Pick a US Presidential Candidate on the Issues
July 6th, 2007 by MarkI recently stumbled across a very interesting web site. It asks you to answer twelve yes or no policy questions relevant to US voters. Questions range from “The federal government should be able to hold a suspected terrorist indefinitely without charging them with a crime (yes or no)” to “Same-sex marriage should be banned (yes or no)”. Next to each question are links to common arguments for and against each stance.
After filling out the quiz, the site ranks each of the politicians running in the primaries for the major parties based on how close their platform is to your own. According to the site, Ron Paul best represents me. That doesn’t surprise me much, since he voted against the Patriot Act, against the Military Commissions Act, against the Iraq war, and he wants to end the war on drugs- all things I’ve written about before. Aside from the issues, I’ve had a great respect for Congressman Paul for a long time. He’s the least corruptible legislator in congress. In decades, he’s never once voted for a bill that would reduce civil liberties, or increase the size of the government, even when his own district would have been the one to profit from new taxes. He just may have the most conservative (in the classical sense) voting record of any legislator in the entire history of the US.
What was disappointing though, was how far most of the candidates’ positions were from my own. Other than Ron Paul, the site said that only Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson’s views have a positive correlation with my own. Most candidates, had a strong negative correlation with my views. Also interesting, is that the front-running two democratic candidates have exactly the same platform in terms of the questions asked, but I feel pretty differently about them. While I’m pretty ambivalent towards Obama, I strongly dislike Clinton. She not only voted for the war in Iraq, but she also played a part in stripping us of our civil liberties by supporting the extension of Patriot Act.
| Candidate | Correlation with my views |
|---|---|
| Ron Paul (R.) | 12 |
| Dennis Kucinich (D.) | 8 |
| Bill Richardson (D.) | 2 |
| John Edwards (D.) | 0 |
| Barack Obama (D.) | -2 |
| Hilary Clinton (D.) | -2 |
| Mike Huckabee (R.) | -6 |
| Mitt Romney (R.) | -6 |
| Rudy Guiliani (R.) | -6 |
| John McCain (R.) | -8 |
Sadly, none of the top four candidates are willing to end the war in the middle east, the war on terror or the war on drugs. I think most voters do want to see things change, but it’s very difficult for an outsider to win in this era of mass media and huge campaign funds. Which candidate’s views are closest to your own?
:
July 6th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Mark, Ron is a racist, anti-abortion shit who talks a lot about States Rights, which every educated person knows is code for racism. He’s closely associated with Reich Christianity, in form of a long friendship with that anti-democracy agitator Dominionist Gary North…. Paul is the antithesis of everything you believe, Mark, AFAIK. I suspect the poll is rigged.
Orcinus has several great reviews of just what a nutcase Paul is.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/search?q=Ron+Paul
Michael
July 6th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Those are some pretty extraordinary claims, Michael. What you linked to is an outright smear piece. Ron Paul has had black colleagues and friends and has denounced racism publicly a number of times. The only major candidate I know of to have made racism comments is Clinton.
States rights is not a code word for racism. It’s an adherence of the constitution.
As for abortion, he doesn’t approve of it, but he doesn’t believe the federal government has any authority to legislate on it either. Similarly, he doesn’t personally approve of drug use, but he’s against criminalizing it.
As for the quiz being “rigged”, check out the questions. I couldn’t find any inaccurate positions given to any of the candidates. Obviously with only 12 questions, it’s a bit crude, but rigged? You’re saying that Attitude Media, an group that tends to favor Democrats rigged their quiz to make a Republican candidate come out on top?
July 6th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
The question on Social Security is appallingly misleading, since the program won’t be in trouble maintaining full benefits for at least the next 50 years, and very modest adjustments will easily keep the system more than flush beyond then.
