Last night, after the election, we heard about how “anyone, if they dream big enough, can be the President.” Obama had overcome all the odds and was now the President.
Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but it’s not that easy.
You have to read this, and watch the Youtube videos it links to. Pretty amazing if you ask me. This is definitely a must read for anyone who gives a darn about the political process in this country.
I feel kind of un-American, but I really don’t care who wins the Presidency this year.
Haven’t we been bombarded with all this election drama for almost two years now? First it was the primaries, where McCain won pretty easily and Barack and Hillary went at it. Now we have this election with Palin and Barack’s connections with old domestic terrorists. In the meantime, the economy went down the drain and all they’re talking about is saving $75 a month on taxes. Yeah, that’s going to fix things.
Maybe I’m so apathetic because I don’t feel that my views are represented. Throughout my life, I’ve known that I did not belong with one of the major parties. I knew they were virtually the same and were there only to preserve the status quo, and not really do what’s best for America.
In high school, I thought being a libertarian sounded great. Small government, less taxes, and less intervention sounded great. The party at the time though, was a mess, and their message sounded more like anarchy than a real political platform.
Then, I thought Nader was the answer and that his policies would save the country. He had some good ideas, but I found myself voting for him because he was against the establishment and corporations, not because of his political views.
Now, I think I’ve found myself with the philosophy of Ron Paul. His belief in the Constitution and what the Founding Fathers wanted is beautifully simple. It makes so much sense and it makes me want to be part of the revolution he is starting. The groundwork is there, now we just have to spread the message.
The message of the Constitution reaches beyond any sort of social status or group. Everyone can come together behind the document that set forth the plan for this great country. The goal now should be to get this country back on track and back to looking at the Constitution and what the Founding Fathers wanted.
I guess I don’t care about McCain or Obama because they want to continue the same policies. They might tweak taxes or healthcare, but are they really invoking change? Not at all. They both voted for the bailout. They both want to keep our military empire intact. Neither has challenged the Federal Reserve. Neither has questioned the validity of all the taxes we pay. Neither has tried to address our welfare state.
We need a voice that counters the political establishment. Until this voice is heard, it doesn’t matter who is the President.
Tonight, I managed to watch the third presidential debate live. I didn’t have to DVR it to watch it later. This gave me the opportunity to watch it without the bias of reading about it first.
After all the back and forth between Obama and McCain, I realized one thing: Americans want the Federal Government to do EVERYTHING for them.
There is a sense of entitlement that the government will provide health care, defend them from enemies, create jobs, educate their for their children, provide welfare, and make moral decisions for them. Of course, all of this comes with lowering taxes.
As Americans, we all agree to the list above. It is part of our core values.
There is one question we have to ask: Is the Government the best organization to do this? I don’t think it is.
How can roughly 700 people in Washington decide what is best for your local elementary school? How do they decide where to allocate their resources? Also, since they are spending taxpayer money, they are not going to find the best product for the best price. If you or I were shopping for health coverage or schooling, we would research and find the best price for whatever fits our needs. The government has no incentive to do this since they are just spending a pool of money.
So, instead of watching a debate about healthcare and education provided by the Federal Government, we should be debating if the Feds should be involved anyway. Instead of arguing about a $100 a month tax break, why not argue if the income tax is necessary at all. Not once did the candidates mention the huge unfunded burdens that Social Security and Medicare are going to become.
I’m not saying that we should abolish the Federal Government. I just think we need to rethink what it’s role should be. I also don’t believe in no taxes. I think that our taxes should be paid locally, and not to a central government.
Imagine, instead of having 6% of your paycheck going to Social Security and Medicare, it could be going to an optional retirement savings account with pre-tax dollars. Of course, there would need to be a transistion period to help fund those on Social Security, but eventually, the system could be replaced with a much more efficient one. Your money could be stored in treasury bills or other very safe investments. Also, since it’s optional, you would be able to stop funding your account if times got tough.
Also, why does part of our income tax go to the Department of Education? How do politicians and bureaucrats in Washington know what’s best for your local school? Why not have a tax that goes to schools in your area? Also, since it will be local, there will be less waste and naturally, more oversight. I don’t want people sitting there second guessing our local officials, but at least there would be dialogue. Now, it is a huge Federal department where are schools are just numbers.
