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 : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (18966)	5/17/2006 7:37:51 AM
From: KonKilo	Respond to of 543106

I haven't heard prominent Democrats even discussing most of these ideas, or any others. I'm no wonk either, but your ideas seem like common sense to me. I'd be happy if the Dems would just speak out forcefully on basic decency issues, such as torture, rendition, secret prisons, habeus corpus and preemptive wars. Its beyond my understanding how so many Americans, who are horrified by a presidential BJ, do not consider these other actions to be obscene.

To: thames_sider who wrote (18966)	5/19/2006 5:04:59 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 543106

How about a move for Clinton-style fiscal prudence, AKA spending less than the taxes coming in? I think calling that "Clinton style" is giving Clinton too much credit. Before the Republican congress was elected he had deficits, and deficits where projected to continue in to the future. I really think that congress was rather unique. Even though many of the people in it are still in congress, today's Republican controlled congress is a big spender. The biggest inflection point seemed to be when they got their heads handed to them over the "shut down the government" issue. I've said before that after that they seemed to lose the desire to fight for the principle of reasonably small government, and that since then they seemed to have even lost the principle itself, and in fact have in deed if not in word support the opposite of the principle. Then to be fair maybe I give the congress of the time too much credit as well. The end of the cold war reduced expenses a lot, and the beginning of the tech bubble inflated tax receipts. Also some of the rosy outlook on the budget was do to the type of manipulation of the figures that governments seem to love to do. While the budget was supposedly in surplus the debt level didn't shrink. e.g., Cut out the huge military spend on pointless future weapons which will plainly never be needed - because by the time there's any possible enemy which might merit them, they'll be as obsolete as battleships... and put half the savings, but only half, into improving conventional and increasing special forces. e.g., give up the expansionist militarist policy (i.e., invading foreign countries which present no threat to the US) e.g., reverse the tax cuts Bush imposed, but only for those above 2x median. e.g., stop wasting vast amounts illegally spying on one's own citizens e.g., DHS? Anyone feeling more secure as a result of that monstrosity? I might argue with your characterizations of some (but not all, for example DHS is a monstrosity and I haven't seen any real benefit from the reorganization that lead to it) of these things as wrong or at least exaggerated, but I'd prefer to stay on the same topic for now. That's not where the big money is. The big money is in entitlements. If you want to get real about fiscal prudence you have to tackle entitlement reform.