Editor, Daily Nexus,

Steven Begakis’ column (“Obama at Odds With Far Left,” Daily Nexus, Nov. 13) is shockingly ignorant and misinformed about any differences between President-Elect Obama’s campaign platform and the expanded majority of the Democratic Congress.

First, Obama’s platform supports an increase in capital gains and income taxes for people making more than $250,000 a year. Likewise, Obama’s platform includes lifting the cap on payroll taxes — which are currently paid only on the first $90,000 of income — for people making more than $250,000 a year. There is no difference between Obama’s platform and Democrats in Congress on this issue.

Obama’s stance on tax cuts is not that tax cuts increase revenue – a laughable fantasy of the conservative movement that has been repeatedly debunked by mainstream economists and by the experience of the Reagan tax cuts and the Bush tax cuts and contradicted by strong economic growth and increasing revenues after Clinton raised taxes in 1993. Rather, Obama says tax relief should go to working families and that increased tax revenue will come from making the tax system more progressive.

Second, Obama’s platform supports the Employee Free Choice Act, which allows a majority of workers who sign union cards to form a union. This would replace a system wherein employers can spend unlimited amounts of company money on anti-union campaigns, require employees to attend vote-no meetings, require employees to attend one-on-one meetings, bar union organizers from the premises during elections, “predict” that the plant will close if the vote is yes and so on. Again, there is no difference between Obama and the Democratic Congress.

All of this can be very easily found with a quick scan of the Issues section of barackobama.com. This leads me to ask whether Steven Begakis is simply ignorant of Obama’s policies and failed to do even the most basic research, or whether he actually did do the research and chose to misinform his readers for his own reasons.

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