I Hope Obama has Audacity

Four years have passed, and I can’t say I’m disappointed with Obama, as I’ve heard many people proclaim; however, I admit that he didn’t turn out to be the president that I expected when he took office. I really did expect him to be someone who was going to fight tooth and nail for his positions; I was really surprised to find out that he was such a great compromiser.

Yet, I do understand why this happened. The entire Republican Party revolted against him, and he needed to make a great effort to allay their fears and anger in order to get anything done. Could I have done better myself? Of course not! That’s definitely not what I’m insinuating. I’m insinuating that I thought Obama could have done better. But, this is just idle speculation. I am appreciative of his achievements while in office thus far.

But now is his second term. If the Republicans are still not happy with him, then they have a serious problem. He has been a puppy dog in comparison to their quarrelsome behavior. It’s time for Obama to become a junk yard dog.

He’s shown glimmers of it in the past when talking to reporters and when teasing Donald Trump’s birther conspiracy theory activism, now he needs to focus this energy against the immaturity coming from the Republicans, in a relentless fashion. He’s been elected to a second term: he’s earned this right.

Republicans are still unwilling to compromise on issues such as taxation and gun control, among others. So be it. Obama must be just as unwilling to budge on his positions. Further, Obama should be seriously critical of the behavior of Republicans. We have seen that Obama clearly has enough intelligence to embarrass people who act foolishly. Now is the time to employ this superpower and let everyone know just how foolish the Republicans are being every time they disagree for disagreement’s sake.

Of course, it is not only Obama, I understand, that must make this choice: his fellow Democrats must also be willing to stand united with their leader, just as the Republicans have decided to do against Obama for the past four years.

Perhaps this is too audacious of a hope, but I can dream 🙂

Is this child’s death exploited enough for you?

I recently saw this picture of a dead child on a site with a caption of, “Is this dead enough for you?” and I thought, is this an acceptable form of political attack? Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you’re on, using the image of a dead child to make a political statement seems like a low-blow, to say the least. The fact is, there is no evidence that America tries to kill children with drone strikes — this is childish, unnecessary demonizing of the Obama administration and America in general. So, what is this image really showing? That war is bad? I think we all know that.

But, of course, we all know that this isn’t the point of the picture and the caption. The point goes something like this:

1) See dead child

2) Be horrified

3) Wonder why the child died

4) Be told that Obama did this

5) Hate Obama

I hope people can think a little more deeply than this.

I have also seen similar pictures used for the Palestinian cause recently. I hope that these kinds of pictures and this form of reasoning doesn’t really affect people as much as I suspect it does, but I do know that the image of a dead child is something that is hard to push out of your mind. As a result, I presume that many people will allow their emotional reaction to overcome their logical thinking, unfortunately.

Taxing the richest does not kill jobs

I honestly watch John Boehner every time he defends not taxing the richest Americans to see if I can find a valid reason why this is so. I have yet to hear it. The only argument I hear is that taxing the richest people will kill jobs created by the “job-creators.” This is nonsense.

First this is because there is one thing that humans do that is logical but doesn’t help the economy: we save money.

It doesn’t take an economics degree to know that the circulation of money stimulates the economy.

So, unless all CEOs are constantly on the brink of bankruptcy because they are perfectly hiring the maximum number of workers to maintain a maximal production level, taxing them will not affect the economy, it will simply reduce the money that goes into their savings accounts.

Further, what do you think would happen in the conundrum of a large company being taxed at a rate that made them choose between going into the red temporarily and growing the company by hiring the number of workers required or staying in the black and letting the company stagnate because it doesn’t have enough workers? If you have any sense, you would take the hit and go into the red because the competition, which is dealing with the same taxes, might try to grow their company larger than yours. Therefore, intelligent CEOs would still take a hit to grow their company, so long as the increased taxes were reasonable (which Obama’s suggestions are).

I admit that this argument that taxation reduces hiring does actually apply to small- and medium-sized companies because many of these companies are actually often in jeopardy of going bankrupt with or without additional taxation. However, we rarely see a company the size of Walmart go bankrupt by minor disruptions in its business.

So, in short, since a CEO is always going to try to maximize their company’s growth, this argument that taxation on the wealthiest Americans will kill jobs doesn’t hold water.

Related articles

• Higher Tax Rates on the Wealthy Won’t Draw More Revenue (WordPress.com) [Counter-argument to my blog post]
• John Boehner: No Tax Rate Boost To Avert Fiscal Cliff (huffingtonpost.com)
• Fiscal Cliff Tax Rate Hikes Will “Greatly Impact Small Businesses” (speaker.gov)
• Conservative Exceptionalism (dailykos.com)
• Obama claims mandate to raise taxes on the richest (tv.msnbc.com)