Talk Elections

Forgive me if this post seems trollish, I'm posting it as an argument for smaller government more than anything else. This article could apply to Republican conservatives in some respects, though probably less so than Democratic liberals. I would've been a little less hostile writing this, but I feel it has a point. I've bold faced the part I feel is important.

"Liberals deserve what they get (http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/columnists/steigerwald/s_269577.html)
 
By Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, November 7, 2004

Someone check if E.J. Dionne is still alive.
The Washington Post columnist was on NPR's "Some Things Considered" Wednesday night already sounding suicidal about the reign of conservative terror he fears is coming in President Bush's second term.

Voicing the concerns of millions of distraught liberals, Dionne worried that President Bush - a partisan ideologue he says deliberately ran a mean and divisive campaign that has cynically polarized the country - is going to claim a policy mandate despite his slim 51 percent victory over John Kerry.

Dionne didn't break down in tears or anything. But he was whining that the president had cynically exploited moral and cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage to win the votes of millions of nutballs on the Christian and NASCAR right.

Now, Dionne worried, with the help of an even more dangerously Republican Congress, we're all going to get things like Social Security privatization shoved down our throats!

And somebody call Kofi Annan! President Bush thinks he has the divine right to nominate any new Supreme Court justice he likes - even strict constitutionalists!

Too bad, E.J. You and your liberal pals deserve every right-wing Republican nightmare you get.

Welcome to the downside of the Big Government world you've created and been propagandizing for since 1932. This is what happens when your side keeps losing elections: the other tribe gets to pass laws they like and you are forced to follow them.

Tuesday's results caused me no particular heartache or joy, though I admit I always like to see the elite media suffer when the good citizens of Flyover Country reject the liberal political and cultural ideas they hold so dear.

I was torn about whom to root for. I believed Bush deserved to be punished for Iraq, but I didn't think 290 million innocent Americans should have been sentenced to four years of President and Mrs. Kerry.

Unlike Dionne, however, "Bush II the Sequel" doesn't worry me much. I figure our quasi-conservative president has already done his worst damage at home and overseas. Without having to get elected again, he might actually be able to honor his rhetoric about wanting to cut the size and scope of government.

Meanwhile, instead of trying to guilt-trip Bush into becoming more moderate or compromising with congressional Democrats, pundits like Dionne should be hiding in shame for having supported a New Deal Neanderthal like Kerry.

Kerry, by the way, is the immoderate one, not Bush. Kerry is a welfare-state-adoring zombie whose political brain was frozen in 1969. Watching his boring campaign was like watching a nine-month-long director's cut of "Night of the Living Liberal."

And let's get real. President Bush is hardly Barry Goldwater reborn. He needs to become less compromising with Democrats, not more. He's already too comfortable with the Big Nanny state, which is why Republicans who really still believe in individual freedom, limited government and laissez faire economics - all 145 of them - are unhappy with his first term.

In any case, don't blame me for the next four years. Along with 0.3 percent of my freedom-loving countrymen, I voted for Michael Badnarik, the Libertarian Party candidate. He finished fourth with a rousing 395,711 votes, which should tell Dionne and grieving liberals everywhere how silly they are to worry about the longevity of their precious welfare state."

Badnarik was very close to beating Nader.

I have to admit smaller government probably benefits me, but it is assinine for the average person to be in favor of it - the great majority of people will be much poorer under the new laissez-faire regime.  Anyone remember the nineteenth century? 

Considering Bush was the man to beat, that's a very poor showing.

I don't advocate complete laissez-faire, though moving towards that direction would be good. No government interference can result in monopolies, cartels, and trusts - the bad aspects of capitalism, which works best when things are competitive. Less unnecessary regulations would make goods cheaper to produce, and therefore in a competitive environment that would make goods cheaper - everyone benefits from that, both sellers and buyers on all levels. Less taxes would give people more money to spend, once again benefiting buyers and sellers. Devolution(giving duties currently run by the federal government to state and local governments) can result in more efficient and customizable services.

Also, it's kind of hard to compare a laizze-faire 19th century to a laizze-faire 21st century - technology has come a great distance, and the Industrial Revolution is over. It would be much different.

Considering he had almost zero media attention and less money than the previous LP candidate, I wouldn't say his showing was poor.

The was a very poor showing for Badnarik.  He ran against two mediocre candidates and got one of the worst results in the Libertarian party's history.  Moreover, every Libertarian on this board was touting this year as the year that the Libertarians would burst into the national spotlight, and they remain as irrelevant as they ever were.