The real issue is that the Bush administration has used the temporary social security revenue surplus for other purposes (tax cuts, war, etc.), and finds the prospect of “paying back” the borrowed funds somewhat distasteful. There will be a fiscal crunch once the surplus disappears sometime in the next ten years, but that doesn’t mean that social security is bankrupt. It just means it starts drawing on its accumulated reserves as the baby boomers retire. Unless the US government plans to default on its own debt the program has plenty of funding.
July 6th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Are you sure about that, David? From what everybody on social security has told me, is that its benefits are falling further and further below what it takes to meet retiree’s basic needs every year. Since I grew up with my grandparents, that is a lot of people.
I agree with you that adding more funds isn’t the answer. Social security is already 15% of every employee’s wages (unless they are very high-earners). The problem is that congress broke the promise they made two generations ago, when the program was created. Only a small portion of the funds actually go back to the retirees who spent decades funding it. FYI, SS funds are collected separately from taxes, and aren’t used for the war to the best of my knowledge. Other tax revenues are diverted to pay for that madness.
July 6th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Mark, if you dismiss all evidence to the contrary on Paul’s beliefs as being a “smear” piece, then there isn’t anything to discuss. “I love Ron Paul despite ample evidence that he is a extremist, racist, authoritarian nutcase” is a position that can’t be argued with. You’re welcome to show how it is a smear piece, BTW. But I doubt you can.
Oh, and BTW, Paul voted to ban partial birth abortion and wants Roe vs. Wade destroyed. NARAL says he is anti-choice.
And States Rights is always an argument for racism in US political discourse. It is never advocated by politicians who are really anti-racism. As the piece I linked to notes, Ron Paul is strongly supported by the Christian Coalition and other right-wing racist, anti-women groups. They know when one of their own speaks in code. He supports a constitutional amendment allowing school prayer, voted against network nuetrality, and also has high ratings from the anti-immigrant group FAIR. He was one of only two Reps to vote against the hate crime bill that passed 422-2.
In short, he is a right-wing authoritarian shit cloaking his beliefs in a facade of libertarianism.
Michael
July 6th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Micheal, I don’t know what world you’re living on. If a pacifist, who votes against wars of aggression, votes against giving the government greater police powers, says the government has no business telling gays who can and can’t marry (despite his own religious beliefs), calls racism a particularly ugly form of collectivism, co-Sponsors the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana, signs the American Freedom Agenda pledge not to violate Americans’ rights through domestic wiretapping, and talks of resistance to authoritarianism as being true patriotism is a racist “right-wing authoritarian shit”, then I guess we don’t process the media in the same way. I won’t deny that a lot of groups I don’t like support him, but then again, so do a lot of groups that I do like. His support is incredibly wide-spread, including people of every party.
Your contribution to the discussion is welcome, but I’d like to keep it civil, and I don’t want this thread to be all about Ron Paul. Maybe we can do that over the next few posts. This post is about voting on the issues, and Ron Paul isn’t the only guy out there.
Which candidate’s platform best fit your views according to the quiz? Is it the same candidate you actually do support?
July 6th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Admin: Save the Ron Paul stuff for the next post
As for my own politics, at present there is no candidate I support. None of the advocate the really radical changes in environmental and energy policy necessary to get us through the global warming problem. If Gore is telling the truth about his views, then I’d support him. Failing that I’ll vote for Edwards or Obama. Under no account will I vote for H. Clinton.
Michael
July 6th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Mark,
The Social Security Trustees put out a report every year which is available online. Their projections have been politically biased since Bush took office, but at worst still only project a deficit somewhere around 2080. Chances are anyone reading this will be dead by then. A short version:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/03/the_2005_social.html
The looming funding crisis is with Medicare not Social Security, but the two issues are being purposefully conflated by the Republicans for political reasons: there is a LOT of cash in privatizing social security accounts. Conversely, there’s not much money for the private sector in fixing Medicare.
