Introducing tests is not the same as running the system, and tests are designed to measure, not improve.
But the feds tied funding according to the test. So if you knew about no child left behind you'd know it has damaged education. Testing does not help a child get a job or help a child get into college. In some cases it dumbs a child down because they have to study for the test.
For the record I never had to take those tests. I graduated before those tests went into effect. I went to college and graduated from college. So standardized tests as far as I'm concern measure absolutely nothing.
They did not measure my aptitude for computers. They did not measure any talents I might have. They did not measure any specializations. These tests measure how well rounded a student is and the school system wants to generate well rounded robots who aren't talented at anything.
The problem with this is once they get into the real world it's all about talent. They graduate from college/university and they get told they ought to specialize and have to be talented to make it in life. This is the exact opposite of the well rounded approach.
How do you know? As far as I'm aware it's mostly run by states/cities.
Standardized testing. It hasn't helped education and the feds implemented that.MAYBE different states have different needs? MAYBE different countries have different needs? Standardized testing assumes every country wants to produce the exact same worker drone.
If it's not really random then the security of your system is weak to brute force attack. If you use a phrase or collection of words they can try every word in the dictionary or multiple dictionaries until they reach your password. If you use a phrase they can try every phrase combination until it matches yours. If your password is very random then the security of the system depends entirely on the algorithm use.
International politics isn't like prison at all. Even if it were, the correct reaction would be to change that.
If international politics aren't like that then how would you describe it?
Prison shouldn't be like that, either.
Shouldn't is not the same as isn't. And a lot of things shouldn't be like that so whats new?
Assignment: Get all nations to sign a paper saying they a) won't use violence in conflict resolution and will b) immediately stop talking and trading with every nation that does, or which doesn't abide by this signed statement. Prison similarity rectified, next.
That's what the UN is about right? It seems like a good idea but that doesn't appear to be happening.
Alternatively, substitute "declare war"
I honestly agree that declaring a war would have been the right thing. This undeclared type war leaves the USA in a confused state. The nation would not be so concerned about warrentless wiretapping, and the removal of civil liberties if an actual war had been declared. Instead we had a President who declared war on terrorism and said the enemy could be anywhere and everywhere.
That's probably the most arrogant thing I've ever heard from an American. May I remind you that in the past 50 years, the USA has not been attacked at home by a foreign state once. You fight because you have interests elsewhere you want to protect. Stop making the world a shittier place for the rest of us.
Arguably, the world would be a better place if the USA did not unilaterally screw around with other countries. From Somalia to Venezuela. From Vietnam to Afghanistan. You don't do it out of humanitarian kindness, you do it because you have a vested interest.
We have the UN for a reason. Realise that, and stick by the treaties you've signed rather than weaselling out of them on legal technicalities.
Tell it to Obama. I'm just telling it like it is, I never made those decisions that you complain about.
We should increase military spending and decrease social program spending...
For 2011 Military+Security spending = 1.5 trillion Debt Service = 0.25 trillion Everything else = 2 trillion
It looks like we already spend WAY too much on the military.
social programs which are conclusively ineffective
Most of the social spending is in social security (prevents old people from starving) and medicare/medicaid (prevents old/poor people from dieing of treatable illness). Which of those do you propose to eliminate?
Thats because we fight their wars for them. We are the worlds mercenaries. We fight while they pay.
The feds could create jobs tomorrow if they increased the size of the military and civilian service.
Of course they couldn't since they don't have magic powers. All the jobs they create would be more than matched by job losses in the private sector, since that's who'd be taxed to pay for it.
If the world really is as dangerous as they say it is, there will be a need for these jobs.
Fortunately, it isn't. The size of the U.S. military is far larger than it needs to be to counter any possible invasion; its purpose is to be able to invade and occupy foreign countries to further the interests of the politically connected.
If we Americans are going to find a niche in the global economy, becoming the worlds mercenaries is a pretty good niche considering our skillset and talent. And that beats being without a niche at all and being deemed useless.
They've managed to keep my meat inspected, get my kids a basic education, prevent most infected/infested fruit from reaching my table, built a really outstanding interstate system in a country of huge extents, put our citizens on the moon and in orbit and gotten pictures of far away galaxies, give me clean water to drink, and even paid for treatment of my sweetheart's breast cancer -- and I still have her for that specific reason. WRT the military, I don't like what they've got it doing at the moment (though WW1 and WW2... good job!), but I am forced to admit that it's damned good at being a military force, so yeah, they get considerable credit there as well.
Nobody is protecting you. Nobody is protecting your offspring. It's you who must protect yourself and your offspring. If you look at how the world really operates, when the government has success you never know about it because it's classified. When the government fails you never know about it because it's classified. The government may have caught some Russian spies recently but thats a very unusual situation. What I'm saying is you might think your meat is inspected and maybe it is safe from viruses, but at the same time they might be radiation levels high enough to cause cancer in most of your products, there might be neurotoxins in your toothpaste, lead in your toys that you give to your child, dangerous radioactive particles in your drinking water or in the air itself, or those particles might be in beauty products such as the makeup your wife or daughter put on her face.
What I'm saying is that government doesn't, can't, won't check everything. This might be because of corruption. This might be because they just can't. Biological weapons might look like pesticides and might find their way into consumer products sold by corporations you trust that happen to be foreign owned through some backroom deal you didn't know about. Who protects you from that?
