Such a moment may have arrived this week in the form of the current controversy engendered by Hilary Rosen’s pithy comment on the employment status, or alleged lack thereof, of the spouse of Milt Romney, the Republican Party’s presumptive candidate to take on President Obama in the upcoming November election.

Ms. Rosen, a prominent Democratic Party strategist, surmised, on television no less, that Mrs. Romney has never worked a day in her life. Mrs. Romney promptly took to the airwaves and asserted that being a housewife, and raising five children, is indeed a job.

This flap between the two distinguished ladies engendered an immediate and intense firestorm of criticism of Ms. Rosen by prominent Democrats and Republicans, including President Obama and First Lady, Michelle Obama.

For the record, I want to add my modest thoughts on the controversy because it has the potential to ignite a spark that provides a once in a lifetime wonderful opportunity to get this fundamentally important matter right. Thus, I want to note that however much sexists, knaves, cads, idiots, and crude political operatives attack Hilary Rosen, her critique of Mrs. Romney’s labor history is essentially accurate.

Raising kids is an arduous chore (been there, done that), but doing so does not require paying Social Security installments from each paycheck. Moreover, if Conservatives really believe raising children is a “job,” they can prove it by joining Liberals via support for legislation requiring that every housewife in the nation be provided a monthly paycheck.

The wonderful opportunity inherent in this moment is the agreement across the political spectrum, for obvious political reasons, that being a housewife is an unquestioned, and uncontested, mode of employment.

Given that, those engaged in such labor should be provided the same work-related rights as other employees, and that includes equal pay for comparable work. Legislation making this a reality is long overdue. Moreover, the courts will need to help resolve issues pertinent to back pay, lost wages, divorced and unmarried women, and retributions for past neglect and abuse.

Those opposing this enlightened advancement will be left with the task of explaining why is could possibly good for any society for more than half of the adult population to be required to labor in a manner that bears, from an economic point of view, many of the characteristics of gentile slavery.

Presidential campaigns. I love them.

Most important, it is exposing the raw financial power facilitating the party’s increasingly unsound political and economic approach to domestic and global affairs, not to mention rational thinking and science. The billionaires who are keeping Gingrich and Santorum in the race appear to be clueless regarding the manner in which their largesse is making the case that genuine public support is inferior to deep-pocket egotists, where the Republican Party is concerned.

One might also note that Gingrich and Santorum are also largely clueless regarding the values and aspirations of citizens outside the so-called “red state” arenas where dogma, anti-intellectualism, hostility to the ascendant colored majority and geopolitical belligerence are depressingly common.

Mitt Romney is the most balanced of all the Republican candidates, and this is one of the many reasons why most members of the party are hoping for the emergence of a viable alternative. In response, Romney is doubling down on ignorance, trying to prove, it seems, that he can pander to the lowest common denominator of intelligence shared by Republican voters in much the same manner as his frequently daffy competitors.

Moreover, Romney didn’t help his never-to-be-successful effort to appear to appear to be a somewhat normal Joe yesterday with his quip about his wife’s Cadillacs. He can wear ripped jeans all he wants, but no one is fooled by that act–because everything about him oozes country club snobbery. Romney also suffers because virtually no one believes he believes half the stuff he says.

As far as I am concerned, Ron Paul is more a curiosity than a serious candidate. However well he eventually does in the Republican primaries, he has absolutely no chance of significantly expanding his support beyond the Libertarian fringe. Thus, he is suspended in the same strange political universe inhabited by failed characters such as Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.

The key point to be grasped is that the Republican Party’s candidates are saddled with numerous liabilities, not the least being the fact they are currently advocating policies and priorities that can’t be expected to engender notable support from mainstream voters.

Given this, it becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, or underestimate, the fact that President Obama has set an extremely high standard of excellence across a broad range of important criteria necessary for doing the job well. Moreover, his overall competence is probably at the root of his rising popularity in public opinion polls. Obama is also benefiting handsomely from the improving economy, the impending conclusion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, decreasing unemployment, and increased public confidence in the current direction in which the nation is headed.

Republican Party power is represented these days at the highest level in the U.S. Congress. But that august institution is currently being awarded abysmally low rankings in popularity. As a matter of fact, the level of public support for Congress is the lowest in living memory. This, too, reflects positively on the President.