FYI social security funds have been used to fund both the war and Bush’s tax cuts. Social Security funds are made available to Congress as investments in Treasury Bonds. Since this is national debt it cannot be repudiated (anyone in government who even suggested this could technically be tried for treason). So we are seeing a two-point attack on Social Security which is focused on trying to undermine public confidence in a system that works, so that people are not paid back their contributions. The first right wing tact is to make insinuations of a looming “crisis” in social security by focusing on the point at which social security will need to start drawing on its massive reserves and thus stop being a cash cow for Congressional spending, tax-relief for the rich, etc. The second is to follow a fiscal policy so grossly irresponsibly that inflation will eat away at the value of the reserves anyway.
All in all, this site strikes me as nothing more than an attempt to push democratic voters towards a marginal Republican candidate in an effort to prevent them from identifying with people and policies which are socially productive and don’t suck.
July 6th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I ran through it too, and here’s what I got for a result:
However, I think Ron Paul is probably the person I would like best to be President out of the pack. Which is why I read Micheal’s comments very closely, hoping for a source to back them up.
And I was let down with a blogspot.com link. I can find a blogspot.com link to show just about anything you could possibly want, however I went to elementary school where they taught us to evaluate our sources before we used them, so I’ll be avoiding blogspot.com. I know us ‘bloggers’ are real proud of ourselves and our movement to change the world, but we’re bloggers not authors and journalists because we link to things like blogspot.com to use as a ‘evidence’ that ‘every educated person knows talk about state rights is just code for racism.’
I guess I’m glad to be an uneducated fool, because I’d hate to live in a world full of those kinds of educated people.
July 7th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Here’s how I come out:
1. Dennis Kucinich - nyynnynyynyn - 14
2. John Edwards - nyynnyynynny - 14
3. Ron Paul - nynnnnnynnyy - 14
4. Barack Obama - nyynyyynynny - 12
5. Bill Richardson - nyynnyynnnny - 12
6. Hillary Clinton - nyynyyynynny - 12
7. Mike Huckabee - yynyynynnyny - -8
8. Mitt Romney - yynyynynnyny - -8
9. John McCain - yynyyyynnyny - -10
10. Rudy Giuliani - ynnnyyyynyny - -12
I know my views tend to be all over the damn place, but Kucinich, Edwards and Paul in a three-way tie? However, I must clarify: I would never vote for Kucinich as he is bat-shit insane. Likewise, Ron Paul is a trivia question for anyone not named Mark Wilbur, and in any case I would never vote for someone from Houston for President. Of all the candidates listed here, I like Edwards and Richardson the most.
In pre-Reagan times I would have considered myself a ‘Yankee Republican’, but the GOP as it exists today is the most morally reprehensible, venally corrupt and criminally negligent political party in American history. The current field of GOP candidates is indicative of how far the great party of Lincoln has fallen: the poor man is rolling in his tomb. At this point, only Chuck Hagel could interest me.
Interesting points raised in comments above. I come closest to trevelyan on Social Security. The ‘SSA is running out of money’ meme is a pathetic right wing canard. The GOP is intentionally sabotaging it in the ways he illustrates. Want to fix social security? Besides voting out the majority of the GOP, eliminate the payroll tax cap. Problem solved.
I agree with Michael. Mark, your understanding of States Rights, if not cherry-picked, is seriously flawed. ‘States Rights’ most certainly is a sobriquet for racism and a veiled desire for a return to Jim Crow. The co-opting of States Rights has its genesis in the aftermath of the modern civil rights movement beginning with Brown vs. Board of Education, and really sprouted wings after the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It reached full bloom after the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan with the defection of Southern ‘Democrats’. Anyone from the southern US knows exactly what is meant by this term. It has very little to do with Federalism, and everything to do with legalized bigotry.
Fun stuff, and a great post to get people on their soapboxes!
July 7th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Prince Roy said:
Another good point. Due to the cap, SS is an extremely regressive tax.
