Convince me to vote for Kerry

Great Debates
81

Sorry Debaser, but you are wrong on this… jshore pointed out above where the Patriot act discusses bookstore and library records, you can read even more here or by doing a google search for “Patriot Act Bookstore”. Before the Patriot Act the government could try to see the records of bookstores, but this has been sucsesfully contested in the Colorado Supreme Court Case Tattered Cover Inc. v. City of Thornton.

Regarding the OP, I’m sorry I cannot help you, personally I cannot see ANY reason to vote for W. And before we get into the whole “I’m not voting for Kerry, I’m voting against Bush” thing, I actually think Kerry is a good candidate. What I really want is for the Religious Right to get out of the Republican party so I can have a choice of who to vote for. The Religious Right, and Bush’s administration in particular, has changed the party platform…

82

Cardinal, you have to decide what is most important to you.

Small government/local government. Kerry wins here. Bush has advocated for more Federal uber-involvement where many believe it is not needed. Kerry argues for local control.

Government not helping take care of people. Bush wins for your POV (despite mouthing compassionate conservatism and passing a prescription benefits package). For me, I like Kerry. I really believe that we have an obligation to help each other; to make this a better place. To me it is a justice, not a charity.

Fiscal conservatism. Kerry sems more likely with his plans to do a better job than Bush has done.

Being a wartime President. Kerry wins. For reasons already described. Right now this is the most important issue to me. If one of my sons ends up in a war I want someone who was willing to go himself to be sending him.

Fighting the war on terror. I believe that Kerry would help us refocus on this war rather than on Iraq. I believe that Bush pulled resources away from this front to go on this Iraq misadventure. Bush’s strategy at this point is the dual approach of a move to a US police state and having democracy in Iraq spur a regional democratization which removes terrror’s impetus. Uh huh. I think Kerry’s push for energy independence (and eliminating Arab despots ability to depend upon oil instead of developing the resources of the Arab people themselves) will do more to accomplish that than this domino theory.

Privacy rights. Bush has lead an attack on privacy rights. Kerry wins.

Moral conservatism. Bush wins if this is your issue. It isn’t mine, I’m a liberal, so Kerry wins for me.

General ability to intelligently analyze information and to lead us in decisions that consider all the possible outcomes. Bush is a proven loser in this regard. If he did not lie then he is a proven poor consumer of information. Kerry seems smarter but the test here will be in who he’ll surround himself with. His vp choice will be telling for his judgement in this regard.

Me, yeah, I’m a non-Bush voter. I do not need to be convinced. I’d vote for the aardvark over Bush at this point. But I understand your POV. I hear 40 some % are like me; 40 some % are like debaser (Bush no matter what) People like you make up the other 10 to 20 % and will decide the election.

83

IMO, that’s actually one of the few real differences between the 2 parties. The democrats still believe in societal engineering through tax cuts. I think it’s a good idea. You give tax breaks for things that will benefit society, like alternate energy sources or conservation. As near as I can tell, the republican tax strategy these days seems to be to give the lion’s share of the tax break to the super-wealthy. Both parties are targeting; they’re just targeting different places.

84

But in this case it’s not. Kerry is not worse than Bush, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Don’t know why BobLibDem gets relegated to “and the rest” status, but is that really all you came up with?:confused: I find a lot more than 6 comments made about Kerry, and I’m only including specific things about Kerry (even though in all fairness any negatives about Bush that we know Kerry wouldn’t do should be counted as well - but just for the sake of argument I’ll leave that stuff out). Here are some of the points made by various people, myself included:

“If you believe in fiscal responsibility in government, I can tell you that the democrats have a much better record in that regard.”

“If you’re referring to affirmative action, Kerry supports it, so he’s not going to be an ideological match for you there if you are against affirmative action. He also believes in enforcing civil rights.”

“College Tax Credit: Kerry proposes a credit of the first $4000 in tuition for each year of college. As the parent of an incoming college freshman, that appeals to me much more than continuing to let the wealthiest Americans raid the treasury.”

“Education: Kerry recognizes the flaws in the “No Child Left Behind” act. Kerry will make sure that we do not turn our schools into test-prep institutions. From Kerry’s web site:”

“If the above makes sense to you, and it does to me, the Kerry reforms are reason enough to vote for him. I challenge anyone to read the Kerry tax reforms and pronounce them as “liberal”. Kerry is truly a visionary, and exactly what America needs at the moment.”

