auros: I'm still not certain whether I'll vote Edwards or Obama...

Auros (

auros) wrote,
@ 2008-01-28 23:43:00

Current mood:

busy

I'm still not certain whether I'll vote Edwards or Obama...
...because I have a tiny sliver of hope that Edwards could accumulate enough delegates to play kingmaker for Obama and extract some promises to break out of right-wing frames and push truly progressive policy (or at least to appoint Edwards to some influential cabinet post -- say, SecLabor, where he could turn around the NLRB so it starts being a neutral arbiter instead of a tool of union-busting corporocrats). Nonetheless, this is a kickass analysis of the SC primary, telling off some of the pundits and prog-bloggers (many of whom I like) for dismissing Obama's SC win. Gacked from mickle.

Unrelatedly, Xta and I now live together. Moving is a lot of work, and distracts me from my classes. I need to do my entire Operations HW tomorrow, which I really should've started on about four days ago. Also should try to get through at least half the Macro HW tomorrow. And prep for a telecon on Thu concerning BizGov.

And I also want to find time to write an endorsements post on the Props. Short version is: 92 on community colleges leaning Yes but not fully decided; 93 on term limits definitely yes (google "site:auros.livejournal.com term limits" to find the post with details); 94-97 on Indian gambling, leaning pretty strongly no, because an expert I trust (Lenny Goldberg from Cal Tax Reform) is one of the authors of the argument against, saying that there is no adequate auditing of the revenues the new compacts will bring in, so even if you're OK with the gambling and with the way the compacts discriminate among tribes (to the potential detriment of many), the compacts are not guaranteed to actually provide real long-term benefit to the state.

PS: Kathleen Sebelius (link is to her delivery of the official Dem response to the Bush SotU) is my personal choice for first woman president. She does a highly effective job of making the case that mainstream Democratic policy is the center, and insofar as the GOP stands in the way of it, we're not talking about two opposing sides, with the "center" in between, we're talking about one party behaving in a sane and responsible manner, while the other ignores the wishes of even a significant chunk of its own electorate. (e.g. Upwards of half of Californians registered Republican believe that global warming is a serious issue and support Arnold's signing of AB32; meanwhile, there were basically no Republican votes for AB32 in the leg, and the executive board of the CA GOP has publicly insulted their Governor.)

ETA: Edwards has quit, so I'm voting Obama.

(Post a new comment)

	brooksmoses 2008-01-29 08:00 am UTC (link)
	What's up with the "the opposing campaign is mostly funded with Nevada casino money" part of the "yes" argument for 94-97? (Reply to this)

bostorus
2008-01-29 08:19 am UTC (link)

It's funny that you use the Obama icon, and then you say you can't decide...

I'm voting against 92. It is yet another setaside from the general fund, which is already rather precarious. My feeling is that this will come at the expense of money for K-12 and 4-year colleges. There's also no oversight / direction as to how the money will be spent.

Also, we already have some of the least expensive community colleges in the country, and some of the most generous financial aid. Many of those who actually might need the reduction already qualify for tuition remission / financial aid (although apparently some of them have a hard time filling out the FAFSA). There are a lot of middle class and upper-middle class folks taking classes for fun, who can well afford to pay. It would be better to have a sliding scale that reduced the tuition according to need.

The community colleges need more money, but I'm pretty sure that this isn't the way to do it.

I'm with you on 93. I would vote for an initiative banning term limits all together.

On 94-97, I'm going to abstain, because I object in principle to the idea that I am the one deciding how many slot machines there are in a casino that is 350 miles away from me.

Are you doing any campaigning this weekend? Amber and I are talking about possibly canvassing or tabling for Obama.

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auros
2008-01-29 08:28 am UTC (link)

There's also no oversight / direction as to how the money will be spent.

I am told otherwise by one of the guys who was involved in writing it, who was at a PDC event a couple weeks back. I'm not committed to voting for it yet, but might.

I unfortunately simply don't have the time to actively campaign. I was doing some work for Edwards last year, but eventually gave all my supplies to a friend and gave up. :-/

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	auros 2008-01-29 08:34 am UTC (link)
	Oh, and re: the icon -- I absolutely love Obama's logo. It's one of the most brilliant bits of political graphic design I've ever encountered. Sun rising over a farm, combined with the flag, combined with a big O. And the animated version in his ads is even better. (Reply to this)(Parent)

plymouth
2008-01-29 05:40 pm UTC (link)

I'm voting against 92. It is yet another setaside from the general fund, which is already rather precarious. My feeling is that this will come at the expense of money for K-12 and 4-year colleges.

I'm still undecided on it personally (and that's speaking as someone who currently ATTENDS community college, albeit as a working professional who already has degrees and is just expanding an existing career), but I'm pretty sure one bit of your analysis is wrong - K-12 already has their own setaside so this would ONLY be stealing from the 4-yr colleges. Not that that's necessarily an argument to vote for it... or against it...

