The Second Obama-Romney Debate

To hear the Pundits, the contributors, the paid hucksters, you would think that watching that debate was the epitome of brilliant oratory.

I wish to congratulate Candy Crowley for doing a remarkable job within the confines of the format. Each of them would give short shrift to an answer and then recite unrelated prepared speeches which we've all heard many times before. If you were looking for one new thought
you must have been sadly disappointed, as I was.

While Obama certainly won on substance he did not win on style because of the format.

I do not like the Town Hall format, because I do not know how the audience was chosen and how the questioners were chosen. Many years ago when I was President of the Riverdale Community Council we had a School Board election program. In order to make it fair
anyone  could come to the meeting. The questioners were given a  card and told to put their question on it. Then we put all the questions in a large drum. We had different people from the audience pick the questions out of the drum. This way the answerer never knew who was asking the question.

What happened to a real question on Medicare and Medicaid? What happened to a real question on reforming our education system?

The Debate Nobody Won

If I had to give points on Wednesday's presidential debate, I would say Obama 501/2 Romney 491/2.

In football terms Obama scored on a safety, got two points at the end of the first half and spent the rest of the game in prevent defense. He had a shot when Romney said he got the help of the Democrats in Massachusetts when they passed the Health Care law. Obama answered that if the Republican Congress had given him any help we would be
well on the way to recovery . He just threw that line out as if it did not matter.

Romney on the other hand could have made points if he just once explained how he could do what he said his plan was, with a Democratic Senate. What if the Republicans lost the House? This is a possibility.

Too much time was spent on the issue of the small business community and how they make jobs. Ever since I was a small kid, I have heard speeches as to how the small business community makes jobs, and how each and every president takes credit for it.


Actually they do almost nothing in that area. If Congress does not allocate funds for loans there is very little the government can do to help small businesses. When I was 24  I went into my first small business, and was a minimum success. I borrowed $10,000 dollars from the bank that my father guaranteed. When I went for more capital to the Small Business Administration, I was turned down. Many years later when I was president of the Record Dealers Association I wrote President Nixon about the small business problem and he said I should join SCORE or become an ACE counsellor. That was 42 years ago. 

At that time the SBA was in the loan business and indeed we helped small business. Congress then decided to go out of the small business loan business, saying the banks could do a better job. As it turned out, the banks were interested in the mortgage business
and did not do a better job when it came to small business loans. The situation was further aggravated by states and cities taxing small businesses with taxes like the Gross
Receipts Tax. The cities and states do very little to help small businesses.

The president had one other good point when he said he would fight for tax relief for small businesses if the businesses keep the jobs in this country. Except no one really defines what  a small business is. Some businesses would blackmail the government by claiming to take their entire business abroad unless the government gave them tax benefits. That is what big
corporations have done.

Pro-Life or Pro-Constitution

The Republican party proclaims itself the Pro-Life party, which would be fine if their candidates for office were running for jobs in their churches, synagogues or mosques. But they are running for offices in a multi-religious nation and their anti abortion and anti gay marriage positions come not from science and logic but from their interpretations of the Bible. And although the country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we are supposed to be a nation that welcomes all views and separates church and state. Either you are for the tenets of the Constitution or you are not. You can't have it both ways.

Besides, how does being Pro-Life or Pro-Choice create jobs, build roads, correct what ever needs to be corrected with  Health Care, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, the regulation of Wall Street, the banking and housing crisis and all the other problems that are holding America back from being as great as it can be.

Fund Social Security, not Congress's bad investments

Men and women work all their lives, buy government bonds, pay into Social Security, make good investments, and feel secure.

They then hire a financial adviser, who makes some poor investments. On their own
they buy things they really don't need, invest in housing and watch the stock market go bad. 

Then when they're finally ready to retire, they find that they are not as secure as they hoped.


To make matters worse, somewhere along the way Congress became their financial adviser. Congress invested in overpriced warplanes, bridges to nowhere, raises in pay for themselves and their staffs, wars, shoring up the banks etc., and then informs them that Social Security is going broke. 

A different approach to reining in guns

States should have the right to make the purchaser of guns buy insurance for each gun.
The insurance actuaries will devise a cost structure based on caliber, and how many shots the gun is capable of. You want a hunting rifle, that's one price. You want a semi-automatic that's another. The government could then make it against the law to own any new gun without insurance - and you buy the insurance from the legal gun sellers. (You have to have insurance to drive a car because of its potential to do damage, why not a gun?)
No insurance and your gun can be seized and both you and the seller could face fines or jail.
Of course this will be impossible to enforce if only one or two states comply but it should be the duty of the NRA and the "States Rights"enthusiasts to ram this legislation through as they do their own. With the NRA and the insurance lobby working together, any law can be passed.

The NRA's priorities

It has become clear that the NRA, with its massive treasury devoted to keeping itself strong, has been buying votes from our representatives in Congress. It also has a lot of help from the "States Rights" advocates.

The first duty of the NRA and the "States Rights" advocates, however, should be to protect its members and its residents.

All municipalities should have the right to protect their residents without interference from NRA lobbyists. Their argument is that we have enough laws and if enforcement of those laws is what we need to protect ourselves from criminals.

The only problem with that assertion is that many people become criminals when they get their first gun. How could the gun laws on the books protect the students of Columbine or Virginia Tech or Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. What's needed are better ways to keep guns out of the hands of people unable or unwilling to use them safely and wisely.

That's what the NRA and the "States Rights" folks should be concerned about.

The trouble with political talk shows

Host: What do you think we ought to do about global warming?

Republican Analyst: We have to get rid of Obama. I don't believe in global warming, but if I did it would be his fault. When we get a Republican president he will convene a panel of industrialist billionaires to prove global warming is a fraud once and for all.

Democratic Analyst: Jobs, jobs, jobs. Put people to work in the clean energy industry and we will solve our global warming problem and our employment problem. Unfortunately, my Republican colleague understands neither.