Hold on to your wallets
 

Here is the future of taxes is a Democrat is elected as President in 08.

Representative Rangel is looking to swap the AMT for a new tax targeted exclusively at the highest-income payers. One often-mentioned idea, proposed by Leonard Burman, director of the Urban Institute’s Tax Policy Center, would impose a 4 percent surcharge on unmarried taxpayers making more than $100,000 a year and couples making more than $200,000.

Some of you might think that a $100,000 single income and $200,000 family income equates to being "Rich". Reality is, that definition would depend on where you reside. $100,000 goes a long way in Oklahoma or Arkansas; however, if you live in Manhattan, or the Bay Area you would be a couple hundred grand short of "Rich".

The Democrat's tax plans does not consider the cost of living or the tax implications of each State. California has some of the highest State taxes in the Nation.

Here is the future of taxes IF a Democrat is elected as President in 08.

Stupid edit feature takes me to the home page.

Wonderful philosophy for a capitalist society...make more and we charge you more. I can already see rich gay people saying "I can't get out of the tax..."

Happens to me as well. :confused:

Never mind that the top 5% of all taxpayers already pays 60% of all income taxes, while only earning 35% of total AGI. Let's heap a little more on. Link

"The mule is pulling a large load - let's make the load bigger! Surely it can haul it!"

Morons. Let's punish success. :confused:

Alright now.....Just stop it. :confused: If you people would go out and buy a Hyundai instead of a BMW you would have a lot more to contribute to Uncle Sam. :thumbup: :rofl:

I think before you can be taxed you should see an itemization of where your funds went.

Um Why are gay people relevant :rolleyes: PLEASE explain this

I think he's saying that this will be added to the "reasons" list for legalizing gay marriage...

Read the post following yours, try to understand the topic and not personalize this issue as if I were bashing YOU. :tsk:

If gay marriage isn't legal, and the only way to avoid the extra tax is marriage, then any gay person falling in the income bracket could NEVER become exempt to the tax. :rolleyes:

Of course if being gay is not relevant, fine...don't cry to the government when you can't avoid the tax. :thumbup:

Good Clarification :thumbup:

but yes, it is a biased tax and shouldn't be allowed, they should offer a provision for domestic partners etc

But I think whoever steps into office has alot of cleaning up to do from the F*ck up currently in charge, they need to end the war, stop bleeding out money and try and get out from under the mountain of debt, If a Red or Blue could do that, I'd vote for them :thumbup:

Keep the dream alive...........

That's all it will ever be

Well may be I should revise my strategy for my divorce and let my wife gets everything that she is asking for then ... which is just crazy !ouch: . That may get me just below the limit :thumbup:

Which dream?:rolleyes:

Honestly I'm disgusted by politics in general, but I am more then willing to give my two cents. This Leonard Burman, wanting to raise the income tax 4%!?!?! hmm, now lets see, my father makes about 160k/year in manhattan (stock broker), his job is not very secure, nor is anyone elses tbh. hmm, now 160k-60k taxes/bills plus an extra $12800, well 88k a year after taxes.... getting ready to put two kids through college... not great...

Honestly, i can't imagine being this burman character, i can't possibly imagine how anyone could be willing to do that just to the people who make 100k+/year, its ridiculous.

I'm gona stop talking cuz im getting pissed off just thinking about it.

:iagree:

How about stop giving away free food, free housing, and free medical care to people who have heat/AC and cable TV! The Dem's line for povery would make a couple growing up in the 40's and 50's feel middle class. But then again, the more you can give away, the more votes you get, and the longer you stay in power...

Instead of a poll tax we need to have a verification of contribution policy... If you contribute equal or more to society than you take, then you can vote on how it's to be run.

How about this for shame: There are people in my own family tree, several branches away, who sit on their front porch in a rocking chair all day drinking beer and waiting for their government checks to come in. Yup, and their 24 year old daughter is about to have her 4th child out of wedlock and she has no job. We work our asses off for those types of people, according to the Democrats.

