2012 State of the Union Address

Admittedly, I did not watch this live. However, I did watch the entire address and was able to pause and reflect as needed. While I don’t think that this will be the year that President Obama is able to accomplish everything he hopes to, I’d like to examine the reasons why he may or may not merit my support in the coming months and the next election. In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, he caught my attention when he said “I intend to fight obstruction with action.” This clearly has a partisan message, especially if you consider the surrounding sentence that I omitted, but I would like to see more action happen more often.

I intend to initiate action by becoming informed and thinking critically about political issues and social responsibility, beginning with the following topics, which President Obama covered in his address:

1. Corporate taxes and U.S. job creation

2. Workers who are qualified for the jobs of tomorrow

i. science and technology industries

ii. education reform

iii. immigration of talented, hardworking students

3. Innovation and publicly funded research

i. basic and applied research ie cancer research

ii. energy

4. Reforming government regulations in oil and environmental protection and health care coverage and wall street

5. Foreign policy, specifically Iran

6. What should have been mentioned: poverty