ryansutter.net

A recent post I made in which I recommended we all get off our asses and do whatever we can to get Obama elected provoked a response from a commenter named Andy (Hi Andy!) who suggested that I was a “nothing more than a blindly faithful Obama supporter who is full of hate”.  Now, admittedly, the post he was responding to, in fact many posts recently, was rhetorical, written in the heat of passion.  I have carried a writing device of some sort on my person at nearly all times for the last 7 years and I regularly inject my thoughts directly into the blogosphere without much in-depth analysis of why I am expressing the particular opinion that I am expressing.  It is not that my opinions are formed blindly, far from it, but rhetoric is often the nature of casual blogging.  Not so this post.

As I have rhetorically expressed in the post Andy responded to, it is time to stop with rhetoric, time to stop panicking, time to move the spotlight where it belongs and where it belongs is squarely on you and me.  This is not about Obama or Palin or McCain or Biden, this is about those of us who have to live in the world they craft, those of us who as American citizens live and die and raise our children under the leadership they provide.  So, the yardstick I will use to measure each candidate is simple: how will their policies affect me and my family?

I don’t know about you, but really I want to live my life.  I want to be healthy as much as I can for as long as I can.  I want to give my son a good college education.  I want to retire with my wife and enjoy our old age together.  I want to trust that my home won’t be broken into and I want to preserve my liberty of thought and mind.  As a former member of a fundamentalist religion that attempted to curtail that last item, it is of particular importance to me because happiness and security are internal states and attaining them is different for everybody.  We all need to be allowed to decide who we are, why we are here, what our values are and what that means for us.

To summarize, I want what I think the majority of people want: a stable, happy, rewarding life for myself and my loved ones.  The policies that go the furthest towards ensuring that are in my interests.  Those that undermine these things are contrary to my interests.

It is my contention that Obama’s policies serve my interests the most effectively.  It is further my contention that Obama’s policies serve the interests of my community at large the most effectively, as well as the country as a whole and the global community as well.  I will now examine, in detail, exactly why that is so. 

One final note before I begin.  If you do not agree with what I’ve said so far, if having a happier, more stable, more rewarding life for yourself and for the human community at large is not important to you or not something you are interested in, then there really is nothing I can say to you.

Money

Money is a big deal for all of us, so I’ll start there.  It probably has the largest impact on all of our individual lives.  Let’s start with income taxes.  Whether McCain or Obama is in your interests financially is entirely a matter of how much money you earn.  Here’s how it breaks down (sources: “Obama and McCain Tax Proposals”, Washington Post, “Household Income in the United States”, Wikipedia):

Average Change in Annual Income Taxes

What is your household income? Look at this chart, find yourself on it and see which candidate is going to serve your interests in terms of the amount of money you bring home each paycheck. If you earn under If you earn under $66,354, Obama’s plan will put hundreds more in your pockets.  If you are under $111,654 a year, you are only marginally better off with Obama’s plan.  If you earn between $111,655 and $160,972 a year, you are going to be marginally better with McCain.  If you earn over $160,973 a year, you will be better off with McCain (although Obama will still be cutting your taxes).  As long as you make less than $603,403 a year, Obama will be cutting your income taxes to some degree or another.  That accounts for 99% of the American population.  For 84% of the population, Obama’s plan will provide more tax relief than McCain’s.  If you fall in the top 1% in terms of income, vote McCain by all means.  Of course, you aren’t reading this blog.

Under McCain, the poorest Americans will see a 0.2% tax cut.  Under Obama, 5.5%.  Median household income in America is $50,233.  This represents the average household, the top of the bell curve.  Under McCain, the average household will see their taxes cut by 0.7%.  Under Obama, 2.4%.  Again, look for your household income, see who helps you most.  Vote for him if this is your major concern.

