#91920 by Skruff on 8/03 at 5:40 am
(Unregistered commenter)

Ardee

“Everyone in the US should have access to health care, but only those who cannot afford it should get it for free.”

....
Sorry Skruff, meant to say and those who cannot afford it should get it free...not only. Though free health care for all is a nice idea it is far more likely that a universal medicare system is the solutiopn, cheap and efficient.

#91664 by mary on 8/02 at 7:11 am
(2 comments total)

Since we’re never going to get politicians who truly support our middle class if we don’t make some changes at the top, let’s start with term limits (I once opposed term limits!)
I do not understand this desire for term limits, frankly. In what other profession does one become more experienced, better able to do ones job, and then be disallowed from using that experience?

I don’t mind paying these people a decent wage, but do they really need tax payer funded healthcare.
Everyone in the US should have access to health care, but only those who cannot afford it should get it for free.

Absolutely do away with pensions.
Do you have a pension? Would you like to lose it? Neither do politicos. Of course that pension should be more in line with the average than it is today. Most of our legislators are rather rich, eliminate pensions and you eliminate any not rich from being able to run for office.....

And of course we must reform the election process, starting with funding campaigns. 
With this I agree wholeheartedly!

Billy,

You still out there?  Thinking about you because we are puttn on a new roof and hammering in morse code.

Tortillia Strips and tomatoes

Since we’re never going to get politicians who truly support our middle class if we don’t make some changes at the top, let’s start with term limits (I once opposed term limits!) I don’t mind paying these people a decent wage, but do they really need tax payer funded healthcare.  Absolutely do away with pensions.  And of course we must reform the election process, starting with funding campaigns.  Do we really want history to see our generation as “The Worst Generation”?  It’s not too late to at least start the process, our democracy depends on it, our children and grandchildren deserve no less.  Do we have the will!  It’s not a matter of ‘big gov vs small gov’, it’s a matter of ‘good government vs inefficient, poor governing’ How about starting with educating our children.  Our kids are smarter and stronger then we give them credit for.  Let’s give them the tools to help put this country back on track.  The religious community has been using limiting education to promote their agenda for too long.  Heaven knows the baby boomer generation has been more then a little short-sighted.  Why have we allowed pundits and the news media to divide us into red state vs blue state anyway?

Karl Marx said:  “Democracy works until people find they can vote themselves money.”

Source?

Got a majority of crooks, call Mayflower and your real estate agent . . . and leave the country.

My comment: #91307 by Outraged, should say Colorado City, UTAH.  My bad.

In reference to:

#91007 by Skruff

“We must shut off 65% of the money going to Washington.  Central government should be incharge of our defense (Not foregin aggression) and interstate and intracountry commarce

Everything else should be done at the State and local levels”

I guessing you’ve never lived in a very small town, say like, a couple of hundred people or less.  There are some things that you just do not want “the locals” in charge of.  Have you caught any of the reports of Colorado City, NV.?

I’ll agree that SOME things should absolutely be local, but some “locals” are just plain crooks running amok without oversight.  All Mormon based towns and communities I’ve encountered sell it to you this way “ Our way or rot in hell”.  No one sits in a leadership position unless, they are a “good” Mormon.

In several towns and cities across the west you will not be awarded a contract by bid unless you have made “donations” to the church.  These are “soft porn” mafia style tactics.  Without federal legislation and oversight they will continue to exercise their “authority”.  They have a long history of this and it hasn’t stopped at all, they’ve just changed the parameters in regards to how they carry it out.

It isn’t just the Mormons (although I would consider them one of the worst offenders).  Look at the bible belt, they wanted to endorse the ten commandments in their courthouse even though the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional.  Remember when African American CHILDREN had to be escorted to their classrooms by the NATIONAL GUARD! What you are proposing would mean your civil rights, afforded to you by the constitution, would depend on which town or part of the country you lived in.

America would not and could not in fact be a unified nation.

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help them.

The real argument here is not who is in favor of big or small government but who is in control of the government we have.

This administration has, as has no other, discovered how to loot our treasury to benefit the very few who in turn pay for those politicos to remain in power...endless cycle anyone?

Farm subsidies, like oil subsidies, go chiefly to those who need it least. Charles Schwab ,for example, has a duck club up near Sacramento. In order to attract the ducks he likes to shoot he plants rice on his modest ten thousand acre hunting preserve. Thus he qualifies for farm subsidies, no shit! To the tune of half a million bucks too.

I fully understand Skruff’s desire to shut off the cash spigot to our government but I would say that there are much more relevent spigots that should be dried up, that election reform would almost single handedly end or at least drastically reduce the power of greed over legislation. It is not our government that needs the hatchet, it is the caliber of folks we send to run the thing.

I think this debate, like the debate between left versus right, distracts from the unacknowledged clash between governments and the governed.

If push ever really came to shove in the clash between reason and superstition, I would expect religions to rally around each other in self defence against disbelievers. I expect governments would also rally around each other in similar fashion if faced with something like the ability of Internet technology to make transparency and total public awareness a real possibility.

Besides the profit motive that’s probably another reason net-neutrality is so endangered.

Imagine the temerity and the gall to suggest people use the technology of the Internet to wire their governments to security monitors and effectively create a Little Brother that keeps an eye on Big Brother?

I think Orwell had it all ass-backwards.

re: #91118 by felicity on 7/31 at 11:16 am:

Very good point!

Curious that the so-called ‘red’ staters scream bloody murder about illegal aliens when a large reason they’re coming north is because, thanks to NAFTA, our cheap government subsidized food stuffs have been flooding Mexico closing down small farmers because they can’t compete.

This is a blatant case of government policies getting labels which have little or nothing to do with the substance or potential outcome of the policies.  Big government is bad/small government is good is absolutely meaningless.

Amazing, isn’t it, how people are fed concepts and ideas, and you take a camera into a diner somewhere in Ohio, and you’ll hear a tired farmer spouting them off in disjointed array, desperately trying to connect them to his values and life experience.  This is the negative of television, 24-hour television that broadcasts these concepts day and night, argues them on news shows using uncredentialed pundits whose agendas are suspect.

Last week I watched Chris Matthews take apart a young woman’s viewpoint on “socialized medicine,” which she opposed in favor of our free market system. “Well, what about medicare?  What about the armed forces? What about the health plan used for congress? Should we let people die who can’t afford health care?” This snooty, privileged, highly educated white girl who had not suffered one moment yet in her life was so sure how the world should work for everyone, but once she was required to think for herself and not by script, she deflated instantly. 

It’s almost impossible, however, to argue with people who have been programmed so deeply.  They believe they are thinking for themselves and resist the notion that they are not. 

The good news is that now that Big Business has decided that socialized medicine will improve their profit margin, Bush and the like will amass a movement to install it just like he did a few weeks ago with amnesty.  What Big Business wants....

Big government or small government, a big government is any government bigger than yours. And so it goes!

Big government is strictly Smoke and Mirrors. Every small government repug president has increased government in modern history. Reagan is a perfect example of the phony lies of conservatives.
Why has big business been so slow to go for universal health care, when the will benefit so greatly? Oregon has no corporation taxes and yet complains how little money they have for schools and health programs...and the dimmos control the politics, guess corporate owns them too. We have a major war and the repugs cut taxes to the rich and than have the nerve to say there is no money for social services? Yup, old father Bush was right, his timing was off..Voo-Doo economics is well and alive.