The Reasons We Think America is On the Wrong Course

I was listening to the Michael Medved show yesterday. He does a nice job at talk radio. But he was worked up because the CBS News Poll showed that 72% of Americans surveyed think the U.S. is on the wrong track. (When I went to CBS' site, it looks to me like the number is 69%, but that's an insignicant difference). Medved's view is that income for the poorest citizens are rising (recent government data), unemployment is low, stock market is high, no cold war, so why so pessimistic?



Here are my answers:

1. Several of our young men and women are being killed every day in a war that we are getting sick of.


2. The deficit is some unimaginable, staggering number that my generation is imposing on my children.


3. Social Security is bankrupt and both Congress and the Administration (both previous and current, and both Republican and Democratic) are unwilling to face the issue.


4. There are virulent infectious agents in hospitals that are resistent to essentially all antibiotics, and the drug companies have little incentive to spend research money on antibiotics, so there aren't many treatments in the pipeline.


5. At a time that education, including tough courses in math and science, are requisites for jobs in the future, our school system is a mess, while India and China's education system continues to improve.


6. Al Queda wants to kill as many of us as they can.


7. Our borders are essentially nothing more than lines on a map, so that millions stroll in every year.


8. When the police arrest someone they suspect is here illegally, unless they have an Arabic name INS isn't interested in doing anything.


9. We are paying $65 a barrel for oil so that the countries that harbor people who want to kill us become the richest countries on earth.


10. We know that we need nuclear power, but a small environmentalist lobby can hold up the majority for decades.


11. President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer almost forty years ago; the cure rate has only increased slightly and for many forms of cancer not at all.


12. Largely as a result of government profligacy, the dollar has gone to hell against almost every other major currency.


13. The percentage of babies born to unwed mothers is shocking despite widespread knowledge that one of the largest categories of poverty is families headed by single mothers.


14. That rat bastard Osama Bin Laudin is still alive.


15. People in places like Darfor are dying by the hundreds of thousands and we basically have no idea what to do about it.


16. The war in Iraq costs about $100 billion a year.


17. For $100 billion a year for five years, we probably could cure several forms of cancer.


18. The typical American thinks there are some fairly simple solutions for the immigration issue; our elected officials can't seem to figure out a solution at all.


19. When we go to an airport we have stand in endless lines, take off our shoes, and throw away perfectly good shampoo and toothpaste.


20. Despite the billions raised every year by the Federal tax on gasoline that is supposed to go to the Interstate highway system, our highways, once the finest in the world, are increasingly inadequate.


21. Teenage obesity and diabities is a real problem.
22. Our fourth biggest oil supplying country is headed by a demogogue who is centralizing power.
23. Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
24. North Korea, run by a dictator who could be a SPECTRE character out of an old James Bond novel, has nuclear weapons.
25. There are both elected and appointed officials in Washington who actually believe that they should pressure China to float the renmenbi against the dollar, expecting the renmenbi to rise (e.g. a falling dollar) would be good long term economic policy.