Like most everyone else, I am strongly opposed to some of Obama’s policies. And more often that I want to be, I am so irritated with him that some days I don’t want to see his face, or hear his voice. Nonetheless, whenever I take the big picture into consideration, and carefully weigh all alternatives, including the current cast of candidates seeking the office under the Republican banner, he looks like a man who is going to prove difficult to impossible to beat in the November 2012 election.

Republican recognition of this particular fact is at the root of their growing panic regarding the prospects of sending Romney, Santorum, Gingrich or Paul against Obama in the upcoming election. Their palpable anxiety is apparent in their growing concern about which of the four might prove to be capable of besting Obama in the critically important debates that will largely decide the election’s outcome.

Their concern is justified. Barring some major, unforeseen circumstance, the upcoming election is Obama’s to lose. The prospect of this occurring seems to decrease with each day’s passing, largely due to the fact that he has set a particularly high bar regarded minimally acceptable performance that each of the four remaining Republican candidates is going to find it extremely difficult to match.

At a time when the nation is in dire need of competent leadership, the Republican Party is struggling mightily to identify a person to present their case for regaining the White House. I need not spend time or space here presenting the manifest shortcomings of the candidates currently vying for the honor. Given the fact that all of them oppose the notion of global warming, and the science on which it rests, it is easy to understand the nature of the Party’s dilemma.

But it not just the matter of their anti-intellectual, don’t-try-to-confuse-me-with-facts rejection of science that leaves one slack-jawed and stunned that engenders the sense that something is seriously awry with the Republicans. It is the Party’s overall rejection of reason, coupled with its seemingly obsessive commitment to protecting the best interests of the elite minority while ignoring those of the vastly larger group of middle-class and poor people, which has convinced me that something is seriously amiss where Republicans are concerned.

This is highly unfortunate for the nation because the Democrats desperately need intelligent, organized, politically aware opposition. Without it, they will continue to muddle about in a mediocre fashion, timid, confused, and largely directionless regarding the nation’s most important problems. Thus, with no significant change in the Republican Party, there’s a good chance the nation will be stuck in the same rut we are currently enduring, even if Obama is re-elected.

The Tea Party partisans tried to subject the GOP to a radical makeover, but their conflicted, anti-intellectualism, has arguably served to make matters worse. This is significantly due to the abject fear that mainstream Republicans (if it even makes sense to suggest that such a species still exists) have of being targeted by the seeking-targets factions deeply embedded in Tea Party ranks. It is also due to inherent shortcomings in the Tea Party’s overall political agenda, which, kindly speaking, is more about hate and fear than it is about inclusion and solidarity.

Having deliberated on the matter, I have a recommendation that could constitute a brilliant solution to our collective need for a new political order. The Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) should take over the Republican Party, and transform it into a powerful Liberal antidote to the Democratic Party. This would solve numerous problems. For example, it would empower the currently unfocused potential of OWS. Most important, if OWS takes over the Republican Party, it will provide a stunning, historically significant, transformation in the existing balance of power of the sort necessary for enacting fundamental reforms supportive of the best interests of the 99 percent of the population going down slow under the current social, economic and political regime.

Think about it…

The dictator, who would be Africa’s king, was slain under murky circumstances shortly after he was dragged like an animal from his last refuge. Rather than a palace, government ministry building, or fortified compound, the refuge was a crude, concrete drainage pipe, covered with asphalt, desert sand and randomly applied bits of graffiti.

The magnificently determined young men who dragged the cold-hearted tyrant from the drainage pipe say he was dazed, wounded and bleeding when they finally got him. They also say he begged and pleaded for mercy, hoping hopelessly that his life would be spared.

Video images of the scene indicate that a large, angry crowd immediately gathered around the wounded tyrant when it became apparent that the profusely bleeding old man in their custody was indeed the deposed dictator. With casual, intense confidence, they moved in for their final assault in much the same manner as lions prepare to feed on a downed, but not yet dead, water buffalo.

With terrified eyes, he searched the faces of the jeering members of the crowd, obviously hoping to identify a friendly face. He may also have been attempting to engender via his forlorn, searching gaze some semblance of the deference and fear he had employed for many decades to cow them and their counterparts in every section of the nation into absolute submission to his will.

But the tyrant’s time had come, and the angry crowd was bent on exorcising his malign influence. First, they viciously beat him. Blood gushed from his head, and covered much of his face and upper body as the brutal attack intensified. He stumbled repeatedly in response to the intense pummeling, but his captors showed no mercy. The last images of him alive show a profoundly frightened old man at the moment of recognition that his time among the living was coming to a brutal, inglorious end.