I agree. There should be more tax brackets. It's rediculous that the highest tax bracket is $200k. The highest tax bracket should be in the tens of millions, and those people should pay a much higher tax than someone who makes $250k. I'm talking about the CEO's that make $80 million per year.

Although my personal opinion is that wealth should be taxed, not income or spending.


The US government's definition of poverty:

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/pover.../thresh06.html

Poverty is defined as anyone earning less than:

For a single adult: $10,294 per year before taxes
For a family of 2: $13,167 per year before taxes
For a family of 4: $20,614 per year before taxes


Now I think we all can agree that these numbers are rediculously low. These numbers do not take into account the place that someone lives. For example, the US government considers a familiy of 4 making $21k per year (before taxes) and living in New York to NOT be living in poverty.

Considering that, here are some stats (as of 2006):

--12.7% of Americans live under the poverty line

--21.9% of American children (under 18) live under the poverty line, the highest of any country in the developed world

--24.7% of African Americans live under the poverty line

--46% of African American children live under the poverty line

--21.9% of Hispanic Americans live under the poverty line

--40% of Hispanic American children live under the poverty line

--24% of the adult work force in the United States works for less than $9 per hour



If anything, these numbers should be much higher as the "poverty line" is rediculously low.




It would look like this:

http://www.sensibleiowans.org/images..._2005_half.gif


I can't even find a pie chart for 2007, but it would look even more lobsided than that one as Pentagon spending has gone up over 20% since 2005.

And before someone comes up with a chart which includes items like Social Security and Medicare, please know that those items have nothing to do with discretionary spending and do NOT come from your income taxes. If you are going to add those items in, then you might as well throw in the state and local budgets into the pie chart as well -- the more items you can add, the smaller the Pentagon spending appears to be. But currently it consists of more than half of your income taxes.

That little orange slice called "health and human services" includes all kinds of welfare and assistance programs, including health care for poor children (the bill that is currently being debated in congress), and also includes the funding for a dozen or so agencies including the FDA.

So if you think you are paying high taxes because of people collecting welfare, you should know that less than 5% of your taxes goes for such things. That means if you are in the 28% tax bracket, only about 1% of your income is going to such things, while about 16-17% is going to the Pentagon. Still care to have this debate??

On the other hand, if we were to end the Iraq war, then military spending would decrease by about 20%, or about 11-12% of the total discretionary spending, more than the entire budget for the Dept. of Health and Human Services.

Don't believe the right wing media hype on this crap. A very very tiny percentage of your income taxes goes for welfare and health care for poor children. Yet for some reason, many Americans are walking around thinking that these social programs are the reason why they have high taxes. Look at the pie chart and it becomes obvious why you have high taxes.

I'm fine with military spending....it is where the rest of the money goes that I'd love to see.

For comparison, here is the national budget for our good friends across the pond:

http://budget2006.treasury.gov.uk/im...moneyspent.gif

See that tiny pink sliver on the right side? That is "Defense".

See that larger pink section on the lower left? That is "Health Care"

See the largest section in the upper left? "Social Protection". That is social services.

This is what a normal budget should look like.

You can do that when you rely on the US during war time :rofl:

Or all the time! :rofl:

WWII has been over for 60 years now. That was the last time they relied on the US Military to help them out during wartime.

60 years is nothing Eric...You seem sure that there will not be a WWIII. I'm not willing to to take that chance by scaling back our military like those on the left who chant Peace and wear flowers in their hair.

When that time does come guess who the free World will turn to for help.

An oldie but a goodie:

My Dad is 61, so ah...that isn't that long ago. I guess 60 years doesn't fall in the WIKI window of reliable facts.

Venezuela??? China????

Yup. It's all about wartime:

FAS Link

One of your favorite sources, no?:popcorn:

Do you fail to see that they are spending simply to spend? Lots of money is made by the military contractors -- military is the largest business in the United States with the exception of oil. And then they need to justify the high spending, so the politicians look for reasons to go to war, and even lie about the reasons in order to make an excuse to go to war.

Our military is 10 times stronger than it needs to be. If we were to cut military spending by 90%, we could still destroy the whole world and take on any enemy in the world.

