Help Choose Final Bush/Kerry/Nader Youth Voter Questions

Quite a few of the submitted questions were generated by Slashdot readers, and your moderations and comments helped select the 25 semi-finalists. There's only one step remaining in the process: Voting on the the final 12 questions that will be submitted to the candidates, which must be done on the New Voters Project Presidential Youth Debate site by noon Eastern Time on October 5. Note that Slashdot readers are the only members of the moderation panel providing "...nominations from an entire community." We'll post the answers from Bush, Kerry, and Nader (who was added after the process began) on October 12.

Kind of ironic....

[isotope23]

that the choices are only bush/kerry/nader

when even the /. poll shows badnarik at 5% and nader at only 1%

Affordable healthcare

[wayward_son]

It is becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to afford quality health care. Costs for health care and health care coverage are spiraling beyond the reach of many in this country. This is having an adverse effect on both the nations health as well as the nation's economy. (For example, the leading cause of personal bankruptcy is people not able to pay their doctor bills.)

If elected President, what would you do to make quality healthcare affordable to all Americans?

10th Amendment

[N3WBI3]

What do you intend to do about the continuing groth of the federal government at the expense of states rights? Laws like No Chiled left Behind (Which Mr Bush created and Mr Kerry voted for) and provisions in the patriot act unconstitutionally infringe on the states.

Coming Global Energy Crisis

[ksemlerK]

What does your party intend to do about the coming shortage of petroleum based energy that will be even more apparent in the near future, (2-3 years)? I have heard President Bush's rhetoric regarding a "Hydrogen Economy", but hydrogen is merely an energy carrier, and not an energy source. Hydrogen may be the most abundant material in the universe, but it does not exist in a free state on the planet earth. Hydrogen must be extracted from compounds such as water or natural gas. Since natural gas is depleting at a very rapid rate on the north American Continent, and importation of this substance over oceans is very difficult. The effort to create a "hydrogen economy" is just boondoggle. If elected, what policies will you implement to ensure the continuance of energy for little cost, and how you ensure that a hard crash scenario does not occur? What will you do to ensure the survival of the "American Way" of life? Please only provide answers that are actually feasible with current technology, not just political tripe. I do not buy into the blind optimism that the media and political parties are forcing upon the American people. Positive thinking will not benefit a nation when mother nature is holding the loaded gun to our collective heads.

Re:What about the real Green Party nominee?

[N3WBI3]

1) They already have interviewed David Cobb,

2) The reform party has pulled more than 10% in two presidential elections and elected a governer, what have the greens done nationally?

No while the reform party has fallen on hardtimes it is currently on the ballot in as many states as the green, and while you (a) may not agree with them, or (b) think that because they will most likely get fewer votes than the greens (although they will get more) does not mean they should be ignored.

The reform party has become a whore, how do you go from Perot -> Buchannan -> Nader? They want to put a name up, that being said Nader is a much bigger factor in this election than cobb..

Disenchantment with Politics?

[Yokaze]

Do you consider think there are sign of disenchantment with politics or especially with politicians?

If so, in which ways do you consider partisanship the problem, and in what the ways the de-facto two party system.

What have you done, and do you to plan do to counteract this?

How do you think your political campaign affects the image of politicians in general?

Re:Kind of ironic....

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't anything stopping other parties from answering the questions as well. Hopefully at least Slashdot will link to them even if they don't appear on the new voters project website.

Re:Affordable healthcare

[TykeClone]

That's true, but the excessive use of credit cards gets a lot of people into financial trouble. I would guess that many more people declare bankruptcy because of the ease of obtaining huge credit card lines than because of the costs of health care.

Re:The Second Coming

[Brandybuck]

There's a story that a freak meteorological event three centuries ago covered parts of New England with uncanny darkness. The story goes that most people stayed home and prayed because they thought it was the end of the world. But one man hitched up with oxen and went to plow his fields.

When asked later why he went about his work, he replied, "Well if figured it was one of two things. If the Good Lord wasn't coming back then I didn't want to waste my time. But if the Good Lord was coming back, then I wanted Him to find me industrious instead of idle."