Travelyan said:
What, exactly, is your idea of “works”? Both social security and the income tax were created during the lives of my grandparents (who I grew up with). I know how much they get from social security, and I know how much of his paycheck my grandfather put into it for decades of his life. Believe me when I say that their SS check is far below what they would have if they’d put the money deducted over those decades in a retirement account, or even just a bank account. Not only that, but it’s far less than what it would take to live the same lifestyle they did when he was a railroad worker. It isn’t even enough to put them above the poverty line! Any retirement system that generates results that bad is broken. Throwing more money into it isn’t the solution.
Well, if the site is rigged against the Democrats, it must have been rigged poorly if it’s suggesting that Darin vote for Obama or Clinton. Also, I’d remind you that the Democrats have not been all that productive. We didn’t vote for them in 2006 because we liked them. We voted for them because we despised Bush. Since they still haven’t impeached him and they merrily funded an increase in the war in Iraq, they aren’t too popular right now. In fact, their approval rate is not only lower than Bush’s, but it’s at an all time low of 14%.
Here is where I am.
July 8th, 2007 at 1:17 am
Mark,
You can get better return on your investments not investing in treasury bonds. Social Security is also a better deal for the poor than the rich, which is usually the way most social insurance programs work out. Your issue seems to be with the entire New Deal idea of social safety programs funded by taxation.
Regardless, my point was that the question in the quiz is dishonest and misleading and spews a right wing talking point about social security that is widly inaccurate. Think for a moment: what exactly gave you the impression that social security was bankrupt?
The right wing is full of shit here. There is always room for improving social programs (allowing limited diversified investments in foreign currency portfolios would be a good step to guard against inflation of the US dollar), but you should read up on what has actually happened in Chile before you buy into Republican rhetoric on this issue, especially as regards their private account solutions.
July 8th, 2007 at 3:44 am
Woah, there. I never said I thought Social Security was bankrupt. What is true, is that rates have been raised significantly over the years. In the beginning, it was only 2%, it was 3% in 1950, 6% a decade later, and now it’s 15.3%. Do retirees really live five times better off of their social security checks now than they did in the 50’s? I think we all know the answer to that.
In truth, Social Security is regressive, it’s wasteful, and it’s a terrible investment for the median worker. Working on a railroad surely couldn’t put his salary into the realm of “rich”, but social security was a terrible investment nonetheless. I suspect that no one is completely satisfied with his or her country’s social programs, but at a minimum I want one that’s a lot smaller and less regressive.
As for going bankrupt, it’s far more likely that retiree benefits will continue to fall further and further below a living income as baby boomers get older, than any actual bankruptcy. One other very real danger is underestimating future life spans. If I were working in the US, I would treat any sort of Social Security check as a pleasant surprise. Maybe Canadians can safely rely on the government to put them through old age, but we can’t. Thus my interest in personal savings.
July 8th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Mark,
The Republicans have been singing the merits of social security privatization along the Chilean model for years. This is sold by portraying social security as a “failed” or “inefficient” investment vehicle (just the sort of rhetoric you are using) instead of what it really is: a progressive form of taxation that helps the poor a lot more than the rich. If you don’t see the need for a social safety net, we’re on different wavelengths.
If you want to improve the rate of return, I’ll agree that there’s space for improvement. But I disagree with your emphasis. There are two conflated problems here. The minor problem is that treasury bonds don’t offer market rates of return. The major problem is that Congress is treating social security surpluses like regular income. Congress pushes up the payroll tax each time the program looks likely to draw on its reserves. This is the major reason you have escalating payroll tax increases. And it’s no coincidence the last major raise was under Greenspan/Reagan in the 1980s.
Diversifying investments sounds fine. But you need to be careful what you are supporting. The reason social security only invests in Treasury Bonds is because of the potential for corruption in the investment process. Treasury Bonds are backed by the US constitution. The future you and the Republicans seem to be advocating is the Chilean model. You should read up on it. What their shift to private accounts resulted in was major short-term profits for current investors (more funding chasing the same number of stocks), massive profits for middlemen “managing” the accounts, and very little long-run return on investment for account holders. Chileans did measurably worse-off under private accounts than they would have under public ones.
