RNC Calls For Halt To Unconstitutional Surveillance 523
Bob9113 writes "According to an article on Ars Technica, the Republican National Committee (RNC) has passed a resolution that "encourages Republican lawmakers to immediately take action to halt current unconstitutional surveillance programs and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's data collection programs." The resolution, according to Time, was approved by an overwhelming majority voice vote at the Republican National Committee's Winter Meeting General Session, going on this week in Washington, DC."
even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, when you oppose everything the president does, it's gotta work in our favor sometimes!
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
And of course when a Republican gets back in the White House, they'll be repealing this and get back to passing oppressive laws like nobody's business. It astounds me how people keep voting for Kang or Kodos.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Interesting)
In another 10 years as more of the traditional GOP retires or is voted out, hopefully they get repaced by more libertarian leaning candidates, or even better the libertarian party will become one of the big 2.... (i can dream)
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, if you have to make shit up in order to find fault with something, anyone with sense will recognize that you're paying a high compliment to it.
The other problem with libertarian thought is that small-minded people are terrified of that degree of freedom, because it means others might do things they disapprove of, and the small-minded just love using government to tell people how to live.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
Cue the highly emotional, belligerent, ignorant people who think anarcho-capitalism and libertarianism are exactly the same thing.
While that's technically true, one of the problems is that in practice they are conflated by the people who call themselves libertarians. Especially in the tea party movement. For any political group there is an ever present risk that the difference between who they say they are and what they actually do is in contradiction.
I have absolute and complete faith that there are are lots of true blue Libertarians in the group. The problem is all the others who are either wolves in sheep's clothing or just unprincipled "useful idiots" who simply don't have intellectual rigor to push back on the self-interested and well-monied anarcho-capitalist types who are working hard to co-opt the tea party groups.
FWIW, I've come to the conclusion that the norquist "starve the beast" approach is a bad idea. It is too simplistic - it is the stick without the carrot. It needs a complementary "good governance" movement too. Else we get things like privatization of government services where any initial cost savings evaporates as the business owners end up with a practical monopoly on state contracts and jack the prices back up in a couple of years.
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The Tea Party itself advocates for reducing the national debt, spending, and taxes, nothing more. The fact that that attracts unsavory elements like Christian conservatives doesn't change the goals, nor the fact that even people who hate each other's guts can cooperate politically on a common goal.
The reason you hate the Tea Party so mu
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think of government as an animal that you can reward and punish and that will learn and improve over time, but that's ridiculously naive.
That's funny ... I think you are the one being ridiculously naive. You think government is a monolithic entity defined by a single parameter -- incompetence. You make your perception reality by giving up any expectation of competence and leaving it all in the hands of those who wish to use it for the worst purposes. When you abdicate your role in a participatory democracy, of course you are going to get worst possible version of governance.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Interesting)
When you abdicate your role in a participatory democracy, of course you are going to get worst possible version of governance.
Nationalism is feudalism writ large. Libertarians would simply like it writ smaller, because they are sure that they are superior to the rest of us and will wind up lord of their own little fiefdom. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the vast majority of them will wind up serfs, but math isn't their strong suit. Selfishness is.
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"The reason you hate the Tea Party so much is because both Democratic and Republican politicians have seen a threat their ability to hand out vast sums to their cronies in industry and special interest groups, and so they figured that destroying the reputation of the Tea Party would be the best defense. And they were right."
The tea party is full of rebadged republicans looking for a new angle to come from - marketing, in other words and any damage to it's reputation has been done by it's own members.
To say
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And that's bad... how? The Republicans are a mix of Christian conservatives, libertarians, and other groups. Some of those want to distinguish themselves from the rest of the party.
Bullshit. There are Tea Party Republicans and anti-Tea Party Republicans. You just refuse to make a distinction because you're blindly partisan.
There may be anti tea-party republicans but there are surely very few, if any, anti-republican tea-partiers. It is not a separate 'party' and it is, fundamentally, no different from right wing conservative republicanism.
Incidentally I am not 'blindly partisan', as you falsely assume. I detest the entire political establishment from top to bottom, democrats, republicans and republicans trying hard to appear not to be republicans. I don't like libertarians either, for that matter, as their party stances le
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The problem is all the others who are either wolves in sheep's clothing or just unprincipled "useful idiots" who simply don't have intellectual rigor to push back on the self-interested and well-monied anarcho-capitalist types who are working hard to co-opt the tea party groups.
