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#1 way to return our government to the people: adhere to the Constitutional requirement that only Congress has the power to declare war--and then stick to it. The last 50 years of American wars has resulted in bloody, vague and indecisive results, precisely because no lawful authority has established the purpose for the war. If the will of the people won't sustain a declaration of war, America shouldn't invade. And for all our bs on stateless actors, every country we are militarily active in has a government. The War on Terror BS is exactly that; an excuse for our government to act in ways that are illegal.
in a word
trade unions. their conspicous absence in the united states is what makes us so different from france.
banding together is how me made this country great, and the absence of unions will take us back to what we were, a nation of starving labor slaves.
see those poor mexican people picking lettuce in the field, that was us b4 and its guna be us again.
This bill is being presented in Wisconsin. I read it as bad news for the people. Is this being presented in other States?
This bill would authorize the State of Wisconsin to take part in an interstate compact with other states, pledging that our state’s electoral votes will go to the presidential candidate who wins, not the popular vote of Wisconsin, but the national popular vote. If you think your vote is just one of many in the state right now, imagine what little impact your vote would have if it was only one of millions and millions of votes! With the Electoral College, your vote is a higher percentage of the total votes from the state and has a greater impact on the presidential election. With a national popular vote, the states with the highest populations determine the president, and then Wisconsin is forced to ratify their vote, regardless of whether that candidate was the choice of the majority of Wisconsin voters.
Corporations were never meant to have the same rights as the people. See the constitution, and read a little about Corporate Charters, especially as written in the early days.
Step one. Fire every career politician.
Step two. Determine what our tax revenues are and make that the max our gov can spend. In other words no more spending in the red. If they need to raise taxes? Put it to the voter.
Support PayGo. No new programs unless there is a way to pay for it (Budget neutral).
The first place to start would be with that non-activist, strict construction, just like the Founders Supreme Court, clean bill of health GOP Supreme Court, that just ruled that corporations are people too.
No the Supreme Court didn't "just" rule that corporations are people. It's been a long standing view of the Court that corporations have the same legal standing as "persons," not people or citizens.
Just as so many others in this thread have also stated. Giving the power back to the states is the easiest way to fix almost all the problems we have with the current government. As long as each "states" has citizens that can vote with their feet, it will be pretty easy to see which states are doing it right, and which states are doing it wrong.
The failed states will have intense competitive pressures to do things right for the people.
How the federal government grew to be as large and all-encompassing as it has become is an astonishment. How the constitution has become so utterly distorted is an amazement to the very concepts of freedom.
And one last thing. I find it utterly silly that Massachusetts already has a univeral health-care system. Yet, the rest of the democrats are sitting around whining, pretending like the only way to do healthcare is nationally. The day I see even a third of the states with a universal healthcare plan, will be the day I begin thinking about supporting a federal healthcare plan.
Until then, let the states have the power, just like they were supposed to.
Who "gives" power back to the states when it's already theirs? The federal government is not Constitutionally in the business of granting powers to the respective states. In fact, just the opposite is true. The central government exists only with the consent of the states and all powers not specifically alloted to the central government by the Constitution are reserved to the states.
If the states want to "get back" their power, they have the perfect legal right to do so. However, since there are 50 different states, representing the will of 50 different groups of citizens and millions of points of view, don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. There is no uniform, collective Will of the People; there is the tumult and confusion created by 300 million different wills.
But, the beauty of our system of government is that when enough like-minded people get together and make themselves heard above the noise, the government must respond. The system is self-correcting, over time, and when The People get angry, things change. The system still works.
So, you want to know how to "return" the government to The People? LOL It never left and has nowhere to return from! The government has been ours from the start and still is. If it's doing things which a majority of us don't like, it's only because we allowed it to do so and we can force it to change anytime we like. We've always had that power and still do. If government is "out of control," it's only because we've let it slip from our grasp, it's only because we've dropped the reins, it's only because we've been too busy or not concerned enough to steer the ship of state.
It is apparently clear that our government is drifting away from the people of the United States and is being largely controlled by heavily-financed special interest groups.
Lobbyists, lawyers, corporations, trade organizations, and unions, to name a few, have a greater influence over the decisions being made that affect the citizens of the United States than the power of the fractured voters.
How do we turn it around? How do we return to the small government as laid out in the Constitution? Have the American people totally tuned out opting for the remote control, swallowing the pop culture message and all its glitz over moral fortitude?
I have great concern over the direction of our country and see parallels to the state of the country at the beginning of the last century. Teddy Roosevelt was the great moralist who took on his own privileged class and sought balance. He exuded traditional American values of hard work, commitment, loyalty and honor.
Who, if anyone, could help return the government to the people of the United States?
Heres the thing, what Teddy Roosevelt did, was BIG government at the time.
You can't have it both way folks. I'm assuming you're a Republican, because of the "return to small government" and "as laid out in the Constitution" statement.
Well, regulation of the markets like Roosevelt did, is not small government. At the time Teddy took on the big New York monopolies, people felt that it was completely out of bounds for a US President to do just that.
So what are you justifying today? Breaking up the big banks, but federal order into smaller branches? Not only would that destroy our economy for 10 years or so while they reorganized, but it would probably bankrupt the government from lack of tax income, and having to federally back so many smaller bank groups.
