Political Ideas To Ponder...

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by legion

I know not really my election but i am wondering. How on earth is she going to pay for all that? is there a linky to where she get to explain that?

The great thing about her plan is that none of those items require government funding. No, she's gonna make Americans pay for her programs out of the goodness of their hearts and pockets. This way she can brag about balancing the budget while the DOW drops below 11,000, medical insurance rates go through the stratosphere, unemployment rates top 8%, personal savings funds dry up, and thousands of Iraq war veterans end up homeless. I hope it's worth all that to put Bush in his place.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Mazer

No, she's gonna make Americans pay for her programs out of the goodness of their hearts and pockets. This way they can brag about balancing the budget while the DOW drops below 11,000, medical insurance rates go through the stratosphere, unemployment rates top 8%, personal savings funds dry up, and thousands of Iraq war veterans end up homeless.

is that a prediction?

[Mazer]

It's my worst nightmare, knife. I hope to God it doesn't come true. Pelosi sounds like she's discovered that you don't have to tax the people in order to spend their money, and increasing the minimum wage is one example of that kind of thinking. I also fear that Democrats will abandon veterans the way they'll abandon the nation our troops are fighting to secure. Iraq keeps getting compared to Vietnam, well it looks like it will end the same way, with a young democracy destroyed by poverty and hordes of fundamentalists while it is shunned by its former ally, an America that treats its veterans with an equal amount of neglect. Hooray for Democrats!

[legion]

in the first hundred hours of a Democratic Congress: We will restore civility, integrity, and fiscal responsibility to the House of Representatives. We will start by cleaning up Congress, breaking the link between lobbyists and legislation and commit to pay-as-you-go, no new deficit spending.

considering the state the U.S. is in (as far as i can judge such a thing from here) no new deficit spending seems a little hard to do. The U.S. government is so far in debt to nations world wide that it will take decades to pay it all off.
And since i couldn't find a page where Nancy Pelosi explains how she is going to fund any of her ideas this comes across as ... well to be honest ... hot air.
Don't get me wrong i applaud the idea to restore some integrity to any political system (including my own government)
With daddy bush working for the carlyle group and with unlimited access to his son the pres. sound a bit dodgy at best.

We will make our nation safer and we will begin by implementing the recommendations of the independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission.

Cool, Now i quickly scanned over those recommendations and some of them cost a ton of money. Again the question on how to fund them remains unanswered.

@Mazer: i think this one requires government spending

We will make our economy fairer, and we will begin by raising the minimum wage. We will not pass a pay raise for Congress until there is an increase in the minimum wage.

The economy never has been fair to the have nots, nor will it ever be. With money you can make money.
An increase in minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 is an 40% raise. Now even to a lefty like myself that sounds pretty steep. Nevertheless I hope she will be able to pull it off, yes with all the consequences that it holds, but I seriously doubt it.
Oh, i stole the $5.15 an hour figure from the U. S. department of labor

We will make health care more affordable for all Americans, and we will begin by fixing the Medicare prescription drug program, putting seniors first by negotiating lower drug prices. We will also promote stem cell research to offer real hope to the millions of American families who suffer from devastating diseases.

hmmm i got this from the washington post:

Originally Posted by washington post

Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies

this suggest that the U.S. government isn't doing that right now and neither should they. Untill last year we had that collective health insurance thing going on here. End result, drugs are 30% more expensive here than in the rest of europe. don't cheer too soon i guess.

We will broaden college opportunity, and we will begin by cutting interest rates for student loans in half.

WOOOOHOOOO i am all in favor for that. education should be available for ALL! no matter what the costs are.

We will energize America by achieving energy independence, and we will begin by rolling back the multi-billion dollar subsidies for Big Oil.

Are you peeps ready for $6 a gallon? Or do you really believe that companies like Shell are going to pay for it themselves? Since Shell is part Dutch let me enlighten you... there is not a chance in HELL that we are going to cough up that kind of dough for you. Why should we pay out of the world gas prices in order to keep yours low?

We will guarantee a dignified retirement, and we will begin by fighting any attempt to privatize Social Security.

She is entirely right here. We are half way down that road here and it is a bitch, don't you peeps ever get lured into that one.

[theknife]

so, you have one party that cut taxes, sent the deficit skyrocketing, and is financing a war by borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars. now you have the prospect of the other party coming in with an ambitious agenda and the stated intention of rolling back the tax cuts to pay for it.

who's the more fiscally responsible party?

[Malk-a-mite]

Originally Posted by Mazer

medical insurance rates go through the stratosphere

Med insurance is already there.

personal savings funds dry up

Dry up? You are kidding right? American's are just now starting to have savings, everyone has been living on credit or paycheck to paycheck for the last decade.

I hope it's worth all that to put Bush in his place.

Depends, do I get habeas corpus back as well?

[Mazer]

What I'm saying, Malk, is that the Democrats can undo all the economic progress this country has made in the last six years.

By personal savings I'm not just talking about your checking & savings account at your local bank. I'm including individual retirement accounts, stocks, mutual funds, certain types of bonds, and any other place people put their money away. In desperation people may begin drawing on these savings before they reach maturity, incurring penalties and putting their futures in jeopardy at the same time.

Medical insurance is very high, but people who really want it can and will find ways to pay for it. I wonder how long that will last.