I'm not saying there aren't good people in the feds who want to protect the country from that. I'm saying that the challenge is a lot bigger than most people think it is. I'm saying that as Americans we aren't at all safe. I'm saying we are under attack from many angles and in many ways which are seen or unseen. I'm saying big corporations bribe, blackmail, and in some cases cause illness and death to control, profit and win.
In the meantime, the private sector would not insure either of us (we're oldish... 50's, and we have pre-existing conditions... she's diabetic, for instance, and has been absolutely uninsurable) and emergency room "care" is not in the least bit comparable with a normal course of treatment under a doctor and with access to the correct drugs, etc. So yeah, I'm for the feds kicking the insurance industry under the rug and starting over. They (the insurance industry) have made a complete cock-up of the opportunity they had, and so they can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I'm concerned.
Assume that the entire world is at war. Assume also that there are well trained terrorists. Assume that some terrorists have been successful and that you never heard about it because it would provoke massive panic. Assume some terrorists are cause and you never heard about it because the methods used to catch them might be exposed. Assume that you or anyone could be killed via slow poisoning over a period of decades by the tabacco company, water company, or any company that sells any product that comes into contact with your biological organism. Do you know who owns these companies? Do you know who controls them? Did you know that polonium 210 is in tabacco products? Do you know what polonium 210 is? It's something you should google, and then you should wonder why tabacco is radioactive and sold to 16 year olds but the government furiously fights the war on drugs to protect those same 16 year olds from "foreign" drugs?
Do I think the feds will get it right first thing out the door? No. Har
ok, why? Wouldn't that money be better spent invested in improving our infrastructure, investing in technology, education, and healthcare?
What threats do we actually face that require the military we're maintaining at the moment? Why do we need to be pursuing the military actions we presently are, and why do we need to be the world's police presence?
I'm intrigued by your idea that we should *increase* the military. Seems completely counter-intuitive to me. Please explain yourself.
1. War is the one thing the feds are good at. As a result we as American citizens specialize in war. It's our niche. It's the only reason the UN and the rest of the world needs our labor at all. It's the only service left that we still offer. It's the only thing we are #1 at.
2. War is the only way we will ever get out of debt. Of course we have to win these wars but the only reason we are being paid by all these different countries is to fight their wars for them. They know we are the toughest society in the world, a nation of warriors, and they pay us as mercenaries to protect them. We've agreed to protect Isreal for example and a number of other countries.
3. We do have competitors. Russia, China, and we have enemies like North Korea and Iran. We are at war with our enemies. We compete with Russia and China and if we do not win the resource war we as a country could find ourselves in a submission position in relation to them in the future. To put it simple they could very well enslave our offspring.
I used to think we do not need to be the global policeman. I intuitively thought it was a bad idea. This was until I learned how the world actually works. The world is run by nation states that operate like mafias/gangsters. They only respect might. It's only our might that keeps us from being enslaved. The real world is very much like prison.
If you walk into a prison you'll notice that there are different factions of gangsters. These gangsters run the prison and act as the "government" as the prison. When you enter you are expected to either join one of these factions, or stay out of their business. If you opt to stay out of their business then you don't have any control over what happens in your own environment. On the other hand the neo nazi's might gain control of the prison and if you are a jew that would be unacceptable right? What if you are a homosexual? What if you use drugs?
The point is rather simple, these factions exist regardless of the nation states. These factions/gangs are international and they'll hijack a nation and make it a satellite nation. We could call this a colony. War happens between these factions, gangs, or tribes, who control colonies and nation states. Nation states are used to defend the faction, gang or tribe.
So to put it simple, we have to spend a lot of money on the military to protect the American tribe from being enslaved, exterminated, dominated, by other hostile tribes. Some of these tribes hate America and American on a bloodline level, it's a blood feud and it's a situation where the American tribe must always maintain the ability to kill, dominate or exterminate their tribe. The nations don't really matter but it just so happens that American citizens are the best at fighting wars so the majority of the Western faction gives it's money to Americans to fight to protect the western way of life from invaders.
No the invaders aren't going to listen to reason. No it's not all the invaders fault either because Americans don't like to integrate anymore than the invaders. America has to open it's culture up and in some ways make compromises. And so do the other cultures, and the problem is this takes hundreds or maybe thousands of years so until that happens we have to keep building weapons.
You have to pay for cops, for firefighters, for medics, in some cases for healthcare and schools.
With the exception of "cops", I'm in agreement with you.
If the cops were on the street and actually patrolling the neighborhoods, interacting with the residents and deterring crime (instead of arriving 20 minutes late and arresting the victim for putting up a defense), I'd be all for them. However, paying for them to sit in air conditioned patrol cars, isolated from everyone, writing tickets and stepping all over people's personal choices... that's ultimately worse than wasted money -- it's like paying to have someone kick your dog.
The current military budget (fed) is also not on my "we should be paying for that" list. Very little useful is being accomplished. At the state level, the drug war is *very* expensive and should be ended forthwith; streetlights are a good example of a mostly useless cost we pay without thinking (cars have headlights, strollers can use flashlights... and a lot more of us would be able to see the stars again.) There are plenty of places we should be cutting, and we're talking significant portions of the budget.
