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Norton
Social climber
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I want to thank John E. for taking the time and careful thought to put forth his above
"problems", seems a good word, with what he sees in the political left's take on the
issue he outlined above.
AND, John is right in that there certainly are some people on the left who do see some of
the issues as he points out.
But I fear he gives the average Democratic voter far too much credit for having intelligence to have sorted each issue through critical analysis- much the same as many of the left mock those on the right for thinking they actually understand and have made informed
decisions of political issues.
Fact is, both the left and right have solid, built in, dependable bases that will always vote Democrat or Republican.
Case in point, last week I was at Starbucks having coffee and sitting across from a 70 year old "white" guy I knew only socially. Our conversation turned to the media and its reporting of the current political scene and he said to me that he always voted Republican therefore felt no need to keep current of issues. I said that must be a relief to not have to be informed before going into the voting booth, makes decision making so much easier.
I asked him if he would mind telling me why he was such a reliable Republican vote and he said one word, "entitlements". I asked him if he meant social security, medicare, corporate taxes, as entitlements and he said no, that he voted Republican because he felt the Democrats gave too entitlements to people who could work and chose not to. I said are you talking about food stamps, Section 8 housing, unemployment benefits and he said yes.
that no American should get any help from his tax dollars and that he felt the Republican party supported his position.
I was in no mood to argue with him and so I just told him that he really did not need to go to the voting booth because he could count of me canceling his vote out each time.
But back to John's above post, it's a good one and deserves a lot more conversation.
I need more time to think about a response, perhaps others will think about what John
said and put forth their thoughts on the individual issues he felt that the political left
was stupid in supporting.
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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John is over generalizing, as usual. Comparing Trump's bigotry to anything hopping on the left is specious.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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John...Has nothing to with her being elected a democrat/ it aligns with the republican platform/agenda and you know it.
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Norton
Social climber
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Crankster,
He took the time to lay out his thoughts and so did I.
I invite you to respond specifically to him?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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1. That there is no actuarial insolvency problem with Social Security. After all, in 20 years it can still pay 70% of what it owes.
That SS funds and other trust funds now get rolled into the general budget construct and can be used to finance non-SS-related activities are the main problems with the program. It's no different than corporations who deliberately fail to fully fund their pension obligations.
2. Greedy bankers are the sole cause of the housing bubble and its bursting;
Bankers do not a bubble make by themselves. That said, make no mistake that it was collusion and corruption from bottom-to-top of the major mortgage-related banking, derivative, and underwriting players which fueled the bubble and bust and they're still scamming relentlessly in the ruins.
3. We can build a high speed rail in California and still spend the money we want to spend elsewhere;
There is not the political will to build high-speed rail where it could be useful, but we look like complete luddite chumps next to the rest of the industrial world if we don't build one somewhere; hence the train to nowhere.
4. Regulation protects the public, but not the regulated;
"corporations without government oversight are indistinguishable from organized crime"
5. The cost of environmental protection or reduction of carbon emissions can be ignored. It's only the greedy businesses that care about it anyway;
No, and those costs could easily be managed if it weren't for entrenched interests deadset against any rational plan to do so.
6. Public transportation pays for itself;
The fight against public transportation, particularly in Cali, has a long and storied history and is still very much alive today.
7. MSNBC, Democracy Now! and ABC, CBS and NBC give unbiased and accurate news reporting;
Way better than Fox.
8. Free trade only helps the rich, and only hurts ordinary people;
Unbridled 'free trade' is a disaster for all but a small minority.
9. The government spends most of its money on the military (Sorry Bob. Social Security and Medicare don't "generate tax revenue." They just have tax revenue earmarked to fund a portion of their expenses);
Slightly more than half of discretionary spending is on the military and that budget is grossly out-of-whack with geo-political reality, drives military adventurism, and is mis-managed in the extreme. So little faith in government and so much faith in the military - now that is irony.
10. We don't need to worry about public employee pension liabilities. If we just tax "the rich" a little more, we can pay for it all; and
Public and private pensions are a gross liability, particularly for old guard private companies. That we don't have decent universal retirement and healthcare programs on a national basis and so relieve our public and private institutions of those burdens is both ignorant and only hurts us comparatively.
