Children are Watching and Listening
One of my favorite bloggers, Judith Ellis, made a post on her blog, The Being Brand, this morning, entitled Being a Child. It has to do with a 4th grader’s question to President Obama at a town hall event in New Orleans. This young boy wanted to know “Why do people hate you?” Judith’s post includes a CBS News video of the question and the President’s response. I encourage you to check out Judith’s post.
But, to me, the most important part of Judith’s post was her words following the video. Here they are:
When adults behave badly we snuff out the goodness and innocence of children. Children are sponges. We really must be more careful; children are watching and listening.
How true this is, and I don’t think any child has expressed this better than DeClan Galbraith, when he recorded the following back in 2006. I think he was around 11 years old at the time:
(email subscribers, view on my blog)
As adults, parents, business leaders, teachers, family members, neighbors, government leaders, and just plain “folk”—what are we teaching the children? Really teaching them?
Thank you Judith, for this important message.
Back to Work
The inauguration is over and President Obama started his new job today. Pundits galore have emphasized the tremendous challenges he is facing, so we are all aware that he has a big job ahead of him. In his approach to some of his tasks, I heard (then) President-elect Obama say, a few days ago, that he wanted to retain certain tax cuts to help small businesses, because “…they are the backbone of our economy.” I like that—our President understands what makes our economy run and where recovery and future prosperity will come from. That’s the way it has been in prior recoveries, and that is the way it will be in this one. Now is not the time to raise taxes on small business.
Unfortunately, the President must deal with a recalcitrant Congress, and Congressional leadership that promote their own agenda. Nancy Pelosi clashed with President Obama’s stand for small business even before he took the oath of office. She made it clear that she wanted to raise taxes now, not reduce them. I am afraid that President Obama’s job will not be to lead an august group of Congressional members to implement well thought-out plans for recovery—his work will be more like (as I’ve said before) “herding cats through a forest.”
If, for a moment, you can visualize the process of “herding cats”, you will quickly realize that the job will take a lot of herders. That’s where we can (and must) be of help to the President. I think it is the responsibility of every small business owner to tell our elected representatives in Congress, that we (small businesses) are the ones who will lead the economic recovery. Furthermore, that more restrictive rules and regulations (including hampering the normal functions of sound banks), and increased taxes will only make our jobs that much more difficult…and take that much longer.
President Obama “gets it”—why can’t our elected representatives?
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