A few, important things that are improved because George W. Bush--and the Republicans--are not in the White House

Let's get right to it:

The first thing is that the Federal Reserve is considering limits on pay for the leaders of the big banks.

This would never happen--far from it--in the last administration. That group was far too interested in letting the foxes guard the chicken coop to even consider this. It was always about "free-market Capitalism", "unfettered markets" and virtually completely untregulated banks in specific but markets in general, to consider any kind of limits.

"The simple proposition should be that you don’t want people being paid for taking too much risk, and you want to make sure that their compensation is tied to long-term performance," Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury.

This statement would never have come from that previous group.

Mind you, we still have big banking problems, for sure, along with the banks virtually owning Congress and Goldman Sachs still pulling the strings from inside the White House but at least it's an improvement. And President Obama and this new administration are also pushing for more change and regulation of the banks.

The second change is a rather big one and it is President Obama's decision to do away with the truly, utterly ridiculous "missile shield" we'd proposed to install in Eastern Europe, virtually on the former Soviet Union's back door.

Besides the fact that it was absurdly expensive--and not working technology yet--can you imagine the US' response if Russia proposed doing this very thing in, say, Cuba? The comparison is a legitimate one. We'd have gone crazy about such a proposal.

Then there's the fact that this was supposedly to counter possible missiles from Iran, which is patently silly for at least a few, if not several reasons but the worst is that this wouldn't do what it was supposed to and, really, it would have been to fight "the last war."

The Soviet Union collapsed. This "missile shield" would be to fight what we perceived years ago, during the now-gone "Cold War." It's no longer reality, by any stretch.

President Obama clearly did the right thing here but we won't hear any such thing from the Conservative Right on this. They'll be going ballistic themselves--pardon the pun.

Another thing improved that we're doing now that we wouldn't be if George W. Bush or other Republicans were in charge is that we're back pushing for a cleaner environment, fighting climate change/global warming--whatever you want to call it--and cleaner energy choices, all three. These are huge.

We've got horrible environmental problems, worldwide, but all we can do here at home is do our best efforts to keep our water, air and soil as clean and workable as possible. It only makes sense but we got away from that for a while. Now we're back on the right track.

Finally, for today and this entry, is the President's push for health care reform.

We may already have been sold down the river, so to speak, but hopefully some good things for us will come out of this. Hopefully our costs for this health care will be driven down so it's more affordable for us.

These are but a few of the more right-headed things were doing as a country right now that would not be happening but for this new administration and leadership.

There are still so many things screwed up--and horribly so--but at least some things are going in a better direction.

It's enough to give me hope.

I hope the same for you.

Links to stories:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/business/economy/19pay.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/world/europe/19shield.html?th&emc=th

Sunday addendum: There is an important, informative article today in The New York Times, pointing out the benefits of President Obama's new plans to replace the "missile shield" of the former President:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/opinion/20gates.html?th&emc=th