Last week, U.S. Senator Barack Obama, D-Ill., came to Champaign for a town hall meeting. Having attended it, there are two perceptions I came away with: Obama is a brilliant politician and speaker and that Anti-War/Anti-Racism Effort can’t help but be disruptive and rude at anything they show up to.

The senator can give a good speech, that’s for sure. He certainly doesn’t have the foot-and-mouth problem that Senator Dick “The Troops are Nazis” Durbin seems to have. He teaches a valuable lesson for Democrats, namely, that you can advance your views by methods other than seething hatred toward Bush and all things Republican. However, there are several things that the Senator did get wrong: stem-cell research, Social Security and education spending. On those three issues, the Senator displayed either negligence or deception on the facts.

The stem-cell debate has been dumbed down by the media and politicians to the point where most of the public doesn’t understand the basic facts of the issue. You have adult stem cells, and you have embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells don’t need government funding; private industry is dumping money into it because thousands are being cured by adult stem cell treatments. Embryonic stem cell research (excepting stem cells in umbilical cord blood) is shunned because of the ethical dilemmas involved, and the lack of any discernible progress. Therefore, it requires government money.

The embryonic stem cell activists would have you believe that there is no other source of stem cells and that we must begin treating human life as a crop to be harvested for parts. They believe that any moral argument is a repeat of Galileo, the perceived, yet non-existent, “attack” on science by religion. They conveniently ignore that adult stem cell therapies work and embryonic ones don’t. ÿPeople are walking, being cured from diseases like Parkinson’s and living better lives because of adult stem cells taken from fat and other parts of the body. In fact, with Americans getting larger all the time, you can consider the supply of adult stem cells limitless. Either Senator Obama doesn’t know this (negligence) or he is willingly ignoring it (deception). Considering that there have been Senate hearings that included testimony from people cured by adult stem cells, it appears to be the latter.

Senator Obama doesn’t peddle the deception that Social Security is about “intergenerational responsibility” because it isn’t – despite what Professor Leff says. The 45 percent benefit cuts that organizations like MoveOn peddle are for people who retire in 2075. Those individuals are also known as the unborn, and, for that matter, unconceived. Though it is refreshing to see the left and their new-found concern for that demographic.

But Obama says Social Security is not broken. When I talk to financial planners, they tell me to expect $0 in Social Security benefits. A retirement system that will not be there when you retire is a problem. Saying differently is deceptive or, at best, negligent. And while he has a point in implying that state pensions won’t be available, that’s mostly because his party is running the State Universities Retirement System into the ground.

Lastly, Senator Obama discussed No Child Left Behind and the usual line about how President Bush has not funded it. The simple fact is that there never has been and never will be a government program that is “fully funded.” Money is like cocaine to a bureaucrat: they can never get enough. Under Bush, education spending went up almost 20 percent (even after Sept. 11, 2001, two wars and a recession). The fact is that states left $17 billion of appropriated federal money unspent last year.

Senator Obama is a refreshing departure from many of his hyperventilating colleagues. However, until the influx of deceptive information stops, intelligent political discourse and bipartisanship will not be able to succeed.

John Bambenek is a university employee and a graduate student. His column appears every Friday. He can be reached at [email protected].