Do we need a 'Sputnik Moment'?

Obama's Not the First to Use 'Sputnik Moment'

Excerpt:

Then-Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, testifying before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in May, 2005, warned that, “Our generation has not had a Sputnik moment…yet. But our Sputnik is on its way.” He was speaking about education.

So were then-Govs. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota when they spoke to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune in April, 2007. “One thing we haven't been successful at is creating a sense of urgency about this,” Napolitano said. “We haven't had a Sputnik moment.” Agreed Pawlenty: “The Sputnik moment will come, but it may come too late for us to fix things.”

Much more on Sputnik here


Comment: I suggest that we need a national Gail Vaz-Oxlade moment (She's Canadian but that's OK ... we can watch her show "Til Debt do us Part" on CNBC). The Gail Vaz-Oxlade moment I'm talking about is when she confronts couples about their debt.

Perhaps we should have a "Ross Perot" moment (if you remember the '92 election)

He now has an entire website dedicated to taxation and the federal budget deficit. Here's a sample:

For a moment (a Gail Vaz-Oxlade moment), pretend that the title of the above chart is "Receipts and Outlays for the Peet Household for 2009") (obviously the numbers on the "Y" axis would not be "billions"! But the green represents income and the red outlays. Gail would say to the Peet's ... "your finances are a disaster ... you ought to be ashamed of yourself". Kathee would sob ashamedly and I would wipe a tear from my own eyes for the remorse of our fiscal mistakes! Gail would confiscate our credit cards (she might even cut them up right in front of us!). She would put us on a budget and after a struggle to accept the realities of our fiscal situiation we would vow to improve and make necessary adjustments!

Our 'Sputnik Moment' needs to be that our nation will be financially bankrupt (perhaps mirroring our moral bankruptsy!) in less than a generation!