The Sark Economic Bailout Plan

I've been away for a while as some have suspected :) But I felt compelled to get this up at the request of some folks in a land far far away.

The administration is proposing $700,000,000,000 (thats what billiions looks like, or $2500 per every man, woman, and child in the U.S.) bailout of the Wall Street companies that hold the significant portion of CDS (credit default swaps) the little pieces of paper of sub-prime mortgages that the Investment banks have been trading with each other at ever decreasing value until they are nearly worthless, thus the inability to use them as collateral for future business operation or other loans.

What does this actually do? It provides a place (a Resolution Trust type entity) for these Wall Street banks to essentially dump suspect mortgage paper and get them written off the books (which will actually have to be written off causing significant losses) and free up generally acceptable mortgage backed securities (the non sub-prime) paper to be used as normal collateral for inter bank loans. The dumped "bad" mortgage paper is still "bad" and suseptable to mortgage defaults and foreclosures, but the big Investment banks are relatively unscathed, and we the working tax payers get stuck with the bill eventually. I say eventually, because the governement right now is not even concerned about any of the massively growing national debt, and this just adds to it.

Ok, the Investment banks get clear balance sheets, they can use normal mortgage loan paper as collateral, the government and us get stuck with $700,000,000,000 in suspect loans that people can still fall into foreclosure on, and the tax payers get the bill.

Now let's think about this from a what went wrong perspective. Banks gave out loans to people who probably couldn't afford them in the long run, but kept pushing for average and below average earning americans to keep buying houses and the more the banks pushed the requirements lower, the more risky financially capable americans bought into the hype and tried to buy their piece of the american dream. The banks and all their accountants, auditors, and executives should have known better. The Americans who over extended themselves should have known better, but let's face it, the average american doesn't have a CPA degree, or nearly the financial acuem that the banks should have had watching over things. If the people with the financial acuem and fancy banking related degrees thought it was ok, why wouldn't the average Jane and Joe out there trying to finally be able to buy a house of their own?

Now what to do. And this is where the Sark bailout plan comes into play.

Take the $700,000,000,000 and PAYOFF those risky mortgages to some degree at the home owner level, say mortgages of $250,00 or less. 50cents on the dollar, or some scaling so that the amount owed by the individuals put their overall financial state more in line with the 33% of gross income rule. Bring the amount of the loan principle down to the proper level, so that the mortgage becomes no longer "sub-prime". Do that with the money and we do more than just save the bacon of the Wall Street big shots, but we actually strengthen the underlying American Economy, by freeing up available consumer spending to nearly the same amount of money. The Wall Street investment banks now have the majority of their CDS converted to "normal" mortgage paper, easily used as normal loan collateral, there isn't nearly as much "bad" paper that needs to be dumped to some "Resolution Trust", and laid on the heads of the ever increasingly burdened tax payer. And the very sluggish underlying economy gets an immediate inflow of non home equity disposible income from consumers which drives 2/3rds of the economy.

ADDENDUM:
Available for PRIMARY home mortgages only

All renegotiated mortgages would be required to have PMI insurance.

At time of resale or refinancing of a "renegotiated" mortgage, the reduction in principle amount must be repaid to the Government

NO Home Equity loans could be made to homeowners of a "renegotiated" mortgage property.

The Sark plan is called "Trickle Up" Economics. And personally, I think it does a better job of solving more than just the one problem of some serious Wall Street Gambling that Tax Payers Anonymous have to end up footing the bill for.

Dogs at play #1

Dealing with government care issues.

Working with government social services programs for the elderly will absolutely drive you nuts. I’m in the process of trying to get my 71 year old mother who has lung cancer approved for Medicaid the last couple of weeks, and I can tell you from personal experience that it can be a nightmare. There is no “single point” of contact that you can get to work with you to navigate the myriad of paperwork trails, working with LTC facilities, insurance companies, and other myriad of government and private groups to get something accomplished.

Somehow, everyone automatically thinks that the “family” can deal with all this paperwork, interviews, and endless meetings to get things done, when in fact the “family” is typically in a situation that they are barely able to deal with the mental and physical aspects of taking care of a elderly family member in need.

So if any of you out there are currently in this position as well, or perhaps you will need to be in the future, my heart felt sympathies go out to you. My only words of encouragement is “keep plugging away at the walls”, and “good luck”. It is a mentally stressful and physically draining experience to have to go through, and anyone forced into the position of dealing with a serious illness of a family member needs comfort and support as well as the family member that is ill. Often, I have found, that the agencies, both private and government, that you have to deal with, forget what the supporting family members are going through, and act as if they are intentionally forcing them to perform 3 ring circus acts to get anything meaningful accomplished.

Obama puts web site to work for flood relief

I've been a little busy the last few days, and haven't been able to post as frequently as I would like, but I wanted to pass on this information about what Obama is trying to do for the flood victims in the midwest.

Obama has dedicated the main page of his presidential campaign website and is sending emails out to his supporters asking for direct support for the flood victims.

Obama site

Let the economy positions begin

Seems Obama and McCain are both out expounding on their economic plans. Looks like they are going to be doing the rounds over the next couple weeks positioning their stands on the economy. While neither has the "official" title of nominee of their party, the general campaign seems to be gearing up pretty quickly and looks to be substantially different than previous elections.

Time gives a broad brush look at Obama's economic proposals, and CNN does a little comparison shopping between the two.

I can't remember the last time there were two candidates that differed so significantly on such a broad range of issues. Looking forward to watching the debating both in debates and in the point counter point press releases.

Where is that gas tax holiday Sen McCain?

I've looked all over the congressional record and I can't find your proposed gas tax holiday bill anywhere to be found? Please tell us this wasn't a campaign stunt. Of course a week after Memorial day that $30 savings we were going to get is getting smaller and smaller each day.

The Dem race is over, but Clinton still swinging?

I listened to the speeches given tonight by Clinton and Obama. I was listening to McCain's speech and dozed off... sorry.

But I have been thinking about the situation in the Democratic party and the impression that Clinton left with her speech, and what it could mean as far as VP positioning, and party unity. And one of the things that struck me was the tone and temperment of the Clinton speech which I thought was still confrontational to a large degree, and still beating the "I'm the more electable candidate" drum, on a night when Obama had actually passed the required number of delegates to claim the nomination in no uncertain terms.

There has been a lot of talk about Clinton floating the idea that she would be open to being VP, and doing her utmost to help unify the party. My sense is that she probably flushed any possibility of her being on the ticket away with her speech tonight. She is continuing to drive her electablity as the primary candidate. She through the primaries has tried to paint Obama as weak and inexperienced, and basically checked off all the chips she has on the table as leverage to be taken as the VP.

However, by continually painting Obama as weak, and effectively listing the reasons he HAS to pick her as VP she is putting him in a box where he has no choice but to select someone else. After her speech tonight, to select her as his running mate, will provide credence to her assertion that he is a weaker candidate by giving into the pressure of the nomination losing candidate. To take her on the ticket now as an apparent appeasment to political pressure, he would automatically lose any credibility of being able to stand up to foreign leaders. Some one on CNN said as much in their assessment, that if he can't stand up to the Clinton pressure, how can he stand up to foreign leaders.

Unfortunately, I think Clinton passed on a unique opportunity to gracefully exit the race with dignity, and recognize the historic significance of an African-American winning the nomination of a major political party for the first time, and strongly start building party unity, but focused still on why she is the better candidate.

My view is that Obama has no choice now, but to go elsewhere for a VP candidate.

Blitzer preaching the "dream ticket" again

Wolf Blitzer of CNN is once again dreaming of the “dream ticket”. Mr Blitzer has been beating this drum ever since the last Democratic debate that he moderated between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I’ve never quite understood his almost insatiable campaigning for this particular scenario, but I’m pretty sure that it is purely wishful thinking on his part.

The original hoopla over the “dream ticket” of Clinton and Obama being on the same Democratic party ticket started with his last question of that debate, and he hasn’t let it die for more than a couple of days in the intervening time. More and more of the DNC members, specifically Pelosi have stated quite frankly that the possibility of a Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton ticket is probably not even a remote possibility. And quite frankly, from a objective political view, it benefits neither Obama, Clinton, or the Democrats in a November general election.

While I give Blitzer leave to voice his opinions and possible wishes, I think the media needs to reflect on exactly what it’s role is in our national debates and elections. I firmly think that Blitzer should stick to the proper role of reporting and analyzing election news, instead of trying to beat a drum to try and direct an outcome, that most political observers see as a non-starter.

Stick to reporting Wolf, that is what you are paid for.

Bush Slam Dance

There is no crying in Baseball... ok maybe

There may be no crying in baseball, but the Rockies are trying to make it almost impossible not to anymore. On a nice day at Wrigley Field, the Rockies managed to surrender an 8 run lead to end up losing 10-9. Jeff Baker's 4 doubles couldn't even stave off another total implosion by the pitching staff on a day when the bats finally started to warm up.

Considering the expectations after their near miraculous 21 of 22 run at the end of last season to get to the World Series, and the signing of nearly all of the core players to multi-year contracts, this year's Rockies are looking more like a AAA team than defending NL champions.

Someone hand me a hankie.. I feel like crying a bit.

Let's talk FL and MI come the 31st

The DNC rules committee will meet on the 31st to figure out what the heck to do with the Michigan and Florida delegation seating.

While we wait.. let's look at this from the two candidate's perspective.

Obama: There is absolutely no reason for him to want to compromise to get either delegation seated. There is no advantage in it for him in terms of the nomination. If the roles were reversed, and Clinton was ahead, and Obama had won MI and FL, does anyone think for a moment that she would be howling at the moon to count those votes and get the delegates seated, if they in anyway had a possibility of providing Obama with a reason to take it to the convention? I think not.