I don't support the drug war. I do support a well trained law enforcement service. I call it a service because law enforcement is supposed to serve the community they operate in, not dominate and disrupt it. The problem communities have with law enforcement stem from officers who disrupt communities that were getting along before they came along. A lot of communities were doing just fine before they started locking everyone up on drug and gun charges. And once again when a lot of fathers are locked up a lot of children do poorly in school, and more money has to be spent on education.
So the money they waste locking up drug dealers increases the cost of educating the youth. You lock up the parents and the kids suffer. I think the laws should be redesigned but I'm not in control. This is why I support local level politics because it's the only level of politics I plan to get involved with. I don't want to bother getting involved with federal politics because I don't have a federal agenda. I don't worry about stuff outside my sphere of influence.
I do think we need a strong military. The feds SHOULD be good at fighting wars. But a lot of the other stuff they get involved with is social control programs designed to satisfy elitist or racist political agendas, or special interest groups. I don't have a political agenda so I see it as a bunch of nonsense.
The feds could create jobs tomorrow if they increased the size of the military and civilian service. If the world really is as dangerous as they say it is, there will be a need for these jobs. Also there will be a need for jobs in the private sector which support or maintain national security. Only American citizens can fill these jobs.
Finally when they focus on creating jobs they need to look up statistics on what Americans are naturally good at. Some of the jobs they create like construction worker type jobs, it's a nice gesture but it's not like everyone is going to be young and will be good at that. On top of that you have a lot of Mexican labor who can do that and probably will.
Once the economy is fixed then the feds can talk about doing other things but we give the feds a lot of credit when they aren't or dont seem to be making the situation better. They focus on control and thats fine but they aren't giving the citizens anything in return, not even security because if a citizen does not have access to jobs a citizen has no security. Federally controlled healthcare does not change that.
Education is mostly handled on a state level, and a single system that works in Rhode Island, California, and South Carolina probably can't happen.
Part of the reason we are training kids to be servants at McDonalds or to work in retail is precisely because the foreign entities that own the big corporations and in some cases own the politicians, already know who they want to hire to fill the jobs and it's not going to be "our" offspring that they hire for any of the better positions. Federal testing standards do not help our offspring get jobs. In fact these standards may in fact be helping China, Japan, Europe and other countries who have all kinds of advantages in that competition from longer school days/years, to better teachers, to more funding, to just being in a good job market so that they get the job by working for cheaper.
Americans support federally controlled education. Then their offspring can't get a job after achieving a college degree because of federally controlled education. And then of course parents blame their offspring for not getting all A's like the kids in Asia. But guess what? Those kids in Asia knew it was a global competition while you told your kid that it's okay just to do as well as you did.
Lets face it, either we are going to have to become a lot more militant about education (yes I said militant), or we are going to be toast. It's a war for jobs, for survival, that is what is at state for your offspring. No you cannot assume any job will be waiting for them. No you cannot assume they'll get into a good school or that it will help them. No you cannot assume that any amount of hard work will lead to success.
If you want your children to be successful then you have to govern in a way which leads to your children being competitive and successful. You have to build education around what American children like to do and are talented at. We are not the Chinese. We will never win the competition for cheap smart labor because we will never be the cheapest or the smartest. So until we find or create a niche it's a waste of time to even bother pouring billions into education.
I'm going to say it because nobody else will. The federal government is not serious about education. The federal government fears that if US citizens are more competitive that it will result in a trade war.
What we don't want is federally controlled healthcare.
We? Speak for yourself. I do want federally controlled healthcare. I want private sector medical insurance to be illegal, and medical care to be universal just as education is universal, only more so. I am delighted to see we've taken a few baby steps in that direction. A society that doesn't put the health and education of its citizens first is, in my opinion, wrongheaded - and I'm trying to be polite about it.
Thats because you credulously have faith in the federal authorities. Do you not realize that they don't really care about citizens in your state because they don't spend time living among them? So you get exactly the level of representation that you deserve when you put all your faith into the establishment responsible for fighting wars. The talk about death panels might be conspiracy theory but it's the same government that tested viruses on it's own military. It's the same government that gets paranoid and sees everybody and everything as a potential enemy.
Do you really want the Pentagon, DOD, and individuals like this to be in control of healthcare? Do you really believe this could be better than having your neighbor who you grew up with in control? Do you know any of these people in the Pentagon to have faith in them like this?
You can put the health and education of your citizens first by focusing on reforming your local government to put this first. You probably have no influence on the federal government which may or may not be influenced by foreigners. So you could end up with federal agendas which promote ignorance and sickness because. Not everything coming from the federal government is free from corruption because the federal government operates on the international level and other nations can easily influence politicians in DC, perhaps even more easily than you can.
Department of homeland security = wasted taxes Reduce military spending by 50% (what are we North Korea?) Eliminate services offered for free to other governments (scientific or otherwise) Kill NASA dead. Sell Alaska to Canada. Who cares about Alaska. Free from jail anyone who no longer represents a threat (detention centres are full) Any state with a budget deficit doesn't get a vote in the next presidential elections. If that doesn't help, then you can tax my internet.
We should increase military spending and decrease social program spending on social programs which are conclusively ineffective. We should expand service so that individuals who take part in social programs are required to serve in some capacity for a specific amount of time.
