Analysis of the third debate

I watched the debate tonight and was disappointed. Here is why.

Healthcare:
I care about healthcare and being a Democrat I always believed we should all have it. I have read both candidates plans and read many expert analysis. Obama brought up two women he spoke with who had just lost their jobs and lost their employer provided healthcare. Obama's plan will do nothing for those two women. They are unemployed and uninsured. Obama will offer them the chance to buy insurance from the government, being unemployed that is going to be difficult. He'll give a credit to small businesses for providing insurance, but these women are not employed. He will fine them if they do not find and buy insurance for their children.

By contrast, McCain's plan will give these women $2,500 toward the purchase of a healthcare policy. Obama kept saying how McCain will tax benefits, but if you are unemployed and uninsured you aren't getting tax-free benefits in the first place. This is one area were we should say the employed with insurance can pay a little more to help the uninsured. If McCain can help us buy insurance outside of our employers then maybe we can hold onto that insurance when we change jobs. Maybe we'll have more than 1 or 2 options too.

In the second debate Obama said healthcare is a right. But under his plan anyone working for a small business, anyone unemployed, students and stay-at-home parents are still stuck buying it. Large companies are incented to provide coverage, but large companies already do. And Obama's plan will require employers contribute to the cost of employee coverage, that does not mean they have to offer a good plan, an affordable plan, or offer a plan that covers spouses and children.

Personal attacks:
Obama rightly brought up the negative comments made by people at Palin's rally's. But McCain did not mention the attacks Palin has been under herself. As a woman I am deeply troubled at people in my own party who feel it's appropriate to attack Palin by circulating pictures of someone else in a bikini with her head on it, someone painting a nude picture of her and hanging it in a bar, someone making a porno movie with a Palin look-a-like, telling her she should stay at home with her kids, and the violation of her personal email account. It's interesting to me to watch the same party who claims to be for equal pay for equal work, to be bashing Palin for being a stay-at-work mom.

Taxes:
Read my open letter for why I have a problem with Obama's tax plan. But it's more than me and my family. It's the long-view that you can penalize the upper middle class to lift up the lower middle class. I keep hearing Obama say the gap is widening, there are too many wealthy. But people earning over $300k are in the top 1% of Americans. $300k is still upper middle class. Over 99% of people are in the middle or lower class so where is the wide gap?

My concern is that we are making more people dependant on the government. They aren't going to take $1 from me and give $1 to someone who needs it. They are going to take $1 from me and spend $0.60 paying people to figure out who needs it, funnel $0.20 to special interests and unnecessary projects and if we are lucky the remaining $0.20 goes to someone in need. That's big government. So now I have $1 less to spend and invest and get the economy going and someone desperately in need has twenty cents.

Obama has also complained the tax code is too complicated. But he wants to raise taxes on small businesses, raise payroll taxes, then give a credit for creating jobs, and a credit for offering health insurance. This is going to simplify the tax code? How about the additional cost to small businesses for documenting and reporting which jobs qualify as new and proving you actually hired a person in that new job? And all this is to not penalize small business. Why not just leave the tax rates where they are?