Democrats and Healthcare and Money January 30, 2009

I guess it’s not just Democrats. The Republicans sure spent a lot of money the past few years too. I sure am glad they said no to the “Stimulus” Plan though. (And here I am reacting when I said just a few posts ago that I was only going to ACT which means philosophizing constructively). But anyway, I guess it feels more unwise to spend so much when so many people are losing their jobs because where does the money come from? The government gets money from us the citizens or from loans. If the citizens don’t have money they can’t pay taxes. And the government can’t keep on borrowing, can it? Doesn’t it have to stop somewhere? Observing this moment–the recession, the House Democrats passing a huge stimulus plan that is just so HUGE and by huge I mean ecclectic and not inuitive, gross even, people losing their jobs–makes me feel like something is eventually going to give. I don’t know when, but we have already paid a price as a country for spending beyond our means, for having a national average savings rate that is in the negative. That price has been an inflation. When we are going to learn the same lesson applies to our government? We can’t go on spending more than we have forever. And I say WE because we are essentially the government. WE are responsible; that’s the beauty of a republican democracy. What is the cost going to be? And when is the due date? I don’t know. We have expensive healthcare, but is it really necessary for the government to solve the problem? Is that really a solution? Why is the government enabling people who make over 65,000 dollars to use government health care? What else would those people be doing with their money? What is the government allowing them to do with the money they’ve “saved” by not buying into their own healthcare? And why is it an all or nothing deal? Why can’t people pay a part of the government healthcare? Are Democrats allowing people to pay for their mortgage that they shouldn’t have bought into in the first place? Are they allowing them to pay for those unlimited family cell phone plans or even for just one cell phone? Are they allowing them to go out to eat all of the time like they are used to doing? Are they allowing them to have nicer cars? I guess maybe they would say yes to all of those things, and then justify it by saying that doing all of those things help drive the economy. But maybe the economy shouldn’t be driven that much, it’s not tenable, and that’s how we came to where we are.

I’m including an article from today’s WSJ by Kimberley A. Strassel about the Democrats’ healthcare efforts: “Democratic Stealth Care”.

With the nation preoccupied by the financial crisis, Democrats have been quietly working to nationalize health care.

Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he’s in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama’s agenda of government-run health care — entirely on the QT.

This was the real accomplishment of this week’s House vote for the $819 billion “stimulus,” and is the overriding theme of Congress’s first month. With the nation occupied with the financial crisis, and with that crisis providing cover, Democrats have been passing provision after provision to nationalize health care.

If Democrats learned anything from the HillaryCare defeat, it was the danger of admitting to their wish to federalize the health market. Since returning to power, they’ve pursued a new strategy: to stealthily and incrementally expand government control. “What no one is paying attention to in the [stimulus],” says Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, “is that Democrats are making a big grab at the health-care sector.”

It began one week after the swearing-in, when Nancy Pelosi whipped through a big expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The Schip bill was Democrats’ first stab at stealth expansion, unveiled in 2007, though vetoed by George W. Bush.

Initially designed for children of working-poor families, this new Super-Schip will be double in size, and even kids whose parents make $65,000 a year will be eligible. The program will also now cover pregnant women and automatically enroll their new arrivals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 2.4 million individuals will drop their private coverage for the public program.

Still, it’s the “stimulus” that has proven the real gift horse — a behemoth that has allowed Democrats to speed up the takeover of health care under cover of an economic crisis. They initially claimed, for instance, the “stimulus” would provide Medicaid money to states struggling to pay existing bills. What in fact it does is dramatically expand the number of Americans who qualify for Medicaid.

Under “stimulus,” Medicaid is now on offer not to just poor Americans, but Americans who have lost their jobs. And not just Americans who have lost their jobs, but their spouses and their children. And not Americans who recently lost their jobs, but those who lost jobs, say, early last year. And not just Americans who already lost their jobs, but those who will lose their jobs up to 2011. The federal government is graciously footing the whole bill. The legislation also forbids states to apply income tests in most cases.

House Democrat Henry Waxman was so thrilled by this blowout, it was left to Republicans to remind him that the very banking millionaires he dragged to the Hill last year for a grilling would now qualify for government aid. His response? A GOP proposal to limit subsidies to Americans with incomes under $1 million was accepted during markup, but had disappeared by final passage. In this new health-care nirvana, even the rich are welcome. CBO estimates? An additional 1.2 million on the federal Medicaid dime in 2009.

