Matters Of Opinion

As The Election Day Comes…

As the election day comes around, Democrats are scraping to find a way to discredit the Republican candidates, even as every expert, liberal or conservative, predicts an R victory this November.

The right you will see a graph of the taxes payed out by “the rich” in the year 2004. I’ll explain the graph a little later, as it pertains quite extensively to the subject matter at hand.

A plant sent me an email that is being circulated by those inside the liberal Democrat community telling organizers exactly what to focus on.

I won’t release the email directly, since that may, in some small way, reveal the source, however I will deal with the main focal points one by one.

1) The first claim is that Republicans have released a tax plan that would borrow an additional $700 billion over the next decade for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans — and would increase our deficit by $4 trillion. Needless to say, it makes their claims of financial responsibility even less
believable than they were in the first place. (the words of the email, not mine)

My rebuttal? I thought you’d never ask.

Democrats routinely fail to recognize that cutting taxes has, over the decades, actually INCREASED revenue to our national government. However, the reason that the deficit has continued to go up and up and up, is because spending has never been cut. Statistically speaking, and if one cares to he or she may reference the graph, the rich actually pay MORE taxes than if the tax rate is higher. The reason for this? The “rich” are the ones that supply jobs. They own businesses, they manage major accounts…and at the end of the day, if they see they aren’t going to be taxed up the wazoo, they either a) hire more people or b) invest more money in different ventures. This creates jobs. Which creates taxpayers. This also creates more revenue for the “rich” man, who makes more money, and pays more taxes than when his tax rate is through the roof. Therefore, the government actually makes MORE money by having lower tax rates over all. The important thing for the government to recognize is that spending, being at the all time high that it is, needs to be cut in order to make those surpluses actually matter.

2) President Obama’s plan includes policies that reduce taxes on the
middle class and small businesses, and would extend the Bush tax cuts
only to those making under $250,000 — not to the wealthiest few.

My rebuttal: this is absolutely true. However, if the wealthiest few are getting the hard end of the bargain on this one, wheres the incentive for them to continue to hire more of those “middle class” people? In all different aspects of economics, there are a couple of things that economists universally agree on. One of the biggest aspects is incentives. Incentives are everything. The economy is not doing that great. There isn’t much incentive to hire people. In order to at least try and get the unemployment rate down, the wealthiest HAVE to be included in this. No matter what your ideology, no matter what your thoughts or feelings regarding the rich, they have to be given a reason to hire people. Period.

3) Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s tax plan would
nearly double our country’s projected deficit by adding $4 trillion in
tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans over the next ten years.
Republicans are pretending they would pay for those tax cuts by
freezing spending — but they haven’t said what they would freeze or
cut, and their freeze generally would save only $300 billion over the
next decade.

My rebuttal.

Hell, see the top couple of paragraphs. This is ludicrous!

Re-pass the Bush tax cuts all the way, from the lowest income to the highest. It worked to get us out of the recession of the early 2,000′s, and it is needed to keep us from the edge of a depression as we near 2011.

And yes, some spending should be frozen or at least cut. It’s what a responsible country does when they are in over their heads in debt. What, exactly? I don’t know, exactly. What would I do? Form a bi-partisan committee (TRULY bipartisan, with an even number of R’s and D’s) and go through the books one by one. Look for mess  ups. Look for wasted funds. If at the end of the day it isn’t that much of a success, at least it can be said that it was attempted.

4) Despite Republicans’ rhetoric about deficits and spending,
Senator McConnell’s tax plan would grow America’s deficit without
growing our economy, creating jobs, or boosting America’s middle
class. Instead, the Republican plan would return us to the same failed
economic policies that led to the economic crisis: cutting taxes for
the wealthy few, cutting regulations on special interests and big
business, and cutting middle class families loose to fend for
themselves.

Don’t cut regulations at all. I agree. The rules are there for a reason. However, I have to be the voice of dissent on most everything else. Special interests are pretty level across the liberal/conservative board, and middle class families are only middle class because they can hold onto a job that is (SURPRISE!) provided by the so called “rich”.

