The defecit is down 71 billion dollars this year...

Still a huge debt, but we can't just magic up some money to deal with the economic nose dive we experienced 2000-2008.

I wonder if our 200 million dollar-a-day invasion of Iraq may have had something to do with this?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/

President Camacho wrote:FakeGeo may have a point that I think we need to explore a little further and possibly elaborate on. I suggest we create a team. Any volunteers?

Fine. I just don't want to be on FakeGeo's team.

johnson1010 wrote:The defecit is down 71 billion dollars this year...

Still a huge debt, but we can't just magic up some money to deal with the economic nose dive we experienced 2000-2008.

I wonder if our 200 million dollar-a-day invasion of Iraq may have had something to do with this?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954/

It's saying something that $200 million a day is almost a drop in the bucket to what we're spending.

Did you know the guy building the community center in NYC, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is currently on a 15-day tour of the Middle East. The trip is being funded by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of about $16,000. Isn't that special?

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/michi ... dwill.trip.

It's little things like that that really make me livid.

Ok, this is a representative democracy. True. But anytime our elected officials decide to spend money it should be heavily scrutinized.

Having taxpayers pay for a benefit that only a small amount of Americans receive is usually going to be WRONG. It should be illegal. I'm talking mainly of pork barrel spending here. I used to be a member of a website against pork barrel spending. The goal of the site was to show how politicians spent our money on things which didn't benefit the entire country. You can't justify taking money from a large group of individuals in Florida to help someone in Wyoming. It's ridiculous. It should be the Floridian's choice whether they want to 'help' or not. It shouldn't be an option for a politician - to force people from other states to pay for their own pet projects. It should be illegal!

It's little things like that. The big things definitely need to be addressed but these little things need to be attacked aggressively because they can be changed almost immediately. Once these things start to topple and momentum is gained in the direction of fiscal responsibility... it may be easier to tackle more difficult spending challenges (ethical/moral/safety dilemmas).

I always looked at money as life. Usually a man makes money in exchange for his life. If he has a job with a set salary as is common in the United States, he earns a certain amount in his lifetime. When money is taken away from this man - a bit of his life is taken away. Someone has made that man sacrifice a portion of his life. The government in this example is the one that is unilaterally taking bits and pieces of his life away from him.



(CBS) Despite a deficit that's pushing $1.5 trillion, members of Congress slipped a whopping 9,100 pork barrel projects into legislation this fiscal year, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

"What it does is it buys votes," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. "And if any senior member of our conference or this Congress wants to pass a bill, they use earmarks. They sprinkle them around like candy."

This year, they sprinkled in $2.5 million for potato pest management and research, $1.4 million to study mosquito trapping in Florida, and $800,000 for catfish genome mapping in Alabama. Taxpayers have been on the hook for this fishy earmark since 2001, for a total of $3.4 million.

For the third year in a row, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran ran away with the title of the biggest earmarker. The ranking Republican on the powerful appropriations committee snagged $490 million for 240 pet projects.



Now, I don't really know about the examples given above. I'm all for scientific research!!! I'm not for bridges to nowhere, hospital upgrades in other states, community restoration projects ...etc.

As someone sitting up here in the north woods, on the other side of the medicine line, I just have to shake my head at all the hyperbole about socialism that is flying around.

From my perspective, and I would bet my pension from that of many in other liberal democracies, the US is stuck with two political parties: the right wing, business oriented party, and the ultra-right wing, raving loony party. I’m sure you know which is which. There isn’t much on the other end of the political spectrum, and when the odd person does try and present such views, the Ralf Naders or the Michael Moores, they are often seen as eccentric, goofy, or maybe even unpatriotic. Voices have become silent, except for the one on the right, which is very loud today.

Societies have become complex, and so the administration and planning for these must also ratchet up to a higher level. This is not controversial in most of the developed world; government is a partner with civil society and with the business community. Those loud voices of the American right stand out alone in advocating that almost all human endeavors must include a method of making a profit. I don’t know how much more of a demonstration we need, after the events of the last two years, that the invisible guiding hand of the market place certainly will not produce desired results for society, if just left alone. The fact is, there is no invisible hand. The only hand making the rounds is quite visible, and it is the corporate hand reaching into the pockets of average Americans, and taking what coins it can find. It needs a cop to slap it on the wrist now and then.

It wasn’t always like this; republican Richard Nixon advocated a comprehensive medicare program, and going back a century, there was even an American Socialist Party running in elections. Today things are much more polarized.

The affluent, and those at the top of the corporate ladder will tell you that they are against socialism, but they are lying. They are against payments to individuals, but not against spending tax money on anything, and everything that will benefit them personally. That includes everything from corporate bailouts, to the military, to law enforcement. This is just another kind of “socialism”- one for the rich only.

What Obama is doing is not socialism, it is anything but. Despite all the weeping and wailing about government spending and the tax burden, the US, depending on how one figures it, is about in the middle range of modern developed economies as far as paying taxes. By some estimates, it is somewhat better off than most. Government spending on social programs is not very high in the US, in this context. Personally, I find it amazingly how furious people can get about paying to support government programs in such an affluent country, and in one where many already have a lighter burden than most. In Canada, equalization payments are routinely made between provinces- the rich pay a little more, the poorer receive a little more. It’s just considered part of the price of living in society. The fact that one may live in Alberta or Nova Scotia is irrelevant.

Sure, there is corruption, and it is reprehensible. Those that engage in these activities should find themselves unemployed, or inside a prison cell for the worst offenders. But to be fair, the US doesn’t have a monopoly on corruption in government. We have it here; and few, I’m sure, escape this sort of thing completely.

