Third Party & Independents Archives

David, herein lies the problem. How many people in this country will check out FactCheck to see what they have to say on healthcare? I’m vaguely familiar with FactCheck but I have to reason to put much credence in what they say about healthcare, specifically. Just like Obama thought he had the AARP in his pocket but when push came to shove, where the rubber hit the road, they reneged on him. Now, many seniors seem to LUV the AARP. But, IMO they represent a bunch of insurance companies and therefore I don’t have any interest in them whatsoever. What we are talking about is TRUST. People really don’t know who to trust on this or any other political issue. We know that O’riley is up 56% and MSNBC is down 15%. That’s about the best metric I can get on the healthcare issue. Otherwise, there is media bias, big business bias, political bias, etc. It’s each man, and woman, for himself or herself. IMO the bills coming out of five committees, 3 House and 2 Senate, will end up as near 1000 pager that nobody reads and more than likely will be passed into law. Following that, the agencies responsible for healthcare and big business will get together and iron out the details over the next couple of years. The 1000 pager will be mostly boiler plate and a skeletonized version of healthcare policy. And, over time, say five to eight years, the Corpocracy will morph the policy into whatever they want it to be. Incrementalism is the accepted term I believe. If you go to the Dem Party website and read up on their Agenda you will find it is something like 52 pages of hotel music. Most folks would quit after the first page. Then look at the Agenda on Republic Sentry’s website and you will find it is clearly spelled out in plain English. Is it so hard for the Corpocracy to show us at least an outline or bullets that define their healthcare Policy? If Factcheck can tell us what is not in the bill why can’t they tell us what is in the bill? Beyond that I think people should know how much profit is in health insurance, medical service, etc. Also, how much fraud and corruption is in insurance, medical service, and the government side with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Why should we vote for a continuation of a policy that is filled with corruption and CEO’s dragging tons to the bank, etc. The people have watched the greatest transfer of wealth in human history take place. They’ve watched us speed from the greatest nation on earth to the largest debtor nation. They watched the manufactured recession come on. They have seen Congress ram through bills that no one has read. People no longer trust government to do the right thing, hence you have the boisterous town halls. The fact that people are standing up the Corpocracy gives a third party advocate much hope.

Otherwise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve.

Missed a good point. Most folks respect the AMA, thinking them to operate with integrity and have the interest of the public at heart. Last evening I learned through the media that the AMA is rejecting Obama’s healthcare plan, whatever that is, for reason having to do with their own self-interest. The AMA mermbership is comprised of something like 40% of the medical services people. They get their funding primarily through a, dare I say it, a government clause put into this country’s healthcare policy. Obama’s plan nixes that funding clause, hence the opposition. Who do you trust to provide you with information?

Otherewise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve!

No question about it, Roy. Trust, or the absence of it, is at the heart of the difficulties in attempting to pass credible health care reform. Brought about by years and years of failed government policy and obligations - Iraq, 9/11, Katrina, the Banking sector collapse, the mortgage industry implosion, the hedge funds and credit default swap leveraging to astronomically unsustainable levels.

Seems to me, the voters should trust in their own ability to vote those responsible for the lack of trust out of office, and hold their replacements equally responsible at election time.

I think we need to give trust instead of just giving outraged paranoia.

Obama ran on healthcare and was elected. Why did we agonize and battle over candidates character and background and proposals if we are not going to give any amount of trust to the winner - atleast to start.

His administration ought to be given some leeway to initiate something before being lambasted. This country seems to take pride in it’s quick ability to distrust. Granted, distrust is easier, and too many people would rather see an administration fail than the country improve.

David,
Why I do believe every Americam meeds to be more self-aware on the issues, I’m also aware that the Lawyers of America will not mandate that all the political material be absolutely truthful. So, it makes groups like Factcheck.org even more important and hopefully will some day lead to the Media Pundits having to prove their claims before the American Public.

Schwamp,
Although I suppose given President Obamas’ Administration a break would be nice; however, I do believe in American Politics all is fair. So ubless or until they can PROVE to the American Public that they can Rule from the Center, its part of American Pride to keep the Office of the White House feet to the fire.

Roy,
With the Republicans supporting Political Stupidity, I do think that a third conservative political party could exploit the Mission of Misinformation to their favor.

For are you willing to keep voting for a party who keeps thinking that the American Public is dumb or are you willing to listen to a party that can take on the Democratic Party based on the facts of the issues?

A clear choice to the voter and one that I think most conservatives believe that they can win on. For on the Health Care Issue, do you want to talk about death squads or the fact that seniors in the next few years are not going to have the medical staff they need to give the same care as our grandparents recieved just a few years ago?

