Ron Amundson’s Political Blog

I find the Kennedy-Klobuchar race interesting. Mark Kennedy has some hard hitting ads, but then again, I think they could be counter productive, in that he is showing what Amy Klobuchar is for.

The last ad, where he sits with a little old lady is interesting. He said Amy is for taxing social security, benefits for illegal immigrants, rationing healthcare etc as it they are negatives. Perhaps for some of his constituents they are, but then again, perhaps not.

Taxing social security is double taxation, yet is mandated by current legislation for those over a certain income level. While I don’t think its right on the premise of double taxation, its an easy revenue source, the overhead to do it, is pretty low, and it could probably be made more progressive without too much negativity due to the small number of people affected. I’m not sure if its a good or bad idea… but it certainly is a political one.

Rationing healthcare occurs daily, and I think it is the way of the future. People don’t like to hear it, but anyone on medicare, or any physician can definitely see that they are getting sub par care as soon as the govt is involved. Once you take the economic incentive out of the picture for excellence, entropy ensues, and quality declines. Otoh, the other situation is for people to pay for services as they are able, and this is going to mean a lot of folks would end up with sub par care even worse than under medicare, although excellence would still be available for those with deep pockets. This is not a black and white scenario, and one has to ask what is the extension of human life worth. If its a family member, its worth a lot, if its an additional 20% sales, income tax, and property tax, it seems pretty worthless.

Its a most interesting campaign either way….. I will vote for Mark, because I think he will be effective as contrated with Amy, and not because of his positions, as I tend to disagree with them.