Third Party & Independents: Archives

For starters, I’d cut spending on developing and building new nuclear weapons. We are spending more now than we did at the height of Reagan’s spending, after all (and yes, that’s inflation adjusted). Additionally, I’d cut funding to the faith-based missile defese system. Right there we’d be looking at a 20 billion dollar savings per year.

I’ve commented on the ridiculousness of these two programs at least twice before, so I wont reiterate here.

David: “There is no question the deficit must be reduced. But, many would choose to cut spending in other areas, like elective foreign wars, putting colonies on Mars, Congressional pork spending, reducing gov’t medicare costs by allowing the gov’t to negotiate Rx drug prices, and corporate welfare, handouts, and bailouts.”

Isn’t that what Bush is doing by asking for proposals to cut spending and reduce the deficit? I’m not sure what you mean by “other areas”—the point where you make a huge leap in your assumptions—since all of the issues you mention contribute to the deficit and are therefore on the table.

Martin, your response makes no sense to me. Forgive my dimwittedness, but, the President outlined what he wants to consider cutting, I outlined what I would consider cutting, and they are different. Sorry, I am perplexed?

Gaelin, I totally agree. A missile defense system would only be marginally effective. And when it comes to nuclear weapons, an only marginal defense will lead to an escalation of nuclear missile development in order to increase the number that get through on the margin. It is simple arithmetic, but, the President was either partying through math class, or once again he is relying on “bad intel and bad information” from his advisors. Either way, we need someone a whole lot better to assess these issues than he.

David, maybe Martin didn’t read specifically what the White House was suggesting cutting (pretty much every Department, including Homeland Security - only Justice and Defense are spared).

-Cf

CF, a real “Law and Disorder” President, eh? Is there a tinge of paranoia in this President that he values Dept. of Justice and DoD more than anything else in the budget?

David,

Don’t ya’ just love how the same people that are taking RX special interest$$$ are now the same ones appointed to monitor and negotiate prices? THat’s not flawed is it? Can’t accuse conservatives of being responsible for anything they do, that’s not what being a republican is about, that pesky taking responsibility thing.

Now we hear about new cuts? Surprised? The republicans want to turn us into an exploitative third world country as they have the south and the midwest. Why don’t republicans just move to Equador or Malaysia, it’s cheaper than a PAC would cost!!! Why should we have to live in the third world country those conservative eeediots want America to be?

What part of move to Borneo or Senegal don’t neo-cons get? Put down those red white and blue flags this isn’t the country you want to live in apparently, we are too sectorally advanced of a nation for conservatives. They want something with monkeybars and no responsibility, we don’t have that, go fish.

I like Kerry’s taxation plans as I’ve always liked Nader’s addressing of issues (win or lose always poignant). What Kerry is proposing is a great move. I disagree with parts of the Kerry platform on several grounds but this isn’t one. Kerry doesn’t go far enough into government responsibility and into special interests running our country, as Nader has. But taxing the 1% club, I agree and I think that it is pandering in the worst on the part of the republicans to have implimented such a proposal as they have done.

Sidenote; In Florida I see alot of republican foibles but none worse than the privatization of infrastructure. See what happens, as you probably know, is that states who privatize take the lowest bid and that usually means the shoddiest contractors. We have roads without yellow or white lines in some places not to mention huge delays. Road repairs done by near third world outfits and the worst I’ve seen thus far was an overpass outside of Tampa falling apart on traffic and a red steel girter falling on a car, killing three, one child. Republicans have no sense of duty towards public responsibility at all. And this stuff gets swept under the rug all the time as a red state lost in its own Jebbie lies about privatization.

Republicans, please move to Burundi, there you can be as irresponsible as you like. Go take advantage of them!

**Another sidenote;

Bush is destroying America and turning us into a third world military superpower with no other institutions. with no bureaucracies and no services. It’s pure corporate feudalism with a purely war-like & military industrial bent, do you not see the steps?

1)Is he just trying to make room for his perm tax cuts? or 2)is it the irresponsible capitol hill spending that has resulted in cuts? If the answer is no to both of these questions then the first paragraph of this post is absolutely correct. What is our ultimate course and for whom or what does the course serve?

Either way Bush is an irresponsible idiot.

All I know is, my Halliburton and L-3 Communications stocks are really taking off. If I could afford more than a few shares, I’d want this to go on forever.

