We've all heard the oft-repeated GOP rhetoric that eliminating Bush's tax cuts is essentially a tax increase. Clearly, these tax cuts were intended to be a temporary stimulous package - to expire when the plan ended; however, attempting to explain this within sound bites is problematic.
I've found the best analogy to clarify this issue to conservatives is the following: "I suppose you could call it a tax increase, the same way that you might call returning from vacation a work increase". This usually sinks in better than any logical argument.
The GOP also repeats the mantra of "Tax & Spend Democrats". As a long-time Republican, I cannot disagree with that as a historically accurate portrayal of pre-Clintonian Democrats. The argument I use for this is: "I rather have an intelligent, thoughtful, visionary leader as President than a candidate (McCain) who cannot even manage his own campaign; I would also take the possibility of Tax & Spend policies over the 8 years of Republican BORROW & SPEND practices any day".
Having said that, I do have a fear of Democrats (or any one party) controlling the Presidency, House and Senate. President Clinton successfully dragged the Democratic Party kicking and screaming to the center, managed to balance our budget, and brought incredible prosperity to our country.
I am voting for Obama - and can only pray that he is able to follow in Clinton's foot steps in this regard. The GOP gave up their mantle of Fiscal Responsibility under Bush; Obama has the opportunity to cement this label to the Democratic "brand". If he does this, you will find many more moderates and fiscal conservatives (albeit reluctantly) shifting to the Democratic party.
There is a story that was told long ago by a respected teacher named Jesus. This is an update I thought up this morning.
The Global Finance Executive council called in a group of money-makers and handed out a bunch of cash, saying, "Go out and make a bundle for us and come back in five years."
Five years later they all came back. Basically, the money-makers had three different responses.
The first group to come forward were the Big Financial Stability group. They came and said, "We have carefully invested your money and followed the highest ethical standards and we bring you this profit. And the GFEC said, "Well, done, faithful servants."
Then the second group came forward, the Small Bankers Stability group. They said, "We can't compete on the same scale as the big organizations, but we have been careful and honest and we bring you these profits." And the GFEC said, "Well, done, faithful servants."
A third group then came in. They represented the High Flyers Group. They said, "We know that you are a demanding employer, and we wanted to make a bunch of money any way we could. We invested in some high risk possibilities and we set aside common sense and ethics in order to try to get the biggest profits, regardless of the consequences. Well, we lost. We are financially ruined! It's all your fault for giving us this pile of money! Our creditors are on our backs, the investors are howling and we have enemies on all sides. Help us!" And the GFEC said, ...
So what would you say to these groups? Does that reflect the way you see this financial crisis?
Of course, this is just a story, isn't it?
Janet
I think Obama's campaign needs to counter McCain's attacks on Obama as wanting to raise taxes by reframing the issue as one of fiscal responsibility, not taxes.
It's disingenuous for the Republicans to suggest that Obama wants to raise taxes for the sake of raising taxes since no one in his right mind wants to raise taxes or enjoys paying taxes. The Republicans might argue that Obama is a "tax-and-spend" liberal Democrat who wants to raise taxes to spend more on social programs, but they've been pretty much an endangered species among Democrats for the past 15 years since most people recognize that low taxes promote economic well-being, which also benefits the poor, and I'm not aware of any evidence that Obama's proposals would cost more than McCain's. The only remaining reason to raise taxes is fiscal responsibility--to reduce the deficit or at least keep it from increasing (and thus having it decrease as a percentage of GDP).
I think fiscal responsibility and the budget deficit need to be explained to people in simple terms they can relate to--something that wasn't done with the legislation for the government to purchase mortgages from banks. I would use an analogy to a person who runs up credit card debt by spending more than he earns and then has to devote part of his future earnings to paying interest on the debt (which reduces his future spending power). I would be specific about how much interest the government pays per capita, the percentage of total government spending it represents, and how that has changed since President Bush took office. Just citing trillions of dollars of government borrowing won't make it real to people. I think it would also be useful to explain how much of the interest is paid to foreigners; dependence on foreign capital and large interest payments to foreigns is likely to resonate with people in a similar manner to the issue of dependence on foreign oil.
