An Appeal To The Left

I recently rote an email to someone who sent a letter to John McCain explaining his frustration over McCain's selection of Governor Palin. He replied with the typical banter one would expect to hear from someone who is supporting Obama.

I would say that in my short voting history I feel more educated on the history and plans of the Democrat and Republican candidates now as compared to any other election. Like nearly everyone else at first I went with my gut and conservative nature supporting McCain. But now, based on my research of the major issues of these candidates pasts (voting histories as well as experience), getting an understanding of their proposed presidential goals, as well as following the trending and life of their campaigns, I can now say with all confidence that John McCain seems both the most reasonable and experienced candidate.

When investing toward retirement you are always told to make measured investments that are a balanced mix of conservative low risk and higher yield, high risk. The reason they say this is because the conservative low risk base investment will help you ride the ups and downs of the inevitable high-risk losses that might occur. This is why so many are in a panic over the stock market right now. The risk was obviously too high for too many and now that it is crashing, reasonable people are weighing the fact that they put too much of their investment in the high-risk bucket. At this stage of our economy Obama's inexperience coupled with his list of inexperienced "change"equals high risk. I think that in better days we as a nation could throw more into a high-risk set of change goals, but what our nation needs is stability. I am not willing to play with those outcomes at this point. Having said that, change is inevitable, so I am speaking to the kind of change that Obama envisions. A simple example of this change would be the inevitable changing of the guard within the government financial leadership in a transition to an Obama administration. Market speculation is already saying that this transition equals risk and an inevitable downturn (again) of our markets. Forgetting lack of experience and character issues, we can't afford Obama on this issue alone.

Having shared there thoughts, here is the letter I gave to the person I mentioned above, in response to the letter he said he sent to McCain. please, consider the points in this letter as you think about the coming election:

I read your note and appreciate you putting thought into the letter, but my hope is that you gain a greater understanding of the actual voting history (in Illinois and Washington) of Obama before you actually vote. I understand that most folks feel strongly at this point about their candidate of choice, but it is never too late to examine the history and character of the candidates within the context of their campaign promises. For example, I think Obama gets a lot of credit for:

1. Obama wants to reform Washington.
2. Obama wants to implement power in Washington to the benefit of main street.
3. Obama wants to tax the the rich and give to the poor.
4. Obama wants to legislate medical benefits.
5. Obama will get us out of Iraq.
   

Things to consider when thinking about the above statements (item for item):

