Nice thread. Couldn’t resist posting here, though I am not a US citizen. I have been living in US for 10 years, love the place and have the its best interest in mind. I fail to understand the US policy on border protection. Ever since I have been in US, I have not met a single person including hard-core liberals (I worked in Cambridge, MA for years), who wouldn’t want the borders secured, stop or at least a see a concerted effort to reduce illegal immigration. Why the f is it so tough, If US can go to a country an ocean and a few seas away, occupy it, spends billions of $ in the name of national security, they can probably apply the same logic to this issue. Why can’t they fence the entire border, put a few brigades down there?. I am not making any judgments on the US immigration policy, all I am saying it if most of the people in the country want something, why can’t it be done. I am from India; believe it or not India has a huge illegal immigration problem of its own on its eastern border. Few years back, the government fenced the border, put up guard towers, and flushed the area with the Army with shoot at sight orders. This hasn’t stopped the flow completely, but has substantially reduced it. There have been some blowbacks, the policy was criticized in the UN, but the people in India are happy. In a democracy that’s all that should matter. If India can do it, surely US can as well, and I am sure they can find a more humane, but effective way to do it.
You people are way too closed-minded to be discussing politics. This is the kind of thinking that gets America in trouble in the first place. This is exactly what I do NOT want in our next president, or any leader for that matter. I know it’s hard to believe, but we aren’t always right… All I’ll say is subjectively speaking George Bush has done a terrible job. If only Presidents were like CEOs… if he was at Bear or ML he would be done.
I think Bush wanted to be the CEO president. In fact, the US is going more or less the same way as the company he CEO-ed, it’s just that there was so much upward inertia, it takes a little time to make things go completely to pot. Still, he’s gotten us most of the way there.
Ya know, even as a conservative, I have to admit that in the short-term at least, Bush will not be viewed as a terribly successful president (who knows how history will judge him? Think Truman, Lincoln in the south, etc.). And if politics were purely based on performance, I’d say the Democrats deserve a chance. HOWEVER, on the issues I care about–tort reform, tax reform, energy independence, social security and medicare reform, immigration reform, education reform, etc.–the Democrats can’t offer ANYTHING. My brother–God love him–is a hardcore Liberal Democrat, and I stated to him one time, “Brian, it’s not so much that the Republicans have the perfect solutions to the problems that face America, it’s that the Democrats have NO ideas at ALL whatsoever on pretty much ANYTHING.” He replied that he’d rather support a party with no ideas than bad ideas. So here’s where we are in America–the “liberals” have no ideas for “reform” except to tax-and-spend. The liberals–ironically–are totally content with the status quo. The Republicans have all the ideas and the media and the Left automatically hate the solutions because they come from conservatives. And even if when the Republicans have power, they can’t help but legislatve spending like Democrats. The Democrats’ solution to “fix” the economy (as if recessions aren’t part of the normal economic cycle) is, in part, to have targeted stimulus government spending per Chuck Schumer. I mean, do the Democrats really live in the 1930s? Is the government not already deficit spending like “drunken sailors”? I’ve said it a thousand times: give me a Democrat with a creative solution to ANYTHING and I’d open my mind to vote for him/her.
In a sense you are right. As a liberal, I actually want to revitalize a progressive agenda. Since the movement conservatives basically want to dismantle goverment (eliminate dept of ed, “starve the beast” etc.), in this sense, I am conservative, wanting to conserve what we have against these forces. When the current republicans refer to social security and medicare “reform,” what they really mean is elimination. So, yes, I’m conservative in that I don’t want that to occur. In fact, I want to basically expand a medicare option to every american. It is time for the government to get involved in an important sense in making sure every american has healthcare and that we embark on a manhattan project approach to developing alternative energy. My hope is that with a few monumental successes, like achieving major healthcare reform, people will see that government has a proper role and can be extremely effective and efficient, like it is with social security and medicare (I like the anecdote about the conservative republican senior citizen that went to his republican senator’s office to plead with him not to let the government take away his medicare). One intellectual argument I have with you is that I don’t really see that the republicans are really so full of ideas. They pretty much adhere to the same mantra over and over–which is cut taxes cut taxes cut taxes. Fine. Yes, I disagree with that on its merits and it doesn’t strike me as particularly creative. Finally, I must object to liberal democrats being labled as irresponsible tax and spenders. Record deficits are what happened under reagan, fixed to surplus under clinton, returned to record deficits under bushII. Discretionary govt spending increased more than in history under bush, which a republican congress. In all honesty, you can’t claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility as a modern republican. Democrats are the ones that insist on paying for tax cuts. Recall the recent debate on AMT?
