Edwards on Today

Well its freezing cold here in Western New York, and this is my first real blog entry. I’ve been meaning to start a blog for some time, but procrastination has held me in her cold cruel grip for several months. Now that I’ve broken free I’ll begin my foray into internet blogging.

First of all, I have to admit that I’m an International Politics major (with a history minor) from Penn State. So many of my pointless ramblings will be concerning politics and history. This morning I was watching the Today Show on NBC and the women who replaced Katie Couric interviewed presidential hopeful John Edwards. Ignoring the fact that he almost shares the same name as John “The Biggest Douche in the Universe” Edward, I still can’t stand the guy’s positions on most of the major issues. On the show he was touting his scheme for Universal Health Care and his views on the Iraq War.

Health Care: Once again a liberal Democrat came out in favor of Universal Health Care…yawn. He wants to cover every American whether they want to be covered or not. This of course means price controls = corporate subsidies and/or mandated price fixing. So we get more corporate welfare and the bonus of fewer investments in new drugs as prices are set at fixed levels. Edwards also called for mandatory health insurance, and while this may force some insurance companies to offer low rate coverage low income people (Seems a little nanny-state to me, but I’ll wait and see.), he also wants government subsidies/aide which will of course drive prices back up. Sure the low income people may not see these hidden price increases but middle class tax payers sure will. And finally, he wants employers to foot more of the health care bill for their employees. Just ask the thousands of people laid off from Ford and GM if they want companies to take on yet more health care related debt. It’s nice that Mr. Edwards can make the bold cognitive move towards socialism while Canada and Great Britain are trying to step back from their socialized health care adventures. Does Health Care need fixing in this country? Yes! But socialism is not the way to go. Free markets will do a better job at correcting the problems if left alone with less government interference.

Iraq: Just so you know with regards to Iraq, I say…SURGE ON!! Edwards like many of the other Democratic hopefuls, want to halt spending on the war or put caps on troop levels. Just as an aside, back in the mid-1990s I supported President Clinton when he issued a formal apology to African-Americans for America’s support of slavery. Slavery was for over eighty years the official policy of the United States government. Even though no one still alive had been a slave or owned one, the US government had not changed. Thus the US government, with Clinton as its spokesperson, owed the ancestors of slavery an apology. A similar situation now holds for Iraq. Even if a Democrat wins in 2008 the US government owes it to the people of Iraq to fix the boondoggle we have created. If I had been a Congressman in 2003 would I have voted to authorize for in Iraq? Yes, because nearly every intelligence agency in the western world believed Saddam had WMDs and only the use of force would get him to comply to UN resolutions. But the war was handled so poorly from the beginning (inept coalition building, not enough troops, let the Iraqi army disperse with their weapons, no protection of antiquities from looters, didn’t finish off al-Sadr when we first had the chance…the list of mistakes is exhausting) that the administration doomed it to failure from the start. BUT, this doesn’t lessen our responsibility to the people of Iraq, in fact we now must bear an even greater burden. In foreign policy compassion and honor often must be forgotten, but not when we invaded the country while claiming to be liberators.

So overall you can safely say that I’m not going to be voting for John Edwards. Since he almost certainly won’t make it through the primaries I guess that doesn’t matter since I’m a registered Republican (I’m not a Bush fan, but I’m hoping we can take the party of Abraham Lincoln back to its roots).