It was Dutchman who said... "And Ron Paul, like his father, way to libertarian to my liking"

I knew what he meant. I guess I didn't feel the need to be pedantic like you.

"THE" party? Are you frickin' brain dead? You really think only one party plays identity politics? The Democrats typically pose as the champions of minority groups and so yes, they highlight the need for minorities to be heard, but the Republican Party, which the Economist Magazine recently plastered on their cover as the "Party That Will Always Be for White People" is downright blatant about the need for white people to vote to keep the advancing minorities that will "destroy the country" at bay.

I was in North Carolina when Obama was elected the first time and I have never seen such seething prejudice spewing from the rotten mouths of belligerent loosers.

It was truely revolting.

ANY peice of legislation can turn into a disaster if the opposition is willing to embark on childish sabbotage. It's not that hard to do when politics is 90% talk and we all know how full of crap politicians are.

An audience blind with obsessive anger has no bearing on my argument. It just means my argument won't be considered. Which is fine... it just confirms my suspicions about the type of people that come on this site, basically to rant and rave. Also, your reference to the flagstone of a dependency mindset is so far from relevant it's not even funny. It's just sad that these are the empty conclusions that political sheep come to.


threat of amnesty? Do you even know what you're talking about zonked?


You seem to be suffering from that common delusion that progressive policies are all about making people dependent on the state to wipe their ass. LOL. I guess it's easier to settle on ideas that can be expressed on a single bumper sticker, than to venture the education required to know better.


I just read another article in Foreign Policy, that suggests more economists are starting to understand the wisdom of Keynes, in light of the fact that austerity programs have failed miserably in every country that has tried it.

The suggestion is that you should cut government spending when times are booming not when times are bad. Now this is something that a person like me can consider without necessarily buying. But I don't expect anyone here to even consider it which is why they're primed for riding the bus off the cliff. And the pied pipers of the GOP know this, and are probably delighted.

LOL...

Maybe Peru will give the American tax payers a better deal. When you consider the fact that anytime the government needs money, they have to actually BORROW the dollars that the Federal Reserve pulls out of their ass, putting the burden of paying back the debt PLUS INTEREST (hello, T-bills) on the backs of the tax payers.

Honestly, anyone who actually understand this knows, that it's not the government that runs the country, it's the banks.

For that reason alone, I give 10 points to Peruvians.

We spent some time in Colorado (Martin Marrieta) and found the education there mildly improved. Then later again he moved to PA (RCA in NJ) Where my brother went to school... I was 17 so I stayed in CA with the surf, the sunshine and the hot girls ;) My father was still dissappointed with the schools in PA. So, yes, it varies from state to state, but our experience tells us that at least 3 states have education systems that fall far behind what you find in England. I've had years to think about this and I did some study in that time and from what I can tell, none of the 50 states come close to the public education in Europe or Asia, and as far as I can tell it's all for the same basic reasons.

From what I know (I could be wrong), New York has the best public education in the nation, but then again they pay the most for it too. I guess you do get what you pay for.

You are correct about my father's choice. Actually, I think it was his career more than the money, becoming a predominate figure in the industry meant a lot to him.

Not that hard to figure out... How much revenue can you get from 50 public schools? None. How much can you get from a fancy basketball arena? Plenty!

It's not just Chicago - it's America. The only country in the developed world that pooh-pooh's ANYTHING that doesn't generate a profit.

...and it's nothing new either.

I am a first generation American, my father was actually invited to this country by scouts who went to England looking for talent for the aerospace industry. When we came here we settled in a town outside of Los Angeles which was basically the center of the American aerospace industry at the time (and still is to a large extent). Almost all my freinds at school were the children of foreign engineers and scientists.

So why would a U.S. corporation want to pay for a public education system, when it can just pick up the finished products from Europe or Asia? And the American people? Well, quite frankly, the American people have just been following the corporate sermon anyway and half of them don't even realize it.

I remember how infuriated my father was with the education available to me and my brother. He used to swear he was going to send us back to England to get a decent education. Too bad he didn't.

Later in life, I did some traveling (not in the isolation of Club Med or the military either...) I noticed a drastic difference between how people in Europe and Asia view education versus how Americans view it. For sure, we ALL think education is *important*, but Europeans and Asians are willing to back that sentiment up with funding; Americans aren't.

