If you want to talk economic security, find a thread about economic security or start one yourself.

Alternatively, wait for an Open Thread and post your concerns there.

In response to your comment, however, you’re the one missing the point. But if you want an explanation of why, follow the above advice.

• JP

He says he plans to add $50Bn to the economy. Where do you think that money will come from? And if you believe that only the $200K plus family will get hit you are deluded.

There are plenty of diaries here that can go into great detail of how Obama’s policies are bad for Americans. But I am sure that as a 1 Hour moby you’re not interested in what we say.

You are misleading “sockscrash” by saying Obama would raise her taxes. By reading her post you can safely assume she makes less then $200,000 as a single woman. If she did make more then that can you tell me how much her tax rate would increase by?

In actuality if she is making less then $200,000 as a single person she would get more money back then she would have this year under Bush’s tax cuts.

The only problem is that history proves since Reagan this has not been the case. Republicans have not been fiscally conservative, and government actually grew while they were in office and so did the deficit. It grew under Carter as well but not even close to the astronomical levels of Reagan, and the Bush’s. The principles that the Republican party claim to have inspire me, but as they say, actions speak louder then words, and I can’t detect any sign of life. Bush and McCain don’t seem to posses what true Republicans believe in. For the better part of 26 years McCain was not a traditional Republican by any measure. Recently he has changed to appeal to the base. There is a difference between capaigning and governing and McCain knows this. Get into the White House and he will be back to the maverick that turned off so many true conservatives. Bush did the same thing and I cannot take the chance that McCain might turn his back on his pledges.

The reason that I as a libertarian is supporting a democrat is that I believe the country needs someone with a plan to bring about stability. Cutting taxes when we are in a deficit will not help. How will cutting taxes, the income to an underfunded government which pays for the military, infrastructure, and many other aspects that a free market need to flourish help? When the problem is so large, the market cannot fix itself without a counter balance.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this entry. You did not give Palin a pass just because she might help the Republicans win office. You looked at her policies with an objective eye. I really applaud that. Many blogs are on the polar opposite of positions. I do not agree that the McCain ticket is something I can trust. Her main standing point of the bridge to nowhere, showing she is a maverick against wasteful spending, has already turned out to be a faux. She only rescinded her position when she found out the federal government would not completely fund it.

Every morning I wake up upset thinking that McCain would feel comfortable putting the country in the hands of someone that he only saw as useful to get elected and not lead with. If anyone argues that a man that met this woman once before deciding on her believes she can help him lead, then that someone is a person I would rather not waste my time on. Thank you for the great read.

atleast I am hearing that the Democrats can feel my pain.

Oh you made me laugh. Obama is proposing higher tax rates, the potential to appoint SCOTUS judges that would make the Warren court look positively conservative, and programs that will make the Carter years look good.

But it’s cool, cause anyone who has to qualify that they are willing to abandon the political ideals over just the VP selection…… well, we call that a moby.

But since I suspect you are being insincere, this is all a moot point.

Personally, I don’t like the concept, but I didn’t ask for a perfect pick, and after trying to prepare myself for settling for something less and then Palin comes roaring in with all the good things she does bring to the table, I’m extremely pleased with her selection.

Regarding oil, its just better to let the market correct itself whether you are talking about ipods, cans of beans, or barrels of oil. In the end, people cut back on driving, oil supplies bulged at the seams, demand from refineries dropped leaving ships full of oil waiting to be unloaded, the dollar plummeted which ate away profit values to the oil exporters and so just about everybody suffered except the speculators. I sure hope they enjoyed their tidy little profit, it was certainly at our expense.

How such a thing can be avoided? I don’t see a legal solution. The only weapon we have to fight back with is the gas pedal. When we stopped driving at the drop of a hat, the bubble burst and prices plummeted. We do have the power to make it stop.

I am as much a free trader as anyone, But, I take exception to the characterization that anyone who suggests that trying to keep jobs in this country by changing tax laws to encourage companies to keep them here as being “protectionist”… misses the point. Keeping as many jobs as we can here and/or creating new ones has nothing to do with free trade nor protectionism… it has everything to do with national security from an economic standpoint. We are fast becoming a nation of consumers only. The more we keep going down the road of not actually producing anything, the more we imperil ourselves.

