Why are you voting or not voting for Barack Obama?

[Paul_Warren]

"- For increasing taxes as well as government spending at multiple levels, and against a flat tax (I am for lower taxes, smaller government, and a flat tax)"

Everyone says that Obama is going to raise taxes. However, the truth is he is planning on cutting taxes for everyone that makes under $50,000.00 a year. I'm all for raising taxes on the wealthy. And if Obama is going to do that, then more power to him.  Higher minimum wage + no taxes for the poorer citizens = a real shot at upward mobility for poorer people in society.  If you make less than $250,000.00 a year it is not in your best interests to vote for Mccain in November.

 

Finally, I want to add something about the troops because they seem to be all that the Republicans ever want to talk about and because the tone of Lindsey Graham's speech really irked me.  Sure, their sacrifices and the fact that they put their lives on the line everyday for this country needs to be honored.  However, at the same time it needs to be taken into consideration that they are largely a volunteer force.  They should know that there is the possibility that they could be killed before they ever decide to enlist and go over to fight in  a war that is potentially still not a just one and that is only being waged to further line the pockets of oil barons.  It has been almost seven years since 9-11, and if Osama Bin Laden was the real culprit behind it, then he still hasn't been brought to justice.

 

     Also, there are people in our society that put their lives on the line everyday just as much as the troops do and many of them have less choice in the matter if they want to put food on their tables than do the troops.  Just one example coal miners.  Myself, recently, I had to work two years of my life as a maintenance man at a fast food restaurant.  That might not sound like a big deal to you.  However, I have a body that was conditioned from an early age for a much more leisurely and scholastic life.  You may think that being a maintenance man requires you to only fix machines (something that I've never really had much experience with -- I have a degree in English literature and was always on the pre-college track earlier in life, so I never took shop courses and the like), but twice a week for over two years in an attempt to have money in my pocket, I had to stand below a twenty foot long metal chute trying to catch boxes of oil, cartons full of large metal cans of gravy, and fifty pound at least bag in the boxes of soda that were flying down that chute at me at close to fifty miles an hour all the while having to work in a perpetually wet basement where I could have contacted such diseases as staph and in an older building that may very well have had asbestos in its walls.  In the end it did damage to my body which still hasn't healed yet.

 

     So, even though, they seem to be the only people that Republicans ever want to discuss and that they have any fondness for other than oil tycoons, there are more people in our society that have to put their lives on the line at their jobs each and every day than just the troops and many of them work for far fewer wages than do the troops.