cwarsh

I suppose being being a libertarian I could consider myself in the "radical middle", combining ideas from the far left and far right. I really don't see how you don't have a voice though... your vote counts as much as anyone's, except people in states that have fewer electoral votes, where the votes of their citizens count more (because the two votes for the senators are distributed among fewer people). I see one problem with your posts thoug

"Saying that we have 527s because Presidential campaigns can't legitimately raise enough money is hogwash. Bush has raised 200+ million dollars. Kerry is close behind." -Think about how much they would have raised if people weren't limited to $2000! Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that people's legitimate rights to free speech should be curtailed, theres no good argument against uncapping donations, as well as ending federal matching f

You guys realize that the 527s exist because McCaine purposely buil them in as a loophole, apparently thinking that they would help the republicans more than the democrats. Now that the opposite has turned out to be true, they're all out to shut them down. The fact is that campaign finance reform that has occured so far is ridiculous, not because its to weak, but because its way to powerful. First of all, everyone has to get over the

whew those are some ugly teeth. well, at least they're voting for kerry instead of nader. This way at least we get a slightly marginally better president then before.

OK, so say only allow deductions for charitable contributions. There would have to be some kind of reform on charitable contributions of securities, because I know that thats one loophole. The way it works is you find a stock with low liquidity and buy up all the shares for sale. For example, you might find a stock selling for $1 and buy 100,000 shares, but in doing so you run up the stock price to $10, but you had an average buy price of sa

"Even though the wealthiest 10% pay 90% of the taxes, the amount collected from a sales tax (consumption, the physical not biological type) from them would be much higher because you can protect assets by sheltering them (becoming a corporate entity for example) but there is no way to protect yourself from the spending. Spending is what many call a "wellhead" tax where income tax is "backend." Much easier to create loopholes on and jump through. I have

"but why not have foreigners pay? They use our services too. The only exception is that they don't get the same rights in court (that's if the ACLU don't get that changed), but they don't have duties either like Jury duty and military draft." -Take this for an example- foreigners don't currently pay income tax. I shouldn't have said foreigners, I should have said residents. If your primary residence isn't in america you shouldn't have to pay N

IF we closed all our foreign military bases and got out of Iraq, that would probably yeild us $300B a year that we could put towards the debt. " I am all for a Constitutional amendment the does not allow the Federal Government to spend money it does not have." -I'm 99% positive that every state besides vermont has something similar. Anyway, the problem that can arise is that on bad years economically the government still has to spend as m

Yeah, an NST would be essentially the same thing as a flat tax, and in both cases you have to make some exemptions at the bottom. For example, you might have a 18% flat tax with you first $15,000 in income not taxed. OR under an NST every person would get a $2500 credit and would pay maybe 20% sales tax. A problem with an NST might be that selling to foreigners would be more difficult. Foreigners shouldnt have to pay an NST, so you would have to ha

"If you are having a picnic in teh park, I simply cannot come and stand at the edge of your beach blanket , wave a sign, and chant at you. Aren't you glad?" -People should definately have the right to protest whatever they want on public property. Its as much theirs as it is anyone elses. Its a completely different story if the picknic is in a private park... then the owner has the right to do whatever he/she wants. I'm actually pretty i

What I meant was that, for example, on the $500B that it paid out, less than $500B was paid in back however many years ago. Of course, this is the point of an interest bearing investment, but the problem is that the government is terrible at making good investments, and now the government has to pay out what it promised with the new social security payments. Where are these people going to get their money from, except the ss payments of their childre

"And allow anti-western elements to dominate, do not be so silly. " -England left America and the americans didn't start committing terrorist acts against England with their new freedom from imperial rule. "Britain has military superiority that is why. I have seen American troops fight, and they are largely undisciplined and without cunning. Without British support, America leaves itself open to ridicule by other nations. You should show m

