The U.S. Now Pressuring China--Oh, How the Tables Have Turned

While China has been and still is in complete control over the United States ever since our economy plummeted and we started to move jobs offshore and borrow money from China, the new, rising world superpower, President Obama is taking a bold step by turning the tables on China, now making them feel the pressure that the U.S. does. In the September 23, 2010 issue of the New York Times, David E. Sanger explains in his article, "With Warning, Obama Presses China on Currency," that Obama is now taking a position confidence and power, even though America may have even tougher times ahead, and may be headed for more trouble as a result of the failing economy.

 President Obama increased pressure on China to immediately revalue its currency on Thursday, devoting most of a two-hour meeting with China’s prime minister to the issue and sending the message, according to one of his top aides, that if “the Chinese don’t take actions, we have other means of protecting U.S. interests.”

Obama is turning up the heat for China, who has basically sat back and watched the U.S. lose most of its money to them, and his threat demonstrates exactly the type of leadership and confidence that needs to be exhibited by every single American. Obama, with this risky move, is really becoming a leader now, and he is coming into position, whereas, at this same time last year, he was solely trying to please the world. Obama's bold, confident and almost arrogant attitude is an attempt to boost U.S. morale and comes at a time when the U.S. and its people truly do need a significant morale boost. I admire this move that Obama has made because it demonstrates to China, and the rest of the world, that, although the U.S. is in a recession of considerable size, we are still one of the world's superpowers, and that until we finally return as influential as we were in the 90's and previous, we will continuously keep fighting. It will be very interesting to examine China's response to this issue, because they will either see this as an act of showy arrogance by an extremely weakened country, or they will take us seriously because, in spite of everything, the U.S. remains an influential and significant power in the world.

Drugs and Crime in the Recession

In the September 23, 2010 issue of the New York Times, columnist Abby Goodnough explains the increase in specific illegal activities. Goodnough's article, "A Wave of Addiction and Crime, with the Medicine Cabinet to Blame," describes the new crime wave as a result of increased drug consumption, and explains the proposed buy-back day for prescription and over the counter drugs.

In 17 states, deaths from drugs — both prescription and illegal — now exceed those from motor vehicle accidents, with opiate painkillers playing a leading role. The number of people seeking treatment for painkiller addiction jumped 400 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. And from rural New England to the densely populated South, law enforcement officials are combating a sharp rise in crime tied to prescription drugs.

Both of these rises in illegal activity, crime and drug consumption, can be partially traced back to the feeling of cornering and hopelessness that the recession brings to many people of the lower classes. There is a direct correlation between the bad economy and the increase in people looking to use drugs because, for the most part, drugs are and have been a means for people to escape the world, forget about their problems, and feel better. I find it quite surprising that deaths from drugs is quickly approaching deaths from motor vehicle accidents because motor vehicles are abundant and are used by the majority of adults, which means that the use of drugs may also be used by a large majority of the entire population of the United States. While the buy-back day for handguns may have been successful, I have a feeling that the buy-back day for drugs will not be as successful because drugs allow people to fully escape many of their problems during their "high," whereas handguns improve security, or sense of sense of security, just one of the many problems that people are dealing with.

The Recession is Over?

According to the most recent episode of the television show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the seemingly endless recession that has been troubling people of the United States and abroad, ended June 2009.
The Recession Is Over
www.thedailyshow.com
To be honest, I would say that I trust the theories of the economists who have been researching and documenting the history of this dreaded recession, especially since they have only as of late  discovered that the recession had presumably ended approximately a year and three months ago.. In spite of this, I remain somewhat skeptical of this somewhat random and startling conclusion that these economists have drawn recently. What I interpret that the economists meant by "July 2009 was the end of the recession" is that in July 2009, the economy of the U.S. stopped contracting at a dangerous rate. However, I believe, and I suspect countless other American citizens, that the official end of a recession does not merely come when the economy stops contracting, but that it comes when the economy returns to a more normal, stable state. Overall, in my opinion, I see that this conclusion is surprising and startling for many Americans because of a simple confusion of definition.

