CATO

Since the blog I was following before hasn't been recently updated, I switched to Cato-at-Liberty. A little bit of background: the Cato Istitute is a non-profit public policy research foundation. Their mission is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. There are new topics posted daily about all sorts of politcal issues.

Most of the recent posts focus on the presidential election and a lot of the issues that the candidates are faced with. The most recent post, and the one that interested me the most is about how Hawaii, the only state to have it, dropped it's universal child health care program. There are two main reasons why: 1. Universal Coverage means paying too much and 2. Universal Coverage means getting too little. Then it goes on to talk about Obama's health plans. I found this interesting considering I just did my soapbox on health care and this was extremely related. Also if you click on his picture, there is a video clip of Barack Obama speaking about his proposed plan.

I think especially with the struggling economy the cost of health care is very important, and right now its extremely expensive. Here is a document I found that has all sorts of facts and figures about what health care and insurance cost.

Vice Presidential Debate

On October 2nd, 2008 at 9 p.m. was the most viewed Vice Presidential Debate ever. I happened to be a part of it. I found it pretty interesting. This is the first year that I have really payed any attention to politics and the election, mostly cause I can be a part of it. There were many different issues discussed during the debate, three of them really stuck out for me.

Obviously, with our current economic state, the economy was a big one. Biden really emphasized the focus on the middle class. He said how it drives the economy and right now its not doing so hot. Sarah Palin on the other hand said how people have become to fear the economy and that it needs to be reformed and John McCain will do that.

Another topic discussed was the environment. Palin thinks that we need to become more energy independant and that energy is key to the future. She felt that the change in climate is all natural but that the planet still needs to be cleaned up and related this to her experience in Alaska. In Biden's opinion everything thats happened to the environment is man made and that investing in new, clean energy will also create more jobs.

The final issue that stuck out for me was foreign policy. I did not know a whole lot about this before watching the debate. On the subject of the war, Biden said we will end this war soon but Palin strongly felt that we couldn't pull out now. And when asked which was more of a threat, Iran and thier nuclear weapons or Unstable pakistan, Biden thought Pakistan while Palin thought Iran. It seemed they disagreed on most issues involving foreign policy.

So, although the media stressed what a good job Sarah Palin did, that was only because she had such low expectations. In my opinion, Joe Biden won the debate. From listening to him I felt he really knew what he was talking about and had a lot of experience whereas Palin is extremely new at all this. She hardly answered any questions, and Biden had a good answer for most. Some of my opinion might just be from a general dislike for Palin but overall Biden is much more suited for a position like the Vice President of the Unites States.