His frenzied attackers responded in accordance with the behavior he had used for decades to maintain his absolute, tyrannical domination over their lives. For now, we are left the finality of it all. His bruised, battered half naked corpse is currently on display on the grimy floor of an otherwise empty cold storage locker.

People are being admitted to the gruesome scene to view the tyrant’s remains, each one wearing a mask to contain the stench. Those standing in the long, winding line outside the chilly locker are patient, intent on viewing the iconoclastic tyrant’s deteriorating corpse with their own eyes.

He was always an elusive figure, hard to understand and impossible to predict. Moreover, he artfully played his hand such that he was sometimes an enemy, and at other times a questionable friend. Whatever the guise, he was always extremely dangerous. Libya’s graveyards and killing fields are filled with the corpses of those who miscalculated the depth of his cruelty, or engendered his ire.

I am pleased that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has been removed from power, and troubled by the horrible manner in which he was put to death. Unfortunately, viscous, homicidal outcomes are dominant, if not entirely necessary, components of the final days portion of the self-serving script by which dictators commonly live and frequently die.

Like much of the rest of the world, I watched with bated breath last week as Tea Party activists in the U.S. House of Representatives held the government hostage over the debt ceiling issue. It was a riveting drama, and my sense is that we are going to experience more of the same.

Now that the extremists know they can control the national agenda via threats to bring the entire system down, it is highly unlikely they will relent and pursue their retrograde political agenda in a more balanced and responsible manner.

My most important concerns about this new set of Washington gangsters focus on the anti-intellectual, don’t-try-to-confuse-me-with-facts dimension of their worldview and rhetoric. In a classic sense, they are “barbarians” intent on destroying traditions, programs and institutions they barely understand. Moreover, some of them appear to have an uneasy relationship with sanity.

I am also concerned with their hostile attitude toward government. However many times Ronald Reagan alleged “government is the problem,” the truth of the matter is that government most certainly is not the source of the most important problems facing this nation. I suspect this truth is most apparent to those who have spent significant time living abroad.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to recognize what one’s government is and isn’t without living abroad. This is largely due to the fact that living under the authority and auspices of another government provides one with a kind comparative perspective that few Tea Party extremists possess. As a result, many of them are intent on destroying the one institution most crucial to all of our long-term best interests.

In addition to destroying government as we know it, bringing down Obama and making him a one-term president is a primary objective of Tea Party gangsters. They have a right to vehemently hate the black guy, and I recommend that they take their best shot regarding their effort to hurt him and his supporters.

But they do not have the right to destroy the nation’s economy, and the crucially important social safety net developed over generations via the sweat and toil of people committed to each other and the common good.

Nonetheless, minus organized pushback on a massive scale by those who reject the Tea party’s “let’s burn down the house” assault, the gangsters may well get their way via shakedown tactics virtually identical to the ones they used to roll the national government last week.

Nonetheless, as far as the military mission in Libya is concerned, I stand with those who consider it necessary and wise. If no action had been taken to halt Colonel Qaddafi and his forces, it is certain that the rebel strongholds would have been overrun. Had this occurred, a bloodbath would have ensued. We don’t need any more of those on our watch.

I assume that those who oppose preventing the bloodbath are sincere, at least some of them. But some of them are clearly up to no good. For example, the cold hearted U.S. Republicans slinking about in front of television cameras complaining about the role the U.S. is playing in the effort to keep Colonel Qaddafi from savaging his countrymen and women are acting true to form.

On the one hand, members of this group have a long history of minimizing the deaths of poor people, domestically and abroad (note their opposition to the life saving health legislation recently passed by Congress). On the other hand, they are clearly using the current crisis to bash President Obama. That’s pretty much what they are about 24/7 these days.

No one should be surprised that people such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are opposed to the allied military intervention in Libya. One senses that they see Colonel Qaddafi as one of them. Each of them has a vested interest in validating the proposition that dictators are something other than abominable criminals. Nonetheless, the inspiring, anti authoritarian movement sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East is rendering such figures obsolete. One senses that their time is coming to an end, and that their blustering about the sovereign rights of self aggrandizing, anti-democratic figures such as themselves are destined to fall increasingly on deaf ears.

I must acknowledge that I am somewhat surprised by the number of Liberals and Leftists who oppose the allied rescue mission. Supporting the Libyan opposition is something that is synchronous with their alleged support of people power. But many of them are deeply disturbed by the allied effort to pry the bloody, murderous hands of the fiendish Libyan dictator from the very throats of that besieged nation’s long-suffering, outgunned citizens.

