If you think you could do a better job, which politician would you replace?

What’s up, is everybody afraid to let us see who you really are? Come on, you all sure have a lot to say about other people’s politics. Let’s hear about you and your ideas.

Okay, I will start. I would like to take the place of the Governor of California.
The first thing I would do is change the laws governing the Lottery, to give more of the money to the education system, and split the rest into more than one winner. I think one or two million is sufficient. Then I would look into the road tax and where they are going, because they are not going to fix the roads. Then I would settle in for a good hard look at the budget.

I would run as an ultra far right republican on an ultra far right platform and then when I am in power I would do ultra far right policies, which means abolishing all regulation, abolishing public schools, police, military, air traffic control, social security, medicaid/medicare, stop funding the building and repair of road, sewage, water and electrical infrastructure, abolish all workers’ rights and protections, etc., and finally give all control over to the corporations.
Then with glee would I watch the country burn, as the fools ‘enjoy’ their rightwing paradise.

@ragingloli Okay, that sounds real American to me. ??

Rahm Emanuel – the Democrats have the White House and House and Senate and they are kowtowing to the Blue Dog Democrats and “moderate” (AKA left of Joe McCarthy) Republicans.

@jaytkay I do believe Rahm Emanuel is an appointed adviser.

@RANGIEBABY Correct, I thought of that, too, but Rahm’s job is politics. So I Ithink he is a politician.

I would not replace any particular politician in my country, because I would not want to be a member of any of their parties. With the election next month, I have taken to ignoring politics all together because both candidates are so dull and populist.

@jaytkay But he can’t make changes. We need good people that can make changes for the good of the country, not their own pocketbook. I say throw all of them out and put people like us in there. I would almost guarantee things would be better.

@FireMadeFlesh Which candidates are you talking about? Is there an independent you could vote for. Even if they don’t stand a chance in hell, at least you would be speaking. If everyone felt like you, what would you tell them?

I’d replace the whole Capital. By the way they’re doing things, anyone could do better.

But if you want specifics…

I’d replace the President. I’d be one of those moderate republicans, or a right independent. You see, I’d adopt Republicans foreign policy (no fucking nonsense), sort of use the Democratic domestic policy (your security or your peace, you decide) and a totally different economic stance, cause neither work.

@Maximillian You go guy. I will vote for you, it can’t be any worse than what is happening now.

Thats what I’m thinking! I’ll take your vote!

all of them with sane people…

@Maximillian You got it. That is what I always tell my husband when he just complains and complains. I say, then do something, run for office.

@RANGIEBABY Terrific question. The problem is, if I try to replace a really competent politician, and I am not talking about one who promotes great policy but onoe who knows the system well enough to get things done, I would never be able to work the system well enough to do any good. If I picked some ninny who is an abject failure, I might be able to do a bit better, but the man behind the curtain would kneecap me if I actually tried to do what needs to be done.

So I would exactly follow @ragingloli‘s idea. I am afraid that the far right is growing in strenght and the only way they will ever realize how disastrous their dreams of paradise are is to have them put into place. After all, their small, under-reaching government, ultra-low-flat-tax paradise already exists. You need look no further than Haiti. That’s what far-right agenda delivers, but you can’t wake them up to it even by pointing out that the only countries in the world with their agenda already in place are all banana republics.

@ETpro I am afraid total destruction of our structure, is what is going to have to happen, to force a change. It is the change that concerns me, and who is running the change. Will it be lopsided or equal number of both parties coming to a grand majority in favor of the people of this country? Or will it be another party altogether?

@RANGIEBABY I keep working within the system, hoping it won’t have to come to that. But you may well be right. Where we have been heading for the last 30 years is steadily toward a corporatocracy where the largest corporations take total control. If that happens, it won’t matter a whit what parties are around , the corporations will tell all politicians what to do. Ones who don’t listen will just disappear, like things were under Papa Doc Duvalier or another famous Corporatist, Adolph Hitler. Small corporations will all be absorbed by the giants till there is just one massive monopoly, and it will attempt to take the rest of the world. It still doesn’t have to go that way, but that’s where we have been heading. We’ve just been moving there at a slow pace, the same way you boil a frog.

@ETpro I completely agree about the frog. In California the big corporations in agriculture have been taking over and running the little farmer out of business for year. The little farmers have had to form co-ops to exist. Same with the large super markets, the little mom and pop markets are very rare. I understand and agree we need to do something. And I don’t thing continuing to vote will be the answer anymore. The politicians (all of them) say one thing and do another. We need to hold their feet to the fire, instead of just saying oh well, he will be gone in 4 years and we will vote in another yokel.