AP, the ultimate form of insider trading, eh? Be very curious to see how much stock is owned by the Whitehouse NeoCons - their families, and the President’s family.

David,

actually all that information is available online, and as it turns out within that administration Rummy is actually one of the wealthiest.

The information is available though with complete listings within the entire Bush cabinet. AND yes fascinating indeed.

Did you see where Cheney apparently set Halliburton up with some multibillion dollar govt contracts? If I thought Cheney would go to jail and Halliburton would lose the contracts over that, I’d sell my stock.

There are all these rules we lay type people need to follow to keep our freedom and avoid the power of government from swooping down and wisking us away from our lives. And by and large, we do pretty well.

It is amazing and angering to me, that conflict of interest, being a simple concept, is so flagrantly violated by so many in government from Justices of the Supreme Court to Presidents and their cabinets, all the way down to a few police chiefs and mayors. Perhaps one day, we the people will hold them accountable - perhaps the next generation or the one after that. It would seem however it takes some real hard times to wake the citizenry from their private pursuits and stir them to action in demanding and supporting a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The main core reason for having any government at all is to pool the resources of force in protection of the constituency from external invasion (defense) and internal crime (justice). However, since the very first of human civilizations, the tendancy of some individuals to take profit from that exercise in corrupt ways has been a problem.

The American Constitution was meticulous in hamstringing governmental institutions and limiting power in order to prevent excessive bureaucratic authoritarianism, but it didn’t sufficiently address the threats to the national weal from the private sector. There is a partial reason for this: the prime actors in the War for Independance were wealthy private individuals who spent their vast fortunes and drove themselves into poverty for the cause of freedom from monarchy, and there was a prevailing attitude that any devout wealthy private protagonists in future challenges to American freedom and security, would do the same. Such, obviously, has not been the case, especially lately.

The spending levels in non-defense and non-justice areas of government are all negotiable, of course, as are defense and justice themselves. What’s “wasteful” to some people seems essential to others, and this dickering is the core of democratic debate.

My own take is that we don’t need to be looking at rocks on Mars when there are people on Earth trying to murder us, for one thing. Another would be that the initial goal of Social Security has been expanded into a vast, more fully-encompassing social safety network, but it did so without really taking a step back and looking at the inner guts of how revenue is taken in and redistributed. It’s been a hodge-podge, and the inflated costs of getting $1 of tax into $0.22 in the pockets of the elderly need some enhanced scrutiny of the hand-off points in the bureaucracy, and possibly eliminating hand-off points altogether.

A comprehensive systemic overhaul should view public assistance as qualified assistance for those who are unABLE to work (elderly beyond ability to greet people at Wal-Mart, or severely handicapped, or a full-time student concentrating on studies), not merely unWILLING to work. Or as a supplement for those who DO work, but do so at wages that don’t meet the basic expenses of life. I would pay out of pocket to help those who are working to help themselves, and better themselves. I would not offer a thin dime to someone who sits on the couch and whines for a free ride in life—even if I were Bill Gates. This public assistance can and should be distributed by the same Service (IRS) that carries out the collection of the revenue. They have the informational infrastructure in-place to make reasonable safeguards against fraud, and also to carry higher penalties FOR such fraud. And the tax code itself should be simplified. There should be a simple standard of basic living calculated for each zip code in the country, which acts as the standard deduction, above which all income is taxed at a flat rate; and below which public assistance makes up the difference as long as the individual works full-time or has the legitimate excuse for not doing so (student, elderly, handicapped). Make the assistance partial for part-time workers (between zero and 40 hours per week, prorate the assistance level). Anyway, EVERY tax form should be in “EZ” format with just a few lines to fill in (and in the case of the employed, can be done through the employers with their pay statements). That would reduce the workload of IRS even more than any work added to them for managing public assistance. And then the bureaucracy for “Social Security” and all other forms of public assistance can be dissolved. And an AUDIT should constitute the basic check of: did you fill in the right zip code? Did you get the right amount associate with that zip code, for the standard deduction? Was your math correct? No more full rectal exams of every aspect of a person’s financial life are needed, for audits, in such a simplified system.