One thing I’d like to point out.  The party of the “blue collar little guy”, the “small town rural American with small town values”, the “working Joe” is supposed to be the Republicans, right?  That’s what they sell, “small town values”.  Please look at the following two maps:

Median Household Income (2000 Census) By County
(Darker = Higher, Lighter = Lower, Click the map to go to the source)

Red (Republican) States vs. Blue (Democrat) States, (1992,1996,2000,2004 elections)

I can’t help but notice that there is a significant overlap between the poorest areas in the country and the reddest states.  Why might that be?  Why is it that all of these people earning such meager wages throughout the majority of the country vote for a party that offers them the least monetary relief?  I’ll get into that more when I get to the topic of Culture and Civil Liberties but one thing to note: multi-millionaire John McCain would cut his own taxes far more than he would cut yours (the average American would get a 0.7% tax cut, John McCain would recieve a 4.4% cut).  Barack Obama (also a millionaire at this point) proposes to raise taxes on himself (and others fortunate enough to be in his position) in order to cut taxes for the majority of Americans.

What do these plans tell you about their characters?  Their priorities?  You decide.

This of course is not the only tax in the picture.  Our friend Andy the Republican asked that I talk about “how Obama wants to double the capital gains tax”.  Happily Andy!  Thanks for bringing it up! 

In interview in March Obama said, regarding the capital gains tax, that in his plan it “certainly would not go above . . . 28 percent and my guess would be it would be significantly lower than that.” and “I think that we can have a capital gains rate that is higher than 15 percent [the current level]. If it – and if it, you know – when I talk to people like Warren Buffet or others and I ask them, you know, what’s – how much of a difference is it going to be if it’s 20 or 25 percent, they say, look, if it’s within that range, then it’s not going to distort, I think, economic-decision making.” 

After this interview, Fox News analyst Dick Morris started making the claim that Obama pledged to double the capital gains tax.  This is simply false.  A) He pledged nothing.  B) He simply gave a ceiling as to the highest he could imagine it being, while also mentioning a range of 20-25%.  C) He mentioned that he had discussed this with a savvy financial mind (Warren Buffet) to get an idea of the impact of raising this rate (which I appreciate, since it shows that instead of just being “the decider” he seeks good counsel to inform his decisions based on their likely impact).  To turn all this into the claim that he “pledged to double” the tax is patently dishonest.  Sorry Andy, you’ve been lied to.  This is a concrete example of it. 

What does he really plan?  He gave details last month.  In a nutshell, Obama plans to raise the tax to 20% on families that earn more than $250,000 a year.  Interestingly, this is the lowest rate that existed in the 1990s, the rate President Bush proposed in his 2001 tax cut and almost a third lower than the rate President Reagan set in 1986.  More interestingly, if you do not earn more than $250,000 a year (I am talking to you, 95% of Americans) this doesn’t affect you at all.  If you do, well, you’re just going to go back to a rate that is the low end of the average for the last 22 years.  A reason not to vote Obama?  You decide for yourself.  I’m just telling you how it is.  Me, for my pocket book, for my yearly tax liability, it’s in my interests to vote Obama.  I’m not in the top 5%. Odds are, neither are you.  If you are, you’re reading the wrong blog bucko.

The National Budget

I’ll just do this one really quick because it’s a huge topic with ridiculous complexity.  We all know that the country in general (banks, community services, etc) functions better with a balanced budget.  Debt is bad, lack of debt is good.  National debt means less economic security in the short term and in the long term.  I’ll let this chart show the picture of the National Debt as it has progressed since 1950 based entirely on data from whitehouse.gov:

Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, Clinton, every Democratic president we have had since 1950 has reduced the national debt.  Every Republican since Reagan was elected has increased it.  I’m just pointing that out.

Deregulation

The subprime mortgage crisis and the failings of major investment banks are threatening our country with the closest thing to an economic collapse since the Great Depression.  Not being an economist myself, it is hard for me to understand how we got to this place after 70 years of minor ups and downs but no catastrophes.  After doing some reading it appears that deregulation is at the root of the meltdowns (Enron, subprime mortgages, investment banks, etc).  Some history taken from this excellent article:

In 1933, a few years following the stock market crash, Congress passes the Glass-Steagall Act, in hopes that regulating banks will help prevent market instability, particularly amongst Wall Street banks. The purpose of the act is to separate commercial banks that focus on consumers from investment banks, which deal with speculative trading and mergers.

