The World Needs More Ninjas

For McCain, he proposed increasing the use of nuclear power for energy. Overall, this seems like a logical thing to do make energy usage more efficient. Also, of course he wants to drill in Alaska (ANWR), which I’m fairly indifferent to, but don’t think it will make that big of a difference as discussed here. Overall, I’m more in favor of ways to increase energy efficiency to decrease demand rather than looking at ways to increase supply since that seems more like a short-term Band-Aid to me. I’m not very familiar with Obama’s energy proposals at this point.

For Obama, the big news was electing to forgo public financing in the general election. I really don’t care much about public financing of elections, but the bigger problem I have with this is that it was a principle to which Obama was very much dedicated to in the past and now, when it’s convenient for him to not adhere to that principle (he’ll raise far more money to spend without it), he drops it in a heartbeat.

Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

One of the things I like about Obama is his support of increased transparency in government. Obviously, as evidenced by virtually every recent president, it’s not in the president’s best interest to increase transparency. Decisions such as this make me wonder if Obama would drop other such principles were he president and there was no longer an incentive for him to stick to them. The move reminds me of how Republicans were against big government until they were the ones in power and then government spending and executive power were no longer bad things. Now, it appears Democrats have considered campaign finance reform a core principle, but only as long as it would hurt Republicans and not them.

The second Obama idea I have a problem with is his nonsensical Social Security proposal. Basically, he wants everyone making up to $100k to continue paying SS taxes as they do today but then start the SS tax again on income over $250k. So, there’s a hole were if you make between $100k to $250k, you don’t have to pay SS on that income. I don’t think you’ll find any serious economist in existence that thinks this is a good idea. Obviously, there are good arguments for making all wages subject to the SS tax, but the only reason one can think of for the $100k to $250k hole is that these are core supporters of Obama (upper-class professionals). I haven’t read any arguments in favor of the SS tax whole other than pandering to get votes.

So, overall, this round definitely goes to McCain by default for such silly pandering and rejection of principles for political convenience by Obama.