Clinton: Getting MI and FL seates as voted (with Obama off the MI ballot, and no campaigning in FL), is the only sliver of hope left for Clinton to even get close enough (getting both seated still won't let her overtake Obama), to make the "popular vote" argument to the super delegates. But if she can get them seated relatively close to how the original voting allocated, it opens the door for her slightly to take this thing to the convention for a floor fight which is something the DNC definately doesn't want to see happen. It would practically cripple the Democrats afterwards. If Obama was behind and had won MI and FL, I'm sure we would be seeing the very same arguments from him to get them seated, and Clinton would be fighting tooth and nail to scale back their impact.

So basically what we have here, is the person in front, having no logical reason to compromise, will probably have to. The person behind, absolutely needing them seated in their entirety, probably not willing to compromise, but will probably have to.

In the end we will probably see the GOP theory at work, seating half of them or some such percentage. Clinton will draw a little closer, but not close enough to catch up in the delegates count, the super delegates will weigh in after June 3rd at about a 50 50 split, and Obama still ends up the nominee, but Clinton will have fought the great fight, and be positioned to go at it again in 4 years should Obama not win in November.

The results of the 31st meeting should at least provide some additonal entertainment Because the Obama supporters won't like the outcome, and the Clinton supporters won't like the outcome, and we will be able to see both sides ridicule and spit at each other from afar until the convention in August

Eight walks, 3 base running outs... OMG!

The Rockies season has turned into the season from hell. With half the starting lineup on the DL, and a rookie pitcher that walked eight.... that is right he walked eight batters, and three base running outs, the Rockies lost 6-1 to Philly last night.

During their historic 21 of 22 run at the end of last season, they couldn't do anything wrong. Now they can't seem to do anything right. They can't hit, they can't pitch, and who would have thought it, they can't run.

In probably the biggest understatement of the year, "We're not even worried about where we are now," manager Clint Hurdle said. "We need to play better. We need to focus in our own backyard. We've got improvement to be made in every area. Unfortunately, we've earned the position we're in."

All I can say is DUH?

We drive less, but gas keeps going up? I smell a Rat

According a CNN article, the Department of Transportation, figures for MARCH.. that is MARCH, not April or May... but MARCH, we saw the steepest decline in driving in the US ever recorded. We drove nearly 11 Billion (thats a B) miles less in March of this year than last year, a 4.3 percent decrease, yet gas prices continued to rise over that period, and fuel stockpiles decreased.

Can someone explain what the heck is going on here? Last time I took an economics class, decreasing demand was supposed to mean increasing supply, not the inverse. And decreasing demand, should be leading to decreasing prices, not the inverse.

I'm begining to smell a rat in the barnyard here folks.

Time to become a novelist?

I’ve been mulling the idea of becoming a novelist. After all I’m retired, and hate gardening, and the political campaigns will only be able to keep me interested until November. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and I liked to write short stories as a teenager, and well into my twenties. I’ve always been a J.R.R. Tolkien fan and there have been some miserable attempts to put out novels that attempted the same broad narrative approach to myth-fantasy.

Since this blog is more an exercise in spouting my intermittent thoughts into the internet void, putting down my love of fantasy and myth into a novel form has always intrigued me. Besides I’ll never make any money with this blog since there are way too many political oriented blogs out there, and no one really clicks on those somewhat annoying Google ads. :)

While I would never convince anyone that I was the next Tolkien, I do feel like I have a well rounded imagination that lends itself to the broad scope myth-fantasy creation that Tolkien made so engrossing. And as I said I don’t really have anything else to keep me busy, I might as well jump into the water, so to speak, and see if I can swim. After all if J.K. Rowlings can start out as an unknown author with a unique idea, and a willingness to stick to the proposition, I think I can.

We will see what happens.

Attacks on Clinton's RFK comments asinine

Well we have finally reached a point in the Democratic nomination race where any statement by either of the candidates is ripped apart and spun in such a way to make it the most disgusting thing ever imaginable. Most of you who have read my blog know that I am an Obama supporter, and am not at all enthralled with the idea of Hillary Clinton getting the nomination, both on personal faults, and her stands on some of the issues.

With that said, I have to say the uproar over her recent comments about the RFK assassination is about as bogus as anything I’ve seen yet in these campaigns. The pundits and the bloggers would have you believe that she is somehow implying that she is staying in with the hope that Obama might befall the same fate as RFK, and making it out to be some heinous implication that it is one of the reasons she is staying in the race.

After reading her comments to the particular editorial board, how anyone can come to the conclusion that she is somehow awaiting Obama’s assassination is totally asinine. Her merely pointing out that previous Democratic nomination races have not been resolved before the middle of June, and turning it into some menacing meaning, shows the vitriol course that the media, the bloggers, and the political forum morons will go to try and twist any comment from a candidate into a blustering support for their candidate at the expense of any responsible judgment.

With the general election season gearing up to start, the viciousness of the media, and the campaign surrogates, can only be expected to increase to a more idiotic fever pitch. Anyone who needs to twist every comment made by a candidate into some sinister plan, is once again feeding on the propaganda of fear that has been the hallmark of the current administration, and should be viewed with proper scrutiny and cynicism.

When an election is decided by the pure unadulterated misdirection, and fear mongering of the media, the pundits, and the campaign surrogates, we all lose the view of facts. Be wary of falling for the despicable reporting of ALL of today’s media, both televised, and through the internet. Be cynical of their purpose and their agenda in reporting anything stated by any of the candidates.

The best defense for America is an intelligently cynical and informed electorate, who is unwilling to take the spoon fed pulp being fed up by today’s so called news sources. Research stands for yourself, make your own decisions. Only with those premises as our guide can we the true electorate make our impact on the direction of the country, and take back our government, and make it once again responsive to our needs.

More primaries and more damage to the Democrats

I’m watching the results from the Oregon primary come in, and it looks like Obama will win Oregon, while Clinton won another lopsided win in Kentucky tonight. I’m thinking about one of the most talked about, but less really focused on aspects of the exit polling from both West Virginia and Kentucky, and a somewhat disturbing bit of statistics keep coming back to what we have been hearing Clinton pound on for the last few weeks since Pennsylvania. She has sharpened her rhetoric that “working class whites” are voting for her, as a mantra to the super delegates that she is a more viable candidate against McCain in a general election. Her continual beating of the racial drum may have started to resonate with some of her constituency, and in doing so may be irreparably damaging the Democratic party in the process.

In Pennsylvania, 12% of the white voters that said that race was important to them, Clinton got 76% of the vote from that segment. In West Virginia, after campaigning for weeks that “white blue collar workers” were voting for her instead of Obama, 21% of white voters who said that race was important to them, Clinton got an overwhelming 84% of their vote. Now again in Kentucky, after another week of the same “white blue collar workers” are voting for her instead of Obama stumping, 18% of the white voters that said that race was important to them, Clinton got an even larger 88% of their vote. Not only has race shown to be a major factor in the campaign now, but it seems that Clinton has started to increase the wedge effect of race within her own voting constituency.

In the mean time to shore up her other core support base, Clinton has come out blasting the media for not showing the same concern over the sexist aspects of the campaign as they have been the race aspect. However, in the exit polling, on average, gender has no where near the direct block of voter impact that the growing percentage of whites who consider race to be an important part of their decision making is.

The Democratic party was always a loose coalition of factions, purporting to be the champions of the minorities, Blacks, Hispanics, Women, and the less affluent components of the American electorate. But what has happened during the Democratic nomination campaign, is that the party has fairly split itself along what can now be primarily viewed as racial lines, with Blacks voting for Obama, and blue collar whites voting for Clinton, and to a degree each voting block uses race as one of their major decision points.

Whether Clinton drops out of the race before the convention or not, is probably a moot point now. The damage to the Democrats may be irreparable, and to a large degree the fault for that has to lay firmly on Hillary Clinton’s side of the playing field. Her husband’s ill conceived words after the South Carolina primary, pretty much wrenched the traditional Black vote that she had counted on and drove it to Obama. Her recent, and continual beating of the “white blue collar workers vote for me” mantra over the last three or four weeks, has effectively driven an inescapable wedge between that Democratic group and Obama, that may not be able to be repaired.

Any way you slice it, and the Democratic pundits keep proclaiming that the Democrats will rally around the nominee, there may have been terrible damage done to the Democratic party base, that will probably not heal by November. And should the Democrats lose in November, the damage may be terminal to the party going forward.

Supporting Mark Udall for US Senate from CO

I've pretty much decided to support Mark Udall in his run for the US Senate seat from Colorado this November. While his congressional voting record of voting across party lines at a little under 5% is not what I would consider bipartisan, getting another Democrat into congress to break the GOP log jam is more important. Since I'm supporting Obama for president, trying to give him the majority in the congress that will be needed to get some things changed is a top priority for me. Plus I am so tired of the GOP political machine and it's campaigns of fear and division, that a clear message needs to be sent.

I haven't looked at the house seat yet, but will be doing that over the next week or so.

As for the State level houses, and the local elections, there is still a lot of investigation to do, but I doubt it will be quite as straight forward as the first two.

All I ask of anyone, is if you are going to vote.... get yourself informed, and make a decision based on verifiable information, instead of the innuendo, and garbage that the current political machines consider valid campaigning these days.

Bush manages to unify Democrats

In one masterful stroke, President Bush found probably the only way to unite the possibly fractured Democratic Party. Attack both the party and the possible Presidential nominee of the party from half way across the globe, and rationalize them being similar to those who appeased Adolf Hitler prior to WWII.

