Rasmussen’s email this morning links out to this…
Monday, September 15, 2008
Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters say John McCain is prepared right now to be president, and 50% say the same thing about Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden. Forty-four percent (44%) say the man at the top of Biden’s ticket, Barack Obama, is ready, but 45% say he isn’t.
Just 26% say McCain is not ready, and 34% feel that way about Biden, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Over half of voters (52%) say McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, is not prepared to be president, but 33% disagree (crosstabs available for Premium Members).Among voters not affiliated with either major political party, 71% say McCain is prepared for the Presidency while just 35% say the same about Obama.
While hammering McCain for being a politician and Palin for being unprepared make good copy and excite the base (including the base working in big media companies) it doesn’t reassure the typical voter that Obama is ready for the Big Comfy Chair.
Obama needs to get back on message and talk about why people should vote for him, not why they shouldn’t vote for his opponent. If he doesn’t so that, he’ll both risk losing and in losing widen the political divisions that may lead to a Cold Civil War (a post I’m working on in my spare time).
That should really, really frighten Obama, especially if those are likely, not registered, voters.
That chair may be big, but it aint comfy.
All these numbers look good. But they are not yet assets, but only opportunities, for McCain.
I hope he will capitalize on them and continue to move the ball. I hope we see more initiatives from his campaign. He’s had a good few weeks, clawing from nowhere to being in contention. Now he needs to finish the thing.
“he’ll both risk losing and in losing widen the political divisions that may lead to a Cold Civil War ”
This will happen no matter what the outcome in November is.
If Obama wins, the Left will gloat so obnoxiously, and then proceed to demand ultra left-wing judges, that the Democratic party itself will be torn asunder.
If McCain wins, the left will apply the same ‘Chimpy Hitlerburton’ ideas to McCain, but in a manner that is disrespectful to the military. They will even go after Bridget, McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter, with typical left-wing racism.
Either way, the Cold Civil War is on. And the lunatic left will lose. The parallels to this and Iraq are uncanny. When AQI started turning on Iraqi civilians, the Iraqis fought back and destroyed AQI. The same will happen with leftists vs. moderate Democrats.
I think the interesting part was that “for several months” roughly 45% of voters have thought Obama was too inexperienced, but that number fell to 38% “immediately” following the convention, but has returned to 45%.
Suggested reason: attacking Palin’s experience undermines confidence in Obama’s experience.
I think the buzz around Palin is waning, but she’s still always going to poll better than Biden will. Honestly, out of everyone running, I would say McCain is the only one who is possibly qualified to be President.
The arguments for Obama and his experience are very thin, nothing in his background or even life experience shows much in the way of leadership ability. Palin is equally iffy when it comes to true qualifications, though being Governor for 2 years is far superior to State Senator for 8 or US Senator for 3 (2 of which he spent running for President).
I should be doing my day job, but… experience suggests that it is easier to tear McCain’s numbers down than build Obama’s up. Worked for W.
AJL: not trying to incite you to play hooky more, but what the heck do you mean by “Worked for W” in this context? Assume I’m clueless, not baiting.
a Cold Civil War
The Cold Civil War has been going on for several years. It’s the possibility of a hot one that worries me more.
NM: The Bush strategy, especially in 2004, revolved around driving down Kerry’s positives, not building W’s up (a probably hopeless course). The reason campaigns use negative ads is that they often work.
Had McCain chosen, say, Gov. Pawlenty, leaving his base listless and his campaign several points back in every poll, we might have seen an issue-oriented race. In the current arithmetic, though, with McCain maxing out his enthusiastic support by bringing the evangelical movement on board [Palin again reported to be a Creationist], Obama strikes me as compelled to hammer McCain’s numbers down (as McCain has tried to do to him).
“It’s the possibility of a hot one that worries me more.”
The leftists would lose this one more quickly. The right has both guns and deeper pockets.
Anyway, the better outcome would be if leftists make good on their promise to move out of America. Even if just 500,000 leave, it would have an electoral impact.
While I’d love to blame the meltdown of the stock and credit markets on Bush and the Republicans every last politician of every color is going to burn in hell on this one.