Time to Play the Catch-up Game

While trying to improve nations abroad, the United States has lost its sense of self and we no longer excel in the world of technological advancements. We have fallen behind in the world, and part of it comes from, as Thomas Friedman would say, our flattening of the world, which in turn comes from outsourcing jobs and other things of the sort. Another part of it comes as a result of our focus on improving countries in the world by developing them in our own image. Since the U.S. has been ahead of all other countries for so long, we have developed an arrogance and we felt as if the position atop of the world would remain ours forever, yet, countries on the rise, like China and India are quite obviously proving us wrong. People are just now beginning to realize that we have fallen behind and we must instill some of the technological improvements that we are missing but that other world superpowers already have. Kate Galbrath, a writer for the New York Times, also suggests that although we have fallen behind a bit technologically, we are on a path to catching up to other countries in her article, "U.S. Plays Catch-Up on High-Speed Rail"

high-speed rail routes, including the recently opened line between Guangzhou and Wuhan, which covers 1,070 kilometers at the world’s fastest average speed.
Soon, perhaps, the United States, with the world’s largest economy will also clamber on board. So far, the United States — in spite of or perhaps because of its vast size — has virtually no fast trains capable of moving swiftly enough over a long distance to compete with airplanes...President Barack Obama has declared high-speed rail to be a priority. He is interested, he has said, in “innovations that change the way we travel in America” through the creation of cleaner, energy-saving options.

It is reassuring to know that our President is aware that our country has fallen behind in many aspects, and is vigorously pursuing options, such as high-speed rail, to bring us back to a point of stability and dominance. President Obama and Friedman both share the knowledge that if we are to clamber back to the point of economic stability and dominance our country was once at, we must first level ourselves technologically with the rest of the world, and we must focus on domestic affairs, rather than work to develop countries in our image, then get frustrated that they are "beating us." We must take the matter of our country's welfare into our own hands, instead of letting other countries control us (CHINA) because we are exceedingly indebted to them.

The Biggest Threat to Humanity in Effect, Right Before Our Eyes

The South of the United States is and always has been an interesting section of America inhabited by interesting people ever since the country's creation. But this new and very interesting event in the southern state of Kentucky does not have anything to do with politics. It deals with the increasingly troubling problem that will eventually consume the entire human population, called global warming. The San Francisco Chronicle explains the bizarre occurrence that happened in a Kentucky farm.

A Hardin County farmer said that some ears among his feed corn rows popped on the stalk in a phenomenon that agricultural experts believe is associated with irregular rainfall and high heat.

To point out the obvious, this "phenomenon" is considered irregular because it has occurred very few times, if at all, and most of these occurrences have most likely occurred recently. What has also occurred in recent years is a vast increase in the carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere, a contributor to what Thomas Friedman, terms the "enhanced greenhouse effect." The "enhanced greenhouse effect" has brought global warming to effect, and the results of global warming are beginning to become visible in the short-term, which is very dangerous because until lately, the effects of global warming have slowly but surely crept up on us and represent our impending doom. Scientists believe that the popping of corn on the ears is because of "irregular rainfall and high heat," which essentially means that global warming is starting to have immediate consequences on our lives in numerous aspects. Left untreated, global warming will cause events like the popping of corn on the ear to become much more common, among countless other events that will be more harmful than this. Therefore, we, as Americans and as inhabitants of planet Earth, must begin to look toward a what Friedman calls a "Code Green."

Here is the link for the article from the SF Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/09/07/national/a130906D07.DTL

The World on Jenny Craig

Thomas Friedman is not just crazy. Numerous other intelligible people around the world are starting to realize the adverse effects of our style of life. If we, as Americans, are to continue with this same rate of consumption of resources and destruction of our environment, the livelihood of our species will be at stake. We, as a society, are learning that we need to change our style of living far too slowly. We will be facing tremendous consequences, as we already somewhat are, if we are to continue on this path. Our resources, food in particular, will not be sufficient to sustain our world's human population within a few, short years at the rate it is growing now. Friedman pointed this out in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, and Mark Bittman, a columnist for the New York Times, also points out, in his article entitled "Seeing a Time (Soon) When We’ll All Be Dieting." In the article, Bittman outlines Julian Cribb's new book called The Coming Famine--The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do to Avoid It. Bittman explains that: 

Much of “The Coming Famine” builds an argument that we’ve jumped off a cliff and that global chaos — a tidal wave of people fleeing their own countries for wherever they can find food — is all but guaranteed. The rest of the book concentrates on catching an outcropping of rock with a finger and scrambling back up. The writing is neither personality-filled nor especially fluid, but the sheer number of terrifying facts makes the book gripping.

