On the road…
This afternoon, I’m heading out to take the boys to visit my family. (T is going to a role playing game convention.) Even without the boys, I’d be stressed about the drive (6-7 hours each way); with them, I’m totally dreading it.
They’re actually pretty good travellers — particularly with the help of our portable DVD player. But I’m totally intimidated by the logistics — things like having to take both boys into the stall with me when I need to pee.
Wish me luck.
My parents only have dial-up access, so I doubt I’ll be blogging while I’m there. Bloggers seem to deal with planned absences by either arranging for guest bloggers or asking open-ended questions of their readers. I’d have to pay for the higher level of Typepad service to have a guest blogger, so I guess you’re stuck with a question.
Mark in Mexico left a trackback to Lauren at Feministe’s post about Rove, whining that this was a distraction from the real business of the country. On one level he’s right, the same way that MoveOn was originally founded to urge Congress to "Censure President Clinton and move on to pressing issues facing the nation."
Mark’s list of the top 10 issues is "in this world today and, more specifically, in the United States, the issues that most concern people are (not in any particular order except for 1 and 2):
1. Terrorism/GWoT
2. Our troops in Iraq
3. Replacing 1, possibly 2, possibly 3 Supreme Court justices
4. G8 / African hunger/debt
5. HIV/AIDS
6. Social Security
7. Oil prices
8. Nuclear proliferation in Iran and Korea
9. A bloated, corrupt, inefficient United Nations
10. Hurricane aftermath in Florida and Alabama"
So, my questions for while I’m away are:
What would you list as the top issues of public concern? In the US? Where you live? In the world? How do they differ from your issues of concern?
I’ve posted my answers as a comment.
Note: even though TypePad is now encouraging you to log in with a TypeKey identity when you post a comment, it’s not required — just provide the usual info of name, email and (optional) URL.
July 13th, 2005 at 7:16 am
I’ll start the ball rolling with my list of issues that Americans care about, more or less in the order that I think people think about them:
1. Terrorism
2. How the heck are we going to get out of Iraq without making things much much worse.
3. Supreme court justices/abortion (yes, I know much more is at stake, but I think that’s what most people are thinking about)
4. Globalization and outsourcing — is my job going to India? to China? to Mexico? How can we compete without accepting wages like third world workers?
5. Cost of housing (ok, that’s more of a regional issue, but it seems to be the subject of every other conversation around here).
6. Quality of public schools — is my kid getting a decent education?is my kid safe? are they spending all their time doing test prep?
7. Health care — can I afford to get sick? If I do have insurance, will I have to spend more energy fighting the insurance company than the disease?
8. Social security — will I be working until the day I die?
9. The national debt — are we totally screwing over our children?
10. “Terrible things in far away countries” — global poverty, AIDS, war in Darfur, etc.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:53 am
I can only tell you what I believe we should be worried about in the US. (I do not claim great understanding of foreign affairs.)
1. Getting out of Iraq; fixing our global image as a bully. (May be too late for this.)
2. Our dropping standard of living. Real income is dropping for most Americans, and it’s not clear why. This problem is driving almost every other problem, IMHO.
3. Health care.
4. National debt.
5. Public education. Two impacts here: our ability to sustain our economy by producing high-quality workers, and our ability to continue as a working democracy. Democracy requires engaged, educated citizens. We aren’t do so hot at this one.
6. Housing costs and the driver behind the housing costs, regulation of the lending industry.
7. Environmental degradation and global warming.
8. What currently goes under the name of “culture wars”, but which I believe is actually the fallout from a media bias towards conflict, combined with the average American’s fear of confrontation. The media is saturated with titillating conflict and confrontation, to the point where you walk away thinking this is the only way to deal with differences. Yet at the same time, we as a country have never learned to work out our problems with our neighbors. It’s almost like we think our only recourse is to go on Jerry Springer or sue when the neighbor’s kids drive us crazy. And so we just move to a place where everyone is just like us: an exurb, a college town, etc.
9. (Lack of) Public transit.