Also, the point of this bill isn't to get the CCs MORE money - it's to get them more CONSISTENT money that won't fluctuate so much year to year - this prop won't give them much more than they get on average now - some years they get more and some they get a lot less. Having consistant funding makes it easier to plan. Of course one could argue that variable funding is just an artifact of the economy and all govt funded groups should feel the pain of fluctuations equally. I even kinda buy that argument, which is why I am still undecided.

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bostorus
2008-01-30 12:44 am UTC (link)

As a community college attendee, do you feel that the change in tuition costs will have a material effect on your financial well-being? If yes, is it true that books and materials are actually more of a burden than tuition costs? If no, then could you afford to pay a little more tuition to support the school?

You're right about its not affecting K-12 (I thought some of the money was going to come from Prop 98). It doesn't really affect the point I was trying to make: it isn't a good idea to fix the amount that we are giving to these entities. You simply can't write this stuff in stone. In one, two or five years, when the economy changes, and we need to give more money to K-12, or the homeless, or to a brand-spanking-new healthcare initiative, but sorry, the money is set aside for the community colleges, which by then might be doing fine, what happens?

Also, I'm not sure that these mandates actually help the organizations they are supposed to help. Is K-14 education in California actually better than it was 20 years ago, when Prop 98 was passed? Or 30 years ago, when local districts had control over their own funds? I'm not sure this says anything, because of the sheer number of ESL students, but we rank near the bottom in standardized test scores.

You might be able to tell that I find the whole notion of a Constitutionally mandated setaside ridiculous. I elect representatives for a reason. I don't want the constitution to bind their hands when making what are already difficult decisions.

:/ Having said that, I could be convinced otherwise. I can usually be convinced otherwise.

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fyfer
2008-01-29 08:38 am UTC (link)

My mother, an NLRB attorney (and former chair of CT's state arbitration board), is about as far from a union-buster as you could imagine a neutral arbitrator being. She seems to find her colleagues reasonably neutral and progressive, also. But she does feel like the current administration has tried to constrain the NLRB's ability to do its job.

Basically, if she felt she was being pressured, even subtly, to make biased judgments on cases, I'm pretty sure she'd quit. If she felt she was a "tool of union-busting corporations," she'd have quit years ago.

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auros
2008-01-29 08:35 pm UTC (link)

I'm sure that the vast majority of rank-and-file employees of NLRB are good people, just like the vast majority of people at the Dep't of Justice and EPA are good people. And yet, in the '80s under Reagan, and again (and more-so) under Bush II, we've seen executive agencies turned against their official purposes -- DoJ engaging in political grand-jury investigations, EPA blocking pollution regulations, and NLRB engaged in (effectively) union-busting on behalf of Wal-Mart and others (through a mix of negligence and rule changes). See, for instance, the reclassification of many workers into the category of "supervisors" to strip them of their rights to speak in favor of, and form, unions. This action was condemned by Human Rights Watch as a violation of one of the international human rights treaties which is constitutionally the law of the land -- not that that's ever stopped the Bushies...

Edited to note another example of the warped actions of exec agencies -- the Mining Safety and Health Admin had basically cut back on fining companies for safety by 90+% relative to the Clinton years, which made paying the fines an acceptable "cost of doing business" relative to the cost of actually providing safe working conditions. And thus we got the rash of mine accidents over the last seven years. Again, I'm sure most MSHA employees are good people who are doing the best they can, but the quality of leadership at the top matters.

Putting Edwards at Labor would make a huge difference in the struggle to recapture some of workers' productivity gains for the workers. The last thirty years of productivity improvements have gone almost entirely into the pockets of the top percentile of the income distribution. This is Not OK.

Edited at 2008-01-29 08:38 pm UTC

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	mickle 2008-01-29 01:54 pm UTC (link)
	I'm voting against 92 for the reason another poster noted - I don't feel confident this will do much more than take K-12 money. (Reply to this)

	erg 2008-01-29 05:20 pm UTC (link)
	Given that I am leaning towards the Clintons' and you're clearly not, I'd like to know why 'cause I respect your ability to parse data and intuition when making the decision. (Reply to this)(Thread)

auros
2008-01-29 08:26 pm UTC (link)

At a very high level, this is why. It's written by the guy who was the undersecretary in the Clinton Treasury Dep't who was responsible for coordinating on the '93 healthcare effort.

