U.S. Elections 2008: General Elections -- Analysis and Commentary

[PanzerJaeger]

Do better than what? We did fine with 40 in our classroom- I got a great education. Catholic schools, where I went, are a model for doing more with less. They got roughly half the money per student than the public schools, yet the education I received was still superior. My parents had to sacrifice alot to pay the tuition (while still getting charged taxes to pay for the public schools we weren't using), but it was well worth it and if I have children, I hope to do the same.

Catholic school sucks, until you get out and realize how much further ahead you are than all those public school flunkies.

[CountArach]

Why do Americans put up with this incompetence?

Thousands of ballots that went missing were never prepared because of a technical problem, the Denver Clerk and Recorder said Saturday.

More than 11,000 ballots went missing when the vendor in charge of printing the ballots, Sequoia Voting Systems, reported delivering 21,450 ballots to a Denver mail processing facility on Oct. 16, but the U.S. Postal Service said they only received 10,364 ballots that day.

[Koga No Goshi]

Note true. California wasn't even in the bottom five in per pupil spending 4 years ago, let alone the lowest. Interestingly, Utah usually ranks dead last in the rankings, yet their test scores come in above national averages. Again, maybe it's not the money- but how it's spent? How can we spend half a trillion dollars a year on public education and still be so far behind many other Western countries?

The bit about CA is news to me because four years ago both sides of the political aisle here in state gov't were claiming we were last-- I wonder what they were basing that on. Wierd. Regarding Utah, I would bet that the lack of multiple formerly industrial, presently low-income densely populated urban areas has a lot to do with it. I would bet that massive school overcrowding is rarely an issue in most of Utah.

[m52nickerson]

And whether it's the right or wrong thing to do, do you see the difference between that and bald-faced income redistribution? One tries to incentivize people to buy a private insurance plan and is available to everyone. The other takes money from people who have high incomes and gives it to people with less.

What tax bracket group pays most of the taxes that will pay for the $5000 tax credit? What tax brackets groups will most of those tax credits go to? It may not be bold faced, it's just disguised. Or Obama's plan really isn't a redistribution of wealth.

No, I actually saw that one, I just didn't feel the need to respond.

Indeed, and what's it say about Democrats when they try to dress up Obama's income redistribution plan as making the rich "pay their fair share" when it's nothing of the sort?

If you want to argue that redistributing income is good for the economy, then make that argument- don't try to pass it off merely making them pay their fair share. To your credit, you did make that argument. What I took issue with was the mischaracterization of it as being "fair" that's been made many times in this thread. I don't agree with you, but that's another matter.

I did make the argument on how a progressive tax system is good for the economy. It's the post you did not respond to. So here it is:

Lets look at all this. We could cut taxes across the board. The problems with that are two fold.

One, you can't afford to give as much of a cut to middle and lower income. Why is that important? It is because they are you largest groups, and the ones that drive the economy. If they have extra money thye but more products or services, which in turn give more profits to buisnesses and will lead to more employment to keep up with new business. Businesses that start to show profits attracts investors.

Two, a cut across the board also cut federal revenue. That will result in a large deficit or cuts in programs. I will also affect millions of federal employees, which are consumers.

Next we could go to a flat tax. Well to do that we will have to raise that % on the lower income class to set a % to keep revenue near it's current level. That would take money out of consumers, bad for buisnesses and the economy. We could make the flat tax % near what the lowest tax bracket is. That will cut federal revenue to drastically low levels.

We could eliminate taxes all together, good for the economy until our infrastructure total breaks down.

So, we have Obama's plan. It allows the middle and lower income classes keep more of there money, or gives them a ~$1000 tax credit. That helps the economy by giving your consumer base spending power. The consumer drives the economy.

It also allows federal revenue to stay very near it's current level, so you avoid many problems here.


Now what about cutting taxes for corporations so they can create jobs? Do companies hire more people just because they have more money? NO. They hire more people to keep up with an increase in business, which you can't get without at stronger consumer base.

What about capital gains tax cuts to entice investors? Since when do investors put money into a business that does not have customers, and even if some do invest, the business still will not hire more people just because they have more capital.

So, the rich or well to do or what ever you want to call the top earners may cry about paying more taxes, but they will cry more when the lower income classes fail and they drag them down with them.

[seireikhaan]

Catholic school sucks, until you get out and realize how much further ahead you are than all those public school flunkies.

