Beginning Friday, October 3, and continuing through Friday, October 24, I intend to be positive, and provide three reasons to vote for each of the four best known candidates for President. Friday the 3rd: Independent candidate Ralph Nader. Friday the 10th: Libertarian candidate Bob Barr. Friday the 17th: Republican candidate John McCain. Friday the 24th: Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
John McCain, Republican
John McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 from Arizona. In 1986 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he has served to this day. In 2004, he was re-elected to the Senate with 77% of the Arizona vote. He is a decorated Vietnam War veteran, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. The McCain-Palin website states that, "His naval honors include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and the Distinguished Flying Cross." click here to read more
Based strictly on data from that site, the following are three reasons to vote for McCain on November 4:
#1. Iraq War surge strategy. Whether you agree with our involvement in the Iraq War or not, you have to admire McCain for recognizing that the Bush-Rumsfeld strategy was not working, and for pushing for an additional troop deployment (surge). McCain took a lot of political heat from Republicans for his action. But the surge has been a success, vindicating McCain's position.
#2. The environment. I quote two bullet items from his website that I feel are most important, and speak for themselves:
(a) Climate Policy Should Be Built On Scientifically-Sound, Mandatory Emission Reduction Targets And Timetables.
(b) Climate Policy Must Facilitate International Efforts To Solve The Problem.
Considering (a), I like the "scientifically-sound" phrase, but would have appreciated a definition of the term. For (b), it is obvious that the USA is not the only polluter on the globe. A world-wide effort is required.
#3. Renewing America's civic purpose. This initiative's concept is described and specifics defined:
"John McCain will create a Service to America initiative to strengthen the teaching and understanding of American history, culture and core ideas, and to inspire Americans to serve causes greater than their own self interest. Civic participation by citizens over a lifetime, working in neighborhoods and communities, and service of all kinds - military and civilian; full-time or part-time; and national or international - can renew America's civic purpose and heal our fractured patriotism."
"Bolster volunteerism with an energetic and comprehensive national service initiative designed to increase opportunities for people willing to serve their communities and their country."
"Convene "Volunteerism Summits" so people can share with others the best ideas and most effective programs currently underway in their own communities." I found this idea particularly attractive. Sharing what works and what doesn't will add efficiency to programs (ALL federal programs, not just this civic initiative), and in so doing, curtail the 'reinventing the wheel' time and money wasting drag upon projects that exists in both the governmental and private sectors.
"Coordinate a network of private sector "venture capital" funds matched with government grants to support job retraining or vocational training efforts in high schools and targeted communities where job loss persists." This targeted approach to areas of specific needs sounds both promising and cost effective.
Next Friday: Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama.
Friday, October 17, 2008
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6 comments:
You must be kidding! McCain will be a disaster for this country given his ideological commitment to deregulation tht will only produce more disasters for this country.
anonymous - Thank you for your comment.
For the purpose of these October posts on each of four presidential candidates, I chose to focus on three positive aspects of their campaign platforms. Had I instead listed reasons NOT to vote for them, McCain's pro-deregulation position would have been near the top of my list.
We definitely need reasonable oversight to try and prevent another: (1) 1960s-1970s housing debacle, when the federal cabinet agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) insured loans to people who could not afford them; loans were defaulted upon and buyers were evicted: homes were boarded up, values plummeted, crime spiked, and hundreds of thousands of middle class folks were forced to pull up deeply embedded roots in their neighborhoods, take huge losses on home sales (in an era where a person's home was their only major investment) resulting in hundreds of thousands of people moving out to areas often far distant from friends and relatives; (2) 1980s savings-and-loan crisis (thanks mainly to deregulation of that industry); and (3) our current, more broadly based economic turmoil.
I liked the three positive reasons.
But you did respond to some bad stuff (not attributable to McCain, I wish to note).
Loans to people who could not afford them, loans defaulted, people evicted, etc. As Yogi Berra would say "De Javu' (yes I know the spelling may be wrong) all over again. HUD may not be involved, but private banking should have known better. "Greed is not always good" when it plunges everything into economic choas.
Every decade or so it seems home loans rears up as the problem child.
I just don't get it.
But I liked your three GOOD points.
I am off the fence, I know who I am going to vote for.
I agree that private banking should have known better. But I refuse to let HUD off the hook. HUD should have known better too.
Don't forget... there's one last candidate to examine on Friday the 24th!
I don't know what good HUD is. Having personally experienced the HUD era you mentioned,(at the risk of seriously dating myself) i.e. blockbusting, welfare recipients getting home loans, (I know of people that had no jobs actually getting mortgages!) scary phone calls from HUD associated real estate agents, etc. I wonder why I try to be law abiding when the rip-offs end up with the good stuff.
The law does not get very many of these so-called white collar criminals.
Consider that my venting.
I can hardly wait for the 24th.
The realtors were the main culprits during the HUD days. I grew up in a two bedroom, one bath bungalow across the street from my elementary school. In 1967 and 1968, when my neighborhood changed from virtually all white to virtually all black, two black men would park their car near the entrance of the school around 5-6 pm (when residents who worked downtown were arriving home on the train) on random days during the workweek, and yell and throw beer and whiskey bottles out of the window when people walked home. This fed racism and financial fears that home values would plummet (they did). It wasn't until the late 1970s that it was learned that realtors hired those guys to act the way they did in order to stampede law-abiding residents (both white and black who had bought their homes with conventional mortgage loans) into selling their homes (which were their nest eggs during that era) for cents on the dollar.
The realtors them bought hundreds of these homes, resold them to people who could not afford them using federally-backed HUD loans. Those folks stayed in the homes for months to a few years, defaulted, were evicted (ever see personal belongings dumped in the front yard, soaked by the rain, being picked over by human vultures?), the realtors collected the full value of the HUD loan, HUD then boarded up the homes, contracted with the same local realtors, who then resold the homes to more people who ultimately couldn't afford the mortgages, and so on and so on.
I too remember the 2 AM calls from realtors telling us to "Sell now, before the neighborhood goes all black, and your house is worth nothing." It had nothing to do with white or black, but green and greed. White folks lost. Black folks lost. Unprincipled realtors won big-time.
This is my roundabout way of empathizing with your comment concerning the lack of prosecution and imprisonment of guilty white collar criminals.
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