Obama Versus Clinton
When one visits campaign websites and reads what the candidates' positions are on issues, there is very little difference philosophically between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Both claim they have a pro-working-class agenda and want to increase aid to the poor. They both see education and health care, as well as bringing an end to the Iraq conflict, as top priorities.
As mentioned in a previous blog, increasing government aid means raising taxes for someone. Both Hillary and Barack want to "close loopholes" for taxing the wealthy. But, the two candidates have a very different idea of who the wealthiest Americans are.
Both want to aggressively increase America's competitiveness in new science and technology. They perhaps have slightly different priorities in mind. Hillary Clinton speaks specifically about medical research whereas Obama talks about communications technology.
Obama is not innocent when it comes to putting out misleading information either. How can we have transparency in government if the information we're getting is false? I do not trust a person who wants to "keep the American people" informed about what goes on "behind the scenes". Usually this means a lot of spin and confusing "facts".
Obama is also not the "defender of individual privacy" and freedom that his website claims. When running for the Senate, he said he would have voted against the Patriot Act, a piece of legislation that has been used as an example of government intrusion on Constitutional rights of citizens to due process. But, he voted in favor of reauthorization in 2005. Another inaccurate representation of where he stands.
Obama also likes the idea of using the tax code to influence how corporations and businesses spend their money. Sounds like trying to run business from Washington to me. Not the other way around, as he claims.
Here's a wild idea for both Clinton and Obama campaigns to consider. I doubt they would ever consider something like this to be fair, but here goes anyway. Why not tax everyone the same, based entirely on total income (in the case of wage-earners) beyond a certain amount? Same for corporations except the tax is on profit? No deductions whatsoever. One tax rate.
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