That said as the meltdown and its consequences move to the fore in people’s mind Obama has the better program and record on economic issues:
“fox news”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FScnrvVfZE&eurl=http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/even-fox-news-calls-out-mccain-campaign.html?disqus_reply=2390646
“While hammering McCain for being a politician and Palin for being unprepared make good copy and excite the base (including the base working in big media companies) it doesn’t reassure the typical voter that Obama is ready for the Big Comfy Chair.”
I would love to see deeper data about why those who’ve changed their minds have done so. Some of it is obviously from the Palin effect, but I wonder how much comes from Obama’s change of tone from his pre-Super Tuesday rhetoric.
I mean, post-racial, post-partisan is so post now.
Seriously, back when I expected I’d be voting for Obama it was because he seemed to have the balance and charisma to be an effective leader. (My man Rudy was flaming out, McCain seemed the best of the rest and not that hot, and God forbid the nominee should have been that other governor from Arkansas.) Now Obama looks more and more like a nasty runner-up in any given season of Big Brother. Sorry, I could have voted for cool, principled Barry. Juvenile, mocking, whining Obama, no.
“I would love to see deeper data about why those who’ve changed their minds have done so. ”
Let me tell you about myself.
While I am an Independent who votes Republican, I liked Obama based on his 2004 speech. I didn’t expect him to run in 2008, but I wanted to keep an eye on him to see how worthy he was.
I liked him more than Hillary at first. But the Rev. Wright thing was the kicker. Suddenly, I found myself thinking “At least Hillary doesn’t have THAT type of baggage”. The same goes for the Ayers issue.
So, I think people have begun to move away from Obama as they learned more about him. His appeal is inversely proportional to the knowledge that a reasonable, pro-US person acquires about him.
Now, I am beginning to dislike Obama to the extent that I am going to do something I have never done before – donate money to a politician (McCain in this case).
I still think Obama will win by a hair, but he is doomed to be a failure after just 90 days in the WH, as more people learn about him. Bush took 5 years for his approval to drop below 50%. Obama will take 90 days.
The Cold Civil War is inevitable, and driven by two main factors AL:
1. The ongoing struggle between mostly Democratic elites in the Media, Politics, Entertainment, and Finance, representing the big coastal cities, and the populace, represented more and more by the populist Republicans.
The elites push multiculturalism (destroys national unity and culture), Political Correctness (can’t say what you think), anti-family measures in law and in culture (particularly promoting single motherhood) and various anti-populist measures.
The attack on Palin for being a “hick” and “white” pretty much sums that up.
2. The existential threat to major US cities from nuclear proliferation. The elites don’t want a power-shift to the military, civilian defense industries, and the like so want to ignore this issue. The populists well understand the devastation to them economically if NYC is nuked, along with having friends/family in harm’s way.
Generally, the populists don’t care what is done, as long as it is effective in preventing a nuclear attack on the US by “deniable” or even independent terrorist groups. Dem Elites don’t believe it could ever happen, because “nice people don’t do that” and more importantly, fighting to stop that from happening reduces the power of elitism and it’s tools, such as multiculturalism.
All other issues, Global Warming, earmark reform, the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan, are either subordinate or merely part of the two factors above.
If Obama wins, the populace is not going to be accommodating to the elites plans for ever more elitism, including reparations for slavery, gay marriage, gun confiscation, negotiations with Iran, AQ, surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. Not to mention the inevitable nuking of various US cities. If McCain wins, the elites are not going to be any more amenable to giving up those goals, and will fight any response to the nuking of US cities (inevitable no matter who wins) tooth and nail.
This election is really about who will run the nation: coastal elites in Finance, Law, Media, and Entertainment, or the inland populace. It will sadly be the nuking of US cities that will destroy the elite’s ability to control the debate. That sad inevitable outcome was decided back in 1997, when Clinton decided not to go to war with Pakistan to stop their nuclear path.
[Perhaps the big uncertainty is if Bush charges Obama under the Logan Act for interfering with the force basing negotiations. Is “the One” above the law? “The One” might be.]
Whiskey
What are you drinking?
More Honorable polling from the McCain campaign. How to be ugly courtesy of “pollster”:http://www.pollster.com/blogs/more_on_message_testing_and_pu.php
Marc,
You wrote “Obama needs to get back on message and talk about why people should vote for him”.
