In reply to Interested! In theory, I like your response. In fact I do feel the same way about our roads and air quality. I have in fact filed my taxes, and yes, I do agree that the infrastructure could and should be better managed to keep costs down. My point really was that everyone should be responsible for their own, and NO ONE should have to pay for others. If everyone was held accountable for their decisions, (ie: if you "decide" to have three kids and a Lincoln Navigator YOU are the one who is responsible for paying for them), then our collective tax burden to "power" the infrastructure you refer to would be less. As long as we allow people to sponge off the system we will never lessen the costs. Lest I be accused of being too conservative let me say that I do NOT condone cutting people off of welfare, and benefits if they are ACTUALLY qualified for it. No, just because you aren't working, and decided not to continue your education and have 4 kids does NOT qualify you. Again, we come back to accountability. Those things were decisions YOU made, so now you live with the consequences.
A Momentum Swing?
Hillary Clinton's campaign feels optimistic going into Tuesday's vote, but has there really been a 'tipping point' for her candidacy?
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After enduring weeks of a slipping campaign, Sen. Hillary Clinton seems to be enjoying a shift, however slight, in momentum toward her candidacy. Whether her sharpened attacks on Sen. Barack Obama are too little, too late is up to the voters going to the polls Tuesday in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island. "I feel really good about today," Clinton said Tuesday morning at Henderson Elementary School in Houston's East End. "We think we're gonna do really well here in Texas and in Ohio."
The former First Lady has been helped by a stunningly unlucky news cycle for Obama. For starters, his friend and fund-raiser, the indicted Chicago Democratic power broker Antoin (Tony) Rezko, began his federal fraud trial on Monday. While the Rezko probe and criminal proceedings are several years old, the timing of the trial's start is beyond inopportune for the Illinois senator. On a conference call Tuesday morning, Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson pointed out that an Obama staffer sat in on the Rezko trial Monday taking notes, which he called "rather curious," noting that the "Obama campaign was concerned enough they had a staff member dispatched to court."
Then there's the broadening flap over allegations that Obama's chief economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, told Canadian officials to disregard Obama's protectionist trade message as pure campaign rhetoric. A Canadian government memo obtained by the Associated Press says that Canadian officials believed Goolsbee told them that Obama's promises to revamp trade policy were "more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans." Obama's campaign has said that the Canadian officials misconstrued Goolsbee's comments.
But the story has given Clinton ammunition to fire at Obama, who has criticized Clinton's previous support of NAFTA, a treaty unpopular in Ohio's factory towns. Wolfson laced into Obama for what he has taken to calling "NAFTA-gate" and demanded that his campaign make Goolsbee available to answer questions.
It's hard to miss that Clinton's advisers smell blood in the water, even as they protect their own legacies by selectively leaking reputation-enhancing tidbits to reporters lest their candidate fail miserably on Tuesday. "Polls show an extremely active and competitive race in both Ohio and Texas," Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn told reporters on a conference call Monday. "We feel there are some very good reasons here why we'll be successful in the two states." But over the weekend Penn issued a none-too-subtle statement to the Los Angeles Times minimizing his role in the campaign-which some observers took as a sign of dissent within the Clinton camp. Penn later told reporters his comments to the L.A. Times had been taken out of context.
Penn and Wolfson also trumpeted the success of Clinton's criticism that Obama is too inexperienced to effectively protect the country from terror and other outside threats. Clinton just launched a new ad in Texas highlighting Obama's failure to "hold even one hearing" on Afghanistan while serving as chairman of a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that has oversight of NATO and its anti-Al Qaeda operations. The ad promises, "Hillary Clinton will never be too busy to defend our national security" and notes that Obama was "too busy running for president" to do his job.
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