Setting Priorities

The world is in turmoil.

North Korea is rattling its nuclear sword more than usual. The Iranians are speeding up their drive to develop nuclear weapons as the major world powers engage in endless monologue, despite Israel’s warning that the Iranians are only months away. Syria’s Assad has crossed President Barack Obama’s red line by using chemical weapons on the Syrian rebels, unless Assad has successfully faked saran in their bloodstreams. The U.S. President is now calling for more evidence and the requirement that there be widespread use of chemical weaponry.

The FBI continues to look into the potential that the Chechen brothers who set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon were not acting alone. Who trained them? Where did the training occur? [Editor’s note: As we went to press May 1, news was breaking that police had taken three more suspects into custody for allegedly helping the living Chechen suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after the Boston bombings but not for planning them.].

Seven months after the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, whistleblowers are finally coming forth to counter the Beltway mantra that the Obama Administration did everything it could to help our diplomats trapped in Libya. The suspicion of a Nixonian cover-up grows.

In the good ole’ USA, the economy is still stuck in the mud. We’re limping along nearly four years after the recession officially ended at an economic pace only a turtle could love. Job creation has almost kept up with population growth and made barely a dent in the ranks of those who lost their jobs during the recession. Youth unemployment (ages 18-29) is near 12 percent, with African-American youth unemployment above 20 percent. Labor participation is falling off the charts, due only in part to retiring baby-boomers. Millions of potential workers have simply stopped looking for jobs. The national debt is rapidly approaching $17 trillion.

Then there is Obamacare. God bless Nancy Pelosi. She was absolutely right when she said Congress would have to pass the bill before we understood what was in it. Now that we are beginning to understand the 2000-plus pages of legislation, even the politicians are panicking. Max Baucus, a Democratic U.S. Senator from Montana who was instrumental in steering the original legislation through the Senate, threw up his hands at a hearing recently and called the implementation an impending “train wreck.” Health-care premiums are headed skyward, many patients may not have access to their usual doctor, some workers will see their hours cut and lose their insurance, and some people that would have been hired won’t be.

Undeterred by the failure of Solyndra and other “green investments,” the president continues to push for more money to spend on green-energy initiatives. He also wants more largesse for education and those proverbial shovel-ready infrastructure projects. His appetite for spending is unabated by the bariatric presence of “sequestration.”

So how is the president dealing with these multiple crises? He clearly doesn’t want to place the U.S. in a leadership role in foreign affairs, unless leading-from-behind qualifies. Domestically, his policies inhibit faster growth, leaving the long-term unemployed in limbo. President Obama seems quite content with encouraging the growth of public assistance and borrowing 40 cents on every dollar the government spends. Apparently the problem of growing debt can simply be transferred to future generations to pay.

The commander-in-chief seems uncomfortable with the big problems concerning the nation. He appears to be more comfortable focusing on abortion, guns, and gays. The top news story this week was the president’s call to Jason Collins, an NBA player who decided to announce that he was gay. Within hours of the announcement, President Obama was on the phone congratulating Collins “for his courage.”

I would have preferred that the president reach out immediately to the Benghazi whistleblowers, promising them career protection if they simply shared their personal knowledge. Maybe then we could get to the bottom of the episode and use that information to craft policies and procedures to better protect not only our diplomats but also our citizens.

It’s all a matter of setting priorities.

Norman Poltenson is publisher of The Central New York Business Journal. Contact him at npoltenson@cnybj.com