If one thing is clear, it is that President Obama has a plan. Watching his speech, he shows that he has studied the problems our nation is facing and has a plan that aims to reposition our country as a world leader in education, scientific advancement, and economic growth. I don’t agree with all of his methods, but I do enjoy a President who has a clairvoyant idea of what he is doing and is sticking to his guns to get it done. Through all of the criticism, he has continued to push his agenda and does very well communicating how he plans to do it. His plans revolve around 5 pillars, so I will go through each one by one.

First Pillar: new regulation of corporations. Admittedly for myself, this is the least appealing of his ideas. Perhaps he put it first so that he could follow up with some much better and more supported ideas. The worrisome statements: “Rules that punish short-cuts and abuse. Rules that tie someone’s pay to their actual job performance.” I’m all for necessary regulation, but his wording here seems to go beyond regulation. Tying someone’s pay to their job performance should never be decided the government. If I own a business, I don’t want the government to tell me how to pay my employees. Sure, it sounds like a good idea, pay people what they deserve. A smart company will do this, a bad company won’t and will fail. That’s how it works! So please Mr. President, don’t try to parent our corporations.

Second Pillar: education. President Obama has been adamant about increasing the level of education in the United States. Undoubtedly this is the right move. Science and education are what fuel new technologies which lead to new industries and eventually our economic dominance. This is one area where President Bush failed miserably, and Obama is quickly and efficiently turning the tides. Through early childhood education, lower college costs, and increased investment in science, President Obama is priming a new generation of scientists and engineers. He mentioned that many right-wing conservatives are complaining about his outrageous spending, but he countered with the fact that these investments will reap enormous rewards in the long-term and are necessary to get our economy back on track. On this point, he is absolutely correct.

Third Pillar: renewable energy. A tenent of the MWP, energy independence is clearly something we need to accomplish. We are funding our enemies by consuming their oil and borrowing the money from China to do it. Not only is energy independence vital to our national security, but the infrastructure and  technologies created to meet the energy demand will provide millions jobs and new exports that will lift our countries economy to new heights. Again, it is expensive now and looks like fat Democratic spending, but here is one boat we cannot miss. Energy independence through renewable energy technologies will be our future. Oh, and it would also reduce our out of control pollution, if anyone cares about that sort of thing.

Fourth Pillar: healthcare costs. Without writing much, let me show this first:

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up over %40 of our governments cost. FORTY PERCENT! The baby-boomers are just beginning to retire. See where this is going? We need to fix healthcare costs and we need to fix it now or your children and grandchildren will see tax rates higher than Cheech and Chong.

Fifth Pillar: restoring fiscal discipline. Well, he didn’t elaborate much on this one. I’m glad he is thinking about it, but it’s hard to laud fiscal responsibility when our deficit is a trillion dollars. Granted, he inherited a lot of that. We’ll have to wait and see if he can make a similar claim in 4 years.

Find the full transcript of President Obama’s address here.