Advertisement
Jewcy Book Club
Welcome Authors
Benyamin Cohen
& Matthew Rothschild
who are posting all week.
Coming up:
- 12/08: Seth Greenland
 |
Why Not To Vote For Barack Obama |
|
 by Daniel Koffler, May 6, 2008 |
||
TAGS:
Obama Shoots And Misses
Jewcers in North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Oregon, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, Montana, and South Dakota still have a chance to cast a vote in the Democratic party's primaries and caucuses. Here are a baker's dozen substantive reasons not to support the senator from Illinois:
- He has at least rhetorically embraced a phony, cringe-inducing populist critique of free trade glaringly incompatible with his consistent history of economic liberalism (especially since he got religion on markets from Austan Goolsbee).
- Admirably, he rejects the notion that the economy and society are zero-sum games, in which one man can prosper only if another struggles --- but he has marred this mutualism by scapegoating foreigners.
- Relatedly, he's been signaling support for corrupt bargains to protect the power of the odious Teamsters Union and free them from legal oversight.
- According to the Congressional Budget Office, his domestic policy proposals would add trillions of dollars to the national debt, perhaps as much as $1.9 trillion.
- He has caved in to the lowest, cheapest sort of fearmongering by giving credence to the paranoid quack notion that there is a link between autism and vaccination (a cave-in, by the way, that makes the country less safe to the extent that anyone follows up on even candidate Obama's vote-scaring).
- He has tried to shade away from his admirable position in favor of diplomatic engagement with hostile regimes in Tehran, Pyongyang, Havana, and elsewhere.
- He has not very deftly fled from an admirable and courageous position in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.
- He sometimes runs away from an equally admirable position in favor of breaking up the power of the teachers unions with merit pay, charter schools, and experimenting with vouchers.
- At the Democratic presidential debate in Nevada in January, he had an opportunity to repudiate the pernicious Solomon amendment, which reinforces a policy of weakening our national security by blackmailing schools into supporting state-sanctioned discrimination. He declined the opportunity.
- His plan to navigate through the subprime mortgage meltdown involves potentially expensive direct subsidies to struggling borrowers. In addition to their expense, such subsidies potentially encourage moral hazard (i.e., in this case, reckless borrowing and lending.)
- In addition to the subsidies, Obama proposes lifting statutory restrictions on bankruptcy courts imposing binding renegotiations of home mortgages, thereby opening the door to unforseeable risks to investors and potential legal challenges.
- He supports a "windfall profits tax" on oil companies, which is either an ugly pander to populist resentment of oil companies, or more alarmingly, is a token of a general principle that the government can dictate how much profit an industry is entitled to make.
- He's largely unwilling to defend Second Amendment rights except in cases where it's uncontroversial.
And these are just reasons that move me. There are plenty of other substantive reasons not to vote for Obama for those who don't share my priors. For example, if your top priority for the next presidential administration is an escalated war with Iraq, a new hot war with any of Iran, Syria, or North Korea, and/or a new cold war with Russia and China, Obama's not your candidate. Ditto if, instead of beginning long overdue improvements in the country's infrastructure and mass transit, you'd prefer the energy policy version of the Nigerian Letter Scam.
On the other hand, if you do share my priors, then despite his imperfections, Obama is better than either of his rivals on nearly all the issues on which he's flawed --- sometimes by a wide margin. On other issues, though his position isn't perfect, it's still vastly better than anything a major party presidential candidate has ever offered.
But see? Cogent, substantive criticism of Obama that doesn't resort to race-baiting or redbaiting, and is at least minimally relevant to justified grounds for voting decisions, isn't that hard after all. I just did it, and I like the guy.
Now, how about you try this exercise out on your candidate? If you're supporting Clinton or McCain (or Nader), I can help.
A Sudanese expatriate breaks the pan-Arab silence on Darfur
Religion doesn't require a belief in God
An artificial country is on the brink of dissolution
Books, movies and music that will remind you of your good intentions...
Forty weeks and 5 days of hell was just the start
| Dev Blog | Privacy | FAQ | Contact | |  | | Comment Policy | About Us | Submissions |
| Hosting provided by Tilted Planet | ||
zbird
DK: On point #12, how would you deal w/ the mortgage crisis if you're opposed to letting bankruptcy judges force workouts of mortgages that cannot be repaid? I always thought that was the best idea ever put forward in this crisis and was upset that it got shot down. I thought it made a lot of sense, because as courts of equity, bankruptcy courts are well-suited to look at individual cases and decide who deserves relief (i.e.: the speculator out for a quick buck would get no relief; the unsophisticated home buyer who was misled into signing an unconscionable mortgage would get the court's sympathy).
