Can You See Tomorrow?

By: Dave Roberson and John Roberson

Some people spend their entire lives trying to see tomorrow. Weather forecasters concentrate their careers predicting what tomorrow’s weather will bring. Gamblers hedge their bets in belief that tomorrow will bring them a self-fulfilling, extravagant lifestyle. Insurance companies accept or deny candidates based on computer models that predict future outcomes. Nevertheless, in spite of the best models that the most up-to-date computers can run, we seem no closer today of knowing what will happen tomorrow than a generation or two ago. I will admit, the graphics today are a little more accurate and a lot prettier, but it is still several hundred miles from Port O’Conner to Sabine Pass when the eye of the hurricane is 100 miles off shore.

If you were to ask people what they want tomorrow to look like, what do you think they would say? My guess is that they would want it to look a lot like yesterday. Granted, the unemployed sure would like to get a job. The person in the troubled relationship might want to be set free. And without question, the family of the heroic soldier would like the call, email, or text notifying them of the trip home. But my read on most people is that predictability is a preference to uncertainty. Some will call this boring, but I think it reflects reality. So if the theory is accurate, why is it then that the current administration is running wide-open pushing major environmental (Cap and Trade) and social (Health Care) legislation with an extreme sense of urgency? I think the answer can be found in history.

When a new President is elected, there is generally a two-year shelf life on implementing an agenda. Going back as far back as Eisenhower, think of some of the signature moments in their administrations and when it occurred. Eisenhower – Interstate Highway Act – began in ‘54 signed in ‘56; Kennedy – Space Program – ‘61,’62; Johnson – Civil Rights – ‘65,’66; Carter – Airline Deregulation – ‘78; Reagan – eliminate price controls and windfall profit tax – ‘81 and after a landslide in ‘84 – lower income tax brackets –‘86; George H.W. Bush – American with Disabilities Act - ’90; Clinton – NAFTA – ‘93; George W Bush – No Child Left Behind – ‘02. The reason that a new administration has to act quickly is because toward the end of the first two years, all of the House and 1/3 of the Senate is worried about re-election and the President’s re-election campaign starts soon thereafter in the 3^rd year. So naturally, Obama is shaping his right now.

So what did tomorrow look like after each of these notable events? The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 not only paved our countries roads and bridges but stimulated a new lifestyle known as “suburbia”. I believe most folks will say that the Space Program has worked out really well and does anybody want to object to Civil Rights for all Americans? Some will say that the courts overstepped in many of the areas, but that was not Johnson’s fault. Lot’s of people have benefited from reduced airfares, but smaller airports have struggled to keep air service. Reaganomics created a tremendous economic boom, but lack of spending restraint by Congress created massive deficits. NAFTA kept inflation in check for over a decade, but many say it destroyed millions of jobs for Americans. Reading skills for all children is great, but others say the testing that came with it narrows our educational objectives. So what will Obama’s tomorrow bring? You need to really consider this question before you get too excited one way or the other.

So now that you are in the proper mindset, let’s look at the two signature agendas for Obama. First, Cap and Trade. If you are not following the national agenda closely, this is the save the Polar Bear Act, also known as man-made global warming. Since ‘global cooling’ didn’t scare enough people during the Carter Administration of the 1970’s and ‘we are all going to die because of the hole in the ozone’ faded fast during the Clinton years, liberal minded politicians decided that this decade’s environmental scare tactic would be ‘man-made global warming’. Apparently there is some great video out now of polar bears floating around on icebergs. Ten year olds and Al Gore really eat this up. Now, do not get me wrong, I am a firm believer in global warming. By my read, it has been going on since the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. Have you ever thought about how the Great Lakes got scooped out and filled with billions and billions of gallons of water? Some pretty smart people have convinced me that Kansas was once covered by ice. I still think it is pretty cold there in the winter, think KU basketball, but one of the reasons you can drive I-70 from Kansas City to Denver is that all of that ice is now gone. Sounds like global warming to me. And it all started a long time before George W Bush. Plus, who is to say what “normal” is anyways?

So now let’s look at Health Care. First we hear about a problem; so many tens of millions of uninsured people. Then we hear a solution; the government needs to run the health care industry. All I can say is that the next time you are in the line at the Post Office or the DPS, ask yourself about how government run health care would work out.

Now you have to ask yourself why. Why does the administration want to push these two agendas? My response is religion and control. Say what, you ask? Yeah that’s right, religion, and control. See, your hard-core environmentalist does not hang out at your local church, mosque, temple, or synagogue. But just because they do not worship in what most folks would consider a conventional manner, they do have spiritual needs and beliefs. They worship the creation, not the Creator. So when they see “harm” coming to the earth they respond with the same passion for jihad as an extremist Muslim would. And since the hard-core environmentalist voted overwhelming for Obama, he tosses them a bone. Or what if he believes this? The control comes with Health Care. Under the current draft of the Democratic Legislation, members of Congress are currently exempt from the government-run health care option, keeping their private-run health care plan intact. Now, if Obama and his persnickety friends in Washington D.C. are so distraught with how privatized health care is, why don’t they include themselves in this new government-run legislation? The answer is control and power. One of the key components lost in the hubris of this debate is the fact that the administration desperately wants a national database of everyone’s health records. Why? Think about it. The upside is if you are on vacation and have an accident, it would be really nice for the ER physician to know that you are allergic to certain drugs. But what if you are not particularly supportive of the current administration’s policies and a little too outspoken about it, a little medication from the government doctor could fix that. If you want to control a population, but do not want to use the military, then controlling the health care system can be pretty effective. Look, if it is really an insurance issue, I think we can solve that. We seemed to figure out how to insure homes and cars without the government running the home and auto industry. Oh wait, Fannie Mae, AIG and Government Motors are run by the government. Well, a few yesterdays ago we had a pretty good system, but today I do not know.

So how do you want tomorrow to look? Do you want your health care to look a lot like it did yesterday or would you rather roll the dice and see if that government clinic is a little more efficient than the Social Security office? Do you want to try to stop climate change and kill millions of jobs or accept that climate is dynamic and is far beyond our control?

My tomorrow says let’s tackle the insurance issue and talk the Canadians into setting aside a giant nature reserve in the Yukon Territory. They can put in some wind turbines to generate the electricity needed to air condition the polar bear dens. Build an airport to bring in tourists to pay for it. That’s my tomorrow; what is yours?