I get the impression that you guys would not mind if they took 90% of your income in taxes, as long as they were spending it all on military. Well, keep that additude and we will surely be heading in that direction.

As for me, I have a major problem with most of my tax money going to the military. The military is certainly not more important than health care or education or infrastructure. How many people die per year from war and terrorism, and how many die from cancer and heart disease? Answer: more Americans died in the last 12 hous from those things than have died in the past 5 years from war & terrorism. Then look at how much money is spent on military and how much is spent on health care.

Perhaps there are things we need to be protected from besides terrorism. ;)

And lets see, what has the military spending bought us....how many assaults on US mainland soil...oh..1, 9/11/2001 and then there was one in Hawaii back in 1941 by Japan (but that wasn't the mainland)....I'd say the money was spent pretty well. And how many real threats are there, oh..none.

How about this Eric...We scale WAY back on our military spending aside from our nuclear weaponry. If we are threatened from an outside aggressor we turn to our only option left. We wipe them off the map with a nuclear strike.

Cold you might say; however, you just castrated our military in your earlier post and we are left with no other alternative.

Nice scenario

Oops...I forgot one other option Liberals rely on in a time of war...

...
...
...
...
...
...
...

Surrender.

You guys all seem to forget that "Our good friends across the pond" are actually fighting the Iraq war with us. Thats right, they have a significant number of troops there aswell.

Depends on what you consider a significant number. I'm pretty sure the number is 5000 which will soon be 2500. I'm grateful for even one; however, as a percentage of fighters I don't consider that a "significant number".

With that said, it is a significant gesture of support.

How many assults have there been on Australia in the past 50 years? Or how many on Japan? Or how many on Brazil? Or how many on China?

The lack of assults has nothing to do with having a strong military.

This conversation reminds me of a rediculous friend (I use the word "friend" loosely here) I used to have back when I was in school. Somehow I went through my entire high school and college without ever getting into a fist fight. Nobody ever "jumped" me, or beat me down, or attacked me -- not even once. Yet my "friend" always used to end up in fights -- almost on a monthly basis. He would claim that someone was always out to get him. Either they jumped him, or hit him when he wasn't looking, or some other reason. Yet he was no wimp -- in fact, he was one of those big strong guys who you would want to be on your side if you had a bar fight. And usually he would beat the crap out of the other guy(s). Eventually he started carrying a weapon around with him just in case -- usually something like a small pocket knife. Unfortunately for him, that didn't help. It just caused him to get into a couple knife fights and land him in prison once. Yet me, without being a big strong guy, without carrying any weapons -- somehow I never had any problems and never got into a fight.

I can make a great analogy here and compare the United States to my buddy and myself to the other countries I mentioned here above.

Being strong and capable of beating someone's ass does not stop you from being attacked. Being a good world citizen is what stops you from being attacked. If you shit on others, they will get their revenge somehow -- or at least they will try.

Threatened? You mean like Saddam Hussein threatening with his WMDs?

Fine idea you have there!! :thumbup:

You mean like R&D?

Who needs progress.

Trends in Global Military & Civilian R&D and their Changing Interface

Ahh, we wave our stick and put are collective neck out far more the China Japan & Australia combined. (not that this is a good thing).

Military is essential to existence of a civilization with a formal government.

I never said it wasn't. Just because I said we shouldn't spend half of our money on it, does not mean I think we should not spend anything. ;)

Of course you should, it is the only element that is required, everything else is optional.

Dodge, dive, dip, duck, and ... dodge. ;)

5 D's of Dodge ball

"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a question."

(apologies to Patch)

I always find it confusing why people think it's the govenrment's obligation to protect the people from military attack, but not from anything else. If people die from starvation, lack of health care, poisoning, in a car accident, in an unsafe workplace, etc. -- none of that should be the government's concern. But for the 0.000001% of the people who die from terrorism -- for that tiny tiny tiny percentage, we should spend 50+% of our tax money on that concern.

Yeah, that makes tons of sense. :rolleyes:

Your plan is great if we lived on planet Utopia. Use history as your guide and you will see we live on a planet filled with conflict and shifting World powers.

