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The people have spoken and we have a new president-elect. For months we’ve watched the longest running political soap opera in American history. We’ve sat on the edge of our seats throughout the primary season, and watched candidates come and go. This has been an historic election by every measure.

But now the dust has settled. The year-long national diversion is over. We can turn off the cable news shows, forget about the latest media rock stars, and get back to our normal lives. Office politics will replace national politics, Monday night football will replace Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer, and we’ll go back to carpooling the kids to soccer games instead of driving to political rallies.

Now that we’re back to real life, what do we have? Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we know were not in Kansas, but we’re not quite sure where we’ve landed. Our home values have plunged, and our 401 K plans have just become 201 K plans. Neighborhood yard sales now feature flat screen TV’s and speedboats along with old cuisinarts and baby cribs. The prices on EBay are half of what they were just two months ago.

You actually know people who have lost their jobs – and have few prospects for new ones. A year ago the best businesses to be in on Long Island were real estate and construction. You could borrow cheap and easy money, build a house – for yourself or as an investment – and be guaranteed to sell it at an enormous profit. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. But Riverhead Lumber has just laid off a significant percent of their work force. So has Home Depot. Those for-sale signs in front of McMansions are starting to rust they’ve been up so long. And the real estate section of the paper starts out every listing with “recently reduced”.

We’re in a Recession and those expert analysts you see on the business channels say they either have no idea how long the recession will last or how deep it will go.

So, let’s admit it – we are sailing in rough seas without a map. No one knows what the future holds for the American economy, but no one thinks it holds good news anytime soon.

Think of it this way – do you know anyone who has had a heart attack? He has two options – go on living the way the same as before – overweight, no exercise, junk food, constant stress – and not last long. Or he can undergo a complete transformation – start exercising, substitute veggies and fruit for McDonalds and lose weight. His cholesterol will come down, he’s no longer out of breath every time he climbs the stairs, and he spends more time outdoors. Guys like him not only live longer, but seem to live better lives. It’s just hard to get from here to there and to get your head around the idea of delayed gratification. It’s not easy to pass up the donuts and reach for the grapefruit.

So, what happens next? The only thing we know for certain in these uncertain times is the values that have guided us for the last decade or so – borrowing, consumption, instant gratification, greed – won’t work in the new era. We should probably dust off some old fashioned values and give them a try.

Our parents and grandparents worked hard, saved money, and often did without so their children could have a better life. They bought one house using their savings as a down payment, and spent 30 years paying off the mortgage. When the kids were grown, and the house paid for, they sold it for a great profit, bought an apartment and put what was leftover in money market funds. Eventually they retired, moved to Florida, and lived on their savings.

We used to think it sounded quaint. But it sure looks good right now. We need to pay off our debts and not sign up for new ones. We should start Saving part of our salary. We might try spending quality time with the family rather than jetting off to exotic vacations. We need to make do with what we have and be happy about it.

Let’s face it. The era of Gordon Gecko and Greed is Good is Gone. Less is the New More. And, like the guy who feels better once he loses the weight, exercises more and gets his cholesterol down, we might all find the new reality isn’t so bad after all.

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This election has gone on way too long, with way too many details. We have tax cut proposals, health care proposals, Wall Street bailout plans, mortgage bailout plans and who knows how many other schemes to spend your money. It is so complicated that we’re all tempted to throw up our hands!

The candidates’ proposals are so detailed, that it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. That’s why it is so important to take a big step back so you CAN see the forest, and get a sense of the big picture that each of the candidates is painting.

The one thing we’ve all learned – the hard way – in the last month is that you can’t keep the party going forever. Americans have borrowed too much money for the last twenty years, as individuals, as businesses and as a government. We’ve bought things on credit – be it houses, stocks, flat screen TV’s, or government programs. We’ve been on a spending binge. And, like all binges, eventually you wake to face reality – usually with a whopper of a hangover.

