


I like Barack Obama. He is charismatic and congenial. He is a good family man, and he is well-spoken. As a political candidate, he has generated tremendous excitement, especially among African Americans. All of this is good. I believe, however, that he is wrong on several very important issues. Here are five of them:
• Labor policy. The Democrats have promised to enact the Employee Free Choice Act. Its purpose is to stifle free choice by employees. Today, a labor union collects signature cards from employees. When it has collected a majority, it presents the cards to the employer and requests to be recognized as the bargaining representative for all employees. Either party then requests that the National Labor Relations Board conduct a secret ballot election and, if the union wins by a majority, then it will be certified as the representative for the employees.
The Employee Free Choice Act will do away with secret ballot elections, and force the employer to recognize the union simply on the basis of signature cards. History has well documented the fact that unions often use intimidation, coercion and false promises to obtain employee signature cards. Without a secret ballot election, there will be no protection against this, either for employers or employees. Obama has said that passage of this law — to do away with secret ballot elections in choosing union representatives — is one of his priorities.
• Freedom of speech. The Democrats have promised to bring back the “Fairness Doctrine.” The ostensible purpose of this law is to force radio stations to grant “equal time” to opposing political points of view. The real purpose is to censor Republicans who have been successful on talk radio, especially Rush Limbaugh. Since radio stations cannot find sponsors to pay for liberal talk programs, they will be forced to cancel the conservative programs, or run afoul of the law.
Although the law will also technically apply to television, experience shows that a Democratic administration will not apply it there, because that is largely an area where Democratic bias, not Republican bias, exists. Nor will the law apply to newspapers, where Democrats are favored by heavy majorities. The whole idea flies in the face of the First Amendment. However, Obama, as president, will approve and enforce this doctrine.
• National defense. Based upon his record and his statements, I do not believe Obama has either the will or the temperament to defend the country. He does not like or trust our military. His statements on how to deal with our enemies seem to me to be naïve. He is sympathetic to demands of leading Democrats to drastically cut our defense budget.
As the campaign has progressed, he has seemed to begin to realize that perhaps we do, in fact, have dangerous and intractable enemies. But he has come late to the game, and I worry that his newfound enlightenment is temporary and will evaporate upon his election. I do not question his patriotism, but simply believe that this is a mindset that will be difficult for him to overcome.
• Economic freedom. Although capitalism has many flaws, it works better than socialism. Winston Churchill said that, under capitalism, the prosperity is shared unequally, whereas under socialism the misery is shared equally. Obama's plan to redistribute the wealth cannot be sugar-coated by calling it “tax credits.” And despite all his talk about “fairness,” there is not much that is fair about taking money away from people who earn it and sending it to people who did not earn it. In a democracy, the true capital is in the persons who are entrepreneurs. However, as the Russians discovered, in a socialist society, entrepreneurs disappear and so, eventually, does the economy.
• Medical care. The proposals set forth by Obama will not, to paraphrase Lincoln, provide the greatest good for the greatest number. The long-run objective, not just of him but also of ranking congressional Democrats, is to nationalize health care and to bring it entirely under federal government control. The rallying cry is that such a program is needed in order to provide coverage for Americans who do not now have it. But the overwhelming majority of Americans who do now have access to medical care will find that their standard of care will be diminished. It is bad enough that health care will be rationed. It is even worse that your medical choices will be determined by a distant federal bureaucrat.
According to our modern-day gurus (i.e., pollsters), Obama will win the election handily. Many people seem to be climbing onto his bandwagon. Nonetheless, even though he seems like a nice guy, he won't get my vote.
Howard Chapman is a resident of Fort Wayne.
(news-sentinel.com)