Tag: barack obama

Categories
too much government

The More They Speak of Change

The more the presidential candidates promise change, the more it seems things are likely to stay just the way they are.

And I’m not the only one to notice. Washington Post columnist David Broder recently called it “the strangest of all presidential contests.” He argued, “The longer it goes on, the less we know about what either of these men would do if he were in the Oval Office next year.”

Both candidates are slinging promises of billions for this and billions for that, claiming to be everyone’s Mr. Everything. In the second presidential debate, Senator John McCain declared that if he were president, he “would order the Secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and . . . let people be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.”

No matter how much more house I buy than I can afford, the government will pay my mortgage?

Obama promises even more: “But most importantly, we’re going to have to help ordinary families be able to stay in their homes, make sure that they can pay their bills, deal with critical issues like health care and energy. . . .”

Obama’s administration is covering all my bills. Wow.

Both men seem oblivious to the reality that the next president will be handed a country badly in debt and unable to pay for the massive commitments it has already taken on. He won’t be handed a magic wand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Must It Be Racism?

One of the two major-party candidates for president is black, the other white.

Obviously, there is much more to say about them. We can talk about their ideas, character, experience, communication skills. Presumably, conscientious voters will choose the person they think can best do the job — regardless of race.

Not so, says Jacob Weisberg of Slate.com. According to Weisberg, given the collapse of the Republicans and the weak economy, everything is stacked in favor of Barack Obama. Therefore, if Obama loses the election, only racism could explain it.

Weisberg offers no coherent argument. He simply asserts that Obama has vastly more advantages than liabilities, while with McCain it’s vice versa. So the right choice is transparently obvious.

And hey, even if you disagree with Obama’s policy prescriptions, at least they’re “serious attempts” to deal with big problems. It doesn’t seem to occur to Weisberg that the “seriousness” of a proposed policy is not what makes it right or wrong. Or that a voter might reasonably consider the actual content of a proposal.

Of course, some voters might reject Obama out of racism. But it’s not self-evident that “racism is the only reason McCain might beat him.”

And would it not be racist, condescending, unjust, and downright stupid for us voters to treat a black man’s qualifications for the job of president as irrelevant, just to prove we’re not racist?

To his credit, Mr. Obama would expect more of us than that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets government transparency national politics & policies too much government

A Question Worth Asking?

The presidential candidates talk about leadership and change. What’s the one question that combines both, but is not asked? Simple: What happens if it all comes crashing down?

After the worst stock market drop since 9/11, the question doesn’t seem so out of place. Our federal government’s debt is rising fast. Even if we balanced the budget tomorrow, the government would have a deep, multi-trillion dollar debt. Trillions and trillions, you might say.

So, Mr. Obama; so, Mr. McCain — what do you do when the Treasury can’t find anyone to invest in all the debt we have created, and must maintain? What do we do when the compounding of interest and increased deficits make monthly maintenance impossible?

Neither of you have even suggested a balanced budget early in your first term. So what do you do when our credit goes crunch?

Add to this the federal government’s obligations to the citizenry, in the form of Social Security retirements and Medicare and pensions and such, and what can you do?

How do you stave off — or, if not, survive — a worldwide depression?

The scenario is not fantastic. Just look at current figures and crunch the numbers.

So, what would Senators Obama and McCain say? I’d be curious what Bob Barr and Ralph Nader would say, too. Have they thought of the possibility?

This is one question that sure would make the upcoming debates interesting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
porkbarrel politics

One Very Fine Pig

The political season is upon us, and people get hung up on the goofiest things. Like jokes.

Sarah Palin jested about hockey moms and pit bulls, the biggest difference between them being, she says, “lipstick.”

Then Barack Obama fought back, attacking the McCain-Palin ticket and Republican policy in general with another such comparison: “You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”

And, it turns out that them’s fightin’ words, because, well, Mrs. Palin is thought to “own” the word “lipstick,” and, some said, Obama had just called her a pig.

No he didn’t. If one has to deconstruct the whole fracas into symbols, Palin would be the lipstick, McCain the pig.

Of course, Obama was really talking about policies. But which policies of John McCain was Obama complaining about, which were . . . porcine?

How about McCain’s best issue, pork itself? Unfortunately for him, Sarah Palin has been too pork-receptive in her days as an Alaskan politician. McCain has resisted pork. He’s not made requesting earmarks part of his job. Obama, on the other hand, though demanding that all pork requests be put up transparently, with full disclosure, is known to ask for quite a lot. In fact, nearly a million dollars for every day he’s been in office.

It’s a pity that in all this talk of lipstick-wearing pigs, the real pork issue gets lost. No joke.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

The Pump Price of Politicians

Before closing Congress in order to block a vote to allow more domestic oil drilling, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “I’m trying to save the planet.”

Funny, Pelosi hasn’t stopped using oil but wants to stop drilling for it.

Some time after Congress’s 35-day vacation, she hopes to find a renewable energy source.

There’s that audacity. Or insanity. You pick.

Presidential candidates, meanwhile, get no vacation. They’re busy producing new energy plans.

Lots of folks, Obama included, blame the oil companies. Not me. They don’t owe me fuel. Just because we don’t like the price of gas doesn’t mean we’re allowed to fill up and drive away without paying. Yet that seems to be the spark plug of Barack Obama’s latest. He’d offer a $1,000 tax credit to taxpayers to be paid for with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. That is, rob Exxon to pay Paul.

McCain says drill, drill, drill. And Obama has already started to cave on many energy stands, though both he and McCain continue to oppose drilling where we know there’s oil, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Beware of politicians with plans. Let markets react. Let the private sector do its job.

As for more drilling on government lands, like up in desolate ANWR? Why not let voters decide? Put it on the ballot this November.

Now that would provide a paradigm’s worth of difference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability Common Sense free trade & free markets insider corruption

A Real Reform for Obama

Barack Obama’s record as a maverick, either in the U.S. Senate or his years as an Illinois legislator, is slender at best. Behind the self-avowed reformer’s rhetoric, his policies seem typical, demanding ever-bigger government, ever-more intrusive government.

But there’s at least one reform practiced by candidate Obama that could yield some very good changes indeed: His rejection of government funding of presidential campaigns.

Note I say “practiced by,” not “advocated by.” Obama has opted out of the system for tactical reasons only. In doing so he broke a promise earlier in the campaign that he would accept matching funds – along with the limits on his own general election spending that this would entail. But he had scooped up so much financial support so fast that he decided it would be shooting himself in the foot to accept spending restrictions.

Obama may be uncomfortable with his flip-flop. I applaud it – no, not the hypocrisy of it, but the example it sets for policy.

We should never force taxpayers to fund campaigns they may not support. And while we’re at it, let’s cut away the tangle of campaign laws regulating how much money we can give a candidate, or what and when and where we can say things about candidates.

If Obama could sign on to that proposal, he could really punch away at McCain on the issue. Obama would then be advocating real reform. Real good reform.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.