4 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, October 15, 2004 OPINION + 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 JORDAN SCHRADER Editor in Chief JASON Z. PESICK Editorial Page Editor NOTABLE QUOTABLE 44'You know, there's a mainstream in American politics and you sit right on the far left bank. " I Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the opinion of the majority of the Daily's editorial board. All other pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Michigan Daily. us a uh.- t i s +h'}s ele.ciofl. TO KEEP M'Y TAX +C1 ,~ " "" SAM BUTLER T_ 1aY mO.~rore *1 wa L-%-0 7 also Wa4 +0 ea- 4i- ss ca\Ke t, ,nQ+ excere:1-se and s+i 11 lose. t - President Bush, addressing Sen. John Kerry, during Wednesday's presidential debate at Arizona State University. 1. 'That's kind of one of those ... exaggerations' JASMINE CLAIR TE nIVIE/ANIN OF PROQRESS always warned me about guys who talk a good game, often sounding too good to be true. "A smooth-talking guy . s will say whatever he has to in order to get my goodies," she often lectured. After watching the presidential debates the other night, Grammie's sweet words came to mind. John Kerry will say just about any- thing, feasible or not, just to get my vote. As much as it pains me to admit, Kerry won the debates. A polished debater, Kerry gracefully rambled off numbers, catchphrases and policy details, convincing me that Bill Gates installed a Microsoft chip into Kerry's cranium. Out-debat- ing Bush on almost every issue, the Democratic candidate unraveled the weak and indecisive characterization that has plagued him throughout the majority of his campaign. Despite winning the debates and making the president look more like a Michigan State drop- out than a Yale man, Bush will reap the greatest advantage from the debates. Bush struggled to give answers to the questions actually asked, and often carried the look of a nervous school boy, yet he made a key power move in exposing how unrealistic Kerry's promises and policies are. Kerry's fuzzy math just doesn't add up. Pre- senting outlandish proposals, Kerry fails to bridge the gap between what the people want and what the country can realistically afford. With intentions to fully fund No Child Left Behind, invest more money into the troops and military equipment and a robust plan to fully insure every American, he leaves many with good reason to ask "with what money?" Despite criticiz- ing the president for financial discrepancies on a proposed social security plan, Kerry failed to mention how he intended to finance his forever- lasting list of promises, all to be fulfilled without raising taxes on the nonrich. His "pay as you go" response does not answer where the money is going to come from. At best, this is a method that responsible govern- ments need to have in place in order to avoid deficits. But now that we're already in the red, Kerry needs to be straightforward about how he intends to fulfill his promise to reduce the defi- cit. With the majority of his promises consisting of increasing funding to social programs, there must be some talk on where the funds will come from to accomplish all of these massive plans. As Michiganders, we should be especially crit- ical of Kerry because Michigan is experiencing a very similar situation. John Engler, the former Republican governor, left a sizeable deficit that Gov.Jennifer Granholm pledged to overcome. In order to accomplish this goal, an overwhelming number of cuts have been made to reduce spend- ing, and a variety of taxes, such as the regressive cigarette tax, have come into being. Granholm's efforts to balance the budget have resulted in col- lege tuition hikes all across the state, including here at the University. This makes me even more skeptical of Kerry and all of his promises. With yet another promise, Kerry plans to alle- viate outsourcing by ending corporate loopholes that he claims reward companies for outsourcing jobs. Most people do not like to see the rich get richer simply because they are rich. Unfortunate- ly, one of the realities of society is that the rich have power and control over a variety of entities, including jobs. As a business, most corporations are concerned with profit and means of increas- ing it and necessarily how many babies are being fed off of their payrolls. Consequently, if a large company is not satisfied with its profits, it turns to options such as job termination and outsourcing, which result in American job loss. From a practical perspective, closing corpo- rate loopholes can not logically solve the problem of outsourcing. Companies are concerned with profit and oftentimes are not willing to jeopar- dize their gains in order to alleviate societal problems such as a lack of jobs. Closing down a plant resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs, is simply business strategy for a company like Ford. But to the thousands that lose their jobs, it means financial turmoil. For this reason, corpo- rate welfare exists. Unfortunately, the rich have to have some incentive to keep factories open in the states, when it is obviously more profitable to have more locations abroad. Hence, corporate welfare. The voice of money can be heard all around the world, but unfortunately the voice of a single worker often goes unheard. This is the sad reality of capi- talism, and if this weren't the case, there would be no need for labor unions or tax incentives to coerce companies to maintain high environ- mental standards or provide decent health care coverage to their employees. This plan to end outsourcing is optimistic, yet it will only make the foreign market look more appealing, jeop- ardizing additional jobs. Kerry's going to win Michigan, but in order to win this election he's going to have to make his platform at least appear feasible. If Kerry's numbers don't even work on paper, I'd hate to see what's going to happen when he tries to get his agenda through a conservative Congress. This smooth-talking senator from Massa- chusetts must be held to the same standards as the president. Just as laughter fills the air when- ever the