The second thing we’ve learned is that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Haven’t you asked yourself in the last year or so, how could home prices could keep going up? How you could have such constantly rising 401K plan without having to add much to it? How 20 somethings on Wall Street could be making such huge salaries right out of college? How borrowing money could be so easy?

Didn’t we all have a nagging thought, buried in the back of our minds, that there was something unreal about it all? That nagging thought was your common sense telling you that something didn’t add up. But it turns out that common sense isn’t so common since most of us didn’t heed it. My favorite was when my one year old was sent a credit card, addressed to her, offering a program so she could charge now but pay nothing back for months. Right.

So the party’s over. And we have two very different presidential candidates – each of whom promises to get us out of this mess by cutting taxes and increasing programs. But how can we pick out way through this maze of programs and promises? Do either of their programs make sense?

After analyzing the candidates proposals for health care, social security, taxes, and economic stimulants, I’ve concluded that when you strip away all the mind-numbing specifics, all the spin and fancy talk, McCain and Obama have two opposing philosophies about America’s economic pie– how big it is and who gets how much of it. Both candidates want to increase the size of the pie. Both want to change who in our society gets what sized pieces of the pie. But they approach it from different angles.

In simple terms, McCain is more concerned with growing the pie, rather than the size of the pieces. He favors policies that encourage the private sector of the economy to grow. His proposals favor small business, where the majority of new jobs come from. His tax policies reward investment in new technologies, building new companies and creating new jobs. Although he doesn’t say it this way, he figures that if the pie is big enough, everyone gets a decent sized piece. He doesn’t believe in giving everyone the same sized piece, but rather a piece reflective of their overall contribution to growing the pie. He is a free market conservative.

Obama is more concerned with the size of the pie pieces, rather than the size of the pie as a whole. As he said to Joe the Plumber, he wants to spread the wealth around. He favors more government aid to the lower classes – in health care and tax refunds. He wants to use government programs – taxes, rebates, mandatory programs – to make sure everyone gets a more equitable size of the pie. He calls this a trickle up plan – that if the lower classes have a bigger piece of the pie they will stimulate the economy to grow. When questioned whether these policies will shrink the pie, he dismisses the very thought. He is a big government liberal.

Now it’s up to you to decide. Do you think it is more important to grow the pie in hopes that everyone gets a bigger slice down the road? Or that it matters more that everyone gets a more equitable slice right now? Or that bad as things are now, they would be even worse if the pie shrinks. Those aren’t easy decisions, but then again, these aren’t easy times.

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Remember when you thought you could pay for your kids’ college tuition? That you could retire and move to Florida for your golden years?

Guest what? You’ve just lost your nest egg faster than you would have in Vegas. What have you gotten for it? Nothing! At least in Vegas they would have thrown in free hotel and floor show!

The American taxpayer just got mugged – and we can’t figure out what happened, who did it and why no one protected us. And worst of all, we have no idea how much it will end up costing us later. At least when you get mugged they only take the cash in your wallet.

The biggest culprit is Fannie Mae – a quasi government mortgage enterprise – regulated and guaranteed by Congress but privately owned. In other words, government sets the rules, taxpayers cover any losses, and private stockholders keep the profits. Washington’s version of heads they win, tails you lose.

For decades, Americans bought their homes by getting a mortgage, which was usually sold to Fannie Mae. But you couldn’t get a mortgage unless you had enough savings for a 5-20% down-payment, proved you could afford the monthly payments, and had a good credit rating.

But all that changed in the 1990’s. With pressure from the Clinton Administration and Democrats in Congress, Fannie Mae eased credit requirements for home loans. They wanted to curry favor with low-income voters by helping them buy houses, and with banks, because more loans meant more profits. They didn’t have to foot the bill if the mortgages went sour – the taxpayers would do that. Again, heads they win, tails you lose.

American banks went on a lending spree, and Americans went on a spending spree. They were called ninja loans– ‘no income, no job, no assets.” It was easy money. As long as housing prices went up, you could sell the house a year or two later and make a profit, without risking a dime of your own money.

