Why is it that I get such amazing questions from my friends? This letter is from a wonderful Italian girl who was a foreign exchange student at my high school. She's now married and lives in Egypt, spending her days scuba diving with her instructor husband and apparently talking about American domestic policy.
----------------------------------------------
Everybody is talking about it ... and ... I don't have a real opinion yet! HELP!!!! I need some insider info.
Now, we Europeans all love Obama, for the simple fact that he is black and because we don't like Bush.
But that's a bit too simple, right? What does the American think?
----------------------------------------------
Well, let's look specifically at money. Obama wants to raise my cost of living. He claims to not, but:
1) in raising the taxes that businesses and corporations pay, they pass their added expenses onto the consumer, raising the prices that I pay.
2) by starting national health, Obama's going to raise the price of health care for me and my family by making me cover insurance premiums for the poor. And I won't have nearly the coverage that I have now, which is paid from my own pocket.
3) Obama wants to restrict trade and punish businesses that send jobs overseas. This will raise the cost of the things I buy because the cost of production and import will increase, and those increased costs will be passed onto the consumer (see #1).
4) he wants to leave oil, coal, and natural gas in order to go exclusively wind, solar, and geothermal. Too right, but too fast. We still need oil and coal to get us through until the technology gets further developed. But Obama has refused to OK offshore drilling or any new oil drilling at all. So what do we do in the meantime? Petrol prices are already four times higher what they were five years ago. Expect petrol prices to rise as we forsake oil prematurely. My feeling: yes to wind, solar, water, nuclear, coal, natural gas, and (gasp!) OIL. Use 'em all, because we can use the resources we have until the new technologies come online.
This went on longer than I thought it would, but Obama's plans are so expensive in so many ways that they all need addressing. As you can see, my opposition to Obama is not because of race or the fact that he's not Bush.
And I haven't even addressed Obama's foreign policy yet!