Thread: Contract For The American Dream

Originally Posted by Blue Doggy

I agree with everyone of the proposals. Most of them was HOW it used to be before the Cons stormed D.C. and put the elite business jackwags in the drivers seat writing policy that helps mostly themselves.

I think most Americans would support the proposal as it is fuckng common sense stuff. And stuff we never used to have to worry about, as that was our ecnomic policy. But since most Americans would support it, you can bet your ass it will never happen until after the BIG CRASH occurs. And we will crash, make no mistake about it. What is going on today with economic policy will destroy America's middle class. As it was intended, IMO.

Sorry Blue, all that site quoted was more of the same old crap. Borrow and spend.

Originally Posted by Blue Doggy

Only because you side with the elites and not the average working American. WHich is very strange, but propaganda is very powerful these days. The right wing are particularly adept at creating great propaganda, to the point that average Americans are voting against their own self interest when they vote for the Pubs. Yeah, it works, for now anyways, but those days are numberbed, IMO, once the real pain gets here.

Wow Blue, you mean under Obama it's going to get worse. I believe it, it's all he's done is make matter worse. And now it's going to get even worse yet.

Ok, now that someone on that side of the aisle has posted a plan, the adults have to fix it.

I. Invest in America’s Infrastructure

Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks.

While Americas infrastructure is in desperate need of repair and replacement, the last thing we need is to add new money we don't have into the system to create yet another bubble. We already collect more than enough money for the task, it is just tied up in dead end entitlements.

While we are talking about infrastructure that is crumbling under the weight of entitlements, we need to talk about personal infrastructure. We need to think about real, durable housing that can stand up to what nature can dish out, transportation that doesn't rust out after a mere decade of use, personal energy independence, and home food, fuel, and fiber production that will provide you with what you need, or what your descendants need in times good or ill. Infrastructure starts at home, and if you want a state of the art infrastructure to greet you at the end of your driveway, you can't be a parasite on the system tasked with creating it.

II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs

We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.

Personal energy independence is by necessity clean and durable. If you seek it, if you demand it, if you innovate it, it will arrive without the government whip.

III. Invest in Public Education

We should provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. A high-quality education system, from universal preschool to vocational training and affordable higher education, is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now.

An educational infrastructure for all ages and all times is essential, but if we are to truly value education, then we must take seriously the history that shows that a quality education in no way correlates to the amount of money spent, but instead in making its use and application a necessity. Implement a personal infrastructure, and you will employ all the elements of a quality education, and your children will learn them as well. The mother and father are the most effective teachers, for good or ill, and the building, equipment, and professional educators are just lubrication.

IV. Offer Medicare for All

We should expand Medicare so it’s available to all Americans, and reform it to provide even more cost-effective, quality care. The Affordable Care Act is a good start and we must implement it — but it’s not enough. We can save trillions of dollars by joining every other industrialized country — paying much less for health care while getting the same or better results.

Again, while a well tuned health care infrastructure is vital to facilitate the healing process, medical entitlements are the ailment, not the cure to our ills. They only serve to absolve people of their personal responsibility or their own health, and are a cancer on the private, innovative organs of the health sector. Drug makers, device designers, and health providers that have to rush the public teet for nourishment will never have incentive to reduce cost or provide more effective care. Build the infrastructure, and then let providers compete to labor for the patient, and you will see costs become affordable.

V. Make Work Pay

Americans have a right to fair minimum and living wages, to organize and collectively bargain, to enjoy equal opportunity, and to earn equal pay for equal work. Corporate assaults on these rights bring down wages and benefits for all of us. They must be outlawed.

Americans have the right to charge whatever the market will bear for their labors, and not what the government or their competition decides they are worth. Their bosses have the same right to charge whatever the market will bear for the products they offer, and would be rightfully accused of price fixing and other anti-competitive practices if they did what the labor cartels do. The day the UAW and SEUI are dragged into court on anti-trust charges is the day you will have equal opportunity in this country. The true measure of wealth is not the salary you bring home, or the benefits you get, but what you do with your money to get the most bang for your buck. You have to spend it on something fruitful. Indeed, the most important work you do will be within the walls of your own home.

VI. Secure Social Security

Keep Social Security sound, and strengthen the retirement, disability, and survivors’ protections Americans earn through their hard work. Pay for it by removing the cap on the Social Security tax, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security on all they make, just like the rest of us.

You can not base a public retirement system on population. Rates of population growth are variable. If one generation experiences a population boom, and then that rate is not maintained, the boom generation will be millstone on the necks of all the generations who follow. Woe unto those who have worked their lives away for naught, but double woe onto those who cast them out. If you want a public assistance system, you need a civil service that assists in building the personal infrastructure for the people who can not build it themselves. Conscript our youth to mobilize for peace, and you will be better able to not only build the national infrastructure, but will, when their term of service is complete, be better able to provide for the generations that follow. The measure of a successful public assistance is one that renders itself obsolete within a generation. We are clearly going in the wrong direction.

VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates

End, once and for all, the Bush-era tax giveaways for the rich, which the rest of us — or our kids — must pay eventually. Also, we must outlaw corporate tax havens and tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Lastly, with millionaires and billionaires taking a growing share of our country’s wealth, we should add new tax brackets for those making more than $1 million each year.

A nation divided will not stand, and pitting one class against another is not only vile, but guarantees that even if you win, you will reign over ashes. A Fair Tax is one that everyone pays equally, based on their spending, as that is something that is both needed, and must be done wisely and methodically. Other punitive taxes that punish the productive and unavoidable parts of life must be done away.

VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home

Our troops have done everything that’s been asked of them, and it’s time to bring them home to good jobs here. We’re sending $3 billion each week overseas that we should be investing to rebuild America.

An end to war has been a child's dream for as long as there have been wars and children. While peace is a noble goal, only fools assume their foes will be willing to comply. Peace has only ever been achieved when the evil truly fear the righteous. There is much work to be done to reform and strengthen our armed forces. We must roll back the so called "Peace Dividend" which proved not only premature, but disastrously hamstrung the logistical strength of our forces. We must rebuild our Navy and Air Force to be able to deliver our forces to the battlefield quickly and to support them throughout the fight. We must build up our battlefield engineering capability to both win the war and the peace. And we must secure ourselves at home against natural and man made threats. Then, we can stand on principle, fearing no nation, ceasing to seek favor with the enemy of our enemy.

IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation

A tiny fee of a twentieth of 1% on each Wall Street trade could raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment. This would reduce speculation, “flash trading,” and outrageous bankers’ bonuses — and we’d have a lot more money to spend on Main Street job creation.

Or, we can cease entrusting the fruits of our labors to those who would gamble it away, and instead entrust ourselves through education and our personal infrastructure to provide for ourselves and our kin, and then teach our children to do the same.

X. Strengthen Democracy

We need clean, fair elections — where no one’s right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn’t buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists’ revolving door in D.C., and publicly finance elections. Immigrants who want to join in our democracy deserve a clear path to citizenship. We must stop giving corporations the rights of people when it comes to our elections. And we must ensure our judiciary’s respect for the Constitution. Together, we will reclaim our democracy to get our country back on track.

We need not fear the responsiveness and powers of government if we retain that power for ourselves. Why appeal to your Congresscritter for favors you never authorized them dispense. The only thing that matters at the ballot box is the integrity of the vote, that the right to vote is preserved for those who have earned the rights of citizenship, and that those citizens have the right to speak their mind, as groups or as individuals.

First, what's with liberals always trying to copy the ideas of conservatives that work?

Second, it's all tax, spend, and a new wrinkle for the left: restrict political speech. I knew they'd given up on trying to persuade the American people, but I didn't anticipate that their strategy would involve trying to shut down the right's ability to persuade as well. I guess when you can't win the argument, shut it down.

Hey, but I'm not satisfied with that summary, so let me point out what's really going on point-by-point:

1. Spend more money on infrastructure. A good start. We need to update our infrastructure. Why is our infrastructure crumbling? Because Democrats set up a system where almost all tax money is taken just to be given to someone else. Real public spending is a tiny fraction of the budget. Let's take money out of entitlements and invest it in infrastructure.

2. Subsidize alternative energies. The Contract says invest, but really we're talking about corporate subsidies here. And we'll base which ones we invest in on political considerations.

3. Further federalize education and spend more money despite the fact that money has never correlated with educational achievement in our public schools.

4. Single payer health care. If the left is serious about this, then they should go in whole hog. Medicare alone spends as much per person as canada's Medicare or Britain's NHS. So if the left wants those systems, they can have them, at no extra cost. Just throw everyone into Medicare, but don't increase Medicare's funding. If you have to increase Medicare's funding, then that proves that you can't save money.

5. This is not really much of a policy proposal. Do they mean better enforce current laws? Or is there a new policy here?

6. Remove the cap on Social Security. How does this save Social Security, since if you lift the cap, benefits have to be raised? Do they intend not to raise Social Security benefits for people who pay more into it? If they don't, there goes the political viability of the system. People aren't going to be happy paying more in than they get out of it. I guess the pyramid scheme is crumbling.

7. Complicate the tax system. More brackets! Yay! More deductions too, because never in history have politicians been willing to pay higher taxes themselves. They always leave themselves outs, which other rich people stampede through, thus making the increased tax rates worthless.

