Get ready for 'change' we haven't seen since 1965, or 1933.
If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.
Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.
The nearby table shows the major bills that passed the House this year or last before being stopped by the Senate minority. Keep in mind that the most important power of the filibuster is to shape legislation, not merely to block it. The threat of 41 committed Senators can cause the House to modify its desires even before legislation comes to a vote. Without that restraining power, all of the following have very good chances of becoming law in 2009 or 2010.
- Medicare for all. When HillaryCare cratered in 1994, the Democrats concluded they had overreached, so they carved up the old agenda into smaller incremental steps, such as Schip for children. A strongly Democratic Congress is now likely to lay the final flagstones on the path to government-run health insurance from cradle to grave.
Mr. Obama wants to build a public insurance program, modeled after Medicare and open to everyone of any income. According to the Lewin Group, the gold standard of health policy analysis, the Obama plan would shift between 32 million and 52 million from private coverage to the huge new entitlement. Like Medicare or the Canadian system, this would never be repealed.
The commitments would start slow, so as not to cause immediate alarm. But as U.S. health-care spending flowed into the default government options, taxes would have to rise or services would be rationed, or both. Single payer is the inevitable next step, as Mr. Obama has already said is his ultimate ideal.
- The business climate. "We have some harsh decisions to make," Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned recently, speaking about retribution for the financial panic. Look for a replay of the Pecora hearings of the 1930s, with Henry Waxman, John Conyers and Ed Markey sponsoring ritual hangings to further their agenda to control more of the private economy. The financial industry will get an overhaul in any case, but telecom, biotech and drug makers, among many others, can expect to be investigated and face new, more onerous rules. See the "Issues and Legislation" tab on Mr. Waxman's Web site for a not-so-brief target list.
The danger is that Democrats could cause the economic downturn to last longer than it otherwise will by enacting regulatory overkill like Sarbanes-Oxley. Something more punitive is likely as well, for instance a windfall profits tax on oil, and maybe other industries.
- Union supremacy. One program certain to be given right of way is "card check." Unions have been in decline for decades, now claiming only 7.4% of the private-sector work force, so Big Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s. The "Employee Free Choice Act" would convert workplaces into union shops merely by gathering signatures from a majority of employees, which means organizers could strongarm those who opposed such a petition.
The bill also imposes a compulsory arbitration regime that results in an automatic two-year union "contract" after 130 days of failed negotiation. The point is to force businesses to recognize a union whether the workers support it or not. This would be the biggest pro-union shift in the balance of labor-management power since the Wagner Act of 1935.
- Taxes. Taxes will rise substantially, the only question being how high. Mr. Obama would raise the top income, dividend and capital-gains rates for "the rich," substantially increasing the cost of new investment in the U.S. More radically, he wants to lift or eliminate the cap on income subject to payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security. This would convert what was meant to be a pension insurance program into an overt income redistribution program. It would also impose a probably unrepealable increase in marginal tax rates, and a permanent shift upward in the federal tax share of GDP.
- The green revolution. A tax-and-regulation scheme in the name of climate change is a top left-wing priority. Cap and trade would hand Congress trillions of dollars in new spending from the auction of carbon credits, which it would use to pick winners and losers in the energy business and across the economy. Huge chunks of GDP and millions of jobs would be at the mercy of Congress and a vast new global-warming bureaucracy. Without the GOP votes to help stage a filibuster, Senators from carbon-intensive states would have less ability to temper coastal liberals who answer to the green elites.
- Free speech and voting rights. A liberal supermajority would move quickly to impose procedural advantages that could cement Democratic rule for years to come. One early effort would be national, election-day voter registration. This is a long-time goal of Acorn and others on the "community organizer" left and would make it far easier to stack the voter rolls. The District of Columbia would also get votes in Congress -- Democratic, naturally.
Felons may also get the right to vote nationwide, while the Fairness Doctrine is likely to be reimposed either by Congress or the Obama FCC. A major goal of the supermajority left would be to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.
