The Obama Deception

[BanginJimmy]

Well, mr. dyslexic ironman, I do have a few ideas:

1.) Instead of bailing out the banks we should have let them go chapter 13 and instead used that money for something else. The credit market needs to slow down. Most businesses aren't looking for credit to expand, if anything they are trying to shrink, and consumers are hesitant to run up a bunch of debt with shite the way it is.

100% in agreement on your here. I would go a step further and repeal any of the govt intrusion legislation such as the CRA.

2.) We could have establishd some sort of basic health care for the 46 million (IIRC) Americans without insurance. A plan like this would circulate pretty much every dollar spent on it back in to the consumer economy, because previously uninsured people would now have access to doctors, and the doctors and hospitals would have more business, creating jobs, etc etc. As opposed to having those dollars get wiped out in a stock collapse like they did with AIG.

What about the people that pay for their own insurance? Are we just going to float the bill for everyone else? I am against any and all govt handouts that come at the expense of the tax paying citizen.

3.) I'd have been tougher on the auto inustry, increasing mileage requirements for all vehicles as a condition of recieving federal bailout money. I'd have them drop redundant product lines (no more badge engineering). At the same time I would study ways to work with safety standards and such to make it easier for them to make vehicles that are globally competitive rather than only competitive in the domestic market.

Making the vehicles less competitive isnt going to help them. CAFE standards are one of the things that are killing the auto industry. American vehicles greatest hurdle to overseas sales, especially in Asia, is importation controls and tariffs. Those do not allow american made vehicles to compete on a level playing field with domestically produced ones.

4.) I would have put more of the stimulus into education and job tranining programs and not so much on things like wildlife preservation and maintainence of gov't facilities and vehicle fleets. I would also significantly raise the bar for any public school which recieves federal money. Rather than standardized tests, school systems would be rated with exit survery of how their students place in the job market and in universities. Highschools with high dropout rates, low rates of college acceptance, and poor rates of job placement would be put on a sort of "chapter 13" untill they achieve results.

You are one of the first I have seen that I agree with on education reform. For years this country has graded our teachers by the number of students that pass, not the quality of students that pass. If a certain percentage of students fail at a certain test, making the test easier isnt the answer. Start removing the useless teachers and you will start to see American student scrape themselves off the bottom rung in education.

5.) I would withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible, redeploying some forces to Afghanistan.

If we just pick up and leave Iraq we will be back inside of a year. I'm not going to debate you on why we are there because we cant turn back the clock and re-evaluate the decision. The simple fact is that if we leave too early it will lead to a disaster and we will leave the same power vacuum we left in Aghanistan when we pulled out of there. We all know the aftermath of that dont we.

6.) Legalization of Marijuana and an end to almost all "war on drugs" efforts related to marijuana. The DEA would be absorbed into the ATF and they would focus on harder drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth. Marijuana would be left for the states to decide, but if they did decide to have it, it would be subject to a federal tax.

I actually agree with you. I'm not for marijuana legalization, but I will not argue if it is a decision made by the independent states.

[Total_Blender]

What I meant in "as soon as possible" is that of course we can't draw down 100%. we would have to continue the "Vietnamization" (for lack of a better word" of the Iraqi security forces, and have a draw down that occurrs in stages. Which is pretty much the course Obama has planned.

The biggest hurdle IMO is going to be setting Iraq up to have peaceful relations with its neighbors.