Obamarama Hits Austin

Presidential candidate, Illinois senator and mainstream media darling Barack Obama entertained over 3,000 people at The Backyard in Austin on November 17. While turnout was nowhere near that of Senator Obama’s performance at Auditorium Shores last February, the crowd’s intensity and vigor remained.

Sen. Obama launched his speech into applause and cheers by reminding everyone that in next year’s presidential election, “the name ‘George W. Bush’ will not be on the ballot.”

He announced the end of Scooter Libby justice and Karl Rove politics, allowing for a revolutionary White House. By highlighting the negatives of wiretapping and Katrina inadequacies, Sen. Obama reaffirmed his distance from President Bush. He also differentiated himself from other candidates by committing to a new style of politics and campaign strategy.

“Telling people what we think they want to hear rather than what they need to hear just won’t do,” Obama challenged his Democratic contenders.

Unfortunately, as is the case with most politicians, no matter how new blood they are, Obama’s speech fell trap to resembling a political pep rally rather than talking about the very issues on which he claimed his rivals wouldn’t elaborate.

Key among debated domestic policies is health care.

“I’m tired of talking about the outrage of 47 million Americans without health care, and I want to start doing something about it,” Obama proclaimed. He continued by guaranteeing every American a health insurance plan comparable to those enjoyed by members of Congress. However, he failed to mention any specifics.

In a document titled Barack Obama’s Plan for a Healthy America (available for viewing on his Web site, BarackObama.com), Obama highlights his strategy for universal health care and claims that his plan will “save a typical American family up to $2,500 every year on medical expenditures.”

Obama’s plan includes subsidizing families who need health care through federal funds, requiring hospitals and providers to submit information to federal bureaucrats concerning their methods and practices and implementing a national health insurance exchange. Additionally, he would force insurers to charge premiums based on income level of customers rather than health needs and mandate employers who don’t cover their workers substantially to pay a portion of payroll to the national health program. Other intrusions include more federal control over public schools to decrease obesity and increase nutrition.

While the plan barely makes a dent in pockets of larger corporations, those most likely to suffer are the smaller business owners who cannot afford to provide a sizeable amount of health care to employees. Obama makes the argument that each business will be able to provide health insurance coverage because costs will decrease. However, Sen. Obama is relying on tax revenue and artificial subsidies to keep prices low.

While Obama continually states that Americans need to take responsibility for themselves, his plan contradicts his professing self-reliance by promoting an ‘Obama knows best’ mindset – or even worse, ‘government knows best.’ Such extensive federal oversight into privacy and market intervention goes well beyond the boundaries of government; of course, the current health care system isn’t exactly doing a great job of allowing the private sector to flex its capability either.

And, of course, as is the case with most politicians, Sen. Obama forgot to mention – both in his speech Saturday afternoon and in his health care plan – the cost of his universal health care. According to the campaign office, the Obama Plan ranges between $50-65 billion dollars per year. How will we pay for it? Sen. Obama says he will let the Bush tax cuts expire for those individuals earning $250,000 or more.

The presidential hopeful’s approach is similar to many other universal health care plans that involve taking money from American citizens through taxes and having the government manage these additional revenues to pay the salaries of its bureaucrats first and health care second.

After evaluating and criticizing current tenets of the Democratic Party, Sen. Obama benevolently vowed to pay teachers higher salaries during his first term but did not explain where the money would come from.

Obama shifted quickly from education to the foreign policy and war powers and immediately differentiated himself from other major Democratic rivals: “I’m tired of Democrats thinking that the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, act and vote like George Bush Republicans.”

Commendable within his speech was Obama’s desire to restore habeas corpus, which was essentially suspended by the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – a bill that passed both houses of Congress in September 2006 and a bill for which Sen. Obama voted against.

Sen. Obama hardly spent any time on the Iraq occupation. He mentioned only that he would bring the troops home within 16 months. He did not elaborate on the costs involved and what the result of his Iraq plan would be.

Unfortunately for Obama, his support might have increased greatly had he explained his plan for getting out of Iraq. His Web site provides a detailed document similar to his health care plan, titled Barack Obama: Turning the Page in Iraq, which describes the shortcomings of current strategies in Iraq, such as the recent troop surge.

Additionally, Obama highlights that removing American troops is the best way to improve our national security and secure Iraqi independence, but he doesn’t stop there. In addition to halting US assistance to different sects, Obama outlines a constitutional convention headed by the UN, for Iraqi leaders “to develop a more sustainable balance between Baghdad’s central authority and provincial governments.”

And finally, Sen. Obama includes in his plan a troop surge to the long-forgotten Afghanistan, to correctly fight the Taliban and capture the man responsible for 9/11.