We probably should change NASA but not eliminate. We need to keep Alaska because it's vulnerable to Russian invasion. We should release all non-violent offenders or at least shorten their terms. We should remove all the victimless crimes so we don't have to keep filling the jails in the first place with non-violent criminals. And I agree that budget deficits are a problem but thats not the way to solve it.
And stop using the feds for social programs? We have state governments for social programs. The state reps who actually are our neighbors have a better idea of what is best for our state because they actually live in our state rather than in Washington DC like the majority of Senators and establishment types.
Healthcare is not something the feds are qualified to handle. The feds cannot even handle public education. That being said if the feds would like to fund it without any expectation of control that is something I can support as a libertarian, but then you have the problem of how much money to give to each state which causes problems in itself.
Ideally the local governments should handle the social programs if we are to have any form of socialism at all. The federal and global government should focus on winning wars and building infrastructure.
You have to pay for cops, for firefighters, for medics, in some cases for healthcare and schools.
The problems start when one state has to pay for another state. Why would people in one state want to help people who aren't even their neighbors, who don't contribute to their state at all, who don't benefit their state in any direct way?
Libertarian socialism is the answer. Tax locally. Govern locally. Fight wars federally. Build infrastructure federally. Maximize individual liberty.
Each state has the right to run itself as it deems necessary for the survival of it's citizens. If it wants to be run in a socialist manner or not is entirely up to the state and I say that as a libertarian. The point is to have minimal interference from federal entities who know nothing about the dynamics of the states they interfere with.
Healthcare should be handled and paid for by individual states for the citizens in that state. If individuals live in states which don't have universal healthcare then they should move to states that do. If the feds want to help the states which provide universal healthcare they should be allowed to. What we don't want is federally controlled healthcare.
Because a state knows whats best for it's citizens better than the feds. Tax sales and use it to pay for healthcare rather than having the feds tax people in Mass to pay for people in Ariz. Let each state spend as much or as little as they want on social programs. Let the feds focus on national security. If you don't like high taxes then move to Texas.
Corporatists believe the corporations should become the new government. They are actually collectivists. Ayn Rand their philosophical leader called her inner circle the "collective". How can you claim to be for individual liberty if you believe in corporate person hood?
I have read, at least, three biographies on Ayn Rand (in addition to many essays from the inner circle). The term "collective" was used tongue-in-cheek.
How can you claim to be for individual liberty if you believe in corporate person hood?
Eliminating corporations is OK. Eliminating incorporating (aka: organizing as a group with an explicit contract or charter) is OK. One thing we might do is to eliminate the limits on corporate liability. This would mean a stock can go to less than zero. It does not eliminate big companies or the stock market or the "impersonal" nature of a corporation. It would change a lot and is not necessarily incompatable with many - if not most - libertarian or O[o]bjectivist idealogies. It is also not incompatible with corporatism as you define it. Sure, it changes the rules, but it does not eliminate the game. Personal freedom - AKA "individual liberty", your words - means we can organize in quircky groups called a "collective" or form a company for a profitable or non-profitable venture. Your posts strongly implies you EITHER do not understand this OR disagree with this exercise of freedom. Which is it?
I never said you cannot organize in a group or that corporations should not exist. I said corporate personhood should not exist. Corporate personhood is like communism. It's a collective and it leads to corporate monarchy.
I agree with the right to assemble. I don't agree with collectivism. I believe that corporations should be treated as machines not as persons because they do not have human emotions. To call a corporation a person is like calling a tank a person.
I'm not sure that I would really classify all members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens as human... And I've observed a rather high concentration of inhuman examples at high levels of government.
Governments do whatever is in the national interest. The ethics of someone working for the government are not the same as the ethics of ordinary citizens because the expectations and responsibilities are not the same. They aren't ordinary citizens. They don't have ordinary goals. So they cannot be held to ordinary ethics.
Governments don't have ethics but they do have laws. If it's legal then it's ethical according to the government.
Interesting point, however, all governments on earth are constructed entirely of human beings.
The ethics of human beings who work for the government are very different from the ethics of human beings who don't. If you work for the government as a soldier then right and wrong is whatever leads to success/mission accomplishment.
If you're a government civilian employee then right and wrong is whatever is legal regardless of how you feel about what goes on.
So right and wrong are determined by profession as well. What is right for an individual in one profession would not be right for an individual in another profession. What is wrong for an individual in one profession would not be wrong for an individual in another profession. It's wrong for a cop to break the law, it's not wrong for a criminal to break the law. It's wrong for a politician to accept a bribe, it's not wrong for a corporate employee to accept a bribe.
Corporatists believe the corporations should become the new government. They are actually collectivists. Ayn Rand their philosophical leader called her inner circle the "collective". How can you claim to be for individual liberty if you believe in corporate person hood?
Stop allowing collectivist corporatists pose as libertarians. They don't believe in individual liberty. They believe in corporate government or in the extreme case corporate monarchy which is actually a form of feudalism.
If you don't think the government should regulate the information superhighway then perhaps you'd prefer that AT&T and the RIAA regulate it? I'd rather it be the government because we have a history of letting corporations regulate things and they never do a good job.
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Introducing tests is not the same as running the system, and tests are designed to measure, not improve.
