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On an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters on The View, Bill Clinton discussed the issue of experience, noting that no one can be "experienced" enough in serving as President of the United States, as it is not a job that either Obama nor McCain has done before. Nevertheless, he added about Obama: "I think he’s ready to be president. And I think McCain’s ready to be president. You’ve got to decide which president you want."
A wise view indeed. Here are thoughts on possible deciding factors, if indeed both would need on-the-job training:
1. Education.
This factor, so important to families when they help to shape the future of their children, is sometimes not factored into the equation. Education is not just about knowledge. Education plays a crucial role in a person’s attitudes, in the ability to assimilate information, in objectivity. Education makes for an individual who is a citizen of the world, and this plays well to the international community.
2. Personal Integrity
There is a lot out there on individual candidates at the top and bottom of the ticket. What evidence is there of integrity in all aspects of one’s life? While everyone makes mistakes, is there a pattern of dishonesty in the past? Saying "I take full responsibility" is simply not enough. Even within a campaign, is there evidence that winning alone matters and everything and everyone else be hanged?
3. The big picture
No candidate can be all things to everyone. We can only look at the broad picture and sometimes, we have to ask ourselves what we can live with and what we cannot. To choose not to vote because we feel disenfranchised from our personal soapboxes is counter-productive. Or one could call it a copout. There is a lot at stake and, in this election, we need to take a side.
The Obama campaign has rolled out an unconventional "nuts-and-bolts" ad summarizing his economic plan, in the face of tough economic times.
The summary of the summary:
1. Reform our tax system to give a $1000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs.
2. Have real regulation that protects investments and pensions.
3. Fast track a plan for energy ‘made-in-America’ that will free us from our dependence on mid-east oil in 10 years and put millions of Americans to work.
4. Crack down on lobbyists so their back-room deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans.
5. Bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours.
The Associated Press also reports that Obama will gather input from business giants including billionaire investor Warren Buffett, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Paul O’Neill and Laura Tyson, former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton. The "conference" will include face-to-face interactions in Coral Gables, FL, as well as participation through conference calls.
According to many Democratic strategists and commentators, it is not for the top of the Obama/Biden ticket (i.e. Senator Obama) to spar with the bottom of the McCain ticket i.e. Governor Palin. And so, the following email from Wasilla resident, Anne Kilkenny, should be of interest. Anne Kilkenny has been verified by snopes and has been interviewed by NPR on All Things Considered. http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=94332543&m=94332497
Until she sent this email to friends, she was unknown. Now, because of her willingness to go on the record, her phone has been ringing off the hook and her email inbox is beyond full.
Not all of what she says about Governor Palin is critical, acknowledging that she is smart, she is frequently under-estimated, energetic, savvy. As for the rest, judge for yourself:
The Anne Kilkenny Email:
ABOUT SARAH PALIN
I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.
She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".
It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.
She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.
She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.
She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.
Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.
Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.
She’s smart.
Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.
During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.
Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative." During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.
The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later; to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.
While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.
These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.
As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.
In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.
She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.
While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.
Sarah complained about the "old boy’s club" when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal; loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).
As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.
She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council
became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.
Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.
When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys’ club" when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).
As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.
As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects; which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance; but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork."
She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.
Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.
As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.
Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.
McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.
There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.
However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.
CLAIM VS FACT
WHY AM I WRITING THIS?
First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.
Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.
Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me out of. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.
Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship.
Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.
CAVEATS
I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall; they are swamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.
You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s
Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008
Contributions to the Obama campaign continue to pour in, energized by the campaign itself and from Democrats’ powerlessness in the face of the Sarah Palin factor. Figures are expected to be released indicating that August donations may top the February 55 million mark. The campaign has used the money to hire more staff and open offices in battleground states, leaving no stone unturned.
Obama is validated in his judgment of the terrorism threat continuing to burgeon in Afghanistan. The crisis on the Afghanistan-Pakistani border continues, and announcements this week indicate that the U.S. is tackling this more aggressively. Finally, President Bush is withdrawing troops from Iraq to send to Afghanistan.
Obama and MaCain are heading into the fall campaign in a really tight race. A national poll finds Republican McCain with the support of 46 percent of registered voters and Democrat Obama with 45 percent. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
Independent candidate Ralph Nader has also managed to score 2 percent, and Libertarian candidate Bob Barr 1 percent. Another 6 percent were undecided or didn’t support any of those choices.
“The race has tightened,” said Clifford Young, senior vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs, which conducted the poll Sept. 5-9, its first since the two major-party conventions kicked off the fall general election campaign.
If you are tired of the back and forth between the Obama and the McCain campaigns, and you are (rightly) suspicious of all those emails that get forwarded to you, you can check the sources. Two excellent fact checking sources: http://www.factcheck.org and http://www.snopes.com. It is never a good idea to believe the campaign ads or to listen or watch any one source without questions. There is a lot at stake in this election, so let’s know exactly what is at stake!
Campaigns are quick to respond to any perceived inequities and sexism doled out by the opposing camp and by the so-called "liberal media."
Let’s not, however, have half truths and exaggerated indignation dribble out of both sides of our mouths.
1. Anyone running for public office and for the highest office in the land, whether at the top or bottom of the ticket, is subject to intense scrutiny. There are no exemptions for race or gender. Period.
2. If a personal issue is used to reflect on a political stand, then that issue is subject to scrutiny. No one running for office can show many photo opportunities of family, use personal decisions in pro-life and special needs to further one’s political career, and expect no analysis. How can references to such be considered sexist, low and Palin-bashing?
3. If one’s commitment to religion is brought out on the campaign trail and is used to lure voters with that religious bent, then that also is subject to scrutiny. Not all scrutiny and spin can be accurate, but scrutiny and sifting out of truths vs. half and untruths are an integral part of our democratic process and free press.
3 Our politicians are held accountable for all words spoken. This is part and parcel of public office. Joe Biden has had his words scrutinized and analyzed. So has Obama. Words used by one side may be used by the other. Thus, the furor over "lipstick" is astonishing. It was first uttered by John McCain in talking about Hillary Clinton, then picked up by Governor Palin in front of an enormous television audience. Why should an apology be expected when used by Senator Obama, especially when sandwiched between two utterances about Senator McCain?
If double standards are so prevalent before political parties have taken office, how does it bode for the future? Surely the process of winning should not preclude basic decency and fairness to ALL parties.
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Whatever our age, we should be concerned with the future of Social Security. Social Security is a safety net that we need. Here are 12 reasons from http://socsec.org, a Century Foundation Project. (The Century Foundation conducts independent research on many matters relating to public policy and functions independently of political campaigns.)
Twelve Reasons Why Privatizing Social Security is a Bad Idea
Greg Anrig, Bernard Wasow, The Century Foundation, 12/14/2004
Addressing Social Security’s potential long-term financing challenges by taking the dramatic step of diverting its payroll taxes to create new personal accounts will have drastic consequences for federal finances, future retirees, and those who rely on the system the most. Learn more about twelve major reasons why less costly and less painful reforms should be considered instead.
So what are the individual stands of the 2 candidates? The bottom line is that Obama believes that the privatization of Social Security would be disastrous. McCain is in support of privatization, by whatever name, and to this end, will be more of the same as President Bush.
