Waxing Political

I actively attempt to keep politics out of this blog, but it is sometimes difficult to do. What with the interrelationship of energy policy and politics, technology incentives and politics, and developments in the future and politics, it is sometimes downright impossible to separate politics from the future. Therefore, with a month to go before the U.S. presidential elections, I will try to limit the overt references to politics during that remaining time.

With that said, I take no position on the candidates (at least in this blog anyway) as the purpose of this blog is to inform and get people to think, not to advocate a given position. Therefore, I give the following rules of thumb for reviewing candidate records, policies, and stated positions on subjects that may be of interest to you (and us and the country).

1. Think for yourself. Don't let others frame your position on a given candidate. Voting for a candidate is a very personal thing. Who is elected has a very personal impact on YOU. Those impacts can range from taxes, to participation in armed conflicts, to your ability to access health care, to your ability to afford a house, car, clothes, or food. Make decisions based on what you know, not on what others say you should know.
2. Candidates have taken specific positions in this election. Don't let the opposition tell you the candidate's position. See the candidate's position directly, not filtered through biased lenses.
3. Be suspicious of opposition advertisements on television, the Internet, radio, newspapers, or magazines. Opposition advertisements that are directed at the opposition are by nature intended to create a negative impression--they are biased. If the advertisements are sponsored by non-candidate organizations (the often mentioned 527 organizations), they are as likely to be exaggerations, or outright lies.
4. Be honest with yourself. If you vote as if you are rich (a very small percentage of the population is rich), but you are not, your vote may not be in your best interest. If you want to vote as if you are rich, wait until you are actually rich. The same goes for middle class and the poor. If you want your neighbor to think you are something other than what you are, that's fine. But when you are in that voting booth, don't delude yourself--vote what you are, not what you want people to think you are. Doing otherwise is downright stupid.
5. Put in the work. If you are too lazy to research the issues and positions, don't vote. That is, if you are too lazy to think for yourself, why shoot blindly in the dark? By the same token, don't vote what your friends are voting because you are too lazy to do the research--you are not a cow in a herd, you are a free human-being given an opportunity to cast your vote in a free election--there are millions in this world that are willing to die to have the same opportunity.
6. Remember, the political system in the U.S. is by secret ballot. You are under no obligation to share with anyone how you voted. That means that it is none of anybody's business--your family's, your neighbor's, the pollster's, or your buddy's business. There is a reason for this approach--to avoid negative repercussions of taking a particular political stand.
7. Beware mass emails and chain letters. About every chain letter out there is deceiving. First, they are being circulated to create a specific position. Second, they are often embellished as they are sent along, so something that may have had an element of truth to it is usually completely distorted by the time it gets to you. (Remember the telephone game you used to play in elementary school where you pass a message verbally from person to person and by the time it got to the last person it was nothing like when it started? That is how a chain email works.) The best a chain email accomplishes is it clogs up your email client and the Internet.
   

Where to go for information

The following links are provided to obtain further information of candidate positions and to verify information:

McCain-Palin: http://www.johnmccain.com/Undecided/WhyMcCain.htm

Ron Paul: http://www.ronpaul.org/ It's difficult to find Congressman Paul's position on specific issues, but this is a starting point.

Nader/Gonzalez: http://www.votenader.org/issues/ Beware that Nader attempts to frame the opposition for you. Make sure you visit their Web sites to find their policies (see recommendation 1 above)

Obama/Biden: http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

If you are concerned about a statement made about an opposition candidate or about your candidate, the following sites are good starting points for understanding if the statements are true, untrue, or downright lies:

Fact Check: http://www.factcheck.org/ This is a non-partisan Web site operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Checking chain letters, mass emailing, and urban legends about candidates: http://www.snopes.com/

Remember, this election is about the future. Use your vote wisely.

A Political Observation

This blog is about the future. It is not about politics. However, over the last couple of weeks, the two have started to merge. For the one person out there who has been hiding under a rock for the last 18 months, we are in the midst of a presidential election campaign. For the first time in eight years, neither candidate is the incumbent.

Add to this background the fact that I live in an overwhelmingly Republican city, in an overwhelmingly Republican county, in an overwhelmingly Republican state. It is the 11th fastest growing city in the nation. It is in the 5th fastest growing county in the nation. The city is young (median age 34.1 years), rated the richest in the nation for its size, and is highly educated (93.4% of workforce has more than 12 years schooling and 53.3% have four or more years of college).

In past elections, you would have to make a real effort to find a yard sign supporting a Democratic candidate. Indeed, it was often difficult to find the Democratic polling locations. Not so this year. So far this year, I have witnessed a state primary where the Democratic caucus at the polling place was overflowing into the parking lot with participants. Keep in mind this is in a state where I have lived for 25 years and did not even know that there was a caucus system! Now, I am seeing more Obama/Biden yard signs than I am McCain/Palin signs.

Does this mean that the city will go for Obama/Biden? I find that highly doubtful. However, the fact that there is a significant opposition from the Democratic party is truly surprising. This is not the inner-city of Dallas; this is the suburbs. This is not a minority or immigrant enclave; we're 10.2% Asian, 5% Black, 10.1% Hispanic, and 72.8% White.

What does all this mean? Beats me. But I can hazard a few guesses. First, I think that this election will represent a sea-change in the electorate. Just as 1960 represented a change in generations in the electorate from the Depression-era adult to World War II and post WWII adult, 2008 appears to be shaping up to be a change from the Baby Boomer adult to the Gen-pick-a-letter adult.