A more sophisticated solution is to put Social Security surpluses in a “lock-box” - and force Congress to finance additional tax cuts or other spending without drawing on social security surpluses. This was part of Al Gore’s platform in 2000. The Republicans opposed it because their budget called for using the social security surplus to fund tax cuts. You don’t get much more hostile to labour than using payroll taxes to fund income tax cuts to the top 1%. This is a redistribution of income from poor to rich.
As far as the raising of the rates go, the real irony of things like the Greenspan rate increase is that it put Social Security in excellent fiscal health. Read the annual Trustee reports and you can see for yourself that they need to make incredibly pessimistic assumptions about social trends (immigration, mortality, retirement ages) to justify forecasting a deficit SEVENTY years in the future. As Prince Roy mentioned above, eliminating the payroll tax cap would do it. Another approach would be eliminating the capital gains exception (capital gains being a form of income).
July 8th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
I’m not using “rhetoric”. I gave you a real world example from my own family, which is not wealthy in the least. My challenge for you is to find anyone whose social retirement benefits match what they had to pay for the program in inflation adjusted terms.
I agree with this, and quite a bit of what you’ve written completely. I don’t think social security is a progressive tax as you called it, but removing the exemption would fix that problem. However, regardless of whether or not the exemption is removed, Social Security is far too large. That does have economic costs. The “lock-box” is a great idea. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect politicians to keep their hands off of that much money after it’s brought in, though. I honestly don’t think the majority can do it.
The main difference in our opinion is that your solutions all involve making the government even bigger by increasing taxes to cover shortfalls, while mine all involve reducing the size of the government so that less taxation is required to keep it running.
July 9th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Ron Paul supported a constitutional amendment? What planet are you living on? Ron Paul is the most tireless defender of the constitution there is. He voted against the network neutrality bill because he the federal government has no constitutional authority to make that sort of legislation, and he doesn’t want to encourage government regulation of the internet. His immigration policy is perfectly rational. Welcome legal immigrants but don’t subsidize illegal ones, because when you subsidize something then you get more of it.
Calling him racist is just slander. That “hate crime bill” you mentioned is in direct violation of the first amendment. I don’t want to ban gay marriage and Ron Paul voted against banning it, too. But under that “hate crime bill”, people could be fined or even face jail time for speaking critically of homosexuality, or mentioning unfortunate truths about black America. Most politicians realized that it would be bad for their careers to vote against the bill even if it was wrong, and so they caved right in… just like they did on Iraq.
As a minority myself, I can say that if you really care about racism, you’ll elect somebody who will stop filling up our prisons with black, non-violent drug users.
November 4th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
How do I take the test/poll/qiuz whatever it is? I tried clicking on a nuber of links but just got page not found. I’d really like to take it because it will save me time in determining who to vote for. I normally go thru the same process, but would sure like to use somebody else work already done for me.
November 4th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
It looks like they’ve taken it down. Maybe I should take down this post, too, so it doesn’t waste anyone else’s time.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Ron Paul is by leaps and bounds the best candidate running. His only problem is that American citizens are gullable and uniformed. They flock like sheep to the candidates the media decides are the front runners, and all the others fall by the waist side, in votes, fundraising and support. Thanfully, Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands by his convictions and doesn’t pander to special interests, in addition to having the stongest message of all: FREEDOM, which has, in of itself, engaged the youth and created a large following through the internet. Anyone who objects to the majority of Ron Paul’s stances and claims to be republican is blind; the other candidates that do are blind with their hunger for power. Paul is the sole Republican on the stage of the Republican debates, the rest are Neo-Cons more conscerned with playing on the message of fear in order to get the vote of the Republican voters who believe the homosexuals, those for pro-choice, and liberals are responsible for 9/11. Any way, vote Ron Paul