If order to call any election a success, any party that perennially gets less than 1% needs to show dramatic gains, not just make excuses for the modest losses.

I was hoping that he did, so I don't see how it would hurt liberals.

Not our best performance, but not even close to our worst. Read up on your history before you act like you know it. http://www.lp.org/organization/history/presvote.html
Looking at the trends, I'd say we made some losses in some areas and some gains in others, but our base is consistant.

And I don't think we were touting any gaurantees, only hopes. We're overly optimistic, perhaps, but better that than pessimistic. It's easy to be a naysayer when you aren't one of us - you already have a powerful party that represents your views, we don't.

And that IMHO is a problem.  Our base needs to be growing, not barely hanging on to even.

Maybe I misunderstood the $1,000,000 - 1,000,000 votes campaign.  Failure to reach the 1,000,000 vote mark is a complete disgrace.  Everyone in the Badnarik campaign and everyone at the national LP needs to resign and be forbidden from ever holding any kind of party office again.  They should be held up to ridicule.  We cannot continue to have an electoral catastrophe after electoral catastrophe.  Incompetence like this can no longer be tolerated.

I think with this election it highlights the need for us to run first in local races.  Putting a lot of time and money into a guaranteed looser is not the way to go.  Looking at Virginia, Badnarik got 11056 votes in the entire state.  The LP's nominee for Arlington County School Board (Shaun Whelden (http://liberateschool.com/)) got 11169 votes  in a county wide race.  Someone running a local county race manages to get more than 100 votes than Badnarik running state wide.  Clearly we need to rethink our strategy.

There very simple solution to this is to find a Libertarian version of George Soros.

And move toward the center politically.

I agree with some of what you said. I don't think we need to ridicule anyone, but they do need to cool their jets and get their heads out of the clouds. We would do better to find areas where we can build up our base through local and state elections.

Badnarik MAY still get 1 electoral vote by chance.

Yeah, I did hear there was one Republican elector who might not vote Bush. He might just abstain though, but it would be nice if a Libertarian got an electoral vote for the second time.

Unfortunately that's exactly what happened.

It's pretty pathetic to hear Democrats talking about exploiting anyone.

Which candidate was telling old people his opponent wanted to privitize social security? Which candidate was saying his opponent wanted to bring back the draft?

Marriage and abortion are important issues.

And what party ran an ad of the president pushing old people in wheelchairs over a cliff. What party claims that Bush is going to repeal the Civil Rights Act?

Exactly what happened was that the Democrats nominated a candidate who hasn't had a new thought since the 1970's, didn't explain his positions, didn't have firm core beliefs, and then  some Democrats wondered why a majority of the electorate didn't vote for him.

That act is unconstitutional, BTW.

The Conservatives hated Social Security and Medicare since they were founded by FDR and LBJ. They know very well that they can not kill these programs. What they can do, is to gradually starve them.
That’s exactly what Margaret Tacher tried to do in GB with the national health care system that she hated so much.

We will kill Social Security this administration though, and privitize it into accounts like it or not.  The current seniors will still see their benefits, but I will get my own account to invest in when I'm older...and the government can't touch it.  All thanks to my hero, G.W.  America is a free, ownership society, not a communist or dicatorial society.  I think our policies should reflect that.

One of the people in favor of this served in LBJ's administration, former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat. 

Shira, this is typical of the outright lies that the loony left puts up.

Why is the president afraid to explicitly say it?


According to your assertion, most of European countries are Communist dictatorships.

No, they are People's Democratic Dictatorships of the Proletariat. Ha ha. Yuk yuk yuk. :)

Listen carefully to Conservative commentators, talk show hosts and some house representatives and senators who are not careful enough in shutting their mouth.

Everyone who already got stuck paying into the ridiculous system needs to get his/her money back out. Other than that, I say kill them both.

Is Bush a conservative? Because he obviously doesn't hate Medicare, being the one to sign the biggest expansion of it into law since LBJ.

I would strongly recommend you read 'The Iron Heel' by Jack London. It was written around 1904, and foresaw a great many things that are present in our modern society. Also has much economic commentary.

Yep...I generally don't like much of Europe and the new way of doing business over there.  They'll figure it out eventually though.  It's also different as most of those countries are a heck of a lot smaller than America.  

In my opinion, people should not be forced to help other people.  If I invested more money in my retirement account and I took an economics class, and I thus have more money to retire on...so be it.  You failed in life...that's your fault...oh well.  If we weren't taxed up the wazoo with SS...middle class would be upper-middle class and working class would be middle class.  The working poor would still be the working poor though, but they would have a lot to strive for.

