I liked It
- From: "Jerry Okamura" <okamuraj005@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 18:10:05 GMT
Here is an opinion piece I really liked by a Victor Davis Hanson in one on
my local newspapers.
Americans - never more affluent or privileged - are in a gloomy mood.
Take energy. The current average cost of gasoline as of Tuesday, $2.85 a
gallon, is still less, when adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1981. But
what is different today is that the relatively sudden surge in gas prices is
assumed to be no mere spike.
Instead the spiraling price seems like something permanent that could grow
even higher as known world reserves decline. And it is made worse by our
voracious consumption and the entry of China and India into the global
energy market.
In response to Americans' anxiety over energy and other, sometimes real,
sometimes perceived problems, we are witnessing ideological stubbornness and
inconsistency from both sides of the political aisle.
Conservatives, for example, are trying to block upping automobile
fuel-efficiency standards, hoping the market will adjudicate any waste of
energy. When the price of gas gets too high, strapped consumers,
conservatives argue, will choose not to buy SUVs and monster pickups.
For their own part, liberals concede that nuclear-powered electrical
generation plants won't contribute to global warming. And these plants now
run as cheaply as burning natural gas and keep energy dollars here at home.
But here, as with their opposition to petroleum drilling in the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge or off the nation's coasts, the environmentally
orthodox are straitjacketed by ideology - dreaming that new-tech alternate
energy and conservation can alone lower costs and keep petro-dollars out of
the hands of unstable Middle East regimes.
These conservative and liberal fantasies also paralyze solutions to budget
deficits.
True, Republican-endorsed tax cuts have led to more net federal revenue in
2005 than in 2001. Yet - even with the unanticipated costs of the 9/11
attack, the ongoing war and Hurricane Katrina - if the Bush administration
had kept entitlement spending to Bill Clinton's levels (with small increases
for inflation), we would today have a balanced budget and a small surplus.
Instead, 2001-2005 marked the wildest growth in nondiscretionary domestic
outlay in our recent history. Even with an expanding economy, vast amounts
of new federal income could not keep pace with even more vast expenditures.
So the valid Republican supply-side argument that tax cuts create more
revenue meant little in balancing the budget. Equally irrelevant was the
"starve the beast" notion that tax cuts would necessitate mandatory
budgetary discipline - especially when many so-called conservative
legislators proved fond of pork-barrel spending.
Now we are told by some free-marketers that a $400 billion annual budget
deficit doesn't matter much - ignoring even the psychological depression
that such borrowing does to a once-confident citizenry.
The Democrats, for their part, won't re-examine entitlement programs to
ascertain which are not working or even counterproductive, such as
agricultural and many education subsidies. Apparently, Democrats' future
answer for the mounting debt will be the old calculus of substantial cuts in
the military (at a time of war) and new tax hikes (that may cool the
economy).
The same public pessimism applies to Iraq. Supporters of the war point to
the steady growth of Iraqi security forces, and that the schedule of
continual elections and constitutional reform remains uninterrupted. Since
the removal of Saddam Hussein, there has been no 9/11-like attack in the
U.S., while there have been positive changes in Lebanon, Egypt and Libya.
Plus, in polls, the majority of Iraqis say they hope the U.S. stays and
finishes the job.
Critics discount that good news and cite the nearly 2,000 U.S. fatalities,
thousands more wounded, billions of dollars spent and near-daily news of
suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices.
In response, some impatient conservatives wish to attack Syria and Iran to
thwart their support for jihadists crossing into Iraq - even though there is
no support for widening the war.
Some liberals want an immediate withdrawal, even though doing so would hand
over to the terrorists what they can't win on the battlefield. The only
viable solution - staying the course - does not satisfy those demanding
either much more or much less.
In sheer numbers, more people are working than at any time in our history.
Home ownership is at record levels. We haven't been attacked in more than
four years. And yet even low unemployment, low inflation and low interest
rates have not brought the public a sense of calm, given the worry over
energy costs, national debt and the war abroad.
Usually such angst - less than half the population expresses confidence in
the administration - would lead to the opposition's advantage. It hasn't, as
the Democrats are offering no systematic alternative to meet the growing
anguish.
And the fatalism of a normally can-do public grows. Voters no longer trust
once tight-fisted Republicans to balance the budget, while the old war party
of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy is no longer credible on national
security. The voters want to both expand traditional domestic energy sources
and to curtail consumption, but the two horn-locked parties see these
solutions as either/or rather than compatible.
The result of this petrified leadership is that while things are not nearly
as bad as they seem, the public in its frustration feels they are far worse.
.
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