The risky lending continued, despite efforts by President Bush to create a new oversight committee to clean up Fannie Mae, and John McCain’s calls for stricter regulations. Democrats in Congress, as well as many Republicans, their campaign coffers stuffed with Fannie Mae donations, refused to put on the brakes. For the six years from 1999 to 2005 Fannie Mae paid millions to 354 congressmen and senators.

By 2004 there were signs of trouble. An office of Management and Budget investigation found massive fraud in Fannie Mae’s bookkeeping practices. But those same Senators and Congressmen refused to hold hearings or hold any of the Fannie Mae leaders responsible. In fact, Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines gave himself a $100 million bonus.

But McCain continued to be one of the lone voices calling for reform. He introduced the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform in 2005, claiming Fannie Mae posed an enormous risk to the “housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”

But Congressional Democrats blocked it, led by those who received the highest campaign contributions from Fannie Mae. Barak Obama called subprime lending a ‘good idea’.

But the problems couldn’t be ignored. Franklin Raines and other top executives were forced to resign. But none were charged with fraud, no one went to jail, and after paying some fines, Franklin Raines got to keep his $100 million bonus.

Fannie Mae, reeling under a mountain of bad debt, is now bankrupt. So are most of the banks that issued those risky mortgages. So is AIG, the company that insured them. But rather than go belly up, the government stepped in to bail everybody out. Once again, head they win, tails you lose. But this time you lose big.

The rescue plan will cost at least 700 billion dollars, some say it could end up costing 2 trillion dollars. Every American will have to fork over thousands of dollars we could have used for our kid’s college tuition or our retirement.

Wonder which politicians got the fattest campaign contributions? The top recipient was Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Todd. And number two was Barack Obama.

Guess what happened to Franklin Raines, Mr. One Hundred Million? He’s one of Obama’s top campaign advisers.

And John McCain, the whistleblower who tried to reform Fannie Mae? Who pushed through legislation to limit campaign contributions? Who rails against earmarks and government corruption every time he opens his mouth? Somehow or other, as looney as it seems, McCain is getting the blame. Go figure.

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America has some pretty serious problems these days – Wall Street is in freefall, the dollar is in the gutter, people are losing their homes, unemployment looms on the horizon – and these are just our economic problems. We haven’t reinvested in our infrastructure for decades and our roads and bridges, highways, the electrical grid, our public works facilities are crumbling. Our health care system is staggeringly expensive yet still doesn’t cover all Americans. Our education system isn’t training our young people for the next generation of jobs, and American preeminence in the world – be it military, economic, financial – is on the slide.

Politicians on both sides of the political aisle blame each other. Our candidates say it’s because we lack strong leaders, but what they mean is if we just put them in charge things would be different.

Candidates take impassioned stands, make speeches with all the right sound bites, but in the end can’t get the consensus necessary to enact anything but watered down bills with temporary fixes. Any serious plan put forward has powerful detractors so, rather than slog through and hammer out a compromise we have partisan gridlock, throw up our hands, and move on to the next problem. We’re like hamsters running on that wheel in the hamster cage. We keep running, but never seem to get anywhere. We’re trying all right, we’re running as fast as we can, but the wheel – the system – won’t let us make progress.

Why? Is this because, as some politicians argue, we just need a change of leaders? You would be tempted to say yes if this was the first time we’ve failed to find solutions. But it isn’t. We’ve been revisiting most of these issues for over two decades and, like the hamster, haven’t made much forward progress. We’ve changed leaders and parties but made no What has changed in the last twenty years is the amount of money special interests group and lobbyists spend ‘convincing’ legislators to vote their way. Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan vetoed a transportation bill saying it had too much pork barrel spending – it had 150 earmarked programs for legislators’ special pals. In 2005 President Bush signed a transportation bill that had a staggering 6,376 pet projects worth $24 billion in unnecessary earmarks.