Ah, then I assume you've been to both, Panzer? Ya know, like me? 'Cuz honestly, with the exception of service hours which most people forged anyways, and the "auto A" religion classes, I couldn't see any differences.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Note true. California wasn't even in the bottom five in per pupil spending 4 years ago, let alone the lowest. Interestingly, Utah usually ranks dead last in the rankings, yet their test scores come in above national averages. Again, maybe it's not the money- but how it's spent? How can we spend half a trillion dollars a year on public education and still be so far behind many other Western countries?

Do better than what? We did fine with 40 in our classroom- I got a great education. Catholic schools, where I went, are a model for doing more with less. They got roughly half the money per student than the public schools, yet the education I received was still superior. My parents had to sacrifice alot to pay the tuition (while still getting charged taxes to pay for the public schools we weren't using), but it was well worth it and if I have children, I hope to do the same.

I would have easily passed most of my high school classes with a class size of 500. That's irrelevant. With the students that are struggling you need a small class or else the teacher can't spend time with them. You can talk about inefficient spending all you want and you'll get no argument, but that doesn't mean that schools don't need money to run. One of the school districts near where I live cut $4 million dollars from their budget (10%) and still can't keep ahead of inflation. Mind you, I don't know much about schools outside ohio, our system has been ruled unconstitutional four or five times but the legislature refuses to do anything about it. Schools are funded by property taxes which means the schools in rich neighborhoods are are over funded and the schools in poor neighborhoods can barely get by.

What tax bracket group pays most of the taxes that will pay for the $5000 tax credit? What tax brackets groups will most of those tax credits go to? It may not be bold faced, it's just disguised. Or Obama's plan really isn't a redistribution of wealth.

McCain plans to pay for it by cutting $1.3 trillion from medicare and medicaid over the next 10 years.

[Lemur]

I'm layin' down this track for my favorite Brooklyn Republican, Spino. The author was under secretary of state for political affairs, the highest-ranking American career diplomat, until his retirement this April.

We Should Talk to Our Enemies

One of the sharpest and most telling differences on foreign policy between Barack Obama and John McCain is whether the United States should talk to difficult and disreputable leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. In each of the three presidential debates, McCain belittled Obama as naive for arguing that America should be willing to negotiate with such adversaries. In the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin went even further, accusing Obama of "bad judgment … that is dangerous," an ironic charge given her own very modest foreign-policy credentials.

Are McCain and Palin correct that America should stonewall its foes? I lived this issue for 27 years as a career diplomat, serving both Republican and Democratic administrations. Maybe that's why I've been struggling to find the real wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama. I'll bet that a poll of senior diplomats who have served presidents from Carter to Bush would reveal an overwhelming majority who agree with the following position: of course we should talk to difficult adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing.

The more challenging and pertinent question, especially for the McCain-Palin ticket, is the reverse: Is it really smart to declare we will never talk to such leaders? Is it really in our long-term national interest to shut ourselves off from one of the most important and powerful states in the Middle East—Iran—or one of our major suppliers of oil, Venezuela?

During the five decades of the cold war, when Americans had a more Manichaean view of the world, we did, from time to time, cut off relations with particularly odious leaders such as North Korea's Kim Il Sung or Albania's bloodthirsty and maniacal strongman, Enver Hoxha. But for the most part even our most ardent cold-war presidents—Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, none of whom was often accused of being weak or naive—decided that sitting down with our adversaries made good sense for America. They all talked to Soviet leaders—men vastly more threatening to America's survival than Ahmadinejad or Chávez are now. JFK negotiated a nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with his mortal adversary, Nikita Khrushchev, just one year after the two narrowly avoided a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis. Perhaps more dramatically, Nixon, the greatest anticommunist crusader of his time, went to China in 1972 to repair a more than 20-year rupture with Mao Zedong that he believed no longer worked for America.

All of these cold-war presidents embraced a foreign-policy maxim memorialized by one of the toughest and most experienced leaders of our time, Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, who defended his discussions with Yasir Arafat by declaring, "You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with very unsavory enemies." Why should the United States approach the world any differently now? Especially now? As Americans learned all too dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn, we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any time and from great distances. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.

The real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most urgent global challenges—the quaking financial markets, climate change, terrorism—cannot be resolved by America's acting alone in the world. Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the force of arms.

Talking to our adversaries is no one's idea of fun, and it is not a sure prescription for success in every crisis. But it is crude, simplistic and wrong to charge that negotiations reflect weakness or appeasement. More often than not, they are evidence of a strong and self-confident country. One of America's greatest but often neglected strengths is, in fact, our diplomatic power. Condoleezza Rice's visit to Libya in September—the first by a U.S. secretary of state in five decades—was the culmination of years of careful, deliberate diplomacy to maneuver the Libyan leadership to give up its weapons of mass destruction and renounce terrorism. She would not have achieved that victory had she refused to talk to the Libyans.

