The Forgotten Generation, Criticisms of Obama’s Rescue Plan

This last Monday, Barack Obama laid out his economic rescue plan for the middle class.  During which, not only was the stock market volatile, but so too were the American people as a whole.

Fear and uncertainty have befallen the country, those tensions grew into animosity.  Over the last few weeks, McCain and Palin supporters have been distracted from the country’s biggest priority, the economy, and led to believe that Obama was a danger to their safety.  The question of character posed at GOP rallies provoked people to hate speech against Obama, such as “bomb him” and “kill him.” At Obama’s economic address, the candidate had to calm the booing crowds after brief mention of Republican Presidential candidate John McCain.

The country has greatly desired leadership, and Obama was able to maintain a cool that both encouraged and stabilized the American people, bringing in turn confidence in the future of the world economy. But after a second play-through of Obama’s speech, I found the man’s calming and powerful words less comforting.

Obama’s rescue plan was addressed to the middle class, and I suppose I am not of said class because his speech certainly wasn’t directed toward me.  The candidate’s focus was toward two groups of American citizens… property or business owners and pre-college minors.

The Presidential hopeful offers a plan to bring affordable college through community service work to our youth, so that our children can bring invention and ingenuity to the future of this country.  However, little is detailed on the availability of this plan for people that would like to return to school for a new degree, or for their first one, given these citizens may not have been able to afford college during the rising costs of tuition of the Bush administration.

Small business owners will be seeing relief and opportunities under Obama’s plan, as well as people with the extra income needed to start a business.  But again, what about the generation currently in their 20’s and 30’s that either went to college during an era where the cost was high and the degrees often did little more than land one a job waiting tables?  What about the people that didn’t inherit opportunities from their parents, and thus not only had to join the work force full time, but couldn’t afford the ridiculous cost of tuition?

This generation is a forgotten, but very large group of American people, who aspired to attain their dreams during the broken education system of the Bush Administration.  The current crisis makes them invisible, and that invisibility is a convenience, given that correcting for them what the Bush administration robbed is a more difficult undertaking than attempting to maintain the country’s current jobs, and current business owners.  Focusing on bringing good education to up and coming college goers is a more comfortable place to start than offering the opportunity to those who didn’t have the luxury during the last eight years of bad policies.

The only real mention of this forgotten generation of people was in Obama’s reference to those Americans that worked bad jobs so that their children could one day have a better life.  Besides the point that working class jobs that provide the income needed to send a one’s children to college no longer exist, bringing those former generations up almost suggested that, for some in this country, opportunities won’t be available.  Accepting such a possible fate from a campaign based around change seems hardly fair, considering the failure of the Bush Presidency is not the fault of any citizen.

This forgotten generation still has many years of untapped potential ahead.  One would hope that Obama would refine his plan to include the possibility of business ownership and affordable college for every citizen, not just the middle class and not just the children of this country.  Why mention that college wasn’t possible for many people over the last eight years and then forget said group of people within the same address?  While a top notch rescue plan in many respects, Obama, as he often does, lacked the fully fleshed out conclusions of his own uncanny logic.

The Future is 8bit!

I’ve been working with The Wiicast for a few months now and I have to say, the experience has been extremely enjoyable. The Wiicast won’t be around forever, however. The site is in a transitional phase, and will soon become the multi platform 8bitrebels.com. Our hope is that we can make a community focused video game website about regular people.

We’ve been very frustrated with the game industry as a whole, as we feel many journalists and readers are putting on a show. People in video game communities have more become characters than actual people sitting on the other side of the screen. The masks people are wearing are hurting the industry, and destroying its possibility of mainstream credibility.

The writers that have joined us in our vision are ordinary people. All of us on staff have our noticeable flaws, shortcomings and weaknesses. Everyone of us is diverse from one another, each with strikingly different cultural backgrounds and interests. We are the audience forgotten by the hardcore gaming press, the average joe gamer.

Many question the success of the new site 8bit rebels. However, I do not. To me, 8bit rebels will garner an audience with great emotional attachment to the vision of the site. Once they get accustomed to the new show, I think people will realize that what we’re doing is something very unique to the industry, but also very necessary.

I will comment more on the means of how 8bit rebels will accomplish its goals in future posts.