I have never seen nor heard an Obama scripted speech, the only ones the MSM report on as ‘off-the cuff’ he is a disaster, where he ever gave a rational argument on why anybody should vote for him. Change/cute/kinda black are not really rational.
Your empty vessel won Donk caucuses and lost Donk popular vote primaries. How Come?
Hillary as the Donk candidate would pretty much be a shoo-in today. Hell, if the Unicorn Rider had chosen Hillary for VP, instead of the bloviator Biden, even his Emptiness would most likely have triumphed (much to America’s regret).
For some reason, most here don’t seem upset about the poll. They seem to even (gasp)…. relish it. Al, again I agree, Obama needs to stay on message and off his opponents (at least for awhile). I really think Obama could win a debate, if he sticks to pushing plans and compare that to McCain’s plan of (?).
BTW: Does anybody know McCain’s plan for the future… I’m still looking for it.
And McCains numbers are dropping again:
Gallup Tracking 09/13 – 09/15 McCain +1
Hotline/FD Tracking 09/13 – 09/15 Obama +4
Rasmussen Tracking 09/13 – 09/15 McCain +1
Newsweek 09/10 – 09/11 Tie
whiskey,
You are wrong in some aspects. “Remember that most of the left-wing base is low income people (earning under $30K a year), while every income bracket starting from $50K and above votes GOP as a majority.”:http://www.singularity2050.com/2006/06/a_take_on_the_l.html
The stereotype of a rich urban leftist is a minority. Most of the wealthy vote GOP.
The battle is not between ‘coastal elites’ and rural families, but rather between ‘producers’ and ‘non-producers’.
Robert M:
Charming point-for-point dismantling of Whiskey. Not.
Whiskey was aiming for substance. You? Drive-by. Advantage, Whiskey — for more closely adhering to the spirit and the letter of the comment guidelines, even though the post was pretty much OT.
GK, you can follow the votes or, as they say, follow the money:
Donor Demographics
You’ll notice that in not a single category do donors out-perform for Republicans. Please note also that donors giving $95K+ favor Democrats over Republicans by 56%-38%.
Seems to me your Democrats really aren’t getting much bang-for-the-buck out of whomever it is ponying up the big money (cough *coastal elites* cough)….
bq. hammering McCain for being a politician and Palin for being unprepared… doesn’t reassure the typical voter that Obama is ready for the Big Comfy Chair.
Well, maybe, but it might affect some tangental character issues that make up the “matrix” of mental checkboxes voters compile when choosing a candidate.
bq. Obama needs to get back on message and talk about why people should vote for him, not why they shouldn’t vote for his opponent.
I suspect there are precious few real “undecided” votes out there–hard to be completely ignorant of the last 20 years of McCain or of the Wunderkid (sorry) who’s been gracing magazine covers for the past 4 years. So now the candidates are trying to switch the X’s in some of those checkboxes to their own advantage.
Alchemist notes a potential plateau for McCains, numbers; the one poll he cited with Obama up +4 points is “the Hotline poll”:http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/16/hotline-poll-palins-favorables-declining/ from today, which shows the Obama campaign’s strategy has succeeded in driving down both his opponents’ favorable/unfavorable numbers.
_Every_ political campaign reaches a point where the candidates have released their stance on “the issues”, and must necessarily engage in tearing the other guy down. (And ignore the inevitable people who will cry “but the OTHER guy has yet to address the issues!”) This cycle we’ve gotten into that phase late in the game–by this time in 2004 we’d already been hearing nonstop Bush-bashing for months.
So I’m inclined to cut the candidates a little bit of slack for some mudslinging over substance… I just wish both sides weren’t so doggedly _stupid_ in their respective attacks.
Kerry was an abysmal candidate.
Obama makes Kerry look like a candidate of utmost gravitas, character, and skill.
The problem for Obama is that the curtain has been opened and voters are beginning to notice.
Moroever, does one really think that the message being transmitted, no longer subliminally—that if you don’t vote for Obama you’re an unrepentant racist—really going to help him?
(At this point, desperate as his campaign has become, he—or should we blame his supporters?—will try anything.)
