Op/Ed: Here’s Why You Should ...

By Chris Millson-Martula and Mike Cobb
Published: November 1, 2008

... cast a ballot for Obama/Biden

Neither of the major presidential candidates has offered particularly bold visions for leading the country out of its current morass. After eight years of abysmal Republican leadership and too much Democrat complicity, our problems are so many and so huge that tinkering and applying bandages will not do the trick.

Only Barack Obama possesses the vision, philosophy, temperament, mental stability, and leadership skills needed to stop the country’s precipitous decline. Unlike John McCain, Obama views us as a country that includes the middle class and poor, for whom he plans to work hard to enable us to realize the American dream. Only Obama has demonstrated the intelligence and perspicacity needed to tackle our problems.

McCain, as a leading member of the Washington elite establishment, is in his own world, divorced from reality, and oblivious to our problems. However, with his seven residences and millions in annual income, McCain does a great job of taking care of his super-wealthy friends like Kenneth Keating, the savings and loan crook whom he defended.

While Obama tries to bring us together, McCain practices class warfare with his polarization, fear mongering and us-against-them mentality. Obama desires to strengthen those socialistic programs — Social Security and Medicare. Like a good Republican, McCain wants to wreck the former by allowing shady operators to inflict their scams and totally destroy the latter because it’s too efficient.

Obama wants the country to continue the practice of spreading the wealth through a progressive income tax while McCain, as a free-market worshipper and deregulator, prefers trickle-down economics and each man for himself. (Has he never heard of a commonwealth?) With McCain, we would be robbed of even the barest protections against an unhealthy environment; dangers in the workplace; unsafe consumer products; doctors, drug manufacturers, hospitals, nursing homes and insurance companies that endanger their patients or customers; and, finally, further erosions of our civil liberties.

According to David Brooks, the conservative New York Times columnist, McCain lacks a central argument to advance. That’s why he feels the need to resort to his filthy campaigning to divert attention from the real issues.

In addition to examining the candidates’ general philosophies, voters should also examine their character, values and ethics.

While Joe Biden may be a bit too cozy with the credit card companies and Obama is not perfect, Obama has not been as closely allied to special interests as McCain in his almost 30 years in Washington.

Although McCain claims to put country first, Matthew David, a former Bush strategist, correctly observes that McCain deliberately and recklessly put an unqualified person on his ticket, and, by doing so, he has put the country at great risk. Instead of country first, he has placed himself first with an insatiable lust for the presidency, and he is willing to do anything, including prostituting himself to the ayatollahs of the religious right, to achieve his goal.

With McCain, we would get not only four more years of Bush’s failed policies but also his immature and juvenile behavior. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and McCain dropped down into Washington during the bailout process all for show.

Far worse, however, are McCain’s erratic and impetuous behavior, impulsiveness, and emotional outbursts and temper tantrums that even his Republican colleagues fear. His instability represents a veritable loose cannon.

Palin lacks experience and any interest in national or international affairs. She tries to cover up her disgraceful behavior by claiming that, as a woman, the media is singling her out. Hogwash. Abusing power to punish one’s personal enemies and using positions of public trust to advance personal and ideological agendas have nothing to do with gender. While she claims to be against earmarks, she’s ready to feed at the public trough by bilking Alaskans to pay her to take her young daughters along on business trips in official capacities. Like your typical soccer/hockey mom, she can ring up bills of $150,000 with clothing from Saks and Neiman Marcus, typical Main Street stores. She also has no qualms about steering state contracts to preferred companies. She is just another corrupt politician.

Not only does McCain and Palin’s hypocritical behavior not represent our values, they demonstrate a total lack of values. At one time, McCain was a man of honor and valor and even the object of vicious campaign smears that he now dishes out daily. Now, neither he nor Palin deserves the public trust.

If you desire to improve your economic status, fix our broken health care system and leave a functioning country to your children and grandchildren (without McCain’s increasing the deficit to pay $10 billion a month for the occupation of Iraq and give ever bigger tax cuts to the super wealthy), Obama is the man for you.

As a true patriot who loves and cares about our country, you must cast your vote for Obama/Biden. Otherwise, we will have four more years of failed policies coupled with wars with Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela, all brought to you by another belligerent president in the White House. The country cannot afford it.

