Presidental debate round 2

The second debate was more agressive then I expected and the candidates were passionate at times to say the least.  Obama definitly wins style points for being an effective speaker this go round and I think he got the upper hand on the debate.  The weakest link in his chain was the Libya issue and when Romney tried to nail him on being dishonest about the terrorist attack Obama came back with a passionate statement about having to greet the coffins as they came back to the USA.  He argued effectivley that he doesn't take American lives lightley or use them to score cheap political points.  If only I actually believed him.  Don't get me wrong.  I think Obama is a good guy and it is true the day after the deaths he refered to the attack as being terrorist activity.  But the administration backtracked and said the deaths were due to random civilians angered over a youtube video and they did indeed follow that tack for 2 weeks when they were aware it was due to an Al Qeada days after the attack occured.  Like most things in politics, if they turn it into a gray area people will stop caring and forgive them for it. 

My Favorite Tweets of the night were about Romney's Binders of women which went viral after the debate.  When talking about his time as Governor all the applicants applying for his cabinet were males. Mitt Romney actively went out to womens groups and asked for referrals and was able to fill half his cabinet positions with women.  The Womens groups gave him Binders full of Women.  This sounded funny to many liberals who ran with it. 

Where Romney and Obama really differ is on economic plans and many of the debate questions revolved around job creation.  We will get into the "trickle-down government" phrase Romney has been using as well. (most of the following information about their economic policies was obtained from CNN) Romney and Obama's economic plans differ on three major points: how much government should redistribute income through taxation; what kind of federal spending is worth its costs; and whether governments or markets allocate resources more efficiently.
Obama believes in Trickel-down Government while Romney believes in Trickle down economics.
On the tax side: Romney's position is more convincing. Raising rates on high-income households will generate only modest revenue, and higher rates on dividends and capital gains are bad for economic growth. Likewise, lower corporate tax rates will boost growth. More broadly, Obama's focus on redistribution sends a chilling message to entrepreneurs and innovators (you will be heavily taxed up to 44% of your income), and any negative impact on growth makes the debt situation worse.

On spending:
Obama wants to focus spending on helping the poor and Romney would prefer to spend more money on the military.  The Federal Government tends to waste a lot of money when spending it whether it is military or domestic projects. And the belt could be tightened much more in all these areas, no matter who wins.  Liberals continue to attack Romney as not caring about the middle and lower class by ending funding for many programs which in many ways are wasteful.  But the military is very wasteful as well.

On Medicare:
Both candidates agree that, under current projections, Medicare grows faster than the national's overall economic output forever, which means Medicare is essentially bankrupt.
Obama's approach to save health care consists of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a creation of the Affordable Care Act. The IPAB will have the power to restrict Medicare expenditure, chiefly by controlling health care prices and limiting reimbursement for care deemed unnecessary or not cost-effective.

Obama's approach has little chance of success, given the failure of similar efforts in the past. Price controls incentivize health care providers to game the system, such as by billing for extra tests, procedures, and medications. This also means that price controls will introduce myriad inefficiencies in the health care system.
Romney wants to shift most or all future Medicare beneficiaries (those currently 55 and younger) to a voucher type system. By limiting the rate at which the voucher amount increases over time, this approach can also slow Medicare expenditure. And if competition among insurers makes the health insurance market more efficient, vouchers can reduce spending further.
The Romney voucher approach has more potential, but the devil is in the details. Any voucher system must include enough insurers to generate real competition. And the definition of "health insurance" must be sufficiently broad that competing insurers can offer policies that genuinely limit costs.

When asked about bringing jobs back to America Obama correctly stated that some jobs are never coming back.  This is true as some countries pay lower wages then American's would ever consider working for.  However the question dealt directly with making Apple products in America and making Apple products in the USA this could definetly be done and here is why.  China only assembles the various components which makes up for about $6 worth of the expense of putting the Ipad or Iphone together.  High end transistors, touch screens and internal components are made in Japan, Korea and even Germany and making those parts pays out at about $34 an hour.  These are jobs that should be done in the US.  In order to do this it would mean we would need a comprehensive competitiveness strategy similar to those now pursued by South Korea, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, China and others.  It is my sincere beliefe that Obama is incapable on formulating any such plan based on his last four years in office.  Both candidates seemed oblivious to these facts during the debate.  Hopefully they start doing homework that will really benifit America instead of political ploys used to damage moral in the other party.  Whoever wins this election is going to have to study long and hard to get high paying manufacturing jobs back into the US of A.

As For Trickle-down: Trickle-down is originally the idea that if tax breaks are given to businesses they will then have more money to provide better wages and benifits to employees.  Many cynical people believe that employeers only pay their employees the minimum amount necessary to keep them working.  (This is true in many cases but tax rates factor into determining where companies set up shop and hire poeple as well.  So if Canada has a Corporate rate of 15% and the USA has a corp. rate of 44%, guess where companies are going to hire people.) Romney has flipped the phrase to Trickle-down government.
Trickle down government means we allow the Fed to keep more of our hard earned money through higher taxes which then hires more goverment workers to watch over everybody and re-distribute the wealth through government mandated benifits and regulations.  Thereby big government insures everybody somehow is better off even though they are taking more of our wealth away. Its really just another way to say big government or big brother is watching over us.  The best example of this is the many additional IRS workers that will have to be hired to insure everyone is paying for health insurance.  Who is going to be paying for all those extra government employee's?  -The Tax payers.

Sorry this post is so long but the debate brings up a lot of points.  If you are still reading this congralations!  You deserve to get a sucker.  Hopefully you have one lying around.  :)

On Energy: Obama touts an increase in energy production and Romney states the increase has come from private corpations and that Obama has cut down Energy production in the USA.  Romney brings up that most of the oil production increase came from the Bakken Range in ND.  He then goes on to say that the president brought a lawsuit against them because 25 birds were killed.  He states the president has reduced permits by half and brought up that the EPA is shutting down coal plants and prohibiting any coal plants from being built.  Mitt says the president has actually hurt manufacturing jobs by reducing permits for drilling.  The president gave a great response by saying the public lands they wanted to drill on weren't getting used.  So the administration said the companies couldn't just sit on them for 10-30 years.  Decide when you want to drill before you come asking for permits, (use it or loose it). Romney brings up production on government land is down-this has been confirmed by many fact checkers already.  The president says production is up. But we can tell if production is up or not by looking at how much your paying according to Romney.  The cost of Gas is up.  Electricity is up.  President Obama says a bad economy results in cheaper prices so if Romney destroys the economy then we could be looking at cheap gas once more.

Sorry if the writing doesn't flow so well but a lot of information had to be covered and I am late getting this up.  Hope it helps in deciding who to vote for!