NEWS: Law Rape: The Right Wing Story

Vote third party, please. It doesn't matter that they won't win. It is an investment in the future - the numbers need to rise. The trend needs to go that way. Do your part to make third party numbers go up.

No idea. Apart from the EPA, the establishment of a national currency, the FBI's efforts to keep organised crime out of legitimate business... I'm sure they count. I think there might be others. You're American, you ought to know this stuff.

I don't understand that. What does "these concerns are trumped by real authority" mean, and what authority are you thinking of? I'd prefer some sort of explanation to a sequence of slogans, please.

Fine. I'll assume that's correct, purely for the sake of examining your argument. You've entirely failed to address my point, which - to spell it out - is that government can call on motives other than money. Corporations - with a few, mostly honourable exceptions - can't.

The EPA is totally in bed with corporate America - just read about their pollution credit program, and the lawsuit that several states have brought against the EPA for its usage.

The FBI has a history of abusing power, though I hesitate to lump them in with wholly bad ideas like market regulation.

Our currency used to mean something, but the Fed Reserve would rather take care of bankers' families than us regular joes.

To elaborate on my prior statement: The authority to regulate industry is an immense power, and as such, inevitably attracts corruption. For as long as our government has exercised regulatory power over industry, corruption and cronyism has ruled.

Nothing wrong with money as a motive. If the desire for profit makes a person do bad things, well, that's a problem, but that does not reflect poorly on the idea of commerce, in my opinion.

I believe the motive of government is mostly self-perpetuation. I am sure there are lots of politicians who go to Washington to do good things. I simply think the best that Washington can do for us is to let us do business and stay the heck out of the way. Obviously we are opposed on this. I believe the evidence of constant corruption and ineptitude within our federal gov't is proof that the system doesn't need tinkering or re-staffing - it needs to mostly go away. Power corrupts. Build a more powerful government, and watch the kinds of people that go for those jobs. Millionaires and their golfing partners. Fuck the fucking fuckers and their fractional reserve banking policies!!

An interesting point, and I have a side question- Why did the Bosnians get help and the Hutus didn't? Was it just hatred of Africans?

If we're supposed to help people, why do we play favorites?

It's been said in other threads that the biggest problem is that a fellow like Ron Paul just pops up every four years and expects be elected to the most prestigious office in the country. As did Nader. I can count the third party office holders I know of on one hand. (I don't mean "Working Families" and the "Right to Life" Parties, mind you, those are just for single issue voters and typically endorse candidates from the big parties anyway).

There's no real base to motivate ordinary people. Nevada and New Hampshire are two states that could probably get Libertarian Reps into the House and start proposing bills that would call for reform- or just dismantling of some apparati. If people realized that Libertarians aren't men who live on compounds, but people that actually want some goddamn change, they'd vote for them.

Same is true for greens- in other states, mind you.

Local offices, mayoralities should come first, then you can get Reps and Senators. Remember that the GOP got Lincoln into the white house and it had only been around for 8 years.

Profit as a motive is not a bad thing in and of itself. But some things are necessary (or, at a minimum) regardless of whether they make money or not, and a corporation cannot be reasonably expected to provide those things. Other things could be provided at a profit (and indeed currently are), but in so doing cut out entire sectors of the populace. Like, for example, health care.

It's true that there are private, nonprofit entities out there that help do some of this, but as they are only answerable to themselves (and perhaps those people who are funding them), I do not consider them to be reliable. (To say nothing of the fluctuating and unreliable nature of their funding, or the commonly religious motives and slanting of their services.)

For example, I work at a library. We love our volunteers and the privately operated "Friends of the Library" organization that organizes the sale of our weeded books and unused donations, as well as other fundraising activities. And yet, as important as they are to keeping us functioning as well as we have been, the majority of our funding, personnel, and other vital elements are supplied by the (county, in this case) government. There is just no way the Friends would be able to keep us going on their own, unless by some miracle every single dollar that currently goes to pay the county taxes that fund us were donated instead. And that's not going to happen.

You may not feel that a library is a vital public service. If so, fair enough. I obviously disagree, but there are plenty of other examples out there.

For that, you would have to ask past and present presidents.

This is hardly any thing new, the founding fathers knew that the different branches would grab for more power then they are entitled and that's why they set up the checks and balances. However, i doubt they would foresee that congress and the senate would give up so much of their power to the president in order to be more politically safe.

However this started almost right away with our first president George Washington when he claimed executive privilege to certain documents that all presidents since him claimed one time or another.

In a more modern since this has happened to even the highest ranking presidents. FDR ran into trouble in his second term:

Since his new programs where being struck down he tried to expand the number of Supreme Court judges too be able to put in his loyal supporters to get his bills past. It is the president who has the authority to appoint new judges as he sees fit but it's also congress that has the right to accept the appointments. So its old news that presidents try to get their supporters in but FDR did take it the extra step.

JFK isn't totally innocent as well, the main reason he won the election is by claiming there was a missile gap between Russia and America (which their wasn't and it stepped up the arms race). He also sent "advisors" to Vietnam who would run Special Forces missions and he also had the CIA help over throw the government and install the baath party. link

Next president to fall short of being completely honorable of course is LBJ with the Gulf of Tonkin where he lied to the American public about being attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin to increase the number of forces in Vietnam. He also had a legacy to use strong arm tactics and wasn't above using black mail to get support he wanted in certain bills.

Next of course is Richard Nixon who threw his paranoia of loosing decided to wire tap the democratic party's main office (even though he would have won any ways). This did lead to the distrust Americans had with their government that people are still having a hard time to get over.

Regarding Ronald Regan and the Iran-Contra incident technically the only thing illegal he did was not inform congress. Presidents now have the ability to do black ops missions and deals just as long as they inform congress x many days afterward. I don't agree with that but technically they can and i have no idea why Ronald Regan never sent a letter to congress.

In the end almost every president has tried to grab more executive power then they should specially since after FDR every president (excluding Dwight D. Eisenhower) they have followed the FDR model of being a president. This might make it easier for them to get elected by saying they have all the answers and can get every thing past but it puts more responsibility onto the president and makes them feel like they have to have more executive power. I don't agree with what Bush is doing and would agree he is one of the worst presidents but I do have a issue with the article being written like it's a vast right wing conservative conspiracy when both parties are guilty and eventually any third party will be guilty as well.

Perhaps you should do some research about how these agencies came to be owned by the corporations they were supposed to oversee.

Then your government is doing it wrong. That doesn't affect the soundness of the argument.

And you need to find a way to compare the present state of affairs with the previous, if you're going to make statements like that. Because otherwise, I tend to think that you are still relying on slogans.

You have utterly failed to read what I wrote. Either that, or you read it and didn't understand it.

Which leads me to suspect that your belief in rampant corruption in federal government is probably based on "evidence" that isn't evidence at all.

IIUC, the history of the Balkans makes people nervous.

Fuckinell.

It's one piece of trite Kindergarten Libertarian blather after another with you, isn't it.

Third party candidates and parties only serve as a spoiler (or less) under our current system, unless one of the two existing parties is crumbling. That hasn't happened here since the Republicans replaced the Whigs, who had replaced the Federalists.

Unless you want to drastically revise the constitution and state constitutions to allow for coalition gov'ts and something more parliamentary, don't bother. Both parties seem to know how to recover from even lengthy setbacks (G.O.P. comebacks like Eisenhower and Reagan, Democrats like Bill Clinton). The Republicans seem to be headed for the shitter right now, but I wouldn't write them off permanently.