Millson-Martula is a resident of Altavista.

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... stay true to McCain/Palin

During difficult economic times, charisma can make us consider electing as president an inexperienced, liberal, socialistic candidate instead of an experienced, free-market, bipartisan reformer. It allows someone to talk eloquently of bringing people together, without ever having actually done it, while instead dividing us between “rich” and “poor” and advocating extreme policies. Charisma allows a political party that blocked reform to be portrayed as the party of reform. It enables a politician to advocate the very centralized health care concepts that many countries are now discarding.

Economic growth

The Democrat blocking of John McCain co-sponsored reform legislation on Fannie and Freddie greatly contributed to our international economic mess. So, what now? Barack Obama has plans described as “some of the most lethal tax increases imaginable.” The New York Times writes that our current economic problems mean that Obama couldn’t prudently go with his plans to raise taxes on the wealthy. Would he anyway?

What of Obama’s call to “restore fairness to the tax code”? Between 1983 and 2005, taxes paid by the top 20 percent increased by almost 7 percent while those paid by bottom 20 percent decreased by almost 53 percent. Forcing a heavier burden onto the “wealthy” doesn’t “restore fairness,” and making even more people have less of a need to keep the government accountable for how they spend our money hardly seems wise.

It fits, though, with Obama’s statement back in 2001 of the need for “redistributive (economic) change.” With an estimated $2.5 trillion in tax receipts for 2008, the real problem is that the government needs to spend less, not tax more.

Regarding job growth, the Brookings Institute Tax Policy Center says, “McCain’s reduced individual and corporate rates could improve economic efficiency and increase domestic investment.” On the other hand, fears of Obama’s protectionism seem to have encouraged allies to send investments overseas with new trading partners. For new businesses, new investments, new jobs and greater self-reliance instead of greater government dependence, vote for John McCain.

Life affirming

Amazingly, legislation was needed to mandate care for those babies born alive outside of their mother’s womb from botched abortions. Obama wouldn’t vote for needed legislation as an Illinois state senator. While he did claim he would have supported a bill worded the same as one NARAL supported, some argue that Obama kept his committee from adding the federal wording and thus killed the bill. (With Obama in Washington, the legislation passed.)

If, as he stated at Saddleback, the question of when a baby gets human rights is “above (his) pay grade,” shouldn’t he default to as early a time as possible until he figures it out? Denver’s Roman Catholic Archbishop says Barack Obama is the “most committed” abortion rights major party presidential candidate in 35 years. For sensible rather than extremist positions regarding right to life issues, vote for John McCain.

Affordable health care

McCain offers tax credits to cover medical costs while Obama advocates universal healthcare.

What about the state of Hawaii recently ending universal child health care because “People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free”? What about the British doctors in 2008 who stated that the “Health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone” and that medical treatment “be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives”?

There’s the Canadian mother of quadruplets who had to be flown to Montana because there weren’t enough neonatal beds in Canada. Also, if cancer survival indicates the state of a nation’s healthcare system, we read in the D.C. Examiner newspaper that “Americans have a better than five-year survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers when compared with their European and Canadian counterparts.”

Countries with universal coverage are returning to the private sector. The British Labour party wanted to triple private- sector-provided, non-emergency procedures by 2008. Sweden will be contracting out some 40 percent of its total health services. In Canada, private clinics are opening around the country by an estimated one a week according to a 2006 article. Other countries see the need for private medical options. Can’t we learn from them?

For greater access and greater affordability to a good, private system, vote for John McCain.

And in conclusion

Who will temper Rep. Barney Frank’s desire for a 25 percent cut in military spending? Who will keep Pelosi and Bingaman from controlling talk radio?

The Obama campaign is the one that blacklisted a TV station in Florida that didn’t adore them, threatened opposition in Missouri and investigated an “average Joe” citizen in Ohio for his question. McCain is the bipartisan reformer who fosters agreement on divisive issues. McCain has pro-economic growth policies, a life-affirming history and incentives for free market health care reforms.

If we genuinely wish the unity that we advocate, we should elect someone who’s done it. If we seek greater incentives and freedoms for business to start companies and create jobs for economic recovery, we should elect someone whose policies encourage that.

If those issues are important to you, you should cast your vote for John McCain.
Cobb is a resident of Lynchburg.