10. The fact that American business is bleeding to death complying with Sarbanes-Oxley.
Oddly I do not think domestic terrorism is a big issue. Statistically speaking terrorism is an infinitesimal risk for me and my family. I just think it gets tons of air time because it’s so dramatic.
July 13th, 2005 at 12:58 pm
1) better relations with the rest of the world.
2) smarter opposition to the crazies (including terrorists)
3) civil liberties in the united states, and in the world in our control -Iraq, Guantanomo
4) public education (see Jen’s comment)
5) independent analysis to drive public policy (in education, environment, welfare, healt care, etc.)
OK, I can’t come up with 10, because I”m basically a “process” person. I hope that the things I’ve listed will help all the other things that people have mentioned, like supreme court justices, terrorism, nuclear disarmament, globalization.
bj
July 14th, 2005 at 10:31 am
I feel that your list, Elizabeth, is pretty close to public opinion. But here’s a list of issues that concern me – one that could have longer-term implications. These are close to, but not in complete order:
1. General apathy from the US populace (low voter turn-out, lack of more complex knowledge of major issues).
2. A bloated, overly-complicated government – ripe for easy manipulation and corruption.
3. State of public education
4. Lack of affordable health care.
5. Relations with rest of the world.
6. The appearance of liberal and conservative agenda being so polar-opposite.
7. The tendancy for major issues to be responded to in quick one-solution ways – as opposed to stepping back and seeing that there may be multi-solutions and what the repercussions of any response may be (ie. war in Iraq as a solution to terrorism).
8. The national debt.
9. The erosion of civil liberties.
10. Terrorism.
July 14th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Most people? Judging by the TV, Tom Cruise tops the concern-meter.
Things Congress can actually do something about, I would venture a guess that top three are:
Culture War stuff — everything from abortion to Ten Commandment plaques.
Iraq/War on Terror — not at all the same thing, but most people conflate them.
Jobs & wages. Everyone would like more money, everyone is worried about debt, everyone is scared of losing their job or not finding one.
Everything else is way less pressing.
My own list is more long-term:
Environmental destruction. This includes but is certainly not limited to global warming. Read Collapse, and Stephen Baxter’s Evolution. This is the biggie: if the life-support goes, nothing else matters.
Terrorist proliferation: Al Qaeda appears to have metastisized, the barriers between crazy Third-World types with bombs and the First World, always more psychological than physical, are breaking down.
Iran’s nuclear program. I don’t care about North Korea, at worst they will bomb South Korea. This is bad for South Korea but negligible for the world. Iran, however, is nuts and hates us.
Demoralization (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) of American public life. We used to care about truth, integrity, loyalty to constituents, preserving institutions, etc. It’s not just that the politicians have abandoned all of the above, it’s that nobody cares.
Destruction of the middle class. We’re taxing it higher, spending less on it, and doing nothing to preserve middle-class jobs. Those who despise bourgeois values are soon going to find out what life is like without them.
Erosion of civil liberties. No more subpoenas, right to privacy on the chopping block, Establishment Clause in real trouble, free speech confined to zones.
Those are enough to keep me up at night. In my spare time I worry about drug-resistant diseases.
July 15th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
I’m horrible at prioritizing and I make no claims that these are the MOST important things right now, but: My list of 10 Important Things from Toronto, Canada:
1. Heat wave (not that there’s anything we can do about it, but people are dying)
2. Karla Homolka’s release, and what kind of terms she’ll be under (given media coverage this must rank very highly among most Canadians)
3. Whether Martin’s minority government can hold on long enough to implement some of the good things they’re promised in the latest budget
4. Ongoing trade disputes with the US
5. Whether or not Canada is likely to be a target for terrorism, and the recent attacks in London
6. Same-sex marriage appears to be ruffling a few feathers still; specifically, recent Catholic leader’s assertions that MPs who voted for the legislation should be excommunicated or at the very least deprived of church leadership positions. But you’ll be happy to know that there has so far not been any report of hte wholesale destruction of heterosexual marriages as a result of same-sex unions.