- Special-interest potpourri. Look for the watering down of No Child Left Behind testing standards, as a favor to the National Education Association. The tort bar's ship would also come in, including limits on arbitration to settle disputes and watering down the 1995 law limiting strike suits. New causes of legal action would be sprinkled throughout most legislation. The anti-antiterror lobby would be rewarded with the end of Guantanamo and military commissions, which probably means trying terrorists in civilian courts. Google and MoveOn.org would get "net neutrality" rules, subjecting the Internet to intrusive regulation for the first time.
It's always possible that events -- such as a recession -- would temper some of these ambitions. Republicans also feared the worst in 1993 when Democrats ran the entire government, but it didn't turn out that way. On the other hand, Bob Dole then had 43 GOP Senators to support a filibuster, and the entire Democratic Party has since moved sharply to the left. Mr. Obama's agenda is far more liberal than Bill Clinton's was in 1992, and the Southern Democrats who killed Al Gore's BTU tax and modified liberal ambitions are long gone.
In both 1933 and 1965, liberal majorities imposed vast expansions of government that have never been repealed, and the current financial panic may give today's left another pretext to return to those heydays of welfare-state liberalism. Americans voting for "change" should know they may get far more than they ever imagined.
Slight side-track for those of our American friends who often voice the opinion that "Europe" never gets to hear about the real Obama, that the media here are a bunch of socialist liars who never even get close to the truth and who decry the BBC for being a Commie bastion:
Panorama this week takes an in-depth look at Obama. From his student days to his current bid for the presidency. No rose tinted lenses there.
Extremely ambitious man who chooses his friends and mentors with an eye to his own advancement, whose goal is pursued relentlessly and who has little staying power job-wise but is more of an eternal campaigner. Who will fight for what he thinks is right, who will put America first and who believes that lifting people out of poverty is better for the country than untrammeled capitalism.
Just another politician in other words.
And guys, this is hardly the first time he is portrayed this way in our local media. Same goes for McCain, in depth portrayals of him are to be found in the better papers and on the better channels. Those of us interested can get balanced, well researched and extensive information about your candidates from various sources.
So please pretty please, when some of us say we'd prefer one candidate over another, give us some credit eh? Rather than shoo us off with "You don't know what you are talking about" perhaps contemplate that we just have different ideas about which candidate would benefit the rest of the world most in terms of war in Iraq, peace in the middle east, climate cooperation and a myriad other issues that affect us and whose outcome is very dependent on the choice YOUR countrymen make come Nov 4.
Brick?
Have I ever tried to tell you whom to vote for?
Have I ever said that Americans should vote for what best suits foreigners?
Have I ever tried to tell you that one of your candidates is better for you than another?
I haven't, wouldn't, and will not.
It would be a stupid thing to do.
Your sarcasm is not only needlessly insulting, it is beneath your oft-displayed intellectual level and your generally gentlemanly demeanour.
I don't blame you in the least for voting according to whom you think will best serve you and your country. It is a no-brainer.
If you can't even allow me to wish for an American president who IMO will best serve the goals mentioned in my previous post, what IS the point of discussing things here?
Courtesy is one of the many strong points of your country's culture Brick.
It goes a long way.
You are being far to kind Juud. Arrogant, overbearing and dismissive are words that could easily have been included in your post, without it being seen as nothing but fair.
McCain has been forced to be who he is not, and his dislike of who he has become is obvious to all. His boat is sinking fast and Palin is merrily drilling more holes.
The Republicans are as bankrupt as Wall Street, and, much to their frustration, everybody knows it.
I should have known it would be taken literally...
There are many ways of being bankrupt, not everything is about money.
Having to define yourself by constantly talking trash about your opponent in the most rediculous manner is one.
McCain has been ruined by his own party. He knows it, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it. Well, perhaps Palin doesn't, but everybody else does.
perhaps contemplate that we just have different ideas about which candidate would benefit the rest of the world most in terms of war in Iraq, peace in the middle east, climate cooperation and a myriad other issues that affect us
.