Why?

Because in Europe and Asia, what people DO is still very important, where over here... what matters more is what people MAKE... as in how much MONEY they make.

This is why the French have an oversupply of doctors and the Germans have an oversupply of engineers, while in America the only oversupply we have is business majors - otherwise known as the "easiest path to the most money" - "hopefully".

American industries are quite happy plucking talent from more educated populations in other countries, so there's no real drive to improve public education despite all the lip service by politicians that see education as a touch point for election campaigns.

Also, before I get slammed with "American has the best universities in the world" argument... I know... Well, some of the best universtities in the world. But that's explained by the fact that unlike public schools, these top-rated universities are profit-making businesses, hence the sky-rocketing tuitions. They are also available to anyone in the world with enough money, so it falls outside the category of what a nation, or state is willing to pay to educate it's people.

You sound like the kind of conservative I actually understand and respect. Old School Paleoconservative? (Not to pigeon-hole you, you sound too thoughtful for that, but as opposed to the Neoconservatives that drove the Bush Administration).

I'll have to check into 'Conscience of a Conservative'. Thanks for mentioning that.

Regarding the loss of those Constitutional Amendments... I just wanted to venture my own understood reasons, perhaps you have others.

4th... To protect Americans from unreasonable search and seizure. Gone! per the PATRIOT ACT! Specifically, because the PATRIOT ACT gives the executive branch the authority to decide who a terrorist is.

5th... to provide Americans with a fair justice system. Gone! via Bush Administration's military tribunal system that bypasses the Constitutional justice system embodied in the Judicial Branch... entirely. Again, the designation of "terrorist" is 100% subjective and entirely left to the Executive Branch to decide without ANY democratic input or process.

8th... to protect Americans from excessive punishment. Gone! per the Bush Administrations, acceptance of torture and suspension of habeas corpus, a law that we adopted from English Common Law that was created in the darkest ages of human history suggesting that even then, people had more sense of justice than the Bush Administration did.

10th - to limit the powers of the federal government to what is specified in the Constitution. Yeah, FDR... AND Bush, AND perhaps Obama... and probably every president in between to one extent or another.

In all honesty, the 10th is a critical amendment but also hard to defend. The problem is keeping a government relevant to the 20th and 21st centuries while keeping it limited to 18th century standards. The fact that these limits are still largely in place as the government enters the the 21st century with 314 million people under it's domain is a tribute to the wisdom of the Constitution's designers, but still, we really are pushing it to the limits of sanity.

I just hope that when the time comes, there will be people in the government that can recognize the "spirit" of the constitution (something the Constitutionalists have already lost) and have the ability to update the design for use with the future while preserving that spirit.

Maybe we can resurrect Thomas Jefferson. I know he refused to sign the Constitution but he DID have the insight to realize that times will change the parameters that shape constitutions.

Crazy... It's difficult to take you seriously when your language is so weighed down with derogatory BS. First of all Obama isn't Muslim, secondly even if he was, there is no law saying the President can't be a Muslim. So already you are sounding like a prejudiced retard. Thirdly, only one of his measures that I know about was ever interpreted by anyone of authority to be unconstitutional, and that argument is still being debated. Also, I don't know what "programs" you are referring to... At this point my perception of you allows me to believe you think ANYTHING Obama signs is a social program because you just see a dirty word, not an actual concept. I'm not sure which programs zonked is talking about either, but I do agree with him that the Republicans, under Bush have expanded the size of the government tremendously and more importantly (and this is where Republicans and Democrats differ most significantly) The Republicans use the most irresponsible methods possible to fund their programs.

Democrats try to levy taxes to pay for their programs. They don't have to worry about alienating themselves from their voters because their voters tend to understand how laws and taxes work. They understand the concept of "getting what you pay for" and that applies to government as much as anything else.

Republicans on the other hand, promise their voters that they will not levy taxes which makes their voters happy for reasons I honestly don't understand, unless it's just simple ignorance of the fact that Republicans STILL have massive programs to fund and will do it by borrowing money, which is so much worse.

so, in simple terms...

Democrats = (programs + taxes) = pay-as-you-go = responsible.
Republicans = (programs + loans) = national debt = irresponsible.

