Promote Conservation: A Short-Term Solution

[The Toecutter]

I must disagree with you - believe it or not, we the people hold the power to turn this all around through voting. It's just as much our fault for not voting these big spenders out as it is for them doing the spending.

Our elections have questionable legitamacy.

Excerpt:
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by Diebold and ES&S.

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the US voting machine industry.

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

We have no viable third party. The democrats and republicans have both been shutting third parties out of debates since the 1990s, effectively preventing them from any exposure to the mass public. Ross Perot scared the **** out of both parties in 1992, and that is when they decided to put a stop to that. Nader has covered this so eloquently in his recent books.

Essentially, we have a choice between:

1) A party that is moderate right on economic issues, moderately authoritarian on social issues, fiscally liberal, pro war (democrats)
2) A party that is moderate right on economic issues, extremely authoritarian on social issues, extremely fiscally liberal, very pro war (republicans)

Both parties refuse to promote real methods to decrease oil use such as electric vehicles, mass transit, and high speed electric rail, and instead promote measures like ethanol from corn that won't make a dent in oil consumption. Both parties support a bloated defense budget where 25% of spending is completely unaccounted for as admitted by the DoD's own accountants, both parties support NAFTA/WTO, both parties support an unconstitutional Homeland Security Department, both parties support an unconstitutional war on drugs, both parties widely supported an unconstitutional war in Iraq, both parties support burying nuclear waste on public land, both parties support continuing the $200 billion in taxpayer dollars each year spent on corporate welfare. Both parties hold national bonds, and are profiting off of national debt interest and thus have an incentive to drive the debt up to increase their wealth.

When it comes to it, there really isn't any difference. We have a bloated windbag like Ted Kennedy and a dog like Hitlery Klinton from the Democrats who wish nothing more than to instill a nanny government, and fascists like Condoleeza Rice, John McCain, and Dick Cheney on the side of the Republicans.

If I had my way, Congress would have three or four major parties. Perhaps the greens and libertarians could replace the democrats and republicans respectively, and a few more parties could be formed and have major positions in government. But we don't live in an ideal world.

I love America and wish to see it succeed for long years, and I think it's going to take what's happening to get people to wake up and take the power back away from the huge government and chop big parts off to minimize the government, then we can run the country as the people want it. It sickens me to see how many things big government has it's hands in where it doesn't belong (can you tell yet that I'm a huge proponent for pivatization? Sticking out tongue).

You know what's interesting about governemnt?

1) Defense spending; $450 billion a year, $110 billion goes completely unaccounted for, and a large portion of the rest soaked up as corporate profit and corporate welfare
2) War on Drugs; unconstitutional, $40 billion a year
3) Homeland Security Department; unconstitutional, $50 billion a year
4) National Debt Interest; $300 billion a year
5) Corporate welfare handouts; $200 billion a year(according to Public citizen)
6) War in Iraq; unconstitutional, $80 billion a year

We could GUT the hell out of the federal budget before we touched any major social spending. Many of the items above overlap, yes, but we're looking at a minimum of $400 billion of our federal discretionary budget that could be cut.

We need a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. If I were a politician, my goal would be to pay off the national debt with any budget surplus gotten from the cuts while spending some on ramping up alternative energy, then afterwards giving a HUGE taxcut starting from the bottom up. It would go to the poor and middle class, not the rich.


My own personal politics are somewhere between a liberarian and a green, if you didn't notice by now. I'm a registered libertarian. I'm quite pleased with most of their platform, but disatissfied with their positions on the environment and unions. I'm disattisfied with the greens when it comes to spending and taxes, and especially dislike the positions many greens hold in regards to firearms(Dare I say it is unconstitutional to regulate this issue?), but also fasvorable of much of their platform.