In order for the 'blog-ee" to understand where I am
coming from, I will discuss where I stand politically. I am a
registered independent, however, due to the current administration and
the after-effects of the Gingrich Revolution, the winds of decisiveness
are leaning me towards the left. I believe when the Executive branch
and Congress are split, compromises will inevitably occur with a
conclusion that will benefit a majority of Americans. Rubber-stamp
congresses are not good, in my opinion, whether if they are controlled
by either party. The term radical conservative/democrat is subjective
and must be placed in the context of time (implicitly discussed in the
chapter titled Values).

The issue I would like to discuss
is one which takes up most of the chapter titled Opportunity: taxes,
economics, and education, as well as its effects on the middle or lower
class. Overall, he seems to be taking the middle ground on most of the
topics he discussed, and if he doesn't, he just falls in line with the
rest of the Democratic candidates. So my question is, what makes Mr.
Obama stand out from the rest?

With further thought and reading
in between the lines, it seems like he is trying to please everyone, as
he stated and paraphrased JFK on page 129, that when voting aye or nay,
many people will be left disappointed either way. As it is said "When
you try to please everyone you generally please no one"

For
instance, he mentions that globalization has caused many Americans to
lose jobs due to outsourcing to mainly China and India. But then on the
subsequent pages he states the positive effects of how globalization
has brought significant benefits to American consumers by increasing
the purchasing power of the middle and lower classes by offering
quality goods at lowered prices.
On page 144, Senator Obama begins
to side with Union workers that have had their production plant
shutdown and outsourced by promising to try to 'amend the tax code to
eliminate tax breaks for companies who shifted operations offshore'.
However, on page 114 he describes that he now spent more time with
'people of means' that are the 'top 1% of the income scale' that write
him checks to finance his campaign. He continues by saying that the
consequence of his fund-raising has caused him to become more like the
wealthy donors he met. Is he a two-face that makes empty promises? I
doubt his campaign contributors will be happy if he tried his hardest
to to stop George Bush's tax cuts on their income bracket, and his
attempts to reform estate taxes.

The positives and negatives of outsourcing is widely debated by
economists
today. However, if one examines the GDP of the recent decades, the
United States has had an increase due to the fact that services
(financial advice, lawyer consultation, accounting, haircuts) has
become a larger percentage of the GDP. The economic expansion of the
mid-90's in America were in large part due to information technology
advances. So what is my point! On page 152, Obama stated that Lincoln
knew that the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society
was disrupting lives and destroying communities, so 'Lincoln embarked
on a series of policies' and subsequently President Lincoln used the
power of the government to ease the transition process through
education and the Homestead Act of 1862.
So now we are in the
process of transitioning from an industrial society towards an
informational society based on services, and his best solution is to
take tax benefits away from Corporations?
The American government
can regulate and slow down globalization but in following with world
trends, it won't stop it, so I believe we must find an alternate
solution (similar to the argument with music and video companies suing
Youtube over copyright infrigment; yes Viacom might win a few cases
here and there but in the grand scheme, creative destruction will take
over and the old-fashioned style of doing things will be outsourced to
the past. One must innovate to stay alive in the business world -- what
worked yesterday may not work today.

My final issue in this blog
post is his position on education. I, being the product of New York and
Florida public education, am in favor of education reform. In terms of
the specific issue in education reform, I am not too concerned with the
finance aspect, but more specifically the methods and topics the
students are taught K-12.
I extremely disagree with Obama's viewpoint on page 161:

"The single most important factor in determining a student's achievement [is] the child's teacher."

The
SINGLE most important (factoring in exceptions) factor is the PARENTS! Nature versus nurture. The
parents have the most influence on a child's outcome in life in most
cases. In other cases it's a relative acting as a parent figure. You
can have a Nobel-Prize , Teaching-Award winning professor teaching a
class of 100 students, but depending on how a particular student was
raised in respect to their views of education, will they take advantage
of that special circumstance to gain wisdom that would help overcome
obstacles and adversity.

On the next page Obama states that
K-12 teachers should be paid $100,000 a year. I understand a university
professor being compensated that amount since universities have deeper
pockets and the fact that there are less professors at the university
level than there are K-12 level, but how much would one have to raise
taxes in order to compensate a good chunk of teachers K-12 in the U.S.
100,000+ a year from state/federal funds? And good luck convincing the
GOP tax-cutting conservatives to vote for your bill Senator Obama.

On page 164, he states that the combined monthly payments of his wife
and his undergraduate and law school debt exceeded their mortgage by a
healthy margin.
Mr. Obama, sir, that is what happens when you attend
Harvard Law School -- you wind up paying Ivy League prices. And don't
you think you made a wise investment? After all, you are the Senator of
Illinois, a Presidential Candidate, and have 2 of your own books. Yes,
I think you made a very wise investment.
The state and federal
governments are doing a great job in terms of financing higher
education. I personally attended a University based on merit
based state scholarships. 95%+ of University of Florida's
undergraduates are on scholarships and financial aid. I know a few
friends that had obtain need based grants (Pell Grant) to assist them
through college. I think Mr. Obama is making the financial situation on Upper Education seem more
dire than it actually is.

Like a stock investment, students
must realize that college is an investment of time and resources. If
the student does not care about the investment (sub-par GPA), their
college degree won't be worth more than the paper that it's printed on.
Bachelor's degrees these days are a dime a dozen, and if a student does
not attach quality and value into that degree, employers will not be
satisfied.

And finally, again, I would like to address a
pet peeve. Senator Obama keeps claiming that "in order to produce more
Googles we must......"; well having read a book on Google -- Google's
funding came solely from two separate Venture capitalist firms for a
total of $25 million (Private money!) The founders of Google also spent
the majority of their pre-college years in public schools in America.
One founder (now in his 30's), made it a point that his fellow high
school students had their priorities out of order. The cofounders of
Google are a product of having a family line of PhD's at their
disposals (coincidently); having great parents made them; access to
great professors and colleagues at Stanford and such molded them into
greatness.

I still think Senator Barack Obama is too 'green and ripe' for the job of the president of the United States.

Here is my question, why should I or should I not vote for Mr. Obama?