Otherwise don’t we have to keep on putting up with the Corpocracy that feeds off the fears of the Unlearned?

David

The FactCheck shows some of the reason people are uneasy about health care. I think a lot of people worry about your points #2 and # 5

· False: The Bill Is Paid For - This is a big deal. Obama has not figured out how to pay for the bill, even in theory. You saw that support for the bill was much higher until the OMB delivered the unpleasant truth that the promises had no basis in fact.

False: Families Will Save $2,500 – this one goes right to the question of who pays. Families WILL NOT save money, according to the Factcheck you mention. Obama’s promise is false and that makes you wonder about other promises.

So we have two BIG problems. The health care bill is NOT paid for and it will NOT save you money. We hear promise about other things too, maybe they are also not true, but these two things alone are enough to make people angry and fearful.

Put it in simple personal terms. You offer to take me out for a really good meal at a great restaurant because you have a coupon for 10% off. I anticipate the enjoying the good food and better price. But then you tell me that you don’t have the money to pay for it. And you don’t have the coupon either, so I will have to pay for my own meal and yours too and get no discount. But you assure me that IF we could afford it, it would be good and that I should trust you to do something good but you aren’t sure what that will be.

That is why people don’t trust Obama anymore on this issue.

The FactCheck article shows there is thick BS on all sides of the debate, but the bottom line is that Obama cannot pay for health care and it won’t save me or you any money. Don’t you think that is enough? If not, isn’t it sort of like asking, “Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”

Henry, I believe the time is getting right for folks to support a third party effort. I believe there will be several upstarts over the next 3 years. But, I would add that solely because people have lost confidence and trust in government to do the right thing, no third party will gain traction unless they come up with some way to regain that confidence and loss of trust. That’s THE primary goal Republic Sentry.
Christine, I like your hard hitting analogy cited in your last para.

Otherwise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve!

Christine-
RTA, I believe, has always been a good rule in dealing with political posts.

The point in question is a matter of technical definitions: it reflects uncertainty as to what will come out of Congress, and therefore uncertainty as to whether the bill will indeed be paid.

The other point about the savings also reflects problems with the CBO’s way of figuring costs. It won’t consider savings that are subject to individual economics, and therefore are uncertain.

Or put another way, people could save that much over time. FactCheck, like the CBO, has a tendency to base its estimates on concrete, here and now, predictable facts, though, and they won’t certify as fact a potential savings, if they can’t see it squarely in a conservative (in the old sense of the word) analysis of the factors.

The problem with that, is that economic figures and behavior are more slippery than that. Their conservative approach (again in the old sense of the word) has lead both organizations to mess things up on occasion, or miss the point of the legislation.

The Problem here is that the CBO’s estimates are being used beyond their design specifications. This is supposed to be a budget-oriented organization, not an expert policy workshop.

Stephen

What sort of savings do you really think they will be able to achieve? How? So you no longer believe the CBO? We just have to have faith in Obama. He doesn’t tell us what he will do. He doesn’t tell us how he will do it? He just promises that we will get more for less money and more people will be covered. I suppose he will then distribute the bread and fish.

Maybe the CBO figures are wrong. But we don’t have anything better. What a shame that they use real facts instead of Obama facts. And logic indicates that Obama is not telling the truth unless he can alter the laws of physics, the nature of biology and the habits of humans. But - hey - he is the Obama and we know that dreams can come true.

Christine,
How we pay for health care reform is very important. The politics of who will pay is why there is uncertainty and why factcheck says it isn’t yet payed for (There isn’t one bill approved to discuss during the August recess).
a
We are going to pay more for health care one way or another even if we didn’t try to insure everyone due to health care costs continuing to outpace inflation. Throw in paying for the 40 million plus uninsured, the millions more underinsured and it is imperative we control costs. The US pays way more for health care than any other industrialized country. The real threat to your health care is not government rationing but the increasing rationing due to costs.

Unless you are OK with a system where there are tens of millions of uninsured getting no care but emergency care, and tens of millions more not sure if they get sick they will be covered, and the cost of medical care falling disproportionately on those who can least afford it (i.e. a Walmart employee making $25,000 a year but premiums and deductables adding up to $3-8,000 per year) then keep avoiding health care reform.

Chris2x

I personally favor a Scandinavian style system, where everybody is covered. But I recognize that the well insured will get less and pay more than they do now in return for universal coverage.

