Obama's socialist agenda
Well, I would like to know what group we are looking at as the “Next Generation”. As far as I can tell it is the youth of the nation that is more focused on their benefits package than working hard for the dollars they are earning.
Obama’s socialist agenda and communistic approach to penalizing my small family and my small business to give to another doesn’t represent me.Â
I feel the group of young workers have been so indoctrinated with Karl Marx but haven’t been educated (because they are not old enough) on what a great system that was for Russia and China.
If you think there are lies and corruption now, just wait. The fearful tragedy you are awaiting might just be what you are voting for versus another 911.
Hopefully I am wrong and we won’t be in line for bread vs. in line for a Starbucks. Yeah, a Starbucks coffee is $3.65, but at least for today I can afford that a couple times a week and have the right to do so.
Editor’s Note: “Kim F,” the contributor of this opinion article, is the daughter of the Editor (John Hoyle). Her opinions are just as valuable as that of anyone else’s that contributes to JustOneOpinion.com - even if some of her opinions stand at the opposite end of the political spectrum from those currently held by her father.
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After submitting this Op-Ed piece, Kim added, “Sorry Dad, you might not publish this one, but YOU put it out there that everyone has an opinion that deserves to be heard.”Kim is absolutely right that “everyone has an opinion.” From where I sit there is no “right or wrong,” “good or bad,” or “American or un-American” when an opinion is honest and comes from the heart and intellect. So Kim’s opinion deserves to be heard just as much as mine, or Dick Kelly’s, or any of the other contributors to this website.
As Editor, all I can do is to publish opinions and articles with as few edits as possible and let our readers decide whether there is any merit or relevance to their own views. I can totally relate to Kim’s position because I was a Nixon, Reagan and Bush (41) Republican for most of my life – and I might very well be again if the Democrats do win the next election and fail to live up to most of their promises. All we can do is look back 4 or 8 years from now and try to determine who among us was right or wrong and try to make better choices the next time.
And, of course, no matter what Kim F’s opinions might be, I love her. She’s my daughter.
Kim, what data did you use to help you formulate your hypothesis that Obama has a socialistic agenda and a communistic approach that will penalize your family and business if he gets elected?
Hi Richard,
My opinion is not based on the oodles of twisted data that exists on the internet or the
various news programs. It is based on what I hear straight from Obama and his wife regarding
the distribution of wealth as well as his ideas on many issues. Although pay scales in the Bay
area are higher than the majority of the country, so is the cost of living. Under his plan, what we
need to make to survive as well as run a business would in some years define us as “wealthy” when we are not. I am not in awe of either of the candidates which allows me to look objectively at both of them and listen carefully to what they say and how they say it. This is a current version of “Robin Hood” yet I am not sure “who” is Robin Hood and “who” is the Sherriff of Nottingham.
Kim,
As a small businessperson all my life, I hear your, and Joe The Plumber’s, frustrations with working hard and paying taxes. As for me, I have always been proud to pay (sometimes more than my share) taxes to maintain the wonderful country we have. My wife and I spent several months three years ago in Communist China, and the formerly Russian Communist, Central Asian Republics. We saw close up, at 12 miles-per-hour from our tandem bicycle, their failures. I wrote very critically of those systems in our travel narratives: http://www.newbohemians.net and navigate to Silk Road.
Barack Obama, and any changes he could make in America, are absurdly removed from the reality of communism, let alone Communism, Your arguments suggest you may be getting your information from the politically motivated. Don’t take your world-view from them, or from me. Travel and see for yourself. Even though China’s farms are still forced cooperatives, you’d be pleased to see that the rural people are creating capitalism for themselves in small markets, restaurants, repair shops and hundreds of different small businesses. Both capitalism and democracy will win out. Neither need be forced on others, and we are in no danger in America.
Sharing with others less fortunate doesn’t mean socialism. Claire and I give to Accion International; they make micro loans to people (mostly women) in poor countries who want to educate their children (unlike America, most countries do not provide a publicly funded education). A sewing machine is all a woman needs to begin a business that will, with hard work, lead to a better life. And yes, they do pay the loans back, with interest. That’s how capitalism spreads, not through talking heads or politicians, but through action and inspiration. Don’t let others poison your intellect. Find out for yourself.
The truth always falls somewhere between the extremes.
Hi Robert,
I appreciate your comments and your investigation in ways to help others. I have a friend that travels to Haiti and brings sewing machines and teaches people to sew so that they can be self supporting. I think it is great as well as the many things that we can do to volunteer our time and our used clothing and money, but then again we get to choose how much we have to offer to these programs or individuals.
I don’t hear in Barack Obama’s plans anything about individuals being able to decide what they can give to help others and still be able to remain self sustaining for their own families. I don’t mind paying taxes to pay my share and help build a community and a country, but I do mind when people (including the schools) constantly ask for me to open my wallet but don’t want to share how the budget is truly being spent.
