why i'll vote for McCain

More political ramblings.

fiscal restraint - the farm bill was an appalling combination that gave taxpayer money to large businesses, dampened free trade. hurt small businesses and was roundly condemned by both sides of the spectrum as pork-o-rama. McCain opposed it, Obama did not. I think that McCain will do a better job refusing to spend money willy nilly.

environmental policy. Me turning my ac from 80 deg to 90 will not solve the energy crisis. neither will drilling, hybrid cars, inflated tires or combining errands into one trip. They are fine things to do (except the ac. 85 is as high as i go) and every little bit helps, but they won't solve the increasing need for energy to serve an expanding population. Nuclear power, combined with wind, and other proven energy sources like thermal solar (as opposed to economically unsound photovoltaic) is an answer. Believing with all your heart that we'll have all the energy we'll need by processing kudzu and turkey offal is all very well and good, but it is not a reasonable policy. throw money into the research by all means, but for now, build nuclear. Plus McCain was against the ethanol debacle. The other difference is a sense of balance. One of the major shortcomings of the environmental movement is to demand that developing areas like Africa spends money they cannot afford on energy sources that are less reliable, less powerful, and far far far less efficient. We don't want these countries to follow the path of china and the early 20th century for pollution, but we can help them do that without stunting their growth.

Tax policy - My sister and her husband gave up a well paying stable income to start a small business selling and promoting solar hot water heaters. they have 4 kids to put through college, I know that they considered very carefully before they decided to risk it. Change the risk/reward ratio enough, and people like my sister will opt for the safety of the working for a big business because it will be what is best for their family. And changing that ratio is exactly what Obama will do by saying that he will cut taxes on the middle class, and raise it on the wealthy. Obama wants to raise the capital gains tax. It was pointed out to him that historically raising capital gains always led to decreased revenue. He said he didn't know about that, but said that raising capital gains would be fair. I understand why people like the idea of Robin Hood, but this isn't robbing from the rich to give to the poor. This is putting brakes on the economy without any benefit, even to the government. because its fair. To Obama's credit he has mentioned eliminating capital gains tax for small businesses. I don't actually know what that means, since small businesses don't pay capital gains tax unless they sell their business. Perhaps he means capital gains tax for the people investing in small business? in which case he is making riskier investments look better. I asked a small business owner what she thought of the plan. She was scared how little Obama seemed to understand about the economics involved in running a business. She felt that voting in her companies financial best interests might be greedy, but it really isn't. She runs a good business that produces a good product that employes over a hundred people. What is bad for her business is bad for other businesses. Its bad for the workers as well as the owners. Its makes people choose to not start businesses, not grow businesses, not take risks, not compete. And that is bad for the country at large. I like that McCain didn't approve of the Bush tax cuts, because he felt that until we cut spending, we couldn't afford them. I believe that he will both limit spending, cut taxes and demand a balanced budget. I also like that he has the courage to go to detroit and areas like it and tell them, "sorry, these jobs aren't coming back". He didn't promise a lot of government handouts to keep jobs that had already left, he faced that realistically. People are upset about manufacturing jobs going overseas, but they forget that a whole lot of manufacturing jobs have simply been automated. China has lost a lot of manufacturing jobs in the last two decades too.

general worldview - I get the feeling that Obama knows what it takes to lead our country into a Utopian state. If health insurance is cheap enough, everyone will buy it. If we just talk with Ahmadinejad and share our feelings, all will be well. At some point the difference becomes theological - People are innately good, and if you remove the barriers in society that make them steal, cheat, attack, etc, then all will be well. Take the insurance problem. Obama said that he had decided against a mandate because "everyone will buy it if it is cheap enough". There are many reasons people don't buy health insurance. One is that they can't afford it. Others can afford it, but don't get it because of the belief that they can't get sick, or that it is someone else's job to pay for that, or that it cuts into their beer money.  If you believe that man is fallen, then you place safeguards so that people do not coast along without tapping their beer fund to pay for their insurance, knowing that they can get it with no appreciable difference once they find out they are sick.