How do you think we (the United States) managed to get where we are today? That would depend on what snapshot of history you use as a reference.

Here is one answer of many:

We outspent the Russians.

I realize that your Planet Utopia has no conflict and everyone looks out for each other; however, last time I looked we were the planet Earth were conflict still exists and World History dictates the Strong Survive.

My "plan" works very well for most of the countries in the developed world, most of whom have a higher standard of living than the United States, less crime, better education, better health care, and better quality of life in general.


And where are we today?

Yes indeed, we are the country that has the most poverty and worst health care system in the developed world. :thumbup:

Yes, we are the country that has the highest crime and murder rates of any country in the developed world.

Yes, we have a $8+ trillion national debt.

But yes of course, we have the best military in the world.

We are like the big dumb bully you went to high school with that can surely kick your ass, but works as the late night custodian at target.

You may be happy with where we are as a nation, but I am certainly not. I think we can do much better.

LOL and Dennis Kucinich is just the guy to make things better.

I for one am glad you are in the minority.

That is what a government does, be it democratic, communistic or a monarchy. The whole goal is security for its citizens, nothing else. People in modern times have confused security with daily 'needs'. Health is not an obligation of the government, no where in the constitution of the United States did it say "and health care for all" or "safe workplaces for all" or "food for all". These have been added to the obligation for better and for worse. It confuses me that people make the assumption that these daily needs are a GOVERNMENTS responsibility.

But alas, people love to push blame for societies failures to anything but society....it MUST be big brothers fault. Big Brother MUST be doing it wrong, we could all do it better.

This was one of the most SUBJECTIVE commentaries you've ever made.

"communistic" is not a kind of government, but a kind of economy.



The original constitution did not allow for an income tax either. But as long as we are now paying income tax, some of us expect certain services for our money. ;)

If the government is only going to provide security, then they can do so without collecting income tax, just as they did way back then. The income tax was added in 1913 (when the 16th ammendment was ratified) to allow the government to provide services to the people in a collective way.

You have taxation with representation...use it. I'd love to know how you maintain a military with out funds....amazing capability.

So you admit the government in no way was formed to protect the day to day piece of mind of its citizens aside from their security. Thanks for the agreement. :)

Your knowledge of economics is amusing. Thanks for the laugh! :rofl:

The income tax didn't exist until 1913. But somehow we had a military before that. ;)

(Answer: income tax is not the only source of the government's revenue. It's just the largest source)

Actually, it's the largest single source - it's not the majority.

But what do facts matter?

LOL...Remember the title of this thread.

Hold on to your wallets.

we come full circle and back on topic.:rofl:

And please, let me know what made up our military in 1913 (this is almost not worth responding to since the comparison between a 1913 military and a 2007 one is RIDICULOUS).........you know, aside from the horses. Facts are military costs money, especially a volunteer based force with our levels of technology. Again, no problem here as a citizen with the majority of my taxes going to military spending.


Also, let me let everyone in on a DoD 'thing'. When the US Congress does dumb shit like blocking a war spending bill, that does NOTHING to stop a war. What occurs is installations like the Pentagon and places that remain nameless reallocate funding to the war effort. The mission is not left in the cold, however, the R&D efforts for weaponry, support, intel, body armor, things like that...lose funding. So every time a congressman say 'oh, we'll block the funding' remember what they are really blocking, the future of your troops & security in your country. You can't design reactive armor for an A1M1 over the weekend with $500.00 nor do intel collection with no bodies.


IMO, it is things like Social Security that have placed heavy tax burdens on society. Social programs and items in there category. Not to say we shouldn't have national programs, but perhaps funding them via taxes on the public is not the best course of action. Like Fred Thompson said "before you ask for a Government solution, make sure it is a Government problem".


So who relies on the US Military? See the map :rofl: (you think that is cheap?)

Last I read, we were in quite a few wars prior to 1913 and won every single one of them. So our military was not so bad.



Who's side are you arguing? :rofl:


Not to be insulting, but I see your viewpoint as extremely naive. Your viewpoint is that spending all this money on military is necessary and those who are doing the spending are doing so with the best intentions at heart.

