Yesterday’s election cast me into a minority unlike any I have ever seen before.  Patrick McHenry (pictured above) is the only candidate I voted for above a local level who won his race.  McHenry was re-elected as the congressman from North Carolina’s 10th district.  Interestingly enough, I’m not a huge fan of McHenry.  He wasn’t my first choice of candidates when he was first elected to this position.  I also supported Lance Sigmon in this year’s primary instead of McHenry.  In that primary and in yesterday’s general election, McHenry hasn’t defeated his opponents in the Catawba County vote by very significant margins, but his votes from outside Catawba County seem to carry him. 

Daniel Johnson (Democrat) was Patrick McHenry’s opponent in this race, and Daniel was a rather worthy opponent.  There is probably only one issue that kept me from voting for Johnson, and that was his philosophy on reducing our demand on foreign oil.  Johnson’s statements on that pretty much follow the general opinions of the rest of his party.  He’s supportive of doing everything available except for increasing domestic production.  This philosophy will work, but it will just take a lot longer to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. 

With current gas prices falling back to just above the $2 per gallon mark, I expect this desire to reduce our foreign oil thirst to subside just like it did in the 1970s after the gas shortages.  It will be out of sight and out of mind before we know it. 

Here are some of the things I expect to see over the next four years:

• Insignificant reduction of dependency on foreign oil
• Across the board tax increases on all social classes caused by a non-renewal of the Bush tax cuts
• Higher than average increases in the consumer price index due to increases in cost of doing business caused by removal of tax incentives for businesses
• Premature pull-out of troops in Iraq, which will cause a humanitarian crisis within that country which will require the same type of aid that is NOT being provided in Darfur 
• Significant increases in the cost of healthcare insurance for those who already have healthcare insurance
• The Dow Jones Industrials index will not return to its peak level achieved during the Bush administration

These are just a few high points.  I’m not looking forward to seeing these things, and I hope that I’m wrong.  I’ll have to come back and review this post in two years or so… I’d love to hear some disagreement on these bullet points along with supporting reasons…

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