But the feds tied funding according to the test. So if you knew about no child left behind you'd know it has damaged education. Testing does not help a child get a job or help a child get into college. In some cases it dumbs a child down because they have to study for the test.
For the record I never had to take those tests. I graduated before those tests went into effect. I went to college and graduated from college. So standardized tests as far as I'm concern measure absolutely nothing.
They did not measure my aptitude for computers. They did not measure any talents I might have. They did not measure any specializations. These tests measure how well rounded a student is and the school system wants to generate well rounded robots who aren't talented at anything.
The problem with this is once they get into the real world it's all about talent. They graduate from college/university and they get told they ought to specialize and have to be talented to make it in life. This is the exact opposite of the well rounded approach.
How do you know? As far as I'm aware it's mostly run by states/cities.
Standardized testing. It hasn't helped education and the feds implemented that.MAYBE different states have different needs? MAYBE different countries have different needs? Standardized testing assumes every country wants to produce the exact same worker drone.
If it's not really random then the security of your system is weak to brute force attack. If you use a phrase or collection of words they can try every word in the dictionary or multiple dictionaries until they reach your password. If you use a phrase they can try every phrase combination until it matches yours. If your password is very random then the security of the system depends entirely on the algorithm use.
A sentence is an incredibly weak password. And if it is strong it will be something random which you deliberately cannot remember.
International politics isn't like prison at all.
Even if it were, the correct reaction would be to change that.
If international politics aren't like that then how would you describe it?
Prison shouldn't be like that, either.
Shouldn't is not the same as isn't. And a lot of things shouldn't be like that so whats new?
Assignment: Get all nations to sign a paper saying they a) won't use violence in conflict resolution and will b) immediately stop talking and trading with every nation that does, or which doesn't abide by this signed statement. Prison similarity rectified, next.
That's what the UN is about right? It seems like a good idea but that doesn't appear to be happening.
Alternatively, substitute "declare war"
I honestly agree that declaring a war would have been the right thing. This undeclared type war leaves the USA in a confused state. The nation would not be so concerned about warrentless wiretapping, and the removal of civil liberties if an actual war had been declared. Instead we had a President who declared war on terrorism and said the enemy could be anywhere and everywhere.
That's probably the most arrogant thing I've ever heard from an American. May I remind you that in the past 50 years, the USA has not been attacked at home by a foreign state once. You fight because you have interests elsewhere you want to protect. Stop making the world a shittier place for the rest of us.
Arguably, the world would be a better place if the USA did not unilaterally screw around with other countries. From Somalia to Venezuela. From Vietnam to Afghanistan. You don't do it out of humanitarian kindness, you do it because you have a vested interest.
We have the UN for a reason. Realise that, and stick by the treaties you've signed rather than weaselling out of them on legal technicalities.
Tell it to Obama. I'm just telling it like it is, I never made those decisions that you complain about.
We should increase military spending and decrease social program spending...
For 2011
Military+Security spending = 1.5 trillion
Debt Service = 0.25 trillion
Everything else = 2 trillion
It looks like we already spend WAY too much on the military.
social programs which are conclusively ineffective
Most of the social spending is in social security (prevents old people from starving) and medicare/medicaid (prevents old/poor people from dieing of treatable illness). Which of those do you propose to eliminate?
Thats because we fight their wars for them. We are the worlds mercenaries. We fight while they pay.
The feds could create jobs tomorrow if they increased the size of the military and civilian service.
Of course they couldn't since they don't have magic powers. All the jobs they create would be more than matched by job losses in the private sector, since that's who'd be taxed to pay for it.
If the world really is as dangerous as they say it is, there will be a need for these jobs.
Fortunately, it isn't. The size of the U.S. military is far larger than it needs to be to counter any possible invasion; its purpose is to be able to invade and occupy foreign countries to further the interests of the politically connected.
If we Americans are going to find a niche in the global economy, becoming the worlds mercenaries is a pretty good niche considering our skillset and talent.
And that beats being without a niche at all and being deemed useless.
They've managed to keep my meat inspected, get my kids a basic education, prevent most infected/infested fruit from reaching my table, built a really outstanding interstate system in a country of huge extents, put our citizens on the moon and in orbit and gotten pictures of far away galaxies, give me clean water to drink, and even paid for treatment of my sweetheart's breast cancer -- and I still have her for that specific reason. WRT the military, I don't like what they've got it doing at the moment (though WW1 and WW2... good job!), but I am forced to admit that it's damned good at being a military force, so yeah, they get considerable credit there as well.
Nobody is protecting you. Nobody is protecting your offspring. It's you who must protect yourself and your offspring. If you look at how the world really operates, when the government has success you never know about it because it's classified. When the government fails you never know about it because it's classified. The government may have caught some Russian spies recently but thats a very unusual situation. What I'm saying is you might think your meat is inspected and maybe it is safe from viruses, but at the same time they might be radiation levels high enough to cause cancer in most of your products, there might be neurotoxins in your toothpaste, lead in your toys that you give to your child, dangerous radioactive particles in your drinking water or in the air itself, or those particles might be in beauty products such as the makeup your wife or daughter put on her face.
What I'm saying is that government doesn't, can't, won't check everything. This might be because of corruption. This might be because they just can't. Biological weapons might look like pesticides and might find their way into consumer products sold by corporations you trust that happen to be foreign owned through some backroom deal you didn't know about. Who protects you from that?
