timwatly's Comments

Blaming the incompetence of our leaders on the uneducated being allowed to vote is a huge stretch. First of all the majority of the poor/uneducated don't vote. No where near the numbers of the "educated". Which is still not a very good percentage.

Our country would be better off if all 100% voted and they voted their true interests. The media confuses everyone so they don't know what is best for them. I know people who have less than 10,000 dollars worth of stock who think lowering the dividends tax rate somehow helped them. This is confusion on the part of the media. Dividends tax the rich, pure and simple. When you cut that you are going to have to get that revenue from some other source like middle class incomes, or go into more debt and devalue the dollar.

Others think getting rid of the death tax will help them. People don't understand the death tax (used to be estate tax) taxes the rich. The estate has to be over 2 million dollars for there to be any taxes. 3.5 million in 2009.

But again this is how the media blatenly misinforms it citizens, and thus they fear there kids will get left with nothing when they die.

If the people truly did whats in their best interest, i think we would have no IRS, go back to original dividends tax rate, tax luxury spending, have huge cuts in the military, bring the troops home, cut spying agencies, get rid of consolidation of media (like we once had), get rid of war on drugs, which saves costs of runing prisons, universal health care with focus on prevention and education, get rid of HMOs and insurance paper pushers, cut federal education budget and get it back in hands of states with local communities, cut corporate welfare, and focus tax dollars on alternative energy technologies. Stop future illegal immigation by going after employers, but not wasting money on rounding up ones that are here.

I think that would be a much better government.

I definitely agree the pollss are not random. Definitely a much smaller percentage believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories. But I also hardly ever believe most polls i read. Really can't trust the methods and whether they are true random samples.

When you say 9/11 threw us into an economic downfall, for whom? Many believe the great depression was increased by bankers like JP Morgan, and that ultimately he benefited by bying up competing banks and many companies at pennies on the dollar. Yes it killed the economy and many middle classes familes were forced into poverty, but many at the top benefited by consolidation.

9/11 economic dowturn for many, anyone with pension funds that were generally invested. But not if your money was invested in gold. Your money doubled overnight. Not if your money was invested in defense firms and oil firms.

Well first of all you missed the main point of my comment which was saying clearly there is difference between getting angry over destroying the amazon rain forest and thinking the gov did this to their own people. Since you decided not to respond to that, I assume you agree it was a stupid comparison.

Second of all, 9/11 led us first to Afganistan. Which got us the Unocal oil pipeline built, the one they wanted for nearly a decade. Then of course we stopped looking or the enemy and the taliban took back over. Guess you can chalk that one up to a success or failuire depending on what your true goals were.

Then we went into Iraq looking for WMDs. And yes we never found them, but we got halliburton to take over their oil fields and create a never ending war to keep military and oil companies happy. So it could be a success or failure. Could they have planted the WMDs...sure, but they got what they wanted either way. Huge defense spending in a war that will never end with new groups that can be deemed terrorists as they see fit.

And of course they have taken people's civil liberties away here to perpetuate the fear and power. We are one more terrorist attack away from martial law being declared and crazy dumb leftists like me can be sent to one of these newly built concentration camps, while the rest of the world keeps their thumbs up their asses. And of course the media won't say a world. People might be disappearing left and right (like they did in Argentina in the 80s) and it won't be reported.

They want the debate to be about how they have screwed up and how dumb they are, because this softens it from the debate about how evil and power hungry they really are. They keep acting dumb and "screwing" things up, but really they are playing the american people brilliantly. I only hope to get out of this country in time. My goal is 12 months to get out of debt and get out.

Well lets be honest, I am upset about amazon rainforest and darfur, but that feeling pales in comparison to the feeling you get when if you truly believe our government killed 3000, of its own people and then led us into a war that cost another 3000 troops and 20,000 wounded and killed 600,000 iraqies, took away our civil liberties, cost 2 trillion dollars.

Don't you think there would be possible a difference in the 2 comparisons? Of course people who truly believe in 9/11 conspiracy will be angry about it and protest more than darfur.

I should stop giving my own opinions on these sites though, because i would like to not be sent to one of the newly created concentraton camps within the US in the next 2 years. So I am going to just start smiling and drink the koolaid.

I can't believe this crap. The point of having representative democracy is for the representatives to act in the interests of public good.