1. He and the 110th Congress were elected on the same campaign for change and reform (this is a redu of that same campaign.) The 110th Congress will go down in history as the "do nothing" Congress with a larger disapproval rating than President G.W. Bush. If we vote for this same campaign again and expect something different than the change Obama didn't ever try to do in the 110th Congress (he didn't lead a single effort for change in the 110th) then we end up being the fools. Fools, not because we didn't rightly want change. We would be fools for voting twice for a campaign that yielded nothing close to the promised result the first time.
2. Obama said this same thing in Illinois when he was elected. And people thought he was going to deliver good change to the benefit of the people on main street. As a result he gave millions of government dollars to the public sector to build "affordable housing" in Chicago. It sounds good if you don't examine the outcomes. The results were the largest slums in Chicago many of which are now condemned. Many of those slumlord are in the middle of lawsuits or in Prison. Some of the others are working for Obama's campaign. I can share the stories from the Chicago Tribune. There were other write-ups in the Boston Globe that followed the story from the main streets where this craziness happened all the way to re-employing those corrupt private sector real estate developers into seats in his campaign.
3. I think we all agree that we should be helping those who are less fortunate. I am not a fan of the concept of "redistribution of wealth." The most writing on the values of redistribution of wealth as a government concept are found in socialist manifestos, and unfortunately those examples didn't work out very well either. It seems that Americans are willing to help each other out each year by giving billions of dollars philanthropically. My concern with the sensibility of Obama's hopes is that if we leave it to the government to create new situations that care for our neighbors, then we won't do it ourselves. A study not to long ago showed that conservative people give more (financially and of themselves) than liberals. Why? The study asked why and it said that liberals feel that their taxes take care of philanthropy through entitlement programs. But even Obama admits those programs are failing. It just doesn't seem like "good" or "change" to take a failing program and throw more money at it. If he throws money at it like he did in Illinois, then those tax dollars will just go into the hands of federal slumlords rather than just the ones he previously knew in Illinois. Some people even think his law experience was good legal experience and philanthropic because it was a non-profit law firm he worked for (some don't even know about that.) The truth is that his firm was the group that got those slumlords the government dollars. As a lawyer he worked to get government funding for those slumlords and later those slumlords helped him get elected to the Illinois State senate. A number of them continue to work for his campaign today. I know we want change, bu I cannot believe this is the kind of change we want.
4. In the very early 1900s federal taxes were made into law by the 16th Amendment. Under President W. Wilson they were used to provided funding for World War I. Before 1913 the U.S. Congress tried to pass federal tax rulings a number of times, but it was always deemed unconstitutional. So Congress had to amend the constitution to make it possible. Jump forward about 100 years and now according to Senator Joe Biden, paying taxes is "our American duty" and "patriotic." Federal taxes are reaching deeper into our pockets compared to many other countries and compared to our rich American history. A UK Paper recently told of companies that were moving out of countries where the corporate taxes were incredibly high compared to other mature developed nations. America was very near the top of that list of nations with already high corporate taxes. Somehow over the last 100 years and our countries ability to forget the fate and facts that have befallen many a socialist governments across the planet, it makes no sense in any shape or form to grow a form of government using a form of taxation that only 100 years ago was considered unconstitutional by our legal system as well as Congress itself.
5. Obama talks a lot about getting out of Iraq. And I hear many, many people talk about "warmongers" and contrast Obama with those war-mongers. The problem is that Obama hasn't kept his plans and promises on any front of the Iraq war yet, and he is already talking about moving troops to other regions of the world. Obama is using the momentum of anger around Iraq to simply split hairs between him and McCain. Fundamentally Obama's plan now looks each day more and more like McCains plan. If you were to draw a diagram plotting Obama on the far left side of the "Iraq plan" and McCain on the far right side, what you would see is Obama progressively looking more and more like McCain every day.
   

In conclusion, in almost all of his plans outside of the plans that are traditionally held Democrat perspectives, Obama has shifted toward McCain along a diagrammatic scale and typically in response to either something McCain has said (as if Obama is learning how to be presidential from McCain while on the campaign trail) or due to some new revelation about some person in his life or campaign that is revealed as problematic or un-American (examples are: Robert Malley who has terrorist ties in the middle east, Mr. Summers and Mr. Rubin who helps architect the deregulation of wall street, his pastor of 20 years and "spiritual mentor" Dr. Wright who has given awards to Farrakhan, Illinois slumlord Tony Rezko in prison for his real estate scandals and who helps Obama buy his personal home, Vallerie Jarret who is another Slumlord in Illinois and a part of Obama's campaign, Mr. Raines who was sought for advice by the Obama campaign and who is an ex-Fannie Mae CEO who was successfully sued for millions for financial fraud.

Again, I agree we need change. So, why not vote for McCain who has an actual track record of pursuing change regardless of what hot water he find himself in inside his own political party? Why not vote for McCain who has a 20+ year record of not pursuing pork-barrel spending (something Obama has only just recently decided he would be about for a few months after 4 years and nearly $1 billion in pork-barrel spending alone!) Imagine Palin presiding over Congress (despite what Biden says about the role of the Vice President, the Constitution says that the Vice President is the "President of the Senate": http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Vice_President.htm) Understand that Palin led her state into a momentum of change toward responsible spending and governance. Within the scope of Congress I have no doubt that she would lead our Congress toward the right spirit of change and into a fiscally responsible direction (more than anyone else.) Palin has proven experience and undeniable success in this area of governance and would be poised and emplowered by the Constitution to lead all 535 people in the U.S. Congress.