The violent and colorful retorts of Senator Biden, Clinton, and Obama blasting Bush for his comments before the Israeli Knesset proved once again what a unifying force Bush has become for the Democratic Party. And if Bush hadn’t done enough to give the Democrats something to unite around, Senator McCain helped himself to some of the Bush legacy by jumping on board for much of the same type of attack.

In one single afternoon, Bush managed to get Hillary Clinton to defend Barack Obama, something that hasn’t happened in over three months. And Senator McCain managed to once again link himself to the most unpopular president in modern history by jumping on the “appeasement” bandwagon started by Bush. You just couldn’t make up a scenario that would present a more unified target for the Democrats at a time when McCain has tried to significantly distance himself from Bush.

An election that exposes our nations racial divides

If you happen to be a person that believes that racial hatred is dead in America, this presidential election will be a shocking revelation to you. As a baby boomer who grew up in the south west and then later living in Colorado, the kind of blatant racial hatred that you read about in other places in the country was always a far off thing to me, and something I tended to see as isolated problems. For some reason I had made myself believe that ingrained racial hatreds were somehow a thing of the past, and that we as Americans had progressed beyond using the color of one’s skin as a measure of their ability to contribute to the country.

I was mistaken. If one thing has been highlighted for me in this presidential election, it is that there is still a serious, and deep, racial divide within the country. I have spent a lot of time over the last few months participating in political forums of different kinds, and one thing that seems to be a constant, is that there are still some blacks and some whites that can not or will not move past the color of other people when making decisions about who they will associate with, who they will support, and who they will talk to, and who they won’t.

Simply view the postings on many of the political forums going on these days, and you will be swamped by the racial rants both for and against Obama. Most of the posters in these forums who are decidedly against his candidacy for president, can not give issue related reasons, without eventually, falling into the same old diatribes of him being a Muslim, his association with his former pastor, his writing that he feels more comfortable with his black heritage than his white. Eventually, any discussion about Obama in these forums degenerates into insults, and racial slurs.

The underlying racial tone of this election is not just seen in the popular forums either. The Washington post did an article depicting what some of the Obama volunteers have had to endure on the ground soliciting support for their candidate, and it was wholly disgusting that at this time in our history, that we as a nation are still consumed with racial hatred.

If there is one thing that I hope comes of this election, whether Obama is the nominee, or even eventually our president, is that his campaign will have made America finally look at it’s self in the mirror and force it to recognize that we are not the paragons of virtue that we announce ourselves to be to the rest of the world. We have a very long ways to go, but perhaps we are in the process of taking another great step in moving past the long standing racial divides within our society.

I for one hope it is the case.

GOP to HQ... We have a problem

On March 9th a little-known Democrat named Bill Foster won a special election for the seat formerly held by former GOP house speaker Dennis Hastert over Republican Jim Oberweis. Hastert had held the GOP seat in the house for 20 years. McCain had personally endorsed Oberweis, while Obama endorsed and cut a TV ad for Foster.

On May 3rd a Democrat won a special congressional election in Baton Rouge Louisiana taking a seat the GOP had held since 1974. Democrat Don Cazayoux defeated Republican Woody Jenkins for the seat opened up when Republican Richard Baker a 20 year incumbent resigned. Cazayoux was attacked in ads that painted him as a supporter of Barack Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This was second special election for a long time GOP seat where negative campaigning from the RNC tried to force negative association with the Democratic candidate with Obama and the Rev Wright. In both cases the negative attack ads failed to secure a GOP win in a historically GOP congressional district.

While the rest of the nation was focused on the West Virginia Democratic presidential primary on May 13th, another special election was unfolding in Mississippi. And at this time CNN has projected that Democrat Travis Childers will defeat Republican Greg Davis in a GOP seat held since 1994. For the third time in as many special elections the RNC threw the book and a ton of money into this election. There were major negative ads run against Childers again linking him to aspects of Reverend Wright through the national picture of association with Barack Obama. Both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the conservative group Freedom Watch spent heavily on television commercials that linked Childers to Obama. While Obama had not endorsed Childers, it was obvious that the RNC thought such a linkage was going to be an effective campaign strategy leading up to the November elections. If that was their thoughts, they may be rethinking it now after three straight special election defeats.

If the GOP does not seem concerned about a national thrashing in November, they might want to start worrying a little bit more, as seats traditionally considered safe for the Republicans in the general election, may not be as safe as they once thought. A second repercussion of these three special elections, could be that the current conventional wisdom of the historic Red and Blue states may be a whole lot more Purple than the GOP, and even Hillary Clinton and the Democrats may be thinking.

Does the strict Red vs Blue state plans still work?

I’m beginning to wonder if the strict Red vs Blue state breakdown of states in a general election still follows the mapping that both major political parties have laid out. One of the possible benefits to the Democrats is that their primary race has brought both major candidates to states that normally would not have had a Democrat campaign in either in the primaries or the general election simply because they would be a foregone GOP state.

There are roughly twelve “swing” states that the previous winner in the previous two elections won by less than 5% of the vote. All of these states have been campaigned in by the Democrats and significant voter registrations have taken place due to the intense excitement of the Democratic nomination race. These states may be more in play in this election cycle than at any time in the past five elections.

As an Independent, I have the luxury of setting back from the overall fray and watching the intricacies of the developing race with a little bit more objectivity than the normal political party adhering voter.

One of the main things I will be watching come November, is the impact of the “swing” states, and even some of the more traditional GOP states as they come in on election night to see if the Red vs Blue slate has changed in it’s dynamics.

It should be a heck of a show regardless.

Clinton goes Nuclear on Race card

I have long held to the belief that once the Clinton political machine got backed into a corner, that something would be said that would finally show Senator Clinton to be a politician that would say or do anything to get elected. Yesterday it finally happened.

Yesterday in a USA Today interview she pretty much dismissed Obama’s ability to be elected president as he would have a hard time winning support from white Americans.

Interview excerpt:
"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
/end excerpt

Does anyone remember the off the cuff remarks of Bill Clinton’s after the South Carolina primary where he implied that Obama’s win was similar to that of Jessie Jackson previously? Doesn’t sound like such a mis-interpretation now.

Clinton has continuously run a more negative campaign. As the math kept developing into a nearly impossible path to the nomination for her, it was only a matter of time before the vindictive political shrew came out into the open.

In a country founded with a born sin of slavery, a civil war to expunge slavery, and a national movement for civil rights to force equal treatment, the idea that a presidential candidate at this juncture would resort to the obvious and misguided statement that a Black candidate can’t win white support is beyond stupid.

I had said in my previous post after the primaries on May 6th that Clinton was essentially a “Dead candidate walking”. After yesterday, I can only hope that I am correct. Unfortunately, for the Democrats, Clinton may have just put a dagger through the heart of their chance to take both houses and the presidency. She may have divided the Democrat party irrevocably.

Oh and Hillary, if you read this? I’m a White American that not only supports Obama, but will vote for him come November.

Dead Candidate walking

On a night when Hillary Clinton needed in her words a “game changing event” she failed to see it materialize. Barack Obama claimed the North Carolina primary with a convincing 14% win, and narrowly lost the Indiana primary by 2%. The more important fact of the May 6th primaries was that Clinton’s closing of the pledged delegate lead of Obama by 12 with her win in Pennsylvania was completely wiped out by Obama’s 16 pledged delegate difference in North Carolina.

At a time when Obama should have been at his weakest in this long Democratic party nomination race. With Obama on the defensive after the Reverend Wright debacle, the “Bittergate” stumble, Hillary Clinton needed to win both Indiana and North Carolina primaries to significantly close on Obama and continue her case before those undeclared super delegates, and it did not materialize.

What becomes an even more increasing problem for Clinton going forward is the issue of money. After PA, her campaign saw a dramatic $10 million dollars in donations over night immediately following her win there. I seriously doubt there will be that kind of “money bounce” after the results of yesterday. Her campaign is increasingly in financial straights, and is developing an ever increasing debt as she attempts to stay in the race with Obama.

I doubt that Clinton will quit the race until the DNC meets to decide the fate of Michigan and Florida delegates on May 31st. But even adding those contest results into the mix only decreases Obama’s lead, not pass him. I suspect that the trickle of super delegates lining up for support of the candidates to begin to turn into a faster flowing river, and I don’t think that will bode well for Clinton.

There is a dead candidate walking and her name is Hillary Clinton, she just can’t or won’t admit it.

Someone teach Clinton and McCain some economics please

Ok folks pay attention. I’m going to be discussing one of those subjects that made your eyes glaze over, and your head ache in high school and college….. Economics.

In the final days of the run up to the Indiana and North Carolina primaries we have three candidates slugging it out over a supposedly simple idea of removing the $0.184 federal gas tax for the upcoming three months of the summer. What surprises me more than anything about the entire discussion is how the two candidates favoring this “gas tax holiday”, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton, seem to be under the impression that a vast majority of us voters have less understanding of simple economic theory then what little they appear to have.

First let’s look at John McCain’s proposal. Just drop the federal gas tax, and don’t do anything else except promise to put the estimated $8.5 BILLION dollars in lost revenue for the Federal Highway Trust, back in from the general fund. I thought there were supposed to be fiscal conservatives in the GOP? So McCain wants to tack on another $8.5 billion dollars on to the already nearly $10 trillion national debt. If we calculate the additional interest payments on the additional $8.5 B, we are adding an additional $255 million dollars at just a 3.0% interest rate (pretty cheap interest eh?). From a economic principle viewpoint, this is not an incredibly sound idea. The US dollar is already falling in value against world currencies with our increasing debt and foreign debt ownership, that it may be impossible to ever have a “strong dollar” monetary policy again. And what does a weak dollar do to us average working Joes and Janes that the gas tax holiday is supposed to give some relief? It makes every barrel of imported oil more expensive when paid in US dollars. Now here is where a little economics come in. If the raw materials (imported oil) cost more to acquire (due to falling US dollar value), the end product costs more to purchase. So not only does the tax holiday put us farther in the hole with the national debt, but will likely end up actually causing an increase in imported oil. There are times when I really believe that John McCain was telling the truth when he said he didn’t understand the economy.