I find it hard to believe that raising taxes on only 10% (which includes most people living in cities and promoting a good economy) is a way to fix the system. People making $200,000 and over are the majority that are paying for what we have in America including roads, schools, welfare, social security etc…. To constantly penalize them will break the spirit to work hard and still try to donate time and money.
I am not rich, I am not retired and I still have young children to raise, feed and house. My business exists in an area that is beyond expensive and forces an income that I will be penalized for beyond a reasonable fair share. Sales taxes are higher, gas prices are higher, property taxes and mortgages are higher. Living on 25% of my earnings after paying for taxes on everything I earn and spend is not simple or comfortable in any manner.
Regardless, I would appreciate it if people would understand that we all have the option to process what we see and hear our own way and make our own choices rather than just assume that we believe anybody or any group that is politcally motivated. Barack Obama and John McCain are politically motivated along with anybody pushing their campaigns. Neither of them are the messiah and can possibly fix everything in 4 years.
I appreciate that we have different opinions and that my father has helped to build a forum in which to share them, but as I stated above to Richard, my opinion is based on what I see from the candidates themselves rather than simply being blinded by talk radio or false internet reports. I wish that more people would rely on critical thinking skills and analysis rather than relying on what the talking heads say, it would make for more interesting conversations like the one we just shared.
Well-done Kim. Where we live, what we do for a living, what values are important to us, and the life-path we see for ourselves, certainly do factor into how we come down politically.
I was born in West Virginia; we raised most of our own food and my mother made my school clothes from roll denim and print cotton from our cattle feed sacks. My parents worked hard and yet made, in inflation adjusted terms, about 20% of the $200,000 number, and with the 8th grade educations available to them, could expect to make no more, no matter how hard they worked. My father was a straight-ticket Democrat, and I naturally went the other way. My first vote was for Barry Goldwater (I would not take it back). I’ve survived on $50 a week and exceeded the magic number when it meant a lot more taxes than it does now. There were times I could have had food stamps, and refused them, and one year when I saved 90% of my income. Now we live on not much more than my parents did, mostly out of choice. I’ve been in both places, paid high taxes and paid none. One thing I’ve always been proud of; I’ve always lived beneath my means, whatever those means. That may be the reason I’m more willing than many Americans to pay taxes.
Whoever is elected president this year will disappoint us all. The problems heaped on us in the last eight years turned me away from the Republican Party. I’m not ready to be a Democrat yet, but I’m leaning. The politics of less government since Reagan (including Clinton) have been a lie. Government is bigger than it has ever been, in all the wrong ways; wrong wars, wrong spending choices, wrong deregulation. The worst of the Bush legacy is the politics that have divided the country into Red and Blue, separating friend from friend, even hurting the closeness of families. This election, if you choose to focus on taxes only, you are being used. America has a much more difficult time ahead than can be helped by a very small difference in tax policy by the two candidates. We need a Roosevelt figure, both Teddy and FDR, and Obama’s calm intelligence offers that hope.
Thanks Bob. I wish that my opinion was based on financial factors alone, yet it is not. I was simply responding to Colin Powells comment regarding the next generation and how generalizations are not the absolute.
We are dealing with a big country with many different demographics which makes it hard to really represent everybody in a statement of that nature or a plan with a dollar amount based on an average. Although my father and I are not in agreement politically these days, I appreciate that he taught me to be an individual and think for myself rather than to be part of a collective. From what I can see by his contributors and by your comments you are also an individual that seeks your own truth and comfort with what lays ahead for all of us. It is too bad that others don’t care to take the time to really go through the process and formulate their own opinions.
I did check out your website regarding your fabulous travels with your wife Claire. What a wonderful thing to do with your lives. I hope that someday my husband and I will have the ability to do more exploring of the world and not be so overwhelmed by the extreme environment that exists in the Bay Area. Good luck next week, some of our questions will be answered in a few days and then we will see where we go from there. Hopefully it will be better than it is currently.
Thanks Kim,
This has been one of the most refreshing political interactions I’ve had in years. If Americans can relearn how to have civil discourse over our differences, we will go a long way to realizing the dream of unity held by our founding fathers.
Thank you.
Thanks Bob,
I have enjoyed it as well. It is very interesting to get the perspective from someone that has travelled in other ways than only shopping and eating at bistro’s in Paris. Also, it is refreshing to have someone listen to my viewpoint rather than attack me before even hearing it with the slight knowledge that I am not an Obama Cheerleader.
Every issue has a different degree of relevance to our beliefs and the group that best represents our own individual ideals and values will win our ballot on Tuesday. Ultimately we will find a happy medium by what is decided by the country in general. I only wish that when the decision is made we could all make the best of it rather than screaming Impeachment on Wednesday morning. I will be the one that will take what we get and shut my mouth in hope until there is an appropriate time to speak (hopefully that will be in 2012). Have a good week.