The party label is not all, but it is important.
If you love….
• gridlock,
• potholes,
• crumbling public schools, • closed state parks,
• government shutdowns,
• meaningless saber-rattling,
• continued concentration of wealth in the bank accounts of the 1%,
• tying the hands of law enforcement in the fight against gun violence, and
• more Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United,
… then vote for the Tea Party Republicans
As for me, I'll vote for…
• liberty
• compromise
• good public schools
• great state parks open to the people who own them
• an open government
• tough diplomacy
• policies that promote the general welfare
• sensible gun policies that protect gun rights and the people, and
• overturning Citizens United and McCutcheon
… I'll vote Democratic.
Laurie Craw
Eloquent as always, TS.
Jane Jameson
Neither side accomplished anything, so having lofty ideals are unproven!
James Grant
I would vote democratic but I think we need a third party as the two we have now are both corrupt and are are beholding to big business and big $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Michael J. Burton
Seems a lot of Americans have a misbegotten notion that someday they will be billionaires. Duped again.
Terrell Shaw
Billy, in a perfect world. But we have a two party system.
There is no doubt that in 2000 the majority of the people preferred Al Gore to George W. Bush. But because some thought there needed to be someone who compromised less with the right, a significant number on the left voted for third party candidates like the very improbable Ralph Nader. So instead of an imperfect Al Gore, they got the shallow George W. Bush who embroiled us in two wars, cutting taxes while we were at war, appointing two extreme economic conservatives to the Supreme Court, and ignoring the environment, civil rights, and terror warnings.
Al Gore might have infuriated the far left, but there'd be no Citizens United or McCutcheon atrocities, or abandonment of voter rights by the Supreme Court. The attacks of 2001 might have happened anyway, of course, but we'd have had a better chance of catching them with a President who respected the anti-terror effort that was in place. The extreme tax cuts would not have happened, and the Great Recession would not have happened IMO, but if it did, stronger measures would have been taken to overcome it, etc., etc., etc.
In the real world, support the mavericks all you want up till the general election, but in the general, vote Democratic or you are, in effect, voting Tea Party.
Raymond Atkins
What amazes me more than anything is how many "just folks" in the economic sense see their interests as being better served by the party of plenty (the Republican Party), when in fact the politicians aligned with that party enact legislation that harms regular people over and over again.
June Lovenbury Warfield
Raymond, there are many people (on both sides) who base their decision on where the candidate stands on abortion and same sex marriage. The tea party side seems to want less government control in financial affairs and more government control in bedrooms. The democratic side seems to want more government control with things like contribution limitations (i.e., financial affairs) and less government control in bedrooms. Two quadrants are missing (more government in both financial and bedroom issues/less government in both financial and bedroom issues). IMHO
Raymond Atkins
I think hot button issues such as abortion and same-sex couples are just that: hot button issues that are used as smoke screens. "Look over here while I vilify same sex marriages and don't look over there while I rob you blind."
James Grant
Terrell I usually do vote Democratic because of what you stated However my hope is that people will see that the two parties are just the right and left of one party that owes its existence to maintaining the status quo. A system that maintains the influence of corporations and the ultra wealthy over the government that is now in all accords a “oligarchy'' a government of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%. What we need to do is get money out of the election system and stop treating corporations as if they have the same rights as people. Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a constitutional amendment to restore the power of Congress and state lawmakers to limit campaign donations. I would also say that third parties have had a major influence on U.S. policy and political debate. The Socialists popularized the women’s suffrage movement. They advocated for child labor laws in 1904 and, along with the Populist Party, introduced the notion of a 40-hour work week, which led to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
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From Robert Reich:
At a time when American democracy seems to be drowning under big money and a Supreme Court indifferent to its corrupting effects, as well as the distortions of gerrymandered districts and efforts by some states to suppress the votes of minorities, it's worth pausing to consider what Afghanis have just accomplished. Despite murderous Taliban attacks and vows to punish anyone who participated (identifiable for days by the ink on their fingers), long walks to polling stations followed by hours of waiting in the cold and rain, and a legacy of electoral fraud, Afghans have turned out in large numbers to vote for their next president and representatives. Just as remarkable: despite threats and intimidation, two women are running for vice-president -- the first time women have ever run for national office there -- and more women than ever are on provincial ballots. Democracy is fragile but the determination to be heard is not. America is the cradle of modern democracy, and we are not going to allow it to succumb to the greed of a handful of billionaires or the bigotry of a handful of throwbacks. We're going to get big money out of our politics and protect every citizen's right to vote. We're going to return our democracy to the people. You with me?
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Terrell Shaw
The rulings of the Roberts court are corrosive to liberty.The greatest potential harm of the Bush presidency, so far, has come after he left office. The Iraq war was a horrible, tragic, mistake. But we'll recover.The Citizens United/McCutcheon rulings may destroy our liberal democracy and replace it with an oligarchy. Soros? I am opposed to oligarchy even should the oligarch occasionally agrees with me. I do not want even a benevolent king.
Brian Barcomb
But wait.... The left cheer Roberts w his decision on Obamacare.
Terrell Shaw
Roberts got one half-right.
Terrell Shaw
Do you support the Citizens united and McCutcheon rulings, Brian?
Raymond Atkins
In spite of this obviously flawed ruling, I am encouraged these days. The super rich were not able to buy the last two elections and I don't think they will be able to buy the next. I think the rest of us have reached the tipping point. We have had enough.