--Z
Daniel Koffler
Z, great question. That's what I was alluding to in the second to last graf (this would have gone on way too long if I had 39 points instead of 13): There are some real problems with Obama's mortgage fix, but it's both the most fiscally conservative and most ingenious, the least risky, and the most likely to work of all three candidates' proposals. Nonetheless, I don't think it has great odds of working, which goes to show just how ugly the shape of the housing credit market is and how sorry the universe of options is. Ceteris paribus I'd favor less intervention, possibly none, but I'm far from 100 percent sold on any of the libertarian proposals out there, since they pose their own potentially substantial risks to the market, and I don't believe in letting the economy tank to appease the ghost of Murray Rothbard.
Anyway, I think this sort of thing is a very useful exercise for everyone to do with their candidates; and also, I now have maximally laconic reply to anybody who accuses me of letting partisanship distort my analysis.
David Kelsey
Let's translate Koffler's euphemistic language:
1) When Koffler refers to "liberal economics," that means that Obama embraces far too much of corporate America's agenda, and far too willingly. At least Clinton puts up a fight before she caves.
2) When Koffler talks of "scapegoating foreigners," this is rich-speak for the outsourcing of jobs to nations that have no comparable labor rights. There is no reason why we should accept this sitting down.
6) Obama has "shied away" from advocating diplomatic engagement because he sounded like a fucking hippie. Engage all you want, but do it like Nixon, not Jane Fonda.
8) Koffler is embracing a myth that teachers are the problem, an utterly oversimplified understanding of the public school system (did Koffler even attend the public school system?). The reality is that some populations are harder to effectively educate than others, and the panacea of "privatization" is hardly going to solve that reality.
12) This is bizarre, because the truth is, Obama is actually the most willing to take on the oil companies, something I have come to concede I underestimated, but Koffler, who shills for Obama incessantly, just doesn't get. It is actually a strength of Obama, not a weakness.
nblg
Does anyone have proof that vaccination and autism are definitively not related? I don't know what Obama said about this specifically, but I'm impressed that he's willing to question the vaccine program. Vaccines have had and can continue to have a place in the world, but the vaccine program is quite flawed as it currently exists. It's far too simplistic to dismiss any questioning of vaccines as quackery.
Anonymous
1) Hillary Clinton
2) John McCain
Payday Loan Advocate
Normal
0
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";
mso-font-alt:Tahoma;
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-1 -369098753 63 0 4129279 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@Arial Unicode MS";
mso-font-charset:128;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-1 -369098753 63 0 4129279 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}
h1
{mso-style-next:Normal;
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
text-align:justify;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
page-break-after:avoid;
mso-outline-level:1;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-font-kerning:0pt;
font-weight:bold;}
p
{margin-right:0in;
mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
margin-left:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Arial Unicode MS";}
span.yshortcuts
{mso-style-name:yshortcuts;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
-->
My grandfather used to tell me,
"if something isn’t broke, than why fix it?" If referring to the
short term financial assistance that payday lenders offer, things surely aren’t
broken. In fact, customers highly appreciate payday lenders largely because,
when used properly, they’re one of the fastest and safest ways out of a
negative financial situation. Unfortunately, some people in high places don’t
see it this way and are trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Several
bipartisan efforts have outlawed the entire industry in certain states, to take
aim at the whole industry. On November 4, don’t vote by party; vote for the one
that respects our right to financial freedom.
Post Courtesy of Personal Money
Store
Professional Blogging Team
Feed Back: 1-866-641-3406
Home:
http://personalmoneystore.com/NoFaxPaydayLoans.html
Blog:
http://personalmoneystore.com/moneyblog/
roguejew
The Rogue Jew
How bout the fact that the Obamessiah is unwilling to reveal just who the moneychangers are that are financing his overthrow of the American government?
More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won’t disclose.
And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.
And it appears that a large sum of these contributions are coming from the Islamic Terrorist supporting nation of Iran!
Looks like the Iranians are buying their way into tea & crumpets with the "Chosen One".
Ismail
"...questions have arisen..."
"..apparently..."
"...it appears that..."
Never have I read such a decisive exposure of Obama's chicanery! I'm sold!
Seriously, dude, why would such a rough, tough, gun-totin' maverick as yourself resort to such transparent weaselisms as this?
Isaac
THROUGH DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS, NO LESS!!!
Hahaha. What a rube.