Thread: Vetting Obama-Your Right To Know

Originally Posted by gunnut

I believe this is his "dash to the center" in preparation for the general election.

Nothing in his history/background suggests that he is all of a sudden a fiscal conservative.

I thought we didn't know enough about Obama to make that kind of judgment; after all he is so inexperienced. I've already shown that his voting record is being distorted. Swallow it whole if you like, but I will try to cut through the partisanship and show some perspective on both candidates.

Originally Posted by Herodotus

Unless it slaps the Republicans in the face and gets them to get their act together. The election of Carter led to the election of Reagan, a Republican Senate, and a conservative House, the election of Clinton led to the election of a Republican Senate and House of Representatives. I don't think the American people want hard-core leftists in power. If Obama is really a Leftist, then it will lead to a backlash, and the Republicans, a reformed Republican party, can reap those benefits.

That's actually what some conservatives suggest. We get Obama in the White House to get the American people to vote for a much more conservative Congress, and possibly, a conservative president in 2012.

Originally Posted by Herodotus

I thought we didn't know enough about Obama to make that kind of judgment; after all he is so inexperienced. I've already shown that his voting record is being distorted. Swallow it whole if you like, but I will try to cut through the partisanship and show some perspective on both candidates.

We don't know enough about Obama, you are right. But that doesn't mean we know nothing. What little experiences he has and we know of tell us that he's a leftist.

Originally Posted by gunnut

Axe HUD, the small business administration, department of health and human services, the energy department, and the labor department. Drop personal income tax and switch to a national sales tax to cut the IRS by half. Notice we don't even have to touch Social Security.

Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.

Kill the Missile Defense Agency.

Originally Posted by Shipwreck

Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.

Kill the Missile Defense Agency.

I agree.

DoHS is a gigantic bureaucracy that doesn't do much.

Why do we need an agency for missile defense?

Originally Posted by Herodotus

I thought we didn't know enough about Obama to make that kind of judgment; after all he is so inexperienced. I've already shown that his voting record is being distorted. Swallow it whole if you like, but I will try to cut through the partisanship and show some perspective on both candidates.

We don't know enough about Obama which is the reason for this thread. We know enough about McCain to know where he stands and what he will and will not do if he is President.

Obama's voting record is distorted because he's all over the place with his voting, and has even so much has claimed he pushed the "wrong button" 6 times. Now you have to admit, that's pretty far-fetched, even for someone as inexperienced as Obama.

If Obama has shown nothing else consistently, he HAS shown he very much likes lots of money, because he likes spending alot of money. He was in no way sympathetic to his many donors by accepting public funding for the GE which would have given them some relief especially since his donors gave so much money during the primaries during such a trying economic time. He has also changed the venue of the DNC convention which will cost much more megabucks. I think that is arrogant, and self-serving with other peoples' money.

I am also not going to be "hoodwinked" into believing all of his tax-breaks for middle-class America, when he fully intends on sticking it to them with the AMT. If you will notice, he never says NOTHING about the Alternative Minimum Tax, because that is his loophole. You see, he thinks he is so smart, and everybody else is stupid.

He says he's going to end the Iraq War, and take that money and provide health insurance for every American. What he's really going to do, is force every small business to provide it for Americans, not him, and as a result, put 30% of the small business work force, out of business. He will then take all of that money, and divert it to Africa that coincides with that world hunger bill he sponsored, that will cost billions.

As to Obama paying down the deficit, and balancing the budget, I just have to say bwahahahahaha. Not in his lifetime.

You see Herod, if you don't know much about a politician, you have to read between the lines to find what you are looking for.

First off, Julie, I have to say thanks for throwing up this thread and putting some red meat on it. And to all those who have contributed their thoughts so far, I say first class thinking. I don't agree with all of it but that is more an admission of my dazed state. Who can say they expected Obama to run to the center so soon, or at all? I can't. I took him for a diehard liberal with socialist overtones and what's more, I couldn't envision him risking the support of his doting young'uns and all those who came out of the political cold believing here at last was someone who would fix all the ills of society. Can he do no wrong in their eyes?

