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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (683525)	5/25/2005 10:02:06 AM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

The particular FLAVOR of tyranny is the stuff of pseudo-populists and their pals, the bond whores. The elimination of taxes on capital formation overwhelms the piss-ant deficits that the those less-than-honest people bitch bout. Such reform is the easiest to bring about, except that the pseudo-populists and bond whores HATE IT, and fight it tooth and nail...

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (683525)	5/26/2005 4:37:29 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

"There are several Constitutional Amendment avenues that would improve the situation." Perhaps... but I believe that the single most effective one would be to ban deficit spending. This would FORCE a reckoning between spending and revenue raising... and I believe that the public would successfully press for a smaller and less expensive government... and enforce that choice at every election, using the natural political powers. "Spending Limit: .-.The federal government could spend no more than 10% of the GDP. You could define it and say that Defense cannot spend more than 4% and non-defense cannot spend more than 6%" (Sounds like the bureaucrats could just manipulate GNP figures to get around restrictions... taking things off and on budget.... This sounds to be most uneffective.) "Revenue Limit: .-.Repeal Income Tax." This one could be quite effective for a short while... of course with no restrictions on spending they would just roll out MASSIVE consumption taxes (& multi-level complicated VATs like in Europe) and, soon enough, we'd be worse off then ever. ".-.Limit percentage of income subject to tax to say, 100%." Eh? ".-.Define income that is taxable. For example, exclude capital gains from taxation." Bad idea. ALL INCOME --- regardless of source --- should be taxed the same. (Who says a retiree clipping bond coupons, or a day trader, needs a tax break from the government, but a ditch digger doesn't?) See: Message 21360306 "Balanced Budget Amendment: .-.Just say the budget has to balance and hope they don't overtax us to fund profligate pork." This is the best of all the proposed solutions. Of course the politicians will TRY to keep their ability to shovel out pork --- but without the ability to totally divorce it from revenue by putting the pork on the 'national credit card', the public will soon see through that dodge, and force a reversal of spending. "Term Limits: Kick the bums out and make a new set of bums learn the ropes every term or two. Include a ban that includes REpresentative, Senate and Presidency. Residency restrictions: No person can live in, or work in the D.C. area for more than 12 years in their life. Appointment Restrictions: Limit the total number of years any one person can serve in appointed federal positions." Sounds intuitively nice (get back to the 'citizen legislators' of our founding days) but I see very little evidence that it has ever worked for long in any of the places it has been tried... nor where it has achieved much of benefit. Certainly term limits do little or nothing to stop the OVER-SPENDING of Washington... (there would even be MORE incentive to shovel out the pork faster then ever... to gain the favors of corporate clients, etc.) "We used to keep the federal government poor. Then we opened the flood gates and allowed them to tax income. Government appetite for additional tax revenues is limitless." Yep... and when they can make money up out of thin air, load down future generations with ruinous debt levels... when they DON'T EVEN NEED TO VOTE FOR TAXES to fund their spendthrift ways --- then things are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE WORSE then they have ever been before.