I don’t hate the rich. I recognize that they are the ones that actually supply jobs in this country, and that they have to be given some kind of reason to keep supplying jobs, even in this catastrophic economical climate. However, the Democrats are doing their damnedest to keep up the typical “rich vs. poor” schematic that has won them so many elections in the past.

Don’t fall for it this time, please.

Don’t let “hope and change”, which is about as useful as a pocket full of rainbows and unicorns, be your calling card. How about we use “hard work and perseverance”, and work towards rebuilding this country as best we can and making the unemployment rate go back down?

But you’re not going to make that happen by screwing the rich.

Global Warming: Three Seperate Thoughts On The Matter

Carbon Dioxide. We breath it out when we exhale. We create a lot of it when we burn our fossil fuels. We limit the parts per-million in the air that we breathe when working in a confined space. And it’s apparently causing a global warming catastrophe that could conceivably result in mass human extinction. When researching global warming, there are several different levels at which once can read about the possible severity of such a happening, and there are several different theories and scientists with different variations and varying fields of expertise that have thrown their two cents in on this matter. What’s the “inconvenient truth” regarding this matter? One wonders. However there are a number of different thoughts and theories that are extremely interesting, and each offers it’s own unique perspective on the matter.

The first and perhaps most publicized theory on the matter, made immortal by Al Gore and his “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary, is that global warming will result in mass extinction and drastic changes in our planets structure, and the only way to halt or even slow down such a happening would be to pass strict reforms on carbon emissions from businesses, to buy electric cars, and to generally cease emitting carbons into the atmosphere. Al Gore was awarded a Nobel Prize for this documentary, and throughout the film he shows numerous graphs and statistics from scientists and meteorologists to prove his theory (not to mention the fact that he whines consistently about losing the 2000 elections). According to this theory, carbon gets trapped in our atmosphere and stays there. Now, carbon is a good thing, because it traps in heat and allows our planet to sustain life. However, according to this theory, we are putting so much up in the atmosphere that it will melt our polar ice caps, submerge much of our coasts in water, and generally kill over half of our population on the planet. Subsequently, in the past few years, NASA has put out press releases saying that the data that Gore uses is old data and they have since found that the levels used are much less.(Singer and Avery, 2007) Also, in Great Britain, children are required to have a parents signature in order to watch the film, because so many other problems have been found with the documentary that it is no longer able to be said to be scientifically sound and is not allowed to be used for educational purposes(also, it violated the law in that there are so many politically charged statements throughout the video, and one is not allowed to push politics, one side or the other, in a public education school system).(Sheppard, 2007) What does this mean? Maybe everything, maybe nothing. That’s up to each individual to mull over and decide for his/herself.

On a more moderate note regarding the global warming controversy, we have Nathan Myhrvold. He and his team of inventors and scientists work in California in Silicon Valley. Some of his scientists research was actually used in the film “An Inconvenient Truth”.(Levitt and Dubner, 2009) Nathan and his team have worked on issues of global warming for years, and they themselves live as green as it is possible for them to. They chronicle many different ways that global warming is misrepresented, and speak frankly about Gore’s documentary and how it was meant to “scare the Hell out of people” (their words). They agree that it is a problem, even if they don’t agree with the doomsday scenario, however they offer up an interesting way to cheaply fix the problem without having to affect anybody’s lives or pocket books. They call it: the garden hose to the sky. The hose would be structured to reach eighteen miles into the sky, and would pump liquified sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. A sprinkler system would pump the sulfur dioxide around the globe about ten times a day, creating what the scientists affectionately call “Budyko’s Blanket”. The blanket would, according to the scientists, halt and possibly reverse global warming. Could this happen because of the politically charged atmosphere (so to speak)? Would politicians allow such a cheap and relatively simple plan come to fruition? That’s hard to say. However, this writer thinks it wouldn’t hurt to try such a scheme before resulting to mass business and manufacturing shut downs.