8. End the wars. Okay. But why should we be spending $3 billion a week on domestic spending? Why not just, um, stop spending that money?

9. Tax Wall Street Speculation. The Tobin Tax has been endorsed by many economists and it might just be a good idea. I think a stiffer rate on short-term capital gains offset with making long term capital gains tax free below say, $100,000, might be a good idea too.

10. Restrict political speech, make voter fraud easier.

Originally Posted by adaher

Hey, but I'm not satisfied with that summary, so let me point out what's really going on point-by-point:

1. Spend more money on infrastructure. A good start. We need to update our infrastructure. Why is our infrastructure crumbling? Because Democrats set up a system where almost all tax money is taken just to be given to someone else. Real public spending is a tiny fraction of the budget. Let's take money out of entitlements and invest it in infrastructure.

I like that idea, but first we have to use that money to pay down our debt then go do the infrastructure stuff.

2. Subsidize alternative energies. The Contract says invest, but really we're talking about corporate subsidies here. And we'll base which ones we invest in on political considerations.

This is the biggest crock of crap I've ever heard of. Government as dumped billions into solar and wind and it has not saved one drop of oil. All our power plants are fired by natural gas or coal, no oil.

3. Further federalize education and spend more money despite the fact that money has never correlated with educational achievement in our public schools.

Agree we have poured billions more into education, yet we end up with less educated. Teachers unions.

4. Single payer health care. If the left is serious about this, then they should go in whole hog. Medicare alone spends as much per person as canada's Medicare or Britain's NHS. So if the left wants those systems, they can have them, at no extra cost. Just throw everyone into Medicare, but don't increase Medicare's funding. If you have to increase Medicare's funding, then that proves that you can't save money.

Repeal Obamacare, it is a job killer not a job enhancer.

5. This is not really much of a policy proposal. Do they mean better enforce current laws? Or is there a new policy here?

This proposal is to unionize America, and do away with the Right to Work States. Yes this will really make us more competitive in the world economy.

6. Remove the cap on Social Security. How does this save Social Security, since if you lift the cap, benefits have to be raised? Do they intend not to raise Social Security benefits for people who pay more into it? If they don't, there goes the political viability of the system. People aren't going to be happy paying more in than they get out of it. I guess the pyramid scheme is crumbling.

This is nothing more than tax the rich to pay yet again for more entitlements. The system was set up that everyone paid in an amount and based on that amount you received in benefits. This proposal does away with that system.

7. Complicate the tax system. More brackets! Yay! More deductions too, because never in history have politicians been willing to pay higher taxes themselves. They always leave themselves outs, which other rich people stampede through, thus making the increased tax rates worthless.

As the tax rates go up on the wealthy the money moves offshore, there is already trillion of corporate dollars sitting offshore that will not come back to the US unless they drop the tax. See higher taxes on the rich move the rich to tax havens. That's a fact.

8. End the wars. Okay. But why should we be spending $3 billion a week on domestic spending? Why not just, um, stop spending that money?

This is a liberal way of saying we don't need a military nor want to spend a dime on one. Liberals are willing to sacrifice good American lives to terrorist or any other country that may wish to invade us at the expense of no military. If terrorist want to take another 10,000 American lives they are willing to chalk it up as the cost of doing business, just a few American lives lost to have more money for entitlements for those of us who are left.

9. Tax Wall Street Speculation. The Tobin Tax has been endorsed by many economists and it might just be a good idea. I think a stiffer rate on short-term capital gains offset with making long term capital gains tax free below say, $100,000, might be a good idea too.

No, Speculators have a place in the markets, they single the future of the markets. Short term capital gains is already taxed at the ordinary income level. Long term has the lower rate as it should be.

10. Restrict political speech, make voter fraud easier.

"Immigrants who want to join in our democracy deserve a clear path to citizenship"

Translated, give all illegals citizenship, have an open border.

I went to the Website about these folks' plan.

"10 CRITICAL STEPS TO GET OUR ECONOMY BACK ON TRACK

I. INVEST IN AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE
Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks."

This is NOT a plan. It's more Rhetoric, Campaign Slogans, and Talking Points.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with anyone of their 10 points, but shouldn't a plan have specifics in it? Numbers? Figures? Which Bridges? How much do we need to spend on them? Where are those funds to be appropriated? When will the projects be allowed to get off the ground and start issuing paychecks to workers?

Does anyone know of any REAL Plans, from any side that does that? Please, reference or link any Plan that shows an all inclusive, detailed, numerical road map to providing jobs, ensuring our elderly and sick are well cared for, we are safe from foreign aggression, and secure in our homes. I know I can come up with a better "plan" in a week.

Thanks for your time.

Can't fault them for that, this is specific enough for a political statement except for one of the points. The Contract With America was about this specific.