If the Republicans from Reagan to Bush were not allowed to borrow money, there would be no national debt crushing our economic system right now. (Nor would thousands of Americans have lost their lives in Iraq.)


1. I think it's a better idea than anything anyone else has come up with. Historically, state provided employment has HAS helped pull economies out of a recession. There has not been a single instance where tax cuts have done the same.

2. Obama has ALWAYS made it a point to source the funding and that $800 was no exception. He included the answer to "where will the money come from" as part of the act. When Bush asked for $700 billion (yeah, you forgot about that one didn't you), he didn't explain the funding at all. He just used the old Republican stand by... "Yes, Federal Reserve? Can you print out a few billion dollars so my Treasury Department can BORROW it from you? The American tax payers will pay you back, plus millions in interest, sometime after I'm gone."

Yeah, Republicans are sooo fiscally responsible :roll:


That's a reflection of the cost for healthcare for a booming generation of Americans projected over the expected population spike. $3 trillion actually sounds cheap when you consider the fact that right now (and we haven't even reached the spike yet) we are already spending $2.6 trillion WITHOUT Obamacare.

This is the argument that angry little peeps like you can't consider because you're too pissed off about a MUSLIM, COMMUNIST, BLACK man in office to understand anything he is doing. As soon as he say's "My fellow Americans..." You're already throwing tomatoes.

Kind of a drag because the rest of us would like to explore avenues to reduce and manage the cost of healthcare. Meanwhile, the Republicans have done NOTHING.

N-O-T-H-I-N-G....

...to reduce healthcare costs and because of that, current healthcare expendatures in the private sector have reached 17.6% of our GDP... Roughly $8,233 per American, which is two and a half times more per head than what citizens of most developed nations pay, including the British, French and Swedes.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/10/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries.html


Of course. :roll:

Fair enough... Here goes...

True, the word can be applied to a lot of areas... I think the first listed definition in your American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language is the best fit for govenrment policy otherwise known as "law".

So.. "The right and power to interpret and apply the law."

This definition assumes the existence of law. Otherwise there would be nothing to interpret or apply. Therefore, with each law comes a right for an authority to interpret and apply it. In that sense we can say the jurisdiction of an authority might expand or contract depending on the laws and what areas of commerce, environment, personal business, etc... such laws affect. When an industry is deregulated, what is happening is a law or a set of laws that previously gave the state authority over specific areas of that industry are being eliminated and with it the right for the state to apply it. Hence the idea of a shrinking jurisdiction.

Now, my use the term was in direct relation to the article referenced in the OP. So I made the assumption that the context would have been understood. I really wasn't expecting the need to whip out the dictionaries.

But now that I've belabored the definition of a shrinking jurisdiction, I hope what I was saying about civil rights being coded in law, will make more sense to you. Indeed, if you're first approach to my comment is to think I am attacking deregulation per se, then I can see how you would miss my point entirely.

What I am saying is actually far more simple...

1. 100% of our civil rights are coded in law.
2. Deregulation shortens the reach of the law.
3. (make your own conclusions)

Well said.

(I wouldn't think being a politician is the best road to riches, they only make around 200K/yr... but you are 100% on who to blame.)

Well, it's your right to say what you think but the only people listening are the people who are already convinced. So really you're only chewing it over and over among the same people. Emotional satisfaction is the only advantage I can see.


Actually, they are. Occupy Wall Street is an example of where these people are and how relevant they can be. As the plutocracy continues to fleece the American people, the interest in liberalism will naturally resurge. I predict a swing back to the left within in the next ten years.


It may seem ironic but the progressive movement was established by Teddy Roosevelt as a way to appease the people who were at the time very annoyed with the extreme forms of capitalism that fostered child labor, intolerable work conditions and economic slavery. There was a lot of injustice to feed liberal movements then which included very strong surges in the socialist and communist parties and the potential for revolution which was already starting to unleash in places like Russia.

What Roosevelt did was he offered the people an alternate route of compromises with the existing system. This allowed much of the frustration that would have charged the potential for revolution to be siphoned off into agreements with a Progressive government. There is a very good chance that the reason communism never took over here in the U.S. is that we had the progressive movement which unlike the Russian Monarchy, was willing to compromise with the people.