The third level of dissent would be the authors of “Unstoppable Global Warming”, referenced earlier in this paper. Singer and Avery are geologists who have dedicated their lives to mapping out past climate models, and have extensively researched Gore’s film and disagree very much that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide at all. They believe in global warming. Temperature changes and thermometers don’t lie. However, they attribute it to a natural progression of the Earth’s cooling and warming cycle. In fact, as predicted in their book originally published in 2007, temperatures have begun to see a cooling a trend, resulting in, perhaps, global cooling. Singer and Avery aren’t just “right wing hacks” or ideological deniers. They have won several awards in their field including an honorary doctorate from the University of Ohio in 1970; Special Commendation from President Eisenhower for the early design of satellites in 1954;and the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Federal Service.

Does any of this prove anything in particular? Maybe. Maybe not. However, in order for people to form an educated opinion on any one thing, some type of actual self educating is necessary. If one is to only believe the politically charged rantings of one politician versus another, then we would be a country of radicals on either side, and this writer for one does not care for such an idea. This debate is certainly not over, and will probably continue for some time, between the many different sects and degrees of extremity within the scientific community. And that’s a good thing! We should have open, intelligent debate across the whole never ending scope of ideas. Because that’s how good legislation is formed.

Game Over?

*Sigh*

Okay. There are so many elements to this it’s unbelievable. I don’t particularly agree with the Pastor Terry Jones. What does burning a crap load of Koran’s really do? Sure, I like to burn things too. I’ve always been a bit of a pyro. But this isn’t going to help anything.

Symbolically, Jones wants to burn the Korans as a symbol against radical Islam (note that he said radical, which is rather important) on the anniversary of 9/11. He has since suspended his endeavor because of pressure from the White House and from his own home town threatening to fine his arse off if he went through with it. While I’m glad he isn’t doing it, the fact that the federal government is involved with this at all is what bothers me the most.

Look, when people get mad, they burn stuff. And it’s all usually stupid.

When John Lennon made his statement that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, Christians across the country burned Beatles records. In protest to the war in Vietnam, liberals burned American flags. When protesting for woman’s rights, women burned their bras (actually, on reflection, I guess I’m ok with that one…). To this day, and I’m sure all the ladies can agree with this one, the first thing girls do when a boyfriend breaks up with them is to burn all his crap, usually with a “traveling pants” type circle of friends talking about how he was a jerk anyways there for moral support.

So lets not all be so appalled that somebody is pissed off and wants to burn something, all right? Let’s not be a bunch of pansies about this. “My God, somebody might get offended!” is not an excuse to stop something from happening. If he wants to do it, let him do it. How can you turn the other cheek at the burning of an American flag, and then be so outraged at something like this? If he wants to do it, just ignore him. Now it’s national news.

The other thing that bothers me about this is that the excuse the military is using to be against it is that it might put the troops in danger. This is probably true (of course, it would have to be talked about on the cable news in the first place for them to get the reception from the caves, in which case, see the above paragraph and tell the news not to cover it. It’s not unprecedented.) but still: if we choose to change our own countries behaviours in order to not piss off some Muslims overseas, what does that mean? That’s right. It means they’ve won.

Terrorism isn’t just about killing people. Sure, that’s often an element. But the basic goal of terrorism is to get people to do what you want. Terrorism is used to achieve this goal when you don’t have, say, an Army like America has. Through this manner, they want us to conform to their views, and so they will take their extremist groups and kill. It probably doesn’t even matter to them that he isn’t burning the Korans now. The next big Muslim firework show will be pinned on him even THINKING about burning the Koran.

What exactly CAN we do, then? Is the White House saying that it’s okay for me to burn Bibles but not the Koran? If this isn’t a war against radical Islam anyways, why should it matter to burn the Koran? Is this an admission that the enemy is, in many ways, an ideological one? Kind of like a cold war, except we’re actually putting lead out there?

WHY is President Obama letting himself get dragged into these kind of things? This along with the New York mosque debate are two great examples of Obama’s inadequacy as President. The President should be above these piddly little arguments. Leave these arguments to bloggers and grass roots people, there, Barry. This makes it seem like you’re admitting to an ideological loss to the terrorists. And if that happens…well, I don’t care much for pork anyways.

Republican Leadership?

Originally written for and posted at: www.thesub-urban.com

2010 is going to be a big year for Republicans.

I’m talking huge.

Colossal.

Oprah’s waist size big.

Obama’s ego big.

Ted Kennedy’s liver size big (too soon?).

