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Eugene Leafty
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Barrack ObamaMember of Trinity Church where he helped create jobs. Also in June 2006, Obama worked to broaden his party's political base, encouraging Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other church-going people, saying, "if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at – to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own – we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse."[58] SCHOOL VOUCHERSBarrack's positionOpposes school vouchers on claims of providing more low income families with greater tax benefits like the Earned Income Credit which he helped create, so that these poor families can put there children into private school. His claim is that providing a voucher program would destroy the public school system. While he believes that more competition in the public school system would be desirable, switching to a voucher system and removing all support from the public school system would be disastrous. He does not believe that the corporations that would operate the private schools would be interested in students that would be more expensive to teach [such as inner city and special needs students]. Obama receives a lot of attention for sending his children to a private school that is supported by the University of Chicago. These tax credits would be worthless to the children of parents that don't make enough money, or any money, and are in a situation where any amount of tax relief wouldn't afford them the opportunity to enroll their children in private school. Benefits School vouchers would enable children to attend private school even if their parents were unemployed or imprisoned. Several countries have successful programs similar to the voucher program, including: Chile, UK (pre-school), and the Netherlands. Further information can be found on Wikipedia: Implementations Problems Many private schools are religious, and a voucher system would provide governmental support of a religious group, however, the Supreme Court has already ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that a voucher program would be constitutional even if it supports religious schools because the choice to use a private school is made by the parents, and the purpose is secular. In the Netherlands, they have a program similar to the voucher program, and recently Islamic schools have been opening and becoming a political issue that would almost certainly become a greater issue in the United States. Initiating the school voucher program could cause an exodus from public schools and cause them to fail. A possible solution is for vouchers to only remove part of the funding that a public school receives, and require that parents make up the difference to send their children to a private school. Private schools would only want to enroll students that would be able to educate students at the least cost to the school. Children from lessor schools that would like to go to a better school would be less educated than their peers, and would require additional education and cost from the private school, and would make them a less likely candidate for enrollment. Schools may have testing programs to keep out children like this. Special needs children may also be left behind unless additional funding is provided for these children. Additional regulations to force private schools to enroll a wider spectrum of children could possibly bring the trappings of the public school system. Political support Milton Friedman, a libertarian, supports vouchers without any regulation. Conservatives support. The National Education Association (NEA), a U.S. teachers union and the largest labor union in the country, "(U.S.) Voters, for the last 30 years, have rejected vouchers every time they've been proposed". Estate TaxOpposes estate tax, calling the cuts a "Paris Hilton" tax break for "billionaire heirs and heiresses".HomosexualsHe opposes marriage by homosexuals, but not unions. He has stated that he was glad to see Bush's position on civil unions for homosexual partners which would allow for many of the same benefits and rights that occur in marriage, such as property rights.When pushed on whether or not marriage is a human right or civil right, his position is unclear. EnergyWashington Monthly: Obama's energy planWhile paying for the health care may be inline with his belief that health is an "instrinsic human right" and may be a better option that saving the automakers from bankruptcy, without provisions for preventing the accounting problems that caused this would permit the wreckless accounting that allowed it to happen in the past to happen again in the future. It is a kind of tax credit, which is better than simply giving out cash, so it the right type of subsidy if money is going to be provided at all. Another problem is that this may open up a pandora's box in which the Government would be pressured into paying for 10% of health care for any industry that could make an improvement with the emissions of their products. The tradable fuel economy credits could be the same type of carbon credits that are being virtually traded at the Chicago Carbon Exchange in expectation that the Government will create a tradable carbon credit program to pressure industry to improve their emissions. Biofuels and biodiesels would increase energy independence, however, it does not reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that are contributing to global warming. While it's not neccessarily a bad idea to invest in biodiesels to reduce or eliminate energy imports, another plan needs to be implemented to reduce global warming. In another article, he points out that China and Japan have more economical cars than us, however, they also have much smaller cars that cannot pass the crash tests in America. Smaller cars are inherently more aerodynamic, so they use much less fuel at highway speeds, and their lighter weight also allows them to use less fuel in city traffic.
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