I'm not saying there aren't good people in the feds who want to protect the country from that. I'm saying that the challenge is a lot bigger than most people think it is. I'm saying that as Americans we aren't at all safe. I'm saying we are under attack from many angles and in many ways which are seen or unseen. I'm saying big corporations bribe, blackmail, and in some cases cause illness and death to control, profit and win.
In the meantime, the private sector would not insure either of us (we're oldish... 50's, and we have pre-existing conditions... she's diabetic, for instance, and has been absolutely uninsurable) and emergency room "care" is not in the least bit comparable with a normal course of treatment under a doctor and with access to the correct drugs, etc. So yeah, I'm for the feds kicking the insurance industry under the rug and starting over. They (the insurance industry) have made a complete cock-up of the opportunity they had, and so they can take a long walk off a short pier as far as I'm concerned.
Assume that the entire world is at war. Assume also that there are well trained terrorists. Assume that some terrorists have been successful and that you never heard about it because it would provoke massive panic. Assume some terrorists are cause and you never heard about it because the methods used to catch them might be exposed. Assume that you or anyone could be killed via slow poisoning over a period of decades by the tabacco company, water company, or any company that sells any product that comes into contact with your biological organism. Do you know who owns these companies? Do you know who controls them? Did you know that polonium 210 is in tabacco products? Do you know what polonium 210 is? It's something you should google, and then you should wonder why tabacco is radioactive and sold to 16 year olds but the government furiously fights the war on drugs to protect those same 16 year olds from "foreign" drugs?
Do I think the feds will get it right first thing out the door? No. Har
ok, why? Wouldn't that money be better spent invested in improving our infrastructure, investing in technology, education, and healthcare?
What threats do we actually face that require the military we're maintaining at the moment? Why do we need to be pursuing the military actions we presently are, and why do we need to be the world's police presence?
I'm intrigued by your idea that we should *increase* the military. Seems completely counter-intuitive to me. Please explain yourself.
1. War is the one thing the feds are good at. As a result we as American citizens specialize in war. It's our niche. It's the only reason the UN and the rest of the world needs our labor at all. It's the only service left that we still offer. It's the only thing we are #1 at.
2. War is the only way we will ever get out of debt. Of course we have to win these wars but the only reason we are being paid by all these different countries is to fight their wars for them. They know we are the toughest society in the world, a nation of warriors, and they pay us as mercenaries to protect them. We've agreed to protect Isreal for example and a number of other countries.
3. We do have competitors. Russia, China, and we have enemies like North Korea and Iran. We are at war with our enemies. We compete with Russia and China and if we do not win the resource war we as a country could find ourselves in a submission position in relation to them in the future. To put it simple they could very well enslave our offspring.
I used to think we do not need to be the global policeman. I intuitively thought it was a bad idea. This was until I learned how the world actually works. The world is run by nation states that operate like mafias/gangsters. They only respect might. It's only our might that keeps us from being enslaved. The real world is very much like prison.
If you walk into a prison you'll notice that there are different factions of gangsters. These gangsters run the prison and act as the "government" as the prison. When you enter you are expected to either join one of these factions, or stay out of their business. If you opt to stay out of their business then you don't have any control over what happens in your own environment. On the other hand the neo nazi's might gain control of the prison and if you are a jew that would be unacceptable right? What if you are a homosexual? What if you use drugs?
The point is rather simple, these factions exist regardless of the nation states. These factions/gangs are international and they'll hijack a nation and make it a satellite nation. We could call this a colony. War happens between these factions, gangs, or tribes, who control colonies and nation states. Nation states are used to defend the faction, gang or tribe.
So to put it simple, we have to spend a lot of money on the military to protect the American tribe from being enslaved, exterminated, dominated, by other hostile tribes. Some of these tribes hate America and American on a bloodline level, it's a blood feud and it's a situation where the American tribe must always maintain the ability to kill, dominate or exterminate their tribe. The nations don't really matter but it just so happens that American citizens are the best at fighting wars so the majority of the Western faction gives it's money to Americans to fight to protect the western way of life from invaders.
No the invaders aren't going to listen to reason. No it's not all the invaders fault either because Americans don't like to integrate anymore than the invaders. America has to open it's culture up and in some ways make compromises. And so do the other cultures, and the problem is this takes hundreds or maybe thousands of years so until that happens we have to keep building weapons.
With the exception of "cops", I'm in agreement with you.
If the cops were on the street and actually patrolling the neighborhoods, interacting with the residents and deterring crime (instead of arriving 20 minutes late and arresting the victim for putting up a defense), I'd be all for them. However, paying for them to sit in air conditioned patrol cars, isolated from everyone, writing tickets and stepping all over people's personal choices... that's ultimately worse than wasted money -- it's like paying to have someone kick your dog.
The current military budget (fed) is also not on my "we should be paying for that" list. Very little useful is being accomplished. At the state level, the drug war is *very* expensive and should be ended forthwith; streetlights are a good example of a mostly useless cost we pay without thinking (cars have headlights, strollers can use flashlights... and a lot more of us would be able to see the stars again.) There are plenty of places we should be cutting, and we're talking significant portions of the budget.