Here is an issue that nearly everyone involved believes is bad to consolidate, yet the FCC doesn't care about whats good for the public, just whats good for big corporations.

Its disgusting that we didn't elect these FCC douchebags. Of course more appointments by bush ruining the country. I am just getting so sick of whats happening in this country.

man i miss the chappelle show.

First of all where do you get this GDP stat, seems like total bs. Did you just pull that out of your ass and think no one would check? Well i did. US is number 1 in GDP health care spent. We spent more in dollars than any other country, more dollars per person, and more in GDP as a percentage than any other country. So wtf are you citing. Not to mention you then say they spend more on healthcare than we spend on healthcare and defense spending combined. Are you delusional? Where are you getting that, do you have any idea how much we spend on defense? Again must be pulling this out of your ass. So then i think it stands to reason that this bogus thing about them on waitlists must also be your imagination, since clearly you are not getting this from facts. But lets move on.

Second, our military is more private than ever. Even functions like doing laundry have been outsourced to companies like halliburton. Feeding this troops outsourced to hallibruton. Even things like arabic translaters outsourced to Titan. The list goes on and on.

And now we have for hire mercenaries from backwater, which undermine are troops due the fact they get payed 5 times more and get better gear.

Obviously when it comes to weapon development we have had this be private public partnership for a long time, but does it have to be. I have several friends who work at defense contracting and talk about the rampant corruption. No deadlines, no one cares about costs due to the cost plus system. Eisenhower said in his last presidential speech, beware of the industrial military complex. It has been getting bigger and bigger thanks to the likes or Reagon and now Bush.

Also, just so you know. The majority of significan breakthroughs when it comes to medical research of cancer, aids, ect, come from university research already supported by tax payer dollers. Drug companies don't find it profitable to do cancer and aids reserach. They will research boner pills and hairloss treatments but not the big issues. And what happens when their is a breakthough at the university level, they give the research over to drug company to patent and have monopoly on it, so the good people of phizer or merck can make a profit on it and not give the drug away to poor in other countries that need it most.

When we talk about ineffiencies in the market of public/private ventures of the military, its not casue its a 'monopoly" as you put it. Its due to the lack of oversight. When it comes to the healthcare system, we currently have this same lack of oversight, but also there are so many paper pushers. Going to a single payer government run system cuts out so much of the excess. The HMO's, insurance companies. All this is money saved.

Also healthcare might not be a public good, although you could make an argument for it. Are we not better off when there are less people with STDs, less chance that we get it. If an epedemic comes back like the plague, or some flu, are we not better off if or neighbor doesn't have it? If people are healthy are we not better off as a society that they can then be consumers of goods and services? I think a healthy society benefits us all.

I think you need to open your eyes.........

well i agree somewhat. But i just hate when people oversimpify and say government doesn't work and point to bush screw up after screw up. It has capabilities of running well, just don't confuse private public partnership screw ups with that of all governements.

People need to realize the power they have. Government is a tool for the public good by definition. Corporations are given charters by the government. These private entities need to support the public good first and then optimize profit. They can't just go for profit and yet have conficting interest in public good. If not the government has the right to revoke their charters.

I don't see a people revolution coming anytime soon with the guillotine. Most people just care about the next american idol are grey's anatomy. So all i can do is try to educate those who oversimplify complex partnerships and then use that as an argument to privatize everything.

Its not that the government wastes the money.......its when their is no oversight. This usually happens when public goods are outsourced to private entities in a public private partnership.

You have to understand this difference. Publicly run water utilities.....efficient and for the public good. Private run monopolies of public water = inefficient waste.

Its like this everywhere. Our current military isn't publicly run, its a public private partnership. Pentagon gets money which it gives to companies liek bechtel, lockeed martin, haliburton, boeing, blackwater, and many others. This is when corruption is rampant.

You have to understand the difference. When the government decides to outsource something like lets say schools to private markets, huge corruption will occur because its a public private partnership.

Currently there is lots of corruption in the healthcare market, because tax dollars are given to private entities like drug makers and hmo's and again no oversight. You can't say this is a failure of public good.....its public private partnerships failing.

Whats the solution? Don't let the governement say privitize public goods via the argument private is more efficient. Because private public partnerships are always ineffecient. Defense shouldn't have for profit entities, and nor should water supplies of cities be for profit and nor should healthcare.

Please become educated before you oversimplify and just blame it on government.