Probably the only part of the Federal Government that is really needed is our military. However, it is not needed in the capacity it is used now. We need to bring our troops home. Not just from Iraq, but from all 150 countries they are in. Part of the troops can be deployed to protect our borders and really make us safer. Others can be put into reserve status or be retrained for new jobs. This will save us billions of dollars a year.
While these proposals aren’t really that thought out, it is just a starting point to really think about the role of our government. Americans have this sense of entitlement for their welfare. It’s time to take control and start showing some initiative. We need to use our imaginations and come up with real ideas of change, not just tweak the existing big government mentality we have.
I’m not saying putting these decisions in the hands of local governments will solve all of our problems. I do think though, that it will help improve efficiency and put our tax dollars to the best use. Who do you think knows what your community needs more – politicians in Washington? Or people in your neighborhood?
Blowback is the unintended consequences of actions you make.
Last week, while the economy was melting down and financial panic gripped the country, John McCain and Sarah Palin didn’t even give mention to the current crisis. Instead, they were too busy connecting Barack Obama to a domestic terrorist who’s actions are over 40 years old.
I’m sure there is more to the relationship between Bill Ayers and Barack Obama than “just a guy in the neighborhood.” However, I’m sure that the relationship was along professional lines and had nothing to do with terrorism. Republicans and Democrats both sat on the same board as Obama and Ayers. In fact, it was closely associated with a Reagan aid.
McCain and Palin were busy though, painting Obama as a man you couldn’t trust, who “palled around with terrorists.” My question to the last statement, is why is that plural? Is Palin trying to say that Obama is associated with other terrorists? How do you see that?
Also, during their speeches, they would leave pauses for the crowd to shout things out. Like McCain said, “Do you know who the real Obama is?” and someone from the crowd yelled “terrorist!” Others yelled to kill him or shouted racial epithets. Also, the announcers at these events would always introduce him as “Barrack Hussein Obama.” That just adds more fuel to the fire.
This is completely unacceptable. Even though they aren’t directly saying it, McCain and Palin are planting ideas in the minds of every American that Obama is a radical terrorist. While most people can sort through the information and process it rationally, there are some people who can not and who might act out.
God forbid that someone tries to take out or do harm to Obama, but you never know. McCain and Palin are only working up the public more and more with every verbal attack. It’s a dirty and dangerous game they are playing. It’s fine to question someone’s judgement, but leave it at that. Don’t insinuate or even put the seed in someone’s mind that your opponent is the enemy.
The blowback could be disasterous.
I DVR’d the Presdential Debate and started to watch it last night. I had heard and read some reviews about the candidates performances, but of course, none of the reviews actually discussed issues.
Personally, I thought Obama presented himself better and was more forceful in his presentation. McCain might have more knowledge and more experience, but he failed to match the performance of Obama.
But seriously, these debates are just a chance for the candidates to spew rhetoric and show their “fundamental differences.” There is no true debate on issues, just some back and forth over talking points or minute details of broader issues.
I got so frustrated that I had to turn it off about halfway through. There really isn’t a big difference between these two. They agree on almost every macro issue. It’s just the little details they actually differ on. You can see why the average American thinks “wasteful spending” is limited to earmarks or that our foreign policy is limited to Iraq and Afghanistan.
If this was truly a debate between two distinct parties, larger questions would have been asked. Instead of debating a timeline to withdraw from Iraq, bigger questions needed to be asked. Among them:
Do you believe in nation building and our military having a presence in over 150 countries?
Do you believe in supplying billions of dollars in foreign aid each year?
Do you think our military presence on the Arabian penisula is good or bad for our national security?
Why does the US call for democracy and liberty and freedom but support unpopular dictatorships and not recognize some democratic governments?
Should the Federal Government have the right to take however much of our hard earned income they want and distribute to others?
Should Congress take back some of the power it has passed on to the Federal Reserve in regards to the money supply?
It is amazing to me that people eat this stuff up without questioning it. The debates and the entire election process is to create an illusion of a choice, when it is really more of the same. The electorate should be outraged that a real debate about real issues can not happen. The Republicans and Democrats have shut out third party candidates and broder issues. It is about keeping those in power today, in power tomorrow.
So I read today that John McCain is criticizing Obama for not coming up with a plan on how to fix the Wall Street crisis. Fair enough.
But McCain’s plan wants to put all sorts of new restrictions and oversight on Wall Street banks. This coming from the party of “small government.”