In response to the allied mission, numerous Leftists and Liberals are rancorously claiming that nothing more is happening in Libya than an imperial gambit aimed at capturing oil. Preoccupied with their ossified theoretical musings, and misbegotten dreams of somehow being accepted as members of a so-called “vanguard” group, they appear to me to be heading instead for the proverbial “junk heap of history” they have always assumed to be the catch basin for their Conservative opponents.

It is too soon to determine how events will eventually unfold in Libya, but two things are crystal clear even at this early stage of the titanic struggle: Qaddafi’s days are numbered, and democracy is on the rise in ways that will transform the geopolitical character of the world as we have known it for a century or more.

The vast majority of Libyans, as best we can ascertain at this moment, want freedom and democracy. Person after person has strode forth since their rebellion’s inception proclaiming that the time has come for their nation to come in from the proverbial cold, and establish a constitutionally-based society committed to due process, law, order and healthy engagement with the rest of the world. In order to accomplish these objectives, they rightly assert that they need to rid the nation of the malign influence of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi “by whatever means necessary.”

The quixotic Col. has responded with wild accusations, tear gas, mercenaries, indiscriminate killing, and vows to waging an unrestrained war dedicated to crushing his opponents. Each day’s news reports prove that he is absolutely committed to keeping his word, and we can understand why. If he loses, death is probably his only option: whether by the mob or the hangman’s noose.

Those engaged in the fight against the Colonel and his small band of vicious allies are portraying their titanic struggle in similarly grim terms. If they win, they will have created for themselves the possibility of living normal lives. If they lose, they will die. That is more or less the rule in Africa: take out the dictator and consequently acquire the right to rule. Those who attempt such a maneuver unsuccessfully must prepare to die. There’s no middle ground ending in such struggles. And there are few middle ground options for the United States.

Thus, given our position as the dominant global power, we are faced with the question of what to do. We can support the Libyan people, or do nothing and probably end up watching them getting crushed by the Colonel’s domestic supporters, augmented by foreign mercenaries, who are obviously willing to kill indiscriminately until they are called off like a pack of crazed, wild dogs.

I recommend that the United States Government put together an appropriate force and orchestrate, with help from like-minded allies, Colonel Qaddafi’s immediate departure. At the very least, this course of action will provide us something that we will never achieve from our current posture in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that’s the unquestioned status of being on the so-called right side of history. That is something we, and the beleaguered Libyan opposition forces, desperately need at this pregnant, pivotal moment.

The second development I am watching is the massive revolt currently underway in Madison, Wisconsin, where citizens from every sector of society are besieging the state government in response to the attack on unions being waged by the newly elected Republican governor. However, the immediate confrontation in Wisconsin is resolved in the short run, my strong impression is that it is a precursor of similar confrontations to come in possibly every section of the United States.

Although I am always hesitant to speculate on the character of the future, the unprecedented events unfolding in Tripoli and Madison move me to comment on things to come. I should also note that I am not I am not projecting my desires regarding the ramifications of the historically significant confrontations currently underway in Madison and Tripoli. Instead, I am addressing potential long-range ramifications of the information we are receiving from witnesses and participants in those confrontations.

As far as Libya is concerned, it is apparent that Colonel Gadhafi’s days as the nation’s dictatorial leader are coming to an abrupt halt. However brutal and blood curdling his efforts to remain in power, the critical mass of public opinion in his nation, and around the world, has turned inexorably against him. The only substantive question at this point is how many corpses he will leave in his wake. Score another victory for democracy, and the indomitable will of human beings to be free.

On the surface, the stately demonstrators in Wisconsin would appear be in another universe, focused on problems categorically different from those being fatally contested in Libya. But that is only partially true. Struggling to sustain the weight of two imperial wars, a staggering financial crisis, and the immediate prospect of having their legal right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions eliminated, a critical mass of Wisconsin citizens are engaged in a showdown confrontation with their government. Much is at stake, and the whole nation is watching with bated breath.

Most important, there is a distinct possibility that the urge to confront government officials via mass demonstrations may well end up sweeping out of Wisconsin and across the U.S. in much the same manner as it is in the Middle East. Should this occur, U.S. political leaders of every stripe could end up in the immediate future desperately perusing retreat options–in much the same manner as their tone deaf, heartless, autocratic counterparts in the Middle East?