Like Friedman, Julian Cribb also argues that the world is on a fairly dangerous road at the moment, and it will take a lot of human energy and effort to break away from this path. Although Friedman does not put it as boldly as people will be fighting for scraps and remnants of food, Friedman does agree with Cribb's argument. The world is headed toward an incredible food shortage as a result of the exponentially increasing population, and the over-consumption of and waste of food by wealthier people. Friedman puts it in simply as the world is getting crowded, which suggests that there will not only not be enough food, but there will not be enough other non-renewable resources or land to sustain human life.
Also like Friedman, Cribb knows that the human race will stand up in the face of adversity and find a solution to this monumental issue:

Mr. Cribb is not hopeless; he predicts that we’ll eventually “unlock new insights capable of making profound gains in food production and sustainability on a par with those of the Green Revolution.”

Cribb also shares the idea of a "Green Revolution" with Friedman, which Friedman calls "Code Green," in his book. This "Code Green" or "Green Revolution" is what the world is waiting on and is the answer to nearly all of the environmental issues we face. We are on the verge of a revolution and the people at the forefront of the revolution are the people of the new generation, Generation We.

Here is the link for the New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/books/25book.html?ref=earth

The Rate of Crowding in America Decreasing?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/02/us/02immig.html?_r=1&ref=us

The New York Times article entitled Number of Illegal Immigrants in U.S. Fell, Study Says, by Julia Preston explains an astonishing figure. 

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States, after peaking at 12 million in 2007, fell to about 11.1 million in 2009, the first clear decline in two decades, according to a report published Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
The reduction came primarily from decreases among illegal immigrants from Latin American countries other than Mexico, the report found.

This implies two things. First, America's status as one of the world's superpowers and greatest countries is declining because people of foreign countries, especially those of Latin America, are finding that America is less of a desirable place to live and work due to the failing economy, among other factors. This fact confirms Thomas Friedman's concern that America is losing its place in the world because it is becoming, as he states it in his book, hot, flat, and crowded. While the world's population may be increasing rapidly, America's population, or at least the population of its illegal immigrants from Latin America, is decreasing. The fact that the number of immigrants from Latin America has declined may also suggest that people from Latin America are beginning to realize that America is becoming overcrowded.

Obama Pitches in to "Code Green"

The article in the New York Times entitled New Stickers Will Go Beyond M.P.G. in Rating Cars explains that, on August 30, President Obama took a small step in the direction of a "greener" America by initiating an improvement on the stickers on new cars. These new car stickers, adopted around 30 years ago, presently describe the city/highway miles per gallon consumption of new cars, the features that come with the cars, and other bits of information which relate to the technical aspects of the car. Obama plans to choose one of two new forms of stickers that the safety agency and the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) have put together recently. Jim Motavalli, the author of the article, states that

The Obama administration proposed on Monday two alternatives to the window stickers in new vehicles, including one that would assign letter grades for fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions...The second possible window sticker would also contain information about fuel economy and emissions, but would not assign a letter grade. Both stickers offer estimates of annual fuel costs.

In his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Thomas Friedman calls for a "Code Green" in America, meaning that American leaders should begin to make the public fully aware of the harsh consequences that will come as a result of our mindless emission of greenhouse gases through industrial factories, cars, and other such things. "Code Green" is not only a goal that American leaders must strive to accomplish, but it significantly involves the American public. By beginning the process of installing these improved new car stickers, Obama has taken a step in making the public realize their own, personal contribution to global warming. In addition to this, by including the annual savings earned with the purchase of some cars, people will now realize the long-term effects and benefits of driving more fuel-efficient cars. This part of it is a monumental step because as humans, and especially as Americans, we tend to think in the short-term, without realizing what negative effects our seemingly harmless actions may cost.

Here is the link to the New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/business/31auto.html?_r=1&ref=politics