The need for committed resolve from the White House

The ball is now in the Obama camp to come up with domestic programs that demonstrate a stepped-up willingness to take on sacred cow thought forms that impede our way to a better future.
That being the case, how could we imagine not having to deal with the issue of inappropriate levels of privilege and power being commanded by disproportionate means, to the detriment of core tenets of mutual concern and universal sovereignty that the authors of the Constitution sought to advance under nationhood?
Clearly, we cannot. And if we cannot, how can we imagine having to do so without anybody's ox being gored in the process? The well-intentioned people that most of us are, we would, no doubt, prefer not to do so, if such were possible. Only the foolish and the insane like to make new enemies. Our intent, after all, is to heal, not hurt.
Regrettably, if we want to reach the levels of societal elevation we desire to see within the remainder of Mr. Obama's tenure, we will have no choice but to take on the principal cause that nourishes and perpetuates the wealth dichotomy - the high-flying compensation of those few whose pay privileges are incompatible with what building a truly equitable societal complex is all about.
How nice and how convenient it would be if we could just put brilliant ideas down on paper, have them signed into law by the President, and watch everyone conform to them to the delight of all - but that's not how change happens in America.
The bitter truth of it is that, for better things to become the norm, some will have to be persuaded - or forced - to relinquish a good part of what they have grown accustomed to having all to themselves. This they will not do without putting up a spirited counter attack - much of it conducted through lavishly paid and highly skilled political and legal proxies.
Trying to reason with the most ideologically dedicated of such people is literally useless. They are masters of the semantic arts and their fixation on personal advantage is as deeply rooted as any other fundament of their respective identities. The only approach that will bear fruit is to know what you intend to achieve, put on the mantle of duly accorded authority and move ahead with quiet determination, while being as impervious to the opposition's countervailing machinations as you can, all the while trusting that your core constituency will remain supportive, or at least come 'round to supporting you. It's a gamble, I know, but if history is anything to go by, making positive change in the world seems to require taking on the risk of possible failure.


The point of the preceding pages is not simply to fulminate over the evils of being too damn rich for anybody's good but, rather, to lay out the justificational ground for why it is in our interests, as a society, to stop being complicit in what harms us and finally attach some socially restorative consequences to the practice of excessive (usually self-awarded) pay to corporate executives - pay whose derivatives (pun intended) compromise the well-being of lesser earners and the greater societal complex in so many ways.
Trusting that I have made a sufficiently strong case in that regard, I can now describe how the First Leg of the POPE system would be augmented by a Second Leg to take the issue of top tier corporate pay in a more direct way.