I am afraid that we will get the worst of the U.S. system (i.e. lawyers threatening health care, defensive procedures, high costs and big baby patients) with the rationing and low innovation of the state run systems. And I don’t like the level of dishonesty shown among the plans supporters and opponents alike.

We cannot get more for less. The “savings” are bogus. The tax increases and cuts in service will be real.

Perhaps the big elephant in the tent is China. If the Corpocracy doesn’t push through some kind of healthcare ‘reform’ what willChina’s position be. They are going to want the rent before any of us get healthcare.

Otherwise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve!

Christine said: “False: The Bill Is Paid For - This is a big deal. Obama has not figured out how to pay for the bill, even in theory. You saw that support for the bill was much higher until the OMB delivered the unpleasant truth that the promises had no basis in fact.”

First of all Christine, Obama has not weighed in with a detailed plan, at all. He has simply instructed Congress that the legislation must be “deficit neutral”, his words. Obama is not responsible for your representatives and what they craft in their Committee Rooms. There is this thing called separation of powers, you know. So, don’t lay the people’s concern on Obama. Lay it where it properly belongs, on our Congressional Representatives in those drafting Committees.

And I might remind you that 165 amendments from Republicans are included in these drafts, so this is NOT solely Democratic legislation anymore.

Christine said: “False: Families Will Save $2,500 – this one goes right to the question of who pays. Families WILL NOT save money, according to the Factcheck you mention. Obama’s promise is false and that makes you wonder about other promises.”

Obama has said repeatedly that for those making under $200,000 per year, their taxes would not increase for a health care bill he will sign in the W.H. Again, he is not responsible for what they draft in Congress. Additionally, as I warn in my article, these facts are not static. There are many more changes to occur before a final draft is available for passage, so, whether or not Americans will save $2500 per year or not, has yet to be determined. Lastly, even if Middle Class Americans save only $500 per year, how many Americans would reject such savings in their health care premiums. If the final legislation saves middle class premium payers anything at all, it will be a vast improvement over the constant annual increases in premiums and out of pocket expenses that have occurred for the last 8 to 10 years.

It would be foolish for voters to cut off their nose to spite their face. Any savings at all is vastly better than annual increases.

Christine,

I liked your dinner analogy. Kudos. I’ll add another Republican Icon’s words, “Trust, but verify.”

We all seem to agree we’ll be footing the bill any way we choose, and we know for certain the bill will be enormous if we do nothing.

Christine-
I believe the CBO. I just don’t think it delivers the full picture, or the folks quoting it the full context.

In terms of savings, there are a number of categories:

Taxpayer expense. The less we pay for healthcare overall, the less expensive Medicare will be in the future. If you need a reason why reform must past, Medicare is the main reason. This would also make the lower level state programs cheaper.

Direct Costs. Things like digital record keeping, best practices on procedures, and preventative care will lead to lowered costs for those paying for either their current healthplan or under government healthplans, like Medicare or the new Public option.

Costs tied to abuses, to long term failure of care. We can divide this further into two categories. With the first we have the productivity costs of having people being more sickly, getting disabled, lapsing into vegetative or long term coma states, and finally death.

With the second, we can include medical mistakes, denials of care, medically initiated bankruptcies, unnecessary procedures.

The system’s become a counterproductive mess, costing more but providing less healthcare value for every dollar.

But one things clear: longer we wait, the more it will cost to fix the problem, and the more we will have paid for letting the problem continue.

One of the big problems is indeed that we don’t have an Obama plan. We don’t have any plan that we can afford. He should not leave it to Pelosi, who lacks the morality and intellect to craft a policy. So Obama should indeed get off his rear and start doing something besides gallivanting around the country in permanent campaign mode. We all know he is attractive. We don’t know what he can do.

I don’t have the religious faith in Obama evident in many of his supporters. (The one God is sufficient for me.) I want to see what we will get. I don’t trust congress to give it to me. I was willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but it is past time for him to get off his rear and do something.

Gergle

The bill will indeed be enormous, no matter what. I don’t think there is a viable “third way” between the government run rationing of the Euro systems and a relatively free market solution. If Americans were responsible enough and logical enough, we could have a free market system. But I don’t have any confidence in that. Crooked lawyers will exploit and open the seams in the system. Hypochondriacs will demand their “rights”. Therefore, of the two, I go with the Euro system, not because I love it but because I think it is the best we can do. I fear we will get a chimera that has the worst of all.

Stephen

There are lots of things we should do to control costs, but there is absolutely no reason to believe that the government can wring efficiencies out of the system. Things run by government tend to run LESS well, less efficiently with less innovation. The government will control costs by limited services and rationing care.