Today, it can be said that the Democratic Party *is* the party of progressives. Mostly moderates that prefer the idea of working within the current system to establish better laws to protect the people. The Republican party, on the other hand seems to have shaken off all their progressives, probably along with all their old-school conservatives and are now obsessed with putting capital first despite what it might do to the people.


Not even... Socialists and progressives sometimes agree on certain issues, but that doesn't make them one and the same. Obama for instance is a progressive but he is NOT a socialist. I have found that many of the people that insist Obama is a socialist, don't even know what socialism is, including Sarah Palin who is about the most retarded bimbo ever to enter politics.


How can you claim to be such an expert on liberals then if you don't even know any?

As for me, I explained in my intro, I do not associate myself with any political direction in the absolute sense that people on this forum do, because I think we should be able to change direction depending on where we want to go or what we want to avoid.

Currently, I think our perception of the center is quite a bit to the right of where it was 30 years ago, meaning that what was once considered center is now considered left and I think this shift has allowed the Bush administration to bring extreme politics into play for the first time since Wilson. So in light of my perception of the current state of affairs and what I think needs to be done to protect my family I stand on the side of the liberals. They just make more sense to me. They seem to know more about the real issues.

Finally, don't tell me that I can't stand to hear truths, just because I don't buy everything you say. I have no problem with truth - I just think it should proven and not accepted blindly.


Yes, well today there is a war on terrorism. There is an entire book of laws called the PATRIOT ACT that explains how terrorists will not be given the same due process that had previously been guaranteed by our Constitution to be extended to everyone, including mass murderers. So maybe calling anyone with a political view different than your own a terrorist is little excessive.


Yeah, that sounds like a personal problem.

Correct... although I'm not sure I would call it a misnomer. Liberalism in it's most general sense refers to the act of liberation. As in liberating ourselves from the social and political constraints on personal freedom, or liberating our markets from the constraints of regulation.

It just so happens that Democrats tend to offer more support for social liberation but less for economic liberation. Republicans tend to offer more support for economic liberation and less for social liberation. Only the Libertarians seem to remain consistent by supporting both social and economic liberalism. Ah, the advantage of basing your ideology on pure, untested theories.

;)

Powell is old-school Republican, which has very little in common with the new blood in the GOP today...

My dad was old-school Republican too and he also voted for Obama. I find it amusing that so many people have their heads so far up the "I'm a Conservative" myopic that they haven't noticed how the GOP has changed since 9/11. According to many of the classic conservatives I know, Bush was the worst president ever and Obama is a chance to return to the way things were during the Reagan era, including raising taxes on wealth to the levels that Reagan set back in the 80's.

But the extremists, sometimes referred to as neo-conservatives, have discovered how easy it is to pull the wool over the younger and the less-astute Republicans, especially when they harbor such a hatred toward liberals. It seems to me that this hatred and it's associated obsession with any and all derogatory remarks about liberals eclipses their view of the real issues that are actually shaping the world we live in.

Same thing happens on the other side, but you don't hear as much from them and most liberals are moderate anyway and have far more in common with the classic conservatives who also tend to be moderate than they do with extremists on either side.

Wow... so you're an expert on Angela Davis then. You call her a terrorist too. I had no idea. Then being a terrorist, who did she kill or threaten to kill? Seriously, you even know her thoughts... That's just amazing! And to KNOW that she's done more damage to "true" education than any group existing in the world today means that you understand how to measure that damage and you are also aware of every group of people existing in the world today and exactly how much comparative damage they've done to "true" education.


And this is how I can tell you know very little about politics... Neoliberalism is a term that was first used in the 1930's but came into forefront of political discussion during the Nixon era and it's been in common use ever since to describe one of the most predominate geopolitical movements of our time. When I made that crack about people here probably thinking neoliberalism has something to do with social liberals I was only half joking. But I was right, wasn't I?


I am a liberal and I started three businesses in the past 20 years. One of which I ran for 12 years before selling it. I also know a LOT of business owners who are in fact liberals.

So my eye witness says you're full of sh*t.

Honestly, what purpose does this constant story telling about liberals and who they are and what they want serve? Does it just make feel better when you say these things?