cfastudent, here is the common denominator–Democrat congress in the 1980s, Republican congress in the 1990s. Now, the Republicans have lost their moral high ground (but CONSERVATIVES have not. The Republican party less and less represents conservatives each and every year–wouldn’t be surprised to see a legitimate 3rd party in 20 years as the GOP is going the way of the Whigs). I’d also argue that the Right has far FAR more ideas than just cut taxes. Let me give you a few. 1) Eliminate taxes on over time hours worked. 2) Simplify the tax code via legislation (one school of thought) or a total tax overhaul through a flat tax (2nd school of thought) or a sales tax (3rd school of thougt). 3) Partially privatize Social Security and Medicare as the government liabilities are oppressive and dangerous in the long-term and the 6-7% FICA taxes are a regressive tax on everyone. 4) Work to reduce healthcare costs by caping punitive damages in medical cases. Doctors spend an exorbidant amount of money on liability protection. 5) Secure the borders, create a national ID card, and implement a guest worker program for our southern neighbors. Oh yeah, and DEPORT illegals who commit–at the very least–serious crimes (felonies and serious misdemeanors). 6) Create school voucher systems for children in school systems that have continuously failed their children, such as the school system in Washington, DC that spends more per capita than any school system in America and yet has one of the worst systems in the Western world. The problem is, Democrats have no solutions for the 10,000 page tax code that only a PhD can understand. They’ve got no ideas to help the students in the nation’s most failed school systems. They’ve got no solutions to the clear immigration problem or to the outrageous tort system in the United States. Give me SOLUTIONS, NOT rhetoric. That’s what I am so sick of from the Democrats–give me a SOLUTION!
Yes, it’s the tax-and-spend democrats vs. the borrow-and-spend republicans. I do wish the democrats had more ideas that don’t sound like dusted-off New Deal programs. The New Deal was very important, but it was suited to a different time, a different productive technology and way of organizing work and workers. I also agree that there is a point where one can’t just have government provide everything, and that one’s philosophy of government should at least have some recognizable criteria for where to stop. I just find that I can’t buy the republican mantra that tax-cuts and traditional marriage are the solutions to any problem from Iraq, to leaving children behind, to the environment. I don’t see very many vital ideas there, other than the “every man/woman/child for themselves” law of the jungle.
chad, but the difference here is that the conservatives DON’T support borrow-and-spend. I wish you knew our culture, but I know that all of my conservative friends are sick at the Republicans. Remember, there’s a fundamental difference between a Republican (McCain) and a CONSERVATIVE (Gingrich–hell, Ron Paul to a certain extent).
That’s why I referred to “movement conservatives” that have taken over the republican party. We’re talking about Grover Norquist and his ilk. They want massive deficits that effectively put the government out of business and they have way too much power in the republican party for reasonable people to ‘negotiate’ with. This is why I am strong opposed to Obama’s candidacy in favor of Hillary or Edwards. But, I digress. I strongly object to your blaming democrats for deficits in the 1980s (reagan proposed the deficit budgets!–and raised taxes!!) and in the 1990s, when clinton raised taxes in 1993 which resulted in a balanced budget, not one single republican voted for the bill–gore had to come and break the tie in the senate. republicans like bob dole said the tax bill would lead to a depression, not just a recession! And, we know how bad the economy of the 1990s turned out to be. (in fact, clinton’s focus on fiscal health ushered in a decade of historically low interest rates). You seem reasonable, but you say that they have more ideas than just tax cuts and then promptly describe two big tax cuts! I have never heard of the proposal to eliminate taxes on overtime pay–maybe some merit there as most wage earners are not the wealthy, so philosophically I would not reject that outright. But some of what you lay out is very narrow and specific, others are broader conceptual things. I think I could lay out a lot of specific things too that democrats are putting forward, like more increases in the minimum wage, expaninding CHIP, increasing the EITC, etc. etc. Speaking more broadly, it’s interesting that you seem to be in favor of a fairly activist federal government. I can agree with that, but I disagree on what it should do. For education, many democrats (myself included) would like to get rid of no child left behind. It is arguably a failure (although I know there are statistics on both sides of this issue), especially for inner city schools, like DC. The solutions that democrats are focused on and are proposing are simply not the ones you care about. They are proposing universal health care (which theoretically could help control medicare costs by expanding the pool of those covered to include many millions of young healthy people that pay in, but don’t use), much more action on the environmental front.
kkent Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > SeanC, most of us on this forum work in an > industry where connections pay the bills. I find > it odd that you’d find it wrong or in anyway > uncooth for a man to make money via his > connections given your career in finance. Isn’t > that how a third of Ivy Leaguers get into their > respective schools? Aren’t connections–directly > or indirectly–how most of the Bulge Bracket hire > people? Aren’t connections how “imperfect” > students get internships they shouldn’t otherwise > have or how people get loans with slightly looser > credit standards? That’s just the nature of the > beast. that may be right, but do you want an idiot running the country you live in. its funny though, you never attended an ivy league school even though academically you probably should have. you are a smart guy however because your father wasnt a senator or a multibillioniare you never attended an ivy league school. dont you get upset when people who are lessor candidates then you get selected to an ivy league job? Did you ever think it was because of connections. I mean you say connections are all the world, but they certainly havent help you out, they certainly havent helped your country or political party out. however at the same time people like you and me complain about the guy who got the job because he had better connections even thought we have better grades and experience. you cant have it both ways, earlier you and many other denizens of this board were decrying the fact that networks overtake ability when careers are regarded and now your saying the exact opposite thing. i have to tell you and the people who subscribe to your view… YOU ARE NOT RATIONAL, YOU WILL PROBABLY BE SHIT PMs AND ANALYSTS. you’re too beholden to ideology, and a guy like kkenbt may automaticaly react and say im a liberal democrat because he’s not bill o’reilly and cant cut my mic and otherwise shut me up. the truth is i dont have any political affiliation. p.s im drunk as fuck so please excuse the shit writing, everything else i mean.