It's Politics. On The Urban Blog.

I can't go long without having thoughts about politics, so it's time to say something about politics.

I want to let everybody know that I'm supporting the Obama-Biden ticket in the upcoming Presidential election.  I was kind of wondering why my output has been consistently low on this blog for awhile now, and there are a ton of reasons, but probably the one I neglected to notice was my addiction to presidential election politics and my apprehension to writing about it here.

Yes, folks, I am the kind of person who starts watching Road to the White House as soon as they start airing it in advance of the upcoming election season.  I pay good close attention.  I'm more of a Democrat, but I try to consume a fair amount of both sides' content.  I want to make sure that I feel the way I feel before I allow myself to actually feel it.

Last year when I was in Reno visiting the folks, Barack Obama showed up to town and had a really nice event in Wingfield Park.  He gave a jim-dandy speech and complimented the city and talked about civil rights and his health care plan and foreign affairs and his story a little bit.  It was a short speech, but it was densely packed and it was coming out from a clarity of belief and purpose that was evident.

Organizers gather for orientation at Barack Obama's appearance in Reno, NV on 05/30/07

The naysayers of Obama often say that they think he is long on platitudes but short on details, but every time I hear him speak, I hear words that actually represent what actions would be taken to effect the kinds of changes he's talking about.  He makes a good case for not being a jerk and for trying to lead with issues and not to insult your opponent but to insult their policy positions.

You may wish to go back to the point about the details that I have heard that not everybody heard.  Well, after the jump... a few.

Health Care

This one's low hanging fruit.  Here's how it works.

Case 1.  If you have insurance at your job, and you like it, you get to keep it.

Case 2.  If you don't have a job like that but you do have some money you wouldn't mind spending on insurance, you can go to a website and pick from amongst a large number of private plans.  Basically, you're in the risk pool for any of these HMOs and the government will pick up enough of the tab that you're not spending all your money on insurance.

Case 3.  If you're so poor you can't pay for a damn thing, then you can have Medicaid, and if you're so old you'll be going to the hospital regularly, you can have Medicare.  And of course, you can still have a Medicare supplement.

So instead of the government owning and operating all the hospitals and employing all the doctors, everybody keeps their current arrangement or stays on the path to a new better one if they find it necessary.

Foreign Affairs

On foreign affairs, it's hard to ignore that Obama's plan for Iraq is in tune with the times.  McCain seems to think 100 years if necessary of occupation of Iraq would be just fine.  Ok, so what are we waiting for with Iraq?  Ghandi?

We have the Iraqi government now calling for a timetable for withdrawal.  I don't much like the notion that we'd have to go back in there at some point, and I'm glad Obama called the "surge" a success, finally.  I have always been a staunch supporter of sending more troops to Iraq if that's what it takes, but it's kind of hard to read something like The Prince of the Marshes without realizing... Iraqis actually tend to like the civil servants Western occupiers send in.  It's the presence of troops in their country that they're not terribly happy about.  We can still help out without having to have 100,000+ troops stationed in the country.  Working the political compromise solutions inside Iraq is one great way to get that done.

Compromise rhetoric may not sound too great to some but the fact of the matter is, it's how things get done.  Our country's constitution for one, was hammered out through compromise.  Compromise can have terrible consequences:  the Civil War would have been unnecessary had slavery been illegal from the start but then, the South wouldn't have joined at that point, either.  We could be Canada by now if that happened.  There was after all the War of 1812.  Britain wasn't letting America go just like that.

So, there's plenty of other stuff.  Obama would have a State Department that would be very busy on the world stage and it would be working on lots of causes at all times.  Not all popular of course, like meeting with the leaders of Iran.  (Frankly I think that meeting with Iran is the right thing to do.  Gives us a chance to size them up.)

Would he increase military funding and allow the size of the forces to grow with no war in sight?  Dunno.  But one thing he would do is fund the hell out of veterans services.  And if there's one thing I'm for, it's for well funded veterans services. 

But Obama and Democratic politicians should take note:  What Clinton allowed to happen to the military was not good, and I think we need to spend what it takes to have the best accommodated military in the world.  Volunteer armies are rare enough and America is still a target.  We need to be ready and reward those who stand ready.

Civil Rights

As a homo, it's kind of dispiriting to see Obama for civil unions and not full marriage, but I'm actually of the belief that marriage is a BS institution and not at all necessary outside the confines of a religious belief.  I see things happening in some states though like California and Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, etc, that make me think... yes, there's hope on that front.

I think family is the more important institution, and I consider family-oriented those policies which help people who were already doing just fine not be poor if something catastrophic happens.

Mind you, I'm not exactly for bailing out people who bought too much house or flippers who are losing everything because they tried using lighter fluid.  A foreclosure is not the end of the world.

But it's just simple stuff.  When I was a kid, my dad died and Social Security, Worker's Comp, and federally backed loans were there to save the day for my family, now under the helm of just my mom.  So you see, social programs are not always a bad thing, and I know from the letter the government sends me every year letting me know how much I've made and how much it intends to pay me when I'm old, that government programs can work.  If they're properly funded.

The crowd for Barack Obama.  In Reno, NV 05-31-2007

Another civil right I care about is abortion.  I'm not in favor of abortion.  I've known women who even as pregnant teenagers carried babies to term.  Some raised them, some put them up for adoption.  It's possible to make a couple extremely happy through the power of carrying a child to term and putting it up for adoption.  In today's world the birth mother can even be a part of the child's life.

