Tied to a leg of Sisyphus
The struggle mounts… this election thing has got me scared of my own urges, afraid of the facts I’ve yet to confront. My political peripheral vision is truncated by certain facts I wish not to heed; and blurred by ideals and ideologies I’ve grown scared to harbor.
This race has tired my soul already, and I don’t know if I’ve got the strength to even become aware of the “correct” approach and decisions…
Viva la Revolucion!
Peace
AM Son
the form of function 
September 3, 2008 at 6:49 am
So first off I have to apologize for taking so long to reply to this post 🙂
I have been on a bit of a news fast this summer, stole that phrase from a friend, partly because if I spend too much time reading up on any person I will eventually find things about them I do not like. What I’m scared of is coming across arguments against Obama that are made by someone who is trying to dissuade voters. I can make a strong argument against just about anything if I put my mind to it, I’ve done it in the past when I knew I was wrong just for fun and made the person I was talking to think twice when originally they deeply knew they were right.
As far as I’m concerned I’m behind Obama and this article doesn’t change things. I know that Nader, Gore, Kucinich, etc. share much more of my views than Barack… shit, I’ve signed the impeach bush petition on D.K.’s website. I was hesitant when I first read up on Obama because of some of his social views. As far as I’m concerned he’s to middle of the road on abortion, death penalty, separation of church and state, etc. But for me, none of those things actually matter.
What matters to me is the seemingly genuine care about the middle and lower class people in this country. Yes I know your article was about him appeasing hedge fund managers, and in my opinion the right thing to do would be to tax every penny anyone makes as income rather than capital gains, but who is going to get elected saying I want to take money from you and give it to the government?
In addition… I don’t trust that article. Yes there are quotes in that book about him seeming more like the hedge fund managers then the rest of the country, and yes I think the top income bracket being at 90% would make the world a better place, but I’m always suspicious of people who need to write articles that sell papers. You can take a few words out of things I’ve written before and paint me out to be an anarchist who genuinely wanted to kill everyone in the executive branch of the gov’t and lead a Bolshevik revolution. What else was in Barak’s book that the projo guy left out?
If you and I sat in a room with some of these hedge fund managers we’d probably think we were very much like them until the conversation turned to how much we should take from their paychecks each week. Jay and I have had hours of conversations about many things, and we are never going to come to an agreement on that issue.
now to my analysis of the article:
1. “For all his supposed concern about regular folks, Obama’s sympathy for the beleaguered people who still do manual labor remains suspect, while his willingness to appease the wealthy elites who preach the benefits of “free markets,” low taxes and job-destroying trade bills appears entirely sincere.”
This statement is just plain wrong.
Lets take the first part: “For all his supposed concern … remains suspect”
Nowhere in this article does he prove this point, and then in the next paragraph then lists things that support the antithesis of this argument:
“… In August 2007, for example, he co-sponsored … the Patriot Employers Act, which would give a 1 percent tax credit to employers who, among other things, hired more American workers and paid their employees at least $7.80 an hour…. Obama also said he would support legislation to treat the income of hedge-fund managers as regular personal income, instead of the current practice of taxing it at the capital-gains rate of 15 percent (and obama) has proposed restoring the top income-tax rate to the Clinton era’s 39.6 percent from its current 35 percent.”
in the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I removed the opinion parts of that paragraph and just left the facts.
the second part: “while his willingness to appease the wealthy elites … appears entirely sincere.”
Once again crap with no substance. His proof of this statement?
A Quote form obama’s book:
“Increasingly I found myself spending time with people of means — law firm partners and investment bankers, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists. As a rule, they were smart, interesting people, knowledgeable about public policy, liberal in their politics, expecting nothing more than a hearing of their opinions in exchange for their checks”
What I see in that sentence is a guy who is being truthful about how he had a surprise epiphany that these rich people weren’t all ignorant gimmie gimmie gimmie republicans, instead they were intelligent, well versed people.
Then in the next paragraph this author pulls one out of the republican bag of tricks… namely “you said something that doesn’t work with my argument so I am going to call you a fence sitter, or a flip flopper, or say you want things both ways, or that you are trying to talk out of both sides of your mouth…” or whatever other phrase you want to turn there.
Obama’s economic policy is raise taxes on those making > 200K (250K for families). For everyone else you remain where you are right now, or get a slight tax cut. This author takes that policy and compares it to pre-reagan numbers and says Obama isn’t genuine because he isn’t doing enough. Don’t get me wrong I would prefer that things go back to the way they were pre-reagan… I probably wouldn’t have student loans right now if it wasn’t for reagan, he took more money away from the government than any president in history. Without reagan states could have had more federal funding, they could hire good teachers and pay them well, they could fund public education and public college education, there wouldn’t be a soc secutiry problem (which I don’t really think there is to begin with but ehh), and we wouldn’t have the avg. yearly income for the top 5% at 2.8 million. But this author’s argument for Obama apeasing ritch people is that he is only going to return taxes on the ritch to clinton levels his first year in office rather than shooting for the moon and telling everyone he’s going to make things the way they were in the carter administration. Yea that’s a great way to win an election “hey everyone I’m going to double your taxes, pick me pick me!”
A big warning sign about this author is that he feels this statement:
“We can try to slow globalization but we can’t stop it.” is not true. As I sit here and write this I’m also conversing with two people in india. Yes, China, India, Mexico… they need to raise their requirements for employee benefits and they have their own class desparities to take care of, but to claim that globilization isn’t going to happen is just plain stupid.
To be quite frank… you can’t run for president, be an extremist, say what you mean, and have a chance. Nader is a great man, Nader would return us to pre reagan taxation, Nader would make America a better place, Nader will never have a chance. By basically saying “Obama should be really really really far left in his official economic policy or he’s not genuine” he’s kind saying “if he cares about the poor he should try and lose this election” Now obviously I’m being a little ridiculous myself with that statement, but the analogy actually fits. It’s unfortunate, but the best leaders, the people who would feel this way and be truthful about it cannot and will not ever win this popularity contest we call an election.
I’ve written a lot tonight, but if I leave you with anything it should be this. The person we would like to see become president cannot almost by definition become president. Then what are we left with? Well we can either throw our support behind the guy who is a step in the right direction, or ignore the election and everything altogether… of course to do that you’d probably have to have a news fast or something. 😀 Full circle!
The good news: local and regional politics afford you the opportunity to electic the real deal guys. Who knows maybe some day you’ll get the opportunity to throw your weight behind me in an election.