Editorial

Lies, lies, and damned distortions

By Kara Owl

Between the lies about "experience" and the distortions about the lack of information about what Obama truly stands for, if you didn't know where to look, you'd never know the truth.

As the televison show once said, the truth is out there, though, and here is a taste.

The truth is, Barack Obama is the candidate with the most practical experience currently running. His 8 years with the Illinois Senate plus his three years with the US Senate trumps both Hillary Clinton's 7 years with the Senate or John Edward's 6 years.

Hillary's claim of 35 years of experience, when examined under a microscope, falls apart. In 1972, she was in law school, and unless she wishes to claim that her experiences in law school were political, that particular claim fails to hold water. She was on the board of Wal-Mart, among others, while her husband was Governor of Arkansas, which would put her in the same position that Dick Cheney resigned to avoid as Vice President.

John Edwards resigned during his first term as a senator to run for president in 2004, and when he failed at his Vice-Presidential bid, began working for the political action committee he founded in 2001. His sum experience as a politician is less than one total term as senator.


The other attack often thrown at the Obama campaign, that he stands for "change" but nothing else, is also an empty one. A simple visit to his website, Barack Obama.com will show you a laundry list of issues with detailed plans to fix the problems inherent in each.

Obama's plan to fix the economy would begin with a tax credit to the working class (including self-employed small business workers), then he would create a universal mortgage credit, expand the earned income tax credit, eliminate income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000, expand the child and dependent care tax credit, and simplify filing of tax returns by giving Americans the option to receive pre-filled tax forms should they desire. And that's just the beginning.

Obama believes that strengthening the economy starts with education-- and his education plan is one that will truly begin at the beginning-- with a Zero to Five plan that he hopes will quadruple the number of children going into Early Head start and he plans to increase funding for Head Start and thus improve the quality of both. He also plans on working to ensure that all children have access to pre-school or some alternative affordable and high quality educational alternative that will ease the burden on families that find it difficult to work and pay for child care at the same time. His goal during his first Presidential term would be to create a Presidential Early Learning Council in order to promote a collaborative program across across federal, state, and local levels.

To Obama, teachers are an invaluable resource that can aid in all of his plans for the economy and education, and he wishes to promote education of current teachers, the development of bright new teachers, and the retention of experienced teacher-mentors with ongoing movements in teacher education, mentoring, and incentives for shared planning and learning time. He would also support service scholarships to recruit and prepare teachers who commit to working in underserved districts, and career pathways that provide ongoing professional development and reward accomplished teachers for their expertise.

Finally, he believes we need to increase our math and science graduates, and encourage our undergraduates studying math and science to pursue graduate studies in order to strengthen our workforce and promote innovation.

This is just scratching the surface of the Obama plan-- a detailed plan for the American people that starts with change that we can all believe in.