8. November 2008 by admin.

I headed out bright and early Tuesday morning to pull the lever for Barack Obama.  The polling place was busy, but curiously, nobody was waiting to vote in my district, so I got in and out fast.  So that’s that.

And yet…

Some years ago, I read Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and wondered at the political landscape where the struggling Kansans would consistently vote Republican, despite the fact that Republican policies were taking their jobs and leaving them worse off.

A New York Post op-ed piece at the time suggested that the Kansans were simply looking out for their own self-interest: they wanted to pay lower taxes.  But it’s more than that.

The United States used to stand for the idea of a place with limited government where one could work hard, compete fairly, and succeed.  The rest of the world probably still believes that, to some degree.  But for those of us who live here, it seems rather different.  I’ve speculated about the causes for that in these pages, and so won’t rehash that here.

I live in the city, and I’m pragmatic: I see that the changes around us under the Republicans (not necessarily initiated by the government, but encouraged by its free-market policies) are changing our country into something that we Americans are not necessarily morally, emotionally, or mentally prepared to face: a new era of competition for all of us.

So I’ll vote for Obama, to take a step away from that.  But it is a step away from what the United States traditionally stood for, and, yes, a step in the direction of socialism.

On the other hand, in cherishing what we stood for, unlike the Kansans of Franks’ book, I wouldn’t (and didn’t) vote for McCain as the more ‘true American’ alternative.  McCain is for big government too, just in a slightly different flavor.

But now I understand where the Kansans are coming from.

*          *          *

The MTA, our local transportation agency, is renaming what we always knew as the Triborough Bridge as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge.  The name refers to a group of toll bridges that connect Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens.

We’ve known for some time that the MTA is in dire financial straits: another subway and bus fare hike seems inevitable for next year.  So why are they spending hundreds of thousands (and perhaps millions) of dollars to rename a bridge that had a perfectly good (and functional) name to begin with?

Posted in Dysfunctional Government, Presidential election | No Comments »

3. November 2008 by admin.

About two weeks ago, one of my colleagues sent me this cartoon:

My immediate reaction was that, well, my colleague is a Republican.   But there’s a little bit more to it than that.

I know that giving to those who are ‘too lazy’ doesn’t work.  Despite the best intentions, it engenders laziness and corrodes personal honor.

But what happens when the world changes, and those who did not set out to be lazy find themselves in dire straits?  Unemployment is creeping up, and jobs are hard to find.  The eight-hour workday, for many, is a quaint relic of the past.  And almost every night on the news, there is a report of some large corporation or another firing a few thousand staffers.  For my part, I left my last job (and went into business for myself) because I was expected to give over my weekends for unpaid overtime, and was still in the doghouse with management for overrunning my budget.

Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for President, proposes to reduce taxes for most of us, while increasing taxes on those earning over $250k per year and closing corporate loopholes.  It doesn’t solve the real problem, but it helps.  One aspect of Obama’s plan is that more people in the lower income levels would actually receive a tax credit instead of paying Federal income taxes.

The New York Post calls that ‘welfare.’  Perhaps, but a refundable tax credit is not enough to live on; it’s just intended to make life a little easier.  As long as the tax credit is tied to some actual earned income, it’s not going to erode the value of work.

To take the contrary view, that of the Republicans, is to redefine ‘lazy.’  If you want to go out and work, even if it’s physically demanding, you’re still ‘lazy’ if you expect your employer, in return for your efforts, to take care of you through health insurance or other benefits, or you expect to be able to have a working life that allows you time for your own pursuits.

The major problem with this view is that most of us were not brought up to be entrepreneurs and be comfortable taking risks.  We may like the sensation of risk–such as one experiences when bungee jumping or skydiving–but those activities, with their redundant safety measures, are probably safer than crossing the street, and do not prepare us to manage risk in our lives.

While many of us may have set up lemonade stands when we were kids, I can’t remember taking a course in high school or college about the basic principles of business.  (There were courses in economics, which is not the same thing.)  And I wonder how our young people, who live in constant communication with each other with their cell phones and their computers, will adapt to the process of going into business for one’s self, which is intensly personal and involves, to a surprising extent, being able to keep secrets.

But that is what lies before us under the Republicans.   And in that direction, to take the zeroth-degree approximation, lies armed revolution: we will learn to be violent before we learn to be businessmen. Actually, we already know how to be violent, so it won’t be a big leap.

And that is why, despite my misgivings about Barack Obama, I will pull the lever for him tomorrow.

Posted in John McCain, Presidential election, Money, Barack Obama | No Comments »

14. September 2008 by admin.

Like everyone else with half a brain in this country, I’ve been looking at the Presidential candidates and trying to decide whom I should vote for in November.

