By Wes Pedersen
It’s time for a preview of the major domestic issues public affairs professionals and the nation will confront next year.
1. Fear. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s line that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was a crock. We are a nation fighting for survival on all fronts and things seem to be getting worse for everyone but the very, very rich.
Fear is endemic now. Facing up to it and defeating it will be America’s No. 1 task in 2012 and probably well beyond.
2. The economy. While the administration and most economists talked not long ago about a recovery, I cautioned that the recession was still with us. Interventions by the administration and the Fed have not helped. Party vs. party rancor in Congress has so far blocked any hope for solutions there. A full-scope depression looms if matters continue to worsen. It is Save Your Money Time now as rarely before.
a. Poverty/joblessness. Poverty, the evil stepchild of joblessness and catalyst for riots in the streets of impoverished third-world countries, has wiped out the dividing line between the upper and lower classes in the U.S. More than 40 million Americans from both social sectors, or one out of every six, are living below the poverty line, says the Census Bureau, and the number increases each month.
Children are special victims. Nearly 40 percent of black kids kids feel the pain of poverty. That is twice the number for other children.
Lack of jobs is, of course, the major contributor to the problem of poverty. The official rate of unemployment is given at 9 percent. That does not factor in those who, jobless for years, drop out of the labor market in desperation, I have, in previous analyses, put the real rate of unemployment at 18 percent.
Squabbling leaders and parties must recognize this. Business must intervene and take a major role in seeking practical ways to put America back to work. Our politicians have demonstrated a near total lack of fitness for the job.
b. Housing. Economists, mortgage analysts and builders predict the weakened economy will depress housing prices for years. If so, it will restrain consumer spending, push more homeowners into foreclosure and darken prospects for any sustained recovery. Home prices are expected to drop 2.5 percent this year. They have fallen 31.6 percent since 2005.
c. Debt reduction. Get real. Nothing of substance or real worth is going to come out of this Congress. Perhaps not even the next, post-election, one. The president’s new plan, short on operational details, is propelled chiefly by overblown rhetoric.
3. The weakened states. A majority of the states are in monumentally bad financial shape. Most cannot keep operating without further federal assistance. The issue has been on every list of this sort for years, but Washington has yet to grasp the true severity of the states’ problems. This could be the year when state agencies and the federal system take their greatest hits in decades.
4. The elections. The campaigns are already all-stops-out mean, and they are going to get worse. Clintonian political strategist Jim Carville has counseled the president to “panic.” Obama has done just that in the wake of public disdain for the new programs for recovery he had seen as his keys to re-election. In Congress, members are bipartisanly opposed to any sensible proposal to get us out of this mess.
If incumbents cannot get their collective acts together with further delay, they can kiss re-election goodbye.
As for the presidency, the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan has said it best: Mr. Obama “can’t win this election bit the Republicans can lose it by being small, by being extreme, by being unnuanced.” Michael Gerson, in the Washington Post, has called the president “increasingly irrelevant to the politics of his own country.” He’s showing backbone too late in the game
5. Cyberwar. The military considers this the most important threat to U.S. security yet. China has led rogue-nations’ trial runs at hacking into Pentagon and corporate cyber facilities. Top Defense officials warn that invasion of U.S. Web communications could leave us defenseless against attacks on governments, companies, hospitals and more. It’s not sci-fi fiction, it’s real. Special military forces are being created to counter the threat.
Free-lance hackers abound. The FBI reports an international trend toward “hacktivism,” linking hacking with political activism.
One cybercollective, “Anonymous,” has, the Financial Times reports, “terrorized law enforcement and leading companies on five continents.” MasterCard and Visa were among Anonymous hits this year.
Legislation is being considered in Congress and in other legislatures abroad to control hacktivism.
6. Immigration. Republican candidates for the presidency are focused on illegal immigration as perhaps the leading threat to America’s social fabric, economy, law and national security. It isn’t.
The Department of Homeland Security says the big story is the fact that fewer Latinos are trying to get into the U.S. Border apprehensions are at their lowest point in four decades. For 2010, arrests totaled 463,000, down from 724,000 in 2008. In 2006, more than a million arrests were made.
Increased border security has contributed to the decline, but editorial writers point out that perhaps a greater reason has been the fact that the shabby U.S. economy has made job openings less attractive.
7. Regulation. The glaring lack of effective government watchdogs in almost every phase of business is going to get worse if the Republicans and business have their way.
Democrats haven’t much cause to complain. They have been astoundingly lax on some regulatory fronts. A new study by Consumers Reports, for example, looks at regulations in the food industry and finds that some are so loose as to be meaningless.
The amount of insects, insect parts and rodent hairs permitted in some products is a glaring, and nauseating, example.
8. Diversity. Championed for the nation by Obama early on, diversity lagged, even in the White House. It’s a key issue now for women and persons of color. Only now has the president signed an executive order calling for greater diversity in the federal work force, something many federal employees recall being mandated a half century ago.
9. Terrorism. The U.S. remains the No. 1 target for terrorists. We lucked out on the tenth anniversary 9/11 – no hits in any states. That has prompted some to assume that the terrorist threat to mainland America is over. It isn’t, despite the success by security forces in keeping the U.S. more secure. The attacks on the American Embassy in Kabul the day after the 9/11 anniversary are testimony to the potential peril that faces American businesses and charitable organizations abroad.
10. Crisis communications. We are dealing with crises in the stock market, politics, health care, business and more every day. This is a must: bring your crisis communications plan absolutely up to date. Don’t wait to be told by others where dangers lie. Get back to in-house monitoring and watch for the economic, political and other trends that spell trouble for your company.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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