This guy CANNOT become president...

[SubwayGuy]

Speaking of white/blue collar offenders

I've seen many people blame the blue collar folks for the housing price collapse in the country. People who purchased homes with no money down and little or no income. I personally think that the broad idea of home ownership WAS a worthy goal in theory. I also think that it was the white collar crooks who realized the bigger gain in the whole boondoggle. The people who okayed these loans, inflated the buyers income, credit worthiness, and home values, as well as those who bundled these worthless mortgages into grade AAA+ securities are more to blame. AFAIK there was NO REQUIREMENT to OK every loan a buyer sought but it seems that the mortgage lenders took it upon themselves to OK these financial transactions to churn out financial gain for themselves. What they did amounted to a perversion of the home buying process yet I'm still waiting to see CRIMINAL prosecutions of the white collar perpetrators while the blue collar people are demonized. The credit agencies, Wall St, big banks, and the independant mortgage lenders have ,so far, skated scot-free while the average American pays the price. I'd love to see the progressives, "original" Tea Partiers, Libertarians, come together for once and demand that THIS administration start going after those that gained the most through fraudulent means. I don't have any faith that the members of the GOP would do this if they win the next election cycle.

 

Exactly that's what us independents wanted but instead all we got is the same tired "let's leave the past in the past" boondoggle... meanwhile federal dollars are spent investigating who took steroids in baseball...

 

When government fails to do its responsibility it falls on the people to do it, or to overthrow the government and put people in place who will. I thought no stronger statement could have been made by America as a nation had Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of goldman ballsacks, walked out of his congressional hearing all smug "denying all knowledge of everything" and ready to walk free and rich back to his CEO post...had some "lone gunmen" blasted him between the eyes on national TV. But instead we get these idiots like Jared Loughner who go around shooting up little girls instead or that moron who crashed his plane into an IRS building killing a bunch of innocent civil servants.

 

There is no justice because no one stands up for it. That's why criminals walk, Bernie Madoff sits in a country club jail and his b*tch of a wife stays wealthy, and why people are unemployed and children are starving while fat cats eat $250 meals every day in their luxury yachts as their reward for outsourcing jobs and burdening America with debt. While welfare recipients game the system and put any schwanz in their hole just to have another welfare increase. While bankers skirt their way around the rules and raise fees on everyone, cry broke, take a government handout, and raise their own pay and get ready to do it all over again. In America justice is the $3 million dollar settlement you get when you fall into a manhole cuz you weren't looking where you were going and you were on the phone...make the building pay, never mind the lawyer gets $2.5 million of it and taxes take close to half of the remaining $500,000, the other half goes to medical bills cuz you're insurance doesn't cover THAT ankle procedure. No one gets prosecuted, no one gets caught, they just walk...because we can't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt anymore, only our own incompetence...but we sure can prove things based on a "preponderance of the evidence" even if 75% of our population can't define the first and last words in that phrase.

 

But rather than do something meaningful like pop Blankfein in the kisser (or, see our political and criminal justice system do what it's supposed to and confiscate his assets and lock him up, so that no one has to pop Blankfein in the kisser), the people who lose the most in this would rather sit around a ridiculous parade dressed up in costumes, hide behind chicken feathers, and play a big game of Live Bullet Lasertag and shoot at civil servant cops. And they don't vote, and they don't read, and they don't learn. But they do know how to blame the cops when someone gets hit in the crossfire...WHOOPS! And that's what the majority of America is now, black or white, poor working or middle class. America BADLY needs a leader and Obama ain't it, and Michelle Bachman can kiss my ass while I'm in the process of taking a shit, and Mitt Romney sure as shit ain't it either. Just another rich guy with financial industry ties who's gonna leave things the way they are till the violence finds its way out of Crown Heights and Bed Stuy and Brownsville and ENY, and covers the whole city again. And it won't just happen here, it'll happen in every major city. Why do you think they want to de-fund education so much? Stupid people are too stupid to know when they're getting f*cked. And they all know if they speak well of God, join a Church, say abortion is bad, and criticize "the gay agenda", they have the southern vote...even if they want to ban farming, import shit from China, and further de-fund the states (blame the GOVERNOR if your state taxes go up!). Well mercy me that's half the votes there. All they need are the rich bankers from the north and the heist continues.