I have to say that I find this concern unrealistic. I don't dispute that the Tea Party movement has a bunch of parasites of dubious provenance attached to it, including perhaps some of the fabled well-monied anarcho-capitalist types, but at its core, is a legitimate concern that keeps getting brushed off. There is an increasing disregard for the law and future consequences which can threaten the continued existence of the US.
FWIW, I've come to the conclusion that the norquist "starve the beast" approach is a bad idea. It is too simplistic - it is the stick without the carrot. It needs a complementary "good governance" movement too.
"Good governance" sounds nice, but it's not working. The US federal government cont
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Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
because it means others might do things they disapprove of
Well, yes. I disapprove of people and organizations who murder, rob, rape, beat up, poison, cheat, and steal. Government is a check on all that by having an organized way of penalizing people who do those things. And it turns out that this is generally successful: There are a lot fewer murders, robberies, rapes, beatings, poisonings, and thefts in places where there is effective government than when there isn't (and yes, I'm considering people murdered by the government in unjustified shootings).
There are 2 points of real disagreement I have with libertarians:
1. They oppose government efforts to intervene when one person's activities are demonstrably harming somebody else. For example, most libertarians I've encountered believe environmental regulations are unnecessary and intrusive, but countries without environmental regulations have people dying of various water-borne and air-borne poisons every day. Most libertarians I've encountered disapprove of government efforts to ensure that products available in stores are what they say they are, but historically and in modern times private industry has demonstrated that it cannot regulate itself, nor can consumers organize lawsuits well enough to correct the market.
2. They oppose government doing what government can and has done more efficiently than private industry. That is in large part because their philosophy is predicated on the idea that government is always less efficient than private industry, so when some egghead quotes statistics that say that (for example) government-run health care gives better health care for less money than privately-run health care, the assumption is that the egghead is just making it up.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Informative)
It also means that they actually have to live with being free, which carries with it some risks. Unacceptable! I demand the government violate everyone's rights and privacy to stop the terrorists!
Considering that I'm more likely to be struck by lightning than die in a terrorist attack, I think I'm willing to take my chances. I also believe that we're less likely to encounter people so desperate to hurt us if we stop manipulating other nations and attacking them for such flimsy reasons. A return to loving freedom would mean no longer trying to tell each other how to live -- this is also the way we should respect the sovereignty of other nations.
I'll tell you what else is much more likely than dying in a terrorist attack: being killed by your own government.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Informative)
Considering that I'm more likely to be struck by lightning than die in a terrorist attack
In fact, that is an understatement. I was just doing some research into the number of terrorism related deaths, and I found that fewer than 25,000 people have died in (non-state) recorded terror attacks. That's less than 25,000 people dying of terrorism in all modern history.
In contrast, about the same number of people die in lightning strikes in one year (worldwide). About 150% as many people die in car accidents each year, in the US alone.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
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Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it...
That's why many of them own slaves...
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually the invention of the horse collar pretty well ended slavery in most of the civilized world. A horse that wasn't strangling itself is much more productive per unit of food then a human slave. Even in America at the time of the War of Independence, slavery was on the way out with the price of a slave having dropped to $50.
England was having court cases where slaves were using habeas corpus to gain their freedom while in the States the cotton gin was invented and the rich landowners people needed cheap labour but did not want more white trash in the form of indentured servants and such and the use of slaves picked up in response to the need for cheap labour with no political rights.
Remember that the USA was the last of the western nations to ban slavery, only finally banning it in 1867 though it was on the way out as the slave economy could not compete and the South was failing economically when competing with cotton growers in other regions that were paying a wage for labour, especially as the (mostly English) factory owners considered slavery immoral and preferred buying cotton that was more ethically produced.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Informative)
As a matter of fact, no. Slavery in Brazil didn't end until the Lei Ãurea [wikipedia.org] went into effect on May 13, 1888.
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This part is key. The religious right likes talking about Judeo Christian values, but I'm not fooled. Though I'm Jewish and theoretically are included in their "Judeo Christian values" what they really mean is "our flavor of Christianity." Let's say they got their fondest desire and the US became a theocracy where laws were set based on what they claimed the Bible said. Who would "they" be? Southern Baptists? Catholics? Protes
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It's a big problem, and affects the Ds as well. Honestly, Eisenhower sounds more like a D that today's Ds do.