president stumbles over three-syllable words or pretends that certain pertaining prob- lems don't exist, this same criticism should be applied toward Kerry. Sure he sounds good and can properly pronounce nuclear, but that in no way means he can implement all if any of these policies. So beware, don't let Kerry simply talk you out of your goodies. Make him work for it. Clair can be reached at jclair@umich.edu Crying wolf and meaning it SAM SINGER SAM'S CLUB t happened in '96, when, in a desperate effort to draw atten- tion to the Clinton admin- 4 ; istration's left-leaning roster of judicial appointments, GOP leadership kicked and screamed until the elec- tion-time media spotlight turned toward the health of the U.S. Supreme Court jus- tices. Then it happened in 2000, this time from the opposite end zone, when the near certainty of a seat opening roused the long-sleeping pro-choice vote and carried the future composition of the Supreme Court to the foregrounds of the Gore campaign. And sure enough, the media cried wolf again in 2004, bringing the dire judicial implications of the upcoming election back into the fold, but this time with one snag - no one bothered to listen. After two election cycles, 10 years and countless false alarms, the nine justices remain stock-still, and the voting public has gradually grown complacent. As I am sure you've gathered by now, in spite of speculation to the contrary, neither Clinton in his second term, nor Bush in his first was given the opportunity to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Accordingly, the American public, now weary of court-packing alarmism, seems to have rel- egated the issue to the depths of its voting plat- form - slating its relevance somewhere between national park conservation and the Federal Click it-or-Ticket campaign. With the judicial branch effectively shadowed by public indifference, the White House has had little trouble marking its territory within the fed- eral court system. In terms of appointments, with 201, President Bush has already topped his father and is well on his way to outpacing both Clinton and Reagan. While some of the country's most divisive social issues ascend the judicial hierarchy clothed in class-action suits and amicus briefs, moderate federal courts are being inundated with right-wing purebreds - religious absolutists determined to use the bench as a platform to cul- tivate moral sanctity. And if you think I've gone over the top here, how do you explain William H. Pryor - a fanatical recess appointment Bush quietly slipped on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year? Pryor, an Alabama native, is well known in legal circles for his rather uncon- ventional interpretation of the bench, once pro- claiming, "God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians ... to save our country and save our courts." And when a slot opened on a district court in Arkan- sas this passed summer, Bush had his pick of the litter again, this time selecting Leon Holmes, the president of Arkansas Right to Life and one of the staunchest legal scholars below the Mason- Dixon. This is a man who has publicly expounded his belief that "the wife is to subordinate herself to the husband" and on numerous occasions, has flippantly equated the probability of rape-induced conception with "snowfall in Miami." Even more frightening than the idea of the reli- gious Right capturing the federal court system however, is the public's uncanny ability to remain completely aloof. The truth of the matter is the temperate 5-4 climate of the Rehnquist court, while comforting, is hardly sustainable. And if the bench tips, will the electorate actually be prepared for the consequences? A People for the American Way study found that a one- or two-vote swing would have reversed the outcome of more than 100 of the sitting court's precedents. Included in those 100 decisions, by the way, are Planned Par- enthood v. Casey and Stenberg v. Carhart - two cases that challenged the fundamental precepts set forth in Roe v. Wade. In any other setting, given the issues at stake, the appointment of partisan firebrands like Pryor and Holmes would usually agitate the electorate, but here, 10 years removed from a Supreme Court bench shakeup, the pub- lic continues to flout the media's all-too-familiar warnings. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be fair to hold the media completely culpable for its miscalculations and second-rate climaxing. Come to think of it, you couldn't find a sports book in Vegas four years ago that would have laid down odds on the bench coming out of Bush's term completely intact. The sitting court, to be certain, is by no stretch of the imagination a sprightly crowd. Eight of the nine justices are on Medicare, two have survived can- cer and one (Rehnquist) has been donning the robe since the Nixon administration. Clarence Thomas, at a youthful 65, represents the high court's most junior associate, and Justice John Paul Stevens, the court's liberal flagship and a relic of the Ford years, celebrates his 85th next April. But despite a laudable display of endurance, vacancy whispers have surfaced yet again, and this time, insiders are convinced they're authentic. The speculative departure list (which looks more like a blueprint for a partisan power vacuum) includes Rehnquist on the right, Stevens from the left and Sandra Day O'Connor - the distinguished swing voter. If we choose to believe the inner-beltway gossip, that the next president will have the capacity to seat one- third of the U.S. Supreme Court, then the national electorate has an obligation to look past the media that cried wolf and start seriously considering the safety of the flock. 4 Singer can be reached at singers@umich.edu LETTER TO THE EDITOR Armstrong bracelets are a fad with a cause he and his foundation were this in the Daily (When (and why) will it end?, 10/14/04). In 1996, Lance was given a very low chance of survival after it was found that he cancer research on Capitol Hill and also researches themselves. Zac Peskowitz could be right. Maybe people are wearing them just to make a