No, not the debate, the election. John McCain needed a game-changing debate, or a strong performance to remind the American people that he stands for more than just opposing Barack Obama. He did not deliver it (transcript). Barack Obama maintained a statesmanlike presence and, except when the Republican dropped some of the more egregious misstatements of the night, declined John McCain the pleasure of combat, which had the effect of making McCain look like he was talking past Obama… and not in the good way.
McCain’s opener – that it was nice to meet Obama “in a town hall meeting” – highlighted two themes of the night. First, that this was supposed to be where McCain would shine, and second, that McCain’s nastiest attacks against Obama would come in the form of subtle digs befitting a snubbed middle schooler (the Obama campaign immediately jumped on the “that one” line). McCain did not excel on his own ground, and CNN insta-polls suggested a shockingly negative reaction to his attempts to conjure Palin’s folksy charm. Every time McCain dropped the “my friends” line – more than twenty times – voter reactions shot down. And the digs, the attempts at laugh lines at his opponent’s expense (“did we hear the size of the fine?”) fell remarkably flat. As one pundit put it, “I’m not sure this was a good night for Barack Obama, but I think it was a bad night for John McCain.”
All of this leads to one simple conclusion: barring a foreign-policy related, game-changing event… say, a terrorist attack… a major flub on Obama’s part, or a serious case of voting booth racism, the election is his to lose. Nate Silver’s optimistic projection of an Obama win (probability hovering at 90%) begins to seem credible, though as I type this I’m knocking on wood and momentarily shunning my otherwise adorable black cat.
Ahem. That does NOT mean “don’t vote.” It means “vote,” but feel good that you’re on the right side (the left!).
As the future starts to look clearer, we need to start considering what the transition to power will look like. No less, perhaps, than John Adams’ to Thomas Jefferson’s, any “regime change” in Obama’s favor come January will result in a cross-spectrum transfer of power. In this eventuality, we as Democrats must acknowledge in victory the virtues, the absence of which we decried in defeat. Precisely, we must work to build a bipartisan consensus around the new President, and avoid the wedge politics that doomed the Bush presidency’s legacy. I take this as a corollary to what my friend, Progressive Conservative of “The Big Stick,” is calling “the Wendell Willkie Pledge”: namely, the duty of every American dissatisfied with the election’s eventual outcome to form a loyal opposition. While it is every American’s duty to acknowledge the President’s legitimacy, while perhaps opposing individual policies, we as victors must never stigmatize dissent as unpatriotic, and (should it come to that) we as a defeated opposition must never let our differences eclipse our similarities. Bipartisanship, after all, is a two-way street. There is no place in America for Brennus’ cry, vae victis (woe to the conquered), nor is there any half-step between refusing to acknowledge the result of an election, and civil war.
UPDATE:
So… you’re saying I don’t need to bother voting?
Posted by Gotchaye | October 8, 2008, 1:08 amNO! VOTE!
Posted by Ames | October 8, 2008, 1:29 amThe only thing that is going to save McCain at this point is if the Michelle Obama ‘whitey’ video is real or if someone finds footage of Wright slamming America with Obama in the front row nodding in agreement.
There will be plenty of time for an autopsy of what went wrong for McCain, but the shortest answer is that he ran a terrible campaign. While the Democratic primary made Obama a stronger candidate (surving the Clintons will do that) the GOP primary did nothing for McCain. Other than Huckabee none of his opponents ran a race worth talking about. McCain squandered a lot of time waiting for the Dems to play out and took way too long to get back on his feet.
As I’ve said, Democrats are likely going to get everything they wanted in November. A sizeable majority and the Whitehouse. I look forward to seeing what they do with it.
Posted by Progress.Conservative | October 8, 2008, 9:13 amWe don’t know what white males (and some females) will do inside that voting booth. In order for Obama to be bullet proof, he needs for those white males to be free of fear of black males. No matter what they say to pollsters, that fear is still there. It may just be that they refuse to vote at all. That might be a good thing for Obama.
