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Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
No, it wouldn't need to be scrapped at all. Everyone wants to talk about things in such an apocalyptic way and always have. We've always been in debt. Is it monstorous right now? Yes. Can it be fixed? Absolutely.
You have to be smart by restructuring the way Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are given out. You have to restructure the entire tax system. You have to restructure our entire trade policies. You have to revisit the middle class wage system. Reform Wall Street and the banking systems, not to mention the oil, coal and gas industries, concentrating (investing in) on more economical ways to power our nation. And most importantly, you have to reform the pharmaceutical and medical industries that have been gouging our social programs and are THE SOLE REASON that medicade and medicare are in toruble. Not the people who are receiving it.
This has nothing to do with our government, it has to do with the fact that every industry I mentioned above has Washington politicians in their back pockets and are funneling BILLIONS of dollars to sway and out right by policies. That's what's broken, that's what needs to change.
It doesn't matter if Ron Paul initiated every warped idea he has, nothing would change, no, things would be much worse, because he would not do a single thing to change the problem, he would make it worse.
I've been saying forever, if you took the money out of politics it would CHANGE EVERYTHING. It would effect everything.
If you agree you can make your voice heard here:
And civil rights are not unconstitutional but it's going to have to be revisited, though. I agree there. But we both know there are places here in the south who would absolutely have segregation policies if allowed.
I agree with everything you said from 'GetMoneyOut' up.
As for segregation policies, you're exactly right, and that's the problem. Nothing has changed.
Forcing a society to accept racial equality, yet in the same breath in 2011 saying how "places in the South would have segregation", shows that NOTHING has progressed in terms of equality, other than whites breeding resentment. Not a safe place to be, and seeing the others as privledged and entitled, simply because of their color. Kinda like blacks saw whites many years ago, and still do.
And I don't think segregation would just be popular in the South. The last school bus district to de-segregate was in BOSTON in the early 70s. Not in the South in the 50s.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
How are you going to stop politicians from being greedy? Just like junkies will always get dope, government will always be corrupted. The only way to limit their depravacy is to make it small.
Here's a better way to explain your analogy: Crack, like a political bribe, is illegal. But imagine being able to donate crack to a crackhead, in exchange for that crackhead not to break into your house, but break into your rival neighbor's house and it be legal. Just like a campaign contribution. It's not illegal because it's a donation. Eliminate the donation, and it's just a drug deal, like a poilitical contribution is just a bribe. Things would get better, and there would be more arrests for buying our elections and public officials.
Small government is a pipe dream. You need an EPA and FDA, you need a military, you need law enforcement, you need social safety nets, you need government oversight over Wall Street, etc. All of this takes government. Of course big business wants small government (with no real power or oversight) and privatized military, law enforcement, prisons and social safety nets; they'd control everything. Ron Paul believes in the people who have the money should make the rules. Like socilism, libertarianism sounds good on paper. Taking a closer look at the facts and the drawbacks... Not so much.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
polluxlm wrote:In the old days you could just hand them a bundle of cash. Political corruption has been under intesified scrutiny for decades and it's hard to belive the stuff they got away with just 20 years ago. Still with all these resources and focus the corporate hold on government has only increased. To the point where not only do they do as they want put they even have government, ie. you and me, fronting the whole party.
If you ban contributions corporate goons will just start funding their own campaigns. Then you have to ban political ads. But they own the media so they can still control the debates. Then you have to get into all sorts of tyranny to resolve a bundle of new issues. As we're talking about drugs, prohibition and throwing money at the problem has gotten us nowhere.
Even if it should work you'd have to get it passed in the house. And you, a top 1 percentile political activist, won't even consider giving the vote to the ONE guy that could maybe, just maybe get such a thing through. So if you won't do it, who will?
You need defense. You don't need 200 military bases and a major war every generation. You don't need 700 billion to pay for a bunch of grunts in Germany and Iceland holding their dicks.
You don't need a million people in jail for substance possession.