Corruption - call me jaded, but I have a hard time trusting a politician that rose through the ranks of the Chicago machine. Even the thought concerns me. McCain isn't all that clean either, but while I dislike many of the imperfections brought on by McCain-Feingold, I respect that McCain tried to address an obvious problem. I saw that Factcheck.org gave Palin a thumbs down on her statement about Obama having not written any substantial legislation either at the federal or state level. I was disappointed by this because their rebuttal was that he had co-sponsored bills, (which means practically nothing). He did not write any of the bills that he co-sponsored, and at least one of them was brought up months ago with people from his own party grumbling about him showing up and putting his name to something when he hadn't attended any of the meeting hammering the thing out. I believe the term "glory hound" was used. To be fair this was during the primaries, so it may have been a Clinton supporter, and this just goes back to the sad fact that nothing in Washington can be fully trusted. Which leads me to my last, and possibly best reason for voting for McCain and against Obama.

Gridlock - there is a democratic congress in place - animosity between a congress and a president of opposing parties who cannot agree and can get nothing done is really the best of all worlds. The less they do, the less damage they inflict.

why i will not vote for obama

most of my reasons will be obvious to many that know me and have discussed politics with me in the past, but i thought i would lay them out here because I had a political debate with someone surprised me with a change to support Obama, and the result of the debate was me not being able to sleep until i got this out of my system. This blog, if you didn't realize and are among my two readers, is my "getting it out of my system" blog.

So we will start with the biggie and from there go as my brain sees fit - the supreme court.
As Scalia said, I prefer my constitution dead. We are a lazy people in general, and we appreciate a quick fix. The supreme court has become that quick fix - if we perceive a law to be unjust, dangerous or outdated the quickest way to protect the innocent, or free the downtrodden is to interpret the Constitution as an evolving standard and a document that should be interpreted in light of everything that has changed since it was written. This leads to a oligarchy of 5 people deciding what the standard of decency our nation has evolved to. If you believe there is a right that needs to be protected under the constitution that better matches the evolved state of our country then you should amend the constitution. yes it is more difficult, yes it takes longer, but it is actually democratic.

Of course, the supreme court leads us to abortion. The fact that Ginsberg has promised to uphold Roe to protect abortion rights even though she felt that it was a poorly decided case on constitutional grounds tells me that we need a more concrete way of interpreting the constitution. One where a judge is bound by the words, and by history, and who do not need to promise anyone how they would tend to vote on any particular issue. But the issue with abortion does not end with the president's stance on justices. There is a lot of grey area in abortion that would come across a presidents desk - issues related to parental notification, partial birth, fetal homicide. These are not issues that i want Obama to deal with, he did after all, call asking a 2nd physician into a room to examine a infant that showed vital signs an burden on the decision of the aborting mother. If nothing else I think that he is going to be an extremely polarizing figure in an already bad debate. Other nations have come to reasonable impasses on this issue - England outlaws abortions after viability, for instance. Here any danger to the most precious right to choose has led us to have a highly lucrative medical procedure be almost completely unregulated.

Abortion being in many circles a matter of religious sensitivity, I will move on to the freedom of religion. My problem with the left in general is that the freedom of religion antics always revolve around the establishment clause, while treading directly on the free exercise clause. A practicing catholic who owns his own pharmacy cannot obey their own conscience in regarding distributing birth control. I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with birth control, and if it was a Hindu vegan that didn't believe in providing any medicine that had ever been tested on an animal, then i wouldn't have a problem with that either. looks like there is room in town to start your own pharmacy, its his right to turn away business. There are a lot of scary examples in various places - pastors in Canada, Sweden, Britain and Australia who have been fined or even jailed for simply stating the Church's position on subjects such as homosexuality. Granted the first amendment should keep hate speech laws at bay, but its definitely a road that i see a Dem administration taking us down.