Such alterations of the dominant narrative pertinent to client leaders at the far periphery of the U.S. Empire are all too common. Thus, Pakistan’s Musharraf, Cuba’s Batista, Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-Shek, Haiti’s Duvaliers, Korea’s, Park Chung Hee, Chile’s Pinochet, Marcos of the Philippines, Nicaragua’s Samoza, the Shah of Iran, and, indeed, Saddam Hussein, received similar treatment as their usefulness to the Empire waned. There are many others, and their crimes against humanity are numerous, and quite often heinous. Even though such figures are invariably feared and hated by their subjugated people, they have tended to remain in office, sometimes for several decades, largely due to critically important assistance provided by the U.S. Government.

There are several reasons why dictators are among the most favored leaders of nations that exist within the orbit of imperial U.S. power. Moreover, they are relatively easy to understand. Dictators keep things simple. As long as they are satisfied, little time, energy and resources need be allocated to the fractious, frequently inconvenient needs, demands and dreams of the people they rule. Demands for freedom, and the right of democratic participation in government, are neither convenient, nor particularly congruent with the overarching geopolitical strategy of the U.S. Government. Thus, leaders of the U.S. government, Democratic and Republican alike, tend to prefer dictators to democrats as leaders of subjugated territories. And this is particularly the case in volatile areas such as the Middle East.

In any event, it does not take genius to understand that such a policy has a glaring weakness, which is the fact that subjugated people eventually lose their fear and take on dictatorships in struggles of the sort we have witnessed in locations as diverse as Romania, Germany, the Philippines, Tunisia and now Egypt. Furthermore, potentially Egyptian-style revolts are currently bubbling to the surface in Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen and the West Bank. Things appear calm in Saudi Arabia at this moment, but my best guess is that royal princes throughout the kingdom are probably keeping their escape jets fueled up, and prepared for immediate departure, should their subjects become infected, and emboldened, by the democracy virus.

Here in the U.S., those who preside at the apex of imperial power are clearly worried. They prefer to talk of their love of Democracy, but hard power of the sort they trade in on a daily basis is based on autocratic authority. The crowds in Cairo are exposing the contradiction. Much is at stake, and the probability is that the U.S. Empire will have a dramatically different shape and context by the time the impressive people’s revolution currently underway in Egypt runs its dramatic course.

The signs of stagnation and decline stemming from economic weakness are both numerous, and deeply troubling.  They include the persistent high level of unemployment, and underemployment; the tens of millions of people who have lost their homes; expanding debt at every level of government; massive annual trade imbalances, and a shell-shocked populace burdened by exorbitant debt.

However much the stock market has gone up in the past year or so, the destructive impact of the recent Great Recession continues to haunt the pocketbooks and lives of most citizens.  Recognition that the Federal Government’s debt load has climbed to $100,000 for each individual citizen is also a growing source of alarm among those who understand its long-term, negative ramifications.  Those who wonder what such ramifications might be should consider the current dilemmas of Greece and Ireland, if not residents of the former Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of that particular empire’s inglorious collapse.

Here in the U.S. these days fear and uncertainty about the economy dominate daily life, and few serious conversations go on beyond a few minutes before one or all the participants mention some aspect of the financial uncertainty that haunts our lives.  As a result, workers in virtually every sector of our society are experiencing unprecedented anxiety.  And this includes many of those employed in industries and occupations that have heretofore been considered safe havens from economic distress.

Much of the anxiety is obviously tied to the nation’s stubbornly high rate of unemployment.  Government statistics indicate that approximately one out of every ten workers is unemployed.  Thus, virtually every citizen knows someone who is out of work, with few prospects of being employed any time soon.

Hunger is another source of anxiety and suffering.  Last year 17 percent of U.S. households experienced significant food insecurity.  And one in every four children in the nation resides in a home suffering chronic food insecurity.  Food banks and community shelters do what they can to provide assistance to those in need, but they are few indications that this problem will disappear for the next several years.

The chaos permeating the housing sector, which is engaged in a slow motion collapse, is an additional major source of anxiety and fear.  Millions of homeowners are “underwater” on their mortgages because they owe more on their homes than they are currently worth.  Moreover, the completely bewildering dilemma of those caught in this particular economic tsunami is being made worse by the continuing downward drift in the value of their homes.

Millions have been evicted from their homes because they could no longer afford to pay their mortgages, and current projections indicate that several millions more will lose their homes during the next three to four years.  Moreover, each home lost because of unemployment, or a bank’s foreclosure, deals yet another wound to the neighborhood in which it is located because of the corresponding decline in taxes collected by municipal governments already strapped for cash.  At this point, there seems to be no clear end point for the downward spiral in government and community resources due to the ominously expanding housing crisis.

