Politically Speaking: Now What?

Well the midterm elections are past and the Republicans gained power in the House while the Democrats kept control of the Senate. The big question is what does that mean for us? It was quite a election season with not only the Democrats and the Republicans fighting in the ring, but the Tea Party was there also, with both the Republicans and Tea Party thinking of victory by riding each others coat tails. My feelings are that the Tea Party got owned by the Republicans, time will tell, but it already looks like there is some dissension between the ranks, and it's only been a couple of days since the election.

I tend to lean towards the Democrats, but I am frustrated and disappointed with their spinelessness. There were investigations of wrong doing by President Bush and some of his close associates that showed that he was doing things wrong and he was intentionally doing them even though he knew they were wrong. Why then is it that the subject of prosecuting Bush, and whoever else involved, such a taboo subject even from the Democrat side? To make things worse, now George Bush has a book coming out where he admits once again of his war crimes. Will the insanity never cease?

Bush basically passed his own pardon and pardoned everyone who took part in all the illegal activities before he left office, put people in key parts of the government, while he was in office, that would allow him to get away with doing things that were wrong. Don't forget that both Bush and Cheney got on national television and admitted that they gave the orders and supported water boarding and other torture techniques, had secret prisons, performed secret renditions, and crimes against the American people and the constitution by the unlimited phone and internet monitoring, arresting people in the middle of the night and not charge them of any crime for 5 years if at all, with no rights, and going against the Geneva Convention rules and international laws and agreements. This upsets me with the Democrats. When Obama stood there and said, let's not bother going back and dwelling on the past, but look towards the future in reference to prosecuting Bush I stood in shock... I think there were many others who had the same reaction. In my opinion the people's mandate for election a great majority of Democrats in 2008 was so that something could be done about the rouge, run away government that the Bush Administration turned into, that included bringing to justice the people who blatantly and openly broke the laws of our constitution and how our government is supposed to operate, both at home and abroad.

The other thing that I and I think many other people that supported Obama are disappointed about is the health bill. Not for the fact that it was passed, but how fast the best parts of the bill were negotiated out before it even came to vote, and then that it really never mattered any way because it was pretty much a straight party vote, so there never was any compromise from the other side at all. Many people would have liked to see the single payer option at least seriously considered. Health care should not be run by organizations that their main purpose is not health care, but stockholders profits, that's just wrong. We need to get rid of all the swindling, lieing, profit machines that we call health insurance companies. A lot of money could be saved if the government took care of people with that money instead of a big company not worrying about if they will break even, but make record profits. This was another thing that didn't make me too happy with the Democrats.

The thing with the Democrats in general is that it's hard to try to compete with the bullies on the playground while playing by the rules and bending over backwards trying to appease any of them. Both sides worry more about being elected, getting their side in power, or keeping their side in power, that they don't really seem to care too much about us. In all fairness I guess I have to say the Democrats tried, they came in at the worse time since the great depression and actually did some good, tried to pass some good financial reform, credit card reform, health care reform, it just was a little too slow to help them for the mid elections.

What will we see going forward? I fear not much different than we seen these last couple of years. In the mean time we, meaning us common folk, will suffer while they all have their pissing contests.

What do you think? Agree or disagree, feel free to leave a comment.

Campaign Finances

It's time we get rid of the party system, there has been too much party and not enough system governing the the country. Each candidate should be running on his or her own platform and not be constricted by their parties as to what they can or can say, can or can't do, they are supposed to be doing the will of their electorates, not their party, not the special interests that are funding their campaigns, our government is broke in it's present form. We need to change campaign financing to fix things in Washington. How can we expect our representatives to vote with the interest of the people at heart when it is special interests that pay to get them elected in the first place? We need to finance elections with money from tax payers, or a pool of some sort. Somehow we need to start with a pool of people to run for the positions in government and then a way to quickly weed out the unwanted or unsupported, then support the runner ups by providing them all with the same amount of airtime, but only by showing their records and/or platforms factually and get away from the smears, lies, and rhetoric. The American people need a way to make informed decisions on electing their representatives without having to worry about getting fleeced by the lies told by the opposition. This could also save a lot of money that is now wasted on elections that could be spent better in other places. This would remove the conflict of interests that come into play now when politicians have to vote on bills that affect the people that paid to get them into office. Because we all know money is not the way to gauge the support or popularity of a candidate when special interests and corporations can spend more than individuals, this is why we have all these bills and laws catering to special interests, companies and the wealthy.

Tax Breaks for the Wealthy

We are only talking about the top 2-3% of the population losing tax breaks, not being taxed extra. We have gave these same people a break the past 8 years or so, now they scream bloody murder that they are being unfairly taxed. How can that 2-3% of the population scare the other 97-98% that the government is out to take income away from them? How can that big a chunk of the population be so gullible? Where has the tax breaks that the top 2-4% of the population got us? The way they talk it will make the difference of there being jobs or not, where are all the jobs that were being developed during the last 8 years? There wasn't any jobs made in this country in the last 8 years, only over seas by the tax breaks of the wealthy. While the general public has been providing tax breaks for the wealthiest 2-3% they have reciprocated by sending jobs overseas creating record profits for the big corporations while the rest of the country goes broke. If you are in the top 2-3%, vote Republican, otherwise, wtf are you thinking?

Fiscal Responsibility

Fiscal Responsibility = Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has raised $96.2 million during his tenure, but he has spent $109.6 million. (The Washington Post)