“Getting government out of micromanging the schools and stomping on local control.”

“Meaningful tax reform.”

“Kerry’s military service record.”

“Kerry supports civil unions, and that’s gay marriage by any other name. Equality is equality, I refuse to fight over a term. The Bush WHGP&HTAJGA Amendment would even outlaw gay civil unions.”

“Kerry has experience, good ideas, and a platform that I for the most part agree with. He believes in rebuilding our relations with our allies, getting the U.N. more involved in Iraq, protecting the environment, supporting education, and rolling back those big tax cuts that Bush gave to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, which we sorely need to do in order to start putting a dent in the defecit. He is far and above the better choice. And if you’re into “character” issues (personally, I’m more concerned with policy issues), Kerry is a war hero, whereas Bush shirked his responsibilities during Vietnam.”

"Basically proposes

1)increase the size of the military (albeit temporarily).

2)military family bill of rights exempting hardship duty pay from cuts, broader healthcare coverage, etc"

“As to Kerry’s stance on gay marriage/union - most pertinent is that Kerry is for leaving it under local control.”

85

And, for a different spin on Kerry-

Not really, especially with his (Kerry’s) proposals to increase federal-level education spending, which is typically a local issue. Add to that Kerry’s desire to increase the role of the federal government in health care, his economic proposals, job engineering, etc., it seems more than slightly implausible to describe Kerry as “pro-small government”, even compared to Bush.

See above. Kerry wants to increase taxes, increase spending, increase the role of the federal government in health care, education, etc., etc., and cut the deficit in half. Uh huh.

Judgement call. If your criterion is that Kerry was in Viet Nam, fine. If you want to argue specifically that Kerry would do something different/better than Bush, Kerry has the problem of explaining why he voted in favor of everything Bush has done to date.

Same problem. Kerry needs to present a more plausible strategy for shifting the problem of Iraq to the UN, who either cannot or is unwilling to deal with it.

The idea of energy independence is a good one. Once again, Kerry needs to be clear. Is he talking about increased use of nuclear energy? Bush is ahead of him. Driling in ANWAR? Same. Increased spending on synthetic fuels? We have been doing that for thirty years, with little or nothing to show for it. Maybe Kerry is talking about this “wind farm” crap the hippies are always going on about. Maybe, but ten years? :dubious:

Same problem. Kerry voted in favor of the Patriot Act, and has no plausible alternative, or any real answer when people point out that you need a judge to approve use of anything contained in the Patriot Act.

On the gay marriage/civil unions thing, the distinctions between Kerry and Bush are fairly clear. As with most other such “moral” issues, you make your decision and cast your vote. Fairly clear choice here.

Again, Kerry needs to demonstrate why he would be any better in this regard than Bush, given that Kerry voted in favor of using force against Iraq. Kerry also needs to be careful, since the Republicans can always dig out quotes where he states (when Clinton said it) that Iraq had WMD, military force against her would be justified, etc.

But I doubt Kerry’s choice for veep is going to tell us much. He will pick somebody for political reasons, if he has any sense. We won’t know who he picks for a Cabinet unless and until he wins the election.

Another factor to consider about Kerry is that he is likely to face a Republican Congress. What is his record in actually getting legislation passed, especially during an era where his party does not control the committees? Not good, obviously - Kerry has passed very little by way of significant legislation. LBJ he ain’t. There is very little to show that he will actually be able to bring about any of the changes he supports.

Some other factors to consider regarding our latest JFK.

Regards,
Shodan

86

Spending money on something and making a serious effort to get it done aren’t the same thing. I see no reason to believe Bush has any interest in alternative energy and I think Kerry is talking about making an actual commitment to it.

You could probably say that Kerry’s most significant work has been on investigations and committees, so I don’t think that means he’s a failure as a legislator.

87

This is no more outlandish than most presidents’ calls that we can have our cake and eat it, too. At least increasing the distribution of the talent pool through education spending can help raise incomes, which will result in more taxes collected. If the government just <i>gave</i> me 20,000 for a college education, they’d have made that back in four to five years, but I’ll be working for a lot longer than that. Reagan, of course, lowered taxes and increased the tax take. But I agree that this doesn’t strictly correspond to smaller government.

