Big Sky Cairn

In February 2007, Barack Obama petitioned the Federal Elections Commission for a bi-partisan compromise that would ensure that both candidates would accept public financing for the 2008 Presidential Election. Obama “argued in his filing with the commission that the public financing system had insulated candidates from a corrupting dependence on big donors.”

Then the primary happened, and Obama learned that he could raise $100 million dollars in a month. NBC News predicts that Obama could handily raise $300 million dollars to spend on the general election. That’s almost four times the amount of money that would be available to him if he kept his promise to accept only public monies.

But when you can raise hundreds of millions of dollars and crush your opponent under the weight of your money bags, who needs a paltry $84 million in public financing?

Apparently, a promise is only a promise until a better offer comes along. And even some of Obama’s strongest supporters are upset by his decision to pass on public financing.

McCain-Feingold co-sponsor Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) said that Obama had not made a good decision. Feingold argues that while the system does need to be updated, the system for the general election is not broken, as Obama claims.

But for my part, Obama’s flip-flop is not the most upsetting part of his decision to pass on public financing.

I’m not a rich person. I’ll never drive a Mercedes or fly on a private jet. I struggle with increasing food and fuel prices, and like a lot of people I live month to month. So, when I hear that a candidate who talks about change and supporting the little guy is preparing to spend THREE HUNDRED MILLION dollars on an election, it makes me sick to my stomach.

Not only does it sound like Obama is trying to buy the election, it sounds like he has lost perspective.

On October 26, 1967, John McCain was shot down while flying over Vietnam. McCain parachuted into a lake, breaking both arms and a leg before he nearly drowned. After he was pulled from the water, a crowd attacked him, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, and bayoneted him. But his nightmare was just beginning.

McCain spent nearly six years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. And despite being tortured and beaten on a regular basis, McCain turned down a 1968 offer of repatriation unless the North Vietnamese would release every American soldier taken in before him was released as well.

Due to the injuries that he received in service to his country, McCain has been rated 100% disabled by the Veterans Administration. So, when I read an article in the LA Times saying that McCain is not fit to be president because of injuries, I wanted to scream. Luckily, I have an electronic soapbox.

By any measure John McCain is a hero, who suffered unspeakable torture in service of his country. He then spent the next three decades in public service. And arguing that the injuries he sustained in Vietnam disqualify him from the presidency is abominable.

McCain is hardly the first person with disabilities to enter politics. Max Cleland and Tammy Duckworth are both 100% disabled, and they are both excellent public servants. Should their injuries make them ineligible to be president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the hero of the Democratic Party, was horribly disfigured and disabled after contracting polio but he served as President for 12 years. His disability didn’t get in the way of his accomplishments, and they certainly didn’t hinder his ability to bring his country out of the Great Depression and lead us to victory in WWII.

So, if these politician’s disabilities don’t hinder their ability to serve, why is McCain different? Because he’s a Republican? Because some moron at the L.A. Times who is neither a doctor nor a therapist says so?

Anyone who has ever volunteered on a statewide campaign can tell you, the trail is a grueling test of the candidate’s physical and emotional health. And in the last 25 years, McCain has breezed through three campaigns for the House of Representatives, three campaigns for the Senate and two presidential campaigns. Not to mention the travel and schedule he had to maintain in order to become one of the nation’s most heralded and powerful politicians.

If he can do all of that despite his injuries, I have no doubt that he is healthy and strong enough to serve as president.

But perhaps the most deplorable part of the LA Times article and the constant speculation about how McCain’s disability impacts his health is what it says to the thousands of young disabled veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you for serving your country and putting yourself in danger to protect my freedom, but you are no longer qualified to be president. So, if you aspired to a life of public service in government, be advised that your aspirations will be limited to only certain offices. What kind of message is that to send to the brave men and women who have sacrificed more than many of us can imagine in the name of freedom?

McCain’s doctors say he is in great health. And his performance on the campaign trail over the past several months should silence the naysayers. But even if you think that he’s too old and frail to be president, don’t start insinuating that the brace men and women disabled in combat aren’t fit to hold public office. Because anyone who can survive the pain of his injuries, the grueling recovery therapies and the stigma of being disabled while rising to a position of prominence in the unkind world of politics is tougher and more qualified to be president than most of us will ever hope to be.