As a conservative, I can come together with you to advocate the steps needed to make care available to all Americans. But let’s say it plain. The European systems are not as innovative and care for the majority of people is not as good. BUT care for the lower 20% is much better, everybody is covered and they deliver the results at less cost. It is a trade off we have to make.

The enemies of success are the liars on all sides. We are not going to hell, but we certainly are not going to create a heaven on earth. MOST people will get less than they do today, but everybody will get something.

Frankly, I think the chances of success are less than 50%. We will get the same kind of “reform” we got with SS, which - after all the dust is settled and the shouting is done - is nothing.

Christine,

Your prejudgment that anything run by government must be inefficient, is contradicted by examples. Our IRS was the world model of efficiency until Republicans came into office in 2001 and later began contracting collection services out to private contractors.

Our Veteran’s Administration is one of the most efficient health care systems with highest quality care in the world, rivaling even those touted as the best in Europe, with cost per unit of care delivered which Medicare/Medicaid and the Private Sector should envy.

Our postal system was the best in the world and efficient until the private sector lobbyists got control of it, and completely flipped the revenue structure upside down, discounting bulk junk mail and pricing valued mail virtually out of the US Postal System except where mandated by legal prescription.

There is nothing which dictates that government run administration must be inefficient. That depends directly on the politicians and the quality of administrators they put in place to manage operations. Brownie at FEMA was a perfect example of how one makes any operation, private or public, incredibly inefficient.

And the Private Sector has no efficiency advantage over the public sector as the Wall St. and Banking Sector meltdown in 2007 and 2008 amply demonstrate. Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse, the private sector rating agencies, banks like Lehman Bros, Goldman Sachs, and CitiGroup plus mortgage corporations like CountryWide, and Hedge Fund operations stand as testament to trillions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse, i.e inefficiencies.

There is reality, and then there is ideology which rejects reality to preserve itself. Your proposition that somehow public organizations are more inefficient than private organizations is an ideological perspective having no basis in reality, as the examples I cite above demonstrate.

David

Americans are very docile about paying their taxes. It is one of our nice cultural traits not to cheat as much as most others. The IRS is efficient at collecting taxes for that reason. But being efficient at collecting taxes is hardly a service most people would want to brag about.

The Veterans Administration is comparable to the best government run programs in Europe. Good. A special league of their own. In fact, the Veterans Administration looks a lot like what we can expect with government run medicine.

The Postal System has a legal monopoly. It worked well when there w/o competition as long as it had s simple business plan. It couldn’t adapt to the technological change. That is the problem with government.

My observation of government v private enterprise is that government enterprise can be as good as private enterprise BUT it doesn’t adapt as well to change or innovation. Private enterprise changes faster because it HAS to. When a private business hits a snag, it has to adapt or go out of business. Government just throws more money at the problem.

This is a structural problem. Government has a problem with change because it is run publically and it can coerce people to support it. Private managers would love to force people to buy their goods or services at prices they dictate, but they don’t have that power. Government can and does.

Your financial examples are good. But in a free market, those guys should be out of business. Government protects them. It protects its own with even more vigour.

Government is a machine bureaucracy. It CANNOT allow managers the freedom to innovate or change product lines. That would be illegal. Actually illegal by definition. The government CANNOT differentiate its services. That would also be illegal. Almost all innovation starts in limited pilots and then spreads to larger markets. Most innovations are very expensive at first and available only to a small number of people. Think of computers. A government manager doesn’t have the discretion to provide better services to some people. It has to provide it all at once to all the people.

In other words, government has a very important role to play to provide fairness and access to all. Innovation never does that.
And we have not even considered the problem of incentives. A profit motive is important for incentives, but not for the reason you might think. A profit indicates what is selling. A government manager has incentive not to make mistakes, but not to try new things that might risk failure.

Again, that is why we put government in charge of security and other things where mistakes are costly and innovation less valuable. It is also why we need to keep government management out of the innovation sector. Government must set directions. It can provide the infrastructure of innovation, but it will not innovate into new products.

Let’s think of a simple and indisputable example, war. The U.S. government is very good at war. We can defeat the armies of any other country or group of countries and we can kick the asses of insurgents if we can hold them down. The trouble is that insurgents innovate very rapidly. We can still beat them, but consider the relative use of resources. We are willing to pay the massive price because we want security. In most parts of the economy we don’t want to pay that kind of price.