I don't support the drug war. I do support a well trained law enforcement service. I call it a service because law enforcement is supposed to serve the community they operate in, not dominate and disrupt it. The problem communities have with law enforcement stem from officers who disrupt communities that were getting along before they came along. A lot of communities were doing just fine before they started locking everyone up on drug and gun charges. And once again when a lot of fathers are locked up a lot of children do poorly in school, and more money has to be spent on education.
So the money they waste locking up drug dealers increases the cost of educating the youth. You lock up the parents and the kids suffer. I think the laws should be redesigned but I'm not in control. This is why I support local level politics because it's the only level of politics I plan to get involved with. I don't want to bother getting involved with federal politics because I don't have a federal agenda. I don't worry about stuff outside my sphere of influence.
I do think we need a strong military. The feds SHOULD be good at fighting wars. But a lot of the other stuff they get involved with is social control programs designed to satisfy elitist or racist political agendas, or special interest groups. I don't have a political agenda so I see it as a bunch of nonsense.
The feds could create jobs tomorrow if they increased the size of the military and civilian service. If the world really is as dangerous as they say it is, there will be a need for these jobs. Also there will be a need for jobs in the private sector which support or maintain national security. Only American citizens can fill these jobs.
Finally when they focus on creating jobs they need to look up statistics on what Americans are naturally good at. Some of the jobs they create like construction worker type jobs, it's a nice gesture but it's not like everyone is going to be young and will be good at that. On top of that you have a lot of Mexican labor who can do that and probably will.
Once the economy is fixed then the feds can talk about doing other things but we give the feds a lot of credit when they aren't or dont seem to be making the situation better. They focus on control and thats fine but they aren't giving the citizens anything in return, not even security because if a citizen does not have access to jobs a citizen has no security. Federally controlled healthcare does not change that.
Education is mostly handled on a state level, and a single system that works in Rhode Island, California, and South Carolina probably can't happen.
Part of the reason we are training kids to be servants at McDonalds or to work in retail is precisely because the foreign entities that own the big corporations and in some cases own the politicians, already know who they want to hire to fill the jobs and it's not going to be "our" offspring that they hire for any of the better positions. Federal testing standards do not help our offspring get jobs. In fact these standards may in fact be helping China, Japan, Europe and other countries who have all kinds of advantages in that competition from longer school days/years, to better teachers, to more funding, to just being in a good job market so that they get the job by working for cheaper.
Americans support federally controlled education. Then their offspring can't get a job after achieving a college degree because of federally controlled education. And then of course parents blame their offspring for not getting all A's like the kids in Asia. But guess what? Those kids in Asia knew it was a global competition while you told your kid that it's okay just to do as well as you did.
Lets face it, either we are going to have to become a lot more militant about education (yes I said militant), or we are going to be toast. It's a war for jobs, for survival, that is what is at state for your offspring. No you cannot assume any job will be waiting for them. No you cannot assume they'll get into a good school or that it will help them. No you cannot assume that any amount of hard work will lead to success.
If you want your children to be successful then you have to govern in a way which leads to your children being competitive and successful. You have to build education around what American children like to do and are talented at. We are not the Chinese. We will never win the competition for cheap smart labor because we will never be the cheapest or the smartest. So until we find or create a niche it's a waste of time to even bother pouring billions into education.
I'm going to say it because nobody else will. The federal government is not serious about education. The federal government fears that if US citizens are more competitive that it will result in a trade war.
We? Speak for yourself. I do want federally controlled healthcare. I want private sector medical insurance to be illegal, and medical care to be universal just as education is universal, only more so. I am delighted to see we've taken a few baby steps in that direction. A society that doesn't put the health and education of its citizens first is, in my opinion, wrongheaded - and I'm trying to be polite about it.
Thats because you credulously have faith in the federal authorities. Do you not realize that they don't really care about citizens in your state because they don't spend time living among them? So you get exactly the level of representation that you deserve when you put all your faith into the establishment responsible for fighting wars. The talk about death panels might be conspiracy theory but it's the same government that tested viruses on it's own military. It's the same government that gets paranoid and sees everybody and everything as a potential enemy.
Do you really want the Pentagon, DOD, and individuals like this to be in control of healthcare? Do you really believe this could be better than having your neighbor who you grew up with in control? Do you know any of these people in the Pentagon to have faith in them like this?
You can put the health and education of your citizens first by focusing on reforming your local government to put this first. You probably have no influence on the federal government which may or may not be influenced by foreigners. So you could end up with federal agendas which promote ignorance and sickness because. Not everything coming from the federal government is free from corruption because the federal government operates on the international level and other nations can easily influence politicians in DC, perhaps even more easily than you can.
Department of homeland security = wasted taxes
Reduce military spending by 50% (what are we North Korea?)
Eliminate services offered for free to other governments (scientific or otherwise)
Kill NASA dead.
Sell Alaska to Canada. Who cares about Alaska.
Free from jail anyone who no longer represents a threat (detention centres are full)
Any state with a budget deficit doesn't get a vote in the next presidential elections.
If that doesn't help, then you can tax my internet.
We should increase military spending and decrease social program spending on social programs which are conclusively ineffective. We should expand service so that individuals who take part in social programs are required to serve in some capacity for a specific amount of time.
We probably should change NASA but not eliminate.
