Time to Strengthen the Social Safety Net: Not extend the supply lines

I find myself talking politics a lot these days. This is common for me, but it seems that there is an across the board increased "chatter" almost comparable to an election year. There appear to be two factors driving this heightened engagement:


1. Our President's attempt orate his legislative agenda. I've previously blogged about Obama's impressive ability to open doors and initiate dialog. Through his abilities, he has injected politics (namely the health-care debate) into the popular culture of America and has been hitting the political talk show circuit and late night shows; and

2. People are genuinely scared for their families' future. More businesses are facing financial ruin, more people are being laid off and the existing support structure is being severely strained.


The anxious middle-class and the newly poor are a growing constituency that feel helplessly sandwiched between the high cost and mandates of Obamacare and the anti-welfare advocates on the far right. These extremes leave a huge middle-ground called "common-sense."


Common-sense dictates that we need to circle the wagons to make sure our existing social safety net is working properly, getting to those who need it for a hand-up and making sure that the system does not financially collapse. Adding new entitlement programs under the banner of "change" may provide good headlines, but is hollow on main street.

Government should protect the social safety net supply line, not string it out so thin that it collapses.
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Tribute to Norman Borlaug

A legend passed away this past weekend. Norman Borlaug had many titles:

Father of the Green Revolution
The man who saved more lives than any man in history
Greatest American of the 20th Century;
Greatest Human Being, RIP
The man who fed the world;
Nobel laureate

In today's pop culture world, this level of media accolades is unheard of, but refreshing.

I had the opportunity to meet Borlaug once at a World Food Prize event -- a program he started to recognize individuals who promote food availability in the world.

One of Borlaug's greatest quotes:

...most Western environmentalists "have never experienced the physical sensation of hunger. They do their lobbying from comfortable office suites in Washington or Brussels. If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for 50 years, they'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists in wealthy nations were trying to deny them these things."

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