Beyond that the question is can there really be any bi-partisanship with Republicans so filled with hate and fear? And with that hate and fear being driven into them by the likes of Faux News, Limberger and Michael Savage. Is there ANY possiblility of them meeting at all? Do you actually believe that Faux News can support the concept of “loyal opposition?”. Hell no they can’t. You can look forward to the next 4 years being one long whining rant from Faux, full of hatred and conspiracies. That’s not to mention the extremely serious problems Obama will have and the extremely unpopular decisions he is going to have to make. Beyond that, I am upset that no one except maybe Glenn Greenwald ever asked either candidate what they were going to do about the attack on the Constitution of the United States carried out by the Bush administration during the last 8 years. NOBODY seems to think that these questions are of any importance. To my mind they are considerably more important than the current financial crisis since they involve the very nature of the USA itself. AND NO ONE IS INTERESTED! Obama, if you remember, voted in favor of the FISA Act thus legitimizing the illegal behavior of the Bush administration and the Telecom companies. Is Obama just another version of Bush? Does he believe in the Unitary Executive and the teachings of Yoo? If not, how can we tell? I may spend the next four years attacking Obama for the same violations for which I attacked Bush. I have no way of knowing until Obama is in office and I take a look at his behavior. Because no one asked these questions.
Posted by Oldfart | October 8, 2008, 10:45 amFrom OF: “You can look forward to the next 4 years being one long whining rant…full of hatred and conspiracies. ”
Isn’t that what we just went through went through?
As for being bulletproof, yes, Obama may fall victim to voting booth racism but another thing to consider is that a large partof his current margin is based on the youth and minority vote, which has a notoriously low voter-turnout rate.
One more story to consider: Voter fraud is already rampant in Ohio and elsewhere. Obama’s old chums at ACORN are hard at work.
Posted by Progress.Conservative | October 8, 2008, 11:00 amI was talking with a friend yesterday about how strange it would be, for the third term in a row (I think only 3?), to have a legislative and executive branch under the same party.
I was saying how while I do hope this happens for Democrats this time around…so that there can be reversals to some of the Republican’s more egregious actions, but I still hypothetically would like there to be two parties in these branches…so that maybe we can start working together somewhere in the middle. Maybe it could lessen some of this partisan anger.
Posted by Oneiroi | October 8, 2008, 11:17 amI don’t think we’ll see partisanship decline. Liberals are going to spend at least the first year gloating. Conservatives are going to keep reminding people of Obama’s shady past.
Posted by Progress.Conservative | October 8, 2008, 12:04 pmI don’t think so. While people did grumble about Bush’s past, it was never front and center. More on the fringes, grumbling about Bush stealing the election or his time in the national guard.
I think most of the allegations from his past are a bit reaching to ever take a forefront in the national dialogue post-election.
Posted by Oneiroi | October 8, 2008, 12:13 pmDoesn’t the sun shine in Chicago? ;)
Posted by Ian | October 8, 2008, 12:13 pmOneiroi,
I was talking with DM and I was reminded of the article you asked me to read. You may have not ever seen my response here:
http://thebigstick.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/obama-economics/#comments
Posted by Progress.Conservative | October 8, 2008, 1:53 pmI did see it, and I was so enthused by the at least a more moderated outlook on Obama’s economic policy, I wasn’t sure what to say and didn’t want to mess it up ;)
I think I did write something up and ended up not posting it. I may read it again and try to argue some more! ha
Posted by Oneiroi | October 8, 2008, 3:59 pmThe thing that i took from the piece is that Obama really does want big corporations to make a lot of money. But then he wants to tax a lot of it away.
I will never understand wealth redistribution.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 8, 2008, 6:27 pmFrom PC:
“From OF: “You can look forward to the next 4 years being one long whining rant…full of hatred and conspiracies. ”
Isn’t that what we just went through went through? ”
Exactly. 8 years of one long whining rant of hatred, racism, faux-patriotism, chicken hawkism from the right wing hate mongers at Faux and other places. And it will just get louder.
Maybe, just maybe, the Democrats will have the balls this time to shut it down, throw Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales and many others in jail where they belong for crimes against America and bring the economy back from the hell that supply-side economics condemned it to and the constitution back to the place where the founders wanted it.
So long as you live in your mother’s basement and suck off her income, PC, you won’t understand. That is correct. You will always believe that 10% from a man who makes $10,000 a year vs. 10% from a man who makes $10,000,000 is an equal distribution of wealth. And you would prefer it be 0% from both except you can’t quite figure out how to fund the Defense department on hot air alone.