The “stimulus” also hijacks Cobra, a program that lets the unemployed retain access to their former company health benefits — usually for about 18 months. The new stimulus permits any former employee over the age of 55 to keep using Cobra right up until they qualify for Medicare at age 65. And here’s the kicker: Whereas employees were previously responsible for paying their health premiums while on Cobra, now the feds will pay 65%. CBO estimates? Seven million Americans will have the feds mostly pay their insurance bills in 2009.

The bill even takes a whack at the private market. Under the guise of money for “health technology,” the legislation makes the government the national coordinator for electronic health records, able to certify what platforms are acceptable. This is an attempt to squelch a growing private market that is competing to improve transparency and let consumers compare providers and costs. In liberal-world, only government should be publishing (and setting) health-care prices.

Add it up, and Democrats may move 10 million more Americans under the federal health umbrella — in just four weeks! Good luck ever cutting off that money. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority is gearing up for a Medicare fight, where it may broach plans to lower the eligibility age to 55. Whatever costs accrue, they’ll pay for by slashing the private Medicare Advantage option.

Mr. Obama will, of course, offer his health-care reform at some point. But he’s clearly happy to get what he can, when he can. Despite talk of entitlement reform, he’s voiced no disapproval of this vast new health-care grab. And don’t forget he chose Mr. Daschle, who appreciates stealth himself. In his 2008 book outlining his health-care reform, he offers his party two pieces of political advice: Move fast, before there can be a public debate, and write as vague a bill as possible.

Guiding all of this is the left’s hope that by the time America wakes up to what’s happening, it’ll be too late. Democrats might be on to something.

Write to kim@wsj.com

Why doesn’t the government plan for a rainy day? January 22, 2009

I don’t understand why governments don’t plan for a rainy day. Are they like normal people in thinking that the good times will always roll and that they won’t ever be held accountable for spending more than they have? I am sure it is hard to say no to good causes, but there is going to be a penalty and it’s not fair to the taxpayers who are entitled to their tax refund and the government can’t pay it back. I liked that part in President Obama’s inaugral speech when he said that governments should be accountable for how they use the taxpayers money. We give almost a quarter of our earnings to the government. Surely they can be smarter with it and really be prepared to help us out when we need it most.

Ah ha! Obama’s Tax Plan October 25, 2008

Obama is saying that he’s happy to provide services to all people (but mostly underprivileged people) while having the top 5% income earners pay for them. How is that fair? How is it fair to have other people pay for a service? Is that how the rest of the economy works? No, but he’s happy to do it. I wish he would just be honest with people and say, “Look (as he always does), I’m happy to provide you the services, but you need to pay for them.” That’s how life works! Make it clear! Draw the connection for people. Don’t be willing to hide it, to obfuscate it. Why are rich people paying for something poor people receive? Spell it out for us. Don’t just go on about how you’re doing us a favor by not taxing 95% of people.

Optimism! October 24, 2008

The media depresses me, but also uplifts! Here is a good article from Peggy Noonan from today:

43% Isn’t Nothing

Obama looks like a winner, but it’s not over yet.

It’s all going fast, the whirl of images on the screen, words on the page, data flashing by. Barack Obama’s up here, his lead now in the double digits there. In green rooms on book interviews, I see quietly angry former Reagan staffers, defensive former Bush aides, harried McCain spokesmen, and almost-jaunty Democrats. A network correspondent with a reputation for fairness—no one knows how this reporter votes—came by one day and shrugged with frustration. Everyone asks me about media bias. Of course the media loves Obama, but I can’t say it. I didn’t take notes, but I think that’s word for word. Soon after, I received an email from a different journalist who referred, in passing, to where many journalists stand.

Neither of these people is conservative. When nonconservatives see the Obama love, and refer to it without prompting, the Obama love is deep. Remember how John McCain used to refer jokingly to the press as “my base”? Now it’s part of Mr. Obama’s. But if Mr. McCain loses, the reason will not be press bias.