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Unfortunately these "libertarian" leaning Repubs also have a penchant for rallying to the CUT TAXES! flag while doing nothing to cut federal spending to compensate. Why again hasn't the defense budget shrunk closer to pre-war levels after effectively exiting Iraq and ramping down Afghanistan?
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NASA should definite send a probe out to whatever planet you're living on.
Defense+Veterans is about tied with Medicare+Medicaid for largest budget category, followed by Social Security third. Nothing else even makes it onto the radar. Lumping together ALL other discretionary spending (education, non-defense research, transportation, CDC, NASA, etc etc etc etc) still only adds up to 4th place in the budget.
-
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I was explicit in including Veterans Benefits. It is is obviously part of the military compensation package. The figures I looked at had a listing for "Medicare&Medicaid" which explains why your figure for "Department of Health and Human Services including Medicare and Medicaid" was slightly higher.
In any case, there are are three almost exactly equal budget categories that dominate the federal budget at over 20% each, vastly larger than anything else in the budget. There's no reasonable way to call any
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Interesting)
What a lot of people seem to be missing is that the GOP is in the middle of a transformation. I will not get into whether or not it is good or bad for the country or the party but the establishment republicans, those like romney or mccain are being pushed aside by more libertarian bent candidates.
Then how come McCain and then Romney were the presidential nominees? How come the rising stars that were supposed to be the next great Republican president were all fairly old school folks? How come the "more libertarian bent" rising star Paul Ryan is advocating what amount to the exact same policies Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich were pushing decades ago?
There are some people in the Republican Party who would really like it to not be the party who's primary demographic is old white people from the southeast. There are some people in the Republican Party who would really like it to not be as corrupt as it is (I'm not suggesting the Democrats are even close to saints in this regard). There are some people in the Republican Party who would like it to no longer be the party of bigotry. But right now, the core of the organization as a whole is a corrupt bunch of old white bigots from the southeast.
As far as the Republican's connection with libertarianism, they're libertarian whenever they're talking about tax rates, social welfare programs, or guns, but definitely not libertarian when it comes to military spending, personal freedoms, corporate subsidies (and subsidies disguised as tax loopholes), and religion.
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What a lot of people seem to be missing is that the GOP is in the middle of a transformation.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Interesting)
Over 75% of the people I spoke with out of over 3000 said the number one thing they want is to cut spending, cut taxes, and reduce the reach of the federal government.
Unless it involves cutting our absurdly bloated defense department and DHS. Anything to keep us safe.
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Huge DOD spending is largely a consequence of having so many troops overseas, and Democrats and "progressives" favor that, because they think they can fix the world. In fact, people who suggest that we may not want to bomb others into democracy are frequently denounced as "isolationists" by Democrats.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Informative)
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The House made a real budget, and passed it several times. The Senate refused to even take one of them up, debate, amend, and refine the bill and send back to the House. There was a real budget - but one Chamber was politically motivated to see sequestration implemented.
As far as the size of the cut to the DOD, defense was cut larger by percentage and in absolute terms [wikipedia.org].
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the equivalent of a Democratically controlled House passing a budget that eliminates all military spending. I'm sure the Republican Senate would amend it and send it back rather than tell them to pound sand. Right?
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I'm sure the Republican Senate would amend it and send it back rather than tell them to pound sand. Right?
I bolded this part for a reason. That is exactly what would happen. But that is not what the democrats in the senate did. They didnt even bring the bills to the floor for a vote and amend process. THAT is what I find disturbing about the current senate
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That's because the House budgets all included the elimination of the national healthcare mandate: that wasn't a legitimate budget, that was their way of claiming they were just looking for compromise.
Get over the "national healthcare mandate". The Affordable Healthcare Act (aka Obamacare) is hardly what you think it is, but rather a huge corporate welfare program for big insurance companies to be heavily subsidized (all at taxpayer expense) in an attempt to shove additional programs at some targeted voter blocks. It takes the worst aspects of the National Health Service from the UK and combines them with raw kickbacks, costing everybody much more money, and only makes the top managers and board of dir
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
But again, it was an unscientific study, and I have a libertarian bias as such my results may be biased as well.