This election will be won or lost on economic security issues. Despite what the politicians (on both sides of the aisle) believe of us, the American people are not stupid. The American people sense that our economic national security is being chipped away by unbridled corporate special interests. I think both McCain and Palin understand this. They understand that there is a balance to be struck between free trade and national economic security.

Biden voted against the first Gulf War. He even voted against the Alaskan pipeline that has brought us billions of barrels of oil. In Joe Biden’s world; Saddam would be in Kuwait; and likely in Saudi Arabia. Imagine our oil supply issues without the pipeline.

It’s more about effectiveness and judgment than experience.

NOW compare the 2 tickets.

Furthermore it has to be stated she is the ONLY one running who has any actual executive experience.

Finally, identity politics are much less of a factor IMO as the fact that she brings a lot of reluctant conservative like me into the fold. I like her reform mindedness, and I very much like her western state individualistic ideals.

The tax in question isn’t a windfall profits tax. It wasn’t designed based on a perception that one element of society was reaping a windfall that needs to be seized and re-distributed (which is Barack Obama’s plan).

Rather, this is a severance tax. You may be a far better tax lawyer than I am — that’s likely if you have any expertise in tax law at all! — but I did have occasion a few years ago to learn something about severance taxes. I was representing Conoco in a lawsuit against Mobil involving jointly owned oil and gas leases in Idaho. The contract between them made one kind of provision for sharing the expense of paying “property taxes,” and a different kind of provision for “income taxes.” So the question arose whether the Idaho severance tax was a “property tax” or an “income tax.” The answer was “property tax,” because severance taxes are, by their nature, a tax on certain types of property — typically subsurface oil, gas, and minerals — that cannot be accurately measured for taxation purposes until they’re produced. Once they’re produced, however, they’re typically carted off outside the state’s borders, so traditional forms of property tax don’t capture them in the state’s tax base. Severance taxes therefore are imposed on those substances when they’re produced, and they’re typically calculated based on the market value when produced.

Sarah Palin didn’t pass a new type of tax at all. Alaska, like most oil-producing states, had long had a severance tax. But the rate for Alaska’s pre-existing severance tax, 22.5%, had been set in closed-door negotiations between the energy companies who rule the roost in Alaska (ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and BP) and an ethically challenged governor and legislature. One of Sarah Palin’s campaign planks when she ran against that governor (Frank Murkowski) was that she would re-visit that entire subject, and replace it with a new tax that was the product of transparent negotiations and discussions fully disinfected by the sunlight of publicity. As a result, the new structure that the legislature passed and that she signed drew wide support from both Republicans and Democrats.

So how much of a tax increase is it, compared to what went before? From 22.5%, it went up to 25%. That’s a very modest, almost symbolic, increase.

The Alaska severance tax was previously progressive, and it became slightly more progressive. Under Palin, the additional tax imposed above the base rate went from 0.25% on proceeds above $30/bbl up to 0.4% — again, hardly a confiscatory increase! On proceeds above $92.50/bbl, the rate drops back down to 0.1%, which was actually a tax reduction compared to what had gone before, and a very significant one when oil is up in the $130-$140/bbl range.

My main source for this information is one with which you’re probably familiar, cchtaxgroup.com. I’ve previously posted on this at my own blog, here and here. By no stretch of the imagination is Sarah Palin engaged in class warfare, nor is she demonizing energy companies. Rather, she’s incentivizing them, and setting them up at competitive purposes against one another for the benefit of the taxpaying public. I think she’s done a job that any committed conservative can, and should, applaud. I hope you’ll consider revising your own views in light of these additional facts.

Republicans aren’t doing the best job defend her “experience”.

I would suggest changing the word defend to the word define. Pej and Zoot both make a rational point that Palin’s experience credentials are slim to non-existent when it comes to dealing with other countries.

My only counter argument on this point is to say that no one who is not now or at any time been a Pres., VP, or major Cabinet Sec’y has this type of experience.

The political elites in DC define experience by spending time and energy going to forums and network talk shows talking.

Republicans can define her “experience” by informing the public of her judgements. Gov. Palin had the good judgement when she took a trip to Germany to visit the Landestuhl Military Hospital instead of cancel like Sen Obama did. Sarah Palin had the good judgement to fight corruption in the Alaska Republican Party instead of going along with corruption in the Illinois Democratic Party like Obama did.