I’ve started with the premise, among others, that Iraq is off the table as an issue.  There is an agreement in place with the Iraqi government on how we will withdraw our forces over time, and while the initial decision to go to Iraq was a spectacularly bad judgement, neither of the present candidates was specifically responsible for it.

The Democrats are running Barack Obama, a wonderful orator with big plans for how the government will help us.  He grants that these plans will cost money, and proposes to pay for them by eliminating tax loopholes for businesses, and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.  His approach to foreign policy emphasizes the use of diplomacy over military force.

The Republicans are running John McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war who has the vibe of being a ‘maverick.’  On the other hand, his actual votes in the Senate track very closely the Bush administration’s desires.  He wants to keep the tax cuts and considers the world a dangerous place, where the use of force is a real consideration.

Part of me really wants to vote for McCain.  I believe that he has better judgement than Bush, I don’t like taxes (who does?), and I’m genuinely skeptical of big government plans to help people, because I’ve seen them backfire.

On the other hand, a government, like a household or a company, has to take in enough money to maintain itself and do the things it does.  And maintaining a strong military and being prepared to use it aren’t cheap.  Moreover, I don’t buy into the thought that lowering tax rates will stimulate economic activity to the point where the government will take in more money than if it had left taxes alone: if taxes were oppressively high, as they were a generation ago, it might be true, but not now.

In the second quarter of 2008, the US economy grew by 2.1%, so that we can officially say that we’re not in a recession, but shed over 500,000 jobs. Who wins and who loses when that happens?

And what good does it do to make ourselves safe from terrorists if most of us end up worse off in terms of our daily standard of living, in a country that is becoming no longer the land of opportunity?

McCain will do nothing to stop this.  Obama will at least try.

For this reason, despite my misgivings, I’ve decided to vote for Barack Obama in the next election.

But God help us, either way….

Posted in John McCain, Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

10. September 2008 by admin.

While on the campaign trail, Barack Obama remarked, with regard to the Republican effort to appear as reformers, “You can put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig.”

The Republicans took the remark as a slur against their Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, who remarked that she was a ‘pit bull with lipstick’ in her speech last week.  Obama’s remarks made the front page in today’s papers.

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.  But wouldn’t it be nice if we could get past this silly stuff and actually discuss the issues?

Posted in Sarah Palin, Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

7. September 2008 by admin.

My wife asked me to join her in the Labor Day parade today, which this year was held yesterday, the Saturday after Labor Day.  She’s a member of the Screen Actors Guild.  My previous time in the parade was in 1982, when I was a newly-minted member of the Transport Workers Union.

The announcement from SAG indicated that the first 25 members to show up would get a free T-shirt.  My wife and I arrived late, but she was #18 on the list, and even though I’m not a member, I got one too.  I’m not an actor: I just play one for the Labor Day parade.

Tropical Storm Hanna,  which had threatened to douse the city all day, held off until mid-afternoon.  It didn’t rain, but it was really, really muggy.  Still, it was a festive occasion, walking up Fifth Avenue.

However, there were very few spectators.  Along the 28 blocks, there were perhaps a couple of hundred people who seemed to be actually watching the parade.  Foot traffic on Fifth Avenue was about normal for late on a Saturday morning,  In recent years, interest in the parade has flagged: is it that the parade didn’t take place on Labor Day (and why is that?), loss of interest in labor unions, or that parades aren’t enough of a public spectacle to hold a crowd anymore?  (When I was with the Transport Workers in 1982, it was really on Labor Day, and there were a good few thousand spectators.)

Many of the parade participants wore Obama for President buttons, and Obama posters appeared on some of the floats.  Of course, Barack Obama, as the Democratic candidate, is favored by the labor unions because he proposes to use government to help the working people.

And why not?  Over the last eight years, we’ve seen the Bush administration use the power of government to favor big business and the wealthy.  He cut taxes and then embroiled us in an expensive war.  He promoted the New Feudalism, also known as the Ownership Society, where one is what one owns.  Under his watch, hundreds of thousands of Americans signed up  for mortgages they couldn’t afford, as a path to home ownership, and then found themselves homeless when their payments ratcheted up, and their income didn’t.

And who wins, ultimately, when hundreds of thousands of Americans go bankrupt?  The people who have assets to begin with, who stay calm, and  can acquire the foreclosed properties cheap.  The rich get richer….

On the other hand, when I was an impressionable teenager in the 1970s, I saw how the opposite premise, that government should use its power to help the people, could backfire.  My parents had steady jobs, so there was never a question of not having a roof overhead or food on the table.  But we had both inflation and unemployment, something classical economics said wasn’t supposed to happen.

