| Joel C. Ewing 2006-04-17, 3:55 am |
| LX-i wrote:
> Pete Dashwood wrote:
....
>
And yet he was the last President to actually appoint people to major
government posts based on competence to do the jobs required by law
(e.g., James Witt at FEMA). Under the current President, with
appointments based only on ability to "suck up" to the President or as
pay offs to major contributors who want to maximize profit at the
expense of the public by having deliberately-incompetent federal
regulatory agencies, we find that when disaster strikes there is no one
left at the Federal level that has the slightest idea how to do anything
other than photo ops.
....[color=darkred]
>
>
> Condi all the way, man... I'd take Condi over McCain or Giuliani any
> day. I think she'd be better than W - same mindset, more... how do our
> Hispanic friend say it... cajones. (Who would have thought that
> "compassionate conservatism" meant "I never veto anything"?)
Another apparent failure of the Peter Principle. As National Security
advisor she has memos passing over her desk warning of terrorists
planning to use airplanes as attack weapons, apparently fails to
consider it significant, and then has the arrogance to say after 9/11
"no one would have expected terrorists to fly planes into the World
Trade Center". The CIA Director had the same information, and when he
heard news of the WTC immediately understood what had happened. Either
Candi was incompetent at her job or deliberately lying to obscure
Dubya's incompetence in failing to take the warnings seriously. So what
does Dubya do? Promote her to Secretary of State. I guess we are
supposed to assume she was lying to protect Dubya and he was rewarding
her. Just the sort of competent, credible leader we need to follow
Dubya. NOT!
....
> The second is our 10th amendment, the last one in the Bill of
Rights. It
> says that any powers not specifically delegated to the Federal
> government are the responsibility of the states. This should be
> enforced - with every bill that comes before Congress, they should ask
> "What section in the Constitution authorizes us to do what this bill
> sets forth to do?" The founders of our country envisioned a small,
> small Federal government, with most of the power and responsibility
> delegated to the states. Getting that power back decentralized is
> essential to getting good laws passed and bad laws repealed, and would
> also get money out of the Federal system - why bribe someone who has
> little power? (This would also offset corruption - if the groups poured
> their money into a certain state, it wouldn't affect the whole country.)
....
I strongly agree that the system is in need of an overhaul. Those who
count up the billions that are now siphoned from the Federal Treasury
every year for special benefits, exceptions, subsidies, tax breaks, etc.
that are slipped into law to "pay off" campaign contributors have
calculated that if we could avoid this excess by having all Federal
campaigns completely financed directly by the tax payers, it would cost
us much less in the long run.
I would propose a simpler first step than justifying each bill - simply
require that every congressman or Senator have first read a bill in its
entirety in its final form before they can vote in favor of it. A
significant part of major legislation these days (e.g., the original
Patriot back, the annual appropriation bills) is either too large to be
read in the allotted time, or is amended behind closed doors with
minimal notice. Votes are cast in ignorance based on recommendation of
committee chairmen or other party leaders, and then we wonder why so
much garbage and waste becomes law!
> (Not that any of that has anything to do with foreign policy...)
>
>
> Those are interesting terms - "haves" and "have nots". People who are
> wealthy, generally speaking, are doing things that make them wealthy.
> Ditto for the poor. This country isn't the land of equal outcomes, it's
> the land of equal opportunity. Think of it this way - take 10 random
> people and give them $10 apiece. That's equal opportunity. Do you
> think the outcome would be equal? Not a chance...
>
To have equal opportunity one must start with equal resources. Totally
eliminating Estate Taxes as the current President and Republican leaders
advocate would guarantee even greater long-term concentration of wealth
and power in the hands of those who through the lucky fortune of birth
and through no merit of their own inherit large wealth, and make for
considerably less "equal opportunity". Our founding fathers were
concerned about this possibility, because they were well acquainted with
the injustices resulting from lesser men inheriting titles, power, and
wealth in England at the time. What job do you think Dubya would have
today if he hadn't had his father's connections and money to provide a
"party experience" at an elite college, and get him another executive
position every time he proved incompetent in the business world? -
perhaps he would have made a good used car salesman, where likability
and a certain lack of candor and lack of honesty are traditionally expected.
If you look at the history in this country (USA) of those that have
accumulated great wealth without inheriting it, you will occasionally
find one who has managed to come up with a brilliant idea and
successfully exploit it commercially; but more often than not you will
find someone who just happened to be in the right place at the right
time with the right resources to successfully exploit the ideas of
others, exploit natural resources they didn't create, or exploit the
work of others. I am always amazed when such consider themselves "self
made men", worthy of special tax breaks and other consideration, when
without a strong element of luck and the resources of others they could
just as easily have been a "have not". And more often than not they
create problems in their wake that others have to clean up, often at
public expense - a good argument why such should be subject to
progressive tax rates.
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