Level-headed Leadership
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Monday, September 18, 2006 22:25
VIEWED: 2995
PAGE 1 of 4
Open to some ideas here.
Who does everyone think would be a good level-headed type to steer America back onto a sane course, away from this trend of serial war, megaspending, and free for all corporate mergers, govt-corporate entities, civil liberty stripping, (or as I like to call it, anti-freedom) ... and back to (or forward to) and america in which people can swing their arms, the state doesn't drain 'em dry, and geopolitical stability is actually a goal of our foreign policy.
Anyone got any ideas?
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Yes.
Ron Paul.
http://www.house.gov/paul/
He's a strict Constitutionalist, follows the original interpretation and meaning, believes in sound money and logical, common sense measures.
How this guy has managed to not "have an accident" I do not know, but he's a breath of fresh air in the current political climate.
For all the good that my local favorite, John Conyers has done, there's still some critical disagreements and i could not reccommend him for any position higher than he currently holds due to lack of experience and a certain partisanship that would only further divide our bruised and battered nation.
I don't completely agree 100% with Ron Paul either, but I am of the firm opinion he's the only candidate who could take the shattered remnants of this partisan warfare and weld them into a cohesive government that did something close to it's intended function.
-Frem
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Brian Schweitzer, the governer of Montana.
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Mit Romney looks the best to me at this point.
But I take objection to some of your comments put forth here.
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Who does everyone think would be a good level-headed type to steer America back onto a sane course, away from this trend of serial war, megaspending, and free for all corporate mergers, govt-corporate entities, civil liberty stripping, (or as I like to call it, anti-freedom) ... and back to (or forward to) and america in which people can swing their arms, the state doesn't drain 'em dry, and geopolitical stability is actually a goal of our foreign policy.
serial war - Afghanistan is a no brainer. Anyone who doesn't understand why we went there, I can't talk to you. Iraq, is debatable. But I'll remind you of the 10+ yrs of a bogus cat & mouse games Saddam played w/ us and the U.N., while the Food for Oil scandal was happening. Also, it was official US policy that 'regime change' in Iraq take place, compliments of Bill Clinton.
megaspending - we spend too much. I agree. Next
free for all corp mergers - Let the free market play itself out. We busted up Ma Bell, for example, and after yrs of smaller businesses, they've naturally gone back to the way they were.
gov't - corp entities - not sure i'm on board w/ that either.
civil liberties stripping - I've noticed none of my civil liberties stripped.
stability in geo-politcs ? Like the US has control over any of that ? There's 2 things wrong here. We have an Islamic problem going on world wide which seeks to DEstablize geo-politics . Also, there's the false notion that 'stabilty' is the prerequisite for "peace" . Sometimes shackles must be thrown off. The absense of fighthing is NOT the same as a free and peaceful wrold. China or N.Korea can quietly suppress its citizens. It's stable, but at what cost ?
People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss
" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "
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Mike Rowe, the host of Dirty Jobs on Discovery Channel. 
Wait. Hear me out. Husband and I were watching Dirty Jobs last night, and one of his crew had a "Mike Rowe for President" t-shirt on. I pointed it out and Husband said "I'd vote for him."
He's level headed.
He's not afraid of hard work.
He's not afraid to get dirty.
He's pretty middle of the road, not extreme on either end of the spectrum.
He's for the little guy, and doesn't seem to be too fond of "Big Business."
He's perfect.
"Have you ever been with a Warrior Woman?"
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Frem,
Did we have a disagreement about something? I don't remember. No disagreement about this. Great idea. I think we could really use someone with some economic savvy. Ron Paul for president gets my vote.
As for how he hasn't had an accident, I suspect he knows where the bodies are burried, and has a timed recording set to launch if he doesn't hit the reset button every so often.
Conyers is decent, I like him as well, but not the level head I think we need. I saw him lose his temper at a bunch of larouchees once (marvel at the concept) black larouchees (marvel at that concept too) but the scene showed certain divisive biases.
Soup,
I don't know enough about Schweitzer to make a judgment, I think he needs more of an introduction for the rest of us. People tend not to pay to much attention ot other people's governors except in the really populous states.