11. The only way to get more is to take it from somebody else, i.e. the economy is a zero-sum game.
If you can't read the graphs of the decline in corporate taxes as a percentage of federal receipts or the obscene concentration of wealth or the skewed top-to-bottom pay ratios since WWII then there isn't much point in even discussing the matter let alone rational solutions.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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I was in no mood to argue with him and so I just told him that he really did not need to go to the voting booth because he could count of me canceling his vote out each time.
Wowwwww.... So you bag on the old, white guy Republican for ALWAYS voting Republican. Then you tell him that your vote will ALWAYS cancel his out.
I snorted a bit of coffee out of my nose when I read that. Good one!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Unbridled 'free trade' is a disaster for all but a small minority.
Is that a direct quote from The Daily Worker? What's Craigslist or Ebay if
they're not 'free trade'?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Reilly, 'trade' in the context of 'free trade' refers to international trade between nations.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Reilly...ebay isn't free trade. :-)
John's points to me are vague. ie... We don't need to worry about public employee pension liabilities. If we just tax "the rich" a little more, we can pay for it all; and this one...
The only way to get more is to take it from somebody else, i.e. the economy is a zero-sum game.
I call bullshit on them. :-)
There are specific reasons why I lean democrat/left and have no problem saying what they are.
John is throwing up smoke and mirrors and I tend to believe he is really embarrassed by the current republicans leaders/party.
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Norton
Social climber
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Wowwwww.... So you bag on the old, white guy Republican for ALWAYS voting Republican. Then you tell him that your vote will ALWAYS cancel his out.
I snorted a bit of coffee out of my nose when I read that. Good one!
woweee, well Madbolter it is only the shallowness of your intellect that limited you to not
seeing the irony behind what I told him
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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LOL... it is only the shallowness of your intellect that makes you unable to detect that the irony is what made me snort coffee out of my nose.
;-)
Sorry... too many layers for you, I think.
Carry on.
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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Norton, I'll respond in this way...
John makes good arguments with the occasional false premise and faulty conclusion. He's a master at false equivalence. Case in point: media bias. His rationale is, yes, Fox, is bias, but so are the other media outlets, so it all balances out. He's wrong. First, conservatives get their information from a single source, Fox, in vastly larger numbers than any one news source used by the left. If he is asserting that Fox's misinformation is in any way comparable to network news coverage, well, he's delusional. He just isn't paying attention. ABC, NBC, and CBS give mostly accurate, unbiased news. I don't expect a Republican to agree, of course, for obvious reasons. What else...public transportation paying for itself? Who cares? What, he wants more freeway lanes? Ridiculous. Greedy bankers the cause of the housing bubble collapse, Great Recession?...not all, just mostly, they needed dumb politicians to help them deregulate.
A few of his other points I agree with, in part.
Look, if you study history you know that "big change" mostly doesn't happen. Not in our system. You need a situation where a president has a supermajority in both house of congress, like LBJ had it '65 -'67, one of the most productive congresses in modern time.
What you should be looking for in a president given the county we have today is someone who is going to inch the ball forward in your direction on the issues important to you. Emphasis on "inch".
For me, that's Hillary, or Biden, if he runs (he shouldn't). I'd like a president who believes that humans are contributing to climate change, not someone who denies its even happening.
John sounds like a Kasich or Rubio kind of fella. Lots of worse choices.
And Trump...he appeals to anxious, white conservatives. Not enough of those, thankfully, to give him the nomination.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
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John sounds as if he defends the 1%.
Fairness is my issue,not hate[he said that].
Just the same from the echo chamber.
He is representing the opinion of 4 million people.
Hardly a majority,in a country of 400 million.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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8. Free trade only helps the rich, and only hurts ordinary people;
Unbridled 'free trade' is a disaster for all but a small minority.
People who dis "free trade" tend to forget that America is an exporting nation. They want Americans to stop buying things that are made somewhere else, but want people from elsewhere to keep buying things made in America.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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No one got rich cutting cheques for work done out of the goodness of their heart...
Obviously true!
Yet somehow liberals think that when the government forces people to cut checks to other people, in exchange for NO goods nor services, thereby literally keeping the check-cutters down, that's not only a good thing but downright noble!