For sure, a successful diplomacy needs to be backed up by strong military and intelligence services to fight our wars and terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. We should constantly remind our adversaries that we have other options, including the possible use of force, if talks fail. But we have put too many of the world's problems on the shoulders of our generals and intelligence officers when diplomacy—our ability to persuade, cajole or threaten an opponent—is sometimes the better and more effective way to proceed. We need to trust our ability to outmaneuver dangerous regimes at the negotiating table and in the high court of international public opinion.

Iran is a case in point. Its hard-line, theocratic government poses the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East today. It is funding and arming most of the region's terrorist groups shooting at us, Israel and our moderate Arab friends. It has complicated our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most alarming, Iran is seeking a nuclear-weapons capability that would change the balance of power in the Middle East.

Rather than default to the idea of using U.S. military force against Iran, wouldn't it make more sense for the next American president to offer to negotiate with the Iranian leadership? Here's the logic. If the talks end up succeeding, we will have prevented a third, and potentially catastrophic, war for the United States in the volatile area linking the Middle East and South Asia. If the talks fail, we will have a far better chance of persuading Russia and China to sign on to tougher sanctions against Iran. I think war with Iran would be unconscionable if we refuse even to try diplomacy first.

I'm not saying the next president should sit down immediately with Ahmadinejad. We should initiate contact at a lower level to investigate whether it's worth putting the president's prestige on the line. We should leave the threat of military action on the table to give us greater leverage as we talk to the Iranian government. And ultimately we'd want other countries with influence—like Russia and China—to sit on our side of the table in order to bring maximum pressure to bear against Tehran. But the United States hasn't had a meaningful set of talks with Iran on all the critical issues that separate us in 30 years, since the Khomeini revolution. To illustrate how far we have isolated ourselves, think about this: I served as the Bush administration's point person on Iran for three years but was never permitted to meet an Iranian. To her immense credit, Secretary Rice arranged for my successor to participate in a multilateral meeting with Iranian officials this past summer. That is a good first step, but the next American president should initiate a more sustained discussion with senior Iranians.

If we aren't willing to talk to Iran, we may leave ourselves with only one option—military action. The next U.S. president will have little chance of securing peace in the Middle East if he doesn't determine Iran's bottom line on the nuclear issue through talks. Similarly, there will be no peace treaty between Syria and Israel if we don't support the talks underway between those countries.

In Afghanistan, the new president will face a very difficult set of choices roughly similar to those in Iraq before the surge. The brilliance of Gen. David Petraeus's strategy in Iraq was, in part, to build bridges to formerly bitter foes in the Sunni militias and to cajole and entice them to switch sides. Some are now suggesting that we should deploy a similar strategy with the Taliban rank and file.

While we should have absolutely no interest in sitting down with Qaeda fanatics or the Taliban leadership, does it make sense to try to persuade lower-ranking Taliban supporters to give up the armed struggle and commit to a democratic Afghanistan? While that's a seemingly logical goal, it would be highly problematic in the short term. We would be better served if we first built up a position of much greater military and political strength, and increased security for Afghan villagers. Talking to our adversaries is not always the answer to all our problems, especially in a highly complex environment such as Afghanistan. We have a long way to go before it might be part of a long-term solution there.

America faces a complex and difficult geopolitical landscape. The next president needs to act more creatively and boldly to defend our interests by revalidating diplomacy as a key weapon in our national arsenal and rebuilding our understaffed and underfunded diplomatic corps. Of course he will need to reserve the right to use force against the most vicious and implacable of our foes. More often than not, however, he will find that dialogue and discussion, talking and listening, are the smarter ways to defend our country, end crises and sometimes even sow the seeds of an ultimate peace.

[m52nickerson]

McCain plans to pay for it by cutting $1.3 trillion from medicare and medicaid over the next 10 years.

Which tax bracket pays for most of medicare and medicaid? Which tax brackets use medicare and medicaid?

My point is money taken in taxes from the top tax brackets still gets filtered down to people at the lower tax brackets.

[KarlXII]

It's just a joke guys!

Surprised this is coming from Faux News.

[seireikhaan]

Thank you John McCain!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

for holding a rally at my UNI while I was working, making this the easiest day of work yet.

[Lemur]

This is horrible! An Obama supporter is mugged by an old white man who carves a "J" into his cheek and tells him he's going to be a John McCain supporter. Oh, the humanity.

