You are covering a lot of ground here, and you’re not even done with me! So I should start by saying that of course you shouldn’t take my political beliefs for granted. Perhaps I should tell you what they are.

The first thing I would say is that I am opposed to both parties because I believe they have become hardened in their liberal/conservative positions due to their quest for power above all things. Hence, serious needs are not being addressed by the folks we hired to do a job. The partisanship must end and the only way to break up this mess in Washington is to elect an independent President. Nothing else will get the politician’s attention.

Secondly, as a “boomer’ (born in 1946) from the generation of the 60’s, I happen to think like many others, that the government should be serving the needs of the people. Our modern society is totally unlike the pre-industrial revolution days. Some people watch too much TV and believe that every person in those “good old days” survived all by themselves due to their rugged individualism. That is absurd of course. Man is a communal creature and we band together to accomplish various tasks we could not do alone.

Fast forward to the 21st Century, when our vets return home from war, they deserve care, we cannot allow people who are elderly and have not been able to save enough money to be cast out into the streets. Social security is not perfect, but it is useable and workable. We also can’t have people dropping dead in the streets, so we need to solve the health care issue. My question to us all, politicians as well as voters is, how to make the government work to take care of the big items we cannot do alone. My personal belief is we can do more together than separately, but we have to use some common sense.

The partisanship has divided us up into for/against liberal/conservative positions that have plenty of room for compromise, not just for the sake of getting along, but because I think most of us Americans want to see smart policies that serve our needs and feel we can do that.

For the record, I think that we can devise so-called “liberal” policies that take care of our people while at the same time administering them in a “conservative” manner that spends the money in a wise way. The issues are many and the space for one comment limited, but I think the old adage of give the man a fish and he eats today vs. teach him how to fish and he feeds himself is a good one. So I do not hate the rich, and policies that favor job creation vs. govt. handouts are preferable. Indeed, I work for a company that was started by a man in his garage in 1965, and when I came to work here in 1987, it was about a $50 million a year business where I and 300 others have good jobs.

All of this leads to the question you have of why I see EQUAL obstructionism by both sides. I must state that I am not the only person who has observed this. It is probably the most agreed upon position of more people that, as some put it, “govt. is broken”! I agree but I identify the cause as power seeking partisanship. Every action in congress is immediately opposed by the other side.

The best example of that was provided by the Democrats when the President gave his State of the Union address a few years back and chided congress for failure to act on Social Security. EVERY DEMOCRAT stood up and applauded themselves for DOING NOTHING! It took John McCain and the gang of 14 to allow the President to get his court nominees to the floor for a vote.

The current obstructionism by the GOP is pure politics, but you cannot say that Reid and Pelosi are not provoking it. So much emotional anger is tied up in the war, and you must admit that the Dem. leadership has been putting into legislation items designed to provoke a veto. Honestly, the Republicans should have had many of their big spending ways vetoed by President Bush as well.

All of this proves my basic point, that the two parties are imprisoned by the ideological straight-jackets they have made for themselves, that we cannot get back to realistic ways to address the challenges facing the country until the power structure is shakened.

If your question is solely one of obstructionist voting and how many are on either side, then I admit that I have not kept count. To me, that is not important. Again, the most important issue facing the country is that the partisanship is caused by power seeking of the elites, and the result is a lack of leadership because everything they do (elites of both parties) is designed to secure advantage in the next election and create more power for the parties. I could almost bet that you and I could sit down and figure out where there are needs in the nation and come up with reasonable ideas on how to make policy that works. The Dems & GOP cannot, they are incapable of so doing!

So the issue isn’t which party is worse, it is how do “we the people” reclaim our authority by getting the hired help to pay attention to what we want, and how do we keep the freedoms we were given as our inheritance. That is the most important of all issues, because without those freedoms, everything else becomes subject to the will of a few men over the inalienable rights of us all.

You should check out a few pages on my website, particularly these two, ‘Partisanship vs. Leadership’ and ‘It’s Just Politics’. I’m looking forward to your further comments and I am not insulted by anyone who wants a rational discussion of who believes what and why. That’s the purpose of this website and the basis of our self governing nation!

Joe: The filibustering by the GOP is instant replay of the Dems when they were in the minority.

Joe, I don’t want this to come off insulting, but level with me here. How did you come to believe that this statement is true? Did you query the congressional record?

The trip you’re on is one I’m sympathetic to myself. If Hillary wins the nomination, I’ll vote for a 3rd party candidate. If Chuck Schumer was one of my senators, I’d vote for the Republican if he wasn’t a supply-side, tax cut maniac. The reason I’m a Democrat though, is because I still honestly believe that when it comes to taking care of Americans (kids, veterans, those at the low end of the pay scale, people who can’t afford college, etc.), there are politicians in the Democratic Party who are in public service for that reason specifically.

