Hey Diesel,
Heard what Ron Paul said about social security? He's against it and over time it would end but he'd also cut gov't and take the money and actualy fully fund ss and many other gov't welfare plans because the gov't made those promises to people and he said because the people have planned on those programs that the gov't is obligated to fulfill them. However, there's enough gov't waste and gov't excess to not only fund this programs for the years ahead until all current obligations are met and then the programs canceled but this could be done and paydown the massive US debt and end the income tax. Who needs a national sales tax when you can end the whole machinery of federal direct taxation in the first place?
By chance I got home from work last night and caught an interview Solidad O'Brien has with Ron. The first part of the interview concerned 9/11 and US Foreign policy and is posted on the net
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2007/11/02/intv.ron.paul.cnn?iref=videosearch but the 2nd part (for whatever reason CNN hasn't posted yet, please save the conspiracy theories) Ron does discuss domestic issues like taxation, SS and other federal welfare related issues and he talks about his ideas that I related above. I'm not endorsing Ron nor have I decided to vote for him as I has such disdain for the 2 parties that casting a an vote their way, even when the candidate is nothing like them, is a very hard thing to do. I'm sure most will not understand and in their shoes I might not either but it's an issue of principle for me that I've held for over 20 years and I'm not willing to relent at this point.
In otherwords D, in a Ron Paul world even you and I would get our SS checks and medicare coverage in retirement based on what I heard Ron tell Solidad so can you name me one democrat who is parading the idea of even fully funding these various programs so that they are self sustaining and are not an ever increasing tax and bueracratic drain on the American taxpayer while at the same time allowing the new citizen coming into the workforce to transition into a self managed plan? Now whatever or however that manifests itself, it's up to the person or even the community in which they live as some communities may form co-ops which I happen to think might be a good thing but the bottomline is that this area won't be overseen or governed at the federal level and is left to the responsibility of the States, local gov'ts or the individual themselves and this IMO squares completely with the US Constitution. Could you imagine large corp interests trying to control the markets spread out over 100's if not thousands or even millions of people and locales from the ingle point market of Washington DC that we now have. Could you imagine the enormous cost of 100's if not 1000's of lobbyist firms scattered over the entire nation all vying to manipulate and control the market for filthy lucers sake? We've made it oh so easy by pushing eveything to Washington and all they have to do is build a central office and control 535 idiot Congresspersons and one President. Could you imagine if they had to do this with 50 governors, 1000's and 1000's of State legislators or the more unthinkable, the 1000's of mayors and the 100k's if not millions of locally elected politicians. What would weld a greater return on investment if you wanted to control a market, having to grease less than 600 politicians or having to grease millions spread out over 1000's of communities across this land?
As for what the democrats might be planning to save things like SS and other welfare type programs, I'll give you that you may be more informed on those candidates that I but I do try and pay a lot of attention and read their websites and such and to my knowledge the only candidate running for office who has expressed an idea of fully funding gov't obligations by cutting waste and needless expense and then also turn around and free the taxpayer for the direct federal tax burden is Ron Paul. To be honest, I don't ever remember a democrat or republican since I first started voting in the early 70's ever mentioned such an idea.
That said, can you explain in light of the above comments can you make the following statement:
but would dread his domestic policy.
There are some areas I'm sure in the purely regulatory realm where you may find what you think is footing to justify such statements but if you'd take the time to look deeper into the whole regulatory machinery of the federal gov't and who sits where in this process, the fox already and has been for decades guarding the henhouse. In fact the Fox owns the damn henhouse with the help of the folks you cheer for (I cheered for some too until I wised up in the mid-80's) and for the ones you boo against, thus the problems we now face.
At the very least with Ron instead of having 1 single huge henhouse for the fox to consolidate his efforts and make life easy, at best he have the beginning back to at least 50 henhouses if not more and in many cases a lot more than that as smaller henhouses would spring up in locales across this great land. The founding fathers not only were wise to include a checks and balance system within the federal gov't but the idea especially with the 9th and 10th amendment was to even further divide and sub-divide society into ever smaller pieces in the hopes that centralized power into a single power would never happen. These guys had fought a war against a consoldiated and single point power in the King of England and the last thing they wanted was to come up with that idea again.
Now, what are we trying to do nearly 250 years later? The odd part is to hear some of the people who call themsleves "Originalists" actually promoting the idea of a stronger and more powerful Presidency or single point power. The worse part is watching other people who rail and loath the idea of "King George" play right into that hand although they tend to think they are smarter by consolidating that power elsewhere within the gov't. Once their party regains the White House, that idea will also shift and some say the fight has already begun between Pelosi and Hillary. If I think it could go nuclear and lead to an american cleansing so to speak, I'll forget principle and vote for Hillary. Ron's trying to peacefully transition but I'm not against a violent erruption of calamity with Pelosi and Hillary because at least we get to see a good train wreck!
Sorry, it's the anarchist in me!
Either way, it's like givng a Hollywood gun that never empties to a manical killer thinking at the end of the day he's the best one to be the security guard and that IMO is what we have done with centralized power in Washington DC!
JMO.
BTW Tie: If some elements of the republican party had their way, D couldn't sitdown in public and enjoy that rum drink to begin with. The muslim idiots aren't the only religious nutjobs we should be concerned with. Read the 2 sides rules of the road and it might get hard at times to tell which fanatic is which! We have Islamo tyrannts true, but we also have wannabe Christian ones as well.
