EDITORIAL: IT’S TIME TO GET THE COUNTRY BACK ON THE RIGHT TRACK

Now that the election for president is over and we have elected Barack Obama as the person who will lead our nation and set our political agenda for the next 4 years; we hope things begin to move in the right direction.

By that we mean that we hope the campaign speeches and rhetoric now becomes reality. But we realize that it will not be an easy task to change a political culture in Washington awash in political favors and lobbyist’s money.

But during this campaign there were several issues discussed which merit immediate attention from the new administration. Here are just w few we think deserve to be placed atop Mr. Obama’s administration’s priority list.



Health Care – This is an issue in which the candidates differed. Mr. Obama made it one of his top 3 priorities. In a country such as ours; it is imperative that the health care industry and health care in general be examined to fix what is broken.

How can it be that a simple visit to the emergency room results in a charge of thousands of dollars? Today; the expense of health care is not measured in hundreds of dollars but rather in thousands. Runaway healthcare costs must be addressed right away.

This is important because many people who do not heave health insurance or access to health care forego treatments and wind up with other illnesses or no care at all.



Education – In this area; we as a community have a lot to do. Making college affordable and providing federal assistance to students is a government function. But then it is also up to parents and students to take advantage of legislation which makes college more affordable and send our youth to college. In addition we must be vigilant of our public schools system and make sure that our high school graduation rates go up instead of declining.



Energy – Our dependence on foreign oil hurts not only our pocketbook but our American economy as well. During the campaign; Republican John McCain said the problem is that we do not do enough off shore drilling. But drilling will only provide a minimal amount of oil and by most estimates will take at least 10 years to produce those results. We need to ...