Obviously that can’t be said for all politicians of any party, but when it comes to what I want to see government doing with my tax dollars, the Democrats put the money to work in people’s lives, while Republicans for my entire life (born in 1978) have first and foremost been about distributing it to those who need it the least.

I’m very disappointed in the party’s unwillingness to stand for the Constitution in the face of tyranny, but I’m not yet cynical to the point where I believe that having Democrats in charge wouldn’t make a difference. In 10 years I could be in the same boat as you are…Kurt Vonnegut put it perfectly in his last book title, “A Man Without a Country”…I’m already halfway there, but I still have hope that things can get turned around.

So I’m not taking your political beliefs for granted. That said, I have to question how seriously you follow politics. I’ll address the rest of your comment later on tonight, but I think this is the most important point I could possibly make to you.

The number of votes that have not been allowed to take place thus far in this session of Congress has been, historically, the highest in the nation’s history. The Republicans are on pace to shatter every other record of parlimentary obstruction from the first Congress up until today.

Democrats were accused by right-wingers of being obstructionists while they were in the minority, but if you look at the number of times they required that a cloture vote be passed in order to end debate (which they could just as easily have done as often as senate Republicans are doing it today), it is the type of comparison that cannot, under any circumstances, lead to the conclusion that they are equally culpable in this.

So Joe, I’m interested in knowing how exactly you came to the conclusion that all things in the realm of congressional obstruction are equal.

The easy part is I agree with you on the bipartisan thing, and the screwing works in the other direction as well. Perhaps, if partisanship wasn’t the big problem it is, the bipartisan label wouldn’t sound so weak.

The filibustering by the GOP is instant replay of the Dems when they were in the minority. Partisanship is at the heart of my message, and I disavow allegiance to either party. That doesn’t mean I am not favorable to view that could be best described as conservative. I do prefer that approach but I give no free passes to the GOP. They are equally at fault with the Democrats for pursuing power and party loyalty rather than addressing the needs of the nation. I’m not surprised at their current antics in congress. It was entirely predictable, I think, inevitable.

The main issue of our declining educational system speaks for itself. Imagine the roads in your town are in good condition but need some attention. You vote in a bond to pay for improving and repairing them, but as time goes on, despite the money voted for, the conditions get worse, more pot holes, more ruts, more accidents due to the poor conditions. Wouldn’t you declare the project a failure and the expenditures wasted?

The declining test scores such as the SAT’s and PSAT’s, the continuing poor graduation rates, the acknowledged need for remedial classes at our universities for incoming freshmen, and our moving down the scale in comparison to students from other nations are obvious signs. The thread was started by the comments of this Dana Gioia from the NEA, that there is a problem. That there are troubles in our schools is more certain that Al Gore’s global warming.

The reason that I believe the teachers unions bear the most blame is that they have set themselves up as the authority for how education will be done in America.

They initiated the many different programs that changed the basic three R’s into experiments

promoted feel good about yourself over achievement

encouraged the abandoning of the idea of right and wrong for the concept of everything is equal so you don’t judge anyone or anything and threw reverence for God out the window

in general have advocated for disregarding the mainstream values of our heritage, attacking traditional marriage, advocating homosexuality, supporting and encouraging promiscuity, etc.

insisting on tenure shemes to protect jobs, rejecting teacher performance standards

fighting against and rejecting all attempts to provide vouchers for the poor, in reality resisting the private school and home school variations

writing, promoting, and praising of textbooks that distort history because they don’t meet their standards of fairness and political correctness

constantly asking for more money without giving us a better product

I don’t think you are disagreeing with me about the state of our educational system, but you seem to not want to hold the teacher’s unions accountable. Yes, the politicians have made this a football, but then again, I’ve been saying consistently that their partisan ways are not taking care of business.

Don’t say I never agreed with you, because that is spot on.

You’ve seen the system decline, but why are you laying that all on the teachers? If management is incompetent, do we blame the workers when a company collapses?

Partisanship to me is a situation where one faction is completely ambivalent to the desires of all others. We like to play King Solomon and cut the baby in half because it makes us feel like we’re rising above in some way, but taking into consideration the fact that Senate Republicans have filibustered every meaningful piece of legislation this session, requiring a cloture vote of 60 to even allow for a measure to come before the full senate for an up or down vote…

C’mon – bipartisanship has become the dumbest word in our vocabulary…it’s a word that translates into “sucker”. When Democrats manage to pass a bill in a “bipartisan manner”, it means they bent over and took a big GOP elephant nose up the rear.