I thought this
Quote:
Europeans want someone who will do what's in their best interest.
Got it. I will keep that in mind when I vote.
was an accurate paraphrase so I could internalize your thought.
But McCain's voter fraud worries – about Acorn or anyone else – are unsupported by the facts, said experts on election fraud, who recall similar concerns being raised in several previous elections, despite a near-total absence of cases.
"There's no evidence that any of these invalid registrations lead to any invalid votes," said David Becker, project director of the "Make Voting Work" initiative for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Becker should know: he was a lawyer for the Bush administration until 2005, in the Justice Department's voting rights section, which was part of the administration's aggressive anti-vote-fraud effort.
"The Justice Department really made prosecution of voter fraud of this sort a big priority in the first half of this decade, and they really didn't come up with anything," he said.
There is to be some big tears if Europeans think Obama will be best for them and he wins.
McCaine is useless? - perhaps so - but I do not think he will tell Europe to go take a hike.
Obama will ? I think so.
-Some Americans think unionization will necessarily lead to better jobs. Please someone give me an example of a union doing this: creating an product or service that the public desired; organizing the capital, labor and raw materials to produce that product or service; marketing that product or service and making those inputs progressively more efficient. Unions, as I see it, can only, by using a government-mandated monopoly on labor, wrest an increased portion of revenue received from the customers from the entrepreneur that did all that organization to produce the good or service. If the union members get more compensation, it can only come from either the entrepreneur or the customer. The entrepreneur has less incentive to produce or the customer has less incentive to buy.
-Some think that health care is a "right", that government should provide it "free". Well, government cannot provide it "free"-it must tax everyone and pay for the medical services rendered. Leaving that aside, food is required, without caloric intake, health care is unnecessary. So, if health care is a "right", we need food care as a "right". Farmers and doctors will be made slaves of the state growing food and giving health care for the people. Oh, you want to pay the farmers and doctors-with what? Right, tax money.
The US system is a real mess. It is not a socialist system where government pays and we don't get as much as we want. It is not a capitalist system were we pay and get as much as we can afford and decide we need. It is based on the employer, so we cannot decide what we need and only get what our employer can afford. I vote for the capitalist system, so I can make my own decisions.
-Social Security and Medicare is deeply in deficit, the Social Security Administration says perhaps $53 trillion in deficit over time. The baby boomers will bankrupt the program by 2030. What are the candidates saying about it? Nothing, sadly. New taxes AND reduced benefits are a certainty among those who can least afford them. The taxes paid by the young who can't pay and the reduced benefits by the elderly who can least suffer them.
-The US debt is $10 trillion and the annual deficit next year could approach $1 trillion. The candidates back a, so far, useless "bailout" that will cost billions and one endorses numerous new programs spending hundreds of billions more. Where will the money come from? Either borrowing, taxing or inflation, there are no other possibilities. Borrowing steals from the future generations, taxing steals from current generation who will react predictably-work less, and inflation steals from everyone of all generations.
-A common citizen asks one candidate a question, his answer becomes a football. So what is the reaction? Make a scapegoat of the questioner and punish him. That party plays the politics of personal destruction, as the Clintons put it.
-Neither candidate trusts the average American to make his or her own decisions without some agent of his government telling him what action to take. The one good news is McCain's efforts to silence political speech (see McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform) has hoist him by his own petard. BHO went outside the government-approved system and is out-spending McCain by 4 to 1. Obviously, BHO will throw his principles under the bus, if his principles stand in the way of being elected. A portent for his administration. The "change" part will be changing principles at will.
-The really depressing part-Americans have become dependent sheep unwilling to take responsibility for themselves and those in their charge-proudly sucking on the proverbial government t*t.
-McCain's campaign is awful, but Obama's is disingenuous.
Reasons to be depressed with the current campaign-neither candidate will address these issues with "straight talk".
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