The Silly Season

Both political parties have had their conventions now. Both have gone overboard to vilify the other.
The surprise with the most clout of course was Sarah Palin. I first learned of her when she appeared on the cover of Alaska magazine. Having recently been to Alaska I was aware of some of the problems they had up there. Mostly political corruption on the part of Murkowski and Stevens. The governor and senator. Palin made a name for herself by fighting the old boy system and getting a better deal for Alaskans from the oil companies.

She has an attractive family and is a beautiful women in a physical sense. She is also a strong conservative Republican. Then there are other endearing qualities about her. She is a life member of the National Rifle Association. She denies global warming. She enjoys hunting and brags about being able to field dress a moose. Hunting moose is like shooting cows in a pasture. She endorses hunting wolves and bears from planes and helicopters. She advocates drilling for oil in the ANWR, a wildlife refuge. Her latest project is the natural gas pipeline to be built by a company she is on the board of. She has to be a cold hearted cookie to espouse all those things.

She tries to convey sweetness and light but in reality is a Dragon Lady. She probably can out Cheney, Cheney. We don't need anymore of that kind of hubris. The conservatives are bent on lower taxes and less regulation. Those twin items alone have led to the dismal state of our infrastructure and the deregulation of banking practices leading to the financial fiasco of the sub prime mess that is costing our citizens their jobs and homes. Combine that with our rapacious foreign policies, over reliance on our crippled armed forces, despite the defense budget being 60% of our total expenditures, our under funded education programs, the atrocious treatment, or non-treatment, of our returning wounded. The cost of the unwarranted Iraq war in lives and treasure is overwhelming evidence of poor decision making and scandalous mismanagement.

The health care system is way out of whack. There is more money going into the administrative
cost than is being spent on actual health care. In the auto industry alone health care costs exceed the cost of the steel in the products. Having the multiplicity of insurance companies with their arcane restrictions is an inefficient way to provide care. Health care providers are driven to distraction and expense to keep up with the paperwork alone. Arbitrary allowances and non-allowances drive both consumers and providers crazy. Yet the conservative answer is more private insurance. Because of the high overhead premiums are beyond the reach of many Americans. Using high deductibles to lower the premium puts many people at risk. By extending the Medicare program to be a universal system there would be tremendous savings. How does that get paid for? Obviously taxes would have to pay for it. However the increase in taxes would be far less than the present cost.

McCain claims to fight the special interests. How is it then that he has the most notorious lobbyist, ex senator, Phil Gramm, as his economic advisor? Gramm engineered the Enron Loophole that relaxed regulation of the commuication rules. This directly led to excesses that caused the collapse of Enron which in turn cost stockholders and employees their life savings.
Many of McCain's campaign crew are either part time or full time lobbyists. Are they supporting him in order to be put out of business? Certainly not!!!! Some things never change.

The convention was heavy on McCain's military family and his service. There is no question that his imprisonment for five years was an extrordinary ordeal. That he survived it is a miracle. He came home to a hero's welcome. He has been playing off that his whole career in government. He has stood for welcome changes in campaign financing. I applaud that. He stumbled once in the Keating Five scandal and was censured by the Senate. He is human but no superman. When Bush/Rove slimed him in the South Carolina primary race it finished him. He gritted his teeth and resolved to make another try at the right time. He pandered to the Bush/Rove Evangelical
base in order to retain a conservative constituancy. He built on that foundation. Nonetheless some do not consider him a true conservative. His opposition to many of Bush's ideas caused him to be dubbed a "maverick". To his credit in his speech he admitted that "the Republicans came to Washington to change it and Washington changed them". the neo-conservatives remodeled the Republican party into the most corrupt. highest spending. most corporate oriented party and administration we have seen. Bush's famous tax cuts, that the Democrats went along with, together with the high expenses of the Iraq war put us deep in the hole. Now our national debt is in the trillions and we are financing our government by borrowing from China and Japan. Some conservative government. It is difficult to believe that things could have gone so wrong in a relatively short time. Bush inherited a great surplus and managed to turn it into a huge deficit.
In spite of McCain's promise to change things it is hard to see how he can do that with the baggage he is carrying.