7. Iraq. For most Canadians, when is the US administration going to wake up and get the hell out (gracefully if possible); for others, what the hell is wrong with Canada for not joining in the first place.
8. smog (related to heat wave, I guess)
9. Energy conservation and supply shortages
10. REcent threats to health care system resulting from a court case in Quebec that allowed private health insurance for services covered by hte public system.
July 18th, 2005 at 12:16 am
The most pressing issue for me personally is double-digit annual growth in Bend, my small (well, not so small anymore) Oregon town, and the associated environmental problems, change in community values, increased cost of living (esp. housing prices), traffic problems, our feeling of personal safety, and overcrowding in the schools. I see everything in this world through that lens.
Actually — this is related — I think most of the country’s problems stem from the fact that we do not exist where we live. Our hearts and minds are elsewhere. I live in a desert, for example, and yet all the city’s landscaping requires constant watering … because a lawn bordered by big flowers is what we think is beautiful, and not sagebrush. In the same way, the people who move here don’t find it beautiful as is, but feel the need to change it to resemble where they came from.
As a country we’re big dreamers, and want to keep changing, changing, changing everything, without much consideration for what already exists.
July 19th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
Wow, it was really interesting to hear what you’re all thinking about.
Jen, I’m fascinated that Sarbanes-Oxley made your top 10 list — I don’t think it would have made my top 100 issues list. If you want to explain why you think it’s important, I’d be interested.
Andrea, I’m not sure I see the significance of the health care case. Is the concern that if people can get things paid for with private insurance, it will undermine support for the public system? That’s how the UK system works, right?
July 20th, 2005 at 9:26 am
Hey Elizabeth, welcome back.
Your top ten point about dealing with outsourcing and globalization, and my similar point about standard of living, are directly related to this country making badly-informed decisions about how to expend resources. While other countries are spending money educating their children, or supporting national health care, we’re spending billions trying to comply with a ridiculous set of regulations, written by people who do not understand the consequences, in a knee-jerk reaction to Enron. Guess what guys! That horse has already left the barn! But now those of us left in the barn get to see our companies’ profits absolutely erased in consulting dollars as we try to comply with SarBox. Bye-bye, cost of living raises. Bye-bye, employer contributions to health care cost. (See a related link here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05195/537848.stm)
I’m not saying we didn’t need to tighten up on accounting fraud. Just like 9/11 showed us we needed to make airports more secure, it needed to be done. But at the airport, do we all really need to take off our shoes? Could we not be spending our efforts in better ways? The same is true in the business world with SarBox.
July 20th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
Welcome back Elizabeth. I’ve been pondering your question, but thought I’d better give you an answer before you moved on.
But I’ll have a go (I think ordering the issues is beyond me)
1. Global warming/ climate change – Sydney is running out of water at the moment, which makes the whole thing much more personal than it did a few years ago
2. The state of public education – 40% of children in Sydney are now educated privately, which is putting the public schools into a vicious cycle of falling enrolments and poorer standards
3. Healthcare – publicly funded health care seems to be barely keeping up with real demand. I feel confident I’d get good care if I had a major catastrophic illness, but I’d hate to be poor with a chronic non life threatening condition
4. The reduction in real democracy – our governments, once elected, seem to be saying that once they’ve got in, they can do anything they like because they have a mandate
5. Superannuation/ pension funding – most people are quite worried about this, but we’re probably in better shape as a country than many others, but it does have a lot of public awareness because of previous efforts to education people to save for their retirement
6. Our treatment of boatpeople – we have put them into desert detention centres and treated them like prisoners, sometimes for years, even when they eventually prove to be genuine refugees
7. Our relationship with the US – we tend to follow the US too slavishly, without reflection on whether the policies are right for us or not. The idea is that the US will protect us militarily and economically as a quid pro quo, but we don’t seem to get that much in the way of trade agreements, and I’m not sure what would happen if Indonesia invaded us
8. The general decline in our infrastructure – we have squandered the fruits of economic growth and not renewed our trains, hospitals, schoools etc – one day it will start to fall apart (already happening with trains)
9. I’ve been reading too many alarmist articles, but I worry about the next flu pandemic
10. Cost of housing – the only topic at most Sydney dinner parties at any cycle of the economy.
I don’t have Sarbanes-Oxley in my top 10, but it would make my top 100 – it’s not just US businesses it is strangling with red tape, but at least for foreign companies, it’s only very big ones, and some reform was needed.