#18 and #20:
As I recall the 2004 numbers, “the bottom and the very top”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004 united in support of Kerry; the middle class through to the lower-upper class united for Bush. By the same token, Bush lost those with no high school (but only by one point), and those with postgraduate educations (by eleven points); he won in the other categories.
Bush won “every category of married”:http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/hughes/041105 but none of the unmarried categories; he won every category of “attends church regularly,” whether monthly, weekly, or more than once a week; he lost every category that went a few times a year or less. He won whites, lost with all minorities. Bush won with everyone over thirty, lost with all the young voters.
Some of these splits are narrow, but they tend to suggest an overall picture. In 2004, the Republican Party was positioned as the party of America’s Middle Class. The Democratic Party was the party of those who would like to join the Middle Class, and those who would like to govern it.
This year is interesting because of the split in the unions that I mentioned above; I wouldn’t be surprised to see McCain carry a much better percentage of union households. With Gov. Palin on the ticket, the party can reach out into that $30-49K demographic that was the dividing line between what Kerry won and what Bush won the last time. It went by only 1% to Kerry, but it is one of the two largest economic demographics (22% of all voters; the next one up has 23% of all voters, and Bush won it handily, 56-43).
I’d say that’s where the real action is in this election. And for the most part? They don’t read blogs, or follow the news that closely, or get worked up about the news cycles. We’re talking about people who haven’t made up their minds yet, and will be deciding based on things other than what we normally care about. It may be McCain’s life story that sways them, or Palin’s obvious allegiance to them and theirs, or it may be Obama’s message of hope that touches them. It will probably be an overall strategic message, though, a big-theme rather than detail message.
Really, my desire for any candidate for office is that they:
1. Show me they understand the duties of the office1, and have the character to fulfill those duties;
2. Show me that they respect their place within the system, and thus the Constitution or Charter (depending on the race) that controls that place;
3. Lay out broad and consistent principles under which they would perform their duties;
4. In key areas, lay out specific proposals.
Both presidential tickets have met the first test.
Neither has met the second, and of the four principals, only Palin seems to have a possibility of meeting the test; and as she’s running for VP, that’s thin gruel indeed.
The McCain campaign has stated its basic governing principles as, more or less, anti-corruption, strong on defense, mildly interventionist in the markets. The Obama campaign has made clear that they will be much weaker on defense than the Republicans, and much more interventionist in the markets (particularly on healthcare). I haven’t seen the campaigns say so, but I suspect Obama and McCain would both be disastrous on illegal immigration.
The specific proposals are generally tie-breakers for me. This year, I would normally have voted independent, had I not been in a swing state. Being in a swing state raised the stakes somewhat on key differences, and those are on strong defense (I’m for it) and economic intervention (I’m against it), which made me lean towards McCain, mainly due to strong abhorrence of Obama’s key positions. But I was really not very happy with McCain because of other stances (McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, judicial nominees, some market interventionism), and frankly am still only lukewarm. His selection of Palin was the factor that made me go from leaning towards McCain to a definite McCain voter.
If the Democrats had nominated Hillary Clinton, I would likely have been a Clinton voter this year, because I really, really don’t like McCain; Clinton is fine on my most important issue (national security); and her interventionism coupled with a Democratically-controlled Congress could make 2010 a reprise of 1994, and set up a chance for someone I could vote for happily (on the Republican side) in 2012. But they blew that; there’s no way I could vote for Obama on character, personality or “gut feel” grounds.
1 There was a race in Michigan (where I voted in 2006) for a chancellor for one of the state colleges. Of the three candidates, the Democrat understood the role, the Republican was clearly out of his depth, and the Libertarian seemed to think he was running for Governor. The Democrat got my vote. It’s amazing how many people, especially how many Libertarians, have not figured this point out.
Obama has the better program and record on economic issues:
Excuse me, but Obama has virtually no record on economic issues if by record you mean accomplishments. Name the economic legislation he wrote that was passed. Name anything he’s done that has actually mattered on anything. Please.
As for his program, raising capital gains and other taxes isn’t good for the economy, as he himself admitted last week. His economic program calls for lowering taxes on people who don’t pay them. What exactly does that mean?
Why yes, Larry, it’s clear that deficit-soaring tax cuts tilted towards the wealthy make for a great economy. Just look around! Bush managed the first economic cycle in modern history where median household income fell peak-to-peak.
