Okay, wow. I'm going to go ahead and throw my own hat in the ring, here's a little disclaimer first however: I'm only interested in a civil discussion, we all have a modicum of intelligence. I will not intentionally insult anyone and if you should choose to insult me I will simply ignore you, I do not under any circumstances throw poo around. I may bring up Clinton, Bush, Obama, Pelosi, Boehner, etc but whether I give them credit or blame them for X subject is not a matter of bias, it was my own objective analysis. Okay, let the conversation begin!
Hey all, i'm a liberal, i'd like to think i'm progressive however I identify myself as a left libertarian. I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about politics and where i'd like to see our country go. I understand we live in a capitalistic society and when it's working right it's absolutely fantastic and works great. I believe regulation is necessary within the free market however I also believe it only needs regulation to a degree. The free market wasn't always this deregulated, it didn't get this way until right before Clinton left office, for whatever reason, I suppose after 94 he was advised it's time to move to the right if he wanted to stay in office, whether his advisors were right or wrong is irrelevant. He deregulated the market to a degree and it seemed to turn out alright, things were still in the black. Bush got into office, he started a spending spree while creating his tax cuts, two wars and severely deregulating the market.
That's when the economy started going down the hole, a combination of massive spending combined with a massive amount of deregulation of the market. Many, many corporations didn't even pay taxes during all of this deregulation, people were exploited, derivatives made people quite rich at the expense of others among other things. The spending, wow, yeah, spending is necessary however it has to be smart spending and should be accounted for whenever possible, it's a tad ridiculous during the Bush era and is now. We're still fighting a war, medicare, defense, social security, education even. They are all going to bankrupt us if something is not done soon.
Ok, let's start with the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, I know conservatives balk at the idea of even touching defense but it needs to be touched in a big way but we don't have to sacrifice security or the benefits of veterans and serving folks to do so. The American military is the most powerful military to have ever existed and by a big margin as well. You know who has the most powerful air force? We do of course? Know who has the second most powerful air force? The US navy. This is discerned by simply how advanced and how many aircraft we own. The might of the US military is about our toys and how many of them we have. This made a lot of sense when we fought real wars back in the 20th century that served a purpose.
It's been many, many, many decades since America has fought a meaningful war. It has also been a long time since we've taken a good look at our own military and judged at it's effectiveness. If we were fighting a world war America would swiftly crush it's enemies because our war machine is just that powerful. Our military technology is simply that amazing. We may not have the largest infantry but that's not what is expensive, it's our massive amounts of machines.
We need to look at what's effective. Do you really think the most powerful country on the planet couldn't find one man in caves? We could, easily, the problem is the American military isn't aimed for that, we're built to fight against real enemies, like countries. We spent the entire 20th century after the cold war prepping ourselves to fight Russia and even though that is no longer a threat we're still building ourselves up as if the cold war is still going on. Instead of swarming the middle east to fight a force that can't be simply conquered like a country's military we should have simply infiltrated the middle east and simply listen, we would have found him eventually and saved hundreds of billions of dollars.,
So what i'm saying is reduce the mass of our military without reducing it's effectiveness, we don't have to screw veterans to do that. Stop spending billions on military pet projects that while may lead to some amazing new military tech we ultimately won't need. I think it's clear now that it's incredibly unlikely that two first world countries will go to war with each other, it's clear enough that they don't want to, the market is global now and the world is a whole lot smaller. We won't thrive by invading people and no one is stupid enough to invade us, even if America lost half of it's military might, we'd still be a major force to be reckoned with, our power is uncanny and I don't think this will change anytime soon.
Alright, now l'm going to move onto healthcare. I wasn't happy with the healthcare bill. It was full of pork because the weak willed dems of today were trying desperately to get the republicans who, just like the dems, are thinking only of their political careers and don't really give a damn about the people. Stalling our government for two years is just bad and plain selfish. I think the public option could have been written a tad better, engineer it, like our government, with checks and balances. No one would want such a thing to overpower the private sector, that can be done. Just because it's by the government doesn't mean corporations can't compete, heck, corporations control our politicians with unlimited anonymous contributions, also, no one should ever be penalized for not buying something, that's bad and should go, even if it's a minute amount (which it is), it's fundamentally wrong and goes against what this country stands for.