The McCain campaign has kept up the drumbeat for weeks now charging Barack Obama would raise your taxes, even though they leave out the fact that this only applies to those who make over $250,000. They also don't mention that those are the same people who were the only real beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts.
Well Johnnie Mac's tax claims are effectively moot now that the Bush Administration has stepped in to salvage Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (no relation to the candidate, except that neither can keep track of how many houses they own). For overnight, the Treasury has levied a whopper of a tax, except instead of sending you a bill you have to pay from you checking account by April 15, they have just gone ahead and charged it to your credit card and left it to the next guy to work out payment terms.
McCain’s Jobs For America economic plan provides great insight into the kind of administration and straight talk he would offer America. The Grand Old Party has focused more on the partying grandly with the current Administration – cutting taxes while spending recklessly.
The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit. Since all their costs were financed with deficit spending, all their savings must go to deficit reduction.
A one-year spending pause. Freeze non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending for a year and use those savings for deficit reduction. A one-year pause in the growth of discretionary spending will be imposed to allow for a comprehensive review of all spending programs. After the completion of a comprehensive review of all programs, projects and activities of the federal government, we will propose a plan to modernize, streamline, consolidate, reprioritize and, where needed, terminate individual programs.
Take back earmark funds. The McCain Administration will reclaim billions of add-on spending from earmarks and add-ons in FY 2007 and 2008.
Not sure how an ‘Agent of Change’ can look the electorate in the eye and tell them he’s for change and reform and have his official fiscal policy to be not to change anything outside of defense and assisting our veterans for the first 25% of his presidency. On the other hand it takes quite awhile to get a budget through Congress, sometimes longer than a year, so maybe this isn’t really a change either. McCain doesn’t explain how he’s going to pay for the comprehensive review of all programs, projects and activities of the federal government without changing the budget. The hard working civil servants I know don’t have time to accomplish their current missions and to stop and conduct a credible comprehensive review.
One of the most stubborn holdovers from the glory days of the Republican Party is that it stands for low taxes, small government, and fiscal responsibility. Voters continue to be lured with the promise that they’ll get to keep more of their hard-earned money and that the government will use the money they do pay responsibly. These are the values that swept Ronald Reagan to power so overwhelmingly and they continue to pervade the world view of many Americans. It’s a compelling story: Vote for us, or the “tax-and-spend liberal Democrats” will take all your money away.
But when will people ever understand that there is no free lunch? That continually failing to match government expenditures with enough tax revenues to produce a balanced budget creates grave problems for this country and by extension to all of us?
I used to be a fan of Ronald Reagan, but he almost tripled our national debt from $900 billion to $2.6 trillion, which means he accumulated more debt in 8 years than all the presidents combined before him. George W. Bush started office with a balanced budget which, incidentally, he inherited from a “tax-and-spend liberal Democrat,” but by the time he leaves office, our national debt is estimated to be close to $10 trillion. What’s more, he squandered the one opportunity we had after 9/11 to tell people that yes, taxes are needed to finance government programs, especially wars, and told us to go shopping.
This Republican administration will leave behind the biggest budget deficit we’ve ever seen. But why should we care, you might ask? If I get to keep more of my money, what does it matter to me if the government doesn’t seem able to do the same with theirs?
There are two reasons we should all care very much: Inflation and China. Mounting debt devalues a currency and creates inflationary pressure. As of July 2007, the rate of inflation in the U.S. has risen to 5.6%, the highest since 1991. Go ask your bank, but at my average money market savings rate of 2%, my money is worth less every year. Put differently, your money does not buy as much as it used to, as anyone lately visiting a grocery store or gas station can attest. And because our government has long run out of people in our country to borrow from, an ever bigger share of our national debt is financed by foreign creditors in Japan, Saudi Arabia, and China. Everyone can see the situation our dependence on foreign oil has gotten us into, but our dependence on foreign money is just as alarming.