Listening to the robots, you would never guess that the most recent Democratic Administration was an economic success that was reversed as soon as the Republicans and their Marie Antoinette model of economic growth came into office.
#25-6:
The difference between the plans as stated is that McCain is proposing a tax cut, and Obama is proposing a tax increase coupled with a welfare program. He’s calling the latter a “tax cut for the middle class,” but it is really a transfer payment where the government will take from the wealthy and give to everyone else.
Now, I don’t like the concept of calling this a “tax cut” either: it’s plainly a tax credit, over and above what is being paid into the system in many cases. That’s a form of welfare, of putting people on the government dole.
The question is, is it wise to do that? I don’t object to such programs if they meet a two-pronged test:
1) They are not simple transfer payments, but investments where the person or family receiving is establishing capital;
2) We can show that people receiving the investment in the earlier parts of their lives will be likely to be paying back the next generation as the investment makes them more prosperous.
So, for example, government educational grants make sense to me: you’re moving someone up into a position where he will be able to pay for the next set of educational grants. (Student loans — where he pays for his own grant, but later on — make even more sense; but I wouldn’t object to a grant program either.)
Helping the poor receive vocational training, or learn how to start a business that they will then own — these are similarly good concepts. In the latter case, there needs to be some demonstration that the person to receive the grant (or loan) has the right skills to run the business, and a plan likely to succeed.
Neither of the candidates is proposing such a plan. McCain is proposing Reagan-style trickle down economics; Obama is proposing a simple-transfer welfare program that he’s choosing to call a “tax cut.” Of the two, McCain’s approach suits me more. (I also don’t think I believe that Obama will follow through on these “tax cuts” anyway — I think he’ll be more interested in funding his national health care bureaucracy, which will require the government to seize more assets from everyone. However, for the purpose of this discussion, I’ll take him at his word.)
I’d like to see it as well and would add one clarification – show us the economic legislation that Obama actually authored and carried through to being signed into law and NOT a bill where the party leaders told the sponsor that s/he would have to step aside so that Obama could carry it the last five yards across the line and get credit with its passage. Yes, we’ve sort of figured out by now that most of the (supposedly substantive) bills that Obama reportedly “co-sponsored†were pretty much just him attaching his name to them (sometimes after all the work was already done) while others did all of the actual work.
I knew guys like Barack Obama in college and law school in some of the courses I took where the professor would assign out-of-class group projects (and sometimes picked the groups). They hung back and goofed around while I and a couple of others did pretty much all of the work. Or they did such a half-assed job that we ended up redoing it for them so it wouldn’t hurt the final grade. They got away with it because they knew that we knew our grades depended on the final product and could count on us doing a good job while they helped themselves to the credit.
Never. Again.
bq. Listening to the robots, you would never guess that the most recent Democratic Administration was an economic success that was reversed as soon as the Republicans and their Marie Antoinette model of economic growth came into office.
Uh, _what_? Are we forgetting the housing bubble started in the 90’s, when that dynamic was demonstrably sparked by “Clinton’s 1995 revisions”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#Clinton_Administration.27s_Changes_of_1995 to the “Community Reinvestment Act”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act ? Or that the economy started into recession in late 2000 _before_ the Big Bad Bush ever took office?
As far as I can tell, neither Obama nor the Democrats as a whole have articulated a better way to run an economy. There has been a lot of reminiscing back to the overheated economy of Clinton’s days–particularly at their convention and by Clinton himself–without ackwnowledging the inherent flaws and instability of such an economy.
In short, this is my primary complaint with the Democratic Party: they have _no_ logical or coherent economic framework in which to hang their various policy positions. (This extends even to the realm of foreign policy and defense, but that’s another rant for another time.)
McCain hasn’t been very articulate either, but at least his party’s framework is known and generally sound.
Nortius
Even w/ the drive by on whiskey-he is proposing a open civil war which I think we are not remotely close to-I do not think was all that OT. My other link is about the economy and how it can effect polling.