Posted by Oldfart | October 8, 2008, 8:58 pmOld Fart
Good points on PC, but you are forgetting that he is a conservative, and thus doesn’t care a nit about actually paying bills. Their idea of paying for government spending is to get a loan from the Chinese, and then shift the payback to the next few generations. They call it “responsibility”.
Posted by Mel | October 8, 2008, 10:04 pmMel,
I find it ironic that you accuse conservatives of ‘not paying their bills’ when it was liberals that came up with the brilliant idea of giving home loans to people who couldn’t afford them. But it bought you all lots of votes, right?
Posted by Progress.Conservative | October 9, 2008, 8:21 amAh, the patented PC tu quoque argument that doesn’t address the issue at all…how easy it is to be a conservative! Never pay any bills, never meet any arguments, never deal with any responsibilities, and simply be arrogant and whine, whine, whine…
Teddy Roosevelt would have been so proud of you.
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 9:08 amYou claim that borrowing from the Chinese is a particularly conservative habit? Is that correct? Then why don’t you explain why foreign borrowing didn’t stop during the Clinton years?
Instead of trying to impress people with Latin phrases, why not try wrestling with the facts, which is that when it comes to deficit spending, it’s not any more conservative than most other government mistakes. Obama, for example, has said that he wil not put the emphasis on deficit reduction that Clinton did. Given his spending plans and his refusal in two debates to discuss where he will cut his plans in the wake of this mess, I expect the deficit to remain static at best.
Posted by Healthcare a 'Right'? | October 9, 2008, 9:56 amYou claim that borrowing from the Chinese is a particularly conservative habit? Is that correct? Then why don’t you explain why foreign borrowing didn’t stop during the Clinton years?
Instead of trying to impress people with Latin phrases, why not try wrestling with the facts, which is that when it comes to deficit spending, it’s not any more conservative than most other government mistakes. Obama, for example, has said that he wil not put the emphasis on deficit reduction that Clinton did. Given his spending plans and his refusal in two debates to discuss where he will cut his plans in the wake of this mess, I expect the deficit to remain static at best.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 9:57 amLike I said, the patented PC tu quoque argument. Ladies and gentlemen, I still stand unimpressed by it.
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 10:32 amSeriously, the Latin, give it a rest. That may impress your poly sci professors at the community college but for most of us it’s yawn-inducing.
I stand equally unimpressed by your failure to explain what makes foreign borrowing uniquely conservative. YOU are the one that is making blanket statements that aren’t backed up by facts. The burden is on you.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 10:35 amIt has been argued, and very recently in the NYT, that government spending is the only way out of a depression and WWII is used as an illustration. So, note the positions of the two candidates: McSame still supports the supply-side theory that taking from the poor and giving to the rich while cutting government (read: services and entitlements) spending is the correct path. Obama supports demand-side theory coupled with government spending to stimulate “green” businesses and technology to grown new jobs. McCain’s way leads to new deficits and certain death. Obama’s way leads to new deficits and the possibility of growth.
For the benefit of PC who many never have heard of the demand-side term in his lifetime, that means taking from the rich and giving to the middle class who does all the spending and who makes the cash registers ring which encourages business owners to hire new employees which become new middle-class members who buy more which encourages……
I don’t think I really need to knock-down the supply-side theory (aka reagonomics or voodoo-economics) much. Give rich people more money and hope they hire someone.
Posted by Oldfart | October 9, 2008, 10:41 amThe problem with both Obama AND McCain’s plans are that neither seeks to do what would stimulate the economy the most which is an infrastructure investment on the same scale as the New Deal. While green technologies sound nice to liberals, they are unproven as job creators. On the other hand we have massive needs for increased spending on transportation, sanitaton, energy grids, etc. A massive spending program would create not the thousands of jobs likely from a ‘green’ investment but millions of jobs and give us a generation of young people trained in basic skilled trades. Obama, again, wants to focus on skills for the ‘green’ industry but that may leave some with skills that don’t transfer to other markets.
I also get nauseous at the way politicians stroke the ‘middle class’. Speaking as someone who is in the middle class, I don’t need their help. If someone was firmly in the middle class and now finds themselves in a financial pickle, I can guarantee that at some point they made a poor decision which got them to that point.
