Nov 05, 08 02:38 am — I'll tell you what mine are.

The war in Iraq. Not a dman thing will change. There's already what ammounts to an exit schedule, and the differenc between it and what he has promised isn't worth owing favors over.

The war in Afghanistan will be ramped up enough to keep the troops busy and away form the voting booth for at least 2 more years.

The economy will be screwed, or foreign relations will be, or quite possibly both. He wants to tax corporations out the ass and punish them for conducting business outside of the country. The only way to prevent them from just taking their corporations to a nation that is a tax haven and operate completley outside the country is to impliment trade penalties upon foreign nations. I don't see congress standing in the way of increasing taxes. I think it will be the pinnacle of stupid because odds are that in the face of an exodus, they won't rethink their policies, but rather bribe companies to stay. Thus negating revenue increwase from existing companies, but creating a HUGE barrier to entry for new business and a nasty chilling effect.

His green initiative will pretty much simply result in screwing the consumer with artifically inflated energy prices that do nothing to actually promote renewable energy. His plans to replace exisitng "dirty" utilities with clean utilities was never going to create jobs in the first place, and the attempts to force it to happen through punitive measures will probably break down in the face of the DNC wanting to keep control of congress in 2 years. What we will undoubtedly see is federally implimented carbon credits that are easily manipulated to trade damaging non-carbon pollution for money. It'll also be an excuse to funnel some money into US auto manufacturers for little benefit, but it'll keep union bosses form being lynched for a few more years.

Health care will be bad no matter how you slice it. Nobody can afford to impliment his plan. Unfortunately, you have had a lot of US manufacturing making deals where the unions take over health care costs for a buyout price. That price can't cover the bill, and you are going to see a lot of pensions getting raided in the interim. Pensions being raided to pay the bills is never good, even if you hate unions. Probably the most catastrophic fallout will be that most every state in the union that could continue crap accounting practices with their underfunded state pensions will now have their accounting called to task rather than be able to allocate budget that paid for healthcare to the task of closing the gap they cause by underfunding their pensiosn in previous years. Pretty much every state in the union has this problem, and is a factor in play that wasn't even considered by either side.

Education - He stands a decent chance of freeing up more money for collge loans and grants if he plays politics properly and really means it. Due to the budget issues, it'll be less grants and tax rebates, and more loans that have to be repayed eventually. I'm sure no child left behind will be revisited, but I'm pretty certain that it won't remove element of the lowest common denominator dragging all the other students with them. I doubt his plans to funnel money into specific majors will work very well. He might be able to steer DoD research funding to public institutions though, but by and large it won't help lower tuition one bit. University budgets just don't work that way. The most dangerous facet is his college serve plan. If he does manage to redirect work study money to on campus activism rather than actual necessary on-campus labor, the cost of tuition will rise significantly as those jobs will no longer be subsidized and returning dollars in the form of tuition and fees. It will disrupt what is a symbiotic relaitonship in order to favor activism.

Gun control - His plank went form local bans are constitutional and lets reinstate the assault weapons ban to touting childproof guns (i.e. smartguns, which is code for banning all handguns except some unobtainable pieces of junk that don't work), and repealing the thiart amendment, which implies national registration of guns/gunowners. Ples his web site added the catch all "common sense" caluse, which means get as stupid as you can. I'm more certain than ever that we will se something unfunded and punitive when he has a horribly unproductive and quite posisbly disheartening first 100 days.

Homeland securrity - Just call it pork. REd states wil be punished, and their share of the pork wil be funneled to blue states. East coast, west coast, and the great lakes region. Likely focusing solely on ports and shipping as primary "risks" to determine distribution. Likely allocating funds to privatized firms involved with ports. It'll be kcikbacks to blue states and the unions that run the ports.


Executive orders - Clinton rewrote the book on them. I expect each presidency to continue to abuse them to a greater degree, and I don't expect obama to be an exception.

Pork - it will flow heavily. It wil flow towards extremely left leaning activist groups much the way Bush pushed the faith based bullshit. Half his campaing planks are this. Promise neighborhoods, business incubators, community development financial institutions, etc. They are all targeted at a very limited number of places, and deal in quantities that won't make a difference, but are huge kickbacks to activists in those areas.

He'll probably get his minimum wage hike, but probably won't get it pegged to inflation. It'll take a bite out of service industry employment and contribute to increased unemployment numbers.

LEss ecrecy and more accountability. I think in part he willa ctually attempt to deliver on this. Right up until he starts being shocked by the level of criticism it generates. That is unless 3rd parties intervene. We get a 9-11 repeat on US soil, the lockdown on info isn't going to let up at all.


PAtent and copyright reform, media consolidation reversal, prtoecting children online, etc. Read between the lines. It reads kiss big media's ass, and even more importantly big telco's. You the consumer will be getting screwed all the way from DRM to bandwidth caps to being able to DVR TV shows. They are big donors, they will be viewed as a "growing", "high-tech" industry that needs ot be protected. Unfortunately the government is shit at understanding technology and long range implications, and the industry really only wants to be protected form consumers getting a fair shake.

Agriculture - He may actually be able to curtail farm subsidies to big agriculture. Unfortunately that will not be a good thing fo everyone's grocery bills, nore will it be a good thing for on of Americas leading industries and exports. Agricultural subsidies are repugnant, but have been used as a method of back door regulation over the industry. I also think he grossly underestimates the degree of abuse by "family farmers."

War on drugs - expect it to get worse. Meth will likely be the poster child. You might actually see penalties based on drug scheduling become more uniform and with fewer exceptions. But mostly I think it will idle along with some spin on marketing it.

Illegal immigration - don't expect anything good to be done. his administration has no plan, and it is a geographically devicive enough issue that party lines won't matter much in congress. So it will be a bunch of lip service on both sides of the issue with no real progres anywhere.

Fiscal responsibility - He could learn to walk on water. Pay as you go isn't coming back no matter how much eh wants. He also won't be able to miracle government efficiency into being either. Between payback to blue states, and grand plans, don't expect the deficit spending to slow down much at all.

military - No matter how you slice it, the military is going to get screwed on budget. PRobably the biggest political issue will be Obama wanting to redefine the missile shield. This will screw over all the former warsawy pact nations that don't want to go back and cuddle up to mother russia. This will not be the intention of it, and it will be bad.