About Politics

Roger Washburn asked:


When asked which of the Caribbean islands is the most beautiful, the debate is endless and almost always without consensus. Barack Obama may well change that. Very few travelers who have hiked the trails through La Sierra de los Organos to the spectacular Vinales Valley , or strolled the white sands of Varandne will vote for anyplace other than Cuba . The only factor standing between Cuba being a travel destination of choice for the U.S. traveler is of course, the U.S. Policy toward Cuba .

But what if the U.S. Policy would change? What are the implications for Cuba , as well as the Bahamas and the Caribbean nations whose economies depend almost entirely on tourism? When Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, there will be change. Only the nature and pace of the change is as of yet unknown.

During a campaign swing through Miami , celebrating Cuban Independence Day, Obama said, “My policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: ‘libertad,’ the Spanish word for liberty. His promise to the Cuban-Americans was to lower travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans visiting family members, plus an increase in the allowable money transfers to Cuba . Many expect this promise to be honored in the first 30 days of the Obama Presidency. He is also expected to expand the people-to-people exchange policy initiated by the Clinton administration, and all but eliminated under the Bush administration. The number of academics, church groups, students and other groups without commercial purpose traveling to Cuba would increase dramatically.

The real question is whether Raul Castro will respond favorably to these changes in U.S. Policy and begin his own policy changes affording the Cuban populace more personal liberties. If that door opens would Obama and the U.S. Congress consider lifting the embargo and allowing unlimited commercial and personal travel? And what would that mean?

The U.S. traveler will win; Cuba ’s economy will win, but I wonder what of the other countries of the Caribbean and their need for the tourist dollar? Is there enough to go around? While the residents of the Bahamas and the Caribbean countries overwhelming favored Obama for president, citing “change” as the critical factor, many experts are concerned harder times are coming for the tourism industry. These difficult times would only be exacerbated by an increase in Cuban tourism.

Furthermore, the government coffers of many Caribbean countries have grown fat with the influx of high end resort developments spending, and promises to spend, hundreds of millions of dollars to develop large tracts of land, often very remote, into high end developments featuring golf courses, casinos and marinas built for the largest luxury yacht. These vacation, investment or second homes often are priced well over a million dollars. A cornerstone of the Obama campaign was his promise to raise income taxes for anybody who could afford one of these properties. An entry from an expat blog, the Belize Gringo, “………the tax reforms that Obama plans to put in place would severely cut the disposable income that this income tax bracket previously spent on vacationing and investing in Belize ” is representative of the concern.

For those Caribbean countries whose financial and banking sectors generate a significant source of national income, Obama policies may also have an impact. He is a staunch supporter of eliminating tax havens in the Caribbean , having proposed the “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Bill” while in the Senate. The French and Germans have suggested a primary blame for the world wide banking crisis is the existence of these tax havens and have discussed embargos to force change. It would be strange world if at the end of the Obama presidency the trade and travel restrictions now imposed on Cuba have been moved to the Caymans and other “tax havens.”

The first ninety days of any presidency is often viewed as a measuring stick for the next four years. No group will be watching the Obama Presidency closer than the Caribbean community.



Amy

BoingBoing asked:


Obama is a politician like others. He has flip flop like any other politicians: So what can Americans do to get Obama elected?

Alicia

Thompson Ogunsanmi asked:


Obama at last! The situation is nothing but reality of prolonged hope and embodiment of fulfilled prophecy declared by Martin Luther King, Jr. an African-American clergyman who advocated social change through American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s challenging the need for equal rights for minorities without violence.

Barrack Obama was prepared to be the fulfillment of the move taken years a go by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There is always a generation prepared for fulfillment, no matter how prolonged an expectation will be.  A man appointed to roll out the contents of an agenda organized without his consent must be proactive and be willing to fight the course of such mandate with strong expectation. When you loose focus on the mandate entrusted to you by your forerunner, you become irrelevant in the course of history and posterity testifies against your existence. How old was Obama when issues he reflected in his day was advacated? It does not mean where you belong now, when the time of your manifestation comes, obstacles will give way as the whole world will rise to say yes on your behalf

The processing of new impression depends on reception it meets on arrival. If you have expectation, you need time and delay will tend to be a factor for its reality just as failure at times poses as a complement of success.When it is your time, obstacles will surely become a ladder and that is when you explore the opportunity of the time allocated for you. You will be celebrated as a celebrity by every man when you act in your favourable time. Do not be stopped by any one or be challenged by your situation. Obama has the understanding of time and season. He exlpored into this, and was accepted by the whole wide world in a time like this.

If you are not at the pick of your dream now, you can be there now if you so desire. Yes, right from your mind. The journey to every height begins in the heart of a man and the longest distance in life is not the two ends of the world but rather, what it takes to transfer the taught in your head to your heart. Let us learn from Obama and know that it takes beign optimistic and rigid determination to get to the peak of one’s dream. Congratulations to all the admirers of Barrack Obama, the first ever African-American President



Wendy

Jim Davidson asked:


Following an historic election, we take a moment to examine just what an Obama presidency will mean to the United States - what we have to look forward to, and how he will deal with our current financial crisis. And according Jim Davidson, some of the numbers just don’t add up.