Now let’s look at Hillary Clinton’s proposal. Drop the federal gas tax, but put a “windfall profits” tax on the oil companies so that they pay the tax instead of you and me. So first off the process of taking the federal gas tax money from gasoline suppliers and depositing directly into the FHT will have to be replaced by some system of applying a “profit” tax on oil companies, collecting it, and then making sure that it gets into the FHT. So theoretically, we get that $0.184 off at the pump, but oil companies know that uncle Sam is going to be coming around to get it later from them, so to ensure that their shareholders aren’t getting shorted (after all, corporations really only answer to their shareholders), quickly pass on all or most of the gas tax back to their customers, which eventually ends up right back on the pump saving us absolutely nothing. Meanwhile everyday Joes and Janes thinking they are going to get a little more gas for the money, start driving more than they planned, and demand goes up. Now this is where we get back into economic theory again. If you have an already short supply product which is driving prices up do to over demand, and you increase the demand, the price continues to go UP. So not only are the oil companies making us pay the gas tax by passing their additional tax cost on to us consumers, the increase in demand simply continues the rapid push of prices upwards, making it worse than it was before.

But even with all this fundamental economic reasoning for the gas tax holiday being a really dumb idea, the problem becomes even bigger at the end of the three months when there hasn’t been any decrease in demand, the tax has been passed on to us anyways, and we have increased our national debt by $8.5 B. At the end of the three months, what then? Who is going to be the one to tell the American people, “well we gave you a break, it didn’t really help much, but we are sorry, we have to add the gas tax back in at the pump now”? Does anyone honestly think that during an election campaign for president that either Clinton or McCain are going to be willing to ADD the $0.184 back into the mix prior to the election?

I think not.

Now I’m concerned that neither McCain, nor Clinton, know anything about the economy. The only one of the three current candidates that seem to have this whole idea figured out right, and is against it, is the one that supported a similar idea in Illinois, until they found out it didn’t work. And they say he has no experience? At least he learned from previous attempts at this gas tax holiday hocus pocus.

End of April Rockies perspective... Ugggg

Ugggg. About the only phrase I can come up with to convey my view of the Rockies after the first month of the season.

After getting to the world series last year, and giving out some hefty contracts to most all of the regular players, the Rockies have pretty much come out of the gate and fallen flat on their collective faces. With a team BA of only .248, and a combined team ERA of 4.47, the Rockies have looked a whole lot more like the team at the start of last season (and in some cases worse), than the team during the playoffs.

Only two regular position players are batting over .300. The pitching hasn’t been much better with only Aaron Cook of the starting pitchers has a ERA under 4.0. And the team has managed through 28 games, to get 2… 2 Sacrifice Flys.

Now they have injuries and demotions going on that do not bode well for the next couple of months. One of the leaders of the team, SS Tulowitzky is now out for a couple of months with a hip injury. One of the starting rotation, Morales, has been demoted to AAA, to work out a myriad of problems, and the rest of the team looks to be in a permanent funk.

While you can’t win a division in April, you can sure dig yourself a pretty big hole to climb back out of in April. While the Rockies are floundering 9 games out of first place in the NL West, the Arizona Diamondbacks are scorching hot with the best record in MLB.

The Rockies need to figure out how to do the fundamentals soon, or Arizona could conceivably run away with the division before the all star break. The team will have to do with without their premier short stop, and a collection of utility infielders at second base.
I never give up rooting for the home team, but damn, a little encouragement from the team right now going into May would sure be helpful.

The Internet generation and the Election of 2008

I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks now. There is something fundamentally different between the election in 2004 and the one now. It is the broad integrated use of the internet to disseminate any and all information whether factual or not about every candidate. This phenomenon was not as prevalent just 4 years ago.

Now, almost every single day, there are Youtube snippets, blog postings, news blog postings, internet polling, political forums, facebook, craigslist, and upteen thousand "political" web sites with various political agendas and leanings.

McCain, Clinton, and Obama have been dissected, probed, prodded, examined, and xrayed by every single media type and political angle that this growing internet minded election can think of. If it wasn't for the internet explosion of information, would we even care about the documents appearing out of thin air that Clinton couldn't find? Would we even care or even remotely believe that McCain could possibly be a Manchurian Candidate possibility? Would we ever have heard or seen any candidates pastor's sermons?

Would FDR have been elected if the national press had presented his affliction with polio in the same manner as they do every blemish of candidates today? Would JFK have been elected if his indiscretions and “lack of experience” been chronicled on every blog, political forum, and media outlet in the country?

Can any candidate actually survive this kind of magnified scrutiny that can in a second disseminate every possible aspect of a candidates life to millions of people who then put their own perspective and pass it on to millions more?

Regardless of which candidate you may be supporting in this election, imagine what the next election may be like when even new and improved vetting (and I use that word loosely) avenues are around, and every piece of news, whether accurate or not is instantly downloaded to those cool video glasses with the little monitor that everyone will be wearing in 2012.

Can any candidate actually survive this kind of election? Could any of us survive that kind of scrutiny?

Earmarks need to be ended permanently

Earmarks are generally regarded as specific funding requests by a member of congress to be directed to a home state or district project or organization. These requests are generally outside of specific government agency funding requests and the federal government agency whose appropriation bill the earmark is included in has no authorization or control over the expenditure. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense (www.taxpayer.net) the current FY08 appropriations contain just a hair over $18 billion dollars in totaling $14.8 billion in sponsored congressional requests, and another $3.5 billion dollars in earmarks that had no congressional sponsor identified.

Earmarks are seldom added to an appropriations bill while it is being constructed, but rather during the conference phase where the two houses of the congress get together to work out differences between the two house’s respective legislation. And in this conference phase is where the real “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” of our current political environment comes into play. This is where the seniority of a congress member comes into play, since the more senior a member of congress is, the more likely he or she is going to get their little pet project funding into a piece of legislation, because their support is needed either to support another piece of legislation, or their weight and support for an earmark for a lesser senior member of congress is desired to ensure that earmark gets included.

Much has been made this election year on earmarking by congress, particularly by Senator McCain, who had zero earmarks associated with the FY 08 appropriations, according to TCS, while Senator Clinton had $342.4 million, and Senator Obama had $98.6. Many projects or organizations funded through earmarks are truly worthwhile causes and do bring jobs, funding, and needed projects to the individual state or precinct. The problem with earmarks is that Citizens against Government Waste estimates that 98 percent of earmarks are added during the conference phase, and are not voted on by the full membership of either house as a stand alone appropriation. This behind the scenes back scratching between members of congress puts the rest of the members of congress in the situation of having to vote for critical federal funding legislation as a whole containing the earmarks. If a member decides to vote against a funding bill due to particular earmarks, they risk suffering the backlash from fellow house members, senators, and constituents for holding up needed government appropriations.

Each of the individual earmarks in and of themselves may not seem like a lot of money, but a couple million here and a couple hundred thousand there, multiplied by a little over eleven thousand individual items, and you start talking about real money. The need to remove the ability to insert earmarks into needed pieces of legislation is becoming more and more imperative, at a time when we are running such large deficits, and funding two external wars. If a particular project or organization’s funding is important enough to take a portion of everyone’s tax dollars, then it is important enough to stand alone as an appropriation line item and be subjected to full congress scrutiny as the spending bills are constructed. The time to eliminate earmarks from the federal budget process has come.

Clinton wins PA, Democrats sink more into quicksand

If the trend to this point continues, Hillary Clinton will win Pennsylvania by an 8 to 10 percent margin over Barack Obama. By winning the state, she does get to chalk up another “big” state win, but will probably fail to put any significant dent into Obama’s pledged delegate lead, and will probably only cut 200,000 out of his 700,000 or so popular vote lead.

While keeping her nomination race alive, it continues to complicate the problems with the Democrat party going into the general election in November whether she or Obama wins the nomination. The super delegates have not completely jumped into the fray and are likely to still end up holding the final trump cards on who gets the nomination in the end.

But the continued split personality of the Democratic party, should be causing some concern for the DNC as it starts thinking of some of the bigger issues that are going to be critical for it in the general election. Many people tend to focus only on the issues of the presidential election, but it is really only a single spoke in what the DNC has to focus on if it wants to break the traditional log jam in congress going forward and get the “super majority” that Pelosi and Reid want to take into the next congress.

If Obama wins, will the stalwart blue collar workers, and over age 65 Democrats of Clinton’s coalition close ranks and support an Obama run. If Clinton wins, will the large African-American, more educated, and youth coalition that he has forged close ranks and support a Clinton run. Neither of these questions can objectively be answered while the nomination race is still continuing.

Outside of the presidential race, the DNC wants to focus on a number of even more important strategies, and a cohesive Democratic party will be absolutely critical to achieve their goals.

If the DNC wants to get a “super majority” in congress they need a presidential candidate that can keep both of these very diverse coalitions together and pull in congressional races on the coat tail, and use the significant increase of registered Democrats to win state victories for the next level down Senate and House races.