The Republican Party has long ago abandoned its conservative values of small government and fiscal responsibility. Yet it continues to tell voters to be wary of the “spend-happy Democrats.” We continue to be told that our money is safe in the hands of the party that failed to manage our nation’s budget for the last eight years. So when John McCain tells us that he will lower taxes and somehow produce a balanced budget by 2013, remember that there is no free lunch. Why bet our future on a candidate who says there is?
Another GOP point attacking the Democrats, at all levels at all times in history, is to talk about "taking on do-nothing bureaucrats" and tout their own legendary efforts to "reduce bureacracy" or "cut red tape". In fact, it is often the other way around. It is often the case that Republican approaches to "bureaucracy" tend to set up roadblocks to effective social services —reference: No Child Left Behind— designing in phoney "standards" that together with micromanagement dictates are aimed at undermining standards and cutting funding to vital programs, while bureaucracy multiplies, as do funds directed to related "consulting" projects.
John McCain seems to have difficulty separating efforts to "reduce bureaucracy" from pro-corporate efforts to strip away vital regulations that keep accounting ethics standards and fraud protections in place. The result can be seen in the banking sector, where predatory lending has cost consumers and the government hundreds of billions of dollars, due to irresponsible, unethical or unsustainable practices. Sen. Obama was working to curb predatory lending in the home-mortgage sector back in Illinois in 2001. He is tuned in to what works and to what scams can undermine the system; he fought to do the same in Washington, while senators like McCain wanted fewer "regulations".
This makes McCain not a principled "maverick", but a rogue free-marketeer, who pushes Bush-like policies that give big breaks to big banks but force the average American into smaller and smaller cages with respect to their fiscal freedom and spending ability. McCain's tax cut proposals WILL NOT FIX THIS, because they are just an extension of Bush's, which have been one of the worst contributing factors to this anti-middle-class economic dynamic we have seen emerge and lead to this financial chaos.
Obama's working-class tax credits and targeted small-business tax cuts plan will fix this; responsible regulation, coupled with higher consumer-spending capacity relative to overall economic output, will restore order to financial infrastructure and keep the big cheats honest. McCain will not.
The GOP will now veer gradually away from the experience argument. Obama needs to keep showing his mettle, but McCain seems to have conceded to some degree that Obama has been "vetted" in the eyes of voters across the left and the center. Even conservatives seem to have acknowledge he can lead, they just disagree with his policies (largely due to historical bias about "liberals"). The item of choice will be fiscal policy, as Palin is not necessarily a strong security candidate.
They will try to scare Americans about how much Sen. Obama's policies will cost; they will say Pelosi is at the head of some sort of spending watershed and that Democrats cannot be trusted on fiscal discipline. For the record, Reagan and W. oversaw the two biggest spending expansions in US history. And H.W. raised taxes. The Reinventing Government program Al Gore ran for the Clinton administration was the most successful and most organized effort ever to counter wasteful spending and "reduce the size of government".
The Bush administration's record on that was: 1) to cut funding for vital programs, like education, veterans' affairs and even combat pay for deployed troops; 2) to direct spending to specific private entities through no-bid contracts. Neither of these did anything to reduce overall spending or the size of government, but both have caused serious harm to actual human lives. Katrina and Iraq are two examples of no-bid contracts causing mass suffering.
Sen. Obama is pushing for a Reinventing Government 2.0, and his fiscal policy is more disciplined and more precisely orchestrated than Sen. McCain's. We need to get this message out. We need to make it clear, we need to show how Barack has a wealth of experience in the fine-points not only of funding public programs, but of orchestrating budgetary priorities in order to keep spending under control, something no Republican president has done in more than half a century (get the historical references and say this every chance you get).