The last 90 years have had government supervision of Wall Street through the FED, which have lead to 20 small and 4 major depression and recessions. Sure you want to give them even more power?
Small government is what made America great. Big government is what has for the last 100 years turned the country and the west as a whole into a national security state in a state of almost continous war and in bottomless debt. Totally at the mercy of elitist bankers and financiers.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
Everything you mentioned can be fixed without dismantling the government or changing everything as we know it. And the reason government got big is because our country was bordering on complete collapse from the good old days of small government. If it weren't for FDR's new deal, increasing government responsibility, taking care of the poor, building the middle class, even WW2, America would be a completely different place. We not only strived we became stronger and more affluent since FDR. Our biggest problem is that big business and a lot of conservatives WANT to go back to pre FDR America where we nearly and literally almost lost everything. Back when the barons and a few welathy families controlled everything and ran monopolies and along with a "self regulated" Wall Street, ran the country into the ground and into a historic and catastrophic depression. Remember, there is a real reason government got big. It can be made better.
I think politicians are a lot more vulnerable than what you might think. Because they know it. The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street can change things, and in some cases, already have.
Creating more transparency would go A LONG way without being tyranical.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
polluxlm wrote:You're confusing 2 incidents. One was the panic of late 1890s which the bankers engineered because they were losing business to the independent branches and they needed government to protect their monopoly. And don't tell me it's a conspiracy theory, they bragged about it in their memoirs.
The FED bill got voted in on Christmas day 1913 with over half the house absent. Now they controlled the whole economy and that's when the real crisis began and FDR could start usher in banker friendly legislation previously unheard of. Effectively he began the transformation from a free capitalist republic to a socialist tyranny with an elected Emperor. Everybody knows the FED held the keys to that depression, but they claim "ignorance". Well the same thing is happening again so either we got the most ignorant mofo's in charge of monetary policy or they're fucking crooks. I choose to believe Rockefeller when he proudly admits to being a gangster.
You don't need a central bank, you need to put guys like JP Morgan and Hank Paulson in prison for manipulating the market. People were ignorant to these matters a 100 years ago, now is a chance to make sound decisions on our own. Not trust another bloated bearucratic entity to tell us how to tie our shoes, which the elite will just bribe anyways.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
I'm not confusing anything. All the bills that were created after the crash republicans - funded by their corporate backers - have been chipping away the regulations set in place back then. It's one of the big problems now. One of the big repeals happened under Clinton near the end of his term. It doesn't take a math genius to put two and two together what happened afterwards...
Along with how things were better AFTER FDR. What he started. You can't argue with results. And the last I looked, FDR didn't create any tyrannical dictaorship, that's crazy libertarian talk. He did, however, tell the few families that really RULED this country, their days were over. If taking the power out of the hands of the top 1% who fix everything to benefit them at everyone elses expense, and not allowing them to write the rules is a tyrannical dicatorship.... I dig it 
And you're mistaking that I'm saying Government needs to be huge and intrusive, when I certainly don't think that. I've said goverment needs to be trimmed but do ti smart and keep big business greedy fingers out of it.
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Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
Government and big business will always be in bed together. Whatever power the government has will attract the power-hungry, so making it bigger to limit the influence of society's 'evil' doers is only going to give them more incentive to pervert the system. And you'll never be able to incentivize the less-powerful everymen to be vigilant enough to keep regulation out of the hands of powerful firms.
Small government is the only answer, and abolishing the Fed would be a great first step. The Gold Standard, or the Friedman rule, would be better alternatives.
Law enforcement and social safety nets have more-or-less always existed (social safety nets used to be more of a Church function). What's new is the world's highest incarceration rate and bankrupt entitlements that you can't opt out of.
Tell me, or most people my age, that they could opt out of Social Security and/or Medicare, and we'd be out tomorrow. They're WORSE than pyramid schemes - which at least I can say no to. Persistent war and persistent debt are the means to which the many fall under the control of the few, which I think is a bad thing.
Government, religion, business - they're all kind of the same to me. You can't use one to improve the others.