One thing I do know is that whatever the polling we are seeing says the voter suppression efforts by the Republican Party tell me their internal polls says they are behind. More on Honorable voter suppression:
“votersuppression1”:http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/authentic-journalism-work-michigan-vote-cagers-run
“voter suppression 2”:http://www.alternet.org/blogs/democracy/98702
The other is tax program. See how Obama’s paln effects you;
“tax program”:http://alchemytoday.com/obamataxcut/
Thorley Winston
And other than voting for tax cuts what orginal tax policy has McCain ever presented meet your own standards: “show us the economic legislation that Obama actually authored and carried through to being signed into law and NOT a bill where the party leaders told the sponsor that s/he would have to step aside so that ‘McCain’ could carry it the last five yards across the line and get credit with its passage.”
At least the unbeliever point is a reasonable place to have an argument.
[Fixed borken URL, second post correcting that removed. –NM]
The main cause of the housing bubble is the way Alan Greenspan turned homes into ATMs with low interest rates. He needed to do that to replace the liquidity sucked out of the economy by the return of huge deficits, which in turn were the result of Bush’s tax cuts aimed at the extreme upper class. Sure, there were other causes, but that is the largest.
The defenders of the Bush economy are like shamans trying to explain why it doesn’t count that people who get vaccinated by Western doctors aren’t getting smallpox while people who continue to have the shamans sacrifice to the old Smallpox Gods are still dying. There isn’t a single metric I can think of (employment, household debt, foreclosures, national debt, etc) where the Republican Administration has shown a clue or been successful. Back when Clinton raised taxes we heard from the GOP that it would be the end of the world. Right. Slow learners? Or just say anything to win?
Why yes, Larry, it’s clear that deficit-soaring tax cuts tilted towards the wealthy make for a great economy.
When the bottom 41% of wage earners pay no income tax (IRS figures), how are you going to give them a tax cut? When the top 5% of wage earners pay about 50% of all taxes, then any tax cut is going to favor them.
Obama is an empty suit. If I were interested in an empty suit, I’d go to a clothing store, not elect it president. He is without a doubt the most unqualified major party candidate in my lifetime. I honestly can’t see how any rational person could vote for him.
_When the top 5% of wage earners pay about 50% of all taxes, then any tax cut is going to favor them_
I’m not sure this is quite true. If a tax cut excluded income over a particular amount, say the amount that the top 5% of wage earners earn, then that particular tax cut wouldn’t favor them.
For example, if you only cut the tax rates on income below $65,000, the cuts would not _favor_ the top 5% wage earners. In the same way, you could reduce taxes _only_ for income above $400,000, if you thought that was a good idea..
Lets not forget that in between the bottom 41% and the top 5% is where the bulk of the tax-payers are, i.e. the 54% of tax payers who you skipped over and who might find a tax cut more helpful than that the top 5%. These are sometimes known as “the middle class.”
Anyone interested in an accurate and non-partisan look at the competing tax cuts, plus a bonus lesson in honest statistical charting, should click here.
If it were really true that there is no way Obama’s tax cut could help low-income not-taxpayers, then what’s your problem with that? It doesn’t increase the deficit if it doesn’t change taxes, after all. You aren’t worried that people might be suckered into voting for a candidate whose economic plan promises riches it can’t deliver? That could never happen. We know voters are always on top of the implications of candidates’ promises and never get persuaded by B.S.
Incidentally, Operation Drive McCain’s Numbers Down is off to a good start this week with a big help from Wall Street, McCain “Strong Fundamentals” himself, and the discovery the Palin Novelty Act was unleashed too soon.
Andrew’s link is immediately deceptive. It says the bottom 3 income brackets are 60% of taxpayers. Well… thats including payroll taxes, which arent income taxes. And _that_ of course all depends on how comfortable you are treating the social security ‘investment’ as a revenue generator.
As we discussed in the other thread, Obama isnt cutting taxes for the working poor, he’s redistributing taxes from the upper middle and rich to the lower. I’d like to see someone crunch the numbers on how many people will end up receiving more our of the system than they put in once you factor in the earned income credit.
I give the Dems credit, they know the country takes a dim view of income redistribution, so theyve taken advantage of our insane tax code to disguise redistribution as tax cuts. Very clever.
Mark B
What would constitute a good tax system? I am in total agreement w/ you here. My belief is a flat tax a la Steve Forbes would really help out the country.
What would constitute a good tax system?
A Taxpayer Bill of Rights at the federal level.