Social Security doesn't help poor people. More often, it rips them off (like everyone else).

I have, and I don't share your delusions.  

You really shouldn't listen to "commentators" of any party.  Should I think that Michael MoreBigMacs speaks for John Kerry and the entire Democratic Party?

Well, I'm a [fiscal] conservative, and I'm completely in favor of killing Social Security and Medicare. But everyone who's already in the system should obviously get coverage.

The Cons like the example of someone who was born poor and became rich. (And there are some examples)
In reality the vast majority of rich people are rich (guess why)…… because they were born rich.
The poor are poor because they were born poor. The Cons, however, are trying to indoctrinate the theory that the poor are poor because they are lazy or because they are “failing to initiate”.

Shira, it is an absolute fact that 90% of rich people earned it themselves. You can spin it all you want, but that's the statistic.

By the way, some of the exceptions would be the entire Kennedy family.

It's true.  I'm sorry but you are nothing but a pessimist if you think a poor person can't get anywhere in life.  It all starts with education, and Bush took significant strides in creating "No Child Left Behind".  I also believe his goal to put a community center in every rural county is also encouraging.  The poor have the opportunity to speak out.  They have consistently chose Jesse Jacka$$ among other dems.  And they're still poor.  And middle class people are still being taxed with a social security that doesn't work.  The poor will continue to be poor until they trust the republicans, who in the end, have to fix all the problems the democrats created or neglected.

"I belive in rags to riches, your inheritance won't last, so take your gray poupon my friend, and shove it up your a$$"
-Steven Tyler of Aerosmith in the song "Eat the Rich"

I'm more worried about fixing the idiotic 5,000 page tax code. Replace it with a sales tax, or at least a simple income tax.

One who was born with $100,000 and died with $10,000,000 is not exactly “poor who became rich”. One who was born with $0 in a poor neighborhood and became a millionaire does meet the definition of “poor who became rich”. These are rare creatures but in many cases they are famous.

The point isn't how many poor people became rich. I don't know what the statistics are on that. It's that wealth in this country isn't tied up in a hierarchy of wealthy of families, like you're trying to make it sound.

The 90% of wealthy people who earned it could have been dirt poor or middle class. Completely irrelevant.

How about the several dozen people that I know that started out with nothing and one or two generations they are middle class.  It's happened over and over again.

In my opinion, one whose family made $30,000 and who now makes $50,000 certainly qualifies.  Anyone who is the first in their family to go to college qualifies.  You don't have to be a millioniaire to advance up the ladder.

And no one that I'm aware of is born into a family with $0. Anyone who's that poor is mentally ill, plain and simple.

You are correct  about Kennedy ( you can add Bush and Kerry to this list as well) but these are not exceptions, they are like the vast majority of rich people.  A better example could have been J.Edwards, but he also did not exactly start from a deep poverty.

Shira, I love how seen incapable of answering my questions and facing reality.

Wrong, they're exceptions.

As for whether or not those who earned it were born poor, not necessarily. Some inherited a small business and turned it into a giant corporation.

The most important factor in getting wealthy is obviously education and skill.

Not many Americans, whether in the ghetto or on main street are in true deep deep poverty meaning they have 0$. Even the poorest Americans own at least one television or vehicle.

And the vehicle is taxed, thanks to Democrats

I am sure that every one of us knows personally at least 20 individuals who are worth 1 M or more. Try to go into the economical history of this person and find out why this person is wealthy. In the last year (since I became interested in this issue) I had the opportunity to observe 17 people like this (two of them are good friends of mine). Out of these 17 in my non-scientific sample, only one really deserves the title “A self made person”.
Remember that a usual problem with these kind of observations is, that people tend to better remember the exception than the common.

I don't know a single person who inherited big wealth. I do know a lot of people who earned it, however.

I don't even I can come up with a list of 20 millionaires I know personally.  The few I do know earned their money, worked hard, and invested, saved, or spent wisely.  Disproving your theory that all Republicans are rich or that all rich people are heirs.

Most of them are not. Many are low middle class, close to the poverty line and some are even below.
The problem is that ignorance and religion are playing major roles in the behavior of low income people.

Religion is very key to underpaid people in the heartland.  Dems have a long way to go on that issue.

I don't know how Bush won...I don't know anyone who voted for him!

If you don't personally know, try to look into public figures ( Bush, Kerry, Kennedy, Rockefeller, Cheney etc.)

BTW: Bill Clinton does belong to the very small but famous group of "self made people". The people are famous because they are the rare exception but the group is tiny.

I would recommend to you to  read the messages in this thread. The mindsets of these people are very interesting.

