IT'S GETTING CLEARER ALL THE TIME

Well last night Joe the Plumber won the day. Mc Cain launched the charges of "class warfare" and "wanting to spread the wealth around" against Obama, whereas Mc Cain says "I want Joe the plumber to keep all his wealth that he's made for himself". I heard the same charges leveled by O Riley against Obama when O Riley had him on as a guest. The truth is that if Joe the Plumber wants to get out of that high tax bracket he can take on an employee and write off his salary as "business expence" to get his income down. Also Obama plans to give small business three thousand or something to provide new jobs. Also if Joe the plumber makes 500,000 only half of his money will be subject to the higher tax rate. One statement that Obama did not repeat often enough was the idea that McCain votes with Bush ninety percent of the time. When Mc Cain said "If you wanted to run against George Bush you should have run four years ago" Obama should have come right back with "That's about the dumbest thing I've heard anybody say" and sit back and listen to the applause. In a head to head confrontation Obama won the day every time. Obama said Mc Cain would tax your health benefits. Further Obama said that under my plan you could keep your health coverage if you were satisfied with it, but Mc Cain may well put the health coverage you have now in jeopardy". Mc Cain tried raising the specter of Ayres the weather underground bomber. Mc Cain brought up ACORN. This is a group who has been in the news for regestering Mickey Mouse and other bogus names such as Al Kilyoo and Pepe Roni. But the truth is that in Colorado, which has swung dramatically democratic in the past four years, more names have been taken OFF the rolls by Republicans than there were newly registered. And these new voters were largely democratic. Obama kept coming back to economic issues every time Mc Cain would launch a personal attack saying how Mc Cain wants to reduce the taxes of big oil companies by 300 Billion or something. Obama reminded us that we have only three percent (?) of the world's oil reserves so cannot "drill ourselves out of the energy crisis". I wish Obama had come up with something a little more specific as to which form of energy he thinks would get us out of our energy crisis. The truth is that we need to explore so many different types of energy and we'll have to see which one does the trick.

On education I like Obama's money for public service feature. A student gets funding for college and in exchange does a year of community service. This helps everybody. Obama needed to stress more the notion that his plans "help the country as a whole" and not just one individual. If we spend money on disease research now we will cut our medical costs later. And if we spend more money on education now we cut the crime rate later and our citizens get better jobs. The one area where I do agree with Mc Cain is this idea of vouchers and the right to let market forces dictate which school parents send their kids to. Both candidates believe that we ought to fire bad teachers who don't perform and this is a good thing. On abortion Mc Cain admitted that he voted for judges Ginsburg and Brior in the Clinton adminestration. Obama said he regarded sex as a sacred act, and this should appeal to Christians. I think it was a cheap shot myself since the issue is not where the partakers of sex have right moral standing by virtue of being married, the issue is the taking of an innocent human life, and I would frame the argument in this way.

Larry Elder says the cure to every economic injustice is to let market forces take over. In the case of this animal rights bill in California I'm inclined to buy his argument. Passing proposition two would wipe out the poultry inductry here in California. We can't have that, especially is we then get eggs from such dubious places as Mexico or China. Rather the solution to a lot of problems including this no smoking quandry is to let market forces and social pressure rule the day, and in the end companies will be pressured into more humane conditions for livestock.

Obama's basic plans for this bail-out bill are better than Mc Cains. He wants to offer job incentives and also a chance for people to remain in their homes and try and make their mortgage payments with a ninety day freeze on foreclosures. Mc Cain wants to cut capital gains taxes and dividend taxes. My understanding is if you're a millionaire and live mostly on stock dividends, you are taxed only at the low rate of fifteen percent. This will not do. I would raise the top income tax rate back up to fifty percent where Reagan CUT it to back in 1981. In terms of capital gains cuts, this will leech capitol from the stock market because people will have an incentive to rush to sell the minute they see any profit because they know they can keep more of their sale price now. The same thing will go on in real estate if we ever recover. Of course capital gains taxes raise revenue on the short term because people have a sudden incentive to sell. But it won't last once the excess capitol is leeched from the system. Thom Hartman has talked about how Jefferson, Madison and others didn't want a nation of filty rich "landed gentry" who owned everything. This is what the progressive income tax prevents. Of course the government has a societal intrest in overseeing the wealth in this country and who gets it. A major purpose of the tax system should be to encourage activities we like, like hard work and production of a needed product, and discouraging of activities we frown on, such as speculation. In this sense we have a remnent of our Puritanical ethic. Mc Cain wants to abolish the inheritance tax in this country and that will insure that we have this Dynastic Wealth that our forefathers frowned upon. It's a strange thing to me that the Joes of the world are worried about and side with the "landed gentry", the multi-millionaires and don't identify with their own pasts and the comon working people. We need to bring back the worth ethic in this country. And I think to a large measure we already have, because the average Joe is working harder than he used to. The trouble is that his bottom line income is not showing it. For the past thirty years the income of the average person has been shortchanged, and it's this situation we must remedy and one way is to raise the national minimum wage to a livable figure. I think we need a quarter or maybe a half percent stock transaction tax to cut down on speculative day trading in the stock market. Michelle Obama gets a huge salary from a corporation that is not doing all that well economically. They had a thing on You Tube on this. Obama is not lilly white in this area. I'll close by saying that we in America need to start looking at the Big Picture economically. Mc Cain can talk about deals with the Columbian government. But we democrats who see the big picture know that dealing with crooks and people who don't prosecute criminal terrorist groups in other countries are not the sort of people with whom America should be doing business.