be middle class everywhere else, it is still a fact that 50 million Americans are now below the poverty line making a sixth of our people part of the underprivileged. One candidate will definitely ask us to throw good money after bad to solve this crisis, while his opponent will probably believe that allowing another  financial "open season" is the answer; they're both wrong. It takes a lot of rolling up their sleeves and getting to work creatively in these new times, but they'd rather sit around the robust mahogany table to bet their money in a rigged market than do their job. It is time for us, the average citizens, to be the main character in our own movie.