The ones that need our help are those in the lower class. There are many ways to do that, but giving them the skills to earn a ‘middle class’ living is the best way to accomplish that.
As for WWII, we prospered more afterwards because the New Deal gave us a generation of workers with the skills to grow the economy and their savings accounts.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 10:54 amPC What I meant earlier, before you were like “he’s a moron with economics that no one with half a mind would go for”, now you’re more “his policy has merit it’s just doing something I philosophically oppose”, which I thought was a “break-through” of sorts. I also just posted on your post about it.
Posted by Oneiroi | October 9, 2008, 11:23 amThe middle class is a HUGE socio-economic group. My pay puts me right below the start of upper middle class, and it’d seem like I could live on this salary forever. But, that’s because I have no debt obligations and no children.
Also, class status is determined by household income, not individual income. An income of $50k is middle class, but a single individual earning that is in a very different position than a three person household earning that.
On a different note, I work in the wind power industry, and I just got back from a course on the industry held in Sweetwater, TX. That town is one of the centers of the wind industry, with hundreds of megawatts of wind farms being installed in the vicinity. The town has exploded with more than 1000 new jobs because of wind. They can’t build more homes fast enough – there are no vacant homes, and a recently build hotel is booked out for a year with “permanent” residents.
These jobs consist of construction crews to erect the wind turbines on site, build the construction roads, lay the transmission cable, etc. There are also operations and maintenance jobs for the operational wind farms. In the larger town of Abilene down the road, there are new manufacturing facilities, such as one where they blast and paint the tower sections for the turbines.
The construction jobs are somewhat temporary, but they will move north across the great plains with the wind industry itself. It’s growing exponentially. But the construction jobs won’t completely go away in any one area, either. Wind farms have a 20 life span, and at the end of that the idea is that the old turbines will be decommissioned and new- generation turbines will replace them on the same farm. Some of the earliest sites near Sweetwater are about 10 years old now, and construction continues on new farms. If new construction even starts to die down, it won’t be before the old farms start getting replaced. There are no shortage of blue collar opportunities in this industry.
And that’s not even to mention the technical, white collar jobs.
Posted by Kris | October 9, 2008, 11:46 amA massive spending program would create not the thousands of jobs likely from a ‘green’ investment but millions of jobs and give us a generation of young people trained in basic skilled trades. Obama, again, wants to focus on skills for the ‘green’ industry but that may leave some with skills that don’t transfer to other markets.
Oh, really? So the space race didn’t translate to other high-tech jobs in the 1960s and 1970s? I think the green revolution has a lot of potential to revitalize science education and hi-tech education, which are currently becoming less and less based in the United States.
Posted by Ian | October 9, 2008, 11:49 amWow PC, you really have a problem with learning, don’t you? You don’t recognize the proper term for the classic conservative argument of “but Clinton”? Wow. How sad.
The thing is, and it is from here than my original point was drawn, conservatives rail against liberals who tax and spend – maintaining that taxation is always wrong. Conservatives then turn around, urge that everything can be had without actually paying, and borrow and borrow and borrow and spend, spend, spend, spend, spend. This has increasingly meant borrowing from foreign creditors. It is irresponsible and it is unpatriotic, and it is very much the essence of modern conservatism. But you won’t grapple with that, and will likely answer with your usual tu quoque arguments and attack Clinton, Obama, and everyone else so as to maintain your vacuous delusion that conservatism is perfect (and attack me for using a Latin phrase on a blog maintained by a person of a profession saturated with Latin phrases).
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 11:52 amKris,
Very interesting post. Of those 1000 jobs how many would you say are likely to remain behind as ‘maintenance’ positions i.e. keeping the turbines running smoothly, running the power grid, etc?
A second question, do you see the skills acquired to work on these turbines as easily transferable to other industries?
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 12:09 pmOneiroi,
I still think wealth redistribution is a horrible idea, so in that respect, yeah, Obama is kind of a moron in my opinion. But I also was impressed to see he believes in free-market principles up to the point where he takes a big % of their earnings to fund his social programs.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 12:11 pmIan,
Good points. I’m 100% on-board with green industries but I guess my concern is that an over-emphasis on them will leave us neglecting our more basic infrastructure needs. Wind turbines are fantastic but if I have to choose betwen that and a bridge collapsing on my way to work, i’ll pick the latter.
