the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold
Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 08:55:10 PM PDT
With the Clinton-McCain gas tax Gimmick, Hillary Clinton and John McCain have clearly and unequivocally passed the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold.
What is the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold?
It's simple.
Some candidates will propose solutions that aren't solutions, quick fixes that fix nothing, poll-driven policies that placate voters but do little else. Essentially, pander policies offer a helping hand that does little more than hurt all of us in the long run.
Take the Gas Holiday. This is a pander policy that Clinton and McCain both support and Barack Obama does not. ABC news notes that the experts all say Obama is essentially right on this issue. Obama says the Gas Holiday is simply not honest, that it is typical of how Washington works.
Clearly, Barack Obama does not meet the Panderer-in-Chief Threshold...
Squandering opportunity for clean energy industry
Wed Apr 30, 2008 at 10:52:48 AM PDT
In today's column, "Dumb as we wanna be" Thomas Friedman has discussed the McCain-Clinton gas holiday idiocy, along with the larger issue of failure to provide stable and significant incentives for clean energy and the attendant loss of American leadership in clean energy technology.
This is, of course, but one symptom of the still larger malaise of government run by and for the benefit of the biggist corporate vested interests. We can hardly expect more from such a government.
What has boggled me is trying to understand what we can do to check and reverse this disastrous situation. Certainly putting a Democrat like Obama in the White House and increasing Democratic majorities in Congress is a step in the right direction. But I can't forget how ineffective the Democratic loyal opposition has been in moderating the course of this administration, even since 2006.
McCain: Obama is Insensitive to the Poor Because He Wants to Raise the Capital Gains Tax
Sun Apr 27, 2008 at 05:28:18 PM PDT
Today John McCain, he who married into a $100 million dollar beer fortune, who claimed until very recently that the economy was "fundamentally sound", and who took three tries to realize that people might need some help from having their homes foreclosed, claimed that Barack Obama is "insensitive to the poor" because he opposes a "gas tax holiday" and because he has proposed increasing the capital gains tax.