The Underlying Problems
In Mexico there problems are middlemen that makes 40% net profits on nearly everything that is grown, captured at sea, or produced in Mexico. Hence in the US the immigration problem, contributions to rising food costs, lost union jobs, a shrinking middle class, etc. Mexico exports nearly 80% of its goods to the US. (Note: This is a global trade phenomenon – not just existing between the US and Mexico.)Now our problem in America is that our economy is about to collapse. If we collapse, Mexico will also collapse and then all hell breaks loose. We are so far in debt as a country it is insane (according to USA Today each one of us owes more than $500,000 as a taxpayer and we have nothing to show for it), social security does not have enough money – short by $10 trillion, and Medicare / Medicaid Funding will also have short falls. So where does the money come from to pay for this mess? More loans? The only solution that exists is to get the economy going again to generate the revenue necessary to pay these obligations. How?
The Strategy
Business 101 teaches that any business sector that has excess net profits is a market to enter into for doing business. So we are going to sell direct from Mexico to the US retail (grocery) stores and restaurants. In other words, direct trade is a solution to our US Economic problem, because direct trade, going around the middlemen, is where the profits are for better wages, lower consumer prices and higher tax revenue collected. The reasoning is as follows. It is in Mexico’s self interest that we do not collapse (80% of their goods are exported to the US) and it is within our own self interest not to collapse. So as people (Mexicans and Americans) we have a common self interest to change the way we do business to direct trade. So Mexicans in Mexico are going to help. We divide up the 40% amongst workers, producers, new distribution channels, retailers and consumers. Push enough money into the workers’ hands who live outside the US to become consumers. Then this allows us in the US to bring back some of the factories again – through competition. Loosely speaking, I figure with green jobs, infrastructure repairs plus new manufacturing and lowered consumer costs we should be able to generate enough tax revenue to get us out of this mess.
Okay, so here's a hypothetical situation....
let's say that I'm a teenager and I'm talking to my parents....
"Dad, I wanna go out tonight. And I'm staying out til 2am."
"Well, daugher of mine, if you do that, you'll be grounded for a week and I won't give you your allowance for the next two weeks."
"No, Dad, I want my allowance and I want to stay out until 2."
"I've told you what's going to happen, dear child of mine...Don't expect me to honor your wishes if you don't honor mine..."
"Have a good night, Dad, I'm off and won't be home til 2am."
So, would you feel that Dad had control/authority of his child, if after the daughter stayed out til two, he DID give her her allowance and didn't ground her? NO! You'd have *no* respect for the Dad, or his "authority" with his child.
Okay, so how is this above situation any different than the Florida and Michigan delegates demanding their votes count??? They disobeyed the rules and were told what was going to happen if they moved the date of their primaries up. They did it anyways. Disobediance requires a pennance. And for Florida and Michigan, that means your votes don't count....
Some Floridians are cranking that they've been "jerked around too much" what with the "hanging chads" and Bush/Gore debacle....Let's face it, that's a basic survival of the fittest outcome...If you're smart enough to vote, then it will count; if you can't figure out where to punch out a chad--and aren't smart enough to ASK for help like you're ALLOWED TO---then you're vote is invalid...too bad, so sad...
Luckily, Bush had no way of putting the kibbash on this judicial outcome and the law prevailed. The kid disobeyed the parent/law and they were punished.
Agree? Disagree? Tell me about it...
[end blog] maven
Florida court throws out DNC suit
Posted: 10:45 AM ETA Florida court threw out a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Democratic Party's decision not to seat delegates from Florida.(CNN) -- A Florida court threw out a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the Democratic Party's decision not to seat delegates from Florida -- as litigants prepared to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.Political consultant Victor DiMaio and his lawyer Michael Steinberg had compared the party's decision to earlier prohibitions against allowing African-Americans to vote and invoked the trauma of the Florida recount in the 2000 contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush, both arguments also used by Hillary Clinton to support the seating of the state's delegates."This is nuts. This is not right. How can they remove Florida after all the things that Florida has suffered through- hanging chads, through Bush v Gore, and they're sticking it to us again," DiMaio said before the hearing.
Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean says the situations are not comparable.
"You cannot violate the rules of the process and then expect to get forgiven for it," he said.
Judge Richard Lazarra sided with the party, saying political parties have the right to make their own rules.