Anyway, look at government run health care in any other place. I have seen it and experienced it in advanced parts of Europe. It is okay. I like it enough. But it is not as good as I would have expected in the U.S. The government advantage is universal access and cost control through rationing, NOT efficiency or innovation.

Not for profits would work well, I believe. We have too much democracy now and I would like to see the government out of private business. Should not the TVA and REA should be auctioned? The federal government should be about a fifth of it’s current size.
The not for profits would need a volunteer board of directors to control wages. Would this not work well and hold costs down?

Christine said: “Americans are very docile about paying their taxes. It is one of our nice cultural traits not to cheat as much as most others.”

Your assumption here is wrong, Christine. Americans are very resistant to paying taxes, and have been for a very long time. In 1920, the NY Times ran an article that the Treasury Staff was too small leaving 1 Billion dollars uncollected in owed federal taxes. A billion then was huge.

This Tax Gap continues through the 70’s and 80’s.

And it continues as in this IRS report:

The updated estimate of the overall gross tax gap for Tax Year 2001 – the difference between what taxpayers should have paid and what they actually paid on a timely basis – comes to $345 billion. This figure falls at the high end of the range of $312 billion to $353 billion per year, an estimate released last March.

Another conservative assumption asserted without questioning their own authority, apparently. Questioning authority is a good thing, especially when that authority is one’s own opinion acquired through osmosis. Took all of 2 minutes for me to question the authority for your comment above. Which begs the question, why didn’t you verify the authority of your own comment before writing it?

I find it interesting that in 2005, under the Bush administration, the IRS stops posting Tax Gap Information (difference between what is owed and what is collected). It would appear the quarter trillion dollar Tax gap of 2005 warranted a halt to publishing that kind of information, publicly.

Add to that quarter trillion, the settlement of cents on a dollar owed losses to the public treasury, and the gap widens to something well over 1/3 trillion dollars PER YEAR. Which means the last 4 years of the Bush Administration, an estimated 1 Trillion dollars in owed federal taxes were never collected. No doubt a contributor to the Conservative Party’s abject failure in fiscal management, doubling the national debt in 8 years.

Conservative’s plan to contract out to private sector collectors was an enormous waste of tax payer dollars decreasing IRS efficiency measures in terms of cost per dollar collected. The Conservative Party talks the talk, but, has proven itself clueless as to how to walk the walk. No doubt contributing to their being ousted from power in 2006 and 2008.

We shall see if the Obama administration and Democrats will do any better on this Tax Gap, and begin posting the losses to the American public again. Thankfully, the program of using private collectors is destined for the scrap heap. The idea of introducing private sector profits as a cost to collection of federal taxes was just about the dumbest idea ever in the history of government fiscal management, if efficiency (cost of dollar collected) is the standard of measure.

Roy,
Sell the TVA? Restrict federal government to about a fifth of its current size? It depends on what kind of world you’d like to see.

In the 1970’s, the top 10% of the US population earned roughly a third of the income. Today, the top 10% earn about 50% of the income. This is the greatest disparity in over a century, even greated than the Roaring Twenties. This is the result of the conservative policies of Reagan and Bush.

If we continued these policies, and privatized the TVA, we would see a similar situation to what we now see with health care. The top 10% of the population would receive superb service, some of the best in the world. The middle would do ok. The lower 20% would do without heat and water and electricity.

There is a certain justice in that. After all, heat and water and electricity are not a right. If the social darwinianism pictured by conservatism came to pass, everyone would receive their just desserts. The wealthy would do well. The poor, the weak, the sick, the lazy, the crippled, the mentally deficient, those lacking strength of character, and the very young and the very old would suffer the consequences.

Because after all, the only fair way to judge the worth of a human being in a conservative scenario is based upon wealth. This is the measure of a human’s value.

Liberals reject this measure. That is why we work through the instrument of a federal government. While liberals recognize the value of innovation that comes through the private sector, we also embrace mechanisms to ensure justice, regulation, and the qualities of mercy. We believe everyone should have equal access to sufficient heat, water, and electricity to survive. We even believe everyone should have access to equal access to health care.

David

Compared to Italy, Russia or almost anybody else outside Scandinavia, New Zealand or Canada Americans pay up semi-voluntarily at extraordinary rates.

Do your quick question of my authority on this if you want. We are comparing tax collections. Only governments can legitimately collect taxes.

It is also interesting how you champion the tax collectors are the example of efficiency. Most people would probably not see the tax collectors as heroes.

Beyond that, Liberals are fond of government and making it seem as though it is only Republicans who make it not work. Of course, one wonders why other governments are so screwed up w/o Republicans. (The more you travel, the more you appreciate our government. I will admit that.) But even if you are right, recall that the people you don’t like will be controlling government around half of the time.