In 2010 there will be a national round of reapportioned. To attempt to re-establish a solid Democrat party base across the US instead of the famous Red and Blue state division, they will need both coalitions to help take control of a majority of the State houses and Senates, which will be making the decisions on how districts are reapportioned.

In the next 8 years there is a possibility of 2 Supreme court justices needing to be appointed by the next president. If the DNC hopes to have a Democrat in the White House they will need the entire Democratic party working and driving together to ensure a victory over John McCain in November.

There is a more imperative need for the Democrats than the Republicans to vastly change the political landscape from the state houses, to the congress, and the white house if they are going to be able to overturn what has been a fairly consistent Republican control of congress and the state houses.

The longer this nomination race continues, and particularly if both candidates continue the last two weeks slide into the negative personalized attacks against each other to the point that party can not heal itself without losing half of the total coalition, the Republicans will take not only the White House, but the congress, and the state houses.

This is in my opinion a “do or die” election for the Democrats, and from my view from outside, they are playing with their own future under the sword of Damocles. It is a fine line they are now walking, and given the penchant for political parties to fail to see reality, they are more likely to blow the perfect opportunity than they are to seize it.

How ever it turns out… I’ll still be on the couch with the popcorn and beer, watching it all unfold in November.

Clinton voted to allow gun confiscation during disasters?

With all the hoopla about Obama’s “bitter” remarks and the discussion around gun-control, an interesting sidelight that hasn’t been touched on is a little known amendment voted on in July 2006. The amendment S.Amdt.4615 to H.R.5441 was “To prohibit the confiscation of a firearm during an emergency or major disaster if the possession of such firearm is not prohibited under Federal or State law”. The vote count was 84 YEAs and only 16 NAYs.

What surprised me was you would think that based on the perception of Obama being a “radical” gun control freak after the uproar following those PA statements, that he should have been one of the NAYs, while Annie Oakley Clinton being taught by her Grandfather to shoot out behind the barn would have been one of the YEAs.

But oh contraire.

Clinton actually voted against prohibiting the confiscation, while Obama voted for the prohibition. Now this might seem like an issue of little importance… but try and tell that to the good folks of New Orleans who by decree of the Mayor had all those “legal” firearms in N.O. confiscated after the disaster of Katrina, and have yet to be completely returned to their rightful owners.

Not surprisingly John McCain was also one of the 84 YEAs that put a halt to a really ridiculous idea.

Now if I was an anti gun control Democrat, I might be thinking “Who’s really on my side if during a major disaster I most likely might actually need this here shot gun?"

Still no knockout by Clinton in the latest debate

On Wednesday night we had the latest in what seems the continuing plethora of Democratic Nominee debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.

While nothing new or ground breaking was discussed, other than spending the first half of the debate having Obama asked to respond to every innocuous innuendo, rumor, past association, and phrasing of words. The first half of the debate had to seem to Senator Obama as a planned and executed ambush, with set up questions allowing Senator Clinton ample time to dig into each one with what seemed like a Rovian relish. What was an interesting development was the question to Clinton regarding the “Bosnian Sniper Fire” mis-speak, and Obama’s high road take of not shooting back at Clinton over it, as she had been more than willing to do to the same type of questions to Obama.

Both candidates promised to not raise taxes on the middle class (what ever income that level means anymore). And both gave assurances that they would quickly move to remove combat troops from Iraq.

Both candidates responded to the questioning with articulate and measured tones, and both took their opportunities to take pot shots at the GOP presumptive nominee Senator John McCain.

With this being the 21st debate in this continuing, and seemingly never ending series of debates, there was little new substance, and little more separation between the two on core issues. Whether this has an impact on the upcoming Pennsylvania primary next Tuesday, we’ll have to wait and see. But if Senator Clinton was hoping to use the forum to reverse the rapidly closing Obama in Pennsylvania polls and his increasing lead in national polls, a knockout was required, and it failed to materialize.

I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!

Time and again, our elected officials are proving that they have no concept of what “providing for the common defense, and promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” means anymore.

We have a government establishment hell bent on doing everything to weaken our ability to defend ourselves with totally irrational concepts of preemptive military action. I have yet to talk to anyone who feels or disagrees with our decision to invade Afghanistan to pursue Al Qaeda and remove the government responsible for supporting the group which was responsible for the largest loss of American lives on US soil by an enemy since Pearl Harbor. But our leaders could not stop there. Instead of completing our task and bringing the culprits to justice, our elected officials either deliberately mislead us, or fabricated the need to invade Iraq to preempt their development of WMDs. Now we have our military in both Afghanistan and Iraq with ever changing objectives and a military that is stretched beyond a sustainable level. At the same time the current administration intensifies the saber rattling at the prospect of a nuclear Iran with growing influence in the region due to our destabilizing actions in Iraq. If some rogue faction was to now actually attack us, we would be without any viable military resources to confront the threat.

We have a government establishment more concerned about propping up support for greed induced meltdowns of companies that propagated close to pyramid schemes of fabricated assets built on sub-prime mortgage paper that was built on predatory lending practices. To further show their support of the financially stressed home owners facing foreclosure, the senate has proposed a bill that would give a $7,000 tax credit to people who buy a home that have been foreclosed, or have had foreclosure filings, which does absolutely nothing for the people actually being foreclosed on, except make it more likely they will lose their home more quickly. The senate bill also gives $25 billion in tax breaks for homebuilders who so over built homes that there was almost no way they could ever possibly sell them. Again our government proposes saving the businesses that primarily drove the crisis while leaving the actual distressed homeowners out in the cold. The only general welfare they seem concerned about is the corporations that have done more to create our current recession than the constituency of American tax payers and homeowners that are left to fend for ourselves.

We have a government that is unwilling to make any positive step to secure our borders and really manage the growing problem of illegal immigration. We have officials asking not to enforce our own laws on immigration because it is bad for business. There is an assault on our American IT workers to have their jobs either supplanted with cheap foreign workers, or having their jobs outright moved to offshore cheap labor markets. Two bills were introduced recently after Bill Gates visited Washington to bemoan the lack of world class employees in the US. The first bill introduced by Representative Lamar Smith would retroactively increase the 2008 H-1B visa cap to 195,000, as well as set that level for fiscal year 2009. The second bill authored by Gabrielle Giffords the same week would increase the cap to 130,000 a year from it’s current cap of 65,000. This blind obedience to Corporate pandering is increasing the pressure on the US middle class by moving the very jobs that we are supposed to be depending on to take us into the future to foreign employees. Even the IEEE-USA pointed out that the decrease in unemployed U.S. high-tech professionals dropped sharply after the reinstatement of the H-1B visa cap to 65,000 in 2004 from 195,000 in 2003. So exactly where is the concern for the welfare of the American people in all this?

Again, and again, our elected officials choose to pander to the corporate CEOs who’s primary objective is their own self interest and corporate greed, without any consideration to the impact to the American worker and tax payer. As Americans it is time for us to fire our dysfunctional and inept employees. We need to examine the records and stands of every political office seeker, and ensure that we vote for a change of our elected officials across the local, state, and federal level to elect people that have the best interests of the American people as their focus. We need to send a message that political business as usual is no longer acceptable. We need to elect officials that are truly concerned and understand the meaning of “providing for the common defense, and promote the general Welfare, secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”

We need to use our votes to tell our government that “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”.

Another GAO report.. more of the same Government Waste

Another year, another GAO report ( AP ), more of the same government waste is found. It seems it never ends, or in any case, ever gets better. Every year there seems to be a GAO report or audit that finds that there is continually an issue with government employees wasting tax payer dollars. This time instead of $400 hammers, we are paying for online dating services, steaks and crab, tailor made suits, and my favorite, “women’s lingerie” for “use during jungle training by trainees of a drug enforcement program in Ecuador.” You just know those thongs were much more comfortable in that jungle heat.

To me it isn’t that the GAO found “questionable” expenses, or “some” lack of department controls of expenditures, it is the fact that year after year it continues to pop up as a problem.

Many Americans are struggling to hold on to their homes, afford gas to get to their jobs, and pay their taxes, only to find that time and time again government oversight of expenses are wasting vast amounts of those hard earned dollars. It speaks to the attitude of long standing practices as Senator Norm Coleman stated “Too many government employees have viewed purchase cards as their personal line of credit”. And I agree with his sentiment that “When money that is intended to pay for critical infrastructure, education, and homeland security is instead being spent on iPods, lingerie and socializing, we must immediately remedy the problem.”

But the bigger and more systemic problem is that it will simply die down, only to re-surface with the next GAO report. As is the trend in these situations Senator Carl Levin stated “Although internal controls over government credit cards have improved we still have a long way to go…”, and that seems to be the consistent response.

Our government leaders wonder why there is such cynicism in the American public toward government. All they have to do is look at how they have managed the hard earned money that is given them by that public to get a clue.

Full GAO report can be found here

Thank God Baseball season is 162 games long

Six games into the season, and I'm already hearing folks starting to talk like the Rockies (1-5) season is over, and looking for Broncos tickets :)

If your favorite football team started out 1-5 I could see the dispair.
If your favorite Basketball team started out 1-5 there would be reason for concern.
If your favorite Hockey team started out 1-5 (well I'm having a hard time with this one because all hockey is, is boxing on skates :) )

But let's get real. Baseball season is a 162 game grind. It is meant to average out the slumps, and the streaks so that "on average" the best teams get to the playoffs.

Maybe the problem is with our penchant for instant gratification, that we groan so much at each loss, and get so euphoric at each win.

Baseball season is a long and winding road. Six games means little, if anything in the longer scope of the season. Now if the Rockies are still sub .500 at the end of April... I "might" start worrying a little bit :)

Why I am supporting Obama

The following was distilled from my postings on a political forum where I went into depth on why I am supporting Obama.

