Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (32682)	6/19/2002 8:35:00 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The services provided by government are always a political issue. Of course it could be an uncontroversial political issue, if it is status quo but major changes in the areas the government gets involved in and what it does in those areas are almost always going to be controversial political issues. Hello, Tim, it's been a long time. Someone, I forget just who, already caught me in a bit of fast typing. I was doing one-liners with LindyBill and, thus, not being precise enough. I did the same here. I tried to say that what I bemoan at the moment is the politicization of everything, including the health care issues. I meant by the phrase "the politicization of everything" the use of serious policy issues as only a means to get elected, a means in which the substance of the issue disappears. The only issue being debated is whether to vote for x or y. The principle debates in congress are not about what should be done to healthcare but how to use the issue to best position oneself and one's party for the next election, and, most importantly, how to raise money to do so. So, at the moment, the supposed issue on the table is some relief for prescription drug costs. But, of course, there is no sense in which the congress or the white house is debating the best ways to address this issue. Rather they are all debating how to use the issue as a tool of political warfare. I should hasten to add I do not mean that all members of the congress are doing such; only that our public discourse is so poisoned that the only thing we see in the media are the politicization. The only way I can see to get this ugly moment out of our politics is to radically alter campaign finances.