Then, in Congress, the Democrats are trying to limit the role of the Treasury and the Federal Governement in the bailout plan.
So we have the Republicans trying to add more restrictions and the Democrats trying to reduce the role of the Federal Government.
If this isn’t proof that the two parties have merged into one, I don’t know what is.
Will someone tell me why the Federal Government is going to create a massive bailout for all the floundering financial institutions by taking on all their bad debt? How is this going to solve anything? Once again, the Federal Government and the Federal Reserve are just delaying the worst of the downturn til a later date.
When the Government intervened and negotiated a merger between Bear Stearns and JP Morgan at a cost of $29 billion, everyone was saying that it created a “moral hazard.” This hazard was that banks could take all sorts of unnecessary risks to make a quick buck, knowing that the government will bail them out.
If the Feds were going to take on all this bad debt – probably hundreds of billions of dollars worth – why did they spend the $29 billion on Bear, the $85 billion on AIG, the billions they have lent out through new auction facilities, $150 billion to other countries, and take on$300 billion when they took on Fannie and Freddie? Why wouldn’t they have thrown the whole “moral hazard” thing out the window instead of wasting all this money?
To me, it looks like a disorganized group scrambling to appease Wall Street. After all, the Federal Reserve, which controls the money supply was created by the investment banks on Wall Street to begin with. Who do you think their allegiance is to? You and me? C’mon, get real.
If they are going to take on the malinvestments of all these banks, why shouldn’t they take over mine and everyone else’s mortgages? Why do the banks get a free pass? It just shows the state of our country. The officials we’ve elected will let the Federal Reserve run amok and then have us pay to clean up the mess.
Now though, McCain and Obama are calling for more regulations and more oversight. That’s a bunch of baloney. There should be less Federal intervention and Congress needs to reign in the Federal Reserve. Rather than regulating the banks, they need to regulate the money printing machine in Washington.
Let the markets work. If we had done that, we would have had a small recession when the dot com bubble burst. Instead, Mr. Greenspan decided to lower interest rates to 1% and triggered a boom of cheap money and easy credit. Not only did he lower rates artificially, but he kept them there way too long. Banks leveraged themselves way too heavily with complex debt instruments. The entire bubble was caused by Federal intervention!
If a few banks fail and get bought by others, that’s letting the market weed out those that made bad investments and bad decisions. By bailing out these companies, we are basically giving them all a free pass at the expense of the American taxpayer. If you or I go to Vegas and take out a line of credit and blow it all at the blackjack table, we don’t get to just say “sorry” and walk away from it. We have to pay it back or go to jail. Why do Wall Street banks get to play by a different set of rules?
The guys in Washington who are printing the billions of dollars for these banks need to be pulled back by Congress. In the Constitution, only Congress has the power to create money. However, they passed this responsibility to the Federal Reserve. Now, it is time for them to pull some of that power, if not all of it back. In the end, they are still responsible for the actions of the Fed. If it is my responsibility to pay the bills, but tell my wife to do it and she doesn’t, the lights still go off. Just because I passed on the responsiblity doesn’t mean that I don’t have to face consequences.
Since we are using paper money that does not have any real value, Congress needs to limit how much money the Fed can print every year. How much is enough? How many billions of dollars can they create? I know that they say they are “loans” but they are taking garbage debt as collateral. They will be lucky to get pennies on the dollar. That’s our money they are using, or losing to help out Wall Street. Congress needs to put an annual cap on the money supply or stop the Fed from printing money altogether.
You realize that for every dollar the Fed creates, the value of the dollars in your bank account decreases. In order to help the big banks, the Fed has thrashed the dollar and created inflation. Sure, their numbers make it seem like there is no inflation because they take out food and energy. Last time I checked, $3 a gallon gas and the rising food prices have caused me to relook at my spending habits.
Instead of putting band aids on the system, it needs a complete overhaul. The Federal Government has to let the market work and let the banks go under. If not, they will just keep creating new and more complex investment vehicles and taking more risks because they know the Fed will bail them out. We need to hold banks to the same standards that we are held to. The American government should not take money from tax payers and give it to a select few companies.
In this election year, we should not be voting for candidates that offer more government oversight and intervention. It hasn’t worked so far and it won’t work in the future. We need to stand up for an overhaul and tell the two major parties that we’ve had enough. They talk about change and reform but their reforms are just minor tweaks to a system that is broken.
A Look Inside 