Terrell Shaw
You are correct that they failed to buy the last two presidential elections, … but they made great strides toward winning all sorts of other elections. Koch money is going to all sorts of races and influencing state and local legislation. And our government has been practically crippled by the 2010 Tea Party takeover of the people's House, enabled by GOP Gerrymandering, in turn enabled by the nationalization of even very local races. When I get a political or push-poll phone calls I alway chat up the guy/gal on the other end and find out where they are --- and they are low-paid folks who are usually happy to tell you. They are almost always in other states or even other countries. Money/publicity/advertising for Floyd County Republican candidates often comes from far away.
Neal Brackett
George Sorros and Warren Buffet are not super rich? I guess I wouldn't know. I have never played golf with either one... But our president has, many times. You never see Obama in the hood, just on the golf course.
Terrell Shaw
Repeating: "Soros? I am opposed to oligarchy even should the oligarch occasionally agree with me. I do not want even a benevolent king."
I also am not so stupid as to unilaterally disarm wile the Roberts court allows the other side to corrupt the system … at least Soros is working to limit the obscene political contributions that he is making toward those ends! Hows that for a paradox. But the Kochs have much greater resources and are much more secretive about their activities and have outspent Soros. Still I long for the day when we find a way to maximize disclosure and minimize the influence of money in politics. Until that day I hope Soros and others will continue to make donations on "my" side.
And our President gets to the "hood" more often than the avg chief executive, for heaven's sake. The party of the Bushes attacks the biracial kid that grew up in a broken home as somehow "elite". Sheesh.
Laurie Craw
Having great wealth, either inherited or earned, would be, it seems to me, a great responsibility. What I object to is using one's great wealth to buy political power when that wealth could do so much good. And I don't mean charity. The very wealthy have business skills and business contacts they could use to create new businesses that are models of social good on all levels while also being profitable. We could have full employment at living wages and little need for government welfare programs. We could have clean energy and virtually pollution-free and waste-less industry. The billions of private dollars spent on elections if redirected by wealthy people with a vision and a commitment to the betterment of society could solve most of the problems our governments are being forced to deal with.
Raymond Atkins
The hood?
Michael J. Burton
Travesty in the making.
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Jane Jameson
You honestly believe this?
George Barton
It's called equivocation. The debt is still increasing, but at a slower rate, maybe. Read between the lines here, http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart...
USGOVERNMENTSPENDING.COM
Terrell Shaw
Yes, Jane, I more than believe it, after 67 years of breathing and over fifty years of observation, I know: the trickle-down faith of the let-free-enterprise-be-unfettered crowd does not work. Period.
Providing support to the real job creators (the consumers of the middle and lower classes) DOES raise all ships. In the period after WWII when unions were strong and taxes progressive we reduced deficits, the middle class grew and prospered, and America became the envy of the world.
When Reagan's "revolution" turned us away from that path we began a decline, during which the middle classes stagnated, the poor increased, and the rich cornered an ever increasing share of overall wealth. Without the partial reprieve of the nineties under Clinton, and the stimulus efforts of the Great Recession recovery under the last suddenly wide-eyed bit of W. and the first years of Obama, we'd be in even worse shape. That recovery has been greatly hampered by the obstructionism of the Blind-Faith-in-Trickle-Down Tea Party Republicans.
Raymond Atkins
Maybe we should begin with "we had money in the bank at the end of Bill Clinton's term" and work forward from there...
Terrell Shaw
I'll take Clinton's lies about abominable personal behavior, and Obama's overstatement about keeping bad insurance for a very small minority in a program that would greatly improve coverage for almost all, to the lies about WMD, aluminum tubes, Iran/Contra, and trickle-down of Reagan & Bush.
Howard Smith
Terrell Shaw, all of your friends that don't believe President Obama, swallowed hook, line and sinker the lies about WMD's in Iraq that cost us over two trillion dollars, thousands of American soldiers lives and tens of thousands more wounded and disabled, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Irag for whose death we bare responsibility. At the same time they fail to give credit to President Obama for not losing even one American soldiers life in a war he started....which is zero wars. All of these folks that can't believe President Obama has reduced spending, decreased unemployment, created jobs, helped the stock market reach new heights, seen the housing market recovery and the auto industry saved, have no trouble rejecting the notion that during the failed Bush presidency our economy all but collapsed, our national debt soared and our standing in the world community took a big hit.....just as they never seemed to realize that calling something "enhanced interrogation" is just another name for torture. The mind can certainly play funny tricks on true believers. Soon, I suspect, they will be purchasing reprints of his paintings to hang in their homes and call it great art.
Jane Jameson
To each his own.
Raymond Atkins
To be fair, Howard, W is a better artist than he was a president...
Jane Jameson
Tell the people of Detroit how Obama saved their city. I am sure they would be understanding. So many move here to our area seeking employment and a better life. Our industries are glad to have them in our GOP state!
Howard Smith
Raymond Atkins, you got me there. And, Jane Jameson, I never said he saved Detroit, although, he did stop the bleeding caused by years and years of GOP economic policies that almost destroyed the city. The right wants to say it was labor unions, but anyone who has actually studied the cause of Detroit's problems knows better. And, regarding our GOP state, and other GOP states like ours, those are the ones as I am sure you know that are most dependent on federal handouts....the transfer of federal tax dollars is from the Dem states to the GOP states...go figure.
