Mary and Barry
Oct 7th 2008Bull MoosePolitics
An old “boss” of mine forwarded me this story. She included the message, “That settles it, I’m voting for Barack Obama,” though I suspect she had settled on voting for Senator Obama the minutes the words “George Bush has been re-elected” passed through the lips of Tom Brokaw in 2004.
The gist of the story is that some woman named Mary was trying to move to Norway, didn’t plan ahead to have enough cash to pay for her suitcases to go with her and started crying. Future Senator Obama was behind her in line and at a time when he wasn’t exactly well off paid the $100 for her.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a very nice thing for young Barack Obama to do, but I find kind of an intersting subtext here that this story happens to come out as a lot of people are panicking about the economy: It’s OK if you didn’t take care of your self and plan ahead, Barack Obama will step in and save you.
And, hey, Barack Obama can feel free to step in and save as many people with his own cash as he wants. I’m just concerned he’ll want to help out the Marys of the world with money that belongs to you and me.
2 Comments »
Nick on 08 Oct 2008 at 11:15 am #
Sorry but the corollary doesn’t hold to me.
Looking over the past 50 years, do you have any data to suggest that Democratic Presidents spend more than a Republican President? Even if you do, do you have any data to suggest Obama would be the same as the old Democratic Presidents? What leads you to believe Obama will spend more of taxpayers money than McCain?
If spending money is your concern here, shouldn’t you be concerned about the $10 billion a month we’re spending in Iraq, or is it only spending you disapprove of that’s the problem here?
This graph seems to suggest that Republican presidents increase the national debt (I think there is a connection between spending more and the national debt going up.. correct me if I’m wrong) more than Democrat presidents
http://www.mypolls.us/republican.national.debt.jpg
This article seems to do a good analysis of how national debt goes up when we have Republican Presidents:
http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm
I’m inclined to believe that increases in the national debt are directly linked to more spending, feel free to correct me if that’s a wrong assumption.
Bull Moose on 08 Oct 2008 at 1:16 pm #
“What leads you to believe Obama will spend more of taxpayers money than McCain?”
This isn’t a hunch, Obama has told us about all the money he wants to spend. Even the estimates most generous to him show $459 billion in new spending (some estimates go up to a trillion.)
Congress controls the purse strings. That’s why we had a balanced budget in the ’90’s. Spending was terrible under Reagan and Bush. I’ve criticized W. many times for signing ridiculous spending bills. (Reagan at least had an excuse that he needed to negotiate with Congress to get what he needed to finish off the Soviets.)
Besides, I’m not talking about generic Democrats and Republicans. A Nancy Pelosi / Harry Reid congress with a President Obama is going to spend much more money than that congress with a President McCain.
“I think there is a connection between spending more and the national debt going up.. correct me if I’m wrong”
There’s also the effects of tax cuts before the Laffer Curve catches up.
“If spending money is your concern here, shouldn’t you be concerned about the $10 billion a month we’re spending in Iraq, or is it only spending you disapprove of that’s the problem here?’
I wouldn’t say I’m not concerned with the spending in Iraq, but at least that was money was spent in pursuit of a Constitutionally recognized responsibility of the Federal government. You seem to be under an illusion that I think it’s great that Iraq is costing us $120 billion a year. I don’t. I wish the surge had happened in 2004 and we could have finished the job in Iraq for less. I do, however, believe that the result will be worth it if we don’t run out of there under the pretense of budgeting.