The problem with Obama is not socialism, but his failure to intervene forcefully enough into the recent economic crisis. Spending to date has been enough to bail out some of the affluent class, but not enough to help the masses of unemployed at the lower end of the scale. What is needed, in my opinion, is the equivalent of a new, domestic Marshall Plan. A true progressive tax system, and a large-scale diversion of resources into re-industrialization- not the smokestack industries of yesterday, but the green technologies that will be in demand tomorrow, are what is needed. A plan to reduce dependence on oil imports would work well with such a program, and is badly needed. And spending a trillion dollars on senseless wars, in addition to maintaining a half trillion a year defense budget, is clearly one of the largest possible areas that could be cut to save money, which could be used to improve civil society and promote productive employment. Bailing out GM so that they can open a new facility in Shanghai may be in the interest of a certain well-healed class, but not in the interest of most Americans.

I think a good start would be to get better leaders. Only intellectuals perhaps. There's just too much stupidity in Washington. I'm not saying this lightly, I've been stunned speechless while watching or reading the things some of our leaders say. Many of them are just plain stupid. They are popular, and have mighty friends, but they are stupid. Not all of them, of course, but many. Replace the idiots with intellectuals who are down to Earth, and make lobbying all but illegal. There is some benefit to lobbying, but we are currently so far beyond that point that it's despicable.

I agree with putting an intelligent person in office - it's sad that I even have to mention that as a requirement. The man doesn't need to be an intellectual but he needs to be intelligent (charisma and leadership are very important qualities). What's most important is that the person is REAL. That the people we vote for come from our same walk of life and not just sound as if they do. We need to vote for people that have had similar upbringings, have similar values, and were brought up in households with similar incomes. We need to vote THESE people into office because they REPRESENT us the best. They are most LIKE ourselves and will do a better job in having our voice heard in Washington.

Why people vote millionaires into office is beyond me. These people have been brought up on fantasy island, are used to treating average citizens as slaves, and care little for the plight of the middle class and working man. We love these people!!!

I agree with that Camacho, but with some stipulations.

They cannot be regular old guys, or girls. They can't have been a plumber the week before, and then decide to be president.

We really do need the elite. Not the elite, as in, "I have the biggest inheritance", but the most powerful, agile minds at our disposal. None of this Sarah Palin "Oh golly, i better get out there and show them commies a thing or two!" crap.

A true representative might be an overweight couch potato nascar-dad with a drinking problem. We don't want, and can't afford somebody just like everyone else. We need passionate, intelligent, agile, forward thinking visionaries, with a flare for diplomacy.

I should have clarified. I didn't mean to infer the plumber scenario. As I said in my last post, we should be voting for people who were "brought up" or have had "similar upbringings" as our own. These people, later in life, would have become very successful because of their innate potential and extraordinary qualities - not because they were given anything as in the case of the millionaire's son. Their roots would have begun in the same soil as our own but they would have grown, flowered, and produced far more than any other in their same situation. They have the ability to take an equal amount of input and with it produce more output than anyone else. They're proven success. They are genetically elite.

I won't take the plumber scenario as an insult because there are some out there that would go that far. That being said, I doubt a plumber would have done a worse job than Bush.

I'm definitely for letting the best run the show but that person needs to represent me as well. The president needs to be the best that the country has to offer for the position. Obviously the absolute best would probably not want to be president as they'd be happier doing other things but we should try to get the best that we possibly could.

Would I sacrifice the best for having someone more like me? No. The "best" would be the smartest individual who would also represent me the most.

Would an average Joe like me would represent me well? That's impossible if he's not intelligent enough to secure my nation's economic security. There are degrees involved here and I hope the readers of my post can figure out what I'm getting at.

We need to simplify the show a little, too. We need to get more people involved by forcing them. In ancient Athens there used to be someone who would go around the Agora marking people, literally, to come to assembly for voting. Anyone found not at the assembly who was marked was fined. They made people do public service and a large percentage of the population did some form of public service daily. In our society this may not be practical but we need to find ways to make public involvement in democracy easier. By not having people involved - the machine may keep humming along but it's an aberration of what it was meant to be. It's meant to be government by the people. The more involvement by the people, the better.

You know, you look around and you really scare yourself with what you see. You see people you consider not only dumb but dangerous and you'd like to wish away their power to vote and even to speak. Why? They have views that are different. They're wrong, lol. As tempting as this is - it's wrong.

Democracy is the system that, in my opinion, is the most righteous. We should listen to the advice of the elite but vote ourselves on issues which we have the ability to. Split second decisions can't be handled by the masses... and there are other examples as well that are best handled by committees but there are many questions out there that the masses can answer. We should have them asked - right or wrong - we should ask them what they want. We should have them educated and involved. Education is key here.

When Athens was asked if they wanted to invade Sicily, there was an overwhelming approval rating for it. Some 6,000 men voted on it. Can you imagine 6,000 men all gathered, without a/c, and having to stand and strain to hear speeches, to vote? The votes were tallied by counting raised hands and the expedition was voted in favor of. It was a disaster and ultimately caused Athens to fall to Sparta. It was their doom. They voted for their own destruction. This sounds like a great argument for how the masses were so easily emotionally carried away by adventure, prizes, and glory.

But our elected officials forced the country to go to Iraq without anyone asking me shit.... and I'm a free man with the power to vote. I would have liked to vote on it. I would have volunteered. I may have even asked to make a speech on it.

Geez, I must have edited that like 50 times.