That you have the self-awareness to know this and the integrity to admit it lends credibility to your poll, unscientific though it may be.
I too want most experience of government to come from the state and local levels, like the Founders intended. It was never intended that the average person would be affected very much by anything the federal government does, except in times of an actual, Congress-declared war (heh remember back when we did that?). The States are about the only entities able to stand up to the feds, and to do that, they first have to stop being addicted to the federal money that so many of their budgets have come to depend on. The Free State Project is, in fact, an effort to do exactly that.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always been puzzled when people say what the "Founders intended". The Founders lived in a time when it took days to get from one populated area to another, on horseback. They were wealthy land owners upset with being pushed around by a monarchy thousands of miles away. They did a fine job in creating a new country, but they created it for the times they were in and the technology they had. There's nothing sacred about the laws or structure they enacted. Undoubtedly some of the motivation behind a structure with states having power was due to the realities of a sparsely populated country and frontier, and recent bad experiences with a monarchy. There's certainly nothing magical about state and local government. Both can be just as wasteful and abusive as federal government, especially, as we've seen, when it comes to personal liberties and civil rights.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's certainly nothing magical about state and local government. Both can be just as wasteful and abusive as federal government, especially, as we've seen, when it comes to personal liberties and civil rights."
One difference is that one can vote with one's feet much easier in leaving a backward town or state, than leaving one's nation. The other is scale: the closer to the voters the representatives work/live, the more likely mutual respect.
Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
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Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
But again, this was very much a function of the state of technology and the limitations of travel and communications at the time. The feedback cycle today can be instantaneous, across the country. And while state representatives live closer to those they represent, that's not a function of state power. Members of Congress live near those they represent. We could have no recognition of states or any state governments and still have federal government representatives distributed across the US, representin
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Both factors make feedback cycles more rapid & precise. I wouldn't be surprised at all, if evidence existed that those poor backward horse-riding founders could conceive of this.
But again, this was very much a function of the state of technology and the limitations of travel and communications at the time. The feedback cycle today can be instantaneous, across the country. And while state representatives live closer to those they represent, that's not a function of state power. Members of Congress live near those they represent. We could have no recognition of states or any state governments and still have federal government representatives distributed across the US, representing people.
State and local government does lend itself to backwardness, which is probably why conservatives gravitate to it. The founders should be admired for the country they created, however if you brought them back today they wouldn't know what a computer is, what a semi automatic weapon was and why somebody shot up a movie theater with one, why all the homosexuals aren't in prison, and why there are so many free slaves walking around.
The giant difference is the amount of influence you have against your city or State government is far far greater than you do against anyone in Fed.gov. Depending on the size of the city you're in your Mayor may care what you personally think and say. The President of the US cares not one little bit what you personally think and your Senator's likely care little more. You're a number among millions and they are going to be far more influenced by someone down on K Street than you.
That's the point in the end.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Undoubtedly some of the motivation behind a structure with states having power was due to the realities of a sparsely populated country and frontier, and recent bad experiences with a monarchy."
Great book: David Robertson, "The Original Compromise: What the Constitution's Framers Were Really Thinking". Basically it's a boiling-down of the Federalist Papers (notes from debates at the original Constitutional Convention). The point being, there was no overarching principle or methodology, our constitution is the end result of a 55-man scramble, argument, and horse-trading over whose interests would get the most power behind them. The prime mover, Madison, absolutely came in with a plan and coalition to basically make the states negligible and have one strong federal government; but the people who didn't agree with what his group would likely do with those powers resisted and ultimately fractured the coalition, with every state looking to defend its own competing interests (e.g., ship-building versus trading versus slaves, etc.). Southern states were all pro-strong federal government (anti-states) for a few weeks until it appeared that the feds would get the power to stop slavery, then they pivoted and started demanding defenses for state governments. No single principle was agreed on in general; it's a mixed business negotiation basically. Including intentionally ambiguous language in places to avoid prolonged argumentation that summer.
Re: even a broken clock... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that most of the people who claim to want small government really mean: spend less on everything except the things that benefit me.