In the early 1970s, we had the energy crisis when the Arabs refused to sell us oil. The Federal government has spent billions since then to try to encourage alternate sources of energy.  And while there has been progress, we’re still addicted to oil, and moaned this spring when the price of gasoline shot up.  So I have to wonder what would change to make the next infusion of Federal billions actually accomplish something.

For my part, I’d like to see a government that doesn’t use its power to particularly help anyone.  But it’s far more compelling campaigning to suggest what the government can or should do than what it can’t or shouldn’t.  So we’re stuck with the candidates as they stand.

*          *          *

I was impressed with the speech made by Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for Vice-President,  at the convention last week.  She’s a good orator, and if her cover story is to believed, a good leader and administrator.  She’s also suffered the slings and arrows of life to a greater extent than your average politician.  All in all, it’s a compelling package, and more relevant than the average Vice Presidential candidate because her running mate, John McCain, will be the oldest person to become President if he is elected.

To some degree, I resented the commentary in the press about her lack of experience, and whether or not she had been properly vetted before her selection.  When I’ve had to hire someone, and have chosen experience over energy and a positive attitude given two otherwise similar candidates, I’ve generally been disappointed.  And I can’t get too terribly upset over Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter when I consider that Palin herself got married in her early 20s.  Some people get married earlier in life than others.

But as I contemplated the Obama buttons at the Labor Day parade, it came to me.  I’m sure that, in fact, Palin was very thoroughly vetted.  Her positions on issues, which didn’t really come out in the convention speech, are very far to the right.  She plays to the Republican base, more so than McCain.

She’s portrayed as a ‘reformer.’  Let’s grant that premise for a moment and consider: of everything that was and is wrong with the Bush administration, it never was in need of ‘reform.’  Our Fearless Leader made his decisions because he believed they were right, and not because someone paid him to.  Yes, all of his friends are in Big Oil, and he aspired to be a Big Oil man himself, but we knew that from the beginning, and voted for him anyway.

Sarah Palin is not a pit bull with lipstick: she’s Dubya with lipstick.

Posted in Sarah Palin, Holidays, Presidential election | No Comments »

3. September 2008 by admin.

At the political conventions this year, Tuesday night seems to be the night for the loser to extol the winner.  A week ago, at the Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton threw her ’support’ behind Barack Obama, even though she was unable to identify anything good about him beyond his not being a Republican, and her more memorable lines were about herself (’the sisterhood of the traveling pantsuit’).

Moreover, the whole convention last week was suffused with the funk of how Hillary should have properly won, but got upstaged by Obama, the upstart.

Last night, at the Republican convention, Fred Thompson  talked about John McCain, and it was a refreshing contrast.  Perhaps it was because Thompson was never a serious candidate, but he was able to actually identify good things about McCain, as well as noting that he’s not a Democrat.

Watching the Republican convention left me with the feeling that McCain was an honorable man who would make a fine President, something the Democrats failed to do at that point with Obama.

For my part, I’m still on the fence, and I have misgivings about both of the major candidates.  But it’s instructive that McCain seems to be held in higher esteem among the Republicans than Obama is among the Democrats.

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4. July 2008 by admin.

Last Sunday, Wesley Clark, former general and Democratic Presidential candidate, remarked on Face the Nation that “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.” The remark related to the Republican candidate, John McCain.

It was, perhaps, a rude thing to say, but not entirely out of place.  Much of McCain’s appeal is based on his having been shot down over Vietnam and serving several years as a prisoner of war.  And as for a qualification to be President, I’d rather have a guy who flew a fighter plane and didn’t get shot down.

But the McCain camp worked themselves into a lather over the remark, suggesting that Clark was asserting that McCain’s military service did not qualify him to be President.

Well, it doesn’t!  The last President to have actually served in the military (as opposed to the National Guard) was the elder George Bush.  And there are thousands of ex-fighter pilots, and probably hundreds of ex-fighter pilots who were also prisoners of war: are all of them entitled to be President?

It was also suggested that Clark apologize for his remarks.  He didn’t, but Barack Obama had to address the issue, indicating regret that Clark had taken the campaign off-message.  Politics makes cowards of us all.

The result of this is that we got through another week chasing our tails because someone said something refreshingly honest, instead of the standard manufactured blather, or, worse yet, actually addressing the issues.

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1. June 2008 by admin.

Yesterday evening, the Democratic rules committee  reached a decision about Florida and Michigan.  The delegations would be seated with half-votes instead of full votes, and for Michigan, some of the delegates (including a handful that would otherwise have gone to Hillary Clinton) were allocated to Barack Obama, who did not appear on the ballot.