One of Obama’s prime campaign planks has been his promise to mercilessly raise taxes on the “rich,” a group initially defined as those making more than $250,000 per year. This was later dropped to $200,000 per year, and more recently has been defined as those Americans making more than $150,000 annually.

Setting aside the precipitous downward slide in the definition of “rich,” there is ample reason to suspect that Obama’s tax changes portend much higher, if not confiscatory, taxes on the most productive Americans. Obama has strongly argued for higher taxes as a way of employing government to alter the pre-tax distribution of income, which he believes has concentrated too much of the gains from productivity in recent years in the hands of the very rich.

He seems to think that the ‘very rich’ are a closed caste of more or less fixed membership, which changes little from year-to-year. This figures in his concept of ‘fairness,’ which supposes that it is perfectly just to burden a small fraction of the population with a majority of the costs of running the Federal government. This was detailed in a New York Times article on “spreading the wealth” by David Leonhardt. He wrote of Obama:

“He would then pay for the cuts, at least in part, by raising taxes on the affluent to a point where they would eventually be slightly higher than they were under Clinton. For these upper-income families, the Tax Policy Center’s comparisons with McCain are even starker. McCain, by continuing the basic thrust of Bush’s tax policies and adding a few new wrinkles, would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners - those making an average of $9.1 million - by another $190,000 a year, on top of the Bush reductions. Obama would raise taxes on this top 0.1 percent by an average of $800,000 a year. ‘It’s hard not to look at that figure and be a little stunned. It would represent a huge tax increase on the wealthy families. But it’s also worth putting the number in some context. The bulk of Obama’s tax increases on the wealthy - about $500,000 of that $800,000 - would simply take away Bush’s tax cuts. The remaining $300,000 wouldn’t nearly reverse their pretax income gains in recent years. Since the mid-1990s, their inflation-adjusted pretax income has roughly doubled.’

“To put it another way, the wealthy have done so well over the past few decades, with their incomes soaring and tax rates plummeting, that Obama’s plan would not come close to erasing their gains. The same would be true of households making a few hundred thousand dollars a year (who have gotten smaller raises than the very rich but would also face smaller tax increases). As ambitious as Obama’s proposals might be, they would still leave the gap between the rich and everyone else far wider than it burdensome on the young entrepreneur who was making his first millions as it would on the aging plutocrat who actually had enjoyed the prosperity of the past-quarter century since Reagan cut marginal tax rates.”

An October 13 editorial in The Wall Street Journal clarifies the mysterious arithmetic of Obama’s sweeping claims to cut income taxes for millions who currently have no income tax liability and pay no taxes:

‘For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase ‘tax credit.’ Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals:

“- A $500 tax credit ($1,000 a couple) to ‘make work pay’ that phases out at income of $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 per couple.

“- A $4,000 tax credit for college tuition.

“- A 10% mortgage interest tax credit (on top of the existing mortgage interest deduction and other housing subsidies).

“- A ’savings’ tax credit of 50% up to $1,000.

“- An expansion of the earned-income tax credit that would allow single workers to receive as much as $555 a year, up from $175 now, and give these workers up to $1,110 if they are paying child support.

“- A child care credit of 50% up to $6,000 of expenses a year.

“- A ‘clean car’ tax credit of up to $7,000 on the purchase of certain vehicles.

“Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be ‘refundable,’ which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer - a federal check - from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this ‘welfare,’ or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a ‘Demogrant.’ Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

“The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year. The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis estimates that by 2011, under the Obama plan, an additional 10 million filers would pay zero taxes while cashing checks from the IRS.

“The total annual expenditures on refundable ‘tax credits’ would rise over the next 10 years by $647 billion to $1.054 trillion, according to the Tax Policy Center. This means that the tax-credit welfare state would soon cost four times actual cash welfare. By redefining such income payments as ‘tax credits,’ the Obama campaign also redefines them away as a tax share of GDP. Presto, the federal tax burden looks much smaller than it really is.”

After all the sloppy definitions are parsed, one point remains clear. The top 5% of U.S. income earners, who presently pay 60.14% (2006 figures) of all income tax, are destined for a huge federal tax increase under Obama.

One of Obama’s specific proposals is to raise the capital gains and dividend taxes to 25%, which will sharply increase capital confiscation as increasing percentages of “gains” will reflect inflationary depreciation of the currency. In the U.S., an investor must pay tax on the difference between the sales price of an asset and it purchase price, with no adjustment for inflation. Consequently, when the tax rate and inflation are high, a large portion of the “capital gain” is illusory. Any asset that appreciates by less than the rate of inflation will result in its owner losing purchasing power and having to pay taxes on the illusory gains. At Obama’s higher tax rates, (he has suggested that capital gains and dividend taxes should be hiked to as much as 25%,) capital confiscation would result from modest levels of inflation.