Re: even a broken clock... (Score:5, Interesting)
libertarian
You keep using that word. I do not think you know what it means. Nor do I think people who call themselves libertarians really are libertarians. Many of them, for instance, are down with the small gov thing, but have no hesitation to stick their noses into a woman's health care decisions. Also do you guys really want to liquidate our National Parks, Federal Interstate system, etc, etc? Cause true libertarians believe that private business should own and run just about everything. As an unashamed Progressive I believe that there are some things that only big government can do well. History shows us what happened when free enterprise took care of (or, all to often, did not) everything, and it wasn't pretty. I for one do not want to go back.
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You are confusing women's health rights with who gets to pay for it. Libertarians object Planned Parenthood stuff because it is funded by the government, i.e. taxpayers money. A woman has a right to do anything she wants with her body. But she doesn't have a right to do it with my money, regardless of the excuses (too long to drive, too poor, etc.). This is the key distinction that you, progressives, have a hard time understanding.
Scotsmen (Score:3)
Cause true libertarians believe
Libertarians are... whatever they say they are. They don't need to be defined by you; certainly they do not need to be defined into a corner as you are attempting to do here. Yes, the ideas you've discussed have been promulgated by those who would call themselves Libertarians, but these ideas are not necessarily true of all, or even most modern would-be (l)ibertarians.
The Libertarian Party has adopted questionable policy perspectives in part because they have never had a serious chance of participating
Re: even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one feel like the Federal Government benefit me by me being able to vote and eat in formerly "whites only" restaurants without being beaten due to Jim Crow. Also I went to public schools received financial aid, have driven on and received goods that travelled along interstate highways, did not get assaulted and robbed by old people because they have social security to keep them out of desperate poverty. O yeah I didn't get poisoned from food I bought at the grocery store because FDA said it was illegal to sell. I didn't get cancer because my drinking water was poisoned thanks to EPA regulations.
I've taken trains, realized the moon was not impossible, used the Internet, benefitted from countless federally funded research projects.
Honestly saying that very little of the money the federal government spends benefits most people (presumably citizens of the US) is utterly ludicrous.
Re: even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
They believe in gay rights and legalizing pot and lower taxes and small govt and no surveillance or drone attacks. What's not to love?
If they would stop there, it would be great. It's when they get into the libertarian utopia stuff where there are no regulations and corporations can do no wrong is that things go off the rails rather quickly.
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They believe in gay rights and legalizing pot and lower taxes and small govt and no surveillance or drone attacks. What's not to love?
If they would stop there, it would be great. It's when they get into the libertarian utopia stuff where there are no regulations and corporations can do no wrong is that things go off the rails rather quickly.
I don't know where you're getting your ideas of what libertarians think, but believing corporations can do no wrong and that there should be no regulation isn't in the mainstream of libertarian thought. Maybe it seems that way to you because libertarians push back against the more insane and intrusive stuff that government does in those areas, so it appears that we hate it all in toto, but that's not the case. We just want to limit government to a sensible role, not the all-encompassing, all-seeing no-sparr
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Funny)
You know that all elections are rigged by the military and they vote in and advertise the canidates that they choose for election, and the public is manipulated into electing them, so nobody is actually representing us?
The issue is not specific to republican or democrat. I want to see us vote out every democrat, republican, and vote in all new people regardless of party, but who have no association with the current system. The problem is not democrat or republican, its the people we have elected and who are in power.
There exists a way they can control society, a system called TAMI, or "Thought Amplifying and Mind Interface" which the military deployed in 1976 in all radar systems. It lets them long range spy on people, spying on their thoughts and memories so the government could control and manipulate people. The military and higher ups has used this system to screen out moles, and people who are against the militaries interests. Everyone chosen for election (Senate, Congressman, President, etc) is passed through their screens and given power only if the military lets them, and people who try to get in who aren't approved get sabotaged in the public eye and/or financially. Nobody is seriously going to fight the government amongst their ranks, and nearly everyone who's elected is benefiting from this and maintaining power through it. It is all rigged. Look up Dr. Robert Duncan's books, .. he's a DOD /CIA /US DOJ scientist who helped develop most of this. His free book is The Matrix Deciphered. Details on their system also found here:
http://www.oregonstatehospital... [oregonstatehospital.net]
Democracy was officially ended in 1976, in the name of national security (anything that could expose the governments misconduct is a violation of national security, because it threatens to end their control over us, and it may result in mass crimimal convictions if they were subject to the laws everyone else were subject to.).