It sure seems that he's been inconsistent in his stands lately, but he claims otherwise and goes to extraordinary lengths to refute those who say he's flipped. In the morning he has a press conference and says he still plans to pull troops put of Iraq, assuming he wins office, but he will take the advice of commanders on the ground before acting. How else would a resonable person interpret this but to think that he won't pull troops out if commanders say it's too soon.

After that press conference the media went to work on Obama's apparent flip flop. By afternoon, he'd had enough and called another press conference, this time to "clarify" that his position on troop withdrawals has not, in fact, changed.

It is almost as if Obama has positions which exist only in his mind and when one slips out he claims his thinking hasn't changed. Technically that may be true, but 10 press conferences won't change the perception that he flipped. on Iraq, because he did. His political reasoning is clear. He wants an out for himself if he doesn't start pulling troops out from day 1, and also is gains him a bit of territory in the center, enough to please those democrats who don't think a withdrawal timetable is such a good idea.

Well, who knows what to make of all Obama's so-called flip flops of late. In watching this drama unfold and listening to him pretend nothing has changed, I get the feeling that here's a guy who has gotten into the habit of saying whatever suits the moment. Maybe's he has been at it so long without apparent consquences that he thinks it doesn't really matter what he says. Afterall, he's still ahead in the polls in spite of it.

Will it come back to bite him come election day? Dale, that's your cue.)

Originally Posted by JAD_333

Will it come back to bite him come election day? Dale, that's your cue.)

I really do think so. I don't know anything about politics, but I know all about bad bulldung artists.

Obama smells. Give me a Dean, who is openly happy about being a lefty, or a Bush, who is openly happy about being a self-assured kinda-sort conservative, or even a Hillary, who's openly happy about being a twisted, power-mad harpie. But this Obama character is scrambling to be all things to all people.

And he's not very good at it. I think his real Achilles Heel moment was the "Can't I just eat my waffle?" one. This trumped-up punk doesn't seem to realize that he's running for the highest office in the land, arguably the world, and it shows. He thinks he can piss on people in the morning and have them convinced it was raining by the afternoon. Maybe someone else could, but not this chump. And in the end, the attitude and the inexperience will kill him.

McCain's to lose.

-dale

Agree with the DoHS Axe it, it sounded like crap when it was started, and is still. However there were soem former agencies that got morphed into it - I suppose reducing overall effectiveness - that one would want to keep.

The Tax Policy Center and the Barack Obama campaign used some sleight of hand this week in Politico. To quote Eric Tolder of the TPC, “Most small-business people, like most everyone else, are not really high-income.” While this is true, it completely and totally misses the point.

Let’s start with the definition of a “small business.” Most will tell you that small-business income constitutes income derived from sole proprietorships, partnerships and Subchapter S corporations.

The conservative argument (and that of the John McCain campaign) is that Obama’s stated plan to raise taxes on households making $250,000 or more in income is a tax increase on small business. The simple answer to this dilemma can be found in the IRS Statistics of Income Bulletin (Table 1.4, for those who are interested).

In 2006 (the latest year available), $706 billion of such income was reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Of this, about half was reported by households in the top marginal income tax rate. Interestingly, two-thirds of this income was reported by households making $250,000 per year or more — the very same households that Obama wants to increase taxes on.

The Obama campaign maintains that the number of small-business owners is what’s important. Economists know what matters is the tax rate that’s applied to the bulk of small-business income. Make no mistake about it: Obama’s plan to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000 will raise taxes on most small-business profits in America.

What type of tax rate are we talking about? Currently, S corporations face a top tax rate of 35 percent, while sole proprietors and general partners face a tax rate of 37.9 percent (since they’re responsible for paying both income tax and the Medicare component of the payroll tax).

Under Obama’s plan to let the scheduled 2011 tax rate hikes occur, and his plan to raise the self-employment tax on those making more than $250,000, the S corporation rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The sole proprietor and partner rate would rise from 37.9 percent all the way up to a staggering 50.3 percent. Many Democrats in Congress have proposed making all small businesses (including S corporations) pay this 50-plus percent rate. A small business tax rate that high would be the highest marginal rate faced by them in nearly a quarter-century.

