
Democracy For America in Orange County reminded me that they have a couple of rallies this week that people may be interested in attending. The purpose is to Tell Washington to Rebuild the American Dream.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH_QaqhueZw#![/youtube]
Newport Beach
Tuesday, August 30, 4pm
Join Democracy for America, MoveOn and other progressive groups to tell Rep. John Campbell, “Don’t Kill the American Dream.” Instead, Invest in America’s Infrastructure, Create 21st Century Energy Jobs, Invest in Public Education, Offer Medicare for All, Make Work Pay, Secure Social Security, Return to Fairer Tax Rates, End the Wars and Invest at Home, Tax Wall Street Speculation, Strengthen Democracy.
Signs will be provided and bring your own too! We will meet at the corner of Newport Center Drive and Santa Rosa Drive, outside Rep. Campbell’s office (610 Newport Center Drive). Parking is free across the corner in the Fashion Island shopping Center. For more event info, visit http://dontkillthedream.com or contact Susan Kopicki at sckopicki@gmail.com.
Please join us and bring a friend or two!
Huntington Beach
Wednesday, August 31, 12 noon
Join Democracy for America and other progressive groups to tell Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, “Don’t Kill the American Dream.” Instead, Invest in America’s Infrastructure, Create 21st Century Energy Jobs, Invest in Public Education, Offer Medicare for All, Make Work Pay, Secure Social Security, Return to Fairer Tax Rates, End the Wars and Invest at Home, Tax Wall Street Speculation, Strengthen Democracy.
Signs provided or bring your own. Location: Outside Rep. Rohrabacher’s office,101 Main Street, Ste. 380, Huntington Beach, CA 92648. Contact Cyndy Fowler, cynfowler@gmail.com.
More info at http://dontkillthedream.com and http://www.ywcdc.com/.
DFA is also looking for new ideas for signs & chants…
Here’s my suggestion for a new sigh and chant, taken from page one of the “Contract for the American Dream”, use the heading for the third paragraph.
“AMERICA IS NOT BROKE”
That’s actually a good one, LaRouchie! Van Jones has been saying that a lot, too.
I hope my friends on DFA saw this in time.
I only have one question for all you radicals and liberals who like to call themselves Progressives. How is that “American Dream” working out for you? Still got a job, your home and your savings hasn’t been wiped out by the stock market? If the answer is “Yes” then you are doing better than millions of other Americans, who are not so fortunate. When it comes time to step into the voting booth in November 2012 and put an “X” beside the name of a candidate, do you really think these people are going to vote for more of the same? I have no crystal ball, but serious doubt it. Bottom line here Progressives is that the vision of your fearless no-leader Obama of redistributing the wealth of America to the masses and creating the “New Society” where government is all things to all people, is not only going to be killed, but buried so deep it will never be heard of again.
Pat — yes, yes and yes. I also recognize that President Obama stopped the situation from getting significant worse. The wound was a bleeding spigot when he took office and it was a big mess to clean up. We have lasting damage to our economy caused by Republican polices. The more important question for conservatives, Republicans and Tea Party Types like you Pat is, are you going to support more tax cuts for the rich that failed to produce jobs, are you going to cut programs that benefit the lower to middle class that make it harder for them to achieve the American dream or not, and are you going to support candidates who place politics ahead of the welfare of the country?
Dan, might I remind you that the “bleeding spigot,” was at the end of four years of the Democrats controlling both Houses of Congress. GWB gets his share of the blame for not providing leadership to stop the spending. The “good ol boy,” Republicans deserve to be whipped in public for their “go along to get along” philosophy coupled with ear mark special interest spending. However, “those who have the gold rule,” and clearly the Democrats with control of both Houses of Congress ruled like they have not had the power to do in many years. Bottom line Dan, is that they all screwed the pooch and should be fired or worse.
To answer your question, “No I do not support more tax cuts, nor do I support tax increases.” Revenue is not the problem, spending is the problem. So where do the cuts come from? If I were King, every last Federal Program would go on the table for review and cuts. I would use a zero based budget process and each Agency and Program would have to prove it’s worth line by line. To start with, within twelve months, I would get us out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, Korea and all the other places where the United States is playing policeman to the world. Bring home the troops, discharge most and use others to shore up our own border. Reshape the military to a lean mean organization focused on the type of conflicts we will see in the future. Junk costly Programs that even the military say they don’t need, but Congress likes. Eliminate overuns and mismanagement in Defense Contracts and hold people accountable for their mistakes. Do those things and 25% of the DOD budget could be cut immediately. Next, I would then cut the State Department Foreign Aid Allocations by 50% and stop using tax dollars for nation building in places that hate America and will always hate us. Next, I would eliminate entire Agencies that are not critical to providing key services and delegate the responsibility to the States. Education is one that comes to mind, but there are many others. The above barely scratch the surface of where we could start and you notice I never mentioned Social Programs. There are many of those which need to be reworked and fine tuned to eliminate mismanagement, fraud and abuse. Do that and you could likely increase benefits to those people who really need it. I didn’t get into increasing revenue, but it could easily be done by overhauling the Tax Code to eliminate loopholes, special interest deductions and subsidies, which allow Corporations like GE to pay no tax. I might even take a hard look at the pros and cons of dumping the income tax and going with a Value Added Tax as a more fair means of raising revenue. Any or all of the above steps would focused on the goal of putting together a “Balanced Budged” in the immediate future and not at some mystical point in the future. Such a projection of stability and getting government under control and out of people’s lives would most likely provide the shot in the arm needed to get the economy moving and most importantly create jobs.
Sorry but the proposal which will likely be coming in the near future of more government stimulus and running the National Debt up further is not going to get the job done and likely will cause us more misery. The answer is not more government, but rather less government with better leadership and vision. Sorry, but I simply don’t see that coming from Obama and have yet to see it in any of the Republican’s.
I am sorry to inform you, but you are not qualified to be a member of congress. You have proposed actual possible solutions and have the non-biased realization that neither party has a solution to offer us.
The only way you qualify to be a politician is to speak in generalizations blaming everyone else.
I am sorry if I am so cynical, we have no hope with the two parties calling the shots. It really comes down to our corrupt congress that needs to pay someone back for all that money they were given. If we did not have that problem, I am sure that we could get most of the way to where we need to go with plain old common sense.
The smartest thing in your comments is the zero based budget approach. It makes you think about every dollar you spend.
I do cringe at the thought of a Value Added Tax. It does put an unfair load on the least able to pay. Our tiered approach to the income tax is not all that bad. It would be much better if the tax code was not 17,000 pages and 5.5 million words. How about making it only a few pages long. Eliminate all of the tax credits and deductions and make the form 1040 a post card. The only problem with that idea is the unemployment increase due to the people not needing accountants and Turbo Tax to fill out their tax forms.
Ltpar has not been given a truckload of cash to influence his thinking. Because of that he has produced clear thoughts and ideas that would help to get us started on the path where we need to be.
If we all were a bit more conservative, we could be able to afford being a bit more liberal.
Obama sure does make you miss to good old days of Jimmy Carter.
Too bad that the “smart Democrats” don’t learn history or understand the Constitution. Nothing like a big old central government to solve all of our problems. Only problem is that the founders never intended for the Federal Government to be anything like the mess we have.
It’s time to look at what we can do and that is cut government, cut the wars, charge Korea to keep troops there or leave, cut, cut, cut.
Proof that Democrats are really dumber than stumps is the failure of California that has been led by the Democrats for 40 years.
Maybe it’s time to let the Libertarians give it a try. They might be crazy, but the 2 main parties have proved that they are too corrupt to fix what they have caused.