I’m also intrigued by some of the Negative Income Tax proposals.
But any system that required tax revenues and expenditures to be balanced would be an improvement. Borrowing to pay for current consumption is not going to end well.
Perhaps the government can make it up with its returns on AIG…
Borrowing to pay for current consumption is not going to end well.
“Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term.” [President Bush, 2002 State of the Union]
Dem. Pres. Clinton balanced the budget. The Republicans? Quadrennial talk, monster deficits in action. But “Republicans are good for the economy” is one of their articles of faith, with great similarity and less reality than a voodoo doll.
AJL’s link (#34) suggests that the Presidential candidates are trying to buy me off! How dare they!
The working class pays a lot of taxes: payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, fuel taxes, state income taxes. Many of these taxes are regressive. I have no problem with an income tax that takes that into account.
Another thing regarding AJL’s link. It doesn’t seem to differentiate the effect of doubling the personal exemption for dependents. Maybe the link averages the effect, but I think a lot of people will look at doubling the exemption seperately depending on the size of their “family.”
_Dem. Pres. Clinton balanced the budget._
Obama’s proposal doesn’t balance the budget. McCain’s doesn’t. Should we elect Clinton?
But would McCain and a Democratic Congress limit both Republican and Democratic fiscal tendencies or exagerate them?
AJL, have you ever suffered an ACL injury due to your violent knee jerking?
For the record, I’m neither Democrat nor Republican. Depending on the day, I consider myself a libertarian, a Burkean conservative or a classical liberal. Neither of the major parties are a good fit for my beliefs, although the Republican party platform comes closer in theory. In practice, I find both parties to be disappointing.
That’s why I prefer divided government. Neither side is able to properly police themselves. Political checks and balances are just as necessary as structural ones. I think Clinton with a Republican Congress did a pretty decent job. I think Bush has been improved by a Democratic Congress (it forced a change of policy in Iraq). Certainly a Republican President and Congress were a bad thing. But I don’t believe a Democratic President and Congress will be better; indeed, it’s quite likely to be worse. I recall that Democratic complaints about Bush’s spending proposals were typically that they weren’t generous enough.
Frankly, it appears that your ability to reason and discuss ends with party affiliation. If that’s all you’re interested in doing, we can stop wasting each other’s time.
So we’re going to get a balanced budget, too, along with the massive tax cuts, the universal health care, entitlement expansion, and the magic 100% clean perpetual-motion energy?
That’s a good deal, because the Scientologists would charge $975,000 for that level of delusion.
SG
I read your suggestion. On a balanced budget level it appears it would work. I think it is inflexible if the s@@@ hits the fan, i.e. you can’t cut the budget for schools, police, roads, social programs etal if you have the extra expenditures you have in Texas now as a result of the hurricane. The other problem is that it doesn’t stop passing legislation that favors one group over another. A clssic example is legislation for anytype of sports stadium or allows building of new housing but the owners pay no taxes on it for a period of time.
It is why I like a flat tax. it is going to cause some massive dislocation in some areas but it will free money to go wherever it can get a return.
eveeryone else
You can’t have this discussion about tax policy of the two parties unless you agree what the discussion is about. the tax discussion AIUI started about federal income tax policy. Let’s keep it there.
Norton wake up. whaaat Cramden
Robert M:
Certainly the details of a TABOR-type constitutional amendment would have to be somewhat different than what’s done at the state level (perhaps require a supermajority for tax increases as opposed to a referendum), but conceptually I think it’s a good idea. I agree that it’s less flexible, but I think that’s a feature and not a bug.
The thing I like about the negative income tax is it’s basically a flat tax and the safety net rolled up into one. It kills two birds with one stone.
But I think the most important thing is balancing revenues and expenditures (with perhaps some exemptions for capital expenditures and war) – I find it more important than the exact nature of the tax code. Which is not to say I disagree with a flat tax, just that I find the exact nature of the taxes used to collect revenue to be less important than the fact that we’re collecting them from today’s recipients of the spending, not tomorrow’s.
Chuck Hagel’s staff (who were in the room at the time) deny the NY Post’s version of the Iraq/Obama timetable meeting.
#45 I posted a link to the same story in the thread where the Obama/Iraq story was being discussed