Let me start off by saying, I'm not a Democrat, I am however a former Republican, so I have a bit of a luxury in looking at the Democratic presidential nomination race with a little bit of a different slant. And my view at this point and my gut tells me that Obama is likely to end up the Democratic presidential nominee, and eventual general election winner. And I'll even tell you why I think that.

In the debates on January 5th in Manchester, Hillary Clinton while on the attack against Obama made the following statement attacking his ability to actually make change happen, "As beautifully presented, as passionately presented as they are, words are not action," Clinton said. This one small view into the differences between the two main Democratic candidates is what my gut tells me will make Obama the winner.

There is something, and you can't put your finger on it, that comes across and grabs you when Barack Obama speaks. And the major problem for Hillary Clinton is that she doesn't recognize that words, presented with passion, and commitment can indeed lead to action. Now I'm not going to sit here and say that I believe every thing that Barack Obama is promising in his speeches, but I can't deny that I "hope" that he means what he says.

Over the last forty some odd years there have not been any Democratic candidates that could remind me of the connections that JFK, and RFK had with the youth of America. What I sense, and feel is starting to happen, is that a growing number of young people disenchanted with the status quo of the nearly last half century of politics, feel that in Obama is a real chance to try a different path.For us baby boomers, who can remember back to the JFK and RFK era, at least to me, there is the same ability to appeal to the "better nature" of Americans, and move that to the front of the platform.

When Obama refuses to make folks pay a penalty for not buying health care when they can't afford it, and Clinton bangs him for it, the attack only strengthens his position. What Hillary has forgotten is, people don't buy health insurance now because they can't afford it. To argue that you have to penalize people already in financial straights with a monetary penalty for not buying something you are dictating they have to buy, when they couldn't afford it in the first place, shows a serious disconnect with common people.

And in the end the reason will be because despite what Hillary Clinton believes, beautifully presented and passionately delivered words CAN move people to incredible actions and change. Just ask the millions of 1960s youth who were moved to action by the beautifully presented and passionately delivered words of a couple of earlier Democrats.

To a degree for me, this isn’t an election between Democrats and Republicans as much as it is a repudiation of “traditional” politics. Both Clinton and McCain are products of the same extreme political machinations that have seen our national and state governments locked up into statues of partisan bickering inaction. And whether or not Obama can fulfill my hopes of moving past this morass, I don’t know, but I do know that not voting for him almost certainly ensures the current “traditional” political environment remains intact. And to me that is no longer an acceptable outcome.

Do I agree with Obama on all the issues? Not at all. In fact I disagree with him on gun control, funding of the UN poverty initiatives with US taxes, and I disagree with his priorities on immigration.

Where I do heavily agree with Obama on the issues is on Health care, Foreign policy, the Economy, and on Education.

In the final analysis, for me at this point, it is a choice between continuing the status quo process of political bickering dead lock, or move to a state where bridges are built across our political divides to ensure a working government that is responding to it’s constituents. One thing in addition, that Obama has driven me to do is to take “serious” looks at the State and Local political candidates, and look for the same qualities of bipartisan gridlock and look to remove those obstacles in the coming election as well. But I am only one voter. My only “hope” is that more people are interested in moving past the same hurdles that I see, and are willing to take a serious chance for changing the landscape.

As I said there are specific areas that I disagree with Obama on some of his stands.

First: Gun Control
I firmly do not believe in legislative gun control. There is more than enough statistical evidence both here in the US and particularly in the UK that proves that gun control does NOT reduce gun related crimes. And in fact the data from the UK strongly indicates that it has exactly the opposite effect.

Second: US tax to support UN poverty initiatives
Until we have our own house in order, and have effectively delt with the growing disparity between income classes here in the US, and specifically done something to reduce the poverty level here at home, I don't think we should be going anywhere with US tax dollars to deal with other country's poverty problems.

Third: Priorities on immigration
I do not agree with the priorities Obama has on dealing with the massive illegal immigration problem. I am steadfastly in favor of securing our border and ports as the most important factor in dealing with illegal immigration. Once that is completed, and we can actually control our flow of incoming immigrants, then I am willing to discuss the issues of what to do with those already here.

Another area where I am not in lock step with Obama on is his energy program. While I agree with his proposals for moving quicker on renewable energy sources, and higher CAFE standards, I also think these things will take time, and in the meantime, we need to be more proactive in opening more components of our own oil/nat gas reserves to drilling in order to bridge the gap until more renewable energy resources come on line.

I've covered some of the issues that I disagree with Obama on, and on the flip side there are issues that I STRONGLY agree with Obama on.

First: Economy
His stands on the negotiation, implementation, and ENFORCEMENT of Fair trade agreements, is in these times of "outsourcing" is critical in my view of ensuring that American workers are not put in a disadvantage while operating in a global economy. I believe in Fair Trade, not Free Trade. To date our practice of negotiating open trade agreements have only benefited the countries we have signed them with while not enforcing the fair trade aspects. I also agree with his stands on Labor Unions, and supporting both their right to unionize, battleing against the efforts such as the NLRB's rulings that professional workers such as nurses are not protected by federal labor laws. I also agree with the raising of the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation. I also support his stands on addressing predatory Credit Card practices.

Second: Foreign Policy
He is the only one of the remaining three candidates that stood firmly against our invasion of Iraq. Many have said he was lucky, but it is something that the "proof" provided by the administration provided that I myself did not find significant enough to go to war over, and take our priorities from the Afghanistan theater, and the pursuit of the Al Qaeda leaders who directly assaulted us. I also believe that our current foreign policy stand of not talking with countries we have differences continues to put us in a unmanageable position of either not partaking in ANY diplomacy, or using military force to enforce our will. I also agree with his stand that we need to strengthen and expand the military so that it remains the most effective military force. Many people argue that because he is a Democrat that he will gut the military, but there has never been a statement or implied indication that he would do anything other work to improve and strengthen the military.

Third: Health Care
I firmly believe that affordable and effective Health Care is a "right" that every American deserves. The current market driven method of dispensing health care to Americans has done little to ensure affordable health care, but has instead put the profits of the corporations ahead of human care needs. Health care providers continue to increase costs, more and more limits on health care coverage, while focusing on profits. The reason I side with Obama instead of Clinton on this issue is because Obama's focus is on reducing costs and making health insurance affordable, where Clinton continues to focus on the "mandatory" implementation of health insurance. As I said in the original post the idea of penalizing families for not buying health insurance when they simply can't afford it in the first place, with financial penalties is showing a disconnection from the underlying problem.

Fourth: Education
Our education system is the foundation that the rest of our country is built on. His plans to reform NCLB by actually making the money that was promised available, rather than just making a law and leaving it unfunded. But primarily I support his initiatives to support and reward the ones who make the decision to Teach our youth. For too long the focus has been on institutions, programs, buildings, while the plight of our Teachers has been ignored. If we are going to effectively educate our next generations, we need to put the resources, funding, and rewards in place to bring more, and qualified teachers into the system, and then make sure they are rewarded for doing what is a critical job.

Freedom of the Press under attack?

“Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.” (CNN article)

One of the foundations of journalism is the confidentiality of sources. And with the administration weighing in on a bill that would specifically safe guard that foundation, we move one step closer to another loss of Constitutional freedoms for the sake of perceived national security needs.

If we allow the growing trend of “contempt of court” punishments for journalists who refuse to divulge confidential sources, we put at stake the very foundation of a free and unfettered press intended to investigate, and inform the public.

To note just of a few of the most dramatic modern examples of reporters breaking stories with confidential sources that may not have been broken otherwise: David Halberstam's critical reporting from Vietnam; publication of The Pentagon Papers; Woodward and Bernstein's revelations about the Watergate break-in; details of the Iran-Contra scandal; the existence of secret CIA interrogation centers; and the recent revelations of extralegal spying by the National Security Agency.

By not protecting the right of a journalist to protect their sources, the likelihood of anyone in government to provide information, knowing that they can easily be exposed with simple “contempt of court” decisions, seems to me, extremely reduced.

One of the arguments used in opposition to the proposed bill, “In a separate letter, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the nation would be more vulnerable to "adversaries' counterintelligence efforts to recruit" those shielded by the bill.” Is Mr Gates implying that if the shield law is passed, that it then becomes “open season” to the recruitment of journalists by foreign intelligence agencies? I think we are placing a very low perception of the patriotism of our journalists if we agree with that view.

“Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the bill would erect roadblocks to gathering information "from anyone who can claim to be a journalist, including bloggers" and Internet service providers.” This was particularly disturbing, since DHS with the enactment of the Patriot Act has been given almost carte blanc to investigate anyone deemed a possible “domestic terrorist”, which in recent disclosures have indicated that the FBI even broke those rules when performing investigations.

The more disturbing trend of the arguments by the administration against the shield law, is once again the mantra of “national security” which has been used as a bludgeon against American rights and civil liberties to facilitate broad, intrusive, and secret government actions aimed at our own nation’s citizens.

If we allow the defeat of this shield law by the administration, could we be allowing ourselves to gag the one institution that is primarily our only means of being informed of government misbehavior, and improper conduct? If journalists can not uncover corruption in government because sources won’t come forward, without the guarantee of confidentiality, how will we the people be able to watch and be informed of the actions of our government?

Bernanke finally admits that there is a recession risk?

Bernanke speaking before a congressional committee ( CNN article ) said he wasn't yet prepared to declare that the economy has fallen into a recession. But later stated "It now appears likely that real gross domestic product will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly," Now if that, coupled with a total melt down in the mortgage/housing market, sky rocketing fuel prices, and his acknowledgement that he expects further rises in unemployment, I have no better definition of what a recession is.