The Glass-Steagall Act provided the proper oversight and entity separation that would prohibit banks and other financial companies from merging into giant trusts (conflict of interests) — giant trusts or corporations being more powerful, naturally, and having the seemingly limitless capital to lobby their corporate interests, however, with a very myopic scope (particularly when it comes to factoring in potential losses — most banks, as seen in contemporary times, chose not to anticipate losses in the mortgage market; they presumed home prices would continue to appreciate).

In 1999, [most of the components of Glass-Steagall were replace with] the new Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act: allowing commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers to merge (which would have violated antitrust laws under Glass-Steagall). … once the Act passed, an influx of “megamergers” took place among banks and insurance and securities companies.

And now our banking industry is crashing and the banks are having to bailed out with taxpayer money, meaning (since they are now mainly government owned) that this experiment in deregulation has ultimately lead to socialized banks! Ironic, ain’t it? Let’s not forget the massive numbers of Americans who have lost their homes in the middle of all this. I know some of you read this blog and you have my condolences.

But that’s not the only piece of legislation that destabilized the system that had been mainly stable since the end of the Depression. The article continues:

Shortly after George W. Bush was elected president, Congress and President Clinton were trying to pass a $384 billion omnibus spending bill, and while the debates swirled around the passage of this bill, [a Senator] clandestinely slipped a 262-page amendment into the omnibus appropriations bill titled: Commodity Futures Modernization Act. It is likely that few senators read this bill, if any. The essence of the act was the deregulation of derivatives trading (financial instruments whose value changes in response to the changes in underlying variables; the main use of derivatives is to reduce risk for one party). The legislation contained a provision — lobbied for by Enron, a major campaign contributor to [the Senator] — that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight. Basically, it gave way to the Enron debacle and ushered in the new era of unregulated securities.

So, the banking crisis, subprime crisis and Enron are the kinds of things that happen when bad legislation gets passed that allows greed to run unchecked. These regulations can be repealed, reformed, replaced and eventually things will get back on track, right? What do the candidates have to say about fixing this mess? In March, Obama released a statement on the subject which contained the following paragraph:

Instead of finding the right level of government oversight in a vibrant free market, we’ve let the special interests set the agenda. Changes in the financial landscape, driven by technology and globalization, made the 1930’s era Glass-Steagall Act – the New Deal era law that required that investment banking be kept separate from commercial banking – increasingly inefficient. While reform was desirable, the banking, insurance and securities industries spent over $300 million lobbying Congress to shape that reform to meet their own interests. In the two years before Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, financial service industries gave $58 million to congressional campaigns; $87 million to political parties; and spent $163 million lobbying Washington. But though the regulatory structure was outdated, the need for oversight was not. Unfortunately, in the rush to repeal the law to create immediate opportunities for certain Wall Street firms, little effort went into modernizing the government’s supervision of the financial industry – to guard against the potential for conflicts of interest, to insist on transparency, or to ensure proper oversight of new and complex financial products or the dramatic rise of investment banks and non-bank financial institutions, like hedge funds and Structured Investment Vehicles. Nearly a decade later, our financial markets—and everyday Americans—are paying the price.

So, it appears Obama intends to restore the missing provisions of Glass-Steagall, to fix the situation. What about McCain?

Well, if you’ve been reading closely you’ll notice that both the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the root causes of a large number of the financial crises in the country today, were both pushed through by Senators who accepted large campaign contributions from lobbyists representing the financial, insurance, and energy industries. Interestingly, both of these acts were sponsored by the very same Senator, Phil Gramm of Texas, who’s wife was a member of the board at Enron. If there is one person alive who can be blamed for pulling the trigger on deregulating and destabilizing our economy, it’s this man, Phil Gramm. Maverick reformer John McCain, the man who promises to bring change to Washington, will be bringing with him, if elected, his top economic adviser, the man who drafted his plan for bailing us out of this catastrophe… Phil Gramm. Yes. The very same Phil Gramm. The very guy who accepted all the money from Enron and the banking industry to pass the legislation to remove the regulation to allow them to start merging and fracturing and destroying the economy. That guy. He is McCain’s economic strategist.

This is why 66% of economists intend to vote for Obama.