Under Obumblecare, my company's group health insurance went up 40.02% overnight, and not one SHRED of actual REFORM took place from thousands and thousands of pages of law. The insurance companies still rape us, and now even more so. The practice of medicine is obscenely expensive, and it doesn't have to be so. Fraud and abuse are rampant, and nothing is done to enforce even the relatively little regulation there is in the industry. And all of this has REAL and immediate effects....
Because we pay for 100% of our employees' health insurance, that increase literally meant that we could not make a hire we intended to.
So, that forced redistribution of OUR money directly into the hands of others, in exchange for NO benefit to ourselves, meant that one "poor person with no job," that therefore (so the story goes) could not afford health insurance (although, somehow, (s)he can afford a big-screen TV via credit card), doesn't GET a job because we now can't afford the hire we WOULD have made otherwise.
So, we grow more slowly, which has sweeping economic considerations with ripple effects. And how MANY other small businesses were put in the same position?
Such theft is NOT noble, and it's not even good. Of course, you, Jim, being from Canada, think that socialized medicine is the best thing since sliced bread, so there's no getting it through your head that in the United States we once believed in private property.
By contrast, you liberals honestly believe that it is not REALLY possible to OWN anything! You always think (at least in the backs of your minds) that we all LEASE what we "own" from the government, such that if the government masterminds conclude that they want to redistribute some of what we're LEASING from them, that's entirely their call, and we shouldn't even imagine to complain because only a selfish a-hole would complain about surrendering what's not REALLY his to give in the first place.
So, Trump's an a-hole because he's rich and therefore doesn't have a good heart. I guess that something like that is the song and dance.
He might well be a terrible person, certainly no worse than the Hillabeast, But at least he believes in private property, which is a FAR cry from the liberal mantra that just kept my company from hiring, literally took money out of our pockets personally, and literally believes in robbing Peter to pay Paul.
With the increasing number of Paul's, I'm confident that the libs will keep gaining ground, because when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you will always have the support of Paul (and his ever-expanding family). Problem is, with a diminishing supply of Peters, good luck paying Paul.
Cut military spending in half (at least), quit engaging in what are really wars of conquest and ridiculous, inconsistent "police actions," quit redistributing what is MINE to other people whereby I am paying for NO goods nor services, and eliminate income tax and property tax (to be replaced by sales taxes), and you BEGIN to return to the America I've believed in.
Will Trump even attempt to accomplish any of that? Doubtful. Will the Hillabeast? Certainly not! Neither His Hairness nor the Hillabeast give a rat's hindquarters about any of us.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Under Obumblecare, my company's group health insurance went up 40.02% overnight, and not one SHRED of actual REFORM took place from thousands and thousands of pages of law.
Where did that money go?
Those reforms that you didn't get?
-free preventive care
-elimination of pre-existing conditions
-elimination of cap on payments
Into whose pockets did the money go?
By the way, how much did the company and it's employees give to defeat this, and support the other side? Sounds like you had too much money, anyway.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Under Obumblecare, my company's group health insurance went up 40.02% overnight, and not one SHRED of actual REFORM took place from thousands and thousands of pages of law. The insurance companies still rape us, and now even more so. The practice of medicine is obscenely expensive, and it doesn't have to be so. Fraud and abuse are rampant, and nothing is done to enforce even the relatively little regulation there is in the industry.
Illinois is a big insurance state and it was clear from day one Obama was in their pocket. Anyone with half a clue knew upfront that any 'healthcare' reform done by his administration was going to be a mockery which left the insurance industry and profit driving basic healthcare. The solution is simple - basic, universal healthcare should be available to all citizens with public and private institutions relieved of that burden. Go to any doctor or hospital you want, but all premiums and claims go through a single clearinghouse with industry would be free to engage private insurers for policies above and beyond that universal level of care to incentivize employees. Individuals would likewise be free to buy additional coverage.
But so long as we load individuals and institutions with the burden of basic healthcare and leave all but very wealthy families a single catastrophic health crisis from ruin, then we fail comparatively as a nation and squelch our potential no differently than the insanity of treating college students as debt mules measured solely for the load they can carry.
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