federalism - this is similar to the problem with the supreme court. You see a problem, you think you have a solution, the federal government is the biggest tool in the box, use it and you fix everything at the same time. America performs really badly compared to many many countries in educational assessments. 4 of our states are at the very top, but the rest of the states drag the others down. The solution to this problem is not to have the federal government mandate new math. we have states that have different problems, that need different solutions. A major problem facing Texas schools is the resources and the best approach to the large non-English speaking immigrant population. A federal program to address this, makes no sense to Alaska and Utah. We have 50 states with 50 plans and 50 results. that sort of freedom of experimentation is good for innovative solutions to local problems that can be implemented elsewhere. Same is true for health care - lets see how Romney's health care plan in MA works. If it does well, other states may adopt it, if not, then fixing, scrapping or tweaking it in MA is easier that dealing with failure across the nation.

Taxation to pay for all the entitlement programs - Mom worked in a state government regulations board, i've been told the stories that would make an efficiency engineer wake up crying at night. helping the poor isn't going to go so well with government programs that carry that kind of overhead.

ok, i'm running out of steam. there are a large number of other things, plus much better arguments for the ones above, but i think i may be able to sleep now.

tort reform

Chris is out of town, the babies are in bed, and I am avoiding the dishes for a little while longer, so I decided I would post about my ideas for tort reform.
Everyone hears absurd stories about various lawsuits, and their adverse effects on society in general, and the health care industry in particular but I haven't heard any tort reform measures that I can really get behind. So i thought I would offer my own solutions, uninformed as they may be. I'm interested in what people think of them.

The only type of compensations I usually hear about is reimbursement for medical costs and damaged property, compensation for lost future wages, pain and suffering and punitive damages. Of these, one is easily verifiable and two should be capped at reasonable sums. The last one is the tricky one, and as near as I can see the main problem, since becoming a millionaire through punitive damages has become the new American Dream.
The idea behind the punitive damages should similar to spanking a child. A small swat, sharp and memorable so that hopefully you think twice next time and it doesn't happen again. In practice it seems to be similar to beating the child with a pipe wrench out of a combination of rage and greed. Capping punitive damages doesn't work, because what can kill one company may not even sting another. I think an independent committee of people who understand how businesses are run should assess an appropriate punishment for a company, not 12 jurors who have been emotionally attacked during a trial. The committee should have no knowledge of the particulars of the case, but simply give their opinion of three levels of effective punishment to fit transgressions that are mild, moderate or severe.

The other solution I like best is the idea that punitive damages should punish the company, but NOT to the gain of the plaintiff. The problem with this is where the money goes. Usually, the person suggesting this is a governor trying to secure a new revenue stream for his state, but this is a problem, as it becomes a conflict of interest. The state after all is arbitrating the suit. Other options are for the money to go to charity or other good works, but again this is problematic, since good works are appealing to the jury, it is unfair to the defense. So what we need is a black hole for money. No matter how much is thrown at the black hole, no real good will actually get done. No one benefits, and only the guilty suffer, and the only reason to go through the trouble of making the guilty suffer is for the sake of justice and future safety, not the the McMahon mansion that you think you'll be able to buy once the trial is over. I can't think of a whole lot of good money black holes, but the one that springs to mind is the national debt. I don't think even the tobacco lawsuit settlements would be much more than a drop in that bucket. If it was separated from the government (IE a reasonable balanced budget amendment*) it would be a perfect black hole. Even so, there should be several black holes that the money can go. The jury would not designate which black hole the money would go, it would be assigned randomly. I'll have to think of other options where the money will make no real difference, and no one will benefit. The UN maybe? Meh.

thoughts?

*My idea, by the way, of a reasonable balanced budget amendment involves requirements for all salaries of elected officials to be cut back to the national average household ($40k), and all amenities - top chefs, non-essential travel, etc. to be eliminated for the duration of the crisis that requires adding debt. plus other measures like suspending all spending earmarks until the crisis is over. This idea also needs work.

It's not relative

I read with interest the statements of the Austrian rapist father complaining about the way the media has portrayed him.
"I'm only being portrayed as a monster and not as someone who committed monstrous acts... I could have killed all of them — then nothing would have happened. No one would have ever known about it."

