There is more and more speculation as to the potential that we'll see a 'clean sweep' by Democratic candidates on Tuesday, November 4th at both the state and federal levels.  I hope that isn't the way it turns out, but I'm tiring of being beaten about the head and shoulders every time I read a newspaper article or watch the bulk of the television news items.  Maybe that is the intent.  If us conservatives can be sufficiently demoralized, maybe we'll just stay home.  Not this conservative!

What do I mean by 'clean sweep'?  I refer to the potential that both the Assembly and the Senate in Wisconsin will see a sufficient Democratic majority that will be able to pass anything they wish in spite of the number of Republican votes that could be massed, with assurances on most such items that those will be signed into law by the Democratic Governor Doyle.

Similarly, I refer to Democratic victories in both the U.S. House and Senate that will be Republican-proof and that will likely find favor with a Democratic President Obama.

Jay Weber has done a good job on setting forth 23 items that could be part of the triumvirate of Sen. Harry Reid (D), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D) and a President Obama and you can find those by clicking here.  Things included on Jay's list include renegotiating NAFTA, ending secret ballots in union organizing, government-run healthcare encroachments, reintroduction of the 'Fairness Doctrine' to control conservative access to the airways, and so on.

At the state level, we could easily see state-run health care, the increase in costs of education, ever larger portions of our income going to state and local taxes,  more and more loss of personal freedoms and so.

There has been, in most of our history, a certain "check and balance" relationship in most of our governments so that not everything that was proposed was ever likely to be passed.  That 'protection' could disappear for years if we see the 'clean sweep' at the state or federal levels, or both, as the result of our national election on November 4th.  Our country tends not to flourish well under such governments regardless of party in power.

Vote your conscience next Tuesday!

The Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families, both found in Madison, have released a report that reaches the startling conclusion you see in the headline above.

Wow!  What a surprise!  Further into the article in today's Journal Sentinel that discussed this amazing statistic, we find out that Wisconsin actually ranks quite well so far as this measurement is concerned...but apparently not well enough to make these groups comfortable.  The report shows that the gap in Wisconsin is actually smaller than on average across the country.  The report found that Wisconsin actually ranks 11th out of the 50 states in this regard, and that means the gap between top and bottom fifths of the population are lesser.

But, there are the usual suggestions made to 'correct' this terrible situation:

• Increase the minimum wage and then index it to inflation.
• Improve worker skills and education.
• Expand subsidized childcare and health care for low-income workers.
• 'Update' unemployment insurance.
• Make taxes 'more progressive'.

This 'minimum wage' canard is so old and tiresome but it just keeps coming back.  There are positions in the workforce that do not command more than the current minimum wage.  Every time the minimum wage is increased, it displaces workers at the bottom end of society because the jobs simply go away. The majority of minimum wage jobs are held on a part-time basis by students and homemakers, and not be sole bread winners.

Improving worker skills and education is a noble undertaking, it is one that we are engaged in already, and it speaks to the need to get MPS working since it seems intent on not graduating 53% of its students thus relegating them to those minimum wage jobs and/or welfare programs (except that you have to read for many of those, so I guess that is out).

I don't know where the people have been who built this study, but every time we turn around, we are expanding childcare and health care for low-income workers.  Look at BadgerCare and BadgerCare Plus.  Listen to the radio commercials begging people to come in to sign up for welfare programs.

Apparently unemployment insurance should be 'updated' (read increased) so the people who are unable to hold jobs get more money until the benefit runs out.  Maybe a better tax climate in our wonderful state would prompt the creation of more jobs and remove the increasing need for the unemployment insurance program 'update'.

Finally, the ultimate liberal solution for every ill to be found in society:  let's take more money away (tax increases) from 'the rich' and give it to the poor.  This class warfare shot is being heard all too often in the current presidential campaign, and it fails to define just who the 'rich' are; be careful middle class; you may be rich.  We don't need to resort to the use of this class warfare tactic in Wisconsin.  In case the 'ruling class' hasn't figured it out, our taxes are already too progressive.

These studies drive me nuts (as is plainly seen from this Blog).  Lower our taxes as Texas has done for its citizens and employers, and watch what happens to unemployment, etc.

