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Take The Quiz – Has The Political Class Ever Resolved A Major Issue?

This quiz asks you to name the approximate year or era of the following New York Times headlines. After the headlines, you will see when those headlines appeared and you may begin to recognize a pattern, namely, after decades of paying for thousands of politicians to go to Washington, the value and successes we have gotten in return is pretty measly:

Calm In The Middle East Urged by The PresidentCigarettes Peril Health, U.S. Report Concludes, ‘Remedial Action’ UrgedPresident’s Farewell Sees Threats To Liberties In Vast Defense MachineCongress Expects Accord This Week On Tax Cut BillHouse, 382-4, Votes To Help ConsumerOPEC Parlay Weighs New Oil Price Rises and Cuts In OutputSun Powered Airplane Crosses ChannelAMA Says Plan Would Drive Many Doctors Out Of MedicareCity’s Teachers Perform Poorly On State ExamTax Plan Offered To Curb Evasions, Raise 7,000,000Jerusalem’s Fate Held Main Issue In Settlement Of Palestine QuestionNorth Korea Calls U.N. Order IllegalPresident In Midnight Statement, Take Up Oil Scandal, Promises Facts Will Be Revealed, Guilty Punished, Special Counsel From Both Parties To Bring Our TruthU.S. Forces Take Control In Baghdad, President Elated, Some Resistance Remains178 Nations Reach A Climate Accord, U.S. Only Looks On

As you might expect, every one of these headlines could have occurred today. Middle East strife, a military budget and industry out of control and wasteful, no energy breakthroughs or coherent national energy policy to make us energy independent, bad teachers, health care problems, tax issues, failed government bureaucracy in the consumer protection field, North Korea, political class corruption, etc. It makes you wonder what these people in Washington have been doing all these decades if the issues we have faced through the years are still unresolved today.

Okay, let’s see how you did on the quiz. The headlines are repeated below along with the first paragraph of the New York Times article that followed the headline and some brief commentary after each headline capsule:

1. Calm In The Middle East Urged by The President – April 1, 1954: President Eisenhower called on Israel and Arab states to restrain their extremists and permit other nations to help them settle their disputes.

Commentary - Fifty seven years after Ike issued his plea, the two sides are no closer to a long term peace agreement than back in 1954. Fifty seven years of fruitless negotiations, resulting in untold suffering and deaths on both sides as a constant state of conflict has existed since this headline. No one in he political class has found a way to solve this problem since Ike’s plea.

2. Cigarettes Peril Health, U.S. Report Concludes, ‘Remedial Action Urged - January 12, 1964: The long awaited Federal report on the effects of smoking found today the use of cigarettes contributed so substantially to the American death rate that “appropriate remedial action” was called for.

Commentary – One of the primary drivers of bad health and high health care costs in this country today is the millions of people that smoke tobacco products in America. While the rate of smoking has come down over the decades, millions still smoke to the detriment of their own health and the health care costs of us all. The government correctly identified the threat over 47 years ago, the political class has yet to come up with a way to eradicate the threat and the associated costs.

3. President’s Farewell Sees Threats To Liberties In Vast Defense Machine – January 18, 1961: President Eisenhower cautioned the nation in a farewell address from the White House tonight to be vigilant against danger to its liberties implicit in a vast military establishment and a permanent armaments industry unparallelled in peacetime.

Commentary – this statement is really scary, given Ike’s military background. Here was an insider to both the political class and the U.S.military correctly forecasting that unless kept in check, this “military/industrial complex” would continue to eat up more and more resources even though there was no world wide war or conflicts going on, wasting resources while endangering our freedom.

Unfortunately, his accurate warning went unheeded by the political class, so much so today that our military budget eats up about 25% of the revenue the Federal government collects. This 25% is far too much for the defense needs of the country today, resulting in an overgrown Pentagon bureaucracy, foreign deployments of U.S. troops that are not needed, and billions of dollars of taxpayer waste every year.

4. Congress Expects Accord This Week On Tax Cut Bill – February 17, 1964

Commentary – No need to go through the first paragraph of this article since it is basically the same as the many other historical tax cut tax cut articles. Forty seven years ago the political class was still wrestling with the proper tax code to have and that wrestling match continues on today. The constant adjusting and fighting over the code has resulted in a tax plan that is overly complex and overly simple to cheat on, resulting in unfairness across all income ranges.

5. House, 382-4, Votes To Help Consumer – February 2, 1968: The House passed today a comprehensive “truth-in-lending” bill designed to give consumers full and clear information on how much they pay in interest and other finance charges on loans and credit purchases.

Commentary – Hey, wasn’t this one of the main reasons for Obama to push through the Dodd/Franks financial industry reform bill last year? Wasn’t that bill and the consumer protection agency bureaucracy it created supposed to do the exact same thing? What happened between last year and 1968, why do we need this new consumer protection law when we had one back in the 1960s? Didn’t anybody in D.C. learn anything from 1968′s action?

6. OPEC Parlay Weighs New Oil Price Rises and Cuts In Output – March 27, 1979: Pressure for another large increase in world oil prices built up today at the opening of a meeting of oil ministers of the Organization Of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Commentary – given that gas prices have risen considerably in just the past year, it appears that 32 years after this headline appeared, the political class and its useless Department of Energy are no closer to removing us from these OPEC threats than we were back in 1979.

7. Sun Powered Airplane Crosses Channel – July 8, 1981 – After several earlier unsuccessful attempts, the first solar powered plane succeeded today in crossing the English Channel.

Commentary – The crossing was accomplished with only the solar power the plane could generate during the flight. The plane contained no batteries to store any solar power it created and there was no other means of power on the plane.

Thirty years after a solar powered plane proved viable and successful for quick air flights, how come the political class, Federal government, and its Department Of Energy have not been able to find a way to solar power a car that never leaves the ground, given that some English folk thirty years ago powered a plane just on solar?

8. AMA Says Plan Would Drive Many Doctors Out Of Medicare – October 4, 1995: After months of public silence, the American Medical Association expressed the concern about Republican proposals to redesign Medicare, saying new limits on payments would make the program unattractive to many doctors.

Commentary – as with