@RANGIEBABY The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a truly great L. Frank Baum book (1900) and movie (1939). As it so powerfully demonstrated, the man behind the curtain only has power so long as nobody looks behind the curtain. Let’s expose the man behind the curtain.

@ETpro Okay lets. You can take the lead, and I will follow, as long as we get them all.

@RANGIEBABY This is going to take some time. I am working on a book. I may take some shorter shots on a blog, and post links from time to time.

I would replace the Governor of New York.
@ragingloli Ultra-anything candidates never get past the primaries.
In any case, sinking the federal government would just provide room for the state governments to stretch their legs.
And there is precious little that the federal government is supposed to be able to do with public schools.

@RANGIEBABY I’m talking about Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard. Independents still end up voting with one party or another on the bills brought to Parliament, and have little power to introduce bills of their own. I plan on writing on my ballot paper that I refuse to participate in compulsory voting unless a worthy candidate is put forward.

@FireMadeFlesh Maybe you can write “voted in protest” “we the people want more power”

For the first time in my lifetime I am seeing a government trying to work for the majority of the people. Not the upper wage earners but the working class people. We just need to open our eyes and see the reality of the legislation and programs that have been enacted. Cash for clunkers, 1st time homebuyers tax credit, energy tax credits, middleclass tax cuts, health care for all, low intrest loans and grants for energy efficient housing, a consumer financial protection agency, and the list goes on. It also has one thing in common, it’s for “we the people” So I would take out whatever party of no member I could find and continue supporting this administration to the fullest.

@thekoukoureport I did a report on this.

Despite all these grand things, the United States is falling deeper and deeper into a hole it digs itself. I theorized that if a nation started out with these great concepts (as the UK did when it started) then the nation does well. But if the government is setup without these things, and are not installed within the first 50–70 years of the country, then a transition from one to the other is extremely dangerous and detrimental. Its basically a death by transition. Socialist countries do very well should they start out that way. Capitalistic countries do very VERY well if done properly, but fail if there is an attempt to go from capitalist to socialist.

@Maximillian We aren’t going from capitalist to socialist. There is no massive move to nationalize private corporations. We are skipping the socialist step and heading instead for fascism—a corporatocracy where the power of big corporations and government are merged to the benefit of a tiny elite.

Not nationalizing? What do you call the healthcare overhaul? That is one of the biggest socialist ideas out there. Sure, we aren’t going all the way. But this is a step toward.

And the benefit of a tiny elite? They’re trying to do the healthcare for everyone. In which case it’d be towards communism.

@Maximillian If you can provide me an extensive list of hospitals, drug manufacturers, doctors and nurses who were suddenly nationalized and, since the health care bill was signed, now get their checks from Uncle Sam instead of the same private industry they worked for in 2008, then I will be more than happy to agree that an industry has been socialized. But you can’t do that, because all the bellowing from the right about a massive government takeover of heath-care was a BIG LIE. It hasn’t happened, and it isn’t going to happen.

The morning after the bill was signed into law, the same private enterprises as always still deliver our healthcare, and there is no plan anywhere in the bill to change that now or in the future. There was a lot wrong with the bill that passed, but socializing medicine wasn’t one of those wrongs because it never happened.

Every other free nation in the developed world provides health care to all their citizens, and none of them are communist because of it. You might want to look up the words socialism and communism. You are misusing them.

Our government spins it’s arrow toward many different ideologies. Afterall it has been a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is also reactionary, only regulating when the abuse of the free market has become so apparent that the people have no choice but to rise up and demand change. This is the one small problem with the free market argument, Business will always air on the side of profit over people. It has no moral obligation to this country or it’s citizens. Although it holds many if not more rights than you or me have as American citizens.

If you follow the market you will see that profits are starting to rise, markets have grown, the dollar has stabilized, corporations have saved almost 2 trillion in cash reserves, bonuses for all in the great cash grab of the recession and still the government has not nationalized anything. But the government is responsible for the 15 million unemployed give me a break.

Healthcare is for the first time a bill of rights for the people. It was written “of the people”, (supermajority 60votes in senate), signed into law a man elected “by the people”, a bill “for the people” yup sounds constitutional to me.

I seem to have not emphasised my point quite enough.