We have the president continuing with his head in the sand mantra that the economy is strong, and the Fed bailing out or capitulating to Wall Street in providing cheap loans, while the US dollar continues to plummet, homeowners bear the brunt of the mortgage crisis, middle class Americans are pummeled with increasing unemployment, and higher and higher fuel costs.

If there was ever a point in time where Americans can look at the statements of our elected and appointed officials, and wonder what planet they live on, now is that time.

Finally, something other than Politics

Yesterday, one of my favorite passions got underway again, and it is not the political bickering between Obama, Clinton, and McCain. Even though I had to wait an extra day due to heavy rain in St Louis, the Rockies 2008 opening season game is now official.

Baseball, despite all the steroids scandals of last year, continues to take one back to their youth, and times when the world wasn't such a scary place to live in. There is something about watching your favorite team pitching, hitting, and catching, that if you squint just right, you can see yourself back when you were in your teens, doing the same thing in the vacant lot down the street.

You may not make as much money as those professional players you are watching on the big screen, but you can close your eyes, listen to the commentary, and almost see yourself standing at the plate in the top of the 9th with the bases loaded, 2 out, and the game tied 1-1. Watching baseball, for all it's player's faults, the mega money, the occasional scandals, still takes one back to their youth, where the world was safer, the air was a bit cleaner, the sun shone just a bit brighter, and your very first girl friend cheered you on from the stands.

There isn't anything complex about baseball. You pitch the ball, you hit the ball, you catch the ball. All the complexities of modern life fades away into the simplicity of the game, and you can forget the report due to the boss next week on the 3rd variable derivatives of the sub-prime mortgage lending practices.

Baseball is a game, a simple game, a game of our youth. A game that can keep us young in spirit, and heart, if we just close our eyes, and imagine.

Oh by the way... The Rockies beat the Cardinals 2-1. One game down 161 games to go. :)

Michelle Obama undergrad thesis on racial divide racist?

I got into a rather heated debate on the Comcast political forums today about whether Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis in 1985 on racial divide was racist or not. The article "Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide" provides the thesis in 4 parts ( Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 ), as it was provided by the Obama campaign on request of the article authors.

What I found interesting in reading the thesis was that there really wasn't anything either implied or overtly racist in either it's premise or in its data presentation or analysis, but that people on the Comcast forums would rant that it was racist simply because it was a discussion of racial perspectives.

It is interesting to view the absolute venom and hatred that can be thrown at someone for a racial subject thesis when it becomes obvious that the ones ranting so hard that it is in fact racist, have never even read the composition.

The entire underlying racial tension associated with the presidential run by Barack Obama, from the youtube cut and past clips of Reverend Wright's sermons, to the "typical white woman" thrashing from Obama's speech on Race, to even going back to 1985 to missinterpreting an undergraduate thesis of his wife, to a large degree, provides ample proof that the racial divide within America is still strong.

Whether or not you as an individual think there is a reason for different views on the racial situation in America or not, it is undeniable that across the country, that there is ample evidence that the discussion of race, whether in a speech or a 1985 undergraduate thesis by a 20 year old, is still a prickly subject that ferments the lowest propagation of hatred and distrust that we still have a long way to get past as a country.

Whether Obama wins the presidential nomination or not, I hope that the underlying and repressed subject of race relations within our country can finally have a full, and objective vetting as a necessary subject that we must confront.

A little time off

I'm going to be taking a little time off from the blog for the next week or so. Unfortunately, I have a serious family illness that needs quite a bit of attention. I do plan on posting as I get time, but it obviously isn't going to be the kind of frequency that I have been doing.

I want to thank the loyal readers who have been dropping by and leaving comments, and appreciate the emails I've gotten.

As Arnold always says "I'll Be Back" :)

Union leaders fiscally irresponsible when paying for political advertizing

As a long time union member, there was always one thing large unions did that completely irritated and annoyed me. Spending my dues, that should be going to improve union health, pension, and individual training programs and benefits on political advertising for candidates that the union leadership feels compelled to support.

I was reading a CNN article on how Hillary Clinton had raised $35 million dollars for her campaign in February, when I came across this little piece at the bottom.

“The Service Employees International Union began spending $1.4 million in ads in support of Obama in Ohio and Texas. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union was spending nearly $200,000 in ads in Ohio.”

Now as far as I’m concerned there is nothing that a union should be spending the hard earned union dues of it’s membership on other than benefits and programs to support the members that pay the dues that are being spent.

If Obama can raise $32 million dollars for his campaign in January, and Clinton can raise $35 million dollars in February, they are more than capable of paying for their own advertising. If the Union leadership wants to support a particular candidate because they are pro-union then they can volunteer their time, or ask membership to volunteer their time in the myriad of things every political campaign needs bodies to help do.

But to me the spending of union funds on political advertising is tantamount to fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the union leadership. And if it could be outlawed I would fully support it.

Life of a Small State in Politics

Still no Knockout for Clinton in Debate

Another debate (that is 20 for those of you counting) in the Democratic nominee process, and as in the last one in Texas, Hillary Clinton failed to KO Barack Obama. In some respects, the KO could have come from the surging Obama who has narrowed polling gaps in Ohio, and even taken the lead in some polls in Texas. Both of the upcoming state primaries are almost do or die for Clinton.

Clinton came out swinging, and Obama came out counter punching. As was evident in the last debate Obama is getting much more comfortable with the debates, and did not let Clinton rattle him with the accusations about questionable campaign tactics and supposidly misleading mailers.

As usual Clinton was strongest on the Health Care subject, but from that point on it seemed Obama had the upper hand or stayed even. With the Texas and Ohio primaries coming up on March 4th, and Clinton needing to win both to keep her campaign viable, it appears the sands in the hour glass is starting to run out. Obama has closed to within 6 points of Clinton in Ohio after being down 19, and has even taken a small lead in the Texas polls.

March 5th we should get one of two decisions. Either Clinton is done, or we go on to Pennsylvania for round 21 :)

Nader gets on the horse again

Well it is another presidential election cycle, and what election for president would be complete without Ralph Nader (CNN) throwing his hat into the ring once more for a drive to irrelevancy. Rather than trying to prove his mettle during the normal primary season, he continued his penchant for late timing theatrics by announcing his presidency campaign last night on Meet the Press.

If Ron Paul was the symbol of non attention in the party primaries so far, Ralph Nader has decided to pick up the mantle for the general election. In his time, Nader was the consummate consumer advocate, and probably did more than anyone alive to promote safety of consumers over corporate greed. However, as he enters his fourth straight presidential campaign, almost everyone is agreed (except Nader), that his best and most influential times are well behind him.

Many in the Democratic party are still upset that they think he cost Al Gore the election in 2000 in a close race by derailing that small percentage of Democrat votes in Florida that could have made the difference between Gore and Bush being elected.

At 74, and after four miserable attempts at running before (5 if you count that write in campaign), you really have to wonder if Ralph is doing this for anything other than pure ego anymore. If you go to his website at you can get a list of what he has put “on the table”. Of course “open up the Presidential debates” would be one of his first priorities since he isn’t likely got get many invitations. And you have to like his “Impeach Bush/Cheney” position. And I’m not quite sure what “Work to end corporate personhood” even means.

If he thinks that political consultants “have really messed up Hillary Clinton’s campaign”, you have to wonder what brilliant political consultants came up with his plan to run for president once again. Obviously not the sharpest tacks in the box if you ask me.
If nothing else, it will give us political junkies something to analyze and talk about when the race between the GOP and Democrat nominees hit some slow spots

A couple days off to revive the brain cells

Been taking a few days off from posting to revive the old brain cells. Not a lot really going on as we kind of mark time before the March 4th primaries.

I'm really concentrating on what is currently going on in the Rockies spring training right now as everyone has finally reported to camp. :) The battle for 2nd base should be interesting, and the bull pen looks pretty strong again. I was really glad to see the front office step up and get some of these great young players signed to longer term contracts. This year the expectations are going to be a lot higher, and should be great to watch.

Clinton fails to knock out Obama in Debate

With Obama beginning to overtake or close the gap between himself and Clinton in both Ohio and Texas, two absolute MUST wins for Clinton, there was an expectation that she really needed to score a knockout during the debate in Texas tonight.

If that was the need, then from where I sat watching, Clinton failed to score. Clinton had her best moments during the discussion on healthcare where she is obviously the strongest, but seriously failed to make strong distinctions between the two in the rest of the issues. She had plenty of opportunities to speak to the substantive differences between her and Obama, but failed to take advantage of the openings, or was simply unable to exploit them.

To a large degree there was absolutely nothing new exposed in the positions of either candidate, and anyone expecting Clinton to change strategy to attempt to blunt the Obama momentum came away with nothing to hang on.

As far as how I saw Obama perform in the debate, he seemed much more relaxed, and in control of the discussions on substance and rhetoric. Remembering back to the early debates, where Clinton seemed dominant, and Obama looked like the novice, I was stricken by how much more composed Obama is now and Clinton seemed the more tentative. From my comfy chair perspective, Obama had his best debate of all of them, and it came when he could benefit from his performance the most.

The biggest plus for me in the debate was the fact that Wolf Blitzer was not moderating it.