 

/RANT

[Tokkemon]

FYI, ranting doesn't get anything changed.

[SoSpectacular]

FYI, ranting doesn't get anything changed.

 

Neither does stating the obvious

[Tokkemon]

Neither does stating the obvious

 

Point. Like I said above, if he thinks he knows how to fix the country so well, then he should run.

[DJ MC]

Please, watch the Nazi Banksters Crimes Ripple Effect at http://jforjustice.co.uk/banksters

[MTARegional Bus]

I attack the rich because they manipulate their position as moneyed interests to get politicians to do their bidding. They scream and whine and moan when the possibility that their taxes could get raised gets brought up but they don't seem to mind one bit when anyone else has to pay more.

 

 

So will you still hate me if I worked hard to get to get rich and pay my fare share of taxes and while a lazy good for nothing is getting public assistant and welfare?

 

Ok there are rich people that are greedy and control politicians and some who were born with a silver-spoon and do nothing yet they get promoted because its there daddy's rich company but some do contribute to this country and worked hard to get to where they are today and so not fair to blame the all, is just that the system of Government needs to change by closing the loophole and changing the tax system so that everyone pays differently not equally.

[Roadcruiser1]

I am tired of both the Democrats and the Republicans. They have both turned our great nation into a giant laughingstock. They can go screw themselves in their a**es. China is laughing at us, many other nations are laughing at us, and we did it by letting the damn rich control our lifestyles. In fact I don't even have damn faith in the people along my generation. They all turn to the media when they want their s**t, and we all know the media is owned by the rich. Our nation is screwed, our economy is dead, and our unemployment rate is extremely high, and I don't know why this economic situation is being called normal, but this isn't normal.

 

All I want is for everyone to have a job, for everyone to be able to put food on the damn table, and for everyone to be able to accomplish the American Dream which seems to be dying in front of our eyes. I highly doubt that people can afford a car, or a house, or to have kids, or even to have a dog. This s**ks.

[Urbanfortitude]

Point. Like I said above, if he thinks he knows how to fix the country so well, then he should run.

 

If memory serves, all that's stopping him is his age.

[DJ MC]

Please, watch the Nazi Banksters Crimes Ripple Effect at http://jforjustice.co.uk/banksters

[SoSpectacular]

So will you still hate me if I worked hard to get to get rich and pay my fare share of taxes and while a lazy good for nothing is getting public assistant and welfare?

 

Ok there are rich people that are greedy and control politicians and some who were born with a silver-spoon and do nothing yet they get promoted because its there daddy's rich company but some do contribute to this country and worked hard to get to where they are today and so not fair to blame the all, is just that the system of Government needs to change by closing the loophole and changing the tax system so that everyone pays differently not equally.

 

Welfare needs to get revamped or fully rid of, it's another issue to be tackled

[engineerboy6561]

Given everything else that's going on I'm considering going into politics after college simply because the country is such a mess right now and it sure as hell isn't fixing itself... I don't think that the mainstream perception of government has been this bad since the Gilded Age 100+ years ago, when politics was perceived as the home of cheats, liars, and whores to special interests (which appears to be the one thing everyone can agree on at this time). Since the collapse we've only really seen one major grass-roots movement to reclaim politics for the honorable men, and it lasted just long enough to get us a Democratic legislature in 2006 and Obama in office in 2008, and no sooner did he fail to solve all our problems in a year or two than the movement collapsed and we wound up right back where we started.

