Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.theory
From: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Subject: Clinton's deceptive TV ad
Reply-To: kwee@oracle.uucp (Karl Wee)
Organization: Oracle Corporation, Belmont, CA
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 23:28:43 GMT
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Recently I saw his ad in California (with Clinton sitting in an office doing
a monologue).  It was outrageously deceptive.


- "Make the rich pay their fair share" .... "I'm on your side"

Mr. Clinton, I think this should be done, but YOU KNOW its impact on the
federal budget is so minute that it's not worth a mention here.  The vast
majority of funds for your proposed programs come from your ASSUMPTION that
the economy will grow at an good rate to generate a larger tax base.
Good luck.  All economic experts know that now is not the time to worry
about wealth distribution, but about economic growth.

I still remember your moving convention speech calling on Americans to stay
as one, and stop "them"ming ourselves.  Now it's "them the rich".

By the way, in light of all this, your "middle class tax relief" doesn't sound
like an accidental product.  I'm in the middle class but I don't want YOUR
relief.  Paul Tsongas plainly called it what it is, and I would have voted for
him, even though he was a wimp who gave in to partisan politics in the later
days.

- "Investing in infrastructure and education"

Mr. Clinton, you know full well that the limiting factor of our economic
growth is NOT infrastructure at present.  Infrastructure of information,
perhaps, but not the physical one.  It may be a problem but it's not a major
limiting factor of the economy.  Why bring this up?

As for education, what is so special and fundamentally different about your
grade school policy, besides pouring more money into the problem?  If there's
one good thing about Bush's promises, it's giving competition back to the
schools and choice back to the parents.

I do like your mention of job training.  However it is a kind of education
that does not teach reusable skills and hence its value to the economy in
the long run is limited.

You don't seem to get it: the only real way to better the quality of our work
force is to make society establish and keep FIRM incentives for possessing
good education and skills.  There is no force as strong as the individual's
will to better his or her life.  In lieu of this, all you propose are more
programs and spending (And with government efficiency at that.  And at
a time when the government deficit is an utterly urgent problem....)

Your education and training programs sound noble and workable on paper,
especially to proponents of more social engineering.  But so did the "War
on Poverty".  Please, no more social engineering that engineers ourselves
further out of control.

Worst of all, this is ALL there really is to your much touted image of being
"good on economic policy" compared to Bush.  I know you, like all candidates,
are really in a strait jacket because of the deficit and special interests.
But please don't tout yourself as an "economy president" and take advantage
of people's anger over the economy.

- "Keeping health care costs down"

Mr. Clinton, everybody with any knowledge on this issue knows that the root
problem is that neither patients nor providers have any incentives to save
money, and the insurance industry is so heavily regulated that market forces
cannot work to remove this root problem.  Mr. Clinton, your attempt to shift
people's attention away from this fundamental problem to the problem of
people without health care is dispicable.  Not that the latter is not
important, but it's a different issue that needs to be solved apart from
the root problem.

In this context, your proposed GLOBAL cap on health care spending seems
completely brain-dead.  How are you going to do it?  What mechanism will
decide who gets less because of it?  This would be interference, with
whatever market mechanisms there remain, at an unprecedented
level!  This gives me serious doubts about your basic economic sanity (or
common sense).  So much for the economy president.

- "Fundamental change"

Mr. Clinton, you're the first person who made this phrase look bad.  Did you
mention in your ad what you know in your heart are the really fundamental 
problems? -- the CONTROL OF OUR GOVERNMENT BY SPECIAL INTERESTS BECAUSE THE
PUBLIC LACKS POLITICAL INFORMATION, the BUDGET DEFICIT, the MURKY BORDER
BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY, the PERMANENT UNDERCLASS,
the cost and inaccessibility of health care BECAUSE THERE ARE NO INCENTIVES
TO ECONOMIZE, the overly cumbersome LEGAL SYSTEM.  No.  I have never seen
you attack these issues except in murky, please-all terms like the "new
covenant".  Tell me what's so fundamental in your message, please.

And I do think that the personal character of the President is a fundamental
issue.  Less for a do-nothing President like George Bush than in a Presidency
like yours.  All kinds of decisions will be directly and indirectly
affected by his personal integrity in all kinds of unpredictable ways.  And
you're asking me to vote for a person who simply can't tell a straight
story about either his affairs or his draft papers.  (Note: I don't have a
big problem with Clinton doing these things per se, but only with his handling
of them NOW.)

- Conclusion:

If Paul Tsongas is a wimp, you're a wimp of a different kind.  Compared to
either Bush or Perot, you are a master of making statements that sound good
to both people concerned with the future of our country and to whatever
special interest groups are behind you.  That's the LAST thing this country
needs now.  Yes, the LAST thing.  Because, guess what, it is precisely your
type of politicians that have gotten American politics into this mess.

[I am not a fan of George Bush, but I have to like him more.  All flames will
go to /dev/null. Constructive arguments may be entertained.]
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