Very few people are debating this point at the moment. There are different reasoning’s and explanations that have been thrown out there, along with a general inquisition as to who is going to lead the party in 2012, but very few aren’t in agreement when the question is asked: Who is going to win big in these in 2010, Republicans or Democrats? Now, there are many different reasons why R’s are going to dominate, and I’ll avoid the usual snark responses like, “We’re smarter,”, or, “We’re better at just about everything,” in order to come up with a real coherent understanding of the political realities that we are tied to this coming election. To start with, it’s the midterm elections, and those classically sway to the right anyways. Statistically speaking, a good chunk of the Democratic voters just don’t come out on midterm elections. Sure, they’re bussed in in droves during the presidential election (a little joke there, I’m here all night) but for whatever reason they don’t show up the following year (possibly because the homeless don’t stay in one area for longer than a couple years? All right, all right, I’m done…) . That block is typically younger voters and African American voters. Sure, there has been a very positive looking uptick in both youngsters and blacks showing up at the polls at all, but unless that uptick really rises, there will still be a dismal showing.

The House and Senate both have Democratic majorities, with a Democrat in the White House, and historically when that sort of situation is presented, the American independent voters level the playing field a bit. This pretty well goes for either party, and has been a more recent trend (relatively speaking, because it’s more of a trend that has developed more since the past couple of decades) where independent voters may vote in a D or an R President and then during midterms replace a D or an R in the House or Senate seats. It happened in the 90′s by putting Newt Gingrich and the Republicans in control of the House while Bill Clinton and the Democrats had the Presidency. It happened again in the 2,000′s when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats dethroned the decade of Republican House rule while George Bush was President, and it will probably happen again this year with the major Democratic dominance in government.

Also, there is the stagnant economy, an overall disenchantment with government, and a whole lot of grass roots activism on the right that has never been so vocal or active. Right now Republican’s are battening down the hatches, working together, and, for the most part, placing good candidates in important races. Yes, 2010, even admitted by most political scientists of a more liberal persuasion, is going to be an unstoppable Republican year (unless some cover up to massacre children is found, which is very very unlikely). A lot of this has been happening at the more local levels, since although members of Congress are often looked at nationally, at the end of the day they aren’t voted on by everybody in America but rather those that live in their individual districts. This is the reason that Nancy Pelosi can continue to be reelected, even though her national approval rating hovers around 15%. Just from my own experiences here in my little corner of Northwest, Indiana, the party has been pristine with their organization and the candidates have been hitting the road hard, knocking on doors rain or shine, handing out pamphlets, and involving the grass roots with their campaigns, showing their recognition of the hard work these groups put in and showing that the groups are energized and happy with the over all lurch of the party back to the right (otherwise, these same very helpful grass roots organizations would turn on the party, and would be pulling for a third party candidate or fielding their own primary opponents. While we’ve seen a little of that with the libertarian sects, it hasn’t been an unusual amount because the libertarians, no matter how far to the right the Republican party goes, will always peg the party as not sufficient for their libertarian means. Ron and Rand Paul are more the exceptions that prove the rule than anything else, and even though they have R’s after their names, a lot of Republicans won’t claim them, including this one. And in any effect, if Ron Paul hauled any more pork back to his district while constantly preaching economical efficiency, he’d have change his profession from doctor and Congressman to butcher and hypocrite.)

However, on a national level right now, there is much to worry about. During this period of Republican re-invigoration, there’s an onward battle between many different faces, sects, and aspects of the party to be the leader and, subsequently, the 2012 Republican nominee for president. This next year and half, depending on presentation and determination, will decide if it will be Sarah Palin with her espousing of traditional conservatism, Mike Huckabee with his Christian right and evangelicals, Ron Paul and his libertarianism, or John McCain again with his moderate views. Granted, there may be an “out of the blue” candidate that could jump into the race (perhaps a John Thune or a Mitch Daniels) but as of right now, that seems to be the most likely handful. The only reason I didn’t include a Romney or a Giuliani in this mix is that neither one has been as vocal, and neither one have done a very good job of putting themselves out there for conservatism, especially when conservatism is the key word this year with Republicans. Of course I’m sure their names will end up the ballot, but I don’t think they will get far in the primary and so, for the sake of keeping this mostly about the possible nominations, I’m not going to dwell on them nearly as much.