 

We really do need a Washington populated with doers across the board, and we then need them to have a clear direction and mandate that both parties can agree on the bulk of; otherwise we have to get and hold a clear majority with a clear purpose of the sort the Democrats haven't had since FDR was in office, and that's where I see difficulties... For the past three or four decades, the Republican Party has maintained a frighteningly yet effectively rigid set of beliefs and goals, and if you disagree with any one of these goals in practice you're out. Hell, Cheney's own daughter is gay and yet he fought gay rights tooth and nail because it's what the party line demanded of him.

 

This leaves Democrats in a rather obnoxious position: they have a strong perennial voting bloc at their core but that core isn't large enough to hold a nationwide majority so they wind up taking in all the rejects from the Republican Party. Now, when the Republican Party goes off the deep end that means a lot of people will vote Democratic, but the only thing this group has in common is distaste for the Republicans rather than any coherent policy platform or objectives of their own. This in turn means that Democrats on a national level are a fairly fractious group and very difficult to get to agree on enough issues to get a platform out of them. That needs to change.

 

If we want a better Washington we need to change the way we choose the people to send there, and the only real way to do that is to really go after corporate lobbyists and campaign finance. Three quarters of the current problem with Congress is that so many members are beholden to large corporations or lobbying organizations that they tiptoe around anything that matters to their particular corporate client. The general idea of an electoral system is that the politicians' "bosses" are in fact their constituents: shaft or piss off enough of them and your contract will be terminated next time it comes up for review. The current campaign finance system allows a few hundred men at most to essentially supplant politicians' constituents as their bosses simply because they can sling around enough money to make you almost invulnerable if they like you and (on the flip side) to manufacture and often successfully push people into accepting your replacement if they don't like you.

 

I'm not saying that this will produce a totally pure slate of federal officials or a perfectly effecient federal government, because it won't; but I'm pretty sure a government actually assembled by the people will be far more likely to work for the people, even (and hopefully especially) in cases where the interests of multinationals conflict with the interest of politicans' constituents. Do that and I'm pretty sure that the line between Democrat and Republican will no longer be drawn so sharply that neither party can get anything done without ramming it up the other party's ass, simply because divisions between individual groups of constituents are far smaller than divisions between the interests of constituents and those of multinationals. If we are doers first, and party members second, then and only then do I see a possibility for a more functional and useful Washington.

[Tokkemon]

Given everything else that's going on I'm considering going into politics after college simply because the country is such a mess right now and it sure as hell isn't fixing itself... I don't think that the mainstream perception of government has been this bad since the Gilded Age 100+ years ago, when politics was perceived as the home of cheats, liars, and whores to special interests (which appears to be the one thing everyone can agree on at this time). Since the collapse we've only really seen one major grass-roots movement to reclaim politics for the honorable men, and it lasted just long enough to get us a Democratic legislature in 2006 and Obama in office in 2008, and no sooner did he fail to solve all our problems in a year or two than the movement collapsed and we wound up right back where we started.

 

We really do need a Washington populated with doers across the board, and we then need them to have a clear direction and mandate that both parties can agree on the bulk of; otherwise we have to get and hold a clear majority with a clear purpose of the sort the Democrats haven't had since FDR was in office, and that's where I see difficulties... For the past three or four decades, the Republican Party has maintained a frighteningly yet effectively rigid set of beliefs and goals, and if you disagree with any one of these goals in practice you're out. Hell, Cheney's own daughter is gay and yet he fought gay rights tooth and nail because it's what the party line demanded of him.

 

This leaves Democrats in a rather obnoxious position: they have a strong perennial voting bloc at their core but that core isn't large enough to hold a nationwide majority so they wind up taking in all the rejects from the Republican Party. Now, when the Republican Party goes off the deep end that means a lot of people will vote Democratic, but the only thing this group has in common is distaste for the Republicans rather than any coherent policy platform or objectives of their own. This in turn means that Democrats on a national level are a fairly fractious group and very difficult to get to agree on enough issues to get a platform out of them. That needs to change.