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Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't know how social security works. It is an intergenerational assurance program in which the currently working give some of their current income to the currently retired.
Social security is not funded by deficit spending. Indeed, social security has run a surplus over the lifetime of the program and is doing so now.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
Social Security is running cash-flow negative [ssa.gov], meaning it is spending reserves rather than living on current cash flow. And whilst, on paper, that looks like it doesn't add to the overall Federal deficit, those reserves are simply bonds from the Federal Government which must be redeemed out of current Federal revenues. And those Federal revenues are from a deficit plan.
Saying SS isn't adding to the deficit is like saying your department in a company that is losing money isn't adding to the loss because you're still under budget - even if the products your department builds don't cover your budgeted costs.
Re:That's not what I see. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Christian Right still has a HUGE stranglehold on the party and that's why unless the Liberian leaning candidate is also for government control of sex, marriage, and reproduction (especially abortion), they will have no chance.
Which is really hilarious considering that I've read the Bible, and I couldn't find "tell thy neighbors how they shall live" anywhere in it. I did, however, find a great deal about not judging.
The religious right's only real interest seems to be using force and threat of force (police power of gov't) to demand that others live only in ways they approve of. They obviously have no real belief in the power of their Biblical message to convince, nor in their own ability to set a good example which works so well that others want to follow it voluntarily. It's just the name of Christ used as an excuse to control people. If they were true to their belief and had the love and forgiveness it demands, and attained the joy it promises, I believe the urge to control others is one of the first character flaws they'd overcome.
The modern political arm of "Christianity" reminds me of what Gandhi (a Hindu) said. He said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians; they are nothing like your Christ."
Re:That's not what I see. (Score:4, Informative)
You didn't read it carefully enough. There are many places where "god" commands that their neighbors be destroyed or enslaved because they don't behave exactly the way the current spokesman for God thinks they should.
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It should be noted that this comes from the same Old Testament they conveniently ignore day in and day out.
Re:even a broken clock... (Score:5, Insightful)
And of course when a Republican gets back in the White House, they'll be repealing this and get back to passing oppressive laws like nobody's business. It astounds me how people keep voting for Kang or Kodos.
By extension, Democrats are only for wholesale violation of constitutional rights as long as it can be used to keep them in office.
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Re:even a broken clock... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that is really both parties. The parties come out against things like this, but they dont ever do anything about it.
Yes, they have an amazing talent for speaking out against something, saying what they know you want to hear, but never actually doing anything about it. This is enabled by the short memory of the public combined with the media's desire to remain cozy with government officials so they can get those exclusive interviews.
Meanwhile, no matter what is said, whatever the monied interests and the military-industrial-complex want is what will happen anyway.
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It was the Clinton - Gore Administration that gave us the NSAKey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
The spying had been going on for years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E... [wikipedia.org]
but that probably doesn't agree with your political prejudices.
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Firstly, I really recommend people watch this video series. It's brilliant:
http://www.thegreatcourses.com... [thegreatcourses.com]
One of the things discussed here was that Hamilton and Madison, architects of the new national government, were acutely familiar with the history of self-governance experiments elsewhere in Europe, from ancient Greece onward.
They sought to avoid the inevitable decline of all previous attempts of such societies. Madison, especially, observed that factionalism led to the decline of all such pluralisti
Re:They now have proof that it can be abused (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about the targets.
Republicans never thought the targets would be other American citizens.
Obama has proven them wrong.
Yes, for some reason there are still large numbers of people who need proof that something which happened every single other time (power being abused) is, in fact, going to happen again this time if you start with the same conditions.
I generally call these people "idiots", but you may prefer such terms as "numbnuts", "morons", "imbeciles", etc.
Oh, the irony (Score:4, Insightful)
From the party that brought us the PATRIOT act.
Re:Oh, the irony (Score:5, Informative)
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Voting against the PATRIOT act would have been unpatriotic!
Re:Oh, the irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Sort of. The Patriot Act is simply too large to have been drafted in the timeframe allotted, so we can start with the obvious truth that whoever really wrote it had it on the shelf awaiting an opportunity. That is chilling, and under-reported, enough.
