Well this moron would fail the test because we are a mixed economy not a pure capitalist economy. The U.S. is considered a mixed economy. Some examples of this include: A central United States bank. Many cities provide public transit as competition against private options, an indirect form of price control. The United States Postal Service is a public mail service that exists alongside private options such as FedEx or UPS. Most road networks are government built and maintained, although private citizens and companies are allowed to "sponsor" a highway or road to ease some of the financial strain. Public and private schools are available for children. Waste collection and treatment are usually provided as a service by the local government, though most local governments pay private companies to perform the service. State and local governments provide guaranteed police and firefighting support, though private security forces are available. Intercity passenger rail (Amtrak) is a nationalized industry, as are many local trains. American airports are government operated but all American airlines are private. The FDA must test and approve a drug or chemical before it is allowed to be sold on the market. State and Federal governments have minimum wage laws, though several occupations are exempt from the rules, such as wait-staff, who make up most of their income from tips. The government provides a social safety net through methods such as Social Security and unemployment benefits. All Americans over the age of 65 are eligible for Medicare, a public health insurance option. Most agriculture has been subsidized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy#Modern_U.S._economy
Yep... A lot of the modern conservative movement seem to have fallen in love with a country and a constitution that doesn't exist.
Beat me to it. An absolutely horrible idea that would bankrupt our country way, way faster than any kind of health care reform bill. Here in California, a Cal prof is desperately trying to end it, but it looks like there won't be enough signatures to get it on the ballot, and even the DEMOCRATIC governor nominee is trying to quash the measure by biasing the wording of the act.
You need to watch a little less "Beverly Hillbillies ", the days of a stray "shot" revealing millions of barrels of oil are gone in Texas. Yes, there is still a lot of oil still left in Texas, but its so far deep underground that it's not anywhere near practical to get to it. The world almost have to run short on oil before we start looking at the rest of the oil in Texas. http://www.texascenter.org/almanac/Energy/ENERGYCH7P2.HTML ["More than a quarter of all the known oil deposits in the U.S. are in Texas.(24) Yet, less than a third of the 190 billion barrels of oil beneath Texas have been produced. Some 129 billion barrels of oil remain, but much of that oils lies deep beneath the surface, making production difficult and expensive.(25)"]
Even if that were the ultimate goal of some of the legislators and/or the President, it won't happen. The support for it is not there in great enough numbers to prevent a filibuster. Not only that, but the insurance companies would spend their last dime to protect their existence.
This is so silly. Newt Gingrich is now writing up stuff for the Tea Party? Geez, this stuff is like a page from the Republican convention held the other week. Is the Tea Party getting their talking points from Newt or just plagiarizing him? Maybe all of this is good. All the looney Republicans can be in the Tea Party, and the Republican party can morph into a moderate party. Then we can have a 3 party system. So tired of the two ya know? At least with 3 it will require a 2/3 of the parties to control an issue, instead of the 50-50% thing we have today.
If this "document" was meant to counter the perception that the Tea Parties are a bunch of raging idiots who don't remotely understand what they aren't even whining about, it failed miserably.
I 100% agree it was only a goal of some of the legislators--however, they just happen to have included the President, the leader of the House and the leader of the Senate--with supermajorities in both houses. The filibuster was only possible because the TEA Party movement helped put Scott Brown in office. People can make all the excuses they want as to the involvement of the TEA Party, but at the end of the day, no one can deny that Scott was elected to specifically enable the filibuster option. Once this message from the people was sent to Obama, he still choose to not listen to them and instead just settled for a watered down bill. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/health/policy/25memo.html?scp=4&sq=public option &st=cse ["A Grand Achievement, or a Lost Opportunity? WASHINGTON — When the last swords in the great health care clash finally clatter to the ground, and Congressional Democrats head home to savor their victory, a question that may still nag at them — and the party’s liberal base — is whether they missed a last, best chance to create the government-run insurance plan known as the public option."] So, can we at least all agree that, if it were not for the TEA Party movement (along with the election upsets), the Dem's in Congress would certainly have been coerced by their leadership to pass a Government run healthcare plan? All you would have to do is look at the timeline of all the events in the past year confirm this. http://timelines.com/topics/health-care-reform
If this document is not to your taste, I recommend a slightly more detailed document referred to as The Constitution of the United States of America :grin:
I mean, good lord, you people don't own the Constitution. And your positions are not more in line with it than the Democrats'. Nor are the founders, the flag, Jesus or God on your side. It is a lazy, dishonest, disgusting tactic to suggest that if people believe what you believe they're with country and God and if they don't they aren't. In fact, to suggest that is against both the principles this country was founded upon and all tenets of Christianity. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Another stupid thing from this contract. They want to change tax policy voting requirement to 2/3? That isn't laid out in the constitution. The constitution spells out specific times when the 2/3 vote is needed, and that isn't one of them. Of course their document also says to govern based on the constitution. The thing is very amateurish and as I said based in part on ignorance of the issues. It's hard to take the group seriously when they don't even know that the government doesn't run health care, and their own contract contradicts itself.
