Open letter to President Obama

February 5, 2009 | Vetting explained

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Hello this is John Riolo and welcome to my Civil Discourse Blog. http://psychjourney_blogs.typepad.com/your_advocate_online/ Dear President Obama: I am a retired member of the National Association of Social Workers among other professional groups. Professional organizations have urged me to write you on behalf of all our nation's children, and applaud your signing the S-CHIP bill which will benefit children and a a few vested interest groups. I do applauded your signing this particular bill. This bil will help children. However trade organizations be they social work or any other all vested interest groups and lobbies will never be satisfied with your signing any one bill. I am sure they are planning to lobby you to include all kinds of pork in the stimulus package that will not benefit the public but the narrow interests of its members. This makes them no better or worse than any other special interest group. Please. I urge you to resist them. I also urge you to control your own left wing of congress. You won this election based on a claim of bipartisanship and willingness to rule from the center. I believe you are sincere in that desire. I am concerned that the biggest threat to administration is not just the far right and the Rush Limbaughs but the an even bigger threat are the extremists on the far left. Please don’t worry about alienating the far left. They have no where else to go. Regretfully, too many of my colleagues fall into that category. So please take any mass letter writing campaign with letters faxes and emails from social workers that all read word for word and sound as if they were written by one or a few people with a grain of salt. I did not vote for you but wish you the best. You are the President of all of us and we will all sink or swim together. I sincerely meant it when I say, what is good for you is good for the country at this time at least. Sincerely, John A. Riolo, PhD. (LICSW) Former member of NASW (retired ) Former Chair, MA Chapter Managed Care HMO Committee

Posted in Assignment:
Stimulus thoughts: What you'd fix first

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