What would a world look like where two-thirds of all small-business income would be taxed at a 50 percent rate? The economic law that “taxing something more and getting less of it” would apply. Fewer Americans would be interested in opening or expanding small businesses. Tax evasion and legal tax avoidance would spike, as tax shelters would once again become a booming industry. Since small businesses create a majority of jobs in America, Main Street closing up shop will have a direct impact on the family budget, as well. Plants and equipment will go unused. Despite the misguided opinions of static scorers in Washington, federal tax revenues will likely decline as the economy staggers into a full-on recession.

What’s the alternative? One place to look is the optional alternate tax system originally proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and now endorsed by McCain. It would give households (including those with small business income) a choice between the current tax code and one with a top rate of 25 percent on all income over $100,000. This would have the beneficial effect of lowering the tax rate on most small-business income by 10 percentage points. Small businesses haven’t faced a tax rate that low in quite some time and would be likely to respond with the creation of new businesses and more investment in existing businesses.

The McCain small business tax plan doesn’t end there. For those businesses that are organized as conventional corporations, the top tax rate would fall from 35 percent to 25 percent, the European average. For all businesses, technology and equipment — which now must be slowly “depreciated” over many years — would be immediately expensed in year one.

Stepping back, voters and policymakers should ask themselves whether they want two-thirds of small business income taxed at a 50 percent tax rate or if they want nearly all small-business income taxed at a 25 percent tax rate. They should ask themselves whether it’s healthier for small businesses to write off a computer over six calendar years or to simply write it off in year one. To America’s small business sector, the answer is obvious.

An argument against Obama's tax plan - Grover G. Norquist - Politico.com

[QUOTE=Shipwreck;515270]Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security.

Just an observation: I found many tourists angry with the rude and arrogant way they were treated by the Homeland Security people. I don't know who is supposed to be in charge of them nor how their ranks were so quickly filled, but it was immediately obvious that civility to incoming passengers was not a priority. I suppose they must have felt it necessary at LAX to subject me to a strip search, take my fingerprints, check my eyes with a biometric scanner and try to take my shoes apart. (I couldn't see the point of it as I was merely inbound from Auckland, New Zealand and transferring via Alaska Airlines to Vancouver.) However their gratuitous rudeness was breathtaking. As another passenger remarked "If they treat their friends this way how do you think they treat their enemies?"

glyn,

Just an observation: I found many tourists angry with the rude and arrogant way they were treated by the Homeland Security people. I don't know who is supposed to be in charge of them nor how their ranks were so quickly filled, but it was immediately obvious that civility to incoming passengers was not a priority. I suppose they must have felt it necessary at LAX to subject me to a strip search, take my fingerprints, check my eyes with a biometric scanner and try to take my shoes apart. (I couldn't see the point of it as I was merely inbound from Auckland, New Zealand and transferring via Alaska Airlines to Vancouver.) However their gratuitous rudeness was breathtaking. As another passenger remarked "If they treat their friends this way how do you think they treat their enemies?"

the main reason why is because the DHS is a slapped-together organization. it was created by haphazardly pulling people away from existing organizations. well, existing organizations didn't like that, so they sent away who they considered the expendable dregs. then, of course, there's the prestige issue of being perceived as nothing more than hopped-up airport security.

as it is, IIRC DHS is ranked dead last in employee satisfaction. it translates onto the customer, aka you.

What does DHS contain? I know it has border patrol, maybe a few intelligence agencies. You figure the "department of homeland security" should have border patrol and the coast guard, maybe the US marshalls and FBI, and that's about it. But it contains a salad bowl of federal agencies that have never worked together, let alone well together.

Under Obama’s plan to let the scheduled 2011 tax rate hikes occur, and his plan to raise the self-employment tax on those making more than $250,000, the S corporation rate would rise from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. The sole proprietor and partner rate would rise from 37.9 percent all the way up to a staggering 50.3 percent. Many Democrats in Congress have proposed making all small businesses (including S corporations) pay this 50-plus percent rate. A small business tax rate that high would be the highest marginal rate faced by them in nearly a quarter-century.