Auraptor,
Serial War was a term which started bouncing around in the Clinton days, and I see no reason to think that it's out of date. If you take the post-gulf war world, it's going to lay down pretty much like this: Kuwait, Clinton's first Iraq capaign, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Clinton's second Iraq campaign, Kosovo, ... [switch to Bush] lead into the the Iraq war bombing campaign, Afghanistan, Iraq, now lebanon, which isn't totally divorced from us, and a lot of talk about Iran and Syria, and some idle talk about Venezuela.
These conflicts are categorically different from the strategic strikes of the reagan years, each conflict seems to escalate, and it's collectively become a policy that a fair number of people before me have termed 'serial war.'
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free for all corp mergers - Let the free market play itself out. We busted up Ma Bell, for example, and after yrs of smaller businesses, they've naturally gone back to the way they were.
This is not natural force in action, it's a pro-merger policy in action. Breaking up ma bell resulted in instant competition which was generally viewed as a success. Merger mania was another big Clinton thing, and now it's a Bush thing, it's one of the things which makes me say Bush is Clinton. In old school republicanism there was a concept called anti-trust which helped keep competition alive. Capitalism is a system which attempts to immitate natural evolution, but it's important to remember that it *is* an artificial construct, there's nothing natural about money, interest, shares, stock options, dividend, etc., these are all things we've put into place to try to push the evolution into a regular flow. Some things like patents, copyrights, etc., are even more drastic, and made need reforming, because they may be steering us off course. But's it's tricky business setting your society up so that it works well with an open and free market. If you're not too careful, you could end up with a monoplistic soviet-style company state.
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civil liberties stripping - I've noticed none of my civil liberties stripped.
I admit it's not as bad as the panick mongers say, but it's an issue. certainly there are points at which the Bush admin has violated all ten amendments of the bill of rights.
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govt./corp entities
Any coporation which essentially has one customer, which is the federal govt., is basically no longer a true part of the private sector. It is no longer surviving by open competition, or even controlled competition given the state of bidding these days. The problem here is that the merger of corporation and govt. as you have with Halliburton taking over the job of the quartermaster's corps (another clintonism) is that you have a corporation lodged in a position where the govt. can't function without it, and the govt. is such a large customer, that the company can no longer function without the govt.
It's important to remember Mussolini's words from which we got the term 'corporatism,' or 'corporativismo' which went something like this: Fascism is more appropriately called 'corporatism' as it is the perfect merger of corporation and state.
the problem is
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Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Soup,
I don't know enough about Schweitzer to make a judgment, I think he needs more of an introduction for the rest of us. People tend not to pay to much attention ot other people's governors except in the really populous states.
Aw man. That sounds like work
. Okay. I'll put some stuff together later today.Schweitzer doesn't have enough experience to run in 2008. But he could be a viable candidate in 2012 or 2016.
A short teaser on my rationale... I don't think a Republican can heal the rift. Not when the Republican party has been working hard over the past five years to widen divides in this country. But I also don't think a blue-state Democratic candidate has a chance in hell of being elected. Especially if they are from an urban area. The electoral system gives too much advantage to rural areas and there is tremendous distrust of any big city politician. I also don't think that members of Congress can gain wide bi-partisan support. It's the nature of Congress for successful minority party politicians to have to engage in compromise. So it's very easy to portray any member of Congress from the minority party as a flip-flopper because of previous compromises. And the last piece of the puzzle is that the candidate has to have had some success at a high enough level in government. So that leads me to look for a successful Democratic governer of a rural red state.
I'll type more later on why Schweitzer is successful.
Oh, and a final note, I think the rehabilitation of this country has to come from the west. As far as possible from DC, at any rate.
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Did we have a disagreement about something? I don't remember.
Aw, I'm crushed, you don't remember me savagely ripping into you...
Actually we agree on some things, disagree on some, and agree TO disagree on a lot of em, cause some of these religion threads I won't touch with a ten foot pole.
But really, if everyone agreed with everyone else all the time, we'd be an ant colony - only through the friction of differing ideas and ideals can progress be made for humanity in general, so long as that friction doesn't cast us into chewing each others throats out.
Diversity is both our greatest strength, and greatest weakness, as a species.
Soup ?
Seriously, check out Ron Pauls' history, and consider your suggestion as a possible Veep ?
It's a thought, I dunno enough about your guy to say whether it'd be workable or not, but just an idle thought.
-Frem
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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Soup ?
