A few days ago I accused the Clinton (and to some extent the Obama) campaign of operating on vague platitudes. Mike suggested in commentary that there were plenty of details and that nobody would read or understand a more detailed policy report, so that my characterizations were somewhat misleading. Perhaps. But as I said at the time the devil is in the details. And while I don’t want to claim that the candidates are being self-contradictory or offering incoherent plans without reading those details, my initial reaction to the plans is that there are a lot of promises and little in the way of logistical ways of realizing those promises. This article does a nicer job than I did of stating the problems that the candidates have. Mainly, they make a lot of promises, but if you look at how they’re going to pay for them, or deal with the political/logistical realities, we shouldn’t really believe them all that much. I recommend reading it.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a long time. But I keep putting it off, partly because its a very challenging issue for me as a libertarian who’s also a scientist. Here is the problem: Science is expensive. But its also important. So, who pays for it? Let’s consider the possible players: Continue reading »
Clinton claimed two things about Obama in the most recent debate.
1) He works in vague platitudes, and doesn’t deal in issues
2) His health care plan will cover 15 million fewer people than hers.
I was curious about this, so I went to her website, downloaded her healthcare plan, and read it carefully. And here’s what I found: vague platitudes. Continue reading »
As our frequent commenter Silence noted the other day, the Obama-Clinton race shares a lot in common with the most recent Massachusetts gubernatorial election in which we elected Deval Patrick. This shouldn’t be especially surprising, especially considering that Obama and Patrick are long-time friends with similar backgrounds. In fact, it was Deval Patrick that the Clinton campaign recently accused Obama of plagiarizing. (Side note: It was one thing to bring it up, but the fact that the Clinton campaign continues to harp on the issue, despite Patrick’s statement that he gave Obama permission to use the statement, only underscores how desperate her campaign is starting to look.) In any case, I thought it might be illustrative to look at how that campaign played out.
Obama and Clinton are in campaigning in Ohio this week, and their stump speeches seem designed mostly around the topic of the economy, and free trade in particular. The free trade bogeyman has apparently caused all the problems in the Ohio economy… didn’t you know? Its all NAFTA’s fault that Ohioans are out of jobs, and the democratic candidates are both strongly opposed to it. (Aside: Clinton was strongly in favor of NAFTA when her husband was in office – so is this a change of heart that we should believe in, or is it empty rhetoric to improve her odds of election? I can never tell what Clinton really stands for vs. what she’ll say to get votes…)
Not so fast! Let’s think this through a little bit. Is NAFTA really so bad for the Ohio economy? And what would be good ways of jumpstarting the economy in places like Ohio? Continue reading »
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