The net result of crises such as the imploding housing market is that the United States is in an economically weakened state compared to recent decades.  On the other hand, China, India, and several South American and African nations are amassing impressive economic clout via rapidly expanding economies.  Moreover, current economic trends indicate that during the decades immediately ahead such locales will pose serious, and possibly destabilizing, economic competition for the United States.

Unfortunately, most indications are that the full ramifications of economic challenges emanating from previously poor and downtrodden sectors of the world are barely understood by this nation’s leaders, and even less so by most citizens. 
 The jingoistic, know-nothing, angry, irrational, Tea Party partisans can be cited to highlight the nature of our dilemma. The Tea Party crowd wants to turn back the clock, and re-embrace policies and procedures that were only barely appropriate when they were in use decades ago. Unfortunately, the world they seek to live in no longer exists.

And their mantras extolling the benefits of “small government” are based on simplistic, if not totally ignorant, perceptions of the world in which we currently live, not to mention the one we will inhabit in the years immediately ahead.

The China factor can be used to elaborate the point.  Current commentary in Washington, D.C. about China’s allegedly undervalued currency is indicative of broad confusion in this nation regarding the Middle Kingdom’s awesome economic performance during the past three decades.  China’s economy is not outperforming ours solely because of its currency valuation.  Better organization of national priorities, including strategic investments in industries and people, is probably more important to China’s overall economic success than the yuan’s contested valuation.

In any event, my best sense is that alarmed dialogue about China’s economic prowess will inevitably expand, and become more urgent. Moreover, as the full extent, and global ramifications, of China’s rapidly expanding economic clout become more readily apparent in this nation, the critical significance of the commentary presented here now will be more readily apparent.

Moreover, a recent cover story in The Economist asserted that India’s economy is poised to exceed China’s in the not too distant future.  The key point to be understood is that expansive, global change of the sort that realigns the grand, geopolitical balance of power, is clearly underway. The process will, of course, produce winners and losers. Economic viability will be one of the ultimate determinants for nations hoping to end up among the ranks of the winners.

Given this, much more serious attention needs to be devoted to the long-term viability of the United States in the increasingly integrated, global economic system. Given the nation’s abundant resources, the possibility of auspicious prosperity is on the so-called table. Unfortunately, the U.S. has numerous structural peculiarities that also render it vulnerable to being eclipsed in the economic sphere by nations better prepared to compete in the global economic arena.

One of the most ominous early indicators regarding the overall fitness of the U.S. regarding the unprecedented challenges dead ahead is the high rate of unemployment here in the United States. Republican Party spokespersons, and their running dog Tea Party accomplices, lay much of the blame for high unemployment on President Obama’s policies. 
 It is not clear whether they actually believe this to be the case. Some of them obviously do, but the probability is that vast majority of those who make the charge simply find the nation’s first non-white president to be a convenient whipping boy.

Mainstream members of the Democratic Party provide different explanations as to why the nation’s rate of unemployment remains worrisomely high. Their consensus seems to be that the business community is being unreasonably cautious, and that when that caution dissipates happy days will return. 
 I beg to differ.

The high U.S. unemployment rate is due to many factors; one of the most important being the fact that much of the work previously performed here has migrated across the globe to places such as India and China. Moreover, as Bruce Springsteen noted, those jobs are not coming back.

In order to get U.S. workers back to work in numbers commensurate with the best interests of workers, and the nation at large, we need to acknowledge that if we continue along the current course, the inevitable outcome will be more unemployment, and more precipitous national decline.  China are not surging ahead of the U.S. in terms of productivity and overall economic growth because its leaders are unfairly manipulating their currency.

If auspicious prosperity could be achieved by such a simple maneuver, the United States, and much of Western Europe, would be aggressively engaged in doing the same. 
  The Chinese are outperforming us because their system is better suited to compete in the global arena than ours. Given this, U.S. leaders, in every sector, need to devote far more attention to studying the Chinese system, and far less to accusing them of improper trading practices. Most important, our leaders need to acquire better understanding of the manner in which the Chinese coordinate government and business operations such that they function as a unified entity, easily capable of dominating virtually all would be competitors.

Our current economic strategies are not sufficient to withstand the challenge.  Therefore, we need to implement major reforms, or prepare to be eclipsed, probably during the decade dead ahead.