As a result, Clinton nets a few dozen delegates, but not enough to make a meaningful dent in Obama’s lead.  When the last primaries end on Tuesday, Obama will be in striking distance to the nomination, but will probably not have bagged it.  But he’ll be the nominee, barring something really extraordinary.

*          *          *

I’m a registered Democrat, and I consider the Bush victory in 2000 the closest thing to a coup d’etat that our country has ever experienced.  I really don’t want to vote Republican this year, but if Clinton were to win the nomination, I’d have to vote for John McCain.

On the other hand, There’s a lot that I like about Obama, most of it stuff that seems to tick everyone else off.  I like that he listens to people who don’t believe that the US is the most wonderful country on the planet, and that he’s an intellectual with a conceptual view of the world.

Part of me likes that Obama is willing to open discussions with our enemies, but he underplays the difficulty of actually doing that: he’ll be swimming with the sharks, and if he’s not careful, he’ll get his leg bitten off.

But when it comes to Iraq, he’s lost me.  Both Obama and Clinton believe that our next task with Iraq is getting out.  While our adventures in Iraq were ill-advised at best, the next President must play the hand that he is dealt.  McCain was refreshingly honest when he remarked, a few months ago, that we might be in Iraq for 100 years.  In other words: Brother, you bought yourself a protectorate.

The Iraqi government is making progress in organizing itself and preparing to function as an independent state.  But it’s a difficult job and cannot be accomplished on a timetable driven by American politics.  It’s not, as some (including Obama) imagine, that the Iraqis are imply lazy, and if we simply hold their feet to the fire, they’ll buckle down and solve all their problems.

If we move out in 2009, we endanger Iraq’s progress, and in turn we risk destabilizing the region.   None of the advocates for withdrawal has come up with a good answer to that.

Obama has an answer, but it’s not a good one: he plans to talk to Iran and hope they’ll make nice.  It’s one thing to talk to our enemies, but it’s quite another to expect that they will act in our interest–instead of theirs–as an immediate result of such talking.

I’d like to vote for Obama, but in some respects he makes it really, really difficult.

Posted in Presidential election, Barack Obama | No Comments »

31. May 2008 by admin.

Today, the Democratic rules committee meets to decide what to do about Florida and Michigan, which were disqualified by the party because they held their primary elections too early.  In 2004, John Kerry was the clear winner after only a few weeks of campaigning, and many people across the country felt disenfranchised because they were voting only after the winner had been determined.So this year, many states fell over themselves trying to hold early primaries. New York moved its primary to early March, and Florida and Michigan moved theirs to January, in violation of Party rules. The decision had been made in 2007, and the consequences of that decision were clear: their delegates would be barred from the convention.

In response, the candidates refrained from campaigning in the two states, and Obama took his name off the Michigan ballot. Clinton won both states, through name recognition and the fact that she had yet to endure the slings and arrows of the campaign season.

And now that Clinton is behind, she’s yelling ‘disenfranchisement’ and demanding that the delegates from these states be seated with their full voting rights. (This is why, despite the fact that I voted for Clinton in March, I’m against her now: she has no integrity.) The voters of Florida and Michigan were disenfranchised by their state Party leaders, who thought they could break the rules and then get absolution through moaning and wailing.

As far as the rules committee’s decision, sadly, I don’t think it really matters. It won’t matter how the issue of Florida and Michigan are resolved, and it won’t matter who wins the Democratic Party’s nomination for President: the party will lose anyway. Maybe their candidate will be elected, but I doubt it.

The two candidates are perceived as members of a ‘disadvantaged’ groups: Hillary Clinton is a woman, and Barack Obama is black. If you favor Clinton over Obama, you’re a racist, and if you favor Obama over Clinton, you’re a sexist. Whoever wins will alienate the other half of the party’s base, and no party can expect to win that way without broad appeal beyond the base, which neither candidate has.

On the metrics, it’s hard to assess who would be the better candidate. Obama got more votes in primaries and caucuses, but in polls matching them against John McCain, the Republican candidate, Clinton does a few points better.

It’s been suggested that Clinton and Obama could both be on the ticket if the winner picked the loser to be the Vice President. Alas, I don’t think that will work either. Clinton as Vice President will be the Democrats’ Dick Cheney: the dark force that is the real power. Obama-Clinton mirrors Bush-Cheney too strongly. And if Clinton, through some degree of political legerdemain, became the Presidential candidate, many people would believe that she stole the nomination from Obama. In either case, the ticket would get lukewarm support, at best, across the Democratic spectrum, and that will not suffice to win.

Posted in Presidential election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton | No Comments »