What are your views/beliefs politics-wise?

I'm not Christian either, so...huh?

And I have no "side". I'm still waiting on a political "Messiah". Fiscally conservative, Libertarian in the matter of personal rights, Liberal in aid to the worst-off in this country, Isolationist in world events. hehehehe Yea, "Good luck, NG"...

 

I believe people take small differences far too seriously, avoid addressing the large issues if possible, and money is the largest problem in our political system

 

all I meant was that there is more than enough, on both sides, confusing what reality is for what the person wants reality to be. It's not just on one side of the aisle. I mentioned not being Christian because I think that "mote in your eye" reference is a new testament thing, and I'm not sure I got it right.

 

Matthew 7:4: How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
Still not sure what that has to do with anything but whatevah...

 

I prob got it mixed up with the thing about being the one to cast the first stone.
Meaning: when the people you agree with have the problem you're complaining about, it's not cricket to complain only about the ones you disagree with.

 

I don't disagree with what I edited out enough to truly comment on.

This portion did piss me off though.

Bush had 8 fucking years to change the bullshit you blame Clinton for and Bush didn't do shit except get us in a war against a country that was more personal reasons than legitimate reasons (Saddam after all did put out a hit on daddy), that whether he or his advisers made up "facts" to get us over there.

Bush had 8 years to get out of NAFTA. 8 Years to correct Wall Street. 8 years to "undo" the damage the right states Clinton created. Clinton left a growing economy and Bush trashed it with a war we couldn't afford. 9/11 DID affect the economy a lot worse than was expected IMHO, it just took time to hit us. Neither Bush nor Clinton can be held responsible for 9/11 unless you are a truther or an Alex Jones nutcase conspiracist.

Now, after not quite 4 years the right bitches how Obama still blames Bush. I see less of that (although in all honesty Bush did leave Obama a fucking mess that no one knew how bad it truly was), but if Obama says that, he's accused of "blaming Bush". Meanwhile, the Bush people spent their whole 8 years blaming 9/11 on Clinton.

Bush passed the auto industry bailout onto Obama, GM and Chrysler were begging Bush for help and he washed his hands and walked away. However, Bush did find time to bail out AIG and the banks because "they were too big to fail".

Freddie and Fannie Mae DID NOT happen during the Clinton era but rather during Bush's 2nd term, he had a whole term and a half to change leadership/policy in that area and made it easier to qualify for housing, even though the banks KNEW the people couldn't afford them, especially if the ARMs went up.

So don't blame Clinton, UNLESS you are willing to bite your tongue on Obama's criticisms of Bush, otherwise I personally believe you look to be a hypocrite, just my opinion.

All Bush did was cut taxes for the rich in the middle of a war, so ummmm how were we supposed to finance the war? Oh wait, he had 8 years too balance the budget and ....... but that's Clinton's fault.

 

Actually, we are both wrong-F&F first came about in 1938 during the New Deal. Bush, Sr. signed the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, requiring the GSEs to to meet affordable housing goals. n '97, Clinton put the pressure on F&F to expand their mortgage loans to low and moderate income applicants in distressed areas. With the increase ratio requirements, (I'll be quoting here because it's late),institutions in the primary mortgage market pressed Fannie Mae to ease credit requirements on the mortgages it was willing to purchase, enabling them to make loans to subprime borrowers at interest rates higher than conventional loans. The NY Times took note of this and predicted that, should the economy take a downturn, the proverbial shit might hit the fan. It did.
Not sure how you see hypocritical actions here-I can't stand either of them quite equally. Clinton didn't think ahead-we are paying for it. Bush lied about Iraq-we are paying for it and I have been to the funerals of the heroes that paid the ultimate price, so there is a lot more lost there than the money from F&F.
Obama? please....he has, among his close advisors, a CEO who is taking his billion dollar business and sending the manufacturing to China while supposedly helping to fing out how to get America working again. /me scratches her head on that one...
I do find it rather funny that the stance of "well, yea but so-and-so had x amount of time to fix it and didn't" is used to validate anything...huh? Whoever screw up and whenever they screw up, it shouldn't behoove us to use the "next guy should fix it" as a valid excuse for the previous fucker. They have ALL fucked up somewhere.