The press knows who the press is for, and it isn’t generally the one to the right. This has been true all my life. What has also been true is that the Republican had to get around it with the truth of his stands, the force of his arguments, the un-ignorability of his words, the power of his presence. You have to go over the head of the interpreters and gently seize the country by its lapels. Mr. McCain never got much over their heads. This is not because they’re so tall. His campaign was not so much about meaning as it was, in the end, a series of moments—a good interview with Rick Warren, a good convention, Joe the Plumber . . .

And yet: It’s not over. For one thing, Mr. McCain has got to be reading Steven Stark’s piece in the Boston Phoenix, which imagines the forces that could produce a McCain upset. What if Mr. Obama underperforms on Election Day, just as he did in the final primaries with Hillary Clinton? What if senior citizens turn out in record numbers and vote for the older guy, and the financial crisis seems to fade, and Mr. McCain finds new grounding on the issue of taxes, and the Obama campaign undermines itself with premature triumphalism . . .

Mr. McCain has endless faith in his ability to come back. He’s been doing it for 40 years, from Vietnam, where, with the injuries he’d sustained and the torture he experienced, he might have died, was likely to die, and yet survived, to exactly a year ago, when he was out of money and out of luck. And then he won New Hampshire. When he says, “We got ‘em where we want ‘em” he must mean: They think they are looking at a corpse. No one in politics has so repeatedly relished coming back from the dead.

Not a single poll has Mr. McCain ahead. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls as I write, rounded off, is Obama 50%, McCain 43%. Actually Mr. Obama has 50.1%, and if that is true and holds, it would make him the first Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter to break 50%. But I find myself thinking of what that 43% means. It’s a big number, considering that this is the worst Republican year in generations. Amid two wars, a deep economic crisis, a fractured base, too much cynicism, and a campaign with the wind not at its back but head on in its face—with all of that working against Mr. McCain, 43% of the American people say, right now, in these polls, they are for him. And there are a significant number of undecideds. Four years ago about 122 million people voted. Forty-three percent of 122 million is 52 million people, more or less. A huge group, one too varied to generalize about because it includes flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities, and many others.

They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies. But they are there, and this is a center-right nation, and many of them have been pushing hard against the age for 40 years now, and more. For some time they have sensed that something large and stable is being swept away, maybe has been swept away, and yet you still have to fight for it. They will not give up without a fight, and they will make their way to the polls.

And they will be a rock-hard challenge to Mr. Obama if he wins.

This is the thing: If Mr. Obama wins, and governs as a moderate liberal, not veering left, not seeming to be the cap that pops off a kettle that’s been boiling for eight years, but governs to a degree, at least in general approach, as Bill Clinton did—as a moderate Democrat well aware of the terrain—he may know some success. And he may be able to tamp down the insistence of the long-simmering left by the force of his own popularity, which will grow once he is president among grateful Democrats, and others. But if he goes left—if it comes to seem as if the attractive, dark-haired man has torn open his shirt to reveal a huge S, not for Superman but for Socialist, if he jumps toward reforms such as a speech-limiting new Fairness Doctrine, that won’t yield success. It will yield trouble, and unneeded domestic arguments. We have enough needed ones.

In a way, Mr. Obama can more easily go left in foreign relations for the precise reason no one knows what going left is, because no one knows what going right in foreign relations is, at least if “right” means “conservative.” Mr. Obama has a great chance, in this area, to confuse the world. And a confused world is not all a bad thing. His persona, name, color, youth and approach will, at least initially, jumble up long-settled categories. Radicals enjoy hating America, but a particular picture of America. He is not that picture. He will give calculating Western European leaders an opening to be friendly to America again; they will feel that Mr. Obama’s victory constitutes the rebuke of the Bushism they desire. They will befriend the rebuker.

People wonder if he is decisive. It is clear he is decisive in terms of his own career: He decides to go for president of the law review, to move to Chicago, to roll the dice for a U.S. Senate seat, to hire David Axelrod, to take on Hillary, to campaign with discipline and even elegance. When it comes to his career, his decisions are thought through and his judgments sound. But when it comes to decisions that have to do with larger issues, with great questions and not with him, things get murkier. There is the long trail of the missed and “present” votes, the hesitance on big questions. One wonders if in the presidency he’ll be like the dog that chased the car and caught it: What’s he supposed to do now?

It is mean out there, and in the next week it will get darker still, perhaps spectacularly so. To me, the biggest nightmare would be a tie. The worst resolution would be no resolution. And the quarrel would not, for even a moment, abate.