You can't really go into famous people.  Most famous people are rich one way or another, no doubt.  But it really says something if you actually personally know a millionaire and if those millionaires are self-made or heirs.  In addition, even those who are heirs and are famous (Kerry, Bush, etc.) have worked hard in their life doing something.  Sure, it's not drilling concrete, but I don't think the average joe could go out on a political campaign while at the same time making hard decisions regarding war and moral issues in America.  Prior to politics, Kerry worked hard in Vietnam and Bush was an avid businessman.  Life wasn't completely handed to them on silver platters.

Wrong.

Life was completely handed to them on silver platters.

Not really.  Very few people have life handed to them on silver platters.  Sure, they may have been some extraordinary circumstances.  Being the son of a president.  Being married to the ketchup lady.  But they could have given up.  They could have not tried.  They could have failed miserably on the campaign trail.  Explain your reasoning.  Or at least your definition of life handed to someone on a silver platter. 

The Bush family was very rich long long before H.W Bush became president. Barbara's family also was very rich for generations.

A TV has no bearing on poverty - you can get a used one free out of the garbage, and a new one for like $100.  And no, many do not own a vehicle.  But one can still be desperately poor and own a 10 year old beater.  Poverty is more about one's place in the social structure than whether one has this or that.   

It makes more sense to look at income - if your income is less than say $20,000 per family member you're awfully poor.  Double that in the economically viable states.  And don't even get me started on the issue of ability to advance in society!

Shira is exactly right - live was handed to all the Bushes, and all the people like them, on a silver platter.  It is amazing to me that anyone can deny America has an aristocracy (admittedly a shabby, honorless one).

On the other hand, I do know a lot of very elderly people with a couple million dollars who got it at least partially through their own efforts.  A million or three is not  much nowadays, and a workaholic miser can sometimes accumulate it through a life of misery.  Or for that matter just owning a good house in the right area can put you part of the way into that sort of 'minimally rich' class.  My own family more or less in this class, and believe me, its not all that impressive.

But when we speak of the class which controlls this country and recieves the life on a silver platter, they most definitely did not get where they are through their own efforts.

I'm going to point out that neith Bush or Kerry were born into a "superrich" family.  Well off, yes, but not on the levels of the Mellons, Duponts, Annenburgs (now), Gates (now), Waltons (now), Rockefellers, or Kennedys.  Where they lower upper class or upper middle class, in terms of wealth?  Yes, but they were not people were even in the top levels of wealth.

I was responding to Shira, who asked about the rich people I know. Taken in context, this post of yours makes no sense whatsoever.

America loves the Henri Ford story of a poor who became rich.
The matter of the fact is that millions of people did exactly what H.Ford  had done, but they never became H.Ford  and no one know their names. These people are the vast majority, while the Fords are the tiny-but-famous minority.

What makes you thing that to be successful, you must be a millionaire.  Millions of people, at some point in their lives have very little, but prosper.

Shira,

My family came over here dirt poor. Although we aren't millionaires we have improved our lifes tenfold as compared to what life was like in the various countries my family came from. (Austria, Palestine, Lebanon, Ireland)

My parents (and their parents) were poor, and now they're semi-rich.

Not superrich but certainly "old money" and well-connected.  W's granddaddy Prescott was a US Senator.

Very few of our presidents haven't come from old money.

Even if Bush and his dad were born into a semi-rich family doesn't mean that they had life handed to them on a silver platter.  I'm sure Bush and Kerry both worked hard in everything they did and were raised that way.  There are rich people who get anything they want and are very spoiled.  I don't think they were like that.  You don't become president by being a spoiled cry baby.  No one does.  Bush and Kerry both had to work hard to court voters and convince people in their policies.  Sure, they probably had a few advice from their parents in their lives and a little guidance, but not full-fledged silver platter.

By the way, I'm not rich.  But my parents worked hard.  They didn't get a college degree, but they work hard at their jobs and encourage their kids to work hard.  Me and my siblings have/will get a college degree and a job we enjoy, our parents giving us nothing but love and encouragement.  Isn't that the American dream...raising hardworking kids who achieve more than you did??  And hasn't W. Bush and Kerry accomplished more than their parent's did.  I'd say so.

They were well connected because someone a few years back became politically active.  Truman, Nixon, and Ford, and didn't come from well connected families.  I think that it was Clinton's mother who became politically well connected; they never had a lot of money.

It isn't that hard to become "well connected," just start volunteering for the party of your choice.  I became, at one point, very well connected and have no money to show for it.

Don't confuse wealth with power.