What a surprise.  The rich get richer faster than the poor.  The real surprise is that liberals have yet to figure out how cause and effect function in this equation!

Seemingly everytime we pick up a newspaper or periodical we see that health care costs have risen again.  The only real question anymore is 'How Much?'.  Of course, if we still have health insurance, the premium rates continue to go up and up.  What in the world can we do about this?  Would statewide mandatory insurance coverage do the trick?  Can we somehow legislate lower insurance premiums?  Are the drug companies really the culprits?  Maybe we simply need to move to Canada or Europe.

Recent studies show that our national health care spending increased in 2006 by 6.7% to $2.1 trillion.  That means that one out of every six dollars spent in our national economy goes for health care.  The 'good news' in this staggering number is that this is actually slower growth than we saw for 2005.  Apparently we're going in the right direction, even if too slowly.

Another amazing fact, to me at least, is the amount of 'out-of-pocket' spending each of us averages after insurance premiums, etc.  In 2006, we spent, on average, 12% out-of-pocket for our health care expenses.  Know what we spent out-of-pocket in 1960?  We spent 47% out-of-pocket for health care expenses. 

That means that we are shielded to a much greater degree today from our real health care costs than we were in 1960.  Our out-of-pocket costs have decreased steadily since 1960.  We are often at the point today where we think of the cost of health care as being the $10 or $20 co-pay we have to come up with when we go to see the doctor.  Or, the $20 or $30 dollars we have to cough up for medicines.  Those amounts are very small percentages of the total costs.

Why is this important?  It is important because we need to think about what we're spending if we're ever going to be able to bring this cost spiral under control.  If we come to understand that the real cost of the doctor visit is in the range of $125 to $150 or more, we can begin to understand that maybe we shouldn't be running to the doctor everytime we have a runny nose or a cough.

Another very interesting fact is this:  more than 50% of all health care claims costs in America today are to cover lifestyle-related illnesses.  Those are the things that you and I can control to one degree or another.  But, we can't control them if we don't know about it or if we choose not to do anything about it.  What are 'lifestyle' issues?  Smoking, alcohol use, obesity and simply laying around doing no exercise.

Does this apply to us?  Here are the most current facts:  One in every four Americans eat fast food every day!  Six of ten Americans do not exercise or seldom exercise!  Two of every three Americans are classified as either overweight or obese!

This is the real source of our health care cost crisis.  We have met the enemy and it is us!

No mandatory state programs, or profit controls on drug companies or anything else is going to solve this problem.  The simple truth is that this is up to us.  All the rest of these proposals are simply pablum calculated to make us feel good.

That is why this 'stuff' is flowing from the mouths of politicans.  And it does nothing to solve the problem!

Let your politicians know that you understand this.  If they really want to help us, they'll begin an educational program using some of the 'smoker money' to get the true message out.  And, be sure to tell them we do not want laws banning fast food or drinking or smoking.  We need to take responsibility for ourselves.  No one else can do that for us.  The marketplace will make its own corrections just as you've begun to see with the menu changes going on in the world of fast foods, for example.

Maybe if insurance companies were permitted to charge people what we deserve to be charged based on our lifestyle habits, we'd begin to see these changes occur.  If I smoke, I pay more.  If I'm overweight, I pay a surcharge.  Make me feel my wallet lightening up if I don't take personal responsibility (just don't think this is your new way to raise taxes). 

Don't just continue to blame big health, or big drugs or big insurance!  You are doing nothing but pandering when you resort to this, and we're on to you!

Maybe bold is a bit overdramatic; these things are almost certainly going to occur during the next twelve months...and probably during the next twelve months after that.

HEALTHCARE COSTS CONTINUE TO RISE...Of course that will happen as it has been happening for a long, long time now. 

We'll know what our healthcare delivery landscape will look like as we move through 2008.  We will be in the process of building too many facilities and that will ultimately drive costs up at an even greater pace.  We'll see the consolidation wave cresting and then we'll effectively have a couple of behemoths.  And that will ultimately drive health care costs up at an even greater pace.  We'll have continuing debate over the governmental control of our healthcare; and that holds within it forebodings for us all if we take the seemingly 'easy' pathway to universal coverage.  Government will continue to blame health insurance companies while it meddles in the free marketplace to the detriment of us all.  Will we be able to work our way through this coming year in healthcare?

