According to presidential polls, not long ago Sen. McCain was the most likely candidate for the next president of the United States. Then our current financial crisis hit, which led to a dramatic change in the polls. Now Sen. Obama is the favorite to win. But why did our financial crisis cause such a turnaround in peoples’ opinions?

The answer is simple: fear. Many people are scared of what this “crisis” might bring and, as a result, have begun to vote with their emotions when they otherwise might not have. These people want “mommy government” to take care of them, and that’s exactly what Obama has been promising to do all along.

Obama’s plans include raising taxes for the wealthy — those whose investments create new jobs and fund new technologies — in order to pass that money out to those who are “more deserving” of it than the people who actually earned it. This money will be passed out directly as tax cuts — or, for the 30 percent of people who don’t pay income taxes, handouts in the form of a tax return — and indirectly as social programs.

As his own Web site says, “Obama will ask the wealthiest 2 percent of families to give back a portion of the tax cuts they have received over the past eight years …” Of course, he won’t really be asking so much as demanding, as one would find out if they refused Obama’s “request” for their money.

So, at the expense of these taxpayers, and indirectly at the expense of the rest of the country as a result, Obama will use that money to fund a paternalistic government system that will take care of everyone. Just think — you won’t have to spend your own money anymore because Obama will take it and spend it for you! After all, he knows how to spend your money better that you do.

Obama’s plan is simply to oppress the minority, which is the wealthiest 2 percent of families, while helping, or attempting to help, the majority — the other 98 percent — in the process.

The Founding Fathers had a safeguard against practices such as these. Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution states “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers ….” Article I, Section 9, states, “No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

This means that taxes were only to be levied on the states in accordance to their population. In other words, if you wanted to tax someone, you had to tax everyone. There wasn’t an option of taxing a minority to gain the votes of the majority until the 16th Amendment was passed.

Many of the people who now support these policies would not have if it weren’t for the financial crisis, hence McCain’s past lead. But they have been corrupted by their own emotions and by the media’s hype and are now more concerned with keeping themselves safe from this crisis than looking at the effects of Obama’s plan logically and rationally.

I once heard a quote that went something like this: “You never really vote to raise your taxes; you only vote to raise other peoples’ taxes. You can give your own money away without a vote.” That describes the situation perfectly: One group of people trying to take for themselves what isn’t theirs and one politician who’s willing to help them do it.

— Blake Hasenmiller is a senior in industrial engineering and economics from DeWitt