Sadly, there are also a lot of women who want to have a lot of sex and take a lot of drugs and generally not be responsible.  I personally believe they might be the ones judged by the Lord when they die if such things happen.  If you need my help as a midwife or Lamaze coach or whatever, I'll offer it.  But I'm not going to support making abortion illegal in any state, sorry. I believe in harm reduction.  And if you want to talk about how a person's decisions shouldn't impact me on a daily basis, the one civic program we're probably not doing away with any time soon is prisons.  That's some expensive-ass welfare.

Immigration is another civil right.  I routinely talk to "white" people in Nevada who feel they have quite frankly been screwed over by the presence of illegal and even legal immigrants from Mexico in their neighborhoods.  I cannot independently verify that the people in question are actually Mexicans and I keep an eye on myself to make sure I'm not being a racist jerk.  From neighbor kids treating other people's lawns as public parks to stealing from neighbors to increases in prostitution and drug crime in different areas, this kind of activity has been reported to me by several people.

But I happen to believe that one of the reasons we're having problems with the Mexicans and anyone else here illegally, is because America has historically been that country where you could go make a living and not be in your crazy ass backward country.  Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews, hell everyone has come to America in search of a better life (less actual Spanish people, though place names in California, Florida, and Texas reflect quite a different past)

What's the difference between now and then?  Well despite the overwhelming commonality of the Spanish language and cultural influences, I believe the most obvious differing thing is Ellis Island.  We had one of those that served us pretty well.  We made citizens out of these people and these people made Americans out of themselves.  They needed our help, we were ready to demand their help and their loyalty, and somehow generations later looking back:  the deal worked.

Now a poor person from Mexico starts their journey by finding a criminal, paying the criminal money, breaking the law, aiding and abetting others in breaking the law... of the "new" country they're going to exploit for as long as they have to.  They might even have kids here and those kids will be their anchor to a land that didn't trust them enough to give them an honest shot.  I'm sure that'll make great natural-born citizens out of their kids.

Civil rights means everyone is treated fairly under the law.  Laws which are unfair are made to be broken.  If we could see this link, we might be able to get our respect for the law back and reduce harm to our society all at once.

The conservative reader by now is likely done listening to this BS, and I hope the rest didn't fall asleep.  There are two more topics that need to be covered.

Economy and Energy

Energy is an important thing to be talking about right now.  I like Obama's call to get us off foreign oil in 10 years.  I like that he's ready to help get American automakers building plug-in hybrids.  This is an area where the government can come in pretty handy.  I personally suspect that the notion that we'd price our existing investments right into depreciation is not that popular but I view our problem with oil as essentially the same thing as our recent housing "crisis".

People got used to the idea that money didn't matter and the price of commodities didn't matter.  What are the three basic necessities of life?  Food, Clothing, Shelter.  These are the core commodities.  Shelter being one, what happens when people run up the price on that core commodity?  It becomes untenable, obviously a problem, right?

To me, "drill more" is like suggesting we take out an interest-only ARM on too much house for our budget.  Drill More says "let's start buying SUVs again and driving them proudly too!"  Drill More says "oh don't worry, we have plenty of oil!"

If we had to fight another war and we had drilled all our oil, we'd be in trouble, because we can't build a worldwide infrastructure to have plug-in hybrid tanks.

But we can build a national infrastructure to have plug-in hybrid cars, and to get the electricity produced we can do what it takes in a variety of areas.  Newsflash folks, not all Democrats are against coal and nuclear.  Some of us are just glad to be aware that cities like Seattle and Reno can power their residential grids using water pressure (hydro electric and geothermal, respectively) and that wind and solar and a better transmission grid would in fact move us forward.  They now have solar systems operating in Nevada that work more like geothermal plants, using heat transfer instead of photovoltaic technology, that generate large sums of energy.  There's no reason to want to overdo nuclear and coal until these other sources are developed to their absolute potential.

Building cars and wind turbines and all kinds of things will keep Americans busy at work, and service industries will spring up around our domestic energy supply.  It's just natural whether the government helps it along or not - but the government can provide the spark and keep an eye on the fire.

Finally, basic economics:  no candidate running right now is saying something I think we need to hear.  I want to hear about a balanced budget from every senate and house candidate but I'm not hearing about it, so maybe if the Democrats win the Republicans can write us up another "contract" and we can get that done.  Something tells me in Obama we'd have a president who'd support the legislation.

As far as tax policy is concerned, progressive not regressive is the order of the day.  Trickle-down economics does not work.  GDP growing, productivity growing, corporate profits growing, overall wages down.  Who the hell is supposed to be spending the money that makes the economy go?  It's wage earners.  I'm all for targeted incentive programs.  Nobody likes taxes, but our country wasn't founded on the notion of no taxes ever, it was founded on the notion of no taxation without representation.  When people make more they are unafraid to pay more and when they pay more, profits rise.  Everything in our economy is already tax-adjusted.  If the plant is going to close and move to China even without taxes going up, then you know something's fishy.  One thing I've noted in my travels:  people who pay lots of taxes who live in places with truly democratic or representative institutions demand something for their money and they get it.  They live very well.  So yes, taxes suck.  But that issue is irrelevant.

So here, I've gone on a very long winded rant about lots of things and the net result is, I'm votin' for the Democrat this time.  I woulda voted for McCain 2000, but once he decided to suck up hard to the Republicans, I decided the "maverick" wasn't really doin' it. One person is in control of his party's agenda, and one person is under the control of his party's agenda.  I prefer the one who is in control, so I prefer Obama.

Comments

[NVMojo]

Great post! Thanks and carry on! It ain't over yet!

[David]

I am supporting Bob Barr, but I definitely like Obama more than McCain.

[David]

I am supporting Bob Barr, but I definitely like Obama more than McCain.