The Bush tax cuts don't actually expire until halfway through Obama's term, which only puts marginal tax rates back to where they were in 1993-2001 (heady times if I recall), and Obama is only going to raise capital gains and payroll taxes. I don't mind tax cuts, but without the necessary budget cuts, any savings a person recieves is swallowed up by higher interest rates, and a weakened dollar caused by balloning deficits. The Republicans have a poor record on cutting spending and entitlement reform, and McCain isn't likely to get anything past a Democratic Congress.

Obama's plan calls for keeping Social Security solvent, and he has a better chance of balancing the budget then McCain and his irresponsible tax cuts. So under McCain we can expect higher gas prices since he will not address the issue (mainly a weakened dollar) that pushes oil prices higher. Tax cuts alone have been proven to not be an effective budget balancer, and without a balanced budget I fear the dollar will remain weak. Greenspan concerned over deficits' future impact - Nov. 19, 2004, from last decade: Greenspan Says Weak Dollar Is Caused by Federal Deficits - New York Times

Only a MSM reporter has troubling pinpointing Obama's ideology. Obama's for sharply raising taxes and for massive increases in spending. He favors immediate retreat in Iraq and wants to parlay without preconditions with Ahmadinejad and Chavez. Obama supports the abortion on demand in every situation, and thinks Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the two most liberal members of the Supreme Court, the model for future SCOTUS appointees. Obama endorsed the D.C. gun ban that was struck down by the Supreme Court and Ibama endorsed the Court's decision conferring habeas rights on the Gitmo detainees. On immigration, Obama worked to undermine the flawed compromise of last year because the amnesty it offered was in his view not far reaching enough. Until this week he opposed the effort to extend the surveillance authority of the U.S..

Obama's run to the center, or the right depending on your perspective, is not really surprising. He's following Nixon's axiom, given to Dole-run to the Right in the primaries, run to the center in the general, just on the opposite side of the political specturm. Obama isn't a socialist, or a commie, so Red-baiting at this point is silly. On some issues he is conservative, or at least moderate, he doesn't support abortion on demand, supports the indivdual right to own a gun, backs away from gay marriage, he is a free trader, supports the death penalty, supports welfare reform, and now supports FISA. On taxes he has a nuanced position; after the Bush tax cuts expire he won't raise income tax rates higher. Finally his position on Iraq is about in line with everyone, including the Iraqis, except the neo-con Right. A 16 month withdrawal of not all US troops (he will keep some residual troops there to fight terrorism) is hardly an abandonment of a country whose leaders and people want US troops out in two years.

Why It's Important to Note that Obama is NOT Liberal or Progressive

by: Matt Stoller
Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 19:52

Over the past few days, I've been pushing out an idea through the media that Obama is not a liberal or progressive. I think it's an important point to get out there, and even though I am a supporter of Obama and a liberal, I do not think it really suits Obama or liberals to consider him one of ours (this was true for Hillary as well, who like Obama is fairly centrist). In a post called the Immunity Hysteria, ardent Obama supporter Larry Lessig mocks Obama supporters who thought that Obama was a strong liberal:

You can't read Obama's books, watch how he behaved in the Illinois Senate, and watched how he voted in the US Senate, and believe he is a Bernie Sanders liberal. He is not now, and nor has ever been. That's not to say there aren't issues on which he takes a liberal position. It is to say that the mix of views he actually has and has had doesn't map on a 1970s spectrum of liberals to conservative. He is not, for example, "against the market," as so many on the left still make it sound like they are. He is for same-sex marriage. So if you're upset with Obama because you see him shifting, you should actually be upset with yourself that you have been so careless in understanding the politics of this candidate.
Obama is not for same sex marriage, but aside from that, Lessig is correct. Obama has a mixture of views and should not be characterizes as a liberal. Consider:

Matt Stoller :: Why It's Important to Note that Obama is NOT Liberal or Progressive

Obama agrees that states banning late term abortions is perfectly reasonable, and that mental health exceptions shouldn't just be about women feeling 'blue'.

Obama believes that the FISA bill legalizing warrantless wiretapping and granting immunity to telecom firms that engaged in criminal activity was a good compromise.