I see this sort of thinking as endemic in our society, the skewed moral compass that assumes it must be pointing more or less north as long as there is still room to move the needle further south, when in fact it is really the other way around. I do agree with the first half of his statement. He isn't a monster. He is a fallen being capable of unthinkable actions but he is still a son of Adam, made in the image of God, loved by God and can still submit himself to Christ's lordship and receive grace. The term monster is simply our way of distancing ourselves from him. So we can glory in the comparative sinlessness of our own lives. This is in fact exactly what Friztle is doing with the second half of his statement - he can show that he is also comparatively good, its all a question of your standard.

Then we consider his anticipated defense - insanity. The proof being that all the things he did were so bad, how could a good person do that without being crazy? The proof he is a good person? Well, think of what he COULD have done.

Lower the bar enough, and everyone is good, and those who aren't have some sort of mental disorder, so it isn't their fault, it is society's. There is a great quote by G.K. Chesterton on this subject -

"Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt."

Obama the liar

From the Democratic primary debate on Wednesday.

Q: Can you make an absolute, read-my-lips pledge that there will be no tax increases of any kind for anyone earning under $200,000 a year? ... Senator Obama?

Obama: Well, I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes, I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes.

(a few minutes later)

Obama: What I have proposed is that we raise the cap on the payroll tax, because right now millionaires and billionaires don't have to pay beyond $97,000 a year.

officially over the hump

We just sent off our first mortgage payment in which the principal that we're paying is more than the interest. Gwyneth and I are planning on going out to celebrate later this month. I figured in honor of this I should post some of the things we learned while buying a house. Some of this information may have become more obvious thanks to the Sub-prime crisis, but I'll post it anyway.

1. Don't even think about buying a house unless you can put 10% down, and 20% is better - I know that it's frustrating to rent while your friends are buying and your family is telling you that you are "throwing your money away", but you are really asking for trouble buying a house with very little down. We know people who can't move because the market went down and now they owe more on their house than it's worth (or at least more than they would clear after paying the realtor's commission). This is a bad position to put yourself in, especially if God is calling you to move. I used to not say anything when friends told me they were considering this, but I've decided that being a real friend means saying things that are hard and that people don't want to hear.

2. Make every effort to get the best rate you can (i.e. look at lots of different sources). Don't trust that your mortgage broker is doing right by you (our mistake), and definitely don't get a mortgage from a big bank (credit union rates usually are up to half a point better). A tenth of a point doesn't seem like a lot, but over the course of the loan it will be several thousand dollars.

3. Under no circumstances use one of the online calculators that tell you how much house you can "afford". Sit down and look at the budget to figure out what kind of payment makes sense. Chances are good that the number you come up with will be several hundred dollars per month less.

4. Consider a 15 year mortgage instead of a 30 year. I'm not going to be dogmatic about this since I see both sides of the argument, but at least consider getting a 15 year mortgage. You'll get a better rate than a 30 year and save tons of money on interest over the course of the loan. The downside is that if your job situation changes, you need to have the flexibility to meet the higher monthly payment. My favorite online calculator to figure this stuff out is Karl's mortgage calculator. If you do go with a 30 year loan for safety reasons, definitely consider prepaying principal to finish off the loan before 30 years.

5. This one is obvious now that we've had the credit crunch, but you don't want an ARM, get a fixed rate mortgage.

6. Avoid paying "points". This is money that you pay up front to get a better rate. Any cash you have lying around should go to principal, not thrown away in closing costs. Don't forget that if interest rates go down anytime between now and the next 30 years, you can always refinance and that most people will either refinance or move WELL before the crossover mark of when paying points pays off.

7. I know it's tempting to get a house that you can "grow into", but if you assume that property values do about the same as inflation (this one obviously depends greatly what market you're in), you save a TON of money if you buy a starter house and then move into a bigger house 5-7 years later even if you include the realtor's commission. Play with Karl's Mortgage Calculator to see the details.