The Grand New Party

We should not underestimate the people, they could have after all stayed at home like the many that currently do. They may not know everything they need to know but they do know enough to want to go vote. Whether they take a left or a right they control their destiny.

So we should applaud having an unqualified electorate? Were you so high on this thought when the Republicans swept in with the Contract For America? (I am willing to bet you had at least once called it the Contract ON America).

There is a reason the Senate was originally a body politic, and why they were given the authorities and responsibilities they were. It is not a good thing to have the full legislative and executive branch driven directly by the vote of the people. Sadly, some think our government is the same that brought us success in the first 150 years, but it is not, and gradually we have sold our Nation's birthright for the sake of "the people". (note I am not speaking in any way shape or form about the racial/sexist attitudes that were prevalent during those 150 years, I applaud our country's growth past those blind prejudices).

Some other examples of leaving the path that brought us growth as a country:

Washington advised us to "avoid foreign entanglements" .
The Constitution, when written, didn't allow for an income tax.
The 10th amendment says
Text of Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Yet we have a Department of Education which tries to tell Alaskans, Nebraskans, and Floridians, that they all should meet Federal guidelines.

Look, it is what it is, but it is not a pendulum it is more like the big thing you drop a quarter in and it rolls in an ever tighter circle until it falls into the dead center. Yes we may cycle to more or less government but it gradually decays into a place where more and more rights are restricted until the government engulfs us.

So we should applaud having an unqualified electorate? Were you so high on this thought when the Republicans swept in with the Contract For America? (I am willing to bet you had at least once called it the Contract ON America).

There is a reason the Senate was originally a body politic, and why they were given the authorities and responsibilities they were. It is not a good thing to have the full legislative and executive branch driven directly by the vote of the people. Sadly, some think our government is the same that brought us success in the first 150 years, but it is not, and gradually we have sold our Nation's birthright for the sake of "the people". (note I am not speaking in any way shape or form about the racial/sexist attitudes that were prevalent during those 150 years, I applaud our country's growth past those blind prejudices).

Some other examples of leaving the path that brought us growth as a country:

Washington advised us to "avoid foreign entanglements" .
The Constitution, when written, didn't allow for an income tax.
The 10th amendment says
Yet we have a Department of Education which tries to tell Alaskans, Nebraskans, and Floridians, that they all should meet Federal guidelines.

Look, it is what it is, but it is not a pendulum it is more like the big thing you drop a quarter in and it rolls in an ever tighter circle until it falls into the dead center. Yes we may cycle to more or less government but it gradually decays into a place where more and more rights are restricted until the government engulfs us.

Yes . . . if they want federal funding. Are you saying that the 10th Amendment is violated where Congress imposes conditions on states that voluntarily accept federal funding? Not even Scalia or Thomas would argue as much.

Yes . . . if they want federal funding. Are you saying that the 10th Amendment is violated where Congress imposes conditions on states that voluntarily accept federal funding? Not even Scalia or Thomas would argue as much.

Which brings us full circle to the fact that it should not be a Federal issue at all, and that Congress should not be collecting tax from Nebraska or Alaska to give funding to Florida. But again, we have moved so far away from original intent, that to claim that thought sounds "radical". I am saying the 10th Amendment strictly adhered to would reduce the size of the Federal Bureaucracy dramatically. But instead, we states give up more of our soveriegnty in order to partake of the tax revenue of others.

Yes . . . if they want federal funding. Are you saying that the 10th Amendment is violated where Congress imposes conditions on states that voluntarily accept federal funding? Not even Scalia or Thomas would argue as much.

It's called bribery.

Yes . . . if they want federal funding. Are you saying that the 10th Amendment is violated where Congress imposes conditions on states that voluntarily accept federal funding? Not even Scalia or Thomas would argue as much.

More to the point, I am saying that
a) the Founders would not have considered a Department of Education as a function appropriate to the Federal institutions.
b) That they would have held it was the State's individual duty and responsibility to decide on the Educational needs of their citizens.
c)That the Virginia founders, for example, would have rejected the Constitution out of hand if they thought it was going to allow a Federal government to operate like it does now.

So we should applaud having an unqualified electorate? Were you so high on this thought when the Republicans swept in with the Contract For America? (I am willing to bet you had at least once called it the Contract ON America).

There is a reason the Senate was originally a body politic, and why they were given the authorities and responsibilities they were. It is not a good thing to have the full legislative and executive branch driven directly by the vote of the people. Sadly, some think our government is the same that brought us success in the first 150 years, but it is not, and gradually we have sold our Nation's birthright for the sake of "the people". (note I am not speaking in any way shape or form about the racial/sexist attitudes that were prevalent during those 150 years, I applaud our country's growth past those blind prejudices).

Some other examples of leaving the path that brought us growth as a country:

Washington advised us to "avoid foreign entanglements" .
The Constitution, when written, didn't allow for an income tax.
The 10th amendment says
Yet we have a Department of Education which tries to tell Alaskans, Nebraskans, and Floridians, that they all should meet Federal guidelines.

Look, it is what it is, but it is not a pendulum it is more like the big thing you drop a quarter in and it rolls in an ever tighter circle until it falls into the dead center. Yes we may cycle to more or less government but it gradually decays into a place where more and more rights are restricted until the government engulfs us.


No, no one said stupid voters should be applauded their right to vote without having them qualify should be respect. If you bet me you will lose that bet. My beef is always centered around reason and policy.