Current projections are at $1.5 trillion for infrastructure repairs and improvements in the U.S. without including green technologies.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 12:15 pmIn the face of $4 gasoline and increasing (ignoring the impending or current recession), I would argue that energy indepence is a national security issue in terms of economics. (Those people who buy into the well established science of global warming can talk about national security issues from that perspective as well. I prefer to stay on the economic arguement here, because it doesn’t rely on global warming.)
Certainly an energy economy based on natural gas or hydrogen will require changes in infrastructure anyway, albeit without the traditional definition of infrastructure. If no one can afford gas, how are you going to drive anyway? How are businesses going to ship anything and food be transported? (Perhaps a chicken vs. egg argument…)
Posted by Ian | October 9, 2008, 12:41 pmIan,
Again, good points. I agree with you that energy independence is a national security issue. You are correct that it’s better to frame it that way because unfortunately ‘global warming’ is a real hot-button term, especially with some of my fellow conservatives. (Personally, I’m convinced that it’s real, but I think we have a whole lot more to learn about it before we can reverse it.)
I think with respect to power grids obviously basic infrastructure needs and green technology have complimentary goals. Likewise with improved rail capacity (uses less fuel than trucks) and new highways that reduce idle time for commuters. Maybe the best way to go at it is to fold green into a general infrastructure package.
With regards to economic / national security issues, our broken infrastructure also makes it harder to compete with countries like China which invests a lot large % of their GDP in infrastructure than we do.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 1:11 pmUnfortunately, fixing our infrastructure will require a great deal of public investment, which will require taxation. There is no other way to do it. From what you have written in here in the past, PC, this seems to mean that, while you recognize there is a problem, there is no possible solution. Would you support higher taxes to rebuild our infrastructure?
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 1:20 pmPC, I can’t really say what percentage are exclusively O&M. What I can say is that I don’t see the construction going anywhere for a while. Sweetwater might not be the best example either; it’s from the earlier stages of the industry, and it’s on the far south range of the great plains. As the industry spreads across the plains, we could see more long-term, centralized hubs where people’s families live and manufacturing takes place.
To put where the industry is now in perspective, about 20 gigawatts of wind turbines have been installed across the country since the late 1990′s. The industry’s goal is to provide 20% of the country’s energy by 2030, which accounting for growth in energy consumption would require about 300 gigawatts installed. Wind currently produces about 2% of US energy consumption.
Industry estimates is that the “direct cost to society” of this growth would be about $43 billion over the next 22 years. I suppose that’s the cost of subsidies and tax credits. Comparatively, the federal government currently pays at least that much per year in energy subsidies, and wind receives less than 1%. The growth in the industry would also directly create about 150,000 jobs nationwide, reduce water consumption by about 7% (traditional power plants use 40% of the nation’s water), and lower natural gas consumption, thereby lessening the price pressure on home heating.
As far as job skills, inside turbines are just big motors, gear boxes, and transformers, similar to any power plant and common to much of heavy industry. The construction of roads, foundations, and electrical transmission are universal. Manufacturing of turbine components could help revitalize the rust belt as towers and internal components use lots of steel. I can’t imagine all of this wouldn’t use the same base skill set as any other heavy manufacturing.
Finally, you mentioned New-Deal-style infrastructure investment. I think we should certainly be focusing on our infrastucture, like bridges, and a depression-era level of investment could work wonders. As far as wind energy goes, transmission infrastructure is one of the biggest constraints on the industry right now. Since the best wind is often far away from population centers (think Montana), high throughput transmission lines just don’t exist to take the energy from the wind farms to the power grid. There are already plans in place for what and where to build, so expanding our electrical transmission infrastructure could be another place to put people to work.
(American Wind Energy Association http://www.awea.org has lots of other information about the industry.)
Posted by Kris | October 9, 2008, 1:28 pmMel,
No need for extra taxes. Here’s just two examples of where the money would come from: We have about 150,000 troops stationed overseas in countrys where there is no fighting going on. At a conservative estimate of $10,000 per soldier that is $1.5 billion dollars per year.
Add to that our yearly foreign aid budget of $50 billion. if we reduce that by 40% we have another $30 billion per year. Combining those equates to $31.5 billion per year, or $315 billion in 10 years. That’s roughly a fourth of the money needed right there.