I need to remember that there are lots of good people out there. By good, I mean, conservative. Heh. I especially like this part, “They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies.” Because that is exactly what has happened to me. The media depresses me, and I know it does, but I still read and listen.

I should not be so moved by what I read though. I should have the integrity and thought to sustain me and give me confidence despite what others are saying.

Oh what a depressing article! October 23, 2008

I love the following article, but it depresses me at the same time. Read it!

October 23, 2008

Willie Sutton Goes to Harvard

By George Will

“Because that’s where the money is.”
– Willie Sutton, when asked in 1934 why he robbed banks

WASHINGTON — Washington is having a Willie Sutton Moment. Such moments occur when government, finding its revenue insufficient for its agenda, glimpses some money it does not control but would like to.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., recently convened a discussion of how colleges and universities should be spending their endowments. Grassley, who says more than 135 institutions each have endowments of more than $500 million, says perhaps they should be required to spend 5 percent of their endowments each year. Welch has introduced legislation to require that percentage be spent to reduce tuition and other student expenses.

This government reach for control of private resources comes even though last year colleges and universities spent, on average, 4.6 percent of their endowments. Furthermore, most endowments are too small to be a significant source of captured money.

Last fiscal year, Harvard’s endowment, earning an 8.6 percent return, grew from $34.9 billion to $36.9 billion. Although less than the 23 percent return in the previous year, it was an excellent performance, considering the economic turbulence. But only 45 private institutions have endowments of more than $1 billion. Among the other 98 percent (1,565) of institutions, the median endowment is just $14 million. So government in a Willie Sutton mood would target the wealthiest institutions — those that are the foundation of basic research that undergirds American prosperity, and that have the most generous financial aid programs for students.

Nowadays, much of politics consists of telling voters that the prices of many things they buy — gasoline, health care, higher education — are unreasonable. But demand for higher education has not declined even though its price at many institutions has risen even faster than the price of health care. Parents continue to pay rising tuition costs because they consider higher education a reasonable investment. They know that, today, wealth creation is driven by “human capital” — trained minds — and that “you earn what you learn.”

Daniel Mark Fogel told the Grassley-Welch panel that at the University of Vermont, of which he is president, 60 percent of undergraduates, and 74 percent of this year’s freshman class, are from out of the state. They pay the nation’s second-highest non-resident tuition, which subsidizes the lower tuition paid by Vermonters, and helps offset declines in state appropriations.

Some Massachusetts state legislators, committing two of the seven deadly sins, are angry because tax revenues do not match their ambitions, and envious of Harvard. They suggest raising more than $1 billion annually with a 2.5 percent assessment on the nine colleges and universities in the state that have endowments of more than $1 billion.

California legislators, disguising a third sin, avarice, as concern for “diversity,” want to require large California foundations to report the race, gender and sexual orientation of their trustees, staff and grant recipients. Other state legislatures will emulate this step toward government control of the flow of philanthropy.

So it goes. The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life. And now the government’s response to the financial crisis, including the semi-nationalization of nine major banks, has blurred — indeed, almost erased — the distinction between public and private sectors.

Hundreds of billions of dollars that the political class would have liked to direct for its own social and political purposes have been otherwise allocated. That allocation, by government fiat rather than by market forces, must reduce the efficiency of the nation’s stock of capital. Which in turn will reduce economic growth, and government revenues, just as the welfare state — primarily pensions and medical care for the elderly — becomes burdened by the retirement of 78 million baby boomers.

As government searches with increasing desperation for money with which it can work its will, Willie Sutton Moments will multiply. Government has an incentive to weaken the belief that the nation needs a vigorous and clearly demarcated sector of private educational and philanthropic institutions exercising discretion over their own resources.

So the frequently cited $700 billion sum is but a small fraction of the cost, over coming decades, of today’s financial crisis. The desire of governments to extend their control over endowments and foundations is a manifestation of the metastasizing statism driven by the crisis. For now, its costs, monetary and moral, are, strictly speaking, incalculable.

It seems to me that government are inclined to grow bigger. That’s why they are lame. I am not really depressed, but I kind of am. Politics are just so depressing right now. Why can’t everyone just admit that government IS NOT THE ANSWER?.

