by Bill O'Connell on October 16, 2008
Watching the third and final Presidential debate I can best sum it up by saying A pox on both your houses! In the midst of a very precarious financial situation both candidates talked about how they were going to get more deeply enmeshed in all of our lives. The tenth amendment of the constitution states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
In other words if it’s not spelled out in the constitution, it is not a federal function. Seems like a pretty good idea, no? Keep government as close to the people as possible. What we are witnessing is a massive gathering of all government at the federal level. Where in the Constitution does it say that education, health care, teacher’s salaries, and pension plans are the responsibility of the Unites States?
In 2006, the IRS took in $1.3 trillion in taxes from individuals and last night the candidates said that government wasn’t big enough! We need to add more programs. We need to take more tax revenue (but only from the rich). Both candidates will balance the budget.
What we need to do is print out the tenth amendment, laminate it, and require every politician carry it in his or her wallet and then read it aloud before voting on any bill or law. The way out of this mess is to put together a plan to disassemble the New Deal, The Great Society, No Child Left Behind, cut taxes massively, and let the States, the counties, the cities, the towns and the villages address the issues that lie within their borders and be accountable to the citizens that live therein.
Liberty is not about more government to run every aspect of our lives. It is about the minimal amount of government that is necessary so that we can have the right to live our own lives as we see fit.
by Bill O'Connell on October 14, 2008
After reading Christopher Buckley’s piece on why he is now an Obama man, I had to read Kathleen Parker’s piece on Sarah Palin, which he referred to. It has been a whirlwind the past five or six weeks since Sarah Palin was named to the ticket and from that first moment the fusillade from the mainstream media began.
It’s hard to tell where lies the true Sarah Palin. Throw in Tina Fey’s extraordinarily dead on caricature (Palin Watches Tina Fey) and you have to work double time to see if you are watching a comedy sketch or an interview. The interviews were clearly not her best moment, and I can’t say if the McCain camp, by sequestering her and force feeding her briefing material about McCain’s positions turned Palin into pâté.
However, I can’t get past the fact that as Alaskan governor she has a stratospheric approval rating of 60+% and in 2007 it was in the 90s. Compare this to the current Democratic Congress whose approval rating has been in the teens to low 20s, during the same time frame. Are the people of Alaska uniformly obtuse?
She also took on corruption in her own party and won. For a relatively new politician that is courageous to say the least, even if she wasn’t successful, but she was. What tough stands has Obama taken against his party? Heard any criticisms of Barney Frank or Christopher Dodd from Senator Obama lately?
So Sarah Palin may not be able to dodge a question as smoothly as Barack Obama, or maybe she was just trying to square her personal opinion with what was most in tune with the McCain campaign, and was playing defense rather than offense, while the cameras rolled.
Just before the Vice Presidential debate, McCain’s two top aides took over prepping Palin and the cry from the conservative base was to just let Sarah be Sarah, and when they did she seemed to do extraordinarily well in the debate.
Did the interviews go badly? Yes. Now was that because she was out of her league, or because she was trying to serve too many masters and not just be herself? In this campaign McCain seems to be overly cautious while Palin seems eager to bring it on. Let her.