We’ve had lobbyists and special interests groups in Washington since the founding of the republic. The difference today is the amount of money they’re willing to spend to get the legislation they want. When it comes to politicians, money talks. It Doesn’t matter if it is labor union money or trial lawyers money or wall street money or oil money. Today our legislators – both republican and democrat – are all too often in the pockets of the highest bidder. Not only is this a waste of our tax dollars – It’s also forcing our entire system of government into gridlock.

In the end the most important issue isn’t the housing crisis, or the liquidity crisis, or the immigration crisis, of the host of other crises we face. None of them will get solved unless we take the money out of the system. But that won’t be easy – no incumbent legislator will willing pass legislation to restrict his ability to collect campaign contributions from lobbyists – it’s the single biggest advantage he has over any potential opponent. It’s like asking the fox to willingly leave the hen house when he’s got free run over the eggs.

But what can happen is for voters to insist on transparency. While McCain-Feingold Campaign reform legislation goes a long way in identifying big money donors to a legislators’ campaign, it’s only half of the picture – we need to know what earmarks he gives to his generous donors. Right now it is extremely difficult to discover who attaches an earmark to legislation before a bill is passed. They’re added at the last minute, behind closed doors and anonymously. That’s got to change. If Congress won’t give up its earmarks we’ve at least got a right to know about them. Once we have both parts of the picture – who donates to a congressman’s campaign and what earmarks he gives that donor – it may not be proof of outright corruption, but it certainly won’t look good come reelection time.

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As a general rule, I tend not to get too riled up about politics, especially during a hotly contested election. People may do some pretty stupid things, but by and large it all works out in the end. Even if your candidate doesn’t win, the board resets after the election.

That’s the beauty of the American electoral system -regardless of whether your guy wins or loses, we all stay in the game for the next round. We might grouse around for the next four years about how the guy who did win has gotten everything wrong, but we don’t try to overthrow the system or join a revolution. If you don’t like the election results just wait – there is always another one right around the corner. Win or lose, we’re all in this together.

But there is a new element in this election season that is downright dangerous for the health of the democracy. There is mounting evidence of systemic attempt to undermine the underlying principle of our democracy – that each of us gets just one vote, whether we choose to exercise it or not.

We don’t have one national presidential election. Our constitution provides for 50 individual elections, with the president being decided by the electors of each state. Given the current state of American politics, it means that our recent elections have been decided by a relatively small number of voters in a few key swing states. The last two presidential elections were among the closest in our history. If a few thousands vote had been cast differently in Ohio and Florida in November 2000, President Gore would be working on his farewell address rather than President Bush.

This time around it could be just as close. A handful of voters in a few key states will decide whether John McCain or Barack Obama will take the oath of office on January 20th. That is why allegations of widespread voter registration fraud by the community organizing group ACORN, is so troubling. As of Tuesday, The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN, has now been accused of voter registration fraud. Their offices have been sealed and their files confiscated by law enforcement officials in 13 states – so far.

ACORN is a quasi private/public organization. It receives federal funds, but also monies from outside groups, including almost one million dollars from Barack Obama’s campaign. It is supposed to be non-partisan, yet its ‘political wing’ has endorsed Barack Obama. It is supposed to promote democracy by registering new, low-income inner city voters, but it has been caught registering voters multiple times in exchange for cash payments or gifts. There is a lot wrong with this:

First, it is illegal for a federally funded group to endorse or work for any political candidate. Second, it is illegal for anyone to accept a bribe in exchange for his vote and certainly illegal for anyone to offer and pay the bribe. Third, it is illegal for anyone to vote more than once. But perhaps most importantly, even more than what is legal or illegal, is that ACORN is undermining the principle of fair and free elections. Banana Republics and Communist countries have ballot boxes stuffed and elections stolen. Not the United States.

With these latest revelations, the Obama campaign has now cut all ties with ACORN, despite Senator Obama’s earlier associations with them as their legal counsel. Perhaps it is just handful of overzealous Obama supporters in key states who are committing election and voter registration fraud. But ACORN’s activities don’t pass the smell test.