Thanks for the question, it’s been an interesting one to ponder as I catch the bus home.
July 21st, 2005 at 8:14 am
Hi Elizabeth:
It’s complicated. The CAnadian health care system is based on a piece of legislation called the Health Care Act, which mandates certain national standards in the delivery of health care services–universality and accessibilty are the two cornerstones. In other words, baseline services must be universal across the country, and they must be accessible to all. While there are many interpretations of these standards, the relevant one for this case is that the health care system must be “one-tier”–that all essential health care services must be done under the public health care system. No private care allowed.
Now, there’s always been a de-facto two-tiered public/private system for things that are considered non-essential (for example, dentistry and plastic surgery are private-only, most blood labs are privately run even though government reimburses for the costs of essential tests, etc.), but for essential (read: life-saving) services, all must be covered under the public health care system.
But due to government under-funding during the nineties, essential health care services haven’t always been done as well as they should have been. In particular, wait times for some essential treatments and surgeries have become unacceptably long. Because essential services can’t be covered privately, people have no choice but to wait. In Quebec (I’m not sure about the other provinces), the province went the extra mile by making private health insurance for “essential” services illegal. That is, health insurance companies cannot legally sell health insurance to residents of Quebec that covers medically essential services.
A man in Quebec took the government to court, arguing that this law was unconstitutional, and the court agreed and struck the law down. BAsically, the court argued that it was not acceptable for Canada to have a half-assed public care system and force people to wait to be treated, and if that was how it was going to be, they would have to allow private insurance and private treatment.
Some have argued in the wake of this case that this is the wake-up the governments need to start moving forward a bit more briskly with recent health reforms (instituting standards for waiting times, for instance, and having maximum acceptable waiting times for certian life-saving adn otherwise essential treatments and surgeries), which is good. But others are worried that this will open the door to private treatment and private insurance, essentially allowing well-off citizens to bypass a strained public system, while those who aren’t well-off have no choice but to wait–and the resources of those who can afford it would increasingly be diverted to the private system, leaving the public system in even worse shape than it is now.
Basically, the fear is that this ruling will create a backdoor for creating a two-tier health care system, with a well-functioning private system for those who can afford it, and a strained and over-burdened public system for those who can’t. This would violate the principles of the Canada Health Act of universality and accessibility and spell the end for Canada’s most cherished social program. It’s a Big Deal.
July 22nd, 2005 at 2:42 am
I would add to this:
1) Given our disastrous fiscal policy in the US, it’s entirely possible we could see a radical decline in the value of the dollar. This would make all our other problems look small and far away.
2.)Even if we avoid economic disaster, our course is towards more financial instability for a larger percentage of American families. More people are going to fall off the cliff, and fewer people’s kids are going to do better than they are. This is because while we can all buy cheap TVs at Wal-Mart, the rise in housing, healthcare and education costs means that if you don’t have a very good job, you won’t be able to offer these to your kids. A lot of those jobs are gone and a lot more are going to go. My husband and I are in high tech but I won’t encourage my kids to go into any profession that doesn’t absolutely require that it be done in person. Plumber is good.
101). Enron could happen again tomorrow. Sarbanes-Oxley does nothing to prevent this, it only gives us a way to slap the CEO in jail personally after everybody’s retirement savings have been swindled. The current administration has resisted any effective reforms and reduced the number of fraud investigators.
Jennifer, tell your avid gardeners in Bend to move here to Massachusetts, we’ve got plenty of all that green stuff without even trying.