I’m not sure Kerry wants to shift the burden, as far as I can tell he feels we are responsible to stay the course and not pull out. But he probably feels that rebuilding a country in the image of democracy is not a dictatorial affair.

They do differ here. In ten years, who still wants the PA, Kerry or Bush?

He needs to be careful that he acted consistently and was duped by the administration?

Presidents push for legislation, they usually don’t draft it. This is true of all presidents.

88

I wanted to add another comment to this. If the OP is nonplussed with what the current admin has done, some of which is definitely through congress, this part of the non-Bush case, were it true (and I don’t believe it really is), would strengthen the drive towards non-Bush. If I have problems with what Bush supports, legislatively, then it hardly behooves me to vote for Bush because his platforms could be pushed through, you know what I mean?

89

Thanks to everyone who’s given details and catalogued things for me to read. I wish it hadn’t had all the stuff about how things were presented and all the fussing, but as I kind of said, going along with this was an attempt to see if we could really address things in a way that could lead to understanding what people saw in Kerry.

If I contributed anything to the tone that I was complaining about, I apologize.

I do with that GD had less of a tendency for people to use both feet to jump on points that they wanted to make, though. I would read the forum more.

90

This is an intriguing point. Can you expand on it a little? What, for instance, will Kerry do as president besides spend money to show his commitment.

91

I apologize for sniping at you.

It’s more the threads you’re interested in than a GD thing, though. I love GD to death, it’s just taken time to learn to avoid certain threads that are the very kinds of threads you dislike so much. MHO.

92

I agree that this is one of the more stark differences. Obviously, I don’t agree with your characterization, but that is another matter. :wink:
I would have characterized it more along the lines that Democrats want to give tax breaks to their political cronies while the Republicans want to give tax breaks to those who pay the most taxes. But tomatoe, tomahtoe. In the end, they both simply say what they think will get them the most power.

The essentials of Kerry’s energy plan were brought up. He wants to begin programs to produce environmentally clean, Americanily independant, sources of energy such that America is independant of Mideast oil in 10 years.

His plan seems to includes something he calls the “Energy Security and Conservation Trust Fund”. This is “*capitalized by existing oil and gas royalty revenues and dedicated to accelerating the commercialization of technologies – such as the manufacture of more efficient cars and trucks, the development of biofuels, and the creation of a hydrogen-based energy economy – that will reduce America’s dangerous dependence on oil. *”.

He wants to increase our fuel economy standards to 36 MPH by 2015 and offer tax incentives for car manufacturers to build factories for producing more efficient cars. He also wants to offer incentives for consumer so “buy the vehicles they want”. But In the context of energy efficincy, I’m pretty sure he means tax incentives for buying more fuel efficient cars. Perhaps he is talking about tax incentives to offset the difference in price of some of the hybrid cars out there.

He would like to support the development of a hydrogen-based economy. He suggests that we could use hydrogen technology to reduce oil dependance in the short term, and “Eventually, John Kerry believes that we can build a truly clean and secure economy based on hydrogen – a clean fuel that we can eventually get entirely from renewable sources from our farms, the wind, solar energy, hydropower and geothermal sources.”

He wants to promote the use of more energy efficient heating, lighting, and manufacturing technologies to reduce the energy needs of our homes and workplaces. He promises to reduce the energy consumption of the federal government by 20% by 2020. He suggests that this will save upwards of 8 billion dollars over the next 10 years. This part of his plan includes tax incentives for energy efficient homes and buildings.

He wants to expand the supply of natural gas. This includes monitoring the natural gas suppliers for pricing abuses. He wants to develop new sources of natural gas. Specifically he supports a partnership to develop sources in Canada and Mexico. Additionally, however, he supports tapping natural gas sources in Alaska. He supports a natural gas pipeline. I think it is supposed to go through Canada. He supports developing a domstic natural gas pipe structure to ensure the safety and reliability of the natural gas supply. He wants to improve our capacity to accept liquified natural gas from overseas. He supports using newer gas appliances and technologies to improve the efficiency of our natural gas usage. (That last part did not seem to contain any actual proposals that the government would do. Perhaps someone else knows how he proposes to increase the use of these newer technologies)

He supports a shift in the tax laws surounding energy companies. He seems to be calling for a reversal of the tax breaks currently enjoyed by large energy companies favoring to spend the money towards the development of alternative energy sources (probably those mentioned above). An example would be cut a tax loophole which “allows small-business owners to deduct $100,000 for luxury sport-utility vehicles through a law meant to benefit farmers and others from being penalized by the luxury tax when they purchase pickup trucks and tractors.”