In Bridgeport, Conn, some 20% of ACORN’s submitted registrations have been deemed fraudulent. In Houston, it’s 40%. In Indianapolis, new voter registration is now running at over 105% of all eligible voters. One man, by his own admission testified in court yesterday in Cuyhoga County, Ohio one man admitted to being paid by ACORN to register 72 times. Since Ohio also allows for early voting, many of these so called ‘voters’ have already cast their ballots – all of them. In Pennsylvania a number of ‘voters’ have admitted to being pressured to register dozens of times. Others, residents of homeless shelters, have said they registered multiple times in exchange for cigarettes and booze.

With the election just two weeks away, and very little time for the counties and states involved to investigate fraudulent voter registrations, it is time for the Justice Department to step in – For everyone’s sake. This election will be too close, and too important to have even the taint of fraud surrounding it. And, if it these investigations turn out something more widespread and sinister is going, like an attempt to throw an election or ensure a certain outcome, then it threatens the very foundation of our electoral system of government. This serious stuff and we ignore it at our peril.

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In 1941, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt rallied the nation. The young men and women who answered that call not only defeated our enemies, but also rebuilt the American economy after the Great Depression. We now call them America’s greatest generation.
But they did something that is perhaps just as important. By working together through a crisis they forged a new American identity. At the start of the war, America was a disparate nation, where people thought of themselves primarily as farmers or factory workers, northerners or southerners, Catholics or Protestants or Baptists or Jews.

Remember all those WW II movies? Every platoon had some wise-cracking Italian kid from Brooklyn, a bigger-than-life cowboy from Texas, a snooty Boston Brahmin, and an awe-shucks farm boy from Iowa. None of them had much in common, and at first they had a hard time working together. But circumstances forced them to overcome their prejudices and, by the end of the movie, they were a band of brothers.

Flash forward to 2001. We were attacked again, and as in 1941, all Americans felt a spontaneous burst of patriotism. But unlike President Roosevelt, President Bush did not take the anger, frustration, and fear all Americans felt and lead us to a renewed sense of national purpose. The war on terror was to be fought with a professional military; the rest of us were told the best way we could help our country was to go shopping.

So here we are today, just as divided and partisan as ever. Our military has done a brilliant job, once the politicians got out of the way, of turning the tide in the fight against Islamic extremists. But the rest of us are on the sidelines. We took President Bush at his word and definitely went shopping – for everything from new homes to vacations to consumer goods – and much of it on credit. So we’re now in a financial crisis that affects everyone from Wall Street to Main Street. People who a month ago thought themselves financially secure are now worried. Young people who looked forward to brilliant careers now see their futures literally evaporating before their eyes.

But Americans are good at making lemonade out of lemons. President Bush may have missed the opportunity to renew our sense of national purpose after September 11, but this new financial crisis – which is a bag of lemons if ever there was one – could give us second chance.

For years Americans have talked about instituting some form of mandatory national public service, but the timing was never right. For the most part, the last thirty years have been an uninterrupted bull market with low unemployment, and great educational and job opportunities. Why would a young person want to spend a year in serving the country when so few of his contemporaries were? Nobody wanted to ‘lose a year’.

But all this is about to change. The bull market is over. Wall street is collapsing, and America is in the throes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Thousands of high paying jobs have just gone up in smoke, and the trickle down effect in other parts of the economy is still to come. In short, we’re about to see more unemployment, especially among young people, than we’ve had in decades.
At the same time, America has a major education and infrastructure problem. We don’t have enough teachers, and we’ve not devoted enough resources to rebuilding America’s public works. We also need to expand the size of the military.

So let’s put them together – the crumbling infrastructure, the failing schools, the military, and match them up with the underemployed young people. Let’s rebuild America with a national service requirement which asks young people to serve their country, but let’s them choose how they fulfill it – by enlisting in the military, working to rebuild the highway system, restoring our national parks, teaching in our schools. But most important of all, it would raise a new generation of Americans who were united in a common national purpose – who would come to know the meaning of serving a cause greater than their self-interest.

