Obama, Taxes, and Deadly SUVs
By Chad A. B. Wilson
Published February 2, 2007, 9:40 am in News, Economic Issues, Voting & Partisanship.
I'm going to do something different today. Instead of sticking to one subject, I will divide this column into responses to three different issues. I know, I rarely stick to one subject, anyway. That's okay. Today, I won't even try.
The "Articulate" Obama
We have two prominent policians coming out this week describing Barack Obama's shot at the presidency. Joe Biden had this to say:
"'I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,' Biden said in the Observer. 'I mean, that's a storybook, man.'"
And it caused all kind of hubbub.
Then George W. Bush said this:
"'He hasn't gotten elected yet. He hasn't even gotten the party's nomination. He's an attractive guy. He's articulate,' Bush said in an interview with Fox News. 'I've been impressed with him when I've seen him in person, but he's got a long way to go to be president,' Bush added."
How interesting that these important politicians don't realize the context of what they're saying. Obama came back with this about Biden's remarks, not even commenting on the fact that he said "man" at the end of his statement: "African-American presidential candidates like Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton gave a voice to many important issues through their campaigns, and no one would call them inarticulate."
Let's analyze what Biden said: Obama is "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." So every previous African-American presidential candidate has been either inarticulate, dark, dirty, or ugly. Now we all know that both Bush and Biden meant their comments as compliments, but Eugene Robinson has a great article that discusses this issue. He ends his column with this: "Whatever the intention, expressing one's astonishment that such individuals exist is no compliment. Just come out and say it: Gee, he doesn't sound black at all." That's a gem, and it gets to the real heart of the matter. We don't say Bush is "articulate," as Robinson points out (not that anyone would think that, anyway). But with black candidates, we describe them this way, and it has become an unconscious code for not sounding black.
I want to admit something here. I have written about Obama in two previous colummns--"From One to Another: The Race for 2008 Begins, Part II: The Democrats" and "Obama Enters the Fray"--and I went back to reread those columns. I was afraid that I may have described Obama as "articulate" without realizing what I was doing. I'm happy to point out that I did not use that adjective. Instead, I said this: "So why all the fuss? Well, Obama is a bit of a rock star. He's young, he's charismatic, he can motivate, and the guy can write, too!" I'm proud of myself, if you can't tell. I, too, am probably prone to use compliments like "articulate" to describe people that I may not expect to be articulate. And it doesn't make sense. Props to all of the analysts out there who have taken Biden and Bush to task for using these words. I'm just glad I wasn't one of them. Then I would have felt really stupid.
Now for another point about Obama. A recent poll reported in the Houston Chronicle says that Obama only has about 20% of the black vote, while Clinton has 60%. I'm not really qualified to speak on this issue, but I can report what I read. One person has commented that "Obama isn't black," and others suggest that he doesn't embody the African-American experience becuase he didn't go through the same struggles. I find it interesting, that's all.
Minimium Wage and Tax Hikes
Congreemen are sneaky, that's all I have to say. Here's what happened: Congress wanted to pass a new minimum wage law, and the House pushed it through. But then it got to the Senate, and Senate Republicans decided to attach a few things to it, like tax breaks for small businesses and what amounts to tax hikes for those making over $1 million. So now the bill has to go back to the House to get approval, and there's going to be a fight. And it's not the Republicans this time who will be keeping the minimum wage from passing. They can say that they approved it, and it's the Democrats who are holding it up.
Here's my take. I support raising the minimum wage, but I agree that it can hurt small businesses. It will hurt the big ones like Wal-Mart, too, and their decrease in profits may affect our general economy. But I'm not too worried about that because these huge corporations make enough money that they can lose a few million every year. Small businesses, however, will feel a hike in the minimum wage. Imagine that a company employs five workers at minimum wage. Within two years, their costs will go up $400 a week, and that equals approximately $20,800 a year! That's a pretty big increase for a small company like that. My dad owns a small cabinet shop, and he paid his workers way over minimum wage, but if he had to increase his pay $2 an hour, he would struggle. My dad only netted somewhere around $40,000 a year, so to cut that by $20,000 is ridiculous. He would need some pretty big tax cuts to make up for it.
So I'm for helping the economy by giving small businesses a tax break. It makes sense to do that in conjunction with raising the minimum wage, and I hope the Democrats in the House don't get too crazy over it.
Man killed by SUV while crossing Houston freeway
I saw this headline in the Houston Chronicle today, and I had to read about it. It turns out that it's a bit misleading. I thought it was going to be an attack on SUVs as dangerous vehicles that kill people. But no, the fact that an SUV was involved had nothing to do with the accident. And when it says a man was crossing the freeway, it means it. A man tried to run across the freeway on foot and was hit by an SUV. But it doesn't matter that it was an SUV. It could have been a Dodge Neon, and the same result would have occured, except that the Neon would probably have been damaged, too.
The fact that they put SUV in the headline, though, makes it seem as if the fact that the vehicle was an SUV had something to do with it, and it didn't. Really, it's just the man's poor judgment, what some would call stupidity, I guess. Let's be careful with misleading headlines like this, okay?
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