[Koga No Goshi]

I would have easily passed most of my high school classes with a class size of 500. That's irrelevant. With the students that are struggling you need a small class or else the teacher can't spend time with them. You can talk about inefficient spending all you want and you'll get no argument, but that doesn't mean that schools don't need money to run. One of the school districts near where I live cut $4 million dollars from their budget (10%) and still can't keep ahead of inflation. Mind you, I don't know much about schools outside ohio, our system has been ruled unconstitutional four or five times but the legislature refuses to do anything about it. Schools are funded by property taxes which means the schools in rich neighborhoods are are over funded and the schools in poor neighborhoods can barely get by.



McCain plans to pay for it by cutting $1.3 trillion from medicare and medicaid over the next 10 years.

This is the exact same situation in California, plus Arnold "temporarily" used 2 billion from the education budget which was then never repaid. There are a small number of public schools so well funded in such upscale neighborhoods that people take out fake mailing addresses trying to get their kids in (to public school!!). And most other schools range from mediocre to severely underfunded.

[Xiahou]

This is the exact same situation in California, plus Arnold "temporarily" used 2 billion from the education budget which was then never repaid. There are a small number of public schools so well funded in such upscale neighborhoods that people take out fake mailing addresses trying to get their kids in (to public school!!). And most other schools range from mediocre to severely underfunded.

If you're making an argument for vouchers, I agree. Let kids go to whatever school they want, and have the funding follow the student.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Funding to follow the student isn't a bad idea. If anything it should be what everyone has always wanted. It is a compromise that allows kids to take the money to schools that work as well as a way to give every child the same amount of money. Win/Win.

[Koga No Goshi]

If you're making an argument for vouchers, I agree. Let kids go to whatever school they want, and have the funding follow the student.

This does of course, rather ignore the fact that kids in bad parts of East or West LA can't exactly make a 1 hour 20 minute commute to the suburbs to go to a nice school. Wouldn't it be more sensible to just make a uniform pot system instead of a local income or property tax based system, and standardize curriculum quality and classroom quality, a la the UK?

[LittleGrizzly]

We did fine with 40 in our classroom- I got a great education.

But it would have been even better with 20, half the people to disturb you or the class and twice as much time for the teacher to personally spend with you, now i hardly ever did need the teachers attention and was distracted anyway so it wouldn't make much difference to someone like me and maybe someone like you, but someone who isn't blessed with natural intelligence but wants to get on and do the best they can probably needs every second of teacher time they can get, and if you had half as many kids in every class all that time is going to have a very positive culmative effect on the kid....

They got roughly half the money per student than the public schools, yet the education I received was still superior.

But it was not because it was cheaper that your education was better, different factors accounted for that, aslong as the money is decently spend it will have a positive impact on education, so more money does eqaul better education, and with children being your future and education thier tool to a successful life, education is your future!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

But it was not because it was cheaper that your education was better, different factors accounted for that, aslong as the money is decently spend it will have a positive impact on education, so more money does eqaul better education, and with children being your future and education thier tool to a successful life, education is your future!

More money does not equal better education. The key is motivated (by whatever means) students. Absent that, you can dump truckloads of money with little effect. With it, even a scarcity of money cannot prevent learning. With motivation, however, then and only then does more money create better education.

[Koga No Goshi]

More money does not equal better education. The key is motivated (by whatever means) students. Absent that, you can dump truckloads of money with little effect. With it, even a scarcity of money cannot prevent learning. With motivation, however, then and only then does more money create better education.

I don't know on what exactly people always base this firm insistence that it's "proven" that money doesn't help. When you have schools in low-income, economically depressed communities where kids (except for maybe the 5% most motivated and determined) more or less don't have much hope of doing anything but the military or KFC after school is over, where typically teachers don't want to go teach and only the barely qualified teachers wind up getting posted, and on top of that, for school funding to be based off local property or income tax (prop tax in the case of CA) of course you have a recipe for failure. And the teaching profession in general is largely a joke because it is so poorly compensated, at least beneath the college level. So it's a catch 22. Insisting that the lower the funding, the better, is just perpetuating this cycle where you have people who couldn't make it into a higher paying career falling back on being teachers (I know there are exceptions but most bright motivated people capable of teaching can make a lot more money doing something else with equivalent levels of education) because the pay is not competitive, schools are underfunded, and public education is broken. And it then becomes cyclical to say "see? see? We gave it some money, it doesn't work, clearly money is not the issue." Bunk I say.

[LittleGrizzly]

Obviously other factors matter as much, if not more (in terms of motivated students) but you are only going to improve childrens education by reducinf classrooms, buying computers ect.

Even with a bunch of unmotivated pupils who want to mess around if you half the class size thier going to have less chance to mess around and are going to have to do more work

More money will mean a better education system, other factors come into play but you don't make pupils less motivated by reducing thier class size, so assuming the money is decently spent it would improve eduation...

