The conventions are over, the balloons are probably all
popped except one for Bill, the candidates are back on the campaign trail, the
media is being the media, Steve Colbert cannot be Steve Colbert, Matt and Jimmy
are feuding, and in just over three months this country will pick a President
to lead us over the next four years.
Not much left to say so I decided to check out each of the
respective nominees’ websites. I am not
going to break down all the issues or get into their details. You can read them
yourselves and probably get a better idea than what I would tell you since I do
not like either. I will be so bold as to offer some review. I have bragged for
decades that I do not vote democrat or republican and this year I am especially
proud I don’t, yet let us be fair.
I always try to post I will be positive so here goes:
Both websites have homepages that reflect the recently ended
conventions. Donald has a picture and Hillary has her video. Both homepages let
you make donations, you can click right there and contribute small
amounts, I wonder if that is pandering to
the idea they are for the little guy…oops I said be positive….and you can sign
up to receive all the news and information they want you to receive.
On Hillary’s site you can ACT and sign up to volunteer in
your state. On Donald’s site you can GET INVOLVED and sign up to receive emails
and texts along with a small box to check to volunteer.
Donald has a positions page and Hillary has an issues page.
This is where we can learn more about what they would do as President. Like
Hillary’s acceptance speech that included a litany of if you are for… join us,
there is a litany of issues you can read about and what she is going to do.
Donald has 7 positions you can read about. I briefly glanced at both pages.
Some of Donald’s positions are standard Republican talking
points to a small degree such as he wants to lower taxes on American corporations
to keep businesses and jobs here. And this is not on the tax reform page, but
deep down the page on the US China issue page. And for tax reform he does claim
revenue neutral and gives some ideas on keeping middle class Americans’ taxes
down and actually it is a pretty strong populist simplified tax reform idea. Actually
a fair read. And he does have a policy on compelling Mexico to the build the
wall. That is an “interesting” read. I am presuming that day one to day two etc
is metaphorical.
Hillary, even though her home page says most progressive
Democratic platform in history, I do not know. Like I mentioned earlier the
issue page is a litany of issues, most are just breakdowns on a few general
topics. Of course with the Democrats wide range of social issues covered, none
really on Donald’s which is a slight break from Republican history especially
right to life and other faith based initiatives. Hillary covers education,
social security, she has tax reform also under the topic name a fair tax
system. The policy wonk aspect of her comes through in her proposals compared
to Donald’s. She definitely has much more verbiage. I would say detail, but
overall if you match it up with Donald’s she gets deeper in description, yet I
am not sure how much more actual depth of program she has compared to his.
She talks about social security which I am going to read
more about later to compare to what I wrote a few months ago about trying to
help social security survive and thrive. The little I read compared to my ideas
shows me there are considerable differences in approach between hers and mine.
Donald doesn’t have as much detail on anything I have written before so hard to
make comparisons. The one topic the three of us covered is discussions of
healthcare coverage. There are some differences there and I have not directly
addressed healthcare like I did social security except as part of my social
security series. I think much further back I talked about it briefly. I never liked Obamacare and Donald is taking
up the we need to repeal it from day one mantra, however, his ideas are too generalist
and even some of the ideas seem to lack understanding of what is already in
place such as HSAs or I may be missing something
Some of you may remember I actually proposed a platform for
a fictitious party back in 2012. Of course my usual verbose and philosophy
driven rhetoric made it much longer than either of these two websites, but if
you are bored I wouldn’t mind you searching back to compare their ideas
currently to what I was suggesting years ago. I can honestly say I have just as
much or more to what can be done for our country than either of these two sets
of programs.
So here is one complaint and I am not being negative.
Neither one addresses macro-economic development ideas and I have been big on
those throughout my writings on my blog. Both candidates talk big about how
they are going to bring jobs and help the middle class, yet I do not see much
in true details as to how. Much talk, not much substance by either. I can
robustly say I have tackled that much more in depth and have much more to add.
I feel strongly there are many projects our country can implement to bring
about economic health in our country, job and wage growth, and continuing to
help our country be a leader in technological advancement. And I support this
by using govt. to be the facilitator with guidance versus FDR’s new deal where
the government was the source. Real quick, think about Hoover dam project or
the TVA etc, but with the private sector supplying the investment capital and
having the government manage the overall goals on how this benefits society. I
am real big on using this type of project to meld people self-governing (best
interests of the country) and capitalism to bring out the best for our country.
Much more to this I have written and will continue to write going forward. It
bothers me that neither candidate or for that matter neither party or even our
so called economic elites can be innovative enough to use forward thinking to
benefit us. We have built the interstate
highway system for one purpose, yet it created so much more for our country. At
this point in our history we should be able govern with forward thinking. We
have the examples of the past; why can’t we create for our future? Oops too much about me, when this was suppose
to be about the websites
Finally both websites have lots of pictures and articles you
can click on. Donald has negative stories on Hillary and Hillary has positive stories
on Hillary so much more Hillary coverage between the two sites than Donald
coverage. I think he needs to get a few positive stories about him going
otherwise he is doing for her what the media does for him, free coverage.
Also both sites allow you to shop. Yep shop! You can buy all
sorts of attire, buttons, etc for either candidate just in case you cannot get
enough crap on the website you can now have it sent to you.
Have a great evening everyone. We are now headed into the
extreme dog days of summer so those of you feeling overburdened by the heat,
relief is now a bit of light at the end of a tunnel. Or you can look forward to
this fall’s drop in temperatures just like the fall of the United States,,,,,oh
darn thought I could keep it positive,,,,,, too hard when the choice is Donald
or Hillary I guess.
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