In reality they are spending simply to spend. It is like corporate welfare with an excuse. They would simply give your tax money away to these contractors if they thought nobody would complain. But of course there would be complaints. So instead, they have to contract companies to do something. So we can always have them build another base, build more weapons, etc. And when people start to complain (like they did in the 1990s) that there is no "major threat" anymore (i.e. "cold war is over") so we should cut the military budget, a new "major threat" must be created in order to keep the budget on the rise.

They could easily have the same quality military as they do for half the money that they spend. But that is not the goal. The goal is to spend the money, not to get something for it. If the goal was really to build a good military, then the government would not allow trillions to be stolen...

http://www.apfn.net/MESSAGEBOARD/07-...on.cgi.24.html
Pentagon"Misplaces"2.3 TRILLION DOLLARS!!!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...8/MN251738.DTL
Military waste under fire - $1 trillion missing

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/...in325985.shtml
The War On Waste - Defense Department Cannot Account for 25% Of Funds - $2.3 Trillion


The reality is that they don't care at all about this. Their goal is to keep the money coming, not to make sure it is well spent. We have a $100-200 billion military for the bargain price of $700 billion per year. The rest of the money is simply going into the pockets of those who give large campaign contributions.

To the contrary, I think your opinion is based on a Utopian belief that somehow simply moving away from military spending removes all corruption from government and makes society better. As if the military was the problem. My opinion is that the US has done a great job of securing itself in less then 300 years by creating bases and outposts all over the world while still maintaining a non-war relationship with the majority. Not many nations can say that. And you now have added to your argument that the US wins wars..at least we agree on something. BTW, I didn't ask 'how many wars' but what we used. Huge difference.

You make the colossal assumption that simply moving the funds around makes all the difference. As if spending for nothing would not occur in nearly every other single field of work. Man I'm glad you don't pull the purse strings for the nation...we would have a land of free loaders with the government being responsible for everything in the nation at all times. Of course, it would be short lived after all the corruption takes place and you scatter for a single entity to blame for the failure.

Apparently, it's Hillary that is the "they" in Eric's diatribe:

AP Link

NO BLOOD FOR OIL! :rofl:

For those that are keeping score:

Government waste spending on military = bad

Government waste spending on socialized healthcare = good.

You can't have it both ways, Eric. Why do you assume that politicians won't be in bed with healthcare if we go socialized? You're the one that's naive. ;)

No, that is not my opinion at all. There are other areas where money is being wasted (i.e. stolen) just the same. A good example would be that Medicaid bill passed 3 years ago that stated the government could NOT use collective bargaining to get lower prices on the drugs -- basically a big handout for the drug companies.

I'm sure such things exist on almost every level right down to local governments, where the mayor gives a no bid contract to his buddy that owns the company who repairs the roads.

You are obviously always going to have some level of corruption. The problem here is the profit being made on certain things and its relation to politicians getting elected. The system we have amounts to legalized bribary of government officials.

You will notice the attempt in recent years to cut any sort of government spending that no businesses profit from. A good example of this is PBS Television, which has had its budget cut over and over and is in danger of disappearing alltogether. You can bet if there were large corporations profiting from PBS Television, they wouldn't be cutting the budget, but would instead be raising it to ridiculously high levels.

What we need is to change the election system and have publicly funded elections, and outlaw all forms of political lobbying. In fact, there are probably enough laws on the books at this time to fix the system, if the laws were only enforced.

But instead, we have a system where a politician NEEDS money from the military contractors, big oil, drug companies, and a few dozen other major lobbies if they want to have any chance of being elected and staying in office. Thus, only politicians whose policy positions will benefit those large corporations are going to ever get elected.

Whatever the solution, and we can disagree about that, the reality still exists that the military spending is $700 billion this year not because the government decided that we need $700 billion worth of military, but because that is the maximum amount they felt they could justify to the public. What they will spend it on was and will be decided afterwards, and if there is extra, it will just be given away, or be "misplaced".