Those account for something like 1-2% of the federal budget. Do that a few more times and the money is there.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 2:08 pmI already said this earlier, but…
The “redistribution of wealth” is a bit of a card that Republicans play to stir up voters.
It doesn’t actually take into account that we almost have always had a progressive tax which nearly by definition has an amount of wealth distribution. And Obama nor McCain represent an extreme change from that.
But if you’re calling for the scrapping of our current tax system, that’s a different story.
Posted by Oneiroi | October 9, 2008, 2:21 pmAnd if the budgetary shuffling were to not work? Would you support increased taxes to fund crucial infrastructure work then?
As for foreign aid, I think cutting it would be a very bad idea. We are already seen as a miser nation in terms of foreign aid. Cutting it further would provoke even greater erosion in our standing with the world.
I am not arguing that proper budget management is not something that we very much need to do better at. However, my point in asking the question was this: your comments at this site have been very mocking toward the responsible idea that taxation to pay for things the country decides are necessary is at all good. I don’t understand this. I pay my taxes with pride because I love this country, and I like being a contributing member of its citizenry. I like paying my dues to help achieve goals for that nation. I would gladly pay higher taxes to retire some of the debt, improve the national infrastructure, and otherwise help my fellow citizens, both born and yet to be born. I haven’t seen that sort of patriotism from you – only the smug ideology that I have seen to be typical of conservatism since my political awakening almost twenty years ago. I think you are better than that, I was wondering if I was correct in so thinking. Your answer didn’t much reassure me, though it was certainly better than your usual habit of attacking Clinton or Obama.
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 2:27 pmOneiroi, yes, I would like to see our current system scrapped. I favor a flat tax. Period. But I also favor closing tax loopholes that allow companies and / or wealthy individuals to pay less than their fair share. It is my belief that by closing the tax loopholes we would see a huge surge in new tax revenues that are not ‘new’ taxes.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 3:06 pmMel,
If every cent of our federal budget was spent wisely. If tax loopholes were closed. If foreign aid was significantly reduced (I think we pay too much now and I disagree with the notion we are miserly, especially when contrasted with the pitiful contributions of our ‘allies’)….if all those things were done and we still didn’t have enough for our infrastructure, then yes, I would support raising taxes across the board.
But we both know there is a LOT of waste and the $1.3 trillion plus could be found quite easily if anyone ever took government spending seriously.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 3:11 pmUnfortunately, I think our country would be underfunded with a flat tax. Either that, or those with the lowest incomes would be taxed to death due to a high overall rate. We could provide extensive deductions for necessary expenses, like we do now, but that ultimately creates a tax system that is progressive on overall income because the flat tax would only be on something like “disposable” income, which increases as a percentage of total income as total income goes up. But maybe that’s what you’re in favor of specifically – a flat tax on “taxable” income, however we define that.
But I don’t think we so much need to change our tax structure so much as our tax code. I agree with you that we need to close loopholes, and it’s infuriating to hear politicians oppose such efforts because they would hurt business. As has been mentioned before, though we have among the highest corporate taxes in the world, our actual recovery rate of corparate taxes is low because of loopholes. Maybe that effective tax rate is fine for funding; let’s eliminate the loopholes and adjust the tax rate down. It would make accounting more transparent and reduce fraud.
I think we can all agree, to a certain extent, that it’s not how much we pay in taxes, but rather what our taxes are paying for. What matters is that we are getting the value that we paid for. I’d be willing to pay a little more in taxes for a better education system – if I don’t have to pay more and can still get that, even better! but I’d still be willing to pay more. I don’t want to pay more because the defense budget keeps growing, in many ways due to mismanagement.
I once saw a bumper sticker that said something like, “What if education got all the funding it needed and the Air Force had to have a bake sale to buy new planes?”
Posted by Kris | October 9, 2008, 3:55 pmPC:
Then there’s much less point of us to talk about changing our tax system if you want to redo the whole thing then. We should then be talking about which tax system is “better”.
Because I personally don’t think we’ll ever switch to a completely different system, and if you have a philosophical opposition to the one we currently have, my argument will always be “wrong”. But I guess you could just want to pick the tax system that’s more “flat”.