Things can always get worse, and you may have noticed how things were just starting to get better.

knife, just because the government is in debt doesn't mean the people are. Federal fiscal policy and America's economy intersect at the Federal Reserve, so the government debt affects interest rates. But other than that the government can only improve the economy directly by decreasing taxation. Unless you're willing to give up on a lot of important social programs, it's near impossible to decrease the national debt and improve the economy at the same time. I just don't see that happening before the next general election.

[Malk-a-mite]

Originally Posted by Mazer

What I'm saying, Malk, is that the Democrats can undo all the economic progress this country has made in the last six years.

Whiskey tango foxtrot? Enconomic progress?

[Mazer]

Do you remember the recession that began in 1999? It ended in 2001 and the economy has progressed strongly since then. The Dow is now at its all-time high, above 12,100 points; four years ago it was in the 8,000 range. That's a 4-year, 50% increase for that part of the economy (hint: that's frickin huge). During the same period unemployment rates have stayed below 6%, now at 4.4%. Gas prices have been high, but at the moment they're lower than they have been in more than two years, and crude has dropped to about $60 a barrel. Are you skeptical of the data, Malk, or are your standards just too high?

[Malk-a-mite]

Originally Posted by Mazer

The Dow is now at its all-time high, above 12,100 points;

Dow by itself means nothing in the econ world.

[theknife]

Originally Posted by Malk-a-mite

Dow by itself means nothing in the econ world.

doesn't mean that much in the real world either.

Originally Posted by Mazer

Do you remember the recession that began in 1999? It ended in 2001 and the economy has progressed strongly since then. The Dow is now at its all-time high, above 12,100 points; four years ago it was in the 8,000 range. That's a 4-year, 50% increase for that part of the economy (hint: that's frickin huge). During the same period unemployment rates have stayed below 6%, now at 4.4%. Gas prices have been high, but at the moment they're lower than they have been in more than two years, and crude has dropped to about $60 a barrel. Are you skeptical of the data, Malk, or are your standards just too high?

it's not that the economy is all that bad - it's just the benficiaries of economic improvements have been primarily upper income people and large coporations.

case in point - me: i have a mid-range five-figure income, i've worked for a Fortune 500 company for a long time, i have two kids, a mortgage, a 401 K etc etc. in short, economically speaking, i'm pretty typical middle class. this is my experience:

on the plus side, i have recently seen the value of my stock portfolio increase (after a long slide). this is nice, but since my stocks are in a 401K, this rise is a blip in the big picture that will not benefit me for many years. i have also seen the value of my home rise dramatically in the last couple of years. this is also nice, but also does nothing for me for the foreseeable future - if i sell my house, any gains will be wiped out by the house i buy elsewhere.

on the negative side, my company has struggled, as have most over the last few years and we do more with less. i get annual salary increases, but my economic gains severely impacted by increases in health care costs. last year, it cost me about $4000 to insure me and my kids - this year, it has increased to $5400 (plus higher deductibles and copays). add it up and that will be a couple of thousand dollars that i could have spent elsewhere. oh, and gas is already on it's way back up (i paid $2.05 over the weekend - i paid $2.17 today).

so i'm holding my own, but i don't see a great economy. my situation is typical - my coworkers, customers, and most of the people i run into every day could tell pretty much the same story and i think the election results reflected that to some extent. at the end of the day, waving unemployment numbers and dow jones industrial averages just doesn't mean much in real terms.

[Repo]

Many Republicans still don't get why they lost the election. Take Florida U.S. Rep. Clay Shaw, as the joke goes, please! He blames everyone but himself. Rep. Shaw believes that had Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resignation been before the election, that he and many other Republicans would have won reelection. "My first impression was that the extra votes that I needed would have been there," said Shaw. Really, in Shaw's mind it is Bush and Rumsfeld's fault that Shaw lost reelection to Democrat Ron Klein. Shaw is in denial. He himself said in the same interview, "I stayed loyal to the president. I believe in this president, as a Republican, I have the responsibility not to run away from the president unless I clearly think he is wrong." Well maybe Mr. Shaw you lost because the people don't want a rubberstamp congressman, or because the people didn't believe in this president and because you believed in a president the people didn't believe in they didn't believe in you, or maybe it is because as a Republican you didn't give any dissent because your loyalty was to your party and not your constituents. Rep. Clay Shaw didn't lose because of Bush and Rumsfeld, Rep. Clay Shaw lost because he stood by them when the people wanted action from their representative not more of the same lip movement. Rep. Clay Shaw and the Republican Party cried wolf one too many times. They try to demonize the Democrats every election but this time the people saw the Republican Party as the party in power, the party that mismanaged the Iraq war, mismanaged Hurricane Katrina, mismanaged the budget, mismanaged the Mark Foley scandal, mismanaged themselves as their own were convicted of bribes and other misdeeds. Where was Rep. Clay Shaw on all these matters? He was silent and nowhere to be heard from...

Rep. Clay Shaw didn't lose reelection because Rumsfeld resigned after the election instead of before it. Rep. Clay Shaw lost because he was part of the corrupt Republican Congress that has mismanaged the country for the last several years. People are tired of the old political party hacks; they want their representative to standup to corruption and mismanagement even if it goes against their own party. If Shaw had any gonads he would have stood up to his own party but he didn't because he was nothing more than a rubberstamp for the Bush Administration and the big spending Republican Congress...

Rep. Clay Shaw said, "I wouldn't have run this time," if he thought the Republicans would be the minority party because, "I've been in the minority and it's frustrating." Well fortunately for Clay Shaw and for us, he lost and won't have to be part of the minority party in Congress...

[Mazer]

Heh. The Dems aren't as ungracoius about their win as you are, Repo.