Edit: koga put it much better than i could...

[Marshal Murat]

In Florida, we supposedly rank ahead of Alabama (?), but we aren't highly ranked in education. While it may be we have several large cities with large suburbs, it is also because of the faulty method of providing funding for schools.

While I don't have the specifics, but the state actually takes the money from lottery and uses that for the Education system, supplemented by taxes. Supposedly. As soon as we got hooked up with the lotto cash, our tax addition went to 'healthcare', 'immigration', and other flub. Luckily, the state can pay for most of your tuition, when you get to college.
Just recently (last year) they had to actually cut back on teachers and the salaries are bad (!!!), but we did get some money for ornamental stuff that everyone hates.

I hate Florida schools.

[m52nickerson]

one big thing that has to be factored in when considering US spending per student is transportation. We are much more spread out here then a lot of European countries. Those buses are not cheap to maintain.

[Lemur]

Off the Rails, Part 3

Did I mention this man hates me? You and me? Yes he does. Why? Because he can. Yes He Can. Beneath that cool persona is a megalomaniac. Cool? Like Stalin after a purge, emotionally and sexually spent. Like Saddam after a torture session, dozing in his chair with someone's genitals curled in his fist. Like Pol Pot after a petit mal seizure, mumbling a litany of the dead. Cool that way. [...]

I do hate to sound Randy Weaverish. But this is the fundament of my world view right now.

[Don Corleone]

Yet another article on Rep Jim McDermott's (D-Wash) and Rep. George Miller's (D-California) plans to restructure 401k plans:

Investment News

"I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s," Ms. Ghilarducci said in an interview. "401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won't have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break."

This would be a direct quote from the economist, Teresa Ghilarducci, that Reps. McDermott and Miller have drafting their bill for a new government mandated 5% contribution rate retirement plan. The government plan would provide a guaranteed 3% return rate: no more, no less, regardless of the returns seen by the fund.

Rep. McDermott's press secretary on the plan:

"This [plan] certainly is intriguing," said Mike DeCesare, press secretary for Mr. McDermott.

"That is part of the discussion," he said.

While Mr. Miller stopped short of calling for Ms. Ghilarducci's plan at the hearing last week, he was clearly against continuing tax breaks as they currently exist.

.

So, Obama + Democrat Congress = end_of (401k) + government dictated retirement plan.

Is it just me, or does their plan sound like Social Security? Isn't it a bit redundant? Why not just announce that they're going to end 401ks and force a 5% raise on Social Security? Maybe because that might actually get people's attention?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

DC, what do you think about that republican senator's plan to go back to the gold standard?

[Don Corleone]

DC, what do you think about that republican senator's plan to go back to the gold standard?

He's a representative, and hardy har har. Maybe because you don't pay into 401k plans, its a non-issue for you, but it's a big deal not just for me, but for a lot of people.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Those tolerant Hollywood folk, showing a Palin mannequin hanging from a noose.

And then there's a guillotine with severed heads form the Bush administration at an Obama rally. Classy!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The media didn't make a big deal of that like they did someone saying 'tell him'.

And finally, for the big issue, Obama says its a tragedy the Warren Court wasn't radical enough in terms of redistribution of wealth.
Gee, that question about Obama being Marxist sounds pretty fair now. I love how the Obama campaign retaliated when faced, for once, by hard questions.

And then he admits he's bored by the spots where a large amount of people live.

(In a rare slip, he told The Associated Press: “I’m not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me.”)

CR

[Ronin]

Have you ever talked to a marxist?...and I mean a full fledged card-carrying communist?

I really think you guys don´t know what that word means...they way you throw it around like that.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

(In a rare slip, he told The Associated Press: “I’m not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me.”)

How DARE he!

[Don Corleone]

How DARE he!

Again, maybe not of interest to you. But I'm sure that people that live in the suburbs would be quite interested that President Obama won't care one whit for their interests. You seem to be telling everyone that disagrees with your worldview to just shut up. Why is that?

[m52nickerson]

And finally, for the big issue, Obama says its a tragedy the Warren Court wasn't radical enough in terms of redistribution of wealth.
Gee, that question about Obama being Marxist sounds pretty fair now. I love how the Obama campaign retaliated when faced, for once, by hard questions.
CR

Sounds to me from the short cuts we get that Obama is talking about job/wage issues, as well as other economic issues that Blacks were faced with in the 1960's. I was not unusual for banks to not to barrow money or even let Blacks open accounts. Black would also had a hard time getting loans for collage.