ABM systems: 4 out of 7 successful tests at $40 billion cost would never fly in the private sector. There is no excuse for letting it fly in government contracting. Make the company refund the money to the taxpayers until the taxpayers get 7 out of 7 successful tests, or simply drop out of the program and let other companies give it a whirl. The DoD is chock full of boondoggles like this, and needs closer scrutiny. The “Golden Fleece Award” used to bring such things to light in a humorous way, and effected real change in spending habits from the public outcry, but it may need some new juice in the Internet age to make it at least sexy enough for mass-forward spams sent around among high school friends.

Hey Ciggy, if you use a 1040 form for taxes (about 40% of Americans do), you theoretically don’t need to actually fill out the form. The IRS already has all the info it needs. The Dems periodically float a proposition to let the IRS take care of it for you. They just send you the bill or the check.

Ciggy, you make some very good and defensible points. I would add however, to the debate, that what the U.S. government in collusion with corporate enterprise has, and is, in effect been doing is compromising the American standard of living.

America has lost living standard in terms of working hour buying power needed to remain above poverty. Now, the U.S. could have chosen to keep American living standards the highest in the world, while working to raise living standards per hour worked in other nations. Or, the U.S. could have abandoned American workers for the open market place and opted to take jobs where the lowest cost per hour worked dictated.

America has chosen a compromise between the two with a heavy lean toward the latter: abandoning American wage standards. The economic facts as well as the anecdotal experience of a majority of Americans over the age of 40 make this an irrefutable fact. In the 60’s a high school drop out or graduate could get a job at 18 or 19 at Ford Motor Co., or Bethlehem Steel. With that job, that graduate could afford to marry his pregnant girlfriend, get a small house, buy a car, raise a bunch of kids, build a pension retirement, have health care for his family, and even save to put one or more of his kids into college - all without his wife ever having to work.

That is not possible today given the cost of living and the wages for jobs that a high school drop out or graduate can acquire and build on through a lifetime of dedicated and loyal work service given to the company or corporation he works for.

This has come about by a collusion of interests between business and government. It may be too late to reverse this trend, but if it is, it marks one of the greatest failures of American history. For instead of keeping living standards in America the highest per wage hour worked, we opted to bring American workers down to the level of far less developed nations in order to attain an equalibrium of maximized profitability for corporations and maximized party and candidate subsidies by corporations throughout each election cycle.

There’d be no need for a “bill” if the system were that automatic—they could just adjust the witholding level, or supplement what the employer is paying, so that some people with the assistance don’t even appear, to their peers, to be “on welfare”, with the associated stigma.

And low-paying employers could face a balancing factor if corporate or business taxation rates were calculated as a function of the disparity ratio between the top levels and line workers. Got cheap labor building your widgets for you in Indonesia? Well your CEO compensation better be low too, or the IRS has news for ya!

Ciggy, I will buy that concept. Sounds practical. But, how does a congress person sell it to their constituencies without losing corporate contributions to their reelection campaign?

A big part of selling ideas in corporate circles is a matter of how the idea is presented and how certain concepts are worded. Rather than say “We will punish you with higher taxation rates for cheapening labor costs and boosting executive perqs”, one could say, “We will reward you with tax breaks for flattening your organizatonal structure, streamlining, and making people your greatest asset and making leadership look more like the rest of the team in terms of overall compensation”. The difference is that it accentuates the positive.

The language of the legislation itself can be neutral and clinical in the nouns, and free of excessive adjectives and adverbs.

And one tool overall toward shaming corporations away from pulling campaign financial support, is to make the public aware that it’s happening, whenever it does. If I were, say, Bob Kerrey, and had these reform elements in my campaign platform, and Coca Cola, for example, decided to pull their contributions because of it, you can bet my campaign speeches would include, “and Coca Cola pulled their support for this campaign because they’re hiring cheap labor in Indonesia and don’t want to be good corporate citizens and keep more jobs at home!” That way, whatever you lose in financial backing, you gain in uproars of public reaction, in your favor and against whoever it was that tried to financially manipulate you.

The check and balance in the realpolitik of a democracy is between “money power” and “people power”. Money prevents the people from reenacting Vladimir Lenin’s bank robbery of Russia; and people prevent individuals like Rupert Murdock from becoming too much of a Grey Emminence in public policy. When each is reasonable and offer up their least defensible cherished notions as bargaining chips, true progress can be made together.