Oh what depressing times October 17, 2008

I’m a conservative Republican, but mostly I’m just a conservative. I’m not sure what the Republican party is about anymore. Well, I know what I THINK it is about, but not what the Republican “leaders” think it is about. I mean, we have nominated John McCain. Is that because he didn’t betray any expectations? As my husband said, I ended up liking Obama better in Thursday’s debate because he surpassed the very low expectations I had for him. I had somewhat higher expectations for McCain and he didn’t even meet them. Except on issues like taxes. He is right–why should people, any people, pay more taxes right now? Obama said he doesn’t like taxes, but he’s still going to raise them. That is dumb. Be honest. You want to have social programs so you want to raise taxes. You like social programs better than cutting taxes. McCain was right to call him out on that. But McCain: are you going to cut spending too? Anyway, the point is, we should be a party that loves America, hates spending money, is wise, is for traditional marriage, is against pork barrel spending, loves people, stands for what is right, encourages family, is financially prudent and encourages Americans to be as well, has leaders, encourages people to give to each other and take care of each other, is tough on terrorism, defends religion, works to have a small government, communicates with Americans often, helps paint a big picture, helps people understand the relationship between government and the people, defends the family, takes responsibility, owns up, is honest. Yeah, in a perfect world right?

Coupons and the Government September 17, 2008

They’re not really related. But maybe they should be. I love coupons and I realized yesterday, while walking to the mail box, that one of the most exciting things I experience each week is looking through the mailed coupons. It’s great! What I love especially are food coupons. Who doesn’t? I love coupons for the grocery store and coupons for local restaurants. It means we get to stretch our $200 food and $50 entertainment budgets even further. We get more bang for our buck, as it were. I love coupons.

The Government. I think they should offer us coupons on taxes. I hate taxes. We should get coupons in the mail saying that if we buy fruit, we won’t have to pay the tax on that fruit. Or something along those lines. I’m tired of the government and of politics. I wish they had philosophers talk on NPR rather than the reporters. I think I would be more inspired each day.

Slow Thinker Me September 2, 2008

Blogging about political things taxes my brain. Forrest Gump was pretty slow too, but he knew some things. “I’m not a smart man… but I know what love is.” Some of the smartest people don’t know what love is.

So I was listening to Sen Biden’s speech a little bit on NPR last week, and feeling a lot more sympathy for the Dems because they care about the unfortunate people: people who are worried about paying for the gas to heat up their homes in the winter, who are worried about paying for their basic necessities because the cost of living keeps going up but not their wages. Yeah, what about those people!? What do Republicans have to say about them? But wait. What about people like my parents who do pretty well, but are taxed like crazy and pay 1000s of dollars each year in tolls to drive on the roads that get them to work where they make money to pay taxes to support people Democrats call the disadvantaged? WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan wrote a great article that sums up the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties here (August 28, 2008, WSJ Opinion Journal). Here is the part I’m referring to specifically:

“Michelle Obama’s speech was solid, but not a home run. First impression: She is so beautiful. Beautifully dressed, beautifully groomed, confident, smiling, a compelling person. But her speech seemed to me more the speech of a candidate, and not a candidate’s spouse. It was full of problems and issues. I continue to be of the Denis Thatcher School of Political Spouses: Let the candidate do the seriousness of the issues, you do the excellence of the candidate. This is old fashioned but nonetheless I think still applicable. It has made Laura Bush (with a few forays into relatively anodyne policy questions) the most popular First Lady in modern American political history. Another problem with the Michelle speech. In order to paint both her professional life and her husband’s, and in order to communicate what she feels is his singular compassion, she had to paint an America that is darker, sadder, grimmer, than most Americans experience their country to be. And this of course is an incomplete picture, an incorrectly weighted picture. Sadness and struggle are part of life, but so are guts and verve and achievement and success and hardiness and…triumph. Democrats always get this wrong. Republicans get it wrong too, but in a different way.

Democrats in the end speak most of, and seem to hold the most sympathy for, the beset-upon single mother without medical coverage for her children, and the soldier back from the war who needs more help with post-traumatic stress disorder. They express the most sympathy for the needy, the yearning, the marginalized and unwell. For those, in short, who need more help from the government, meaning from the government’s treasury, meaning the money got from taxpayers.

Who happen, also, to be a generally beset-upon group.