True, many industries have not been nationalized….yet. Perhaps not in the next 2 years. Not the next 4, or maybe in the whole administrations of the next 3 presidents. But it is the goal of uber-leftists (such as the Obama Administration) to nationalize big industry. You’re right, I can’t provide you those details, cause it hasn’t happened yet.

And I did not misuse the two terms. You used fascism as an extreme example, so I used communism.

And multiple economists have stated that socialism is a lesser communism.

“The morning after the bill was signed into law, the same private enterprises as always still deliver our healthcare, and there is no plan anywhere in the bill to change that now or in the future.”

Wanna know why? Cause the bill doesn’t come into full effect until 2019.

@Maximillian
Obama is a centrist, as are most of the Democrats, not an “uber leftist”. Not even close.

@Maximillian What exactly is the problem of a nationalised healthcare system? The way I understand it, the unemployed in the US have no access to healthcare, because health insurance is attached to employment. Wouldn’t a nationalised system help to bridge that void?

When public health was introduced here in Australia, it caused massive public debt and in part led to the only dismissal of a government we have ever had. Subsequent governments found a way to work the scheme into a sustainable format though, and now our system is (nearly) sustainable, and does not let people fall through the cracks.

@Maximillian When you lean way, way over to the right, so far to the right that you need to be propped up by a litany of phony right-wing talking points, even telephone poles appear from your perspective to be leaning far over to the left.

President Obama is a centrist who is actually under fire from the progressive wing of his own party for being too far to the right. We saw that today when 112 Democrats and even 12 Republicans voted not to extend funding for the Afghan War. Of course the funding passed by 308 to 114, but 30 more Democrats voted no this time, after the Wikileaks disclosure, than in the last funding vote. We saw that in the election of 2008 when he won by a margin of ten million votes in a center right nation.

And the Progressive wing of the Democratic party isn’t the far left. The far left is made up of the environmental terrorists, the war protesters who somehow condone violence to end war, the tiny group who actually do want socialism for America or even communism, those sorts. Compared to the extreme, radical right of today, the far left is a microscopic segment of our population. They have no political clout.

We have governmental dangers facing us. But becoming a socialist nation isn’t yet one of them. We are instead becoming a corporatist oligarchy, not a socialist state. All the numbers are now in regarding income, wealth and employment disparity over the past 30 years since Ronald Reagan launched voodoo economics. The data scream that loud and clear. And slowly, the big sleeping giant called the American Public is waking up to that fact.

The wealthiest 1% now own over ⅓rd of all the wealth in America. From 1979 to 2005, real, inflation adjusted income for the top 1% increased by 279% while income of the bottom 90% remained virtually flat. In fact, income for the bottom 60% fell over that time. See http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/politicaltruths/ and scroll to the bottom for the income chart.

If we keep cutting taxes for the rich, which Republicans want to do by passing a new law to extend the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 to 3% which are scheduled to end this year, we will hit some point where the bottom 90% will be so starved you will see a socialist uprising, and the Greedy Oligarchy Party, AKA GOP, will have their own bone-headed welfare-for-the-rich policies to thank for it.

Silvio Berlusconi.

@mattbrowne Aw, I like Berlusconi! You’ve probably never done this, but if you go up to an Italian Communist, you can say “Berlusconi” and he’ll fly off into a spittle-soaked tirade that is just too funny.
Also of note is the manner in which he seems to be the only Italian prime minster who can keep his administration from falling apart. And that is just sad.

@mattbrowne
I agree. He is a contemptible, corrupt, little proto fascist who should not be anywhere near a position of influence.

@ragingloli He owns three major Italian broadcast channels, the Mediaset franchise. :D
The only other ones worth mentioning, Rai1, Rai2, and Rai3, are all state-owned. Mediaset Italia1 plays more anime than any other station, and so is my favorite.

“Silvio Berlusconi has an extensive record of criminal allegations, including mafia collusion, false accounting, tax fraud, corruption and bribery of police officers and judges. Berlusconi has been tried in Italian courts in several cases. In three of these cases accusations were dropped by the judiciary because of laws passed by Berlusconi’s parliamentary majority shortening the time limit for prosecution of various offenses and making false accounting illegal only if there is a specific damaged party reporting the fact to the authorities.”

“L’état, c’est moi” is his motto. History seems to repeat itself. Europe got rid of the guillotine, though. Berlusconi will live.

@mattbrowne Someone tried to mush his face in not too long ago, using a tourist-bait model of the Duomo di Milano.

Reminds me of this

@ragingloli I love it!

@Nullo – I know. It was wrong. People have to use words when disagreeing with him.