Seriously, check out Ron Pauls' history, and consider your suggestion as a possible Veep ?
It's a thought, I dunno enough about your guy to say whether it'd be workable or not, but just an idle thought.
From looking at info on Ron Paul's site, I like his stance on civil liberties. Where I disagree with him, and this is a point where I disagree with libertarians in general, is on economic matters. I'm a big government kind of guy, I want the federal government to handle the big problems and look out for the little person. So I'm not too interested in shrinking the size of the government, I just want to make sure we have a big government that runs efficiently. Conversely, I don't want to see government grow all willy-nilly like, either.
I might consider voting for him for President based on his unwavering principles. It would be interesting to have veto power in the hands of a truly-principled believer in small government. It would force Congress to cut out a lot of the pork that greases things now. I just want to make sure that we don't eliminate positive social programs in the interest of shrinking the government.
It would be a tough call for me. I really think we need a President who firmly believes in protecting our civil liberties. And Ron Paul looks like he would do a great job in that regard. Is that enough to override my disagreement with him on fiscal matters? I'm not sure.
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Okay. Here’s some background info on Schweitzer. He’s a Democrat who was elected to office in the same election that saw Bush beat Kerry by 20 points in Montana. He has one of the highest approval ratings among governors. He brought together environmentalists and hunters through his stand for conservationism. He wants to make America more energy independent.
He got almost everything he had on his wish list during his first year in office.
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excerpted from http://www.billingsgazette.com/newdex.php?display=rednews/2005/04/21/b
uild/state/64-gov-leg.inc
# Promote the production of ethanol in Montana by mandating its use in fuel.
# Require groceries to put up signs telling people the country of origin of most meat sold in stores, even as Congress had passed a similar requirement but postponed it and is considering making it voluntary.
# Reinvest money in state's colleges of technology, the two-year schools.
# Put $80 million into Montana's K-12 school funding over the next two years, which Schweitzer called one of the largest increases in state history.
# Set a balanced budget that will have a projected surplus or general fund balance of about $80 million as of mid-2007, without raising taxes and that honors the spirit of the budget spending cap.
# Eliminate the property tax on business equipment for some 13,000 businesses by raising the exemption from the tax to $20,000 in business equipment, up from the current $5,000.
# Crack down on methamphetamine use in Montana through a series of measures that Schweitzer said amount to the strongest package in the nation, apart from Oklahoma's.
# Help improve access for hunting and fishing by making permanent the Habitat Montana, block management and the fishing access enhancement programs.
# Reinstate the Made in Montana program, which the administration of Republican Gov. Judy Martz had discontinued, to promote items produced and grown in Montana.
Schweitzer listed two disappointments:
One was a failure of his ethics bill to prohibit legislators, state elected officials and their top staff from becoming lobbyists until two years after they leave office.
…
His second disappointment was the defeat of his proposal to create a Corps of Discovery, funded by $400,000 of state money, to create a bipartisan committee of business executives and lawmakers to ferret out an estimated $60 million in waste and unnecessary duplication in state government.
He has been described as a, “populist, pro-choice Democrat.” Salon did a long interview with him last year that is a good read (although, note the long part). It can be found here: http://dir.salon.com/story/news/lotp/2005/04/19/montana_governor/index
.html
Here are some quotes:
On gun control.
“I understand that the Democrats in the big cities, on the East and the West coasts, have a grave concern about gun control. Frankly, as it turns out, so do Republicans. [California Gov.] Schwarzenegger supports gun control, I think. [New York Gov.] Pataki certainly does, [former New York Mayor] Giuliani does, most of these East Coast Republicans do. So I can appreciate that they've got a problem in their inner cities. But that's not what we have out here in the flyover zone. We have guns because we like them. We have guns because in some ways it just kind of defines who we are. We like having guns around. It's not necessarily that you're out shooting -- it's knowing that you could if you wanted to.”
On religion.
“I went to high school in a monastery. I understand Catholicism. But I don't have a need to carry my religion on my sleeve. It's something I have in my heart. … If the question is, Is it important in the flyover areas, the Midwest and the West, to understand something about God, I think it is. I think people are likely to be more God-fearing. Are they in church on Sunday necessarily? No. They might be fishing. People have different ways of getting close to their maker. In Montana, lots of time that means getting out.”
On the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“As you
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