And if in a couple of years, the public begins to get upset over the high military spending, there will just have to be some sort of event that will remind them why we need such high military spending. There are plenty of groups out to get us, and it will be quite easy to allow one of them to succeed.

:thud:

Sorry man but you can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which fills up first. Not even sure what your opinion is any more, so I can no longer debate it.


:tribe:

Me either, but here goes...

So the bottom line is that money is thrown away, and to make that more effective, MIHOP/LIHOP. Very nice position.

How have you not gone completely, clinically nuts with that belief system? :confused:

Love your example...Big brother passes collective bargaining and works out exclusive contracts with certain drug companies who meet the lowest bid. Only the largest who can afford to take this loss bid ridiculously low bids to freeze out competitors. New upcoming pharmaceutical companies are unable to work with Medicare and go out of business leaving the larger pharmaceutical producers with a monopoly.

This leaves less competition and as an end result higher prices. Not to mention less innovation and competition.

Alas...The model is right in line with your BIG government mindset. Capitalism = Bad and Government = Good.

No, actually the insurance companies all use collective bargaining to get lower rates on drug purchases. Prior to the current bill, Medicaid used to do the same thing. Now they are prohibited from doing so by law, and must pay list price on everything.

Imagine for a moment if the board of directors of IBM (or any other major corporation) was to decide that their purchasing dept. that handles the leasing of vehicles was no longer allowed to bargain the price and must pay the car companies MSRP. Even mentioning this as an example is sure to make you laugh since we all know that no corporation in their right mind would do such a thing as it would be a huge waste of money and would not be in the interest of the corporation. Of course we can all agree that it WOULD be in the interest of the car companies who are leasing the vehicles. Yet when our government does the same thing (thus wasting our tax dollars), then you try to justify it in saying it is a good thing? :confused:

LOL...That is fine until your insurance company tells you that you MUST use lab X because they have the exclusive contract. Or we won't pay for Drug Y because the drug company would not participate in the program. Drug company Y decided it would not bow down to the giant HMO which would have required layoffs and cutbacks in R&D had it caved to the pressure.

That is where you and I differ Eric. Let the free market decide...Not the Government or HMO. Go ahead and negotiate price...But don't allow large corporations to sell below cost so they can get exclusive contracts and freeze out the competition. Sure you get lower prices in the short run...In the long run you get low quality and few choices.

But then again, that is your ideal government. One GIANT bureaucracy that knows better.

Perhaps you did not know this about Congressman Billy Tauzin, who authored the Medicaid bill:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/indust...ugs-usat_x.htm
Tauzin switches sides from drug industry overseer to lobbyist

WASHINGTON — Retiring Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., who stepped down earlier this year as chairman of the House committee that regulates the pharmaceutical industry, will become the new president and CEO of the drug industry's top lobbying group.

Tauzin will begin work Jan. 3 heading the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a powerful trade group that marshaled an army of lobbyists last year to successfully support a bill overhauling Medicare and establishing the first prescription drug benefit for seniors. Tauzin was a co-sponsor, and President Bush signed the bill into law a year ago.




Before you say, let me guess.... You think it's a good thing that the person in charge of regulating an industry was loved so much by the industry he was supposed to be regulating, that they hired him to run their lobbying group? Did I guess right?

Actually, silly me for suggesting that Billy Tauzin wrote the bill. I doubt he did any such thing. He simply took credit for writing the bill. I think we can safely assume that the bill was written by the lobby he is now working for.

Happens all the time...I'm not a fan of the lobbyist industry and the larger Government gets the more lobbyist storm Capital Hill.

Again...Let the free market decide...Not the Government. You can't have it both ways. Take Government out of the equation and you end the need for the lobby industry.

Eric's view of big government:
:bow:

The results of our efforts to open his eyes:
:dh:

LOL...Can you imagine a lobby group approaching a large private company.

http://members.shaw.ca/tom.t/unh/u18.gif

Groups Lobby the Government because they know how to work Politicians. Given enough votes most would sell their mothers into prostitution.

How do you take government out of the equation? Are you suggesting to end all regulation of private industry? No more FDA? No more oversight of anything? No more labor laws, no more product safety laws, etc.