DiMaio's is the second Florida lawsuit protesting the Democratic Party's decision to be thrown out of court. An earlier one filed by Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Alcee Hastings, both Florida Democrats, was also dismissed.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/05/28/florida-court-throws-out-dnc-suit/
We have a choice this election between change and insanity.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.
More after the jump!
(for a quick overview click on the link http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/198681.php)
The candidate who has loaned herself MILLIONS of dollars and is still in the hole, is now saying she's the most "fiscally responsible" candidate!
On her last day of campaigning in South Dakota, Hillary Clinton told a group of supporters huddled inside a ballroom that South Dakotans should pick her on Tuesday because of her economic experience.
“If you will vote for me next Tuesday, you are voting for the most fiscally responsible candidate in this race on either side of the aisle,” Clinton said, a blatant jab at both Barack Obama and John McCain. Clinton was referring to her practice of offering explanations on how she will pay for all of the programs she has laid out, including her very expensive universal health care plan.
Hold the heck up. She couldn't even get through her campaign without getting herself in debt and then when she ran out of funds, she started throwing good money after bad...and that's "fiscal responsibility"?
What a hoot!
Yeah, Obama should pick her for a running mate for several reasons:
1) she spread pictures around of him in supposedly "muslim" garb and made up fables and fairy tales about his origins and background and the origins of his given name
2) she had her cronies say that the only reason he's winning is because he's black when that's precisely the thing that could potentially stop him FROM winning
3) she held him accountable for something his minister said, as if he could control the mouth of another grown man
4) she had people talking about his wife when all she was doing was being honest about her feelings
5) she cried when she should have been about business, thus showing she didn't have the strength to tough out the hard times
6) she's got a string of dead bodies and mafia connections running spilt blood all the way back to the Capitol steps, plus outstanding felony charges that she may still be prosecuted for while in office
7) she's harping on his military experience when she obviously doesn't have any herself (besides being theoretically shot at in Bosnia, that is)
AND
8) she invokes the name of Robert F. Kennedy and his assassination with regard to the upcoming June primaries, basically stating that she is hoping Barack gets off'd so that she can still get elected...
Those would be darn good reasons for Obama to pick her for a running mate, especially since she seeks forgiveness for doing and saying things that Obama would never have been forgiven for had he done same to her.
God bless him, anyway, no matter what happens in November.
Republicans often claim that they are for fiscal responsibility and small governements, but we all know this is not true. They spend money like teenagers at the mall with their parents creditcards. Spending money wildly on far fetched defense plans and corporate welfare while at the same time cutting the taxes of the rich and passing the bill onto the young Americans of the future.
If the conservatives actually practiced anything that they preached, I may be able to believe they would not wreck our nation. However they have proven themselves unwilling and unable to stop spending. Below is a chart of the revenue, spending, and debt growth rates under the last 7 presidents adjusted for inflation. The "Reagan Conservatives" have a startling trend: spending increases faster then revenue and debt skyrockets. Meanwhile in both Carter's and Clinton's time in office the National Debt actually grew at a slower speed then inflation.President, Term, Revenue Growth, Spending Growth, National Debt GrowthNixon, 1969-1973, 3.88%, 1.72%, -1.64%Ford, 1974-1976, -0.73%, 7.54%, 7.83%Carter, 1977-1980, 2.37%, 2.11%, -1.58%Reagan, 1981-1988, 2.70%, 3.35%, 16.22%Bush I, 1989-1992, 0.53%, 3.21%, 7.24%Clinton, 1993-2000, 7.03%, 0.97%, -1.78%Bush II, 2001-today, 1.08%, 3.59%, 4.325Now McCain is the next candidate in the list promising more conservative tax cuts and lower spending. Promises that the previous conservative candidates in front of him also made. The problem is none of them have ever came through on the reduction of spending. McCain promises to cut pork barell spending by a heavy use of the veto, but without a line item, this policy will do nothing but stall out our governmanet and create a gridlock in which no legislation will get passed. In the end McCain willl not accomplish his spending cuts, but he will push through the tax cuts he promised when he bought the votes of the Republicans. Creating evan more deficits and debts for us and our childeren to pay off. The Republicans often preach about responsibility, but appear to have no idea what it means when it comes to managing a budget. They all want to have it both ways. They want everything that the government provides, but at the same time do not want to pay for it.Meanwhile, the Republicans rail against Obama and say how his election would be disasterous for our nation. Obama is a firm believer in PAYGO budgeting, meaning that if you are going to spend money on something you must either cut somewhere else to fund the new initiative or increase tax revenue. This was the same policy used during the Clinton years that sadly ended with the election of Bush.