President Obama himself compared government to private sector unfavorably. Check out Obama in his own words if you question my authority - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-WdOu2s.

David

Let me add that I believe government has an indispensable role in society. There can be no free market w/o a reasonably strong and efficient government. But government w/o free markets is fascist or communist hell.

What I am looking for is the right balance. Expanding on a answer to an early tax collector, render onto Caesar that which is Caesar, onto God that which is God’s and let the people (i.e. the private sector) take care of everything else.

Again, a wonderful last para Christine! Striking the right balance! Thats the reason behind my advocataing for a third party. The far left and far right have given up the middle ground, except during the runup to an election. I believe a third party can strike the right balance and find broad appeal to mainstream America.
PhoenixEight, I believe we have too much democracy for the good of our Republic. Government has chosen to give more democracy to big business than to We The People, and for good reason. Big Bucks! And, government has overextended democracy to all, which is why we find ourselves a debtor nation in perputuity. I should clarify that I am not in favor or privatizing the TVA or REA UNTIL government reform has been accomplished. And, that means that Corporate Personhood and Money is free speech has been abolished. Until that happens I would want the government to do nothing other than perhaps name a courthouse or maybe add an extra stitch to the covering on a legal baseball.
IMO the huge conflict of interest created by the money influence renders any legislation coming out of this Corpocracy null and void by We The People.
Otherwise, we have the Corpocracy we deserve!

Christine said: “What I am looking for is the right balance.”

Nice cliche’. Here’s another one, the Devil’s in the Details. The right balance for some will never be the right balance for others. Ergo, the ABSOLUTE MANDATE for some form of government to resolve the differences without bloodshed, violence, and anarchy.

Yet, we have conservatives increasingly calling for civil disorder, from the ultra conservative militias to Sen. Grassley telling his constituents that they should be afraid, (of their government). Talk about a loser’s attitude and respite. Some Republicans and conservatives would seem to rather destroy America than live with solutions of their own design. Which of course, was the condition leading into the Civil War.

Christine said: “It is also interesting how you champion the tax collectors are the example of efficiency. Most people would probably not see the tax collectors as heroes.”

I stated facts, Christine, I didn’t champion. But, I will. Tax collectors are my neighbors and fellow Americans doing a thankless job to provide a safe and secure place for my daughter to grow up in, compared to many other nations. I wouldn’t call tax collectors heroes, anymore than I would call my neighbor welder a hero. But, the tax collectors are not the American people’s enemy, as many conservatives imply by making taxes a dirty four letter word.

Taxes are how we pay our military, secure our nation, retaliate against our enemies, provide for government as opposed to anarchy, provide public services like fire, police, and emergency medical services, public health protections, and many, many other vital and approved services requested and approved by the American people. We do afterall, live under a democratically elected government.

Conservatives need to be careful about damning taxes and lauding law and civil order, because taxes are how law and order are maintained.

Republicans screwed up on the IRS big time, making it very much less efficient, and more costly to operate over its performance prior to their achieving majority power. That fact remains indelible.

Christine said: “Beyond that, Liberals are fond of government “

And Republicans were even more fond of government, since they grew it even larger and made it VASTLY more expensive than the Democrats before them. It was Republicans who doubled the national debt in 8 years, not Democrats. It was Republicans who elected unnecessary war, and passed the burden of today’s costs to future generations at a record pace. It was Republicans who reached into the privacy and family of the Terry Shiavo case to assert government Decision Making in private matters.

Don’t give me that crap about Democrats loving government. Democrats love government solutions for what they see as private sector failures to address public sector problems. Republicans demonstrated they love government for the wealth and power it can bring them and their wealthy and loyal supporters, just as so many Democrats do. In this regard, one cannot condemn one party without condemning the other by all the rules of logic and reason. Which is why I advocate voting the incumbents of both parties out in ever larger numbers until each party acknowledges and responds appropriately to the needs of the nation and the people, instead of themselves.

David

You hit the nail on the head when you talk about government’s mandate to maintain order. If you look at the bigger picture or the longer run, BTW, you see that government maintains order WITH bloodshed and with violence. Many things can be done by either government, NGOs of the private sector.

Government is unique in its ability to use coercion. In fact, any government that cannot maintain a reasonable monopoly on the legitimate use of violence is no longer THE government. That means that government has more power than any other part of society. You have to be careful giving it more.