That system worked fine 100 years ago. We had 9 year olds working 60 hour weeks for 2 cents a day. If you got hurt on the job, you were SOL as there were no workman comp laws. There were no ingrediants listed on any food products -- you just had to guess what you were buying. As for medicine? Most products that were advertised as "medicine" were simply alchohol products that made you "feel good" because you were getting drunk. Yeah...that system worked quite fine. :rolleyes:

I'm sorry, but you will always need some sort of oversight of industry if you want to live in an advanced industrialized country, or you will end up with chaos and anarchy. There are some countries that have a system with no government oversight. Afghanistan and Somalia come to mind. I'm sure there are others.

But we do agree that the problem is indeed when you mix the "free market" and government together.

The solution is to outlaw lobbying and have publicly funded elections. If the drug companies could not give campaign contributions to your politicians and were not allowed to lobby on Capitol Hill, then you would have real honest regulation of industry, not this system of legalized bribary. Do you see my point?

Exactly my point.

Eric...You blame business for playing by the rules set by the government. Worse yet you want that same corrupt government who set these rules to take over more of the private sector under the guise of providing better services.

Private companies and the people who work for them pay for this government and make this Nation strong. Government on the other hand creates bureaucracy's which are inefficient and get nothing done at great expense.

So then you are in favor of eliminating all regulation and oversight? :dunno:

Or are you in favor of keeping the current extremely corrupt system that exists?

I'm a little confused as to what you are in favor of. You keep saying to let the private sector handle things, which leads me to believe you want no oversight or regulation, which obviously is handled by the government.

Or are you saying that industry should regulate itself? That's like putting the criminals in charge of stopping crime or the poluters in charge of polution control. Although with the current corrupt system, that is essentially what you have anyway, as the example with the Medicaid bill showed.

So what is your solution to have real honest regulation of industry?

Eric...The system you labeled as "extremely corrupt" was put in place and is run by the government. Your idea is to put more government in place to protect us from ourselves.

I say privatize as much as possible with protections in place for the greater good and prosecute those who endanger society or break the rules.

Government should be responsible for the military and the protection of the Unites States or our Allies if found necessary or in our best interest and govern foreign and domestic affairs. Many items currently being run by our government would work better and be cheaper if left to the private sector. Prisons for example...Bad ones should be held responsible and good ones should be rewarded. In the end things will run more efficiently at a lower cost.

As we discussed, if you privatize these things, the "protections" will mean nothing as the politicans who are in charge of these protections will be bought and paid for by the privatized companies they are supposed to be regulating. And you can forget about any prosecutions of those who break the rules.

What you are suggesting does not work as long as you allow the companies to contribute money to the campaigns of the politicans who are in charge of regulating them. What is your solution to fix that problem?

And you still call for socialized medicine, and the nanny state. :confused:

End all lobbying and corporate contributions. Develop a publicly funded election system where everyone is on an even keel. The problem would be keeping nuts from using those funds running for president. There would need to be a way to filter the group down to people who could actually win. That would eliminate those like Kucinich...And that would be a good thing.

Bingo!! :thumbup:


You already have requirements in some states that you get a certain number of signatures in order to get on the ballot. You could simply increase that number to something substantial.

BTW, Kucinich has enough of a following that he should be on the ballot. I don't see that as an abuse. But if you've ever gone to vote in a primary, there are sometimes a couple of dozen candidates listed, and most of them are people you've never heard who simply got on the ballot in one or two states. Those are the ones who would have to be eliminated.

Another posibility is to give public funding based on how many signatures you get with a tier system. That would eliminate all those who don't belong, and all those who reach the top tier (your top candidates) would get the same funding.

Why don't we just elect congressman with term limits and have them select a president :rofl:

I for one am tired of hearing about Hilary and Rudy as if they are the only candidates that stand a chance of winning....thanks media...it's been fun.

Remember that 4 years ago in October 2003, the media was 100% sure that Howard Dean would win the nomination. At that time, John Kerry was running 5th or 6th in the polls at around 4%. ;)

And you see what happened with him......