"A Conservative for Obama" editorial: Don't hate tax cuts, hate spending increases!

Someone sent me a copy of an essay published in September in the Dallas city magazine, Big D, in which the former publisher of the conservative National Review says he's going to vote for Obama because he's less likely to get us into a war than McCain, and Obama also shows glimmers of useful pragmatism.

Good essay. He's right about the Republicans not being conservatives in any helpful sense any more - or for a long time. I am not confident that the Democrats are a whit better, but still... He's not promoting the Demos, he's promoting Obama, and he makes a good case.

However, I hate the misreading of the value and meaning of tax cuts -- first, we are not in debt because of the tax cuts -- the improvement in the economy since then generated more money for the government than projections had it earning before the cuts. Second, we are in debt because we are spending even more, if that is possible, than ever before - much, much more. Much of that on the war, but equally profligate in every other area Washington touches. There is simply no amount of tax money that will pay the bill when the politicians hold the credit cards. Just try asking a politician or a tax-eating special interest how much is enough? You'll never get a useful answer--because enough is all of it. There will never be enough money to satisfy them. Every increase in revenues is overmastered by a bigger increase in spending - whether in war or peace, in crisis or in flush times.

Third, if the economy is indeed staggering at this time, the worst thing on earth is to increase taxes -- not even on those awful, awful people, the "rich." JFK made this exact same argument while President, and then signed the largest tax cut since WWII - which was followed by the boom that helped define the economics of the 60s. The right thing to do, in reality, would be to cut marginal tax rates, especially where they will boost the economy most -- on the rich, on investment, on capital gains, on corporations. Yeah, I know -- all the devils of the modern world, what could I be thinking?

And then, of course, to cut government spending, which we should be doing even if revenues are up and even if we increase taxes. But we will never, in our lifetimes, have a budget of any level of government that goes down from one year to the next. Or even stays even. The most we can hope for is that a planned 20% increase will be held to, say a 12% increase -- whereupon we'll have to endure complaints that spending has been "slashed" 8% and how we are suffering!

Marlarky, baloney, bullshit. I weary of it.

But as he says, Obama is marginally less likely to invade someone, and might actually be a Kennedy type of character who would hesitate to kick the economy in the nuts, if he's really as "pragmatic" as this guy is hoping. We can all only hope.

McCain would be better, even with his lust for invasion, if only he were a real Republican conservative, who would cut taxes, reduce government impositions, reduce spending *somewhere, anywhere*, regulate less impulsively, and argue against government intervention in every aspect of human endeavor. But of course he's not a conservative in any of these areas, he's only, like all of his kind, a lifetime member of the Republican faction of the Politicians' Party.

So is Obama, though for a shorter lifetime, and so less embedded. A tiny flicker of nonpolitician hesitation would be a welcome relief at this point. Not to mention any little hope, however faint, that we won't try to play policeman or Superman to anyone outside our borders for the next four years.

But me, I'm voting Libertarian across the board. The heck with it. Maybe we'll get lucky and Obama will get the nod instead of McCain. But either way, I'm not voting for the Politician's Party this year either. Marginal variations in levels of oppression are welcome, but not worth my vote.

mac

Election 2008: Experience versus Judgment?

The Independent Institute in Oakland, CA, has an original and interesting view of this debate!

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Both Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have been criticized for their "inexperience." In his latest op-ed, Independent Institute Senior Fellow Ivan Eland argues that experience should not be a determining factor in the selection of national political leaders. Richard Nixon and James Buchanan, for example, had lots of experience before becoming president, yet neither was a good president, according to Eland. In contrast, Chester Arthur was a good president despite having previously held only two mid-level jobs in New York and being vice president for a mere six months when the assassination of James Garfield thrust him into the Oval Office.

John McCain, although a more experienced candidate than Obama, has shown poor judgment on several matters of foreign policy, according to Eland, including calling for greater U.S. involvement in Iraq and advocating Georgia's entry into NATO--a move that could draw the United States into a military confrontation with Russia.

On the other hand, Obama, writes Eland, "was against invading Iraq from the start, has astutely championed withdrawing U.S. combat forces during what is likely to be a temporary lull in violence, and was much more measured about the conflict in Georgia, which threatened no vital U.S. strategic interests." McCain, Eland concludes, has too much experience in getting co-opted into making bad judgments from serving too long in Washington's military-industrial-congressional complex.

"A President Needs Good Judgment Rather than Experience," by Ivan Eland (9/8/08) Spanish Translation

The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed (Updated Edition), by Ivan Eland

Center on Peace & Liberty (Ivan Eland, Director)

Hillary's Handlers Make a Good Case for Her Continued Fight--Believe It Or Not!

I heard one of Hillary's spin docs on a political show yesterday explaining why Hillary thinks she should keep running and deserves to have the superdelegates throw the nomination to her despite Obama's growing strength.

At first it was just ridiculous listening to him talking about changing the rules on Michigan (yes?) and Florida, and even talking about Puerto Rico's vote (they can't vote for president but can vote for the nominees, oddly enough). And he repeatedly ducked explaining Hillary's racist-sounding "candidate of the working white man" quote that is the current controversy. But as he talked, he started sounding entirely reasonable after all:

• The total popular vote so far is 16.5 million for Hillary and 16.7 million for Obama. In an election he would win; but this is a nomination, not an election, and in some sense this is not far from a tie.

• The job of the superdelegates isn't just to echo the popular vote. If it were, there'd be no point in having superdelegates (except as flattery, which it also is). The superdels, like all delegates if the convention were for example to be unable to come to a decision in the first vote, have as their first obligation to decide who the best candidate is for the Democratic Party--'best' in this case meaning only, and entirely, "the one most likely to get elected." In this near-tie vote situation leading up to the convention, there is nothing wrong with or even strange in suggesting they vote for Hillary if they decided she would be more likely to win the election. It wouldn't be a betrayal of party principle, or the voters; it would be what it is: Politics.

• And, finally, another commentator said Hillary is Hanging On mostly because, though she seems like a long shot now in mid-May 2008, "anything can happen," including a major screwup by Obama, a remark or act or bit of past history of Barack's that can be *twisted* into seeming like a major screwup, some world event that changes perceptions of the candidates (e.g. her stupid and scary Bomb Iran remark last month would make her sound Presidential if, say, Iran threw a nuclear missile at Isreal before the convention), or, also God forbid, some fatal or crippling accident to one of the candidates. All these are unlikely, but the one certainty about electoral politics is that nothing is certain. And, in light of the above, what happens doesn't even have to actually cripple Barack in the election--it just has to convince a few superdelegates that Obama has been seriously compromised, and -- Bam! -- the nomination goes to Clinton.

Personally, I am not thrilled at the idea of having Hillary as president; her lack of respect for liberty and the citizenry, and her arrogance in the use of power, are things to dread. Of course, Obama is no libertarian; he's as much a leftist Democrat as she is, he just doesn't have much baggage yet. And McCain, of course, has zero interest in the liberties of the people -- or in the Constitution, as he has proven repeatedly.

It will be a weird few months. I have to say, it is at times like this that I am glad I am a libertarian, and all this hubbub in both mainstream parties is just so much political eye candy for me - it's like watching a football game in which I have no team playing.

I just thank goodness there *is* a Libertarian Party on which I can waste my vote. It beats having to choose between (to exaggerate enormously) Stalin and Mao....