 

If we want a better Washington we need to change the way we choose the people to send there, and the only real way to do that is to really go after corporate lobbyists and campaign finance. Three quarters of the current problem with Congress is that so many members are beholden to large corporations or lobbying organizations that they tiptoe around anything that matters to their particular corporate client. The general idea of an electoral system is that the politicians' "bosses" are in fact their constituents: shaft or piss off enough of them and your contract will be terminated next time it comes up for review. The current campaign finance system allows a few hundred men at most to essentially supplant politicians' constituents as their bosses simply because they can sling around enough money to make you almost invulnerable if they like you and (on the flip side) to manufacture and often successfully push people into accepting your replacement if they don't like you.

 

I'm not saying that this will produce a totally pure slate of federal officials or a perfectly effecient federal government, because it won't; but I'm pretty sure a government actually assembled by the people will be far more likely to work for the people, even (and hopefully especially) in cases where the interests of multinationals conflict with the interest of politicans' constituents. Do that and I'm pretty sure that the line between Democrat and Republican will no longer be drawn so sharply that neither party can get anything done without ramming it up the other party's ass, simply because divisions between individual groups of constituents are far smaller than divisions between the interests of constituents and those of multinationals. If we are doers first, and party members second, then and only then do I see a possibility for a more functional and useful Washington.

 

So if I understand you right, you want the Democrats to win by doing exactly what the Republicans have been doing? I.e. getting a strong party-line ideology? There already is one: Liberalism. Its just the flavor of Liberalism you're looking for. By all means, split up into multiple parties so you can group together and bond over your flavors of ideology. That's what every other nation in the world has done, except for this one, oddly.

[engineerboy6561]

So if I understand you right, you want the Democrats to win by doing exactly what the Republicans have been doing? I.e. getting a strong party-line ideology? There already is one: Liberalism. Its just the flavor of Liberalism you're looking for. By all means, split up into multiple parties so you can group together and bond over your flavors of ideology. That's what every other nation in the world has done, except for this one, oddly.

 

I want to see a cohesive, strong Democratic party. A simple, rigid party line is the easiest way to do that, but not necessarily the best. I would, however, like to see some sort of cohesive program for fixing this country (or at least a general set of goals and agreement on priorities) that doesn't involve pussyfooting around corporate interests and ignoring the needs of the American people in the process.

 

As far as liberalism being a strong, party-line ideology, it may have been before the end of the Vietnam War but 1960s-style liberalism is rather outdated and as such doesn't really have the same ability to move people that it used to. Also, the problem is that by definition the Democrats don't seem to be able to hold a hard party line because our base isn't big enough that we can afford to do that. I'd say that our problems as a party come from two places: an ideological model in need of a few updates and an inability to set priorities.

 

I vote Democratic because I am a Keynesian, I am the son of a union man, and I believe in keeping personal matters such as sexuality, abortion, etc. strictly in the private sphere. I disagree with them on gun control and (at times) on the death penalty, but that's maybe 5-10% of what matters to me while the other reasons I named above constitute 90-95% of what matters to me.

 

The problem is that groups of Democrats subject their potential officials to a litmus test as strict as Republicans, only with no means of enforcing it. When a Democrat disagrees with (or holds too strictly to) old-style party-line liberalism, he may still make it to the general election, but not before a really ugly and divisive primary that may in fact cost him the general election in the end. When a Republican candidate steps out of line... Well, let me put it this way: How many can you think of who have?

 

Essentially, we're now down to two separate choices: run the Democratic Party with the same stridence as the Republican Party, even when our ideology deviates from common sense, or be willing to accept ideological diversity from candidates on the smaller issues as long as they stand with us on the big ones. Quite frankly, I'd much prefer the latter approach, as it makes for a far more resilient party and a more prosperous American people.

 

For those of you who wonder why I'm not Green/Progressive/Working Families/Independent/Libertarian/etc, it's because those movements don't necessarily tend to get much accomplished. To take and hold any real governing power at the national level under the American system a political party or movement needs:

1) a clear and coherent program for the nation akin to the presidential platforms of old

2) a simple, galvanizing message that stays true to the platform and brings people in

3) a general understanding among most of the populace that the movement exists and has #1.