BARAK OBAMA is the only candidate who has the fiscal responsibility to get the nation back on the right track.
Letter to Obama sent on 2-16-08:
Title: Credit Card ConservativesA pithy word that hasn't been used by Obama yet: "Credit card conservatives." I saw this in a youtube comment and I think it sums up the type of Republican that Independents like me despise more than any other. If Washington is to change "business as usual," then we have to name the culprits by their deeds.It is the credit card conservatives that like to talk about balancing the budget but borrow more and leave my generation with more debt at every juncture.Democrats may have been complicit in the past, but balancing budgets must be a priority for any American president now. Obama has the best chance to achieve this because he already understands that we cannot AFFORD to rule the world through military spending. We need to stand down our forces and focus on strengthening America through its economy - not its military. On weapons, we already spend more than the whole world combined. And what has it got us? The least bang for our buck of any military in the world! If we tightened our belts, we might someday be the great power for good that previous generations believed us to be.Our addiction to the collosal military-industrial-complex has sapped our economy of strength, denied our country's people better schools and healthcare, and made us the world's bully, not its visionary. And for this we have the credit card conservatives to thank.Regards,Marc MaxsonNew Orleans (freelance political speechwriter for hire)
He has repeated in many interviews that he brings in democrats, independents and even some republicans. But can he keep them with him in the general election?
Katrina. Hurricanes in Florida, crop failures across the south due to this rash of 100 year storms/ cold snaps/ heat waves we have been having.
Folks- the weather is changing. And the scientists tell us it's going to get a lot worse. Now, the same radio talk show folks who told us what a good idea it would be to invade Iraq and vote for Bush is telling us that Climate change is some chicken little fairy tale. They are entitled to their dream world, but both Obama and McCain agree there is a significant threat. This threat will mean the loss of more southern cities, and repeated crop failures that will destroy farming as we know it.
If we do nothing, it's going to cost us trillions of dollars over the next 30 years. That money is gone already. We can be irresponsible and wait for nature to come take it from us. Now, if we do something, we can instead spend that money on putting people to work so that we will not continue to suffer devastation due to weather disasters that will go on and on and on until we take action.
Folks don't care if they don't have health care if their house is under 3 feet of water, and they don't care about a tax rebate if they have no job giving them any income to tax.
Let's get to work building up America's energy production. America's number one export industry is shipping US dollars and jobs overseas. Let's start by not exporting our money to Arab oil producers. Let's start by keeping that oil money in the US by building US energy production. Let's start by not waiting for the weather to take trillions from us. Instead, let's put people to work in our struggle for national energy survival.
We can build the power plants. We have the technology. We can't expect private industry to do this for us. The challenge is worse that the threats posed in World War II. Believe it. We will lose more american cities, and millions more will die world wide until we have the courage to face this looming threat.
Neither McCain nor Clinton can be counted on to lead the country towards bold action against this common threat to our survival. Their proposals cannot be distinguished in kind from the failed energy policies of the past 30 years.
We need bold action now. Obama is the only man who has the courage and the intelligence to see that there is no other way other than to face the threat now.
09 Jan 2008 11:59 am
Ross takes me to task for downplaying Obama's liberalism. That's a little unfair for a blogger who wrote last May:
He may, in fact, be the most effective liberal advocate I've heard in my lifetime. As a conservative, I think he could be absolutely lethal to what's left of the tradition of individualism, self-reliance, and small government that I find myself quixotically attached to.