We need to keep Alaska because it's vulnerable to Russian invasion.
We should release all non-violent offenders or at least shorten their terms.
We should remove all the victimless crimes so we don't have to keep filling the jails in the first place with non-violent criminals.
And I agree that budget deficits are a problem but thats not the way to solve it.
And stop using the feds for social programs? We have state governments for social programs. The state reps who actually are our neighbors have a better idea of what is best for our state because they actually live in our state rather than in Washington DC like the majority of Senators and establishment types.
Healthcare is not something the feds are qualified to handle. The feds cannot even handle public education. That being said if the feds would like to fund it without any expectation of control that is something I can support as a libertarian, but then you have the problem of how much money to give to each state which causes problems in itself.
Ideally the local governments should handle the social programs if we are to have any form of socialism at all. The federal and global government should focus on winning wars and building infrastructure.
You have to pay for cops, for firefighters, for medics, in some cases for healthcare and schools.
The problems start when one state has to pay for another state. Why would people in one state want to help people who aren't even their neighbors, who don't contribute to their state at all, who don't benefit their state in any direct way?
Libertarian socialism is the answer. Tax locally. Govern locally. Fight wars federally. Build infrastructure federally. Maximize individual liberty.
Each state has the right to run itself as it deems necessary for the survival of it's citizens. If it wants to be run in a socialist manner or not is entirely up to the state and I say that as a libertarian. The point is to have minimal interference from federal entities who know nothing about the dynamics of the states they interfere with.
Healthcare should be handled and paid for by individual states for the citizens in that state. If individuals live in states which don't have universal healthcare then they should move to states that do. If the feds want to help the states which provide universal healthcare they should be allowed to. What we don't want is federally controlled healthcare.
Because a state knows whats best for it's citizens better than the feds. Tax sales and use it to pay for healthcare rather than having the feds tax people in Mass to pay for people in Ariz. Let each state spend as much or as little as they want on social programs. Let the feds focus on national security. If you don't like high taxes then move to Texas.
Corporatists believe the corporations should become the new government. They are actually collectivists. Ayn Rand their philosophical leader called her inner circle the "collective". How can you claim to be for individual liberty if you believe in corporate person hood?
I have read, at least, three biographies on Ayn Rand (in addition to many essays from the inner circle). The term "collective" was used tongue-in-cheek.
How can you claim to be for individual liberty if you believe in corporate person hood?
Eliminating corporations is OK. Eliminating incorporating (aka: organizing as a group with an explicit contract or charter) is OK. One thing we might do is to eliminate the limits on corporate liability. This would mean a stock can go to less than zero. It does not eliminate big companies or the stock market or the "impersonal" nature of a corporation. It would change a lot and is not necessarily incompatable with many - if not most - libertarian or O[o]bjectivist idealogies. It is also not incompatible with corporatism as you define it. Sure, it changes the rules, but it does not eliminate the game. Personal freedom - AKA "individual liberty", your words - means we can organize in quircky groups called a "collective" or form a company for a profitable or non-profitable venture. Your posts strongly implies you EITHER do not understand this OR disagree with this exercise of freedom. Which is it?
I never said you cannot organize in a group or that corporations should not exist. I said corporate personhood should not exist. Corporate personhood is like communism. It's a collective and it leads to corporate monarchy.
I agree with the right to assemble. I don't agree with collectivism. I believe that corporations should be treated as machines not as persons because they do not have human emotions. To call a corporation a person is like calling a tank a person.
I'm not sure that I would really classify all members of Homo Sapiens Sapiens as human... And I've observed a rather high concentration of inhuman examples at high levels of government.
Governments do whatever is in the national interest. The ethics of someone working for the government are not the same as the ethics of ordinary citizens because the expectations and responsibilities are not the same. They aren't ordinary citizens. They don't have ordinary goals. So they cannot be held to ordinary ethics.
Governments don't have ethics but they do have laws. If it's legal then it's ethical according to the government.
Interesting point, however, all governments on earth are constructed entirely of human beings.
The ethics of human beings who work for the government are very different from the ethics of human beings who don't. If you work for the government as a soldier then right and wrong is whatever leads to success/mission accomplishment.
If you're a government civilian employee then right and wrong is whatever is legal regardless of how you feel about what goes on.
So right and wrong are determined by profession as well. What is right for an individual in one profession would not be right for an individual in another profession. What is wrong for an individual in one profession would not be wrong for an individual in another profession. It's wrong for a cop to break the law, it's not wrong for a criminal to break the law. It's wrong for a politician to accept a bribe, it's not wrong for a corporate employee to accept a bribe.
If you get convicted of a felony via drugs for example, you can not get financial aid.
If you haven't figured that out by now maybe you should look at who funded Obama's rise to power.
Corporatists believe the corporations should become the new government. They are actually collectivists. Ayn Rand their philosophical leader called her inner circle the "collective". How can you claim to be for individual liberty if you believe in corporate person hood?
Stop allowing collectivist corporatists pose as libertarians. They don't believe in individual liberty. They believe in corporate government or in the extreme case corporate monarchy which is actually a form of feudalism.
If you don't think the government should regulate the information superhighway then perhaps you'd prefer that AT&T and the RIAA regulate it? I'd rather it be the government because we have a history of letting corporations regulate things and they never do a good job.