As I said to a friend, “It’s like…I’m trying to build a sand castle on a beach and someone else comes in and goes, “No that’s wrong and will always be wrong. What we need is a snowman. Let’s replace all this sand with snow”. I can argue all day about sand castles but it still wouldn’t be a snowman”.
I hope that’s not too dismissive because I’m not trying to be.
Posted by Oneiroi | October 9, 2008, 4:20 pmIn other words, PC, you say no. Have you ever heard the aphorism that the perfect is the enemy of the good? If you are waiting for perfection, you will still be waiting when the very protons of the universe start to degrade some 10^26 years from now. If taxes need to be raised to fix the infrastructure even if there is some waste, then raise them and fix the dern infrastructure. I am a liberal progressive, and I thus believe in pragmatism first and foremost.
Still, you made a tiny little break though there. Try to be a bit more pragmatic and less ideological and you could even be patriotic if you tried.
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 4:57 pmMel, i don’t see anything even remotely ‘patriotic’ about your half-assed approach to fiscal policy. If taxes need to be raised to fix the infrastructure even if there is some waste, then raise them and fix the dern infrastructure.
It seems to always be easier for liberals to tax and spend doesn’t it? Instead of actually getting wasteful spending under control, instead of closing tax loopholes (y’know, actually doing the work government is supposed to do?) you find it easier to take money from the public in the form of taxes.
You can make all the not-so-subtle digs you want, but the reality is that your system rewards waste (as you happily allow for above) and I don’t.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 5:58 pmAs opposed to your side’s system of borrow and spend and borrow and spend? Conservatives have proven themselves masters of waste. The last twenty-eight years are proof of this. You would see this if you didn’t have your ideological blinders on.
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 6:19 pmGive me a break!
The tax loopholes for corporations were still in effect during the Clinton years. Earmarks have been just as much a boondoggle for Democrats in the last 28 years as for Republicans (you can check the bailout bill for the latest round of liberal pork).
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 9, 2008, 6:29 pmAnd again with the tu quoque…
Posted by Mel | October 9, 2008, 7:58 pmYou can keep throwing your latin phrase of the day around, but it doesn’t apply here. When you make statements that begin with, “Conservatives…” and liberals are equally guilty, then you are making a concious choice to ignore half of the political system in our country.
The fact remains that BOTH sides of the aisle have allowed corporations to avoid paying taxes and have engaged in wasteful spending supported by foreign borrowing. Only one of us seems to be honest enough to admit that.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | October 10, 2008, 10:31 amBut, PC, only YOU seem to think that the funding the never-ending neocon wars and sad attempts at nation-building are worth holding on to. You would remove $50 billion in foreign aid but retain $40 billion a year in defense expenditures – FOUR times more than our nearest competitor – in order to keep funding the forever wars.
I suggest we stop invading small countries and save ourselves billions of dollars a month. I suggest we streamline our defense department by reducing it’s funding to $10 billion/yr (same as the Chinese) and telling it to live with that funding like we tell our science and medical departments to live on a flat budget. Of the $30 billion we save, I suggest we use $20 billion to ship all the rednecks who support McCain to Argentina where they love beer-drinking hypocrits with guns. That will save us no end of trouble. I suggest we replace them with the hard working – if illegal – hispanics that can actually contribute something useful to our nation and won’t be continually attacking the constitution and selling our civil rights out of fear of muslims.
That orta keep you all juiced up for awhile.
Posted by Oldfart | October 11, 2008, 9:28 amPoor PC, you must have been very badly hurt by a Latin teacher at some point in your life. Or is it that you don’t like it being pointed out that you are just another conservative whose only means of rebutting points against conservatism is to go to the old “but Clinton” or new “but Obama” arguments and never address the original charge. Very sad. No wonder you conservatives have left the country in such dire conditions. Why do you people hate America so much?
Oldfart,
Are you referring to the funding for the Iraq war funding? The defense budget is actually closer to $500 billion a year, amazingly enough.
Posted by Mel | October 11, 2008, 12:34 pmHmmmm….I might have been off a zero or 3.
But $20 Billion to get rid of the 25 per-centers would be well worth it, ya gotta admit that!
I get confused by the actual Defense budget and the “real” cost of defensive offense.
Posted by Oldfart | October 12, 2008, 7:37 pm