We need to be proactive or things will only get worse

The next President of the United States will need to lead the country in a new direction. In order to keep our status as a superpower, we need a government that is proactive not reactive. Across the country Mother Nature is showing her power. She is also showing the flaws in our country’s infrastructure. Our power grids are old and our levees are being breached. Our bridges are collapsing and we don’t have a system in place to trace the source of food contamination. People on the West Coast are sitting in the dark in the heat and dealing with hundreds of brush fires. The heat will lead to an increase in health incidents while the fires will increase property damage. In the Midwest, farmers in our heartland are losing crops to flooding but not because of the massive amounts of rain.

Our levees are being breached and several farmers have lost their crops. Many did not have time to reseed before the flood. Even though they lost their crops, farmers are still obligated to honor their contracts. We can expect to see higher prices at grocery stores. What we won’t see is tomatoes. A nationwide salmonella outbreak in tomatoes has growers unable to sell their tomato crops. This is good for local growers who have seen an increase in their tomato sales. This will continue to be a problem until the farm is found that was the source of the contaminated tomatoes. A system needs to be put in place to be able to trace food contamination in order to minimize deaths and affecting the bottom lines of growers and buyers around the country.

A president can’t beat Mother Nature or predict the extent of damage that she will cause. He can, however, work with Congress and state governments to help make us less vulnerable to Mother Nature’s wrath. Improving our infrastructure would increase our national security. Rather than fighting a war in one country in the Middle East and helping that country rebuild, I hope our next President focuses his attention on the nation building that needs to happen here in America.