We have to deal with lots of issues but lets not pretend America is getting worse. It isn't. Politics used to be much dirtier than it currently is. There's more money than use to be but money was always at play in Washington.

I leave you with this article (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-happiest-places-on-earth-are-heavily-taxed?siteid=rss) I found interesting. You may not like what it has to say...click it at your own risk.

No, no one said stupid voters should be applauded their right to vote without having them qualify should be respect. If you bet me you will lose that bet. My beef is always centered around reason and policy.
We have to deal with lots of issues but lets not pretend America is getting worse. It isn't. Politics used to be much dirtier than it currently is. There's more money than use to be but money was always at play in Washington.

I leave you with this article (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-happiest-places-on-earth-are-heavily-taxed?siteid=rss) I found interesting. You may not like what it has to say...click it at your own risk.

I would like to know what the wager is?

Your beef is yours alone.

I wouldn't say that all Libertarians are liberal on social issues. They're just so far to the right that they seem strange. Ron Paul and Bobb Barr are so far to the right that things like, let the States decide for themselves when it comes to drugs, abortion, and homosexual special interest seem almost foreign to the average person. Auditing the Federal Reserve is a libertarian / conservative Ron Paul idea that is gaining strength in the House right now. If you have to take the good and the bad, well . . . . there's a lot more good to that idea than bad.

I wouldn't say that no one notices either. You and I have. I'll go out on a limb and say that a lot of people on this thread have too. Capitalism isn't under attack because we're not really practicing it. Our government already had it's hand in the socialist cookie jar to begin with. Capitalism is the answer. The liberal media doesn't like capitalism so they smear it every chance they get.

Perhaps the majority of Americans don't do their homework. Many of the ones I know don't. A lot of them are just ignorant. Even they read the news papers and get fed up. No one that I know truly likes these bailouts.

The problem for many of the voters that I know is that they're to lazy to get involved in the process. I vote in the primary, or I used to. One thing that should be done IMO is to stop having the Northern wing of the Republican Party decide who the nominee is. Everyone knows that the Republican's bread and butter is in the South and Midwest. Yeah, there are conservatives up North and on the Left Coast, but they're out numbered five to one.

I liked Romney and Giuliani but I wouldn't have voted for them. Giuliani would've made a great addition to the State Department and Romney would've been nice to have in a public office with this economy. I might have voted for Romney. I dunno . . . .

On the first bolded point, you're correct. In fact, the word 'liberal' has been twisted and morphed into something that it never meant originally. If you go by the current use of the word, being 'liberal' on social issues would actually mean one would favor more gun control, being against the death penalty, that sort of thing. I should have said that libertarians are for freedom and individual rights when it comes to social issues.

On the second bolded point, you're correct there too. A system of public education, a progressive income tax, the creation of the federal reserve and moving more towards central planning on economics are all indicators of socialistic tendencies and they've been around for a long, long time.

So it is absolutely true that we are a mixed economy of some socialism and capitalism, and we haven't had a pure free market system for quite awhile.

No, no one said stupid voters should be applauded their right to vote without having them qualify should be respect. If you bet me you will lose that bet. My beef is always centered around reason and policy.

We have to deal with lots of issues but lets not pretend America is getting worse. It isn't. Politics used to be much dirtier than it currently is. There's more money than use to be but money was always at play in Washington.

I leave you with this article (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-happiest-places-on-earth-are-heavily-taxed?siteid=rss) I found interesting. You may not like what it has to say...click it at your own risk.

Ok, I clicked it. And surprisingly, it didn't bother me at all. My response may be jumbled, so read and respond at your own risk.
First, if you look at my list of reductions which you asked about, you would see I reduce our military to a self defense posture. The fact that we pay 22BILLION dollars for 1 fighter is insane, and guess what, those people who are so happy in Denmark Holland Norway and Sweden, they don't do that. It is no myth that northern Europe lives under the shield of America, and has had the peace derived from that. I am glad they are happy, now let them pay their taxes to build defenses from the natural predators in other countries that have lain fallow for the past 30 years.
While we spend hundreds of billions to support a tremendous military and the rest of the world, even those nations that hate us, benefit from the general peace that we have created. It is not surprising that you would find some who are happy to pay outrageous taxes. I can tell you also, that Germans, who basically get gouged are not so happy that others are living off of the German national wealth. My German aunt visited last month and while I didn't go to deep into politics with her, it is clear that the EU has taken deep cuts into the German nation.

There is a point for taxes. But not every solution requires a Federal answer, you say we should not pretend America is getting worse. I am not pretending, I am saying it that that is my belief. And I am not speaking about just under President Obama, he has only been in office 100+ days, the systemic problems that I believe are making it worse speak to the growing dependence on a large federal government.

Let me ask a question:
If you have a large problem, any large complex problem, what is the first step to solving it?

I leave you with this article I found interesting. You may not like what it has to say...click it at your own risk.

Here's another way you can look at that poll which indicates people in northern Europe are so "happy" even when their taxes are so high: If they have a progressive tax structure like we do, meaning that a very small portion of their society pays the bulk of the taxes, then it's no wonder the majority say they're happy since they weren't taxed too much in the first place.

Ask ten people independently if they are happy with their financial situation -- if one of them had a gun pointed at their head by a government official forcing them to hand over 80% of their paycheck, while the other nine could keep most of theirs, the poll's results would say that 90% of respondents say their financial situation is just fine.