Blog Entry

I care a lot more about what you are going to do than how many "special interests" you have. Substance matters more than style. Style matters, no doubt. But it matters less. If this were about style, I'd vote for Obama too.

One of his big issues is health care. He thinks he can reduce cost and increase quality by ... increasing regulation. It's bizarre. What would inevitably happen is we will have less liberty and more costs (whether borne through taxes or directly).

Obama wants to take way the rights of all employers to hire and fire at will. To run their own business the way they think is best.

Obama wants to destroy the whole concept of payroll taxes, which is that people put away money for themselves, and have those subsidized by other people.

Obama wants to REQUIRE every employer to enroll their employees in a retirement plan.

Obama wants to get the federal government in the business of actually giving *ratings* to credit card companies. Ratings. One through five stars.

Run by the federal government.

For credit card companies.

And this is just a few highlights up through page 15 of his 64-page Blueprint for Change.

I like Obama. But there's no chance in hell I'll vote for him. His motto is, "you're too fucking stupid to take care of yourselves, so I'll do it for you." And maybe we are too fucking stupid to take care of ourselves, but I'd rather live free and die young and peniless than survive only by the beneficence of my my government.

But hey, that's just me.

Thanks for the info.

All presidents are hostage to the events of their administration. I don't really care what a candidate says they're going to do. Once elected, so few can actually execute on that plan.

As to the problems you have with BO (of which his initials apparently aren't one :-), most of them are ideological. And that's OK. For instance, I don't like Romney or Guiliani. Any candidate that thinks we can torture our way through a global war on terror suffers from an epic paucity of imagination. Our current president has this deficiency spades. There's no problem for which Mr. Bush isn't ready to introduce tax cuts to remedy.

One of his big issues is health care. He thinks he can reduce cost and increase quality by increasing regulation.

While I don't dislike "regulation" as a concept (regulating murder, for example, is fine with me), there's a lot of implementation details to get right on a plan like that. The current privatized health system isn't really doing a good job at regulating prices. A plan that I support is modeled on the public school system. There would be public hospitals that provide a certain level of health care for everyone. The rich can go get private insurance and go to a fancier medical facility for their new robot bodies.

Obama wants to take way the rights of all employers to hire and fire at will. To run their own business the way they think is best.

This doesn't really sound like his plan. But it does sound a like a characterization of the effects of one of his plans. Firing people is already hard in today's litigious society.

Obama wants to destroy the whole concept of payroll taxes, which is that people put away money for themselves, and have those subsidized by other people.

Payroll taxes crush the poor and middle class and irrelevant to the wealthy, who care about capital gains. I'd love to see payroll taxes go away for a certain income bracket. The savings found in reducing federal bureaucracy could offset the lack of income!

Obama wants to REQUIRE every employer to enroll their employees in a retirement plan.

That's worse than requiring people to pay taxes into a federally mandated "retirement plan" like social security? SS is structurally challenged. Perhaps there is a better retirement vehicle out there.

Obama wants to get the federal government in the business of actually giving *ratings* to credit card companies. Ratings. One through five stars.

Admittedly, the feds are in a good position to know a lot about how a business conducts itself. However, this is probably an ill conceived plan. Consumers have been screwed since the beginning of capitalism and that's unlikely to change.

For the record, a McCain/Powell ticket is very attractive to me. A Clinton/Obama -- not so much. But you go into an election with the candidates you have, not the ones you want!

A while ago I was listening to an NPR story on one of the primaries/caucuses. They played a soundbite of a Baby Boomer who said that us younger women should have voted for Hillary out of gratitude for all that she and other boomers have done to advance women's rights.

Bite me.

Yes, thank you for creating a world where I can go to college, work in IT, have my own credit card, and keep my maiden name should I ever get married. Thanks, I appreciate it. But that doesn't mean your sense of generational entitlement requires me to suspend my cognitive abilities and just vote for you. Part of fighting for equal rights was so we'd be judged on our own individual merits, not our gender, remember?

You get my gratitude, not my vote.

Unless you deserve my vote based on your character, your policy initiatives, your experience, your bearing, and whether I think you'd be a good President.

I voted for Obama in the primary and hope to vote for him in the general. After the pigheaded leadership of the last eight years I beleive he is exactly the right man for the job and the country. Like you Joe, McCain vs. Clinton is really not a choice I want to consider.

What I was referring to re: hiring/firing was his goal to outlaw the permanent replacement of striking workers.

I hate payroll taxes too. Despise 'em. But they exist as they do for a reason, and if we're going to give the lower incomes a "free ride" whereas now they are required to cover themselves through payroll taxes, this should be done in a broader discussion of reforming Medicare and Social Security, which needs to be done anyway, and all Obama will say is "I will protect it, make sure everyone gets what has been promised, and won't privatize it."

Frankly, I want to cut Social Security benefits for people like me. I want means testing, increased retirement ages ... but what is more likely is that the ceiling on Social Security taxes will keep getting increased just so people like Buffett can get a Social Security check! How does it make sense to tax the upper middle class to pay money to rich retired people?!

Note: this is a problem with BOTH parties. Rich Republicans don't want to give up what's coming to them, and Democrats would perceive any cut in benefits, even for the rich, as a potential slippery slope for others losing benefits.

Also, I think forcing anyone into a retirement plan is bad, including SS. But this new thing is even worse. SS is supposed to be a safety net, but this new plan is supposed to be a primary investment. As if a company or individual needs Barack Fricking Obama to hold our hand to tell us what to do with our money.

Again, I actually like Obama. He seems like a great guy. But I don't want what he wants. We share the same goals, but very different means of achieving them.

I would much rather have him as my President than Clinton as a person, but on the other hand, I think he's further "left" from me and I would dislike many of his policies more.

Finally ... it's terribly funny to me that many on the "left" hate Clinton, and many on the "right" hate McCain. The big difference is that almost no one on the right would vote for Clinton.