Believing in the second coming shouldn't have any effect on one's behavior towards the environment. A really good answer to your question would be, "If the Good Lord is coming back tomorrow, I want Him to find me to be a faithful steward of the Earth..."

A question that will never see air time

[mabu]

Mr. Bush, why is our government protecting one of the world's most notorious arms smugglers [globalpolicy.org], Victor Bout [pbs.org], known affectionately as the "merchant of death" and is suspected of supplying weapons to Al Quaeda? The administration has pushed to protect Bout from international sanctions claiming he's "assisting" the US in Iraq. Why is our country protecting this criminal? Why would the US do business with a man who has been supplying terrorists with weapons? Why is this story not being covered by the mainstream media?

Re:interesting fact about the new voters project

[lar]

I've read all three of those articles, and I'm a little confused. It seems to me that the thing everyone is worried about is the ability to fradulantly register voters, and then have people pretend to be those voters on election day. But isn't this something that any and all registrants can do? Why are the New Voters being singled out here as the "criminal" organization?

One of the articles claims that the New Voters being a registrant is bad because it can push its ideals on the voter as he registers. Even granting that the New Voters may be partisanly-biased (something they claim is untrue), how is this different than me going up to my Campus Republicans' club and registering at their booth (something I've done more than once in the past)? Maybe that's something you can't do in Wisconsin, I don't know (I live in CA).

But if you could explain to me why this is such a bad thing, I'm willing to listen. I just don't see why the New Voters have been singled out.

Um...

[Slipped_Disk]

Are slashdotters becoming morons? I'm sad that I only have 5 mod points, and i'm not wasting them modding all the crap on this article as offtopc.

Clue in: We're not proposing new questions, and this *IS NOT* an Ask Slashdot. If you want your voice to have ANY chance of being heard go to the site (http://youthdebate.newvotersproject.org/) and vote for the questions you want to see answered by these candidates.

If y'all have INTELLIGENT comments to make, by all means make 'em, but quit baiting eachother with the usual republicrat false-posturing "A is a better choice than B because A stands for everything that B doesn't" crap, it's sickening.

Re:10th Amendment

[Thunderstruck]

This is a good question, if a bit short on the grammar... anyway It won't be asked as part of this survey. I submitted almost the same thing, as did others, and neither made the top 50.

Such a question requires the asker, and those voting on the top 50, to actually understand balance, and the notion that there are some laws the federal government cannot pass, but the states can... and vice versa.

Until folks from coast to coast stop thinking of themselves as only as citizens of "America" and not citizens of "My State," they're not ready to ask this question.

Re:Only 12 questions?

[hrieke]

Well since question #20 [slashdot.org] is mine, I'll give you my response.

Background:

We're talking about 73 trillion dollars here, to be spent over the next 50 years. Allowing for a bell curve, that means in about 15 years time we'll be heading for the sharpest increase in the curve.

Since congress never met a pork project it didn't like, both the Repbulicians and Democrates used Social Security to spend money that they didn't have, on the promiss that it would be paid back.

The problem

• Now what Bush is suggesting has faults of it's own:
• 1. Market preformance. What will people do if there is a stockmarket crash? How will people retire if their retirement funds are wiped out?
  1. Fees by brokerage accounts. A 10% return is nice, but we all know that Wall Street is drooling over the fees that they will get to charge just for selling index funds.
  1. Artifical bubble of the markets. Trillions will be put into the stockmarket, every stock will have someone buying it. Too much money, not enough products to buy = bubble.
  2. 
     This is already happening with popular Funds for 401(k)s! See Fidelity Low-Priced Stock Fund - FLPSX as an example
  1. We'll still be paying for those who are already in Social Security. Somehow we have to make good on our promise to those who already are in the system. By taking out money that will be going into it, we'll need to come up with 2 or 3 trillion TODAY for this to work.
  1. Don't forget that companies are defaulting on Pensions too. This is going to make the Savings & Loans trouble of the late 80s look like small potatoes.

So my point is that it's just not going to work out.

PS. I find your sig to be part of the problem with politics in general- too much '' mentality.

PSS. I agree 100% that SS is a Ponzi scheme, but origially SS was for widows, orphans, and the blind. See my comment above about pork.