Now, I think his assessment is overly harsh; I think she would be a basically competent president. But I am in general not a huge fan of her, and I do not believe she has any real ambition to change the overall direction of policy -- she'd do a decent job puttering along, taking care of things, but would not realign policy or politics. Edwards would aim to realign policy, and I think he can do it. Obama is less ambitious on policy, but could potentially realign politics, such that future progressives have an easier time getting elected. (Note that this is what JFK did -- he didn't actually accomplish a lot of progressive policies, but he set the stage for them. LBJ started to follow through, and had RFK been elected instead of assassinated, he would've finished the job. Unfortuntely, Sirhan Sirhan shot him, and we got Nixon.)

There's also the fact that I think Clinton is the hardest candidate to win with. She's intensely divisive. Her negatives say that 45-49% of the country would resolve to vote against her, the instant she was nominated. Obama and Edwards consistently poll better against the GOP potentials, especially McCain, who polls with solid leads against Clinton. Edwards activates more of the Dem base and ensures they show up to vote; Obama pulls over independents and some Republicans.

And lastly, I'm sick of party machines and dynasties. I do not want the same two families in the white house for three decades.

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surpheon
2008-01-29 09:01 pm UTC (link)

A random question, is the majority of the Economist's readership really American as the linked page states?

For me, the last line of your post is enough for me to lean away from Clinton. GWB has proven to me the hazard of electing a president who gets a partial pass just on name recognition rather than taking the normal ugly scramble up (as Edwards and Obama have done).

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	auros 2008-01-29 09:06 pm UTC (link)
	is the majority of the Economist's readership really American as the linked page states? So I hear. there are a lot more Americans than Brits, period. And the Economist tilts heavily conservative relative to the perspective of most Brits. I quite like the more moderate Financial Times, which is sort of like the WSJ without the raving lunatic editors. :-) (Reply to this)(Parent)

surpheon
2008-01-29 09:02 pm UTC (link)

Personally, I prefer Obama over Edwards since I am more impressed by Obama's experience and proven track record. In particular, the requirement to record police confessions in homicides he pulled off over the initial objections of both parties in Illinois resonated deeply with me (I was on a 4 week jury where we ended up throwing out all interrogation evidence since we just could not trust the police officers' word and there was no other record of the interrogation). The canard that Obama has no experience is about as true as the Al Gore quote "I invented the internet." But I admit to being somewhat ignorant of Edward's record - could you toss me a pointer to a good site summarizing bills he has written?

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auros
2008-01-29 09:20 pm UTC (link)

I agree that Obama has much more legislative experience than he is given credit for. He's also largely responsible for the fact that we got any lobbying reform in '07, and for improvements in the transparency of the budget process.

Re: Edwards' experience, he hasn't really been stressing that on his site or in the campaign -- he's been much more focused on providing detailed outlines of what he'd submit to Congress if elected. (And having a plan ready to go the moment you take office is important; part of the failure of Hillarycare was that they didn't submit it until the fall, giving nine months for opponents to start sowing FUD, and dissipating the public support from the electoral win.) Here's a short article in the NYT from when Edwards was running for VP in '04. Ron Wyden notes that Edwards was one of the first Senators to criticize the Iraq intelligence (originally in closed hearings). This slightly overheated Edwards supporter digs into the Thomas system and notes that Edwards authored the Spyware Control and Privacy Act, "an important early bulwark against attempts to compromise our computer privacy," played a major role in getting the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill passed, was a key player for the defense in the Clinton impeachment (he deposed two star witnesses), fought to ensure the Patriot Act would include sunset provisions, and fought against the Bush bankruptcy "reform". There's a full list (poorly formatted) of the bills Edwards co-sponsored, which are pretty good rundown of progressive policy. I suppose it's worth noting that for two thirds of Edwards' Senate term, he was unlikely to be able to pass anything major, since he faced a right-wing GOP majority, and Bush's veto pen.

Edited at 2008-01-29 09:21 pm UTC

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

bostorus
2008-01-30 12:50 am UTC (link)

Re: Edwards' experience, he hasn't really been stressing that on his site or in the campaign -- he's been much more focused on providing detailed outlines of what he'd submit to Congress if elected. (And having a plan ready to go the moment you take office is important; part of the failure of Hillarycare was that they didn't submit it until the fall, giving nine months for opponents to start sowing FUD, and dissipating the public support from the electoral win.)

Another part of why Hillarycare failed was that the Clinton team refused to get opinions from anyone outside the White House. I think Hillary's learned her lesson on this, but when I listen to Edwards, I tend to think that he will make the same mistake. He talks about taking Congress's health care away from them if they don't pass a bill (presumably, this is a new enumerated power of the presidency of which I was previously unaware) and not bringing the healthcare industry to the table (which is what spawned all of those attack ads in 93).

He has some nice plans, but I see him being as divisive as the Clintons.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	auros 2008-01-30 08:04 pm UTC (link)
	Well, Edwards quit this morning. So I'm voting Obama. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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