Now for social security. I don't know the details of this idea but I hear it often from a lot of libertarians. Why not privatize social security so the economy benefits however make it secure. What you put in is what you will get and if you want to see some of that extra money being made voluntarily lower the degree of security by X amount of money? I don't know how well that would work, I don't have a degree in finance and i'm not majoring in it.
Now for taxes. Taxes can be bad in the hands of an incredibly corrupt government, whether it's a democracy, monarchy, socialism, whatever, it can go bad HOWEVER taxes are not inherently wrong or bad. Saying taxes want to take your money and give it to poor people is a really negative and sensationalist spin on what taxes are supposed to do. Taxes aren't taken and then someone knocks on my door and hands me a check from your money, the government is supposed to use it for things that benefit our country AKA you and me. Whether that's on infrastructure, defense, researching technology that actually will return a profit AKA NASA, funding our social programs that support millions of Americans to some degree.
The people who get welfare aren't all degenerates who do nothing and simply feed off of those who pay taxes like leeches. There are children who could grow up to be the next president, influential scientist, business tycoon, etc. They won't reach that if their parents can't afford to sustain their children, instead they become part of the problem because they begin to do desperate things to survive like join a gang. I grew up and live in the city of Chicago, I see this happen all the time and nearly all the violence is guaranteed to stem from desperation to survive.
So having said that, I think we need to actually let the Bush tax cuts expire, they are completely unpaid for. Our taxes have never been this low, making them any lower or at this level is unsustainable. HOWEVER we should do some real research and see where are taxes need to be with the above things I mentioned being in place. The economy has stabilized, we aren't going to end up in a depression however we still have a long uphill climb before we're back on top again. When you fall on tough times you have to make sacrifices, this is common sense. Our country is no different, these are tough times, those who can afford taxes need to be paying taxes, not saying we need to tax the shit out of the rich and wealthy but anyone who can pay a bit more for taxes. If I was a millionaire sitting on a massive fortune I really wouldn't mind paying 2-3% more on taxes, it's not as if i'd be hurting for the money.
And finally, concerning the midterm elections. So, the tea party candidates made major ground. They had a great victory. That's great, it really is but not for the reason people may or may not think. The country didn't vote out democrats because they had a problem with their policy, it's their politics that's the problem. Americans are tired of politicians only catering to their careers. You know which democrats got voted out of office the most? the blue dogs, the ones who called themselves conservative democrats and of course the corporate ones. The democrats that stayed in office were the liberal ones, the actual liberal democrats lost two or more seats. Fresh, young democrat politicians won elections against incumbent republicans.
So what does this mean? Americans simply want change from politics today, they want government to make progress and fix the problems of the US, not sling poo around the senate and house while our country grows stagnant because our government has been ineffective the past 2 years. I guarantee you, in another two years the people will probably vote a bunch of dems back into the office unless republicans somehow manage to make serious headway with our issues. I personally don't think they will. The tea party solutions just sound like a different way of spending to me and repealing healthcare is just going to bring us back to where we were before, spiraling into a hole we may not be able to dig ourselves out of however we'll see. I could be eating my words two years from now but something tells me that won't be the case. Especially if Obama gets a clue and starts acting like a real democrat (by real democrat I mean JFK, FDR), something we haven't had in many, many decades, Clinton was an exception but otherwise every democrat that has been in office since JFK has pussyfooted around. When FDR was in office the CEO of Montgomery Ward(might be wrong corporation, I forget these things sometimes, been sober way too long) refused to pay a tax he imposed on corporations to support his GI bill. So you know what he did? He had the national guard arrest his ass. Can you imagine a president ordering a CEO to be arrested today?
It would be the dawn of a new era as the government really worked for the people once again. That's the kind of politician we need in Washington today, that's what the American people voted for, not for republicans or democrats but for politicans that did their job, the dems who did that kept their office and the tea party candidates who claimed that's what they were going to do got elected. America is thirsty for change and they're going to vote both parties in and out until they get politicians who finally get a hint.