Te Anau to Wanaka ... The Soapbox

It all starts with a question ... some more tentative, some bold and disbelieving.. 'How could we elect that guy again' they all wonder. Into my tirade I launch, mainly heartbroken over our occupation of Iraq. The lives wasted, the country destroyed. What could we do with over 1 billion dollars every week? Think of a problem on the planet, and I guarantee with a few billion and some time to implement, we could solve most if not all of it.

So I go into fantasy. Given the recent state of the union speech, I've been thinking some about the one I'd like to hear before I die. Let's say it's 2016, and it would go something like this:

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Fellow citizens of the US, and of this planet. I'm proud and honored to stand before you tonight, to serve you for another four years. We live in a phenomenal time, and this is a most talented, rich, intellectually powerful and capable group of citizens I represent. Four years ago you elected Hillary and I on a platform of sustainability and peace. I'd like to jump right into my report card. We set an incredibly aggressive set of goals 4 years ago, and I've given myself an 87% score for our success. I don't know if 100% is possible in these next 4 years, but we're aiming for just that. You can read detail on everything I mention tonight, as well as on how we came up with the score at barackobama.prez.

In 2012, our base year, we set a number of areas of priority. In no particular order of importance, I'll briefly assess our successes and failures. Firstly, we've had some terrific results from our scientific competitions. Setting up groups of competing scientists and giving them 100 million dollars was very controversial, as you all remember. Yet look at what the winning solar group accomplished. In just 3 years, they created and we have now licensed paper thin photovoltaics, easily retrofittable, that create electricity at just under 3 cents per kilowatt hour. And winning the bonus prize of 300 million dollars, along with licensing fees, was certainly great motivation.


Lester Brown, our Secretary of the Environment, is also very proud of the wind initiative, and we are now generating 38% of our electricity from wind. That's above our goal of 35% by 2015. He's doing wonderful work on soil and water conservation as well. Another major goal of ours was to become independent of foreign oil. We've not quite reached success there, but the new carbon fibre trucks and autos coming off the assembly lines today are getting an average of 124 miles/gallon. The hybrid technology continues to improve. We'll continue to get the old cars off the road, and hopefully have complete phase out of gasoline engines in autos and a full hydrogen fleet by 2020.

Warren Buffett has done remarkable work as Secretary of the Treasury. It's always a learning experience to be around this man. Our dollar is as strong as it's been in many decades, our budget and trade deficits have turned to major surplus, and our trade policy now favors the working poor around the world. And I'm proud to announce that the top tax rate will drop to 30% as of this calendar year, and there will be no income taxes on those earning less than $65,000 annually.

On to AIDS. I promised a reduction of 70% infection rates during my inauguration speech. We've not done our job there, and you can read the detail at the web site. But we've reduced infection rates by 63%, we know why we fell short of our goals. We're working hard to get to our 2020 goal of 95% reduction in infection rates from the base year.

Vice President Clinton has done a stellar job with health care reform, and social security management. We decided to not appoint any new committees to study the issues, as had my previous 6 predecessors. We jumped into implementing strategies. I'm happy to say that social security is completely solvent, and our universal health care system now takes care of all of our citizens. She's done wonderful work.

And finally, I'd like to talk about the most controversial, and most personally most exciting area of challenge we've undertaken. That, of course, is the transformation of the Department of War (Defense for some of you) to the Department of Peace. Wesley Clark is doing a fantastic job there. It's been a tough tough fight, and a very rocky road. The FBI and the CIA have been almost completely disbanded. And the major defense contractors have mostly made the transition to peacetime manufacturing. The solar and hydrogen initiatives have provided many jobs for those who worked in the industry. And denying companies the chance to outsource also created significant job growth. The wind turbine and solar flat panel industries have also absorbed many of those displaced.

And now, for these next four years, I'd like to briefly mention my main focus, my largest goal. I call it the 90/90/90 plan. We are going to bring 90% of the world's population clean water, enough food, and primary education by 2016. Working closely with the UN, we think these goals are achieveable over these next 4 years. You elected me on the promise we'd work on these issues, and we are beginning this month to roll out the working groups in various target countries. As we learned from our debacle in Iraq, and many other countries prior to that, you can't bring democracy to a country at the point of a sword. So we continue to strive to be a shining light, and example to the world.

Thanks, and may what ever diety you pray to bless you ... be it Krisna, Buddah, Allah, God, or whomever. Now, let's get back to work.

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OK, OK ... I'm not a speech writer. And for now, back to our regularly scheduled presidency. But I can dream ... O, how I do dream.

Oh, yeah ... the cycling's been astounding and fantastic. The 57 mile out and back from Queenstown to Glenorchy defies description. It's obvious why Peter Jackson used it so much for Middle Earth, it's magnificent. And the Crown Range ride from Wanaka to Arrowtown and back was a wonderful grind.

My two days in Wanaka sadly come to an end. This town continues to astound. Being in the warm embrace of the Green family was pure delight ... I will miss them.