 

It is true, we have lacked a true leader for too long. The sad part is I don't see one on the horizon. The GOP candidates are all on book tours and Obama is too weak in some areas and too headstrong in the wrong areas.

 

Uh....Haliburton?

So...After Obama tries in vain to get the GOP to actually compromise in some way, and we end up screwed next January....Do we get to blame Romney by 2013 for the mess?

 

I have issues with NAFTA, but not the economic impact. It has added to the US GDP every year since it was enacted as a result of the removal of tariffs of neighboring trading partners. US farmers are exporting significantly more than pre-NAFTA and manufacturing exports have increases significantly w/o the tariffs as well, particularly for US small businesses. The removal of tariffs also lowered the price of Mexican oil.

 

this is the problem with right libertarian thinking--it pitches you toward 30s isolationism, which leaves you unable to think about things like the vast network of free trade zones (which is a far bigger driver than nafta in terms of reception of suppliers for metropolitan anything-goes capitalist barbarism) and also pitches you toward imagining that the state is somehow responsible for the race to the bottom in terms of wages. way way too simple, that. so simple as to be false.

the breakdown of the geographical limits on capitalist organization happened gradually....first the urban/rural distinction, then the fragmentation of production, beginning with numerical machine tools (late 1950s) then just-in-time (japan, late 1960s-70s) and toyotaism (based on it), then the profit sqeueeze of the mid 1970s (oil shock but a lot of other factors as well.) and the internationalization of the stock trade/abandonment of bretton woods (nixon administration)---but the main drivers really were neo-liberalism as an ideological justification (thatcher/reagan) and the development of the internet--supply pool softwares in particular for manufacturing and transnational capital flows for explaining how it is that profit-taking got detached from the social interests of any particular geographical space (except maybe for the gated communities in which the players in the financial system live)...nafta etc. never would have happened outside of the convergences between/among these longer-term processes. the state played a key role in enabling it (the internationalization of the stock trade in 1970 was a big fucking deal but the implications were not foreseen at the time---but it's fundamental to the detachment of the economic interests of capital from any socio-political considerations in any particular place so long as one way or another stability is maintain or enforced enough that capital flows can keep moving--- but no-one talks about it in the land of the free and home of the brave because people prefer simplistic bullshit about the state ), the harmonization of tarrifs came along with the creation of free-trade zones---the right had no compunction about redefining what the united states was as a legal unit around the free trade zone network to minimize the appearance of transferring the manufacturing sector offshore).

this is also why libertarian thinking has nothing to offer in the way of remedies for the existing fiasco that people who framed the world in the same ways have engendered by the application of that thinking (try to imagine the derivatives trade even being possible without some mystical belief in "self-regulating markets" in which growth was a steady state and maybe watched over by some god---you know how exceptional america is....)
--- merged: Dec 22, 2011 1:48 PM ---
edit: if you think about it, you could blame developments in transportation. the highway system in the united states, for example. then, later, the development of containerized shipping and of a different kind of play between centralized (rail-based mainly) and decentralized (trucking-based) shipping. i mean, why were factories located near cities in the first place? rivers and railroads. transportation issues, then. why does that change after world war 2? trucks and highways. what was a consequences of the older location model? well, you had highly unionized workers who had the audacity to think they should be paid well and have health care and all that. well, highways and trucks helped fuck over those uppity workers and replace them with the kind of interchangable bearers of labor power so dear to early 19th century forms of capitalism. big, highly efficient and powerful engines, then, helped to fuck over working people. just like now, the computers that let us communicate here are fundamental to the fucking over of american workers in all kinds of ways. an edifying research project is looking into how computers are manufactured and where. but i digress.

 

Halliburton was not on the payroll per se, despite its infamy; it, as a corporation was "hired". Yes, we paid it with taxes, but I have a REAL issue with hiring an advisor for a jobs council who is actively sending his own company's work out of the country. How is he helping?

