Are you Liberal, Conservative, or Independant and why?

Kimball, classical liberal and federalist!?! Ha, why not call yourself a constitutionalist while you're at it?

As a side note, your analogy about Christianity supporting conservatism because of the tithing is weak. You can do better.

 

It's not that black and white. Money is king. Private corporations use the government for subsidies and tax breaks while the government uses the corporations to fund their political campaigns.

 

So it's a co-dependency, like a symbiotic relationship.

Peace,

V-03

 

Exactly. It's why nothing ever changes towards less money for campaigns and less money for government subsidies but towards less transparency and more government subsidies.

The elite have it all figured out and the monied interests are just continually making it worse, not better.

Jonathan Rauch wrote two great books about our current system: Demosclerosis and Government's End.

Eye opening and pretty sad. But there it is.

 

I'd have to disagree there. Campaign finance reform was moving along quite seriously for several decades before the baldly partisan Citizens United decision. Now, I'd certainly agree that there is too much corporate influence in politics. But it's not as if this is some all-powerful and insurmountable cabal that has been moving everyone around like pawns from the beginning. There are plenty of well-meaning, high-ranking government officials that are fighting against. And they've had some real successes over the years, so that even as recently as two years or so ago, you could point to times when the situation was a lot better than it was now. There are specific people driving this. You can vote them out of office, or prevent more people like them from being nominated to long-term posts. This isn't so hard to deal with.

EDIT: To bring it back around to the main topic of this thread, there's only one of the three ideologies listed in the title that refuse to acknowledge that this could, even in principle, be a problem.

 

Yeah, it's all the conservative's fault.

Jabbawocky
There are specific people driving this. You can vote them out of office, or prevent more people like them from being nominated to long-term posts. This isn't so hard to deal with.

You can vote bankers, lobbyists, and bureaucrats out of office? And if it isn't so hard then why is it getting worse?

 

Money can't buy elections. Which is why my governor isn't named Meg Whitman right now. However, politicians routinely sell out. I don't see that as new or particularly unique to one party.

 

Sometime I wonder if it's not getting worse, and just becoming more transparent.

 

I actually agree quite a bit with Quix, though I watch MSNBC regularly. Some of their hosts make me vomit I shall. I do watch all three 24/7 channels but Fox is hard to watch because of their overtly obvious right wing propoganda, CNN is kind boring, and MSNBC gave Al Sharpton an full hour.

Ugh.

 

Hey, all, corruption in government is nothing new. Taft's government was the most corrupt in American history (he was president in early 20th century), so I don't think much has changed, we just find out about it more easily now.

 

When the Fed Reserve transfers billions of taxpayers money to prop up faultering banks, but both Ron Paul and Barney Frank teaming up can't get them to disclose the actual amounts transfered until two years after the funds are transfered, I dont think that's very transparent.

And when you look at where the funds went, to Saudi bankers and numerous other overseas firms, I think we have corruption on a massive scale that no election will change.

When you have corporations endowed with personhood, with the same rights and privileges as a flesh and blood individual, no election will change that.

But anyway....I'm not a liberal or a conservative or an indepedent. I'm a radical. A small "L" minarchist.

But I also realize that is a small minority view and not practical in today's polticial framework.

So I'm pragmatic and vote for the moderates usually. Sometimes even democrat(voted for my congressman Jim Matheson last cycle). I figure they will stay enough away from social meddling like the right wingers and take enough of a pragmatic approach to economics(like Bill Clinton did to his great credit) that it's good enough. Does less damage.
The problem I had with Bush and now with Obama is they're true idealogues. Bush was a firm believer(or at least he surrounded himself with true Wilsonian foreign policy accolytes) that he spent our military to exhaustion. And now you have Obama spending us into oblivion and following the war strategy of his predecessor.
I want Clinton back.

 

I don't know why people give the government such a hard time about being corrupt when corruption is just a natural by-product of politics. And I mean that to say that you can have very "corrupt" people in office who are in truth still very good people.