Go ahead and prove that the Department of Education has wasted billions. Just saying it doesn’t make it so. Movement conservatives have been repeating the same message long enough for such accusations to seem legitimate even when they’re not.

You’re longing to be considered an independant, but it’s not working Joe. More thought and skepticism need to be put into your positions. If you’re of neither party, then sit down and research for yourself what’s what, and leave all talking points behind.

I’d read up on Ben Franklin and learn how he did it if I were you.

With regards to your posts 19 & 20 above:

Once again your anger towards me is showing as you either misrepresent or outright fabricate stuff I never said. Also, be sure to mention your superior knowledge of Constitutional court cases every time you attack me. I promise to admit you know more than I do about that, ok? I hope you’ll sleep better at night now.

You accuse me of saying everything is broken, which I never said of course. You are correct however that blame should be applied to those who deserve it. The elites who serve in government do so as hired help. If they do not do the right thing, I will certainly speak out about their individual and collective failure. Not only that, but I will also offer my solutions or proposals which you are free to disagree with and refute on every occassion. Why shouldn’t I speak out? For that matter, why aren’t you? Isn’t that what this site is for in part?
Whose country is this anyway? Is it their personal little kingdom, or an inheritance that belongs to us all?

1. I never said anywhere that I hate anybody.

2.I did not damn my country to hell.

3. Dems & GOP are wrong – I have stated many times that the Dems & GOP have pursued power rather than solve the challenges of the nation. I’m sure you can correct that with a thread on how our country is in great shape due to the policies of both parties over the last 60 years and show how I am wrong, not them.

4.Teachers aren’t doing their job – I believe it to be true that the teachers unions, not every teacher, are not serving the needs of our kids. I’ve been watching them for 40 years as the education of our H.S. & college graduates has continually declined . If you haven’t noticed that, you haven’t paid attention.

5. “Economists are liars”, not exactly what I said. I did say that they play games, i.e., they produce numbers depending on many different factors. Our own federal budget has many different categories; things like off budget, supplemental, deferred, etc. That is what I was referring to as you well know.

6.”leaders are worthless” another thing I never said. I have said that partisanship has replaced leadership in the two parties, but if you don’t think so, you could argue that our leaders are great statesmen and start that thread as well.

7.I never said money wasn’t important to education. I did say that the DoE has wasted billions of dollars because there has not been any improvement since its inception. I also live in NYS where the state lotto was created to generate even more money for the schools, and the kids in NYC are still suffering.

8& 9. Congress is worthless, govt. has failed. reread numbers 3 & 6 above.

10.Cops aren’t doing their job. Sorry MD, but I never said that either, you just made it up.

11.”Judges are always wrong”, well I never said that either.

Aubrey Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 5:57 pm e
Once again, providing more money doesn’t constitute a change in lesson plans. Joe is right when he says that schools have tossed, “Morality & God- out the door
Right & wrong – that’s judging others
How a child feels – more important than learning to apply himself
Basic 3 R’s – irrelevant to the new everything is equal ideology.”

The problem isn’t how much construction paper the kids have, it’s the content and quality of what they’re being taught.

You’re changing the subject. Schools are keeping thermostats below 60 in some areas because of a lack of funding. You want to talk about God and morality?

So getting the books and the heat turned on is not the most important thing?

It is this tactic in particular that causes us to solve nothing in this country. By you responding to an argument that schools are failing with a lack of books and supplies with the injection of religion, the whole debate collapses. It is a diversion tactic.

I never ever ever had religion taught to me in the public schools I went to growing up, but I did go to Sunday School once a week. I think I ended up with a good education.

By me just going there though, it gives in to the diversion, and legitimizes it, as we might now get into a thread where Catholic schools are put up alongside public schools.

Aubrey, it’s not as if this hasn’t been planed out for a long time already. This is Grover Norquist’s vision in action…you starve the public institutions of money and competent leadership, then take advantage of the situation however it is most convenient. In this case, it’s the underfunded public school system versus private Catholic schools.

How nice – - – a fair fight…with one school system unable to pay to keep the heat on in the winter, and the other one funded by chips off the gold mountain back at the Vatican.

Then pump the idea constantly that money has nothing to do with anything and the teachers are all overpaid.

Aubrey Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 6:06 pm e
As for Dr. Ravi Batra, I couldn’t find anything of his that says SS isn’t on life support. Maybe his books go into more detail but I am not going to run out and buy it.

I just read his books. To be honest, I’ve never read anything in the form of an article or otherwise written by him. The last one I got was .01 on Amazon…about 3.50 after shipping. Besides the library, that’s where most of my books come from.