He supports developing “clean coal” energy resources. This seems to amount to devoting more resources to switching older “dirtier” coal fired electrical generating plants to newer cleaner technologies. He calls for spending 10 billion over the next decade. He believes that new coal plants will play an important part in the new Hydrogen economy mentioned above.

All in all, I think Kerry is really sold on the idea that we can develop a totally clean Hydrogen economy some time this century. Many of his energy proposals are tailored with a view to how such an economy would use them. From a certain point of view, his plan looks like the first steps in that direction.

93

Check out the energy policy section of his site. Frankly, I think even the fact that he’s making noise about it will make a difference. Bush paid lip service to it in one speech (and talked about hydrogen cars, which everybody knows won’t be practical for 20 years). Kerry’s talking about raising fuel efficiency and things.

94

Those people aren’t the Republicans’ cronies? :confused: :confused:

95

Check! See my last post. :cool:

<Can I use that smiley?>

96

I didn’t see it on preview. But any excuse to use that smiley is valid. :wink:

97

Cite?

Tomato, tomahto indeed. Who pays the most taxes? That wouldn’t happen to be the wealthy, would it? Which wouldn’t happen to be what I said, would it? :wink: Of course they pay the most taxes; they make the most money. A percentage of a very large number is bigger than a percentage of a small number.

I consider myself pretty cynical, but not that cynical. I believe that sometimes, people actually do believe in principles. Hell, as much as I dislike Bush, I suspect that he really does believe in some of the things he does, however misguided that belief might be.

And that’s a big selling point for me, which is why it was one of the first things I brought up. And I think increasing fuel economy standards is crucial, as well as closing loopholes that in effect force automakers to build gas-guzzling SUVs, and force consumers to buy trucks instead of more efficient cars. Which, BTW, is why I thought this thread isn’t going to do any good, since the OP has already declared his opposition to government regulations. I just don’t see it that way. Every single bit of improvement in the environment and in fuel efficiency has been because of government regulations. Without it, there is simply no incentive for businesses to voluntarily improve these things. And these regulations are rapidly being gutted.

This is a typical republican attitude, and it bugs me. As long as we have relatively cheap oil, alternative fuels aren’t going to be better or cheaper. But we still have to do the research. You guys want to wait 'til we RUN OUT of oil, and THEN start looking for something else. I don’t doubt your statement that we’ve been looking for thirty years - in fact, man has been looking for energy sources for thousands of years. But we need to start making a serious effort, and not give up just because we didn’t right away find something that’s cheaper than oil.

98

Easy. It was only an alternative characterization. Not meant as counter evidence or anyting.

Right. But unless I missed something, sometimes acting on principle means that mostly not believing in principle. Personally, I believe that most people do their best to act on principle. But politicians in particular are more prone to adjust their principles to political expediancies.

Can you expand on this some? I don’t understand what loopholes you are talking about.

Well, this is a littel overbroad, don’t you think? Who plants more trees than any other organization?

Well, to be fair, Shodan said no such thing. If anything, he mentioned that we have been spending lots of money already on energy research.

99

No, I was agreeing with you. It IS a “tomato/tomahto” issue. Your re-wording of it makes no difference. You can re-word it to your heart’s content, but you won’t change the fact that Bush believes in tax relief for the extremely wealthy, while Kerry believes in rolling back that tax relief. Whether you believe the former or the latter to be right or wrong is another issue, but the facts remain the same.

Sure, they’re more prone to, but I don’t think it’s their motivation 100% of the time. Rolling back the tax breaks for the wealthy probably isn’t going to get Kerry any more votes, but I’m sure he believes it’s what is required to move towards balancing the budget.