Peace and Security

Whatever your thoughts on war, I think we can all agree you don’t want it to happen to you.  You want your country to protect you on some level or else there would be no need for a military.  We are currently involved in two wars, one in Afghanistan, one in Iraq.  McCain has indicated that he supports a long-term military presence in Iraq, even if we’re there “100 years”.  Obama has a plan for a responsible and phased withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

In principle, I am a pacifist. I believe that wars of aggression such as the US invasion of Iraq are never, ever, ever, warranted.  There is always an alternative.  Defensive wars, or wars fought in the protection of allies who are themselves the object of a war of aggression are a necessary evil as long as barbaric national leaders insist on instigating wars of aggression against others.  In short, somebody had to stop Hitler in WWII and somebody had to protect Kuwait in the first Gulf War.  Taking on Al-Qaeda too, needed to be done if they are indeed the ones who attacked the US on 9/11.  If they are based in Afghanistan, then there is a mission for the military to complete there: find Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.  However, what about the invasion of Iraq and (more importantly) our continued presence there?

The war in Iraq has already lasted longer than World War II.  US and UK forces have suffered over 4,400 dead and estimates of Iraqi deaths due to violence currently range between 87,000 and 95,000 (source: Iraq Body Count).  These numbers do not even include non-fatal injuries (amputees, burn victims, spinal cord injuries, brain damage, etc) or the massive numbers of Iraqis who have died due to the lack of hospitals, food, water, electricity, etc (a number estimated by some to be over 1.2 million).  If this last number is true, then the United States has killed more Iraqis in the last 5 years than Saddam Hussein did in his entire 21-years as leader.

The Iraqi people are clearly not better off at this point.  But what of the United States?  What about you and me?

Impact of the Iraq War

How has Al Qaeda been affected by the war in Iraq?  They have regrouped in Pakistan, the Bush administrations 2006 National Intelligence Estimate said that “the Iraq War has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists…and is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives” and the war has increased terrorism seven-fold worldwide (source).

The elected leaders of Iraq want us to leave.  John McCain wants us to stay.  Staying is creating more terrorists and strengthening Al Qaeda.  In my opinion, this is not helping, but rather hurting the security of this country.  This doesn’t even touch on the fact that our military is over-extended abroad and under-represented at home, leaving us more vulnerable.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that the war has already cost over $555 billion?  Do you think that maybe that money could help the economy?  National infrastructure?  Renewable energy?  Universal healthcare?  What would you do with $555 billion dollars?

Before I move on to another topic, I’d like to address one more of Andy’s claims.  Andy said he wanted me to “Talk about how Obama took action to delay the troops from coming home from Iraq”.  This charge, if true, would be a big deal.  However, it’s totally false.  I’d go into it more extensively here, except it’s merely a lie perpetuated by Rush Limbaugh and his dittohead followers and if I addressed every single Republican lie I’d be typing until my fingers fell off.  So, I will link to a site that debunks the claim in case you are interested in it.  I just didn’t want Andy to think I hadn’t addressed the point.

Summary of Part 1

To sum up what we’ve covered so far…  McCain supports a war and Iraq policy that are actively strengthening terrorist activities, has as his top economic advisor a man who was pivotal in causing the major financial crises we’re all currently dealing with, and he will not cut the average American’s tax bill as much as Obama will.  McCain = less security for all of us and more taxes for most of us when compared to Obama.

But the economy and the war aren’t the only topics that matter here.  There are lots more, including the constitution, science and technology, education and domestic affairs.  Also, we need to consider the answer to the vital question of why so many American’s continue to vote against their own interests by supporting people like John McCain who lie to them, take their rights away and profit off of their lives and sometimes, as in the case of war profiteering, their deaths.  Stay tuned for as many parts as I need to post to cover all these topics.

More From Ryan Sutter

• The Historical Jesus Puzzle – Part 1
• Substance (Part 1) redstatebluestate.jpg – ryansutter.net
• Cognitive Dissonance
• Letter to Barack Obama
• RyanSutter.Net’s 700th Post!

Related posts

• Fear (2)
• Why Can’t Barack Obama Close the Deal? (3)
• The Obama Bitterness Non-Controversy (7)
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright (5)
• Letter to Barack Obama (18)