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October 26, 2013 at 5:33 pm #798942
elikapekaParticipantNo, I’m looking for something new. The idea that tax cuts filter down and create jobs has been thoroughly disproven over the last 30 years. I’m thinking in terms of direct investment in projects that are targeted directly at job creation and improving our communities. We have thousands of middle-aged people who have lost good jobs that will never come back and don’t have the skill sets for today’s family wage jobs. Instead of just relegating them to working at WalMart and McDonalds and getting public assistance, why not spend that money on targeted shortened education programs that would let those folks get back into the work force at a living wage (and enforce age discrimination prohibitions)? How about rebuilding our roads, bridges, power grids? Even our technology lags behind a good deal of the developed world. You can go almost anywhere in Europe and Asia and the internet is blazing fast. The deregulation experiment of the last 30 years has proven that you can’t just cut taxes and assume that business will reinvest that money and create jobs and a better community. It didn’t happen. Now we need to figure out a better way to invest in the future so that we all benefit, not just a few at the top.
October 26, 2013 at 6:07 pm #798943
wakefloodParticipantEloquently stated and seconded. Now, we just need to elect people who agree and aren’t beholden to the same interests who got us here in the first place.
October 27, 2013 at 4:44 pm #798944
elikapekaParticipantAnd there’s the problem….how do we find those people? Seems even those who start with good intentions end up corrupted by all the money in the system. And I don’t mean corrupted in the sense of secretly taking money under the table. I just mean our entire political system is now a big series of open bribes. It will be a long process, but hopefully enough of us will eventually be sick of the best politicians money can buy and change the system so that we get the best, period.
October 28, 2013 at 5:59 pm #798945
wakefloodParticipantPublic funding of elections and overhauling of the gerrymandering process. Done and done.
See how easy that was! ;-)
If only…
October 30, 2013 at 10:33 am #798946
HMC RichParticipantElikapedia, please, your blame the right wingers doesn’t hold water. The state of Washington, City of Seattle, and King County has mostly left leaning politicians. Have they solved all of the problems? Hell No. If there wasn’t a budgetary cap, Christine Gregoire would have spent the state into Oblivion. Inslee at least has some good priorities regarding education. You want infrastructure, so do I. In fact, lets stop wasting money on so many different programs that basically do the same thing and combine them. Now, as far as Europe goes, I was in France and I was in a place that was not wired well. It was nice being off the grid, exploring Medieval towns and drinking some excellent wines. Bon Jour!!
October 30, 2013 at 10:37 am #798947
HMC RichParticipantElikapedia, your post 23 is worthy of promoting. I don’t disagree with it that much. I want wasteful spending stopped. Anyway. It is going to take me a while to answer some of the earlier posts. But I should clarify. You can blame some of the right wingers for some thing. They were complicit in a few government decisions but mainly I see a political ruling class by both parties that is losing touch fast.
October 30, 2013 at 6:52 pm #798948
elikapekaParticipantRich, I didn’t mention right wingers and I don’t only blame them for the mess we’re in. The Carter administration started deregulation of industry with airline deregulation. The Clinton administration was all in on free trade and other business/deregulation/trickle down policies. Both parties have bought in and promoted the philosophy. And it didn’t work. We have such a huge concentration of wealth at the top, the greatest income inequality in our history, and the worst in the developed world. You are right about a political ruling class that doesn’t have a clue about how the hoi polloi live, doesn’t seem to know how to address societal issues, and worst of all, doesn’t seem to care very much, with a few exceptions.
There is a professor named Peter Turchin who has written some interesting things about political cycles and he says we are in for a period of upheaval peaking in 2020. Don’t have time right now to cite anything, but if you Google the name, and also cliodynamics (that’s the theory) it’s some interesting reading.
October 30, 2013 at 7:14 pm #798949
wakefloodParticipantI too realize there’s culpability on both sides of the aisle. But it’s important to not let a false equivalency go without mention.
The Dems have (mostly) had good intentions of shared growth and wealth and societal harmony as their goals. What has tended to skew them over the last few decades especially, is the need to jump into bed with the folks with the $.
No money means no electeds. No electeds means no power. No power means being helpless to stem the tide of deregulation and greed that has slammed us down like a tsunami.
It’s been a death by a thousand cuts – or more literally a thousand compromises and a few dozen outright capitulations.
Yes, occasionally the wrong idea came straight outta’ “left” field but they were few and far between compared to the coordinated and well funded onslaught from the right.
October 30, 2013 at 7:18 pm #798950
wakefloodParticipantAnd each time they cut a deal for check, a little bit of a Dem’s soul was lost to ether, usually never to return. Certainly not to its full potency.
October 31, 2013 at 4:20 am #798951
dobroParticipant“…your blame the right wingers doesn’t hold water. The state of Washington, City of Seattle, and King County has mostly left leaning politicians. Have they solved all of the problems? Hell No.”
Has any group of politicians solved ALL the problems? Of course not. More irrelevant assertions.
“You want infrastructure, so do I.”
Who doesn’t want infrastructure? The right wing pols that you don’t want to blame for anything, that’s who. The left wing guys that you think should solve all the problems are in favor of more infrastructure development. What’s stopping them? Lying turncoats who campaigned as Dems to get elected and turned out to be trojan teabaggers.
“In fact, lets stop wasting money on so many different programs that basically do the same thing and combine them.”
Great idea. To run gov’t efficiently you need people who believe in its power to work. Not people that hate gov’t and try to obstruct and gum up the works. Like the right wingers you don’t want to blame.
“Now, as far as Europe goes, I was in France and I was in a place that was not wired well. It was nice being off the grid, exploring Medieval towns and drinking some excellent wines. Bon Jour!!”
Didn’t it feel kinda good to know that if you happened to slip and fall in the dark after a few glasses of wine, you could go to a hospital and receive care courtesy of France’s gov’t run health service at no cost to you?
October 31, 2013 at 6:32 pm #798952
wakefloodParticipantJust thought I’d add this short addendum to my post above about both sides having dirty hands but that there’s still a false equivalency due to the corruption of $ in politics.
This week the House, including some Democrats, voted to remove the derivatives laws passed in 2010 to prevent another meltdown. The law was written almost entirely by Citigroup lobbyists.
Just because it’s not likely to get past the Senate is no reason to deny this crap happens now and it is because Wall St. OWNS our Congress.
You want your Republic back? Fight to get $ out of politics.
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