Obama wants to expand the size and budget of the Pentagon.

Obama believes that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization.

Obama believes that promising to rewrite NAFTA was just overheated campaign rhetoric.

Obama wants to keep residual troops in Iraq to fight terrorism.
Now there are many liberal policies that Obama believes in as well.


Obama is seeking universal health care.

Obama is seeking 7 days of paid sick leave all across the country.

Obama's current position is that he will end the war in Iraq by removing combat troops, and that he will engage Iran in aggressive diplomacy.

Obama is a strong advocate of net neutrality, universal broadband, and a diversified media structure.

Obama supports the Employee Free Choice Act and wants a more progressive tax code.
I could list more on both sides of the ledger, but you get the point. He is not a right-winger, but he is not particularly liberal. And that's the kind of government to expect him to bring in 2009.

As a liberal who thinks we are in a crisis moment in our politics, I believe that this kind of government is destined to run into serious troubles, much as this centrist muddle of a Congress has dropped to an approval rating of 9%, worse than the GOP Congress of 2004-2006. You cannot nibble around the edges of our deep systemic problems. There are conservative solutions to our problems, like more drilling, war, a surveillance state and depression, and there are progressive solutions, like an end to the war on terror and the war on drugs, an end to the surveillance state, a move to sustainable food, industry, development, and media systems. Both carry immense amounts of pain, neither is guaranteed to work, both offer a different set of winners and losers, and they each reflect different views of human nature. People try to do the right thing if given the opportunity versus people cannot be trusted and respond only to force and propaganda.

That's the choice, and progressives basically have chosen the former. But notice that tthere is no centrist solution to peak oil or climate change. You can't cut the baby in half, someone is going to have to reduce oil and coal consumption by a lot. Change is coming in a big way; in fact radicalism since 2000 and a broad internet revolution shows that change has been here for quite awhile, though nothing like what we will see.

As a liberal, I believe that if Obama comes in and implements a bunch of muddled centrist policies, proposing tax cuts to deal with poverty and an expanded military and entitlement reform along with a weird convoluted health care reform, he will fail because basic liberal ideas like accountability, oversight, and integrity in leadership will not be embedded into our institutions. The rich have left us with a massive bill in the form of an intractable trade deficit, national debt, and oil addiction, and someone's going to pay it. If it's the public instead of the people who ran up the country's credit cards (take a look at the nation's billionaires), it's going to make a lot of people much angrier than they are right now.

This anger will go somewhere; right now anger is going against Bush, but he's out of the picture come 2009, though we can kick his corpse for a few years or so if Democrats act smartly (which they won't). If Obama's centrist policies fail, and he is considered a big government liberal or progressive, the public will reject liberalism and progressivism, as it has for the last forty years. But this will not be a result of disliking progressive ideas, but as a result of believing that bad centrist ideas are progressive ideas.

So, as liberals who believe in a different vision for America than Obama, it's important that Obama's centrist policy sympathies are blamed for what goes wrong when he takes over and screws up the country worse than it is right now, which we'll notice after our honeymoon of hoorays some time after the transition. We should not want him to make policies in the name of liberalism unless they are actually liberal policies. America tends to get the right answer after trying everything else first, and this period is no different. After trying out a disastrous top-down financialized conservative framework, the DC elites are moving to more centrist top-down period of transition, much as they did after Bush the first. Just as the 2007-2009 Democratic Congress failed utterly in stopping the war in Iraq or setting us on a different energy future, kicking the can to the next President, the next President is going to try to avoid big ideological fights as post-ideological change agent.

When the next President runs into trouble, he can either turn to the left and we can be there with political support and real solutions, or he can either turn on the left and pretend like his trouble is coming from him not passing enough FISA-like actions. I'd far prefer the former to the latter, but a liberal opposition strategy - as the 'loyal opposition' within the party, makes sense. Obama isn't ours, he never was, and we shouldn't pretend he is or else we are throwing away the opportunity to have real progressive policies enacted sometime over the next few years.