4) an infrastructure capable of carrying out a campaign (especially TV ads) on a truly national scale for a nonestablishment campaign.

 

Essentially, #s 3 and 4 is the most difficult to obtain, and also where all of the movements I listed above run into trouble. First off, Independent isn't even a movement; it's merely a nice name for a wild card voter. Second, pretty much all of the other movements I listed are relatively small and neither ready nor able to mount effective national campaigns. The biggest impact in recent years I'd say any of them had was Nader in 2000, and we all know how that turned out. The Democrats have #3, #4, parts of #1, and a #2 for every presidential election . Not the best of combinations, but certainly the easiest to retool and put to work for the country...

[SubwayGuy]

FYI, ranting doesn't get anything changed.

 

Ranting can at least change other people's opinions. But if you want to talk fruitless endeavors, "being a one sentence wise guy who contributes nothing of value to the thread" is at the top of the list.

[SubwayGuy]

Point. Like I said above, if he thinks he knows how to fix the country so well, then he should run.

 

I've already stated a very important reason I am not allowed to run.

 

So will you still hate me if I worked hard to get to get rich and pay my fare share of taxes and while a lazy good for nothing is getting public assistant and welfare?

 

If you're still paying "your fair share of taxes", you're not that rich. If you sit around all day doing little while your private equity firms make you money at the capital gains tax rate, meaning you pay less in taxes than your secretary...then you're rich. And yes I would hate you for that. I would also hate the lazy good for nothing getting public assistance if they were doing nothing to ween themselves off public assistance. My policy would reflect both, and reward the efforts of the person paying their fair share of WAGES EARNED who works and is productive.

 

Ok there are rich people that are greedy and control politicians and some who were born with a silver-spoon and do nothing yet they get promoted because its there daddy's rich company but some do contribute to this country and worked hard to get to where they are today and so not fair to blame the all, is just that the system of Government needs to change by closing the loophole and changing the tax system so that everyone pays differently not equally.

 

The tax structure I've proposed allows the rich to still make the most of any social class. Their take home pay is just brought down from the exponential increments of worker salary it currently is at, and incentives would exist for companies to pay their top executives less. But again I'll reiterate the tax structure I've proposed still allows the rich to make the most of any social class. No one's getting "punished" here - except those deemed guilty by a commission I'd charter to study the financial crisis, who profited of it, and who directly caused it.

 

If memory serves, all that's stopping him is his age.

 

Right you are.

 

Hey SubwayGuy question. If you were old enough would you actually run for president?

 

I would consider something of the sort if I could generate the support needed to launch a campaign. So that means I'd have to evaluate how feasible it is financially...but ideologically it's far from out of the question.

[MTARegional Bus]

.

 

 

 

If you're still paying "your fair share of taxes", you're not that rich.

 

Wow, Whats your definition of rich SubwayGuy?

[Tokkemon]

But if you want to talk fruitless endeavors, "being a one sentence wise guy who contributes nothing of value to the thread" is at the top of the list.

 

You're most certainly right.

 

*irony in one sentence*

[SubwayGuy]

Wow, Whats your definition of rich SubwayGuy?

 

Income of over $500,000 per year OR total wealth "possessions" of over 10 million dollars (notice I did not use the odious phrase "net worth" because ALL AMERICAN CITIZENS ARE EQUAL).

 

Those are the people that my suggested policies target, many of whom use loopholes under the present system to not pay their fair share (which with the JFK -> Bush 2 tax cuts isn't that much at all!). The goal is not to additionally tax the "upper middle class".

 

You're most certainly right.

 

*irony in one sentence*

 

I guess your posts in this thread have given us a glimpse into the irrelevance you plan to contribute to it. Fine, carry on...it doesn't faze me.