An Electric Plan

I found an article that is very interesting. Max Shulz wrote about John McCain's plan, if he is elected, to give a money reward to whoever can design new battery technology that is more advanced than we have now. But Shulz says that McCain is hurting himself for not bringing it up and making it an important part of his campaign. Shulz seems to be very knowledgeable when it comes to the subject of prizes for innovation. He brings up two prizes, although they are privately backed, that nonetheless spurred people forward to create something. One of his examples was the X-Prize that gave ten million dollars to whoever made a reusable manned spacecraft. But, as Shulz says, this has not been what is done in Washington. There, winners are picked before a competition is even started. They set goals and reward people regardless if the goals are met or not.
But McCain's plan is different in that it only rewards the first group that develops the new technology. Shulz says that it is different then something like Bush's billion-dollar hydrogen initiative or Clinton's Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, which cost seven billion because these two things did not reward the winner only. McCain had put energy high on his agenda early in his campaign supporting offshore drilling and choosing a VP candidate from an energy rich state. His plan was to give $300 million dollars to the person or group who could develop a smaller, more powerful battery to be used in cars. McCain hurt himself by not making this an issue now.
I personally think that McCain's plan is good because it gives money to the winner only after they accomplished something. New battery technology is a must if we are going to stop buying foreign oil. The batteries would not just help pure electric cars, but they will also be used by hydrogen-powered cars to store the energy that is created. The problem I would see about talking about this plan right at this moment is because the price of a barrel of oil is around $70, so people will probably go back to SUV's instead of hybrids and tiny cars.

Partisan Politics and the Economy

The author of this New York Times article says that the reason that the bailout bill did not pass was that Republicans did not get the right amount of votes. The author says that since the majority of Democrats voted for it, then it cannot be their fault. The blame is also put on the Bush administration whose policies contributed to the financial crisis. The author also says that the Republicans broke step with the current administration for the first time in eight years, and the opinion of the author is that it was not a good thing.

I do not agree with this at all. How is it just the Republicans fault? If the Democrats were more unified, they could have pushed the bill through themselves. They did not need the Republican vote at all. Another reason that they cannot just blame the Republicans is that 98 Democrats voted nay. If just half of those representatives voted for the bailout, then it would have passed. I also think that Pelosi was ill advised to be so partisan in her speech. All that did was make Wall Street get extremely uncomfortable, causing the single largest drop in the market. A point that I do agree with is that on of the reasons the Republicans did not vote is because they think that free-market economics should have limited government regulation, which the author says is impossible because without regulations, the market would crumble.

This article has shown just how partisan the politics of the country is. The Republicans always blame the Democrats, and the Democrats always blame the Republicans.

Who really knows the economy?

Who knows more about how to fix the economy, Obama or McCain? McCain has already said that he would fire Christopher Cox, head of the SEC. Meanwhile, when Obama was asked during a campaign stop about what he would do about the economy, he didn't have a clue about what to say except that he would talk about it later. It is almost like McCain is on top of things and Obama is never there to seize the opportunity of a situation in which he should have a say in; kind of like the Georgia-Russia conflict in which Obama was lounging by the beach in Hawaii and McCain took the opportunity to have the floor to himself. My point is that Obama runs away from situations that he can't just go out and say that he will "change" the country without going into specifics on how to do so. But, I have to say that both candidates are exactly the same when it comes to their responses on whose fault it is. Both McCain and Obama have said that the blame should be placed both on the companies and the American people.

This is in response to an article on Fox News.
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/18/mccain-id-fire-sec-chaiman/