At his Inaugural Address in 1961, President John F. Kennedy admonished all Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country”. For far too long we’ve got the equation backwards – we’ve asked only what’s in it for us. No one wanted this financial crisis, and few predicted it. But let’s seize this moment and see if something good can come of it.

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Party Conventions are rarely occasions for spontaneity, but the GOP’s choice of Governor Palin electrified not only the Republican Party, but many undecided voters. But the Palin phenomenon has the Media Mandarins scratching their heads. They can’t figure out why an awful lot of Americans who live in the fly-over states, as they call the states between the East and West Coasts, actually like Governor Palin. The inside-the-beltway-gang certainly don’t. They dismiss her as a lightweight and a hick.

One national columnist implied she wasn’t necessarily wrong on the issues, she just didn’t understand them. ABC anchorman Charlie Gibson interviewed Governor Palin last week and couldn’t keep the disdain out of his voice; peering over his half moon glasses like a distinguished professor forced to deal with a mediocre student who had no place in his honors class. Several democratic operatives, and even Senator Obama himself, cracked that her candidacy was akin to putting lipstick on a pig – without specifying who was the lipstick and who was the pig.

Since they can’t figure out why anybody else would take her seriously when they so clearly will not, the Media Mandarins have dismissed Palin as a novelty candidate, a flash in the pan, a beauty queen who Americans like just because she is pretty. The publisher of one of the nation’s esteemed weeklies said she looked like a stewardess, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Another said she was attractive in the way the girl behind the cosmetics counter at Macy’s was, and he didn’t mean that as a compliment either.

What’s going on here? Why all this vitriol from the press? At first, it seemed like the normal Roman circus-like bloodlust that surrounds American politics today – which the media claim is the ‘normal vetting process’ of any national candidate. But in the last week the attacks have become more vicious. The wolf pack is tearing into Governor Palin’s life and family with zeal, and seizing on any shred of gossip as gospel truth.

But the public aren’t buying it. In a recent poll, 45 % said Governor Palin had been the object of sexist attacks in the media, compared to only 33 percent who felt Senator Obama had been the victim of racist attacks. Turns out all those guys in the fly-over states have opinions of their own.

In fact, it seems that the more the press go after Governor Palin, the more the McCain-Palin poll numbers climb. Today, almost every national poll shows McCain tied or ahead of Obama, in sharp contrast to the way things were just three weeks ago. The turnaround, especially among working class white women, is one of the most striking in modern political history. The media may not think Governor Palin is worthy of being a candidate, but the people sure do.

One of the most important moments at the Republican convention got very little notice. I was there in St Paul sitting in a skybox directly across from the podium when Governor Palin gave her acceptance speech. When she referred to the media elites not liking her, the delegates on the Floor spontaneously started chanting NBC, NBC, NBC , pointing to the skybox with the NBC banner. It was like a scene from the French Revolution when the peasants stormed the Bastille. It was a little scary. And it was a far cry from the days when news anchor Walter Cronkite was voted the most trusted man in America.

Why is there such a disconnect today between the media and the voters? Because when people give Congress and the President such low approval ratings, they’re lumping the media in there, too. The average guy thinks EVERYONE inside the beltway is the problem, not just the politicians and the lobbyists. It’s just the media haven’t caught on yet.
As for Sarah Palin’s qualifications?

The press have derided her for being:
- under 45 years old with lots of children
- a outdoorswoman who loves to hunt and fish
- a self proclaimed reformer willing to take on the establishment of her own party
- and the Republican vice presidential candidate although she’s only been a governor for two years

But guess what? You could have said the same things about Teddy Roosevelt. And his face ended up on Mt. Rushmore along with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.

If John McCain wins in November, it will be the greatest come from behind victory since the Tortoise beat the Hare. And it will be in no small part because he put Sarah Palin on the ticket.