Its going to take time, to turn this ship around. President has stopped a artery bleed, and it is now just a flesh wound. Thats saying something, but he has put us further into debt to do it.
The fastest, best, and easiest way to save our economy is to cut our military spending, in half.
Military spending is almost half of the United States budget. Imagine cutting our budget by 25%. It'd not only allow us to start paying down the debt, but it'd allow us to pay for some more government jobs, where the money stays at home.
Just seems the best option to me. I know its a radical idea to Republicans to cut our standing Army down, but I am tired of being the worlds police officer.
All this "less taxes" and "small government" talk, and no one talks about cutting the size of the military. I say we have a 5 year plan. In 2.5 years, we timeline having all troops out of Iraq, and Afghanistan. Then, over the next 2 to 5 years, we cut defense spending by half. It should be mandated that half of the saved funds goes directly to paying down the debt, and the other half of the money is spent on either R and D for new technologies that are American, or new Federal construction jobs, where all of the money stays here at home.
Thats my idea, and I can't believe people don't see it.
Heres the thing, what Teddy Roosevelt did, was BIG government at the time.
You can't have it both way folks. I'm assuming you're a Republican, because of the "return to small government" and "as laid out in the Constitution" statement.
Well, regulation of the markets like Roosevelt did, is not small government. At the time Teddy took on the big New York monopolies, people felt that it was completely out of bounds for a US President to do just that.
So what are you justifying today? Breaking up the big banks, but federal order into smaller branches? Not only would that destroy our economy for 10 years or so while they reorganized, but it would probably bankrupt the government from lack of tax income, and having to federally back so many smaller bank groups.
Its going to take time, to turn this ship around. President has stopped a artery bleed, and it is now just a flesh wound. Thats saying something, but he has put us further into debt to do it.
The fastest, best, and easiest way to save our economy is to cut our military spending, in half.
Military spending is almost half of the United States budget. Imagine cutting our budget by 25%. It'd not only allow us to start paying down the debt, but it'd allow us to pay for some more government jobs, where the money stays at home.
Just seems the best option to me. I know its a radical idea to Republicans to cut our standing Army down, but I am tired of being the worlds police officer.
All this "less taxes" and "small government" talk, and no one talks about cutting the size of the military. I say we have a 5 year plan. In 2.5 years, we timeline having all troops out of Iraq, and Afghanistan. Then, over the next 2 to 5 years, we cut defense spending by half. It should be mandated that half of the saved funds goes directly to paying down the debt, and the other half of the money is spent on either R and D for new technologies that are American, or new Federal construction jobs, where all of the money stays here at home.
Thats my idea, and I can't believe people don't see it.
So we should just arbitrarily cut a certain amount out of the defense budget without any regard to whether or not our enemies do likewise?
The threats are still there. There are still people and groups who mean us ill. We can't just simply ignore those threats, disarm ourselves and retreat back behind our oceans. That's been tried before and it's always led to a larger, more destructive war in the long run. It's called Isolationism and it's never worked yet.
Yes, the defense budget can be cut and substantial savings could be made by re-organizing the whole thing, from top to bottom (for instance, why does the Navy need it's own ground troops?) and Secretary Gates is in the process of reforming the acquisition system right now, which is another good, needed step. But to cut defense spending without any regard to what's needed to defend the nation would be terribly short-sighted, don't you think?
In any case, calls for defense cuts as a matter of principle simply says that we think our domestic spending is more important than national defense, without which all the other spending we like amounts to little more than re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
So we should just arbitrarily cut a certain amount out of the defense budget without any regard to whether or not our enemies do likewise?
The threats are still there. There are still people and groups who mean us ill. We can't just simply ignore those threats, disarm ourselves and retreat back behind our oceans. That's been tried before and it's always led to a larger, more destructive war in the long run. It's called Isolationism and it's never worked yet.
Yes, the defense budget can be cut and substantial savings could be made by re-organizing the whole thing, from top to bottom (for instance, why does the Navy need it's own ground troops?) and Secretary Gates is in the process of reforming the acquisition system right now, which is another good, needed step. But to cut defense spending without any regard to what's needed to defend the nation would be terribly short-sighted, don't you think?
In any case, calls for defense cuts as a matter of principle simply says that we think our domestic spending is more important than national defense, without which all the other spending we like amounts to little more than re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The United States spends 41.25% of the worlds money on military expenses.
Our closest competitor is China, AT A STAGERING 5.8%!!!!
If you count England and France together, you get 10% of the worlds military pie.
So we are spending more than 8 TIMES what the next highest country is in military spending.
Sorry, that needs to be cut back to at least 20%, don't you think? Our "enemies" right now, are kids with explosives strapped to their chest, and there is little a guy with a M-16 can do about it.
Yes, I served in the military, and our soldiers deserve to make more money, but we don't need to have the number of soldiers, tanks, and other crap we'll never use.
Why do you think we scrapped the F22? We didn't need any more, because the plane would be obsolete by the time we ever got around to using it.
Stay on the edge technologically, but lower spending on the standing army. Work on unmanned drones for air, and ground attacks.
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