Second, we (the Baby Boomers) have given the Gen-letters a reason to be interested in this election. We have clearly demonstrated to them that they can't count on Social Security for their retirement. We have clearly demonstrated to them that health care will most likely become the highest expense they incur next to their house. Speaking of their house, we have demonstrated to them that it isn't nearly the financial asset they thought it was three years ago. We have created an environment for them that the economy is based on spending. In doing so, the emerging electorate is deeply in debt. For good measure, we have strapped every man, woman, and child in the nation with an additional $31,000 in national debt (regardless of the current negotiations for a $700 billion bailout, the national debt will be at a minimum $11 trillion when whoever the president is takes office). Indeed, every week, every man, woman, and child in the nation incurs an additional $137 in national debt (based on an average of $50 billion in new debt instruments the Treasury has been issuing every week for the past several months). Suddenly, a lot of people who are going to be strapped with this debt are interested in this election.

My perspective is if this is the best the Baby Boomers can do, then it is time to pass control to someone else. We've demonstrated that we are more interested in immediate satisfaction than we are in long-term solutions. If you don't believe it, consider for a moment that Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, first proposed a universal health care system at the beginning of the last century. Yet, more than a century later we in the US pay more for health care and get less for the cost than virtually every other developed country in the world.

Consider for a moment the US financial position in the world. For more than half a century, the US has been the benchmark currency for the world. That is, every currency in the world is pegged against the US dollar and convertible to the US dollar. The US dollar alone is not convertible. (It used to be convertible to gold, but that changed during the Nixon administration. The dollar now is based only on other countries trust in our economy and our government.) Now you can see why our economic problems are of major concern to every economy in the world. Indeed, there is a good chance that the current economic crisis will result in the US ceasing to be an economic superpower.

We now return to our regular prognostications on the future. Your thoughts?

Politics and Our Future

Over the past two weeks, we have seen grand showmanship by two political parties, both extolling change. While I have my personal political view (known to most of my acquaintances and friends), that is not the subject of this post. Rather, this post is on the subject of what has not been addressed by either party (or inadequately addressed) that has the most impact on the future of the U.S., its future economic viability, and its standing among world communities. I believe that the following two issues are of critical importance. I present them with factual realities and the inadequacies of both party's position. In reading further, it will become obvious that the issues being discussed and the solutions being proposed by both parties are found lacking in effecting real change. It is also obvious that what is being discussed by the popular press (from the right, center, or left) fails to address root cause issues or to hold the candidates accountable for inadequate solutions. Once again, the fourth estate has failed us.

• The National Debt: Neither party appears prepared to tackle what could arguably be one of the most critical long-term issues facing the U.S. today. The National Debt (not the deficit, which is something entirely different) today stands at around $9.7 trillion and has been growing at a rate of $.5 trillion per year for the last 7 years. During that time, taxes have been reduced. Barack Obama has proposed a PAYGO system to "pay as you go," and has voted in the past to not raise the ceiling on the National Debt. However, he has not stated how he intends to REDUCE that debt. John McCain has proposed to balance the budget 2013, but has not stated when, how, or what he would do to REDUCE the debt. He also has not made a commitment to stand firm on the debt ceiling. While both candidates play to the immediate gratification of reducing taxes now (whether for the rich or middle class is irrelevant), nobody seems to be holding the candidates accountable for the real issue and how to address it sooner rather than later. In the meantime, nine cents of every dollar now goes to pay interest on the National Debt. With the war in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing to be financed with debt, and with increasing support of failing banks also being financed with debt, it is now obvious that the National Debt will top $10 trillion before whoever the winner is takes office. It should be remembered that debt, and the rate of increase in issuing additional debt instruments (whether printing money or IOUs) directly contributes to inflation (oil is not the only cause).

• Energy Reform: Both candidates have extensive platforms that will reform our energy consumption and sources and they are both to be congratulated--as far as they go. Unfortunately, neither go far enough. First, while government should not be in the role of directing private energy development, they are through continuing subsidies to the major oil companies. At the same time, the Congress has failed to pass energy tax credits for alternative energy (with the exception of ethanol production which amounts to an agricultural subsidy that has already destabilized crop prices and will continue to do so). McCain proposes the development of 45 nuclear generation plants by 2030 which means not one watt of electricity will come on line during his administration or his successor's administration. At the same time, his platform is to "Drill baby, drill," as the chant from the Republican National Convention so eloquently phrased it. Yet, if an oil company elected to begin drilling, it would take years to gain approval, more years to equip and drill, and even more years to bring successful wells (not all are) to production. Estimates range from many years to decades. Again, additional oil production from this approach will not be seen in any volume during a McCain administration. Since Obama has also supported this approach (although limited), the same holds true for his administration. Simply put, the most rapid solution would be to decrease subsidies to the oil companies and shift those subsidies to alternative energy solutions--and not just to ethanol production. While it would have a short-term increase cost to energy, it would have a long-term stabilizing effect (and possibly lead to a reduction). Yet neither candidate is willing to make this commitment.

What do you think are the real issues impacting our future? I'd like to know.

Sources:

"The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It," TreasuryDirect, http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

"Issues," McCain-Palin Campaign, http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/

"Issues," Obama-Biden Campaign, http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

"Obama, McCain on the Issues," by Calvin Woodward, Associated Press, September 8, 2008, http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WHERE_THEY_STAND?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-09-08-16-58-15

"Why Lifting the Offshore Oil Ban Won't Help Gas Prices," by Kathy Gill, Kathy's US Politics Blogg, http://uspolitics.about.com/b/2008/07/17/why-lifting-the-offshore-oil-ban-wont-help-gas-prices.htm