EDIT: To anyone who says Ron Paul is "crazy" - compare his OLD statements and predictions with reality, and those of other politicians. I assert that no one running for President in my lifetime has a better rate of prediction. He was against the change made to Glass-Steagall that you seem upset about, I don't really think it was a very big factor compared to Fannie, Freddie, and the Fed.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
You know, I've heard people say that churches should be an alternative to government run social safety nets so to justify abolishing them, because any sane, rational person knows we need them. The problem is that not only can a church dictate who gets what, or if you get anything at all, charities still need government assistance to function on such a wide, national basis. There is no guarantee, whatsoever, that people would donate enough money on a consistant basis for this to work in any meaningful way.
No one should be able to opt out of SS or medicare, and if you do, forty years later you're not in the shape you thought you would be in and not only are you screwed, but you'll be asking/demanding a government hand out, instead of collecting the money that YOU invested into the system. Allowing people to opt out would end SS and Medicare (though, I think that's the plan, right?) and it would lead to catastrophic poverty. Imagine an epidemic of impoverished, uninsured senior citizens in our future, which is exactly what will happen. What would happen with them? Let them die? Churches and charities wouldn't be able to handle that. But I'm sure the Perry crowds would be okay with it. Let them die.
These systems could easily be tweaked to be financially sound, but there's too many people using the system to push their agendas. Like the economy; why would you want it fixed when, A - It helps your financial interest. B - You can continue to beat your small goverment drum that your false political ideals work. I guess some people would rather throw the baby out with the bathwater, it seems... But not the majority.
Small goverment folks ideology comes down to a simple fact that they don't want to pay their taxes. Speak out against unessasry taxes, but that pyramid bullshit is just that. BULLSHIT.
Small goverment is a fantasy. You had your shot once, and to quote Bobby DeNiro, YOU BLEW IT. And Ron Paul should take all his money, build a time machine and go back to the beginning of the 1900's, where the wealthy ran everything, there was no pesky middle class (because it didn't exist), or civil rights bills, no unions, you could pay, fire, hire employees exactly the way you wanted to the point where they would be forced to spend their paycheck at YOUR company stores, in effect giving you back your money you paid them to do YOUR work; no regulation, no oversight, no EPA, FDA, SEC and he'd be in Ron Paul heaven for a few years until the bottom fell out.
And guess what? There were a lot of people who were saying (predicting) what was about to happen during the Bush administration. It didn't take a genius to notice that when you increase spending, lower taxes, start a war without a war tax, but on borrowed Chinese money, at the same time as you raid SS and Medicare funds, not to mention the shit the banks and wall street were pulling because of lax regulations and oversight you chipped away at, to see that things weren't going to end up very nicely.
Re: Hank Williams Jr. Compares Obama to Hitler
I know tons of people who would be dead today without their Medicare and/or Social Security.
It blows me away the brainwashing Republicans have done to the middle class and poor, who literally go out there and carry their torch under the guise of "over taxation" (Tea Party), yet none of them are really taxed all that much.
If this country tanks because poor people believe rich men that they would take care of them if they just cut their corporate tax... frankly, i'm glad. What fuckin' country do we live in? If you're that damn dumb to believe a rich man will save you... you deserve to fall.
As for Ron Paul, it's a sad double-edged sword. I love the guy's honesty, and frankly he tells it like it is almost always. But as much as I love his feelings on isolationism, protecting borders, legalizing drugs -- love it -- at the same time, he wants to completely de-regulate government and almost all businesses.
As good as the first few things I said sounded, anybody who knows history knows that the early 1900s in America, business NEVER had MORE of a stranglehold on the country and it's politics. John Rockefeller and Standard Oil were practically a shadow president and government. Practically everyone up there were marks for him. The train industry was another one basically running the country.
The seperation between rich and poor was also more vast. The people who were rich, were filthy rich, those who were poor... didn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.
I think we need a balance between Paul's politics, and a pro-government politicians politics.