We could end medicare if we made some reforms that would drastically cut the cost of recieving medical treatment, including changing intellectual property laws, having tort reform so that doctors, hospitals, and drug companies would be less liable if something unfortunate were to occur, and changing FDA regulations making it easier and cheaper for drug companies to get drugs authorized. I realize that the FDA does what it does in the name of safety, b

"A nation must show its military strength," -No. A tyranny must show its military strength. Don't get me wrong, I believe in maintaining a military strong enough to defend america against any threats to the life, liberty, and property of its people. By being in the middle east we are actually inciting more terrorism. We can never win the war against terrorism. Its an unwinable war. For ev

"I do not give any credence to the idea that we are somehow to blame for the terrorism we face" -not to blame in any legitamate way, but you might say instigators. Having military bases in places where the local population doesn't want them is bad for the average american- it costs them money, incites terrorism, and doesn't do anything for them. "So, in a sense, they do hate us for our freedom. That is if you take freedom to mean politica

i agree- and in order to pay back our debts, our government has to downsize. If we were to cut the federal budget from $2T to $1T and then lowered total taxes to $1.3T, we would be on the road to fiscal responsibility.

"But before The United States of America had a continuing income tax, The United States government (specifically the President) asked for handouts from Rockefeller and other rich business owners for handouts or The United States government would have to basically claim bankruptcy. Pretty horrible huh?..." -A lot of libertarians believe that thats how the US government should be run- by private donation. They believe that its unconstitutional or un

OMG... now were going to go around the globe paying aoff everyone's debt while the federal government still has $7T of it.... I don't know. My personal opinions is that if you stopped all welfare, including all types of foreign aid and corporate welfare, then you would be able to cute taxes, empowering the american people to give more to charitable organizations if they so wished. Private organizations are going to be more efficient then the

Yeah. I really don't think that there could be a lot of negative backlash form UN countries, after all America dontates more in foreign aid than any other country and donates more to private charitable organizations per capita then any other country. I just believe that the government needs to get out of the aid game except in cases where aid might be part of a peace or trade agreement and leave it to private organizations.

"Cwarsh- I think the real solution is to completley eliminate our dependence on middle eastern oil." -How? Yeah we could drill in our wildlife refuges, and I don't think that I would be especially opposed to that as long as certain measures were taken, but even then its a relateively small amount of oil. Other than that, we could ramp up renewable energy capacity.. but thats substancially more expensive than petroleum.

Amen to the original post, I especially love the part about how food relief floods the local market, putting local farmers out of business. IRT Samuel, I completely understand where you are coming from, but I don't really think that countries besides wealthy european ones would really care if we stopped giving aid. Countries that currently "receive" aid wouldn't care because its all being stolen by warlords anyway, or otherwise ruining the l

"cwarsh: The US is firstly and foremostly focused on its own national interest, as is every other nationstate. Unless there is some sort of terrible global revolution, nations are always going to put their own interests ahead of others. Protest it if you like, but far more will be gained by trying to remind the US of its imperial responsibilities than trying to tell it not to protect its imperial rights." -I completely agree that the US should be c

"Name a company that has left the USA. " -Accenture, an accounting firm based on the remnants of Arther Anderson moved to Bermuda. Ingersoll-Rand, an "American" construction equipment manufacturer also moved offshore. A company only needs their "headquarters" to be in a foreign country to get foreign company tax benefits. They still might have alternate offices and employ thousands of people in america. But the bottom line is that the

Hehe thats pretty funny. You see that we spend $200B on accountants and tax lawyers and say "we can't make taxes more simple because a lot of these people would lose their jobs, lose invested money, etc." I see that same statistic and say "Its ridiculous that we have to spend 2% of our GDP in order to pay taxes because they're too complicated for people to understand, either enact a flat tax thats simple enough for anyone to fill out on a pos

"If you can't see the political aims of people like bin Laden and the leadership in fundamentalist Islamic nations, and how democracy and freedom are a direct threat to their cultish hold on populations, then YOU are a moron. As I have said many times previous, the vast majority of "Islamic" violence is political, but Islam spends a great deal of time confusing religion, law, and politics." There i