And the Great Credit Crunch implies that inflation will be far higher than in recent experience.

Setting aside whether it is moral or equitable to force a small fraction of the population to essentially pay for the whole cost of government, much of which entails the shuffling of checks to purchase votes of various aggrieved groups, there is a bigger question. Can it be wise for the whole fiscal regime to stand on the shoulders of a small group, like a pyramid tottering on its point, so that any tribulation which undermines the prosperity of those who pay would promise to bankrupt the state?

It is a worthwhile question to ask if you have considerable assets. In light of the worldwide credit crunch, which has deflated assets of all kinds, the prospect of burgeoning prosperity at the magnitude required to enable one-in-20 Americans to become “Super Rich” benefactors of Big Government is vanishingly small. There won’t be enough rich people to fill the role assigned to them in Obama’s scheme. The result to be expected, in addition to confiscatory taxation, is a dramatic shortfall of revenues. This, in turn, implies surging deficits and deficit financing requirements that will rapidly swamp the capacity of the Treasury to borrow.

Source: The Danger Lurking Behind Obama’s Tax Policy



Kathleen

Aaron Taylor asked:


As a freelance missionary, a social critic, and (I should add) a self-professed moral failure; I watched Obama’s speech this morning with great interest. I couldn’t help but thinking to myself that I was witnessing a profound moment in history, something that would have been unthinkable 40, 30, or even 20 years ago. I’ve never publicly endorsed a political candidate and I don’t plan on doing so here (to be quite frank, I have some serious disagreements with the Senator on a variety of issues), but what I heard in the Senator’s speech this morning was a man who is both Caucasian and African-American (howbeit African-American in a non-traditional sense) pleading with members of both races to look past their prejudices, abandon the politics of discontentment, and unite under a common vision for the good of all.

As a white American evangelical, I’ve clearly grown up on one side of the discontentment divide. My politically conservative Christian background has taught met to emphasize personal responsibility in the political sphere, but eschew racism in the private sphere. The way this usually translates on the white side of the discontentment divide goes something like this: “I’m sick and tired of black people (and other minorities) getting special treatment just because of what my ancestors did. If there are racial inequalities in our country between black people and white people, then it’s their own damn fault and-for the love of God-I’m sick and tired of being called a racist!”

Given my racial and socio-economic status, I can understand this sentiment very well and, ironically, Obama seems to understand it too, which is why he didn’t condemn this type of thinking outright in his speech. Rather than pointing his finger at white discontentment as an example of systemic racism, Obama put the blame on special interest groups and corporate greed. While one can easily disagree with this analysis, depending on whatever side of the political divide you find yourself on, it’s not so easy to dismiss the fact that, for the first time that I can think of, a formidable black candidate for the President of the United States has officially given voice to white discontentment-without using the wrath provoking word “racist.”

To further drive home the point, Obama spoke of his white grandmother who loved him, cared for him, played a significant role in raising him, and occasionally gave voice to racially insensitive stereotypes. Obama’s point, which was in no uncertain terms relevant to the current Jeremiah Wright debacle, is simply this: people are more complex than than the sum of their racial discontentment.

The hallmark of the speech for me was when Obama addressed the history behind the current economic and achievement divide between black people and white people in the U.S.A. I’ve known for a while that the violence in the ghettos, the breakdown of the black family, and whatever other deficiencies currently present in black culture aren’t simply a matter of black inferiority verses white superiority, but there are historical factors that have produced the situation today. The problem has been that I’ve never been able to explain these historical factors to the average discontented white male (including myself). This is where the speech struck the deepest note in me:

“Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, ‘the past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.’ We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustices in this country, but we do need to remind ourelves that so many of the disparities that exist between the African American community and the larger American community today can be traced directly to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were and are inferior schools. We still haven’t fixed them 50 years after Brown Vs Board of Education and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students. Legalized discrimination, where blacks were prevented often through violence from owning property, where loans were not granted to African American business owners, where black home owners could not access FHA mortgages, where blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or the fire department, meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps to explain the wealth and income gap between blacks and whites and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family contributed to the erosion of black families, a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic service in so many urban black neighborhoods, parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick up, building code enforcement, all helped create a cycle of violence, blight, and neglect that continues to haunt us.”

In sum, I didn’t agree with everything that Obama had to say in his speech (especially when it came to his one- sided statement putting the blame solely on radical Islam and none on Israel for the current problems in the Middle East), but, on the whole, I think it was an important speech that everyone in our nation needs to hear. Rather than just playing to one side of the racial divide, Obama challenged white people to understand the roots of black anger and black people to get past their anger and take personal responsibility for their lives. Perhaps there really is something to this “removing the plank from your own eye” business a humble carpenter from Nazareth stated so beautifully 2,000 years ago.



Brenda