It's also worth noting that the two people in Congress who were capable of stopping it were exactly the ones targeted by the anthrax attacks--attacks which have never been solved. Isn't that convenient? Well, it certainly was if you were the Bush Administration anyway...
Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of this unconstitutional law because the far right corporate media drumbeat was going to brand them as unpatriotic or worse if they even wanted to figure out what they were voting on. But hey, it was OK, because they were only going to violate the Constitution for a little while, right? Except that it keeps getting renewed, and renewed, and renewed even though it is very highly obvious that terrorism as an actual threat to the US is completely overblown.
Time to end this idiotic war on the American people, end the TSA, end the wholesale harassment of absolutely everybody at the borders, and stop spying on everybody's Internet and banking activities.
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There was an analysis linked to on DailyKos that showed the congresspeople who favor surveillance tend to be the once who've been there longer; the newer congresspeople tend to oppose it (with many exceptions on both sides).
In any case, you can never over-estimate the capability of politicians to
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Sorry, but the Patriot Act extension in 2011 was overwhelmingly supported by House Republicans, 196 Republican yeas to 54 Democrat Yeas.
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/house/1/376
The extension was not in any way "bi-partisan".
Re:Oh, the irony (Score:4, Insightful)
From the party that brought us the PATRIOT act.
You actually think there are two parties? They are two factions of the same party. It's your basic duopoly. If it were a marketplace, the average person would understand why that's bad. This is power, something even worse than money in terms of the damage it can do.
The best analogy is the way all US wireless phone carriers overcharged for text messaging. None of their prices were related to the actual cost of delivering the service (zero for GSM-based phones). None of them wanted to try undercutting the competition because they all made more money that way. They each recognized it was in their interests not to rock the boat.
That's what a two-party system is like. That's why the Founders warned against allowing one to develop. At the state level, it's the same two parties who write the election rules and neither has any incentive to make it easy for third parties to get on the ballot. Effectively, the two parties serve the same function as the trade guilds of old: to lock out competition.
It's to be expected that they take turns being the bad guy. It's called good cop, bad cop, and it's a method of manipulating the voters by playing them in the middle.
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It would be nice if I could find a non-statist, who is *also* not a corporatist. Unfortunately all the non-statists I've ever heard of are devout corporatists.
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"hat's why instead of voting for PARTIES, you need to understand where the candidates you can choose between lie on the statist/non-statists continuum ..."
... and realize that the statist - non-statist (others call it authoritarian-independent) continuum is not directly related to the Left-Right continuum.
That's why THIS [theadvocates.org] was invented.
Re:Oh, the data! (Score:2)
Oh, the irony: From the party that brought us the PATRIOT act.
Oh, the data!
Here's [educate-yourself.org] the roll-call vote for the Patriot act.
tl;dr: Democrats: 145 yea, 62 Nay (with 4 abstentions).
I've been thinking of changing my party affiliation recently (and no, not making this up).
Which party do you recommend? I'd like to see if your party votes in the interests of the republic. Do you know any accomplishments that you think are noteworthy? Excluding health care, since everyone already knows about that.
Even attempted accomplishments would be a good indicator of intent, even if they c
Re:Oh, the data! (Score:4, Insightful)
Who can you recommend?
If you are mature enough to understand that most are not anarcho-capitalists, I'd recommend the Libertarian Party. They're the only ones I know of who are serious about reducing the size and power of government, which is badly needed right now. If that ever happens (ha ha!) I'd be open to other ideas myself.
I could not in good conscience recommend either major party. I'd personally rather back the underdog that's not going to win, than be Satan's Little Helper, but that's me.
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Oh please. The government isn't run by the people you elect. It's run by the people who finance their appearance on the TV. And if all you people didn't play along, the velvet glove would come off. Power and privilege is never given up peacefully. The 'underdogs' are allowed to mouth off because nobody's listening.
Re:Oh, the data! (Score:5, Insightful)
Greens are interesting too ... essentially libertarians with a greater willingness to ensure a social safety net and protect the commons (environment) from being abused by a few who profit at everyone else's expense.
Honestly though, I'd vote for either. The DNC and GOP are so corrupted by and enslaved to their donors, I'd be happy to see anyone kick their collective elephantine asses.
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Apparently you didn't really pay attention, it being so much more fun to criticize.