I have to disagree yet again. You said, “To act selflessly is to act irrationally, to the detriment of self and society.” This is not the case. Actions that result in positives for yourself are the only rational acts. If I’m the butcher and make sure that my life is stable and secure, the village also benefits because of the service I provide. If I give my profits away to the village idiot and go out of business…the village suffers from the loss of my service. Such behavior is predictable, normal, and is the basis of free markets. This concept is also an argument to privitize schools. Just like the butcher, the schools and teachers will have to take ownership of their product because it is for their own good…which results in the greater good.

Have you read Ayn Rand’s “The Virtue of Selfishness”? You should pick that one up. I probably have it on audiobook, maybe I can burn you a copy. You’re speaking her language right there.

I can’t argue with it really. Where Rand and I become polar opposites, is when she gets into this whole concept of capitalism being perfect in its purest form, minus any and all government regulations. Movement conservatism has put her theories into action, and the results haven’t been good.

One big agreement between her and I is that the market is corrupted when the government picks and chooses winners and losers (think the awarding of contracts)…this is happening also when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. How political donations so easily turn into favoratism…

Crony capitalism is what this is, and it means that the best and most qualified players do not get what they deserve. It is called ’statism’…Cheney and Haliburton are textbook examples. Add in the lack of accountability, and it can’t be described as anything other than thievery.

Rigging the system to make oneself rich off of the people’s sweat is an anathema to capitalistic purists, but movement conservatism has always avoided having to deal with that one particular hanging chad. Between FEMA and the war profiteering, the chickens are coming home to roost on that score.

A political party cannot hang its hat on the virtues of capitalism for the sake of laziness or disintrist forever. It’s like a candidate proclaiming to be a super duper holy warrior, only to get caught doing blow and partying to death metal once they’re elected.

I have to disagree yet again. You said, “To act selflessly is to act irrationally, to the detriment of self and society.” This is not the case. Actions that result in positives for yourself are the only rational acts. If I’m the butcher and make sure that my life is stable and secure, the village also benefits because of the service I provide. If I give my profits away to the village idiot and go out of business…the village suffers from the loss of my service. Such behavior is predictable, normal, and is the basis of free markets. This concept is also an argument to privitize schools. Just like the butcher, the schools and teachers will have to take ownership of their product because it is for their own good…which results in the greater good.

The problem isn’t how much construction paper the kids have, it’s the content and quality of what they’re being taught.

Aubrey Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 1:49 pm e
Al,

I admit that I haven’t done any in-depth research in to SS, but, can you name one reputable economist who doesn’t have dim predictions on SS?

Ravi Batra is one that comes to mind right away. In fact, there are economists out there who weren’t buying any of the supply-side economics coming out of the Reagan administration, but I suspect that as media consolidation continues, the opportunity for a variety of opinion being heard decreases dramatically.

“Conventional wisdom” is always a formidable factor in the realm of economics. Every so often a great thinker will emerge with a contrarian view and be proven right. Ravi Batra is one of those people. This happens in politics as well. Groupthink is the condition.

An accepted norm for a big chunk of our lives has been that Social Security is a program about to self-destruct, but as I researched it more this past year, it was really mind-blowing how dishonest such a statement really is. My parents had this mantra about it all throughout my growing up, as if it were a foregone conclusion. Why wasn’t it known by mainstream Americans that while we were being told of Social Security’s insolvency, nobody was adding in the fact that the surplus balances (created by Greenspan and Reagan to head off a potential crisis in the future, this was the tax hike in 81 or 82) were being spent to cover the federal budget defecit every year.

That is a collective act of…something…and it’s bipartisan, this theft of our social security funds. Greenspan, Tip O’Neal, Gingrich, Bush Sr, Clinton, Reagan…it’s spanned across administrations.

Aubrey Says:
November 20th, 2007 at 1:52 pm e
Al,

I think your heart is in the right place in regard to education. We both agree, I think, that the end results leave quite a bit to be desired. The problem I have with simply tossing more money at this black hole is that it may feel better but there is no substantive change, just a more expensive version of the same, non-productive thing.

This is another instance where the conventional wisdom fails. It is not a “black hole” just because we’ve been told that’s what it is for the last 10-15 years. The truth of the matter is, schools are given much less funding per capita in 2007 than they were in 1980.

The first part of the deal was to convince us that public schools are a problem, and then when the funds get sucked out of the system year after year, to the point where teachers are having to buy their own supplies at Staples, schools are having to send kids door to door to hawk crap (not for a class trip) to afford books…

It’s a national disgrace. Especially since this all happened while the government spent its way into $7+ trillion in debt. Where did it all go? You mean to tell me (not you Aubrey, but whoever’s standing around the soapbox) that a tax break for the rich that we couldn’t afford was a better invesment of these funds than in our schools?