On a public level, you don’t hear a lot of in-fighting and baring of claws as of yet (which is good, I think it would make the party look disorganized and petty if that were to happen so far away from 2012) but when you look at the grass roots level, whether it be through blog sites, Facebook and MySpace rantings, or even rhetoric at different events, an internal warring of ideologies is eminent and real. For example, while I do believe that there are indeed RINO’s in the party (Republican’s In Name Only), not EVERY moderate Republican is a RINO. I don’t believe John McCain to be a RINO. I don’t think that every member of Congress should be thrown out and publicly exonerated. Yes, there are members of Congress that are inadequate for the job, at least in my eyes, however that is ultimately up to the voters in those districts to take care of that situation. Regionalism in politics is a very real thing, and the voters in Tennessee don’t influence, say, the voters in Arizona.

Another prime example is the constant usage of the term “neoconservative” to describe any Republican that doesn’t tow a certain libertarian line. Every Republican that is in support of the Iraq war, or that agrees we need a more hawkish foreign policy, is not automatically a “neoconservative”. There has been this odd fascination with libertarian leaning R’s to weed out the hawks under the guise of eradicating the “neocon’s”, and though it isn’t going to happen any time soon, there is a small danger of losing the elderly vote that has a much more hawkish foreign policy (but I could rattle on about that all day, I’ll save it for another piece). There are hundreds of others that I could speak of, different ways of looking at things, different ideologies, however I think you all get the point. There is some fighting with in the family for the head of the dinner table, and only one man/woman can carve the bird.

This isn’t too uncommon, though. The Republican party has always been the “Big Tent” party because it incorporates so many (needed) elements. The different ideologies are there to counter balance each other and to (usually) come up with the best possible legislation for the most people as possible. We need the libertarians to keep us fiscally sound, but we have to be weary of their protectionism and often nutty foreign policy platforms. We need the traditional conservatives, not just because it’s such an enormous block of votes, but so that we don’t become knee jerk reactionaries and take things slow and steady, like most conservatives universally agree is the best, most effective method of passing good legislation. And we need some moderate voices in the party as well, because not everyone is politically tied down to one ideology or the other, and in fact more and more people consider themselves independent voters.

Also, this isn’t uncommon for a party that is in the throes of reconstruction, either. During the long stretch of Democratic President’s (FDR, Truman, an eight year break of the trend with Eisenhower, who was a rather moderate conservative, following by Kennedy and LBJ) there was worse infighting than now. Rockefeller represented the liberal wing of the Republican party, Nixon the moderates, and Goldwater the conservative wing, and many more dirty tricks and underhanded things were done back then compared to now because we didn’t have 24 hour news channels, cell phones with camera and video recording capabilities, or shock news hounds that wanted to dismantle politicians with a rather unhealthy passion (this changed with the Watergate scandal, of course). Hell, wire tapping itself was commonly ordered from the White House, and the Kennedy and Johnson administration had ordered at least double the wire tappings that Nixon had, not to mention the dirty Chicago politics that probably got Kennedy elected, or the dirty deals that Johnson was known to cut in order to get what he wanted. Politics was different then, less transparent and less accountable to the American people. There was a lot less “sun light” on the politicians, and so not only were they less accountable when in office, but the in fighting was less publicly known during that time or even in election cycles.

Right now the Republican party is like a giant game of king of the hill. Every ideology has their hat thrown in the ring, and they are all scraping to end up at the top and be able to mold the party as they each individually see as the best fit. It’s one of the reasons that I love politics. The different people with different ideas battle it out and the person who has conveyed his/her thoughts on the issue, and has done a good job hitting the streets, and has…well, just been lucky, runs and becomes de facto leader of the party for that period of time. Hopefully at the end of the day they can all do what past politicians have been able to do: shake hands and smile. Because while they may all be vying for power, they have to realize that the over all goal is better, if not good, government that does well for our nation and is supported by the people. If any one of them begin to lose sight of that over all goal, and I’m not convinced that any of them have, then all is lost.