Jill Stein was the candidate last season. She's a medical doctor.
Don't Forget (Score:2)
The NSA is also spying on the internet under Section 702 of FISA.
No one is talking about discontinuing that program or protecting our 4th amendment rights online.
Realization Dawns (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in 2002 or so, when people were really starting to rally against the PATRIOT act, the usual faces were all over the media, calling detractors "terrorist sympathizers" and worse. More than a few openly called for such people to be labeled traitors.
And here's Paul Krugman with regards to Rush Limbaugh back in 2002...
I can't remember where it happened, or who exactly said it, but someone confronted Rush Limbaugh about his words and said, "Imagine if Hillary Clinton were to become president, and she has the power that you want to give President Bush."
Well.
It would appear that has a very good chance of happening. And what was laughed off back in 2002, is now staining underwear in 2014.
Re:Realization Dawns (Score:4, Interesting)
Were they? Sounds more like a rationalization or ex post facto justification for those wars. I would argue that they didn't exist at the proclaimed threat level that was presented, given the lack of any real attacks in the mentioned time frame.
We'll just ignore, like the GOP did, that the IRS went after "Occupy" groups as well, and that every group investigated did get its non-profit status eventually.
I know that people who hate Obama love to make baseless claims, so I'm going to have to ask you for some examples of this.
And they were ignored wholly from 2001 to 2008, then suddenly they became the biggest threat ever.
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I'm not changing the subject, I'm directly questioning your assertion. There's no evidence that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq did a single, goddamn thing to prevent terrorism in the US. None.
It still hasn't been shown that the President was involved, I'm sure that his enemies would be all over the news if they had any actual evidence for it. But, agai
The law of unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The law of unintended consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
What you miss is that the Republicans and the Democrats are only pretend enemies. They are actually allies. So their "enemy" getting the power they asked for isn't something that bothers them.
Good (Score:2)
Opposition parties should oppose stupid things (even if they would do the exact same thing if they were in power).
The problem with the GOP not that they oppose, it's that they seem to have lost the element of selection.
This will pull undecided votes (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Where Will They Find the Courage? (Score:2)
Re:Where Will They Find the Courage? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an election year.
Watergate? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait a minute. Weren't these the same people who broke into the Democratic Natl. Committee's headquarters seeking to pilfer with documents and information?
FTFY: GOP notices that NSA spies on them too (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. Even the most dimwitted Republicans have figured out that America's secret police do not discriminate. They spy on *everybody* who might need to be arrested or blackmailed (i.e. everybody), congress included.
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Next thing you know the RNC will favor marijuana and homosexuality.
Only for themselves, everyone else who engages in that is a sinner.
Re:Nobody.... (Score:5, Insightful)
but I suspect the homosexual angle will be solely Democrat for some time to come because of the religious objections.
The anti-surveillance stance reminds me of the rally against deficit spending by whichever Party is presently out of power.
The roles in our two-trick pony show are amusingly interchangeable.
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Nobody believes them anymore.... they just seem to do knee-jerk reactions to any and everything. Next thing you know the RNC will favor marijuana and homosexuality.
I reject the entire notion that consenting behavior among adult people is ever the concern of government. The sooner the average person figures this out, the sooner we can stop having these silly, phony, issue-by-design debates about such things.
Re:Nobody.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nobody.... (Score:5, Funny)
Good point. Probably why the GOP won't be seeing the inside of the White House anytime during the next 6 years.
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I know it's just anecdotal, but almost all of the Republicans I know have more of a laissez faire attitude towards marijuana and homosexuality.
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Who is working to end this?
not Obama, that is for sure
The only change thus far has been that the the NSA has been ordered to use the Rubberstamp FISA court.
the appearance of change. not actual change.
Re:Considering they're fighting so hard against Ob (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama who is working very hard to end this
[citation needed]
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who is working very hard to end this, we know this is a lie. They hate him so they are for it because he is against it. That is how those people think.
If he is working hard to end this, it's because its existence was leaked and the Joe Sixpacks of the nation who need to have these things explicitly explained to them became outraged. The rest already assumed they were doing something like this while listening to the sheep cry about tin-foil hats anytime someone tried to suggest that massive surveillance powers were going to be abused like any other power. You really can't help people who won't lift a finger to help themselves and are hostile to the sugge
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