One you absorb this state of affairs, it's a fairly optimistic path forward. All of the work going into getting Obama elected is helping to build the progressive movement and teaching millions of people to get involved, give money, run for office, etc. These people have progressive sympathies and are attaching themselves to important political networks. Some of them paid attention to FISA who were not paying attention in 2006, which is good. The network is just bigger and stronger.

We have a variety of problems in the progressive movement, but several of them are changing quickly. The 50 state strategy has reshaped the party apparatus and grassroots, and the homogenized boomer white leadership structure is changing quite quickly both racially and generationally this cycle. That is exceptionally good. There's a lot of work to do yet, including building much stronger links with elements of the corporate world and a renewed need for strong gender diversification, but at a certain point, the progressive movement will be big enough to regularly influence and even change policy. And then we're going to be able to proactively shape the agenda of all politicians.

So work for Obama, help him get elected, but realize that he doesn't and will never share our values. And we shouldn't try to pretend that he is the progressive we wish he were, since he's a politician, and politicians go where power is. And he's decided that power is not with the liberals. That's fine. But it's important, as people who believe that liberal ideas work, that Obama be understood as who he is, not as who we wish he were. I have tried to broadcast this message over the past few days, but first, I'll make a caveat most of us on this site will recognize.

Caveat: We want to make it very clear that criticism or analysis of Obama is not intended as a repudiation of support for Obama. He's a far superior candidate to McCain, a better person, and will be a much better President. Second, we are not really making an argument that Obama's recent moves will hurt him in this election. They may or they may not. It really doesn't matter what any of us think about his campaign, he's chosen his path, perhaps because he did not think there was a viable progressive alternative or perhaps because he's more of a Jimmy Carter good government Democrat than a liberal populist. Regardless, we don't think this is a sudden swing to the center for him, he has always broadcast his politics as centrist and post-partisan in nature. We don't feel betrayed, because we always took him at his word that he saw incivility and not conservatives as our major political problem. We saw him support Lieberman in 2006, and we listened when he praised Reagan for bringing optimism back to American politics.

We support him, even though we disagree with his political outlook and policy positions.

Over the past few days I've made a number of public statements in various traditional media outlets about the ideological nature of the government we'll see in 2009 to highlight this distinction.


I headlined the Brave New Films campaign petition drop asking Joe Lieberman to be stripped of his powers within the Democratic caucus come 2009, which includes the Chairmanship of the Government Reform and Homeland Security Committee which he would no doubt use to undermine Obama's attempted withdrawal from IRaq.

I was quoted in the Washington Post today saying that an Obama victory will be a victory for "centrist government". Last night, I was on Al Jazeera and was asked about what progressives had in common with Barack Obama. My response was "not much", and that he's just a politician and needs to be pushed.

I visited and grilled Kevin Powell, a primary challenger to corrupt corporate Democrat Ed Towns, to see if he is worth supporting.
What all of these statements have in common is a belief that the 2009-2011 government will not be liberal or progressive, but will by and large be a mixture of the recent FISA bill and the recent Medicare bill. The Democrats will move progressive legislation around the edges, but corporate interests will hold a good amount of power (such as capital gain cuts for entrepreneurial businesses, a venture capitalist dream). Progressives and Ron Paul libertarian types will have a bit more access, but we will still be a largely marginalized group because there just isn't enough power or sophistication within our movement to get much more. Smart organizing campaigns, like the FISA fight, will originate from outside DC, and will lose far more often than they win, but progressive movement actors will continue to get better and stronger and at some point will break through to the mainstream.

So let's keep going in the direction we're headed in. It's working, but it is also going to be a real slog. And it's not worth it to pretend otherwise.

Open Left:: Why It's Important to Note that Obama is NOT Liberal or Progressive

Originally Posted by gunnut

What does DHS contain? I know it has border patrol, maybe a few intelligence agencies. You figure the "department of homeland security" should have border patrol and the coast guard, maybe the US marshalls and FBI, and that's about it. But it contains a salad bowl of federal agencies that have never worked together, let alone well together.

FEMA, Coast Guard, Secret Service, (FBI is still separate), Border Patrol, ICE, USCIS, (formerly INS), and TSA. It also has its own bureaucracy, and internal intelligence agency.