It's also why the Tea Party has put out a list of candidates that it supports (pretty much all Republicans) and candidates it wants to target for removing from office (pretty much all Deomocrats). http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/15/tea.party/index.html?hpt=T2
The poster I quoted did not provide a productive response to the discussion, therefore, I repied with an attempt at a little dry humor. Notice the wink smilely , it was not meant to be taken seriously. ["Holy Kleenex Batman, it was right under our nose's and we blew it !!!!!!!"-Robin]
Especially since there are only two Tea Party threads on the front page of the D&D. Gotcha, the Tea Party is a nonpartisan organization that only requires its candidates follow a few simple rules, far simpler than the eight required to date Kelly Cuoco. I agree with individual liberty, limited government, and economic freedom, lets see if they do... Moral liberties: Tend to be far more legislated by conservatives. From gay marriage to abortion, our laws discriminate on moral grounds far more than they should, and this discrimination is rife within the conservative movement, the GOP, and the Tea Party. Political liberties: Haven't been reduced at all as far as I can tell. The biggest difference I see today as opposed to years past is the fact that the media now appears to be allowed to simply lie, distort, and spin when talking about politics rather than telling the truth. This is one of the reasons that I created the Facebook group called "Stop watching Fox, CNN, and MSNBC!" Economic choices: The only "economic choice" that has been legislated recently has been the mandate to buy health insurance, which is a common sense move designed to assure that people are not able to simply mooch off of the system because they are young and healthy and believe they won't get sick. These are the freeloaders in our health care system and it is about time they were forced to stop mooching off of my tax and premium dollars. This disjointed nonsense is extremely disingenuous. The government is to exercise the powers enumerated in the Constitution, not some fictitious list "relinquished to it by the people." Defense is probably the single most important function of government, but just behind it is justice, a concept which takes many forms. Some of the marketplace interventions you decry have had the effect of extending justice to people who have not enjoyed it previously. Here are some examples... It is a just outcome that nearly 30 million people who previously did not have health insurance will have some coverage now that HCR passed. It is a just outcome that companies are not allowed to collude with each other in order to fix prices at levels that guarantee them high profit margins. It is a just outcome that people are not forced to work 80+ hours per week without overtime. It is a just outcome that children are banned from working, with a few exceptions. All of these things are government interventions into the marketplace and I would argue that all of these outcomes were not only desirable, but necessary for us to have the America that we all love and support. Justice is an important part of what the government is supposed to provide and I will be returning to this theme throughout this rebuttal. Here is the first place that I will return to the "justice" theme. The "free market" is a powerful system that gives consumers many choices, generally guarantees the lowest prices, and maximizes the welfare received by the consumers. Unfortunately, the term "free market" uses a lot of underlying assumptions that cannot be guaranteed if the market is simply left to its own devices. For example, the term "free market" assumes that the people involved are honest, engage in open competition, all have access to the same information, and all act rationally. The term also assumes that the businesses follow the law scrupulously, refrain from unfair business practices, and act with the best interest of their customers and other stakeholders. All of these assumptions are clearly laid out in many of the classes in business schools, which teach the students the various ways to distort the market and maximize profit to the exclusion of all other concerns. Business classes actually teach the students how to assure that the "free market" does not exist, with terms, prices, and actions determined by the dominant players in the market rather than an ACTUAL "free market." As a result, government has to intervene to ensure that there is justice in the market in addition to as much freedom as can be allowed. Meh. Article 1, section 8, clause 1 pretty much covers anything... "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;" I'm pretty ambivalent about C&T, but IMO the best reason for it is to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy, not climate change. I agree with half of this, the balanced budget. I want the federal government to balance the budget and would only support an exception in wartime and only for wars expressly declared by Congress, as specified in the Constitution. The Constitution, which is supposed to be the preeminent document guiding the Tea Party, lays down the specific instances in which a supermajority is required. A 2/3 requirement for tax hikes would give the federal government the same problem that California has and would make a balanced budget amendment virtually impossible. So, this point has two opposing goals that would appear to be mutually exclusive. I don't know about the length requirement, that seems silly as legislation should be comprehensive enough to describe all of the situations envisioned by the writers of said legislation. However, I am on board with scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with a transparent consumption tax with reasonable protections to reduce the regressive nature of sales taxes. Article 1, section 8, clause 1 Task force obviated. There is an easier way to do this with a consumption tax. Set the tax rate every year high enough to cover all of the previous year's spending plus 5%. Spending can grow as much as it needs to, but is directly and transparently reflected in the tax rate that people pay, giving them incentive to vote out people who increase spending and in so doing, the tax rate. The 5% would go towards paying down the principal on the debt until the debt is completely paid off. Then, the 5% would be used as a tax holiday at back to school time just like we have in Texas every year. Do you really want to kill Medicare and Medicaid? These are the only "government-run Health Care" systems in this country. You are welcome to talk about the "slippery slope" all you like, but the fact is that nothing in the recently passed HCR bill even remotely approaches government run health care. You are welcome to crow all you like about how Obama wants single payer, what I would like to see you do is show me any documentation that shows that single payer is a less efficient insurance system for health care. If you are going to decry the current plan based on the "slippery slope," you need to prove that the bottom of said slope is less preferable to the status quo. I'm pretty sure this is what Obama has been doing or didn't you hear about the offshore drilling policy modification? I tend to agree with the sentiment, but do you realize you are talking about somewhere around 1-2% of the federal budget? The only tax hikes that aren't being repealed next year are the ones on the top 5%. I would argue that since they have gotten the bulk of the tax cut benefits over the last three decades, they are the appropriate people to bear the necessary tax increases given that we have a progressive income tax. I will thank you in advance for taking the time to answer my post point by point since I took the time to answer yours.
I agree with a lot you what you said, but on some points I don't. Nevertheless, thanks for providing a very good post. I will respond to you in more detail this weekend.
This kind of stuff always makes me chuckle. Anger about what you think someone else is thinking? Really? Come on, now. The first bill introduced was not a single-player system. The current bill is even further from it. Healthcare is not "government-run" whatsoever. If you think it is, you are living in a total fantasy world. This is the reality. Argue about reality, not something you think someone else is thinking. Even if Obama/Democrats would prefer single-player, so what? Until they introduce legislation as such, why do you care what they prefer? Perhaps you think bananas are disgusting. I like bananas. Unless I force you to eat a banana, why do you care whether I like bananas or not? It's such a ridiculous argument that it's tough to argue against. That's why it's funny.