Yes. That's the way it works. This economy hit the sewer when Bush was in office but it was 20 years in the making. But whose ass is in the chair when the shit falls, that's who is responsible. I completely understand that that person should be cleaning it up or at least attempting to, regardless of whence it came, but these asshats in Washington are so consumed with their own party lines, they have NO clue anymore how to actually govern and right this sinking ship. It's sickening. And Obama is just as guilty re: party lines. Instead of stopping with the they did/we did playground bullshit and actually taking charge, he points fingers. Ugh! This is not conducive to my wellness...

 

I am basically a social democrat with certain very mildly libertarian leanings.

I believe that the government has the responsibility to prioritize effective and compassionate social services and maintenance of infrastructure above nearly all things. People who are unemployed need support and aid in finding new work. People on welfare need to be able to get further education and training if needed, or at the least, to not lose their benefits until they are truly self-sufficient (right now, if you find more than around 10 hours work per week, you lose your benefits, which incentivizes remaining on welfare, not transitioning off of it).

There should be universal health care freely available to every member of society.

Education should be high quality, and free through graduate school, at any accredited schools.

The poverty line should always be an accurate reflection of a living wage, the minimum level of letting a person live a secure and decent life (so, for example, in today's US, I'd set the poverty line around $20-$25K). I think everyone living below that poverty line should be tax exempt. I think that, conversely, the rich need to be taxed highly. If you make a hundred million dollars, you can afford a 90+ percent tax. And I firmly believe in closing tax loopholes for the rich.

I think the idea that corporations are people, and have the same rights as people, is utter bullshit, and needs instant disposal. Corporations are corporations. They need to be regulated, taxed like hell, and and prohibited from interfering with politics. Monopolies need to be broken. Media, especially, should be broken up, and strict regulations put into play to prevent any one company from owning more than one kind of media outlet in any area. And, clearly, financial institutions and markets need to be strictly regulated and watchdogged.

I think all political campaigns should be publicly funded, from the same campaign fund, with an equal division of funds to all candidates, and private contributions banned.

I think that all corporate lobbying of government should be banned. The only lobbyist groups allowed should be NGOs and citizens' groups, which should be watchdogged, to be sure none of them are being funded by or controlled by or unduly influenced by corporations.

The wall of separation between religion and state should be vast and unbreachable. The best way to ensure tolerance for all religions is for the government to be aggressively secular.

Likewise, the government needs to get out of the marriage business. Everything that we now call "civil marriage" should be renamed "civil partnership." Same licenses, same legislation, same everything, but call it "civil partnership," and open it up to any consenting adults who wish it, regardless of gender. "Marriage" can then be something that religions offer, and which has nothing to do with the personal rights and social privileges currently associated with civil marriage (tax benefits, presumption of medical privilege, presumption of next-of-kin, joint property ownership, etc.).

I think information should be free. Hands off the internet.

The War on Drugs has to end.

The drinking age should be lowered to 18.

Governments don't belong in people's bedrooms. If people are over 18 and consenting, they should be able to do whatever they want with one another, sexually.

Prisons should never be privately owned or operated. They should generally focus highly on rehabilitation, and not merely on punishment.

The death penalty should be unbelievably difficult to get. Mountains of evidence should be needed. And no executions of anyone convicted while underage, or who is mentally retarded, or a citizen of another country.

Fair play. Social responsibility. Valuing education and curbing unmitigated greed and power. That's what a decent, civil, progressive society is supposed to be. It's what we should have.

 

Along with many other points you made, this one I agree with 100% and firmly believe that it would change the political landscape a lot.

 

My beliefs are to twisted to mention.
My sister worked for the Saudis for 15 yrs. so yeah my views are sick by what I have learned. So many lies and deception in government on both sides.

 

Paid for it with taxes? That's rich. If we'd paid for it with taxes rather then borrow it from countries like China we wouldn't be in much of the mess we currently find ourselves.

 

My views: you can't get people to stop acting like people no matter how many laws you pass.
And people don't stop acting like people just because they are in the government.
People with power tend to relish it and try to enhance it.
Power is more dangerous than money.