Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Headed Where?

The latest poll being mouthed by the ‘liberally biased” news media is that the current administration fails the test on whether the country is headed in the right direction with about 62 percent of the folks polled claiming it is not. However, I am not sure that this lack of confidence is a reflection of the administration’s poor planning, poor ideas, poor budgeting, or poor choice of words. I am also not sure if it is an indictment of only the administration, for I suspect that this dissatisfaction has as much to do with the silliness that goes on in all levels of government as with the administration. And right here, let me quote my conservative buddy, Lefty, “Statistically, every man and every woman in the country has one breast and one testicle.” I like that sentiment; I did clean it up a little so that you won’t think Lefty a crude person; I do want to examine the current poll with Lefty’s warning in mind.

Take taxes: if you asked Lefty he would day we need to lower taxes on everyone because government has no right to tax us and taxes are limiting to the economy. If you asked me, I’d say we need to raise taxes because we haven’t paid for the prior stimuli, the war, or the tax cuts that occurred in the 8 years prior to this point in our history. So, as far as this topic is concerned, zero percent, in the two-man-poll thinks the administration/government is headed in the right direction.

Take health-care: Lefty would tell you that we did not need to monkey with health care (his is fine), that the government has not business involving itself with private enterprise and we sure don’t want single payer because the government can’t manage anything at all. I’d say, once again, obstructionists have blocked an attempt to make decent, affordable health-care available to all the citizens of the country. Whenever the country has an opportunity to clean up the healthcare mess before it prices itself out of the reach of many folks, we end up with a token package that is so replete with exclusions for the culprits who make it expensive that the attempt to fix it folds up like a poorly, contrived soufflĂ©. And, on this issue, zero percent think the government is headed in the right direction.

Take the budget: Lefty wants the federal (and I think he would say the state’s budget) slashed to get rid of entitlements and to reduce the size of government, cut it all out. I would say cut the budget by slashing all programs by a percent that will get us solvent- all of them including the defense and security budgets because I think there is waste and redundancy in all of it. Hey, we come away again with zero percent thinking the country’s headed in the right direction.

I have no doubt that whoever took the poll used statistically acceptable methods and published the standard deviations, but I also have no doubt that the poll really reflects why people are so dissatisfied with what’s happening in our country. I am also pretty sure that what individual Americans see as important issues in their lives are so disparate that no poll would ever do justice to public sentiment. I am as sure of all this as I am sure that tomorrow Lefty will whip my ass again at pool like he does every time we play. Only liberals, like me, can take a constant butt-pounding and keep coming back for more.