I can’t give you cites at the moment, but the reason Detroit makes so many pickups and SUVs is because they are subject to lower fuel-efficiency standards than cars. By manufacturing a lot of SUVs and marketing them as replacements for family cars, the auto makers can have a lower aggregate gas-mileage for all their vehicles, since they get to average in the lower “truck” standard. Didn’t you ever wonder why almost nobody makes station-wagons anymore? That’s why.

And surely you know about the other loophole, since you mentioned it specifically in your post:

There was a recent expose on t.v. about this - IIRC it was on 60 Minutes. They provided instances of tax advisors advising people to purchase luxury SUVs instead of cars. In many cases, people who would have bought cars, bought SUVs instead because they got a tax break. That’s just not right.

That’s not a replacement for old-growth. I would hardly call that an “improvement” in the environment. The very nature of business is that it will always do what it can to minimize expenditures and maximize profit. I think it’s naive to believe that businesses are benevolent entities that will always do what’s best for society if left unchecked. That’s not a slam on anyone; it’s just the nature of what a for-profit business is.

But I suppose that, yes, there may have been businesses that helped the environment without being told to, Mr. Literal. :wink:

He didn’t say exactly that, but I wouldn’t say he said ‘no such thing’. He says things like “Maybe Kerry is talking about this “wind farm” crap the hippies are always going on about”. He’s obviously pooh-pooing alternate energy research. My point is that we can’t wait until it’s too late, we have to do the research NOW, and we can’t give up just because it’s not better than oil right now.

And to be fair, Bush has paid lip-service to alternate energy as well, although he has been criticized for putting all his eggs in the hydrogen-car basket. But I’ll be really generous, and say that both candidates are in favor of alternate energy sources. Even with such a generous scenario, it doesn’t make Kerry “far worse” than Bush, as several pundits have claimed. If your criticism of Kerry is that he’s barking up the wrong alternative-energy tree, I can’t see how Bush is any improvement.

100

Fair enough. I was not trying to change the facts. Just the characterization.

I agree. In fact, in some ways, I think the situation has improved over the last several decades.

Oh, come now. I’m willing to believe that Kerry wants to cut those taxes because he honestly thinks it will be a good thing to do. But you can’t seriously believe that doing so will not garner votes. Raising taxes on the wealthy has been a political mainstay of the democratic party for a century at least.

Oh, that’s ok, I believe that the fuiel efficiency rules work this way. I just was not sure what you meant by “force manufacturers…”. I understand your point now, I think.

Yes. I knew about that loophole. The characterization of “forcing manufacturers” threw me off.

I agree. Of course, I think the appropriate solution for this is to remove the tax breaks intended to promote one behavior over another. They will inevitably lead to behaviors which we do not intend. And just for fun, they will inevitably lag behind the sorts of behavior we do intend.

Fair enough.

But you have to be very careful how you do this. Go to Kerry’s site and look through his energy plan. It contains some research for hydrogen power. But it also talks about doing alot to expand our use of natural gas, improve the efficiency of the technology with which we use natural gas and coal, and even opening up new hydrocarbon based energy sources. Unless I am far off in my math*, he plans to spend far more on carbon based energy (although admitedly much less on mideast oil) forms than on hydrogen based.

Well, again, go and look at Kerry’s web site. He does not mention much about anything except hydrocarbons and hydrogen. This quote seems to be the extent: “* Eventually, John Kerry believes that we can build a truly clean and secure economy based on hydrogen – a clean fuel that we can eventually get entirely from renewable sources from our farms, the wind, solar energy, hydropower and geothermal sources.*” Bush’s energy plan reads almost as a rewording of Kerry’s. It “*Provide tax incentives for residential solar and wind energy systems, and for production of electricity from clean and renewable sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and landfill gas. *”

Bush’s site does contain a couple additional things, but given that the most notable are Nuclear power and Fusion research, I don’t really expect to see them on Kerry’s site.

I agree. I hope I have not said such a thing.

Well, one can have any number of opinions about which alternative energy tree to bark up. On could even have the opinion that the impending world energy crisis is far enough away that most of our efforts should be spent on energy efficiency while a more modest investment in many different alternative forms of fuel is made.
*By math, I actuall only mean a quick judgement on the number of times that variaous technological options were mentioned.