I distrust concentrations of power. Sooner or later concentrated power is abused. Today supporters of Obama think that he can be trusted with power. But the power you give to Obama will be used by a future Bush or Cheney. Just as the power supporters of Bush would have given him can be used by Obama. Since you cannot guarantee who will be using those tools of power, you better be sure you don’t concentrate the power in the first place.

The government has a right and duty to prevent violence among citizens. I hated it when Code Pink and Act Up acted like fools. I don’t like it now when opponents of Obamacare act up. But we have to be careful about when we bring in the strong power of the state to shut them up. That is the balance.

Roy

I don’t think we will ever can a viable third party. The best you can hope for is that a “third” party replaces one of the two parties.

Our system of election gives power to those who can create large coalitions and unify them. If your party that appeals to 60% of the voter breaks into two parts based on details and my party that appeals to 40% remains united, we win. Always. So some of the smaller party must defect until they also get close to 50%. If you get 51% you get it all. Everybody else gets bupkis.

Nobody needs money or undue influence to figure this out and anybody really interested in gaining office knows it very well.

Christine, scratching my. . errrr head on that last para. Get up to the top of the column and let your thunder roll.

Roy

This is off topic, but since you kinda asked…

I am talking re the structure of our system. We have a “first past the post” system. Whoever wins the most votes wins. Everybody else gets nothing. It encourages compromise and coalition building. Our two parties are essentially large coalitions. In a proportional representation system, as they have in much of continental Europe, there might be several parties made up of the factions of out two.

We have the first past and so do the Brits. This is one explanation for the extraordinary stability of our systems. We sacrifice some amount of representation for stability. I think it is worth it.

It is interesting to remember that the last time we had a true third party victory and a divided electorate, we had a civil war. And countries with lots of parties tend to be unstable over the long term. Compare the U.S. and UK with France, Italy, Israel etc.

I don’t think there is any way a third party has a chance unless we change our constitution. In America, the major parties simply assimilate any serious challengers.

The third party guys often have lots of ideas. That is why we like them and the major parties steal and co-op them. But they don’t have the staying power to seriously govern. They are anomalies or curiosities, like Jesse (the Body) Ventura.

We get, as you say, the “corpocracy” we deserve. And when compare our stability and unexciting politics with other places over the last century, with their fascists/communists, coups, revolutions, insurrections, pogroms, and general instability, I wonder what we did to deserve it.

Christine, the very concentration of power you say concerns you stems directly from the very two party first past the line POLITICAL system you seem to support. Is this a contradiction or cognitive dissonance?

Constitutionally, in the absence of political parties, there are checks and balance between the branches of government and the government and the people. Add 2 political parties, and a great many of those checks and balances the Founders designed are muted and circumvented. One of many examples lies with the President of one party nominating SC Justices, and a Senate of the SAME party in control of the consent and affirmation. This is a clear end run around the Constitutional checks and balances originally designed.

I have to run with Roy Ellis on this one, the way to reinforce those checks and balances is to further divide power between 3 or more political parties, such that no ONE party can rule without the assent of at least ONE OTHER. Ergo, deliberation and compromise are restored and excesses and extremes of one party are checked and balanced more often, than the on party takes all system we are now witnessing and have witnessed for the better part of the last decade and a half.

Our government was never designed to be operated on a binary system of 1’s and 0’s, Republicans or Democrats. But, that is the way it is being operated due to the structure of this 1 and 0 political system.

David

Our system was designed w/o parties. It was an unintended consequence, but it happens. People who study strategy in systems agree that two (or a kind of two and a half) parties is what you get when you have geographically based constituencies with a first past the post decision.

It has given the U.S. and the UK, among few others, very stable political systems. We can complain about the troubles, but a system like ours produces fewer problems than we find in democracies that use variations of proportional or at large representation that permits larger numbers of parties.

So a multiparty system might be something you and Roy and lots of other people want, but you cannot have it w/o a radical change in how we elect our representatives. Experience shows that these more complex, and ostensibly fairer systems, produce more instability and rather than divide power, they concentrate veto power in the hands of small and sometimes irresponsible hands. Eventually a larger block uses its muscle to demand some extra-legal solution and all hell breaks loose.

Our system would not produce leaders like Hitler, Allende or Hugo Chavez, all of whom leveraged minority constituencies into abuse of national power. (The Wiemar Republic was a nearly perfect system in theory.) We are not plagued by the indecision or frequent shifts of power. We pay for this in ways you have made clear. But we are better off overall, IMO, not to sacrifice the practical good for the theoretical perfect.

Christine said: “It has given the U.S. and the UK, among few others, very stable political systems.”