While his speech excited the crowd, Sen. Obama did not focus on the specifics concerning the two important topics of health care and the Iraq occupation. Instead, he told the audience what it wanted to hear – watered down political euphemisms with the gift of good intentions, leaving his revolutionary campaign strategy in the dust.

Real ID Act: Are You for Real?

On May 11, 2005, under the counsel of the 9/11 Commission, President Bush signed into law the Real ID Act – a bill that may ultimately jeopardize the American citizen’s right to privacy, and waste billions of taxpayer dollars. The Real ID Act is actually part of a larger bill entitled “Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005,” which was originally meant to obstruct terrorism.

Chiefly, the Real ID Act reforms border control and establishes national criterion for state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards. The bill also prohibits the federal government from accepting state-issued identification for any official federal purpose. In other words, this new ID card will be necessary for one to gain employment, fly on an airplane, open a bank account and enter a federal building.

Thus, it will require every American to hold an identification card, and it will centralize every citizen’s personal information into a national database. For now, the Real ID Act only requires that ID cards have one’s full legal name, signature, date of birth, sex, driver’s license number and residence, but there has been discussion about whether or not the federal government should mandate that states put additional information into the federal database, such as a citizen’s driving record and firearms registrations.

Most supporters of this bill view it as a measure against terrorism rather than as an anti-immigration bill. Its fan base is primarily mainstream Republican. According to advocates, the Real ID will secure our borders and prevent terrorist infiltration. It will also assist the federal government in keeping tabs on potential terrorists.

Drawbacks of the Real ID Act are many, but most are centered on privacy and cost issues. Creating a national database that joins all of the states’ information about its citizens will make every American more vulnerable to identity theft. Not only identity theft in the realm of high tech computer hack jobs into government databases, but now your information could potentially become readily available to any organization, retailer, employer or anyone else who requests your driver’s license or social security number – not to mention the government.

This law’s ratification has officially moved America closer to a “show us your papers,” statist society. The fourth amendment provides us freedom from unreasonable search and seizure; this right should extend into the digital age also. No person is above the fourth amendment, not even in the name of Homeland Security.

The Real ID Act is a largely un-funded federal mandate. Although Congress plans to give $40 million to states to help implement this new system, it’s hardly a drop in the bucket.

“When we know it [the cost] is going to be around $11 billion [nationally], to offer $40 million is almost an insult,” declared Texas state senator Leticia Vande Putte.

In Texas alone, start-up costs to pay for new technology and verification systems are around $142.6 million, with annual expenses of about $67 million. Naturally, taxpayers are expected to pick up the slack.

Many people, politicians and citizens alike, are put off by the shear inconvenience of the law. If this law isn’t repealed, then over the next two years 12 million Texans will have to renew their licenses and state ID cards. In this way, the law puts a huge burden on local and state governments. Furthermore, insufficient media coverage about the impending change almost guarantees a flood of Texans into DPS’s in late 2009.

According to Chief Judy Brown of the Driver’s License Division of Texas, “The Department [of Public Safety] and its employees will face implementation challenges with legislative, operational, and fiscal limitations.”

No doubt the Real ID Act is going to be a bureaucratic nightmare.

Because the Real ID license would only be available to those with a social security number, obtaining a driver’s license as a non-citizen would be near impossible. Legal and illegal aliens who will presumably still drive, will then drive unregulated and without liability insurance.

Due to its unpopular infringement of privacy and its cost, several states have passed legislation to oppose the Real ID Act – including Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington.

In our own state, we have Congress members on all sides of the issue, but the majority is in favor of the Real ID; it’s unlikely that Texas legislators will move to reject this law or refuse its implementation. Most politicians in Texas are so in favor of the law that ten Texas Republican representatives including Gohmert, Hall, Neugebauer, Poe, McCaul, Johnson, Granger, Carter, Barton and our own Lamar Smith actually cosponsored the bill on its way through the House.

Neugebauer, happy to see it pass, says it will increase border security and in turn national security. Smith, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee was also a promoter of the Real ID Act stating, “It makes the country safer and protects the American people from terrorists who would use the most common form of ID as cover.”

Not all Texas representatives are so sure. Both Republican representatives Jackson-Lee and Gonzalez were cosponsors of a bill that would repeal the Real ID Act.

Texas state senator Craig Estes expressed a similar viewpoint: “While I support efforts to enhance our national security, it should not come at the loss of state sovereignty and the undue burden on our citizens.”

Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has also remained adamant about the law since its conception. “In reality, this bill is a Trojan horse,” said Paul in 2005. “It pretends to offer desperately needed border control in order to stampede Americans into sacrificing what is uniquely American: our constitutionally protected liberty.”

-Lauren King