Another flameout for Clinton and Huckabee

An interesting thing happened to Hillary Clinton on the road to the Democratic party nomination. After taking a substantial lead in delegates after Super Tuesday on February 5th, she forgot that there was still an election going on, and failed to try and win every state, as opposed to the big states. In Wisconsin, a state that should have been tailor made for Hillary Clinton to win, no major African-American block of voters to write off as voting for Obama because of race, losing even larger sections of her major constituencies in terms of demographics as well. Obama over the weeks since February 5th has consistently improved in white male voters, white female voters, age category voters (except for 65+), lower income level voters. Wisconsin was an absolute “no excuses” loss for Clinton, except that she didn’t campaign as hard as Obama, and she continued to use the same speech that has not been resonating with voters for some time now.

There is a consistent theme that Hillary Clinton has been using as her foil against Obama, and that is her experience is greater than his. What Clinton has failed to realize, and what I believe the McCain camp is also failing to realize, is that there is a growing segment of the American people that are tired of the experience in Washington D.C. continuing to be polarizing and stagnant. Another point that I think both Clinton and McCain are missing, is that there is a growing segment of the American people are tired of being told that they must be fearful of every shadow that is propagated by our politicians to get us to vote for them, and Obama’s theme of hope and broad support resonates with those who are looking for more change than just switching which party holds the White House.

There is still a ways to go in this campaign and there is a real possibility that Hillary Clinton could win the nomination in the end. But something she has been promoting is change, to win the nomination, she will have to change her message, if she can’t change her message to better resonate with the voters, she won’t ever get the chance to change things from within the White House.

On the Republican side, McCain easily defeated Mike Huckabee in Wisconsin and Washington, further extending his delegate lead and clearly establishing himself as the Republican nominee. The exit polling still shows McCain having trouble bringing core conservatives to his camp. The only reason I can imagine that Mike Huckabee is still running is that he really doesn’t have anything to do at the moment.

A time and need for change and what it means to me

I have spent a lot of time recently getting my fixes of the political landscape. With the current election progressing the way it is, how could a political junkie not get a daily fix? I get a lot of news from CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and local news channels to that I feel that I get at least a smattering of varying perspectives and coverage. I also spend a lot of time discussing politics with folks on the various political discussion forums. A lot of the discussions center around the two extreme perspectives of the political spectrum, and these discussions along with the news has given me a much different view of politics and our government from what I had when I was 20, 30, 40, or even 50. One of the things that I have become concerned about most recently, is the absolute polarization of the country between the far left and the far right. If you visit any of the large political discussion forums you continually see the folks squaring off between the ultra conservatives, and the ultra liberal factions. What I have found is that neither side willing to compromise on their perspectives essentially settling nothing, much like our current situation in the national government.

We have a tremendous number of things that need to be fixed in this country, and we have gotten nothing but continual doses of fear and doom from the conservative side, and nothing but continual finger pointing and failure to take responsibility from the liberal side. But neither extreme is willing to move toward the other to compromise to actually accomplish anything meaningful, resulting in continual grid lock and stalling, and failing to fix any of our major problems.

On the issue of Iraq there is a great majority of the American people that believe that we were led down the terror path to war in Iraq with no understanding of what it was going to require to extricate ourselves, and were convinced of the need for war, on faulty, and to be honest, exaggerated intelligence that under more strenuous examination could have kept us from this unwarranted predicament in the first place. While 20/20 hindsight is always perfect, even in the initial discussions of the need for invasion, there were only tenuous and highly suspect links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. There was insufficient proof of WMDs even in the most cursory review of the UN inspector reports. But the Administration pushed the buttons of fear and national security for force a resolution that they obviously wanted, but drastically took our attention from where it was most required in the tracking and capture or killing of the actual 9/11 supporting terrorists in Afghanistan. Democrats not wanting to look weak followed the Administration lead and toed the line to save face rather than stand and require substantial verifiable proof before agreeing to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Both sides failed us, the Administration by jumping into a second front that was never required, and the Congress by not doing their duty to require reasonable proof before authorizing. Now we are in two wars, with no real plan to extricate ourselves other than providing occupation forces for the foreseeable future, while we continue to put the Afghanistan front on a back burner and allow the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to reinvigorate, and grow stronger in that area. And the deficit continues to grow at an alarming rate with no plan on how to pay for it other than printing more green backs. This two front war on terrorism has created a situation that is intolerable at best, and unsustainable at worst. In the mean time the conservatives dig in, and the liberals dig in, and our young military people continue to die, and spend increasingly longer tours in a place we should have never gone.

On the issue of Illegal immigration, the vast majority of American people believe that something has to be done to control and manage the inflow of illegal immigrants through our boarders. The current estimate is that there are 12 million or more illegal immigrants in the U.S. and the number is growing. The current administration tried to negotiate a comprehensive immigration reform program with congress, only to be torpedoed by the two extremes of the political spectrum. The conservatives demanded securing the borders first and then deportation of the illegal immigrants already in the country. The liberals demanded some form of realistic approach to allow the current illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and a focus on securing the borders. The conservatives pounded on the fear buttons again, blaming the immigration issue for the down turn in the economic prospects and threw the fear of terrorist infiltration through our unsecured borders for the need for a wall and a big one first. The liberals having felt fooled by the Administration on Iraq, failed to believe that the threat from terrorist infiltration was as severe as advertised, and focused more on the plight of the immigrants and wanted to make the road to citizenship as painless as possible. Consequently nothing actually got achieved, neither the securing of the border, or a realistic plan on dealing with the 12 million people in our country illegally. Again the two extremes focused on not giving in to the other side so that they could claim being “right”, and the rest of us suffer the consequences of no progress on either front simply because the two extremes can’t compromise.

Our corporate tax structure and individual tax laws are so archaic and unmanageable that no one from either side of the political spectrum can figure out how to give middle and lower level income working people a tax break without giving tax breaks to the corporate raiders, and the financial elite who continually fund campaigns to ensure that they get first crack at the “appropriate” legislation. The passing of NAFTA has been a major contributor to the current economic problems, by providing incentives for American companies to move jobs and manufacturing outside the U.S. and drive lower the incomes of those few workers that remain. We have provided a bankruptcy law that protects the financial corporations who prey on low and middle income families with “zero” interest or down payment schemes to lure people into extending themselves farther financially than both they and the financial institutions know they can afford. Both conservatives and liberals have failed the middle class of America by pandering to the corporate and financial elite at the expense of the middle class, and they wonder why the 2/3 consumer driving portion of our economy can’t keep the ever expanding deficit and budget deficit afloat. More Americans are going to lose their homes due to mortgage company greed in throwing away responsible lending practices, in order to make the quick buck sale, and garner the up front fees. And when the housing market bubble caused by the rampant speculation brought on by this race for profit at the expense of reason, the government looks to support the financial institutions rather than finding a way to help the families that are not only losing their homes, but crippling their ability to afford the now sky rocketing rental rates. The conservatives don’t want to provide any solution that doesn’t bail out the corporate sharks who created this problem, and the liberals don’t want to provide any solution that doesn’t bail out the people who knowingly over extended themselves without thought of changing circumstances. So nothing meaningful gets resolved because the two sides can’t afford to move away from the ingrained extremes of their respective political poles.

Our national health care situation is now bordering on a crisis, yet neither side is willing to move to do anything other than talk about how sad it is that families can’t afford health insurance, and large health providers having a right to make ever increasing profits. Conservatives support the HMOs, and private institutions as the way to provide adequate health care, but fail to realize that profit and providing necessary expensive care do not coexist in the corporate world. Liberals support the government intervention in the provision of health care, either by single payer (i.e. government) or mandated health insurance purchases regardless of ability to pay. While the two sides bicker and fight with each other, millions of Americans are caught in a health care vice where insurance is unaffordable, and care is metered by the profit percentage. The elderly and retired of our country are increasingly forced to choose between barely being able to feed and house themselves, and affording the health care that is a natural consequence of aging.

We have required people to pay into a Social Security system their entire lives with the promise that the monies paid in would be there for them when they retired to provide a safety net. All the while both conservatives and liberals have without hesitation dipped into those funds to decrease spending gaps for bridges to nowhere, parks, and every other pet project of the politicians except for what it was intended for. We have provided corporate bankruptcy laws that make it cheaper to simply default on pension plans that were supposed to be the primary retirement means of middle America, and stolen from the Social Security funds so that there is no safety net remaining. Yet even something so obvious as the insolvency of Social Security and Medicaid can not stir the two sides from their implacable polarization to move to solve the problem, we remain at a bickering “they said”, “they said” war of words with no solution in sight while the elderly hope without reason that all the money they paid in during their working lives will be enough to keep a roof over their head, some food in the fridge, and some health insurance that will not force their family to have to declare bankruptcy to acquire.


We need a change in the political landscape. And the required change is not a swing from the conservative extreme to the liberal extreme. The change needed is a return to the principles of our original founding ideas of compromise for the good of the majority, rather than the myopic polarization of the radical extremes. We need a government concerned about the majority of working class Americans that provide the foundation and hard work that is the base of this great experiment in democracy. We can no longer afford the debilitating grid lock of extreme conservative, and extreme liberal bickering that provides nothing but stalemate. We can no longer afford to pander to the corporate and financial elite who take the labor of the middle class and then discard them. We can no longer afford the notion of ever increasing government expenditures without fiscal responsibility. We must have a political landscape that encourages compromise to actually solve the vast problems that we face. We must step away from the use of fear to remove individual freedoms so hard won centuries ago. It is time for our politicians to go back to work for us instead of themselves. Whether the leader of this change is a conservative, a moderate, or a liberal is of less importance than their willingness to drive compromise and movement to actually solve the problems of our country instead of encouraging stalemate due to radical ideological differences. The time to do away with the last 40 years of polarized political posturing is upon us. The time to step away from the politics as usual is painfully obvious. The question is do we have the intelligence and resolve to force such a change upon ourselves?