I don't expect the Democrats to be the party of limited government. But any reward for the Republicans after the massive expansion of government power and spending under Bush would be much more fatal. Because it would destroy even the potential for a party of limited government in the future - by ceding the GOP to spendthrift Christianists. So voting for Obama to punish the GOP and then hope for a revival of conservatism in the ashes doesn't seem like such a contradiction to me. I find it staggering that commentators on the right who have said virtually nothing about Bush's nanny-statism and fiscal irresponsibility these past few years start raising these issues immediately with Obama. Yes, Bill Bennett, I'm looking at you. I'm sorry but you have zero credibility on these matters. And neither do most of the Beltway Republican punditocracy.
I also just think that Obama is a pragmatic liberal. His judgments in the past have been largely practical and reasonable. He is not an ideologue. Nor is he an excessive partisan. Those qualities are admirable from a conservative point of view. As for Burkeanism, I agree it can be an amorphous concept. Because it allows for a great deal of lee-way for prudence to determine particular judgments in history, it allows for minimal change and maximal change within its boundaries. I don't think this makes it meaningless as a concept. It is the way a society changes that Burke was interested in. He backed the huge change of the American revolution, for example. And all we're talking about with Obama is a prudent response to an ill-begotten war, some measures to tackle a failing healthcare system and an attempt to tackle the emergent problem of climate change. And all in a spirit of national reconciliation. This is no Robespierre, Ross.
Ross claims there is still some space to the left of Bush. Sure - but much less than there was eight years ago. Put it this way: if a Democratic president had added $32 trillion to the next generation's debt in eight years, if he'd bungled a war, if he'd abrogated habeas corpus indefinitely and authorized torture, do you think a Republican would be criticized as a leftist for wanting to withdraw troops, and extend healthcare insurance - without mandates - for more of the working poor?
Come off it. There are two possible solutions to GOP degeneracy: Obama and McCain. As of last week, there appeared only one: Obama.
It's interesting to watch the debate on the Alternative Minimum Tax…and by “interesting” I mean the same kind of detached dread that one must feel if one is awake in an operating room as one’s right hand is amputated.
Even without the moral basis for wanting to draw a speedy conclusion to the misbegotten war in Iraq, the cost in sheer dollars is a drain on the economy of the United States. Between the expenses of transporting and maintaining the troops half-way around the globe, the countless no-bid contracts rife with accounting irregularities, and the increased security requirements for our diplomats that line the pockets of questionable organizations such as Blackwater, the taxpayers hard-earned cash is profligately squandered at astonishing rates.
Joe Bodell, in a September 23rd article about the political landscape in Minnesota, (published via the Huffington Post,) concludes with this insight:
"Fiscal conservative" and "Fiscally responsible" are two entirely different and, in recent history, contradictory concepts.
Senator Obama has consistently tried to extricate us from the unconscionable expense associated with the ill-conceived, ill-begun, poorly prosecuted War in Iraq. We need to recast "politics as usual" in such a way that the financial and ethical priorities of the U.S. Government resonate transparently with the desires of this great people, not the greed of those few positioned to profit from global conflict.
We need a change, a courageous new visionary to unify us in harmony, not isolate us via wars. The spin for eight years has been "compassionate conservatism," but the reality: divisive fear-mongering and hidden agendas that were anything but compassionate.
Mission Accomplished? The urgent mission now is to resist the spin, to restore the greatness of the United States of America, the pride of our diverse citizenry, and our credibility abroad.
We need to elect Senator Barack Obama as our next President.
Fiscal Stewardship: The Issue of the 21st Century
On the first of March the Government Accountability Office (GAO) made a report to the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee saying that, “the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable.” According to the GAO’s report, Critical Accountability and Fiscal Stewardship Challenges Facing Our Nation, if changes are not made now, then by the year 2040 federal revenues may be adequate to pay little more than interest on debt held by the public and some Social Security benefits. Fiscal responsibility should be central to the campaign of any candidate running for president, because of the potential impact to the long term social welfare and national security of our country.
