Thomas Sowell Takes Obama to Task On His Record

Newsflash: Obama is a bona fide liberal. 

Obama has had more than two dozen of his own earmarks in the past fiscal year, and he knows the Senate well enough to know that, if he voted against the bridge to nowhere, his own earmarks might get nowhere.

Those earmarks, incidentally, included a million dollars of the taxpayers’ money for a facility where his wife works at the University of Chicago. Her salary rose by nearly $200,000 when her husband became a United States Senator-- no doubt a shrewd investment by the university that paid off.

When a highly publicized bridge collapse in Minnesota in 2007 led Senator Tom Coburn to propose taking money from federal spending on bicycle paths and use it for maintaining and repairing bridges instead, Senator Obama voted against it. The kind of people who vote for him want bike paths.

Moreover, the very idea of taking money from one thing to use for something with a higher priority-- something that we all have to do in our own personal lives-- is foreign to the liberal big spenders in Washington.

When they want more money for some purpose, they simply raise the tax rates. They don’t cut spending somewhere else.

The idea that Barack Obama is somehow different from other liberal-left politicians can only be based on his rhetoric, because his actual track record shows him to differ only in being further left than most liberals and at least as opportunistic.

1. Quick question.  Is implementing a windfall profits tax on your state’s largest industry, increasing state tax revenue by $6 billion, or $5 billion more than your state needs to maintain its operations, and sending checks to each and every state citizen in the range of $2,000 to $3,000 a conservative or liberal position?  Cause that sounds like a heckuva lotta redistribution of wealth to me.  Don’t I pay for that at the gas pump here in the lower 48?  Am I missing some thing here?

   Its the GOP that is implementing socialism on our economy.  It is the GOP that has spent all but 2 of the last 18 years they’ve held the White House being beyond fiscally irresponsible.  Its the GOP that controlled congress for 12 years and all three branches of government for 6 straight year before the lending crisis.  Try and convince yourself they were helpless, that the big bad Dems just wouldn’t let them govern responsibly.  Any objective view of the facts dismisses that position in a heart beat.

   I understand, based on the arguments you make Owen, why you don’t vote for Democrats.  It is clear where you hold a philisophical difference, based on the issues.  What I don’t understand is why you vote for Republicans, because on every fiscal issue you allegedly care about, what they enact once in power is much farther from your position than the fiscal policies implemented by Clinton and advocated for by Obama,

   Posted by on October 12, 2008 at 2201 hrs




2. I vote for Republicans (most of the time) because they are right more often than the Dems are.  For example, Sensenbrenner (my rep) voted against the $700 billion bailout.  That’s how I wanted him to vote.  I can’t do anything about people in other districts who vote the wrong way.

   You are falling into the mistake of thinking that the Republican Party has a philosophy.  It does not.  The parties are merely instruments to gain and retain power.  It is the people within them who have philosophies.

   Posted by Owen on October 12, 2008 at 2229 hrs




3. You are falling into the mistake of thinking that the Republican Party has a philosophy.  It does not.  The parties are merely instruments to gain and retain power.  It is the people within them who have philosophies.

   Get off it Owen.  You know as well as I that this whole thing is about majorities and leadership.  Sure you should vote for Sensenbrenner, he’s a voice that agrees with you, and you agree with, on the vast number of issues.  Of course you want him in DC advocating your positions, especially if he is a part of the majority caucus.

   But the fact is, the GOP as a brand has governed farther from the position of fiscal responsibility than the Dems have over the last 28 years, regardless of whether there are a handful of Sensenbrenner’s in the world who actually fight for what you support.

   Posted by on October 13, 2008 at 1948 hrs




4. I vote for Republicans (most of the time) because they are right more often than the Dems are.  For example, Sensenbrenner (my rep) voted against the $700 billion bailout.  That’s how I wanted him to vote.  I can’t do anything about people in other districts who vote the wrong way.
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   Posted by 反应釜 on October 13, 2008 at 2029 hrs