Montana lost a real treasure.  God Bless you Joe for all you did.

One thing that the primaries yesterday produced was a clear choice in the Congressional race.  (The Senate results seem to be in a dimension beyond the capabilities of ordinary language to describe it, so why try.)

Check out Western Word’s summary of the Vote Smart answers that Driscoll gave vs those that Rehberg gave.

A clear choice.

Because I will be out of town next week, I arranged to vote by absentee ballot.  Something that more and more Montanans are doing.  But after I filled out my ballot and repackaged it inside it’s super secret container, I noticed something that made me a little ticked off.

To vote in Silver Bow County was going to cost me $1.41 in postage.  Why?  Because the powers that be in the SBC elections office decided to use a return envelope that is 12 in. by 16 in. The darn thing is so large that I could use it as a welcome mat or a baby blanket.

As I affixed the postage to the American flag sized envelope, I began to wonder, “What happens when voters don’t realize they need to add postage?  Or when they don’t add enough postage?”

At least in Great Falls, the county picks up the tab in the interest of democracy.

According to the Tribune, almost one-third of all Cascade County’s primary ballots are arriving sans proper postage.  Most are arriving with one stamp, but do to the weight of the envelope it takes two to cover the fee.  This gap in price is costing the county $100 per day.

But when the alternative is disenfranchising voters, what else can they do but pay the postage?

Given the growing popularity of absentee balloting with college students, senior citizens and workaholics like myself, this trend is likely to cost the counties (read: the taxpayers) a pretty penny.  Especially when you consider that the general election ballot is even larger than the primary ballot.

So, if you too are voting by absentee, make sure to affix enough postage.  Two stamps for a normal sized envelope, and four stamps (ah!) for the flying carpet sized ones Butte is using.

I guess it’s true what they say, democracy isn’t free.

Over at Montana Headlines, we have noted on a couple of occasions the importance to supply-side tax policy of the Laffer curve, even reproducing it more than a year ago for interested readers when writing a post in support of an opinion piece that Sen. Roy Brown had written about tax policy in the state of Montana. Briefly stated, the Laffer curve demonstrates why cutting high taxes can actually result in increased government revenue, and why raising taxes can result in decreased revenue.

Recently appearing in the Wall Street Journal is a piece that demonstrates yet another inconvenient truth about taxes in a simple form. Economist Kurt Hauser plots revenue as a percentage of GDP against the top marginal tax rates. Not surprisingly, what is demonstrated is that revenue as a percentage of GDP remains constant at about 19.5%, regardless of what is done with taxes at the top rates.

This of course reflects the fact that people at top income levels have a great ability (and motivation) to come up with ways to shelter, under-report, reclassify, or decrease their incomes. As tax rates increase and as incomes increase, those motivations also increase. That is one of the reasons why in 2004 we learned that Sen. and Mrs. Kerry paid a far lower percentage of their income in taxes than did President and Mrs. Bush (and indeed a far lower percentage of their incomes than did the average middle-class voter.)

Since raising taxes generally decreases GDP, this is yet another demonstration that raising the top marginal tax rate actually is more likely to lower revenue than to increase it.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand rhetorical flourishes, and one hopes that the Hauser graph joins the Laffer curve in the tax-cutting (or at least anti-tax raising) Hall of Fame.

Over at Montana Headlines, there was the pleasure of hosting our candidate for governor — Roy Brown — in a guest editorial about the governor’s testimony in support of the “Clean Water Restoration Act.”

We of course immediately had a member of the loyal opposition show up (all of those kids working for Sen. Baucus have to have something to do) to give highlights of the governor’s testimony before Congress.

The governor’s remarks, if these excerpts are representative, seems truly to have been a tour de force of style over substance — not that this should be particularly surprising.

At root, the governor’s folksy rhetoric is irrelevant.  What is relevant is what the bill actually will do to erode the ability of individual states to control their own water, and that the governor supported this erosion of Montana’s sovereignty.