TAXES WILL CONTINUE INCREASING...Again, of course this will happen as surely as the sun rises in the morning.

Our governmental bodies from village to state to federal continue to spend at a pace that simply cannot be sustained without damaging the economy.  Programs once instituted never die.  If funding channels go away (read cigarette taxes), the programs are simply shifted to using 'general purpose funds'.  And, as if the idea of never killing off useless tax-funded programs isn't bad enough by itself, our various government bodies add new tax-funded programs willy-nilly.  Our state budget just approved carries with it unfunded future obligations of something in the range of a billion dollars for the next biennium.  Our federal budget carries within it the same type of mischief.  Our politicos are absolutely addicted to 'earmarks' and those infect state budgets as well as federal budgets.

EDUCATION WILL CONTINUE TO BE DEBATED...And this, too, is a virtual given.

The primary state teacher's union, WEAC, has still not extracted its payback for the massive support provided to the Governor and many elected representatives.  Look for the QEO provision to be attacked and possibly thrown out if Democrats gain control of the Assembly in addition to the Senate and Governor's mansion.  Milwaukee's system will continue to move in precisely the wrong direction so far as numbers of graduates, test scores and almost every other measurable area.  Germantown's petition to move from MATC to another technical college district will be heard by the state technical college board, and only a miracle will see that petition granted.  We will have been accorded our 'due process' but come to realize that appointed boards do not provide 'due process'.  Virtual schooling will continue to be assailed by the teachers' unions...even though union member teachers are employed in those programs.  Why you ask?  Competition seems to be a great idea in everything but education, where the establishment simply cannot tolerate the possibility that we'll come to realize the king has no clothes.  There will be more referenda, and those that are properly presented will be voted on their merits from the electorates' perspective.  'Properly presented' means that the referenda are scheduled during an existing election, and not on some obscure date calculated to bring out only the 'right' voters.  'Properly presented' means that teachers and administrators are not employing taxpayer money to make their case, and that all the facts are presented well in advance to permit reasoned public debate.

ELECTIONS WILL DETERMINE THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE...And that is truly the hallmark of our country.

Our state government will be re-shaped and a Democrat sweep, should that occur, will virtually assure the we'll have universal health care called 'Healthy Wisconsin Two', higher taxes across the board, and fewer freedoms as government sucks up more of the available air.  We'll have more tax and spend programs that will take on lives of their own, and conservatives will trudge through the political wilderness for another decade or two.  Our Governor, who promised this would be his last term, has apparently decided that we need him for another term of four years.  Of course we expected that since other promises like 'no tax increases' have been conveniently forgotten, as well.

The federal scene holds a similar scenario.  People will need to evolve beyond the still-controversial 'hanging chad' feelings.  There was no Supreme Court fiat involved in the Florida race; that was a contrived attempt by the loser to fan the flames and get into office because he 'deserved it'.  So, he then went on to exploit the 'global warming' thing instead, while emitting more pollution that a thousand or more normal folks.  We'll have a new President-Elect by year-end.  The Iraq war seems to be less and less an issue as the press finally tells a more positive story...that has been going on for much longer than has been told.  The attempt to convince people that we're in a recession seems to be failing, but Congress still tries to make that happen with tax legislation.  For the first time since 1952, we have a wide-open race on both sides of the aisle.  What will happen if a strong third party candidate 'suddenly' emerges...like the 'sudden' emergence of Mayor Bloomberg of New York (as has been rumored for months now)?  That will throw everything into the proverbial 'cocked hat' on both the Democrat and Republican sides.  Yet another reason why congressional seats are so important.

2008 promises to be a very exciting and rewarding year, just as all the other years I remember have held great promise coupled with the aura of excitement...if we can but sieze those opportunities.

May you and yours enjoy a most healthy, happy and prosperous 2008...no matter your politics!