In my quest to dig into the issues, I have come across quite a number of embellishments, innaccuracies, and in some cases, I suspect, downright lies. I have done my best to weed through these and do a detailed evaluation of the issues and selected the candidate who most represents my beliefs. Given the volume of material that must weigh into the decision, I plan on putting my thoughts down on this virtual paper in multiple posts as opposed to one long one that no one will get through. Bare with me!
Below are the first batch of my results and rationale. I reviewed lots of sources, but the following sites seemed to present the least amount of bias and provided the most straightforward position of each candidate. If anyone reading this finds any innaccuracies, please feel free to correct me (and cite sources!) because I want to make sure I am making my decisions based on fact, rather than rumor. By the way, a good rule of thumb for a biased site is one that lists most issues as a mere "Yes" or "No" on whether the candidate supports one issue or not. Rarely are you going to find a straight yes or no out of either candidate for the majority of the complex issues.
Topics covered in this round are:
Abortion: Advantage McCain
Ten or fifteen years ago, if I were faced with an unplanned pregnancy, abortion might have been something I seriously considered. I wasn’t married, did not have a job that paid enough to feed another mouth, and I was not a very responsible person at the time to say the least.
However, I have done a complete 180 degrees on this issue due to the birth of my daugher. She is just an angel in my eyes and and brings me the greatest joy and happiness and has truly changed my life. It makes me sick to think it could have been her life that was aborted if she came ealier in my life. Now I know it would have been tough if she would have come when I was in college (or in high school, for that matter), but sometimes life is tough and you need to find a way to perserve. Life is never as bad as it seems at the time.
Now I know that the big debate is around whether the mother has the choice in what she does to her body. I contend that she already had a choice to have sex and that is what got her into this position in the first place. Once that baby is concieved, the choice is not hers anymore.
At the end of the day, though, this issue did not have a lot of weight for me in regards for my selection of a president, largely because of the low likelihood that Roe v. Wade will ever get overturned. Even a good chunk of Pro-lifers would not necessarily support overturning the decision because of the high possibility of illegal abortions that would take place, increasing the risk to the health of these mothers. Just ask John McCain.
I am not a fan, however, of McCain voting against a bill in 2006 to reduce teen pregancy through contraceptives and education. If you are pro-life, you should support alternative solutions the problem rather than ignoring them.
By the way, I have seen a number of innacurate material citing that Obama is for late term abortions. For the record, his actual position is posted here:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Social/Barack_Obama_Abortion.htm
Budget: Advantage Obama
McCain is a strong believer in significant cuts in government spending. While I would typically support this when the economy is good, unemployment is as high as it has been in 15 years. Government spending, particularly those that generate jobs is crucial to buoy the economy during hard times. That was FDR’s approach when recovering from the depression with his “New Deal” and seemed to work well. Now there are critics who might dispute that claim, I would respond that there are still a large number of New Deal programs that are still funded today, over 70 years later. I do, however, support Obama’s push for disclosure of all congressional projects so that the public can put those projects under the microscope.
This issue did not have much weight with me either, though, because the actual policies that either candidate would implement was pretty ambiguous and made it tough to rally around a particular policy.
Capital Punishment: Even
Both candidates support capital punishment and their historical voting paterns have supported that stance.
Civil Liberties: Even
This one was a tough one. Obama clearly has the most experience in this area and has made great strides in the expanding the punishment of hate crimes, supporting voting rights, fighting employment discrimination, and has focused his policy on rehabilitation of ex-cons to improve their ability to re-integrate into society. However, he is against the patriot act and expanding wire taps. I for one, have no issues with the government listening into my phone calls or reviewing my personal record because I am not a terrorist and have nothing to hide. If it helps secure our borders, I am for it. Although, it does have some similarities to what the communist Chinese government does today with their citizens. I think the big question here is whether the battleground has significantly changed enough since the times of our founding fathers to justify changes to our constitution allowing the government a lot more access to our personal information. I guess my decision on this will depend on how much harassment I get from the FBI once I buy the Communist Manifesto and the Quran, books that I plan on getting over the next couple of months. While not necessarily doctrines that I support, they are certainly influential texts that have significantly changed the world.
Much to some folks understanding, Obama does not support gay marriages, and that civil unions should be decided by the states, not the federal government. This is the same position that McCain has, although most of their other values are dramatically different on same-sex issues.
Ecomony: Advantage Obama
I support Obama’s “Robin Hood” policy of raising taxes for those making $250k+ and providing tax credits to middle and lower income families. I am probably biased because, of course, I am not in the $250k+ club, however, I am pretty sure that if I was in that bracket, I could afford a tax increase for the benefit of those who are struggling to live the American dream. I know this policy has a bit of a socialist flavor to it, I support it nonetheless. I disagree with McCain that pork-barrel spending is one of the biggest issues plaguing federal spending and do not support cutting government spending in times where the economy is struggling. In fact, I would contend that some pork-barrel spending, when it funds projects that generates jobs, is actually benefits the country and gives some power to the states to use federal funding for local projects.
Despite the fact that I work for a company who certainly does this to a significant degree, I would suport tax incentives for keeping jobs in the US rather than offshoring.
And yes, unfortunately I do know that a vote for Obama means no more tax cut checks. :-( . Those checks will likely go to programs to support the next topic. However, the closest I could find to an analysis on the differences of the tax policies between the two candidates and how it impacted my bottom line was posted here. Doesn't look like a big deal to me, unless I start making some big bills.
Education: Advantage Obama
This decision is largely do to the school vouchers, that I do not support. While I agree that a free market for schools would drive competition and an overall improvement in our education system, I don’t think that it will be an even playing field for private and public schools to compete against each other. The reason is that public schools will never be able to deny enrollment to a student while a private school can. This will essentially amount to “cream skimming” and you will find that lower performing students or those with emotional or behavioral problems will be denied from the private schools.
I am not sure how I feel about government funding of a national voluntary pre-school, however. Sounds awfully expensive to me and I have not seen enough information around how this would be regulated and how schools would be accredited to accept these funds.
McCain has a history of voting against increases in funding to educational programs. I strongly believe that the future of our country relies on having educated population.
Energy: Advantage Obama
This was an easy decision to me because of 2 words, “Nuclear Energy”. How can we heavily promote a source of energy that we don’t condone in other countries (e.g Korea, Iran, etc.). Seems like we are talking out of both sides of our mouth. We need to lead by example here and show that nuclear energy is not the right solution. I also definitely do not support a “tax holiday” on gas because all that is going to do is drive up gas consumption thus putting more money in foreign countries. We need to eliminate our dependency on foreign oil.
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1 comment:
Hey Dale,
I just noticed your blog link on Tracy's site. This should be interesting!!!
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