[smc]

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

You do that, and every idiot with a gripe will put themselves on the tax-payers payroll. Instead of 12 or so idiots with at least some experience doing something running for president you'll have hundreds of idiots getting paid by tax payers to rant about the government under the guise of a campaign.

Did you actually spend any time thinking about what you would write in response before your knee jerked? Obviously, as the experience of nearly every industrialized country in the world (and where public financing is the norm), what you fear doesn't happen. Safeguards, reasonably constructed under a system that aims to work and level the playing field, not favor the corporation-humans you consistently defend, ensure that the waste is minimized. I would trade some of my tax money for a less-expensive campaign system that is publicly financed for the Super PACS and other interest groups that can spend unlimited amounts of money, with no transparency, any day of the week.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

1. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United
Careful what you wish for smc. You wanted corporations to be taxed like people. All of a sudden corporations are people now. That means they have rights doesn't it? They have the right to freedom of speech don't they?

I never said I wanted "corporations to be taxed like people." But by putting those words in my mouth, you get to make your insipid point about freedom of speech. Seriously, this is your response? I bet you'd be embarrassed to say such a thing on a stage, in a public debate, in front of people, when you can't hide behind the Internet.

To equate the "freedom of speech" of people to corporations is an affront to the Bill of Rights, and you know it.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

2. The elimination of special private benefits and perqs to public servants, such as the ?revolving door? with lobbying firms
Eliminate perks to public servants, yes. The revolving door is good in a way because it gets experienced people into government rather than career politicians and lawyers who don't really know the industry they are regulating. It has some good points. Minimize the bad points with rules such as mandating that politicians recuse themselves from committees overseeing industries they just came from within 3 or so years.

Our cemeteries are full of those who paid the ultimate price of having politicians become lobbyists for industry and then being handed the reins of writing regulations for the industries they serve. Ask any worker in the bituminous coal industry of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and so on.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

3. Enactment of comprehensive job-creation legislation.
Obama has tried this many times. It hadn't worked. His last jobs bill failed to pass. Interestingly unemployment went down afterwards without the stimulus package.

I said nothing about Obama's proposed legislation.

I'd like to see your evidence that the implied direct link between failure of his bill to pass and a decrease in the unemployment rate are positively correlated.

In any case, while some Occupiers may support the specific Obama legislation, I would support something more along the lines of what was done during the Great Depression to put people to work doing what needs to be done. You know as well as the next person, Tracy Coxx, that it is government that builds roads, repairs bridges, and generally deals with infrastructure. We need those things done in the United States. You have no answer for why it shouldn't be done, except to defend the phony "job creators" among the wealthy who economists have proven do not create jobs.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

4. Student loan forgiveness.
The country can't afford to take on all these student loans. And it sets a bad example to students as they enter adulthood. Lesson: You don't ask for a loan you don't know you can pay off.

Imagine if higher education were free in the United States, like it has largely been in most of the rest of the industrialized world. Imagine the innovative spirit of the United States coupled with a highly educated workforce. Imagine paying for this by not building a few aircraft carriers or suspending a few other wasteful defense contracts.

Oh, my god ... that might be SOCIALISM!!!!

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

5. Immediate reenactment of the Glass-Steagall Act.
I'm not up on the Glass-Steagall act or its reasons for repeal. I spent some time looking at it, but not sure which way we should go with it.

This isn't rocket science. The Glass-Steagall Act separated bank types into commercial and investment, and established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), during the Great Depression. Study after study after study has shown that a huge portion of the things banks have done that caused the economic meltdown that began in 2008 are linked directly to the fact that these two banking functions were consolidated into single "too-big-to-fail" banks. The research is easy to find, and "which way we should go with it" should be quite obvious.

As far as I can tell, the only people who are strongly advocating to keep the overturning of Glass-Steagall from 1999 are mega-bankers and the politicians they own.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

I'm sure there are some in the occupy movement that have legitimate gripes about the government and certain fat cat people in wall street who ought to be in jail. Fine. I'd like to see some of them in jail myself. But I also see many pro-occupy people who are anti-corporation... regardless of the corporation, and think that rich people ought to get the shit taxed out of them to support their entitlements. That is who Adam Carolla is directing his ranting towards.

Why you would choose to be an apologist for Adam Carolla, who says absolutely nothing in his rant to distinguish one Occupier from another, and who paints the entire Millenial generation with his broad brush, is beyond my comprehension ... unless you really do agree with him.

But more interesting would be to learn who you think ought to be in jail, and for what crimes.

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

Just so you know, I have never heard of Adam Carolla before this rant of his. I posted the video because of its criticism of the latest self-empowered, everybody's a winner, no-loser generation.

Yeah, well, I would recommend listening again before you again support anything that he says. Do you think his kind of "criticism" is actually productive? What if I just ranted and said the following about every person who works on Wall Street (paraphrasing Carolla):

?We are now dealing with another wave of 'I'm-rich-and-you're-not, my-fecal-matter-smells-better-than-yours, powerful-thanks-to-bought-and-paid-for-politicians-and-regulators, anyone-unemployed-is-a-lazy-fucking-asshole, who-cares-about-losers-who-lose-in-a-rigged-game-on-an-uneven-playing-field, motherfucking-douchebags,' from the lowly accountant at Goldman Sachs all the way up to the CEOS, because if you work for any of these cretins you are no different than the worst of them!"

Would you think that was legitimate criticism, serious and worthy of discussion?