Corruption (if defined as deviation from strict adherence to a pure and clearly defined set of ideals) is inevitable in an environment where interests which would be mutually self-supportive or non-relational in a prevailing situation of abundance can also exist in a state of competitiveness (typically brought on by scare resources i.e. budgets). Having to choose where to allocate scare resources inevitably means

-someone else didn't get what they want
-someone else who probably shouldn't be benefiting probably is by virtue of circumstantial/smart positioning
-yet another party who shouldn't be harmed might be just by virtue of their proximity to the issue

Cue accusations of "corruption".

"Scare resources" resources also applies right down to the number of votes that have to be fought over if you want to stay in office.

Corruption is a natural by-product of any arena defined by scare resources and is easier to be accused of the more causes you claim to support (which in politics means just about everything).

A saint is someone who picks only one cause to support and therefore can only be judged based upon his actions towards that cause, however villainous he may be towards any other.

People shouldn't expect politics to be anything other than corrupt and just set that aside most of the time. In truth, many politicians are probably just "corrupt" because the nature of the occupation doesn't allow them to be (over even appear to be) anything else.

 

You're right that the Federal Reserve isn't that transparent, but they and the Intelligence/Defense are really the exception and not the rule.

I also disagree with a Corporation being a legal person, but that's not corruption. It's creates a lack of accountability for business leaders, but that's not corruption, and it's definitely not corruption in the federal government.

The United States has one of the least corrupt governments in the world. Latin America, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Russia, Europe... these are not bastions of ethics. Of course we have our crooks, like Ensign and Rangel and Joe Walsh and that fridge guy in Louisiana, but for our federal elected officials most scandals are related to sex, not money or abuse of power. There are politicians who ask for too much special treatment for their states, like Bill Nelson and Mary Landreau, but that's legal.

In fact, the drop in corruption is probably related to the increase in partisanship. Principled and less corrupt politicians are much less likely to compromise and make a deal.

 

WHAT? All due respect man, and there is a lot of it, but remember 2000? Florida? All that? I know that certain connections had a lot to do with it, but you can't tell me that money didn't play its part.

 

Voters still determine elections. You can like candidate X enough, and hate candidate Y enough, that even if $5 billion dollars are spent trying to tell you that candidate X is horrible and candidate Y is wonderful you would still vote for candidate X.

 

I am a Monarchist because I am a Christian.

I don't know what that makes me in terms of "liberal", "conservative", or "independant" (sic).

 

Oh, I'd say you can sway things, but more that it's not as though if you just pour the money in, you can win. I just got to watch a candidate outspend her opponent by at least $100 million and lose after just barely cracking 40% of the vote. You can sway an election that was already going to be competitive, but there's more to it, is my point. Saying it buys elections and saying it can influence elections is nuance, I'll agree, but I think it's an important one.

And with Florida, I think that was primarily an issue of influence and connections, moreso (don't think one can easily bribe supreme court, for example) and Florida not being consistent/objective in what should count as a vote.

 

You're anology with Whitman is inaccurate though because that was her own money.

I'm talking about special interest money buying influence to already elected officials.

Like this: Obama raises more cash from Wall Street than any other prez cand in 20 years

All while attacking them.

 

To address your unspoken complaint, I've nowhere implied that Democrats are perfect. But really, given that you just made a long post bemoaning corporate influence in politics, why are do you seem to bristle here? Conservatives are, factually, and unabashedly, espousing views that claim even the paltry restraints we have left are fundamental miscarriages of justice. Legislation forwarded by conservative policy makers and judicial decisions by conservative judges are directly responsible for many of the things you are complaining about.

Both sides can have a problem, but that doesn't mean they both have it equally. And it's not being overly partisan to point that out.

A number of reasons. Again, though, I'd argue that it actually wasn't getting worse. Relative to other periods in our history, we had actually improved for quite a few decades, before the trend began to reverse itself. My point is not that this should be a cake walk. No problem that gets this big is. Rather, it's that we are not fighting some monstrous, intangible, unstoppable force of nature. There are people that have put forward solutions that move towards fixing it, and there are people actively exacerbating the problem. If this is seriously the most important issue for you, then vote in the people who are doing the former, and vote out those doing the latter. Don't just wail about how terrible it all is and then act as if it's disconnected from the specific policies that our few hundred elected representatives espouse.

 

Ok, if we want to talk about buying influence over officials, rather than using money to sway elections, then that I'd agree with. Heck, the California legislature's routinely paid off with trips financed by various groups, that don't even enter into campaign financing.