Check out what Sen. Brown wrote, follow whatever discussion ensues, and decide for yourself who is more likely to put Montana’s interests first.

On Friday, Jay Stevens spent the majority of a blog post exploring Rep. Denny Rehberg’s alleged vote against mothers. On Saturday, I responded to Stevens post by explaining how parliamentary procedure works and pointing out that the bill in question passed unanimously. Now, Stevens has taken to his blog to claim that I missed the point of his original post. But his newest argument doesn’t hold much water.

Stevens’ Friday post was 247 words long. (Yes, I counted.) The majority of his post, 224 words of it (a full 91%), was spent criticizing Rehberg for a supposed vote against mothers. The last 23 words expressed this rhetorical gem:

“Yes, I realize this was just a gambit to delay a vote on mortgage relief for homeowners…but that’s not much better, is it?”

Stevens is now using that measly 23 word phrase to argue that his original post was about homeownership and the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. Talk about burying the lede.

If you want to write a post discussing homeownership and the subprime crisis, feel free. There’s plenty to talk about. Like how the bill in question would allow bankruptcy judges to renegotiate the terms of individual mortgages. Or how according to the Congressional Budget Office H.R. 3221 will increase direct spending by $4.8 billion over a 10 year period and decrease revenues by $21.5 billion during the same time frame. Let’s talk about the effect this crisis is having on the economy and how everyone from the homeowners, to the banks, to the government needs to shoulder their fair share of the blame.

But Stevens didn’t talk about any of that. Instead he spent over 90% of his post berating Rehberg for a non-existent vote against mothers and then when the fallaciousness of his argument was exposed, he claimed that the post was really about homeownership. A post cannot be defined by 10 percent of it’s content, and therein lies the “truthiness.”

I won’t spoil it for you, but when you figure it out, you’ll never look at the subject quite the same…

Over the last few weeks, I have become increasingly alarmed by the effect that global commodity prices are having on the world’s people and governments. News that nations from Haiti to Senegal to Indonesia are facing serious shortages of basic staples like rice, corn and flour is deeply concerning. And international relief organizations like the World Food Program and USAID have reported that a global rise in food prices of almost 40-percent will lead to rationing, widespread hunger and political instability in many developing and developed nations.

Obviously, the problem of global food shortages raises uncomfortable questions about the ethics of using 20% of the world’s corn in biofuels and about how the rising cost of gasoline makes everything more expensive. But this post isn’t about energy policy, or about how corrupt governments squander international contributions with zero accountability. Instead, this post is about what you, yes you Virginia, can do to help alleviate some of the burden.

• To give directly to the nations most in need of food aid, while ensuring that your money will pay for food isntead of paper clips you can donate to Friends of the World Food Program. You can earmark money specifically for Haiti, or have it placed in a general fund and spent at the UN’s discretion. Even a little bit helps, a contribution as small as $30 buys roughly 75 meals.

• Contribute to economic growth and stability in the third world through micro-financing. Microcredit makes it possible people in the developing world to own small businesses which contributes to the success of their family, their community and their country. The donations are small (usually under $50), and the repayment rate on the loans is 98%. Some good options are Mercy Corps, and my personal favorite Kiva.org.

Another charity that provides a helping hand to individuals who need it is Heiffer International. Instead of giving money, you buy a cow, some ducks, a swarm of bees, or whatever barnyard creature strikes your fancy. Heiffer then gives these animals to small family farmers who milk the cow, sell the ducks and cultivate honey to make their living. Heiffer also makes a good gift for the Mom who has everything. My mom is getting little yellow duckies.

• If you prefer to keep your money in country, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The rising cost of food and fuel is also effecting American charities. Groups that feed the poor and homeless are reporting that contributions are drying up. And Meals on Wheels, a damn worthwhile charity, is suffering from rising food prices and a lack of volunteer drivers. So, consider donating your time to Meals on Wheels, writing a check to the soup kitchen or making a donation to the local food bank.

Stemming the rise in food costs will require long term political solutions on both a national and international scale, but those take time. And in the interim, I’m not willing to watch people starve. So, I’ll keep donating a little bit of my monthly paycheck and I hope you will too.