Democrats show little expressed sympathy for those who work to make the money the government taxes to help the beset-upon mother and the soldier and the kids. They express little sympathy for the middle-aged woman who owns a small dry cleaner and employs six people and is, actually, day to day, stressed and depressed from the burden of state, local and federal taxes, and regulations, and lawsuits, and meetings with the accountant, and complaints as to insufficient or incorrect efforts to meet guidelines regarding various employee/employer rules and regulations. At Republican conventions they express sympathy for this woman, as they do for those who are entrepreneurial, who start businesses and create jobs and build things. Republicans have, that is, sympathy for taxpayers. But they don’t dwell all that much, or show much expressed sympathy for, the sick mother with the uninsured kids, and the soldier with the shot nerves.

Neither party ever gets it quite right, the balance between the taxed and the needy, the suffering of one sort and the suffering of another. You might say that in this both parties are equally cold and equally warm, only to two different classes of citizens.”

But here is what bothers me about Obama and Democrats and really anyone that looks to the government for answers: how do you know the difference between someone who has had bad stuff happen to them, and someone who has made dumb choices? Because those people should be getting different responses from the government. Someone who is truly destitute because her husband died and he was the breadwinner and she has children to feed should have help that is different than someone who overextended themselves because they had to have a nice house, a nice car, a cell phone with the unlimited text messaging plan, cable or satellite tv, and nice vacations, or some sort of combination of those things. Is there a distinction there for Barack Obama? Does he care? What has he done to encourage people to live well within their means so then can live truly independent and empowered lives? Does he want to educate people? Just a quick glance at his website issues (under economy, fiscal, and poverty) shows me he doesn’t want to, he just wants to take care of them. He has lot of ideas to address the issue, but they are all top down, not bottom up. They won’t help people change their behavior, or empower people to live better by teaching them and encouraging discipline. The government, for Obama, is the answer. But the government is never enough.

Universal Health Care…bleh August 11, 2008

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It makes my skin curl. It’s so un-American, isn’t it? I need to research the subject though, and become armed with a real defense against it. I guess the best defense would be to go on the offensive: coming up with a plan to reform health care without making it universal as provided by the government. Why do employers have to pay for health insurance and not car insurance? Is it because not everyone has a car but everyone has health? Curious. People, at least in some states, are required by law to have car insurance. In fact, they can’t register their car unless they show proof of insurance. It seems that part of the high costs of insurance result from the use of the ER by people who have no insurance. Is there proof of that? If so, maybe everyone should be required to have health insurance. Is that un-American? I don’t know…I’m so torn. There are charities for people with no health insurance, right? If so, I wonder what percentage that covers. What if people could have health insurance and they choose not to? Are there studies of that? So many questions. Here’s an article that I don’t really like, but it’s interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/opinion/11krugman.html?ref=opinion.

Ohhhh Shoot January 23, 2007

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I don’t think anyone is following my blog yet so that probably doesn’t matter, but then, it does matter because it’s kind of like a release for me. And since it’s been a few months since I last posted, I am seriously ready to do some releasing.

The irony is that I didn’t post because I was so busy with my political science major–well, okay, with school in general–that I have hardly had the time to look up what is going on in the political world besides occasionally looking up drudgereport.com and realclearpolitics.com.

But I’m back. I’ve recommitted. I haven’t stopped being concerned (I don’t think it takes much political information to realize one should be concerned about what is going on in our country).

So I jump back onto the Drudge Report today and one of the first articles I read is about President Bush’s incredibly low approval ratings. The article from bloomberg.com mentions  that  71% of Americans this month think that our country is on the wrong track. That naturally raises the question: What, then, is the right track? Can anyone cohesively answer that question? Does one ever get the feeling that things are really jut too complicated? That’s how I feel a lot. It’s true that I just recently graduated from BYU in political science, and so perhaps my lack of experience leaves me easily overwhelmed by all the complexities of American politics, but still, I can’t imagine that it is a good thing. If I, after studying politics in college, can be overwhelmed, what does that say for the average joe? For those who don’t have a college degree, or for those who didn’t study politics in college? But I digress. The point is that Americans are seriously dissatisfied, and the question is, what can politicians do to remedy the situtation? Oddly enough, I don’t have the answer. So I’m going to go read the blogs and columns of those who do.