Prices for gasoline, groceries, restaurant meals, services and almost anything else I want have risen dramatically in the last year and insanely in recent months.

A one-day record leap in the price of oil, a report that unemployment has risen faster than any time since 1986 and a 400-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average make me worry about my once-adequate retirement.

News that Arizona is the No. 4 state for the number of foreclosures is made worse because virtually every homeowner in the state will get a record-high property tax bill in September.

Neither the Arizona Department of Revenue nor the state’s 15 county assessors saw the housing crisis coming. But even when the problem was pointed out to them they did nothing.

So more Arizonans will be homeless by year’s end. Unlike refugees in some other countries, they won’t get much aid from their own country or the world community.

I don’t feel particularly safe with our military forces stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, reports that cost overruns for weapons have "reached crisis proportions" and our nation’s request for 58 future military bases in Iraq.

Rising airfares, cancellations of flights, employee layoffs and a prediction that all big airlines could be in bankruptcy by next year have killed my desire for a vacation trip.

I wonder why the greatest nation in the world seems to be doing nothing to save its air transportation network. We already suffer from neglecting our once-fine railroad system.

Why do we build and rebuild roads and bridges in a country plagued by a civil war but don’t repair or rebuild our own crumbling transportation infrastructure?

Should Tucsonans be pleased about our state’s financial crisis because the federal government isn’t paying its share of immigration, border security, health care, education, welfare and other national problems?

Should we feel good while our county and city governments, our schools and colleges, and our hospitals and social-service agencies cut services because their federal and state funding has dropped?

I’ve often criticized city and county governments in the Tucson area, but their financial problems would be fewer if the feds had paid for their own responsibilities during the past eight years.

In this election year, we’ve heard very little about Arizonans’ problems from our two senators, John McCain or Jon Kyl. Presidential candidate McCain’s senate term expires in 2010, Kyl’s in 2012.

U.S. Representatives Raúl Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, both seeking re-election this year, haven’t said much so far about how Congress could solve or alleviate these crises.

Nationally, most Republicans voice hope the bad times are only temporary. Most Democrats say they were in the minority for six years of the Bush presidency and now have too slim a Senate majority to pass laws they want.

As the Republican presidential candidate, McCain has defended policies of the past eight years and proposed few new solutions.

Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has cited many problems but hasn’t yet provided detailed outlines of all his ideas.

After an election, presidents and members of Congress too often forget they’re Americans first and party members second. But both Democrats and Republicans have good ideas that sometimes deserve support from their rival parties.

We will still have great problems after the November elections. Barring a landslide, it will take votes from both sides of the aisle to begin withdrawing from Iraq, reviving our economy, stabilizing the dollar, rebuilding our armed forces and national infrastructure, and coming up with a healthcare program for all Americans.

So far in this century, our record in those areas hasn’t been good.

Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to noon weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.