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Two flip flops, both by Barack Obama and John McCain, one centers on public financing of campaigns, and the other is all about offshore drilling for oil.

Barack Obama has been severely criticized as of late with regards to his withdrawal of public campaign funds to finance his own campaign. Early on in the Democratic Primary, when asked whether or not he would agree to such campaign financing, his reply was in the affirmative. But now that he has had a clear advantage in raising money against Senator John McCain, he may have seen the light, and in politics, such a flip flop in the name of winning an election is a common scenario. With this reversal of his stand on public financing to opt for private financing, he is being criticized left and right.

And for Barack Obama, a man who has campaigned with the one word catch phrase of CHANGE, anything that puts him in the light of not adhering to CHANGE, and adhering to the same old politics of yesterday, will have a negative affect on his campaign. This is why, we have seen, conservative talk-show hosts, republican attacks after another, focused on this one issue.

What they do not tell everyone, is that a majority of Barack Obama’s private funds are of the denomination of less than a hundred dollars. In fact, the goal of public financing was to get rid of the big companies who has been financing many elections in The U.S.

With the groundbreaking Obama Campaign, he has not sold out to big companies, because in fact, a majority, 80% of his funds come from small contributions, such that no one big corporation owns him. We cannot say the same for John McCain.

In any case, I still was disheartened by Barack Obama’s decision, but I see this decision as one that was made by a politician. Sometimes, because Barack Obama comes off as a change agent, an almost activist and radical thinking public official, we cannot see him as he is, a politician.

And now to John McCain’s own flip flopping, when back in 2000 and even in 2004, he was against offshore drilling, but now, today, he is all for it. It’s clear, that this is not catering to the people of The United States, because to let loose the oil companies to more land, is not making a solution to the energy crisis, it is just another George Bush style attempt to delay tough decisions.

Points to make.

1. If offshore drilling is opened up, it will still take around 10 more years to have oil being pumped out of those drilling sites.

2. The current amount of offshore drilling can already provide more supply, but the oil companies are only pumping around 25% of what it can actually pump out of its current offshore drilling procedures.

The following video makes it more clear,

And a quote from Senator Joe Biden in that same show,

SEN. BIDEN: We’re not trying to get Saudi to drill more, we’re trying to get them to pump more of what they’re drilling. They’re not pumping what they could, number one. This is a gift, a gift to the oil companies by John McCain. They have now leased 41 million acres of offshore leases. They’re only pumping in 10.2 million of those acres. Seventy-nine percent of all the offshore oil available off the coast of Florida, into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, lies within those acres that they now have. Why are they not pumping? Why are they not doing this? Why are they not pursuing what’s estimated to be a total of 70–54 billion barrels of oil at their disposal right now if they pump? Why are these greedy fellows deciding they want to go beyond that? It’s because they want to get it in before George Bush leaves the presidency. It’s because they’re not pumping the oil to keep the price up. They are not even drilling. So here you have 30 million leased acres they have right now that possesses 79 percent of all the offshore, and they’re not drilling. And John says they need more? And it would take 10 years for it to come online.

Thus was the week of focusing on these flip flops, which to me, the most enlightening of these flip flops, and the most interesting debate that ensued was that of the oil companies which are deliberately withholding supply, and trying to further their monopoly by getting at more offshore drilling sites before their best friend George W. Bush is out of the White House.