Stable, yes. But, also, very highly inefficient and counterproductive, beyond the structural inefficiencies designed into the Constitution. Reversing policy direction every 8 to 16 years, which is what you get with a 2 party system, absolutely prevents these nations from successfully tacking and resolving complex issues requiring long term application of solutions. We are witnessing this with the health care crisis which has been growing for decades, and still, we are unable to devise a sustainable and effective solution.

A viable, competitive 3rd party can, and in many countries does, prevent such complete policy reversals every time one of the 3 or more parties gains a numerical advantage in the government.

And make no mistake, such policy reversals cost a nation’s economy and their tax payers, huge sums of national resources. Military spending, health care, civil and voting rights are examples of the most recent costly reversals we have witnessed in the last 16 years, canceling the investments in solutions made to install new investments in policy shifts, which in turn, will be reversed before the dividends of the investments are ever realized.

Were it not for our bi-polar party system, we would very likely have a much better functioning and more efficient health care system today, whether a well regulated private system, or cost sustainable socialized system, depending upon when a viable third party was introduced into the policy arena.

A third party, which is the minority party, will maintain its relevance and existence by adopting the moderate centrist role in political policy. It has no other choice in the long run, but, to appeal to voters who are no longer aligned with the bi-polar extremes of the larger two parties. They then become the brokers for insuring longevity to investments already made by forcing compromise upon the the bi-polar extremes attempting to reverse policy each time one or the other gains a numerical advantage.

Christine said: “Experience shows that these more complex, and ostensibly fairer systems, produce more instability and rather than divide power,”

Sorry, I am not going to take your word for that, since it defies reason and logic. Care to provide some factual historical references to back up your claim?

I offer the Netherlands in support of my argument. Regardless of which statistical or theoretical model is applied in this study (PDF), the result of the Dutch multi-party system prevails, and their system is hardly what one could call unstable.

Those professing religious beliefs voted for their denomination’s religious
party; members of the working class without strong religious beliefs voted for Labor; and the nonreligious middle class voted for Liberal.

Another common explanation, the spatial model, contends that Dutch voters care about the policies advocated by the parties and vote accordingly (Dutter 1985; Downs 1957; Enelow and Hinich 1984). The spatial model assumes that government policy can be summarized by a point in a well defined issue space, that voter utility functions are defined over this space, and that voters vote for the party that puts forth the policy proposal that provides them with the highest utility.

David

Inefficient compared to what? Americans misjudge their own country’s performance because they are generally unaware of the politics and challenges of other countries. I suggest you take a look at the political pages of any European country and see exactly how content the people are with their politicians. You also need to look at the U.S. and UK in relation to others over a period of many years. Almost every country in the world has had a violent change of government over the last century. Most have had several. Not us.

Take a look at the Italians, Israelis, French, Spanish, just about any country in South America if you want to judge stability.

The Dutch and the Scandinavians are exceptions to many things because they are probably the world’s most honest and reasonable people. Many things work there that wouldn’t work in more diverse places. You also need to consider that the scope of choices is smaller for them. Since the end of WWII, the U.S. and NATO have supplied most of the security to small nations of Western Europe and the EC and then the EU has supplied the economic macro environment. You have to think of particular European countries more like U.S. states in terms of the complexity of their choices.

It is a faulty comparison that people often do between particular smallish countries and the U.S. First there is the problem of scale. Many things that work well with a homogenous population of 5 or 10 million work less well with a diverse population of 300 million. Then there is the cherry picking. And third there are cultural habits. Try comparing Americans of Norwegian descent with Norwegians. There are about the same numbers of each, BTW. You don’t have much crime in Norway and you don’t have much crime in the similarly sized towns in Wisconsin, Minnesota or the Dakotas where there are lots of people of Norwegian descent. Sometimes people behave a certain way because it is their tradition.

But you may recall, the Dutch famously rejected stronger integration with the EU in a referendum a couple of years ago, completely confounding the virtually united political classes. Give the people a choice and they often do not choose the way the leadership says. Norway rejected EU membership entirely – twice.

Would you call those drastic turn arounds inefficient, or the expression of the people.

Now let’s just think about stability. Go back 100 years and see which systems are still standing.

You know that the U.S. has the oldest constitution still in force. (Some people argue San Marino, although there is some dispute. I suppose that matters to anybody who could find it unaided on map, but not to any practical person talking about a real country.) Second place, BTW, are the Norwegians. The Brits strictly speaking do not have a written constitution, but they have not suffered a extralegal change of government since 1688. Not bad.