Our National Temper Tantrum

Who would have thought that the symbol of our nation's current discontent would be a 19-year old college freshman and his father. But no better metaphor could be available than the case of Penn State quarterback Rob Boldin and his dad, Robert Sr.

Boldin surprised many by being named the Nittany Lions' starting QB at the beginning of the season as a true freshman. Anyone familiar with Joe Paterno and his football program knows that freshmen rarely get to play at Penn State and even more rarely get to start. True freshmen playing is even more crazy. But the octogenarian patriarch of Penn State football handed the keys to Boldin because he was the best guy for the job. Well, Boldin struggled, as freshmen do, but he kept the starting job until suffering a concussion in the Lions' 8th game of the season. When he came back, he was shaky and finally replaced by walk-on Matt McGloin, who led a dramatic 2nd-half comeback to beat Northwestern. Well, a walk-on who becomes the starting QB makes for good copy, and so it was that Boldin became the forgotten man while McGloin led PSU to the Hall of Fame Bowl (yes, I know it's called the Outback Bowl, but I don't recognize corporate titles for bowl games). Then, McGloin threw 5 interceptions in the game, leading to a loss to Florida. joePa never turned to Boldin to bail his team out.

According to Boldin Senior, this was the last straw, and he immediately announced his son was transferring. Are you having the same reaction that I had to that announcement? My initial reaction was, "WAHHHHHHHH... Coach wouldn't play me so I'm leaving, WAHHHHHH!!!" Yeah, two Robert Boldins, one temper tantrum. Not even caring that Boldin could win the starting job back next spring and keep it for 3 more years, they didn't get what they wanted so they want out. Well, JoePa has the final say over such matters and he put his foot down and said, "NO. You don't get a transfer." Stay in State College and deal with it. Maybe you might learn some life lessons, like the thousands of other kids who toughed it out and stuck with Paterno for four years.

That's what is happening all across America right now, and especially in Washington as the new Congress takes office. First of all, rather than actually get right to work on our debt issues or putting people back to work, the first major vote taken by the new GOP House will be to repeal the health care bill passed last year. Even though it has NO chance of passing the Senate or being signed by the president. All it will do is cause the Left to throw their own tantrum, waste time that could be spent fixing problems with the bill, and make future efforts to do just that unworkable, because the Left will throw such a tantrum over this original bill that they won't sign onto common-sense legislation about it. We have Senators Wyden and Brown trying to come up with a bipartisan fix in the Senate and this repeal vote will either mean that this fix won't see the light of day in the House or worse it won't see the light of day in the Senate because Harry Reid will be so angry over the repeal vote that he declares that there will be NO future action on health care in the 112th Congress. Way to go, Tea Party. Enjoy your tantrum.

Meanwhile, you have a tantrum-within-a-tantrum in the form of Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota. She made herself a bit of a kingmaker by latching onto the Tea Party vibe during the midterm elections last year, and she expected to be handsomely rewarded for it in the form of a committee assignment or leadership post. She didn't get them, and now she is throwing her own temper tantrum and threatening to use her standing among the Tea Party Caucus to block her own party from doing anything constructive. I had warned that this could happen when I did my election recap, but I didn't think it would come from such a wig-out as this. Well, maybe it will subside now that she has been tapped for the House Intelligence Committee; the squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?

But even this pales in comparison with the nationwide tantrum that the Baby Boomers are having, and will continue to have in the coming years. After having things handed to them their entire life, they were hoping to sail into retirement with comfortable pensions or Social Security, and the recent economic troubles have soured the deal for them. Hence, why so many of them got especially angry about things in the last few years. But even worse than the fact that they will have to keep working is the fact that they see the mounting debt and they realize what it will do to their way of life. And as the Baby Boomers go, so goes America. We want to get rid of the $14 trillion debt but we don't want any of the solutions that would best fix that problem. Don't touch my programs and don't even THINK about raising my taxes. Raise the rich's taxes, that'll fix things, but don't raise mine. Never mind that last I looked, there are a heckuva lot of "rich" Baby Boomers out there making over $250K a year.

Nevertheless, a recent poll (although it's from Vanity Fair, so consider the source) stated that 60 percent of Americans want the debt paid off by soaking the rich. 20 percent want defense spending cut, but that was probably the peaceniks talking there, so I doubt it was really about fixing the debt. Very small percentages wanted anything to be done to Medicare and Social Security. Meanwhile, the British made another tough choice this week by raising their VAT tax, affecting everyone. Our politicians don't have the stomach to make a move like that which will affect the non-rich, we can't ask people to sacrifice because we might lose reelection. Now don't get me wrong, I am in principle against the VAT tax, precisely because of a situation like this where it becomes another lever to pull for revenue, but increasing the taxes we DO have seems to be a nonstarter for deficit hawks.

If we ever get around to working together as a country to fix our economy and make sure that those who want to retire can have the means to do so and make sure that we don't default on our debt or become property of the People's Republic of China, hard decisions will need to be made. Sacrifices will need to be made. You better start getting used to the sound of that, because it's our only way out. Tea Party Congressmen say they want to chuck farm subsidies, slashing $20 billion from our budget annually. That's a good start (although a couple of the ones who were farmers and accepted those subsidies had to swallow hard a bit). I hope when the pedal hits the metal, the president and the Congress can figure out real ways to fix the tax code and the spending structure of Washington to get our house in order.

But until then, we have to act like parents who just sent our screaming little children off to sit in the corner for a while. Let them sit in "time out" until they get this tantrum out of their system, then maybe we can start getting somewhere.