Today I was told I could not-should not vote democrat this election

Today I was told I could not-should not vote democrat this election. I really don’t like being told what I can and can’t do-that would be a my republican acquaintance being a hypocrite.

So this is the point of why I should not vote democratic. America is supposed to be a Free market
That if a company makes a lot of money, and keeps it for themselves, to the point of greed, that is fine. If employees are willing to work for poor wages, that is their problem. They should join a union. That health care (though education was not brought up) should be private. Etc. Etc.

So I think of, yes, if I earned my money, it’s my right to do with it as I please.

But if business does what it pleases, it can unfairly concentrate power and wealth onto itself, and therefore control (wages among other things) and create an unequal society.
Then a person is more or less forced to work for that wage that is dictated to them, because the businesspeople(capitalist) friends are not going to offer higher wages to attract workers and allow them a choice. Wouldn’t that be dictating what a person can do as well?

Now, you have what I am accused of being, a socialist. Being accused of letting the government dictate what we can say or do to such drastic measures, I can’t even repeat the paranoid statements. I was told, if I wanted to be giving and fair, I can just volunteer my time or donate on my own.

I am new to the political arena however there is no doubt that my views are strongly democratic.

Why is it wrong for the government to make guidelines? The constitution says it shouldn’t? And that what was our country was based on? So we can’t evolve?
Knowledge is power, educate me.

in the rain?

unless you like spectators ...

sets of 2 protons and 2 electrons ...

Or a pair of guys named Ron ... America once elected a guy named Ron ...

Oh, God ... free association!

Get your free association here !!!

and with all the letters together???

I really don't think we can GO back to 100% laissez-faire.

Society has been burned one too many times in the past to not look over the shoulder of 'the power brokers'.

Though people of his ilk use Adam Smith as their "spiritual leader," Smith warns against the very type of power amassing, greed, and corruption which dominates our financial world today. They always seem to forget that part of his book.

I just love that word. Our military is socialist. The post office is socialist. The education system is socialist. The police department in your town is socialist. And the 700 billion bailout sure should like socialism to me.

They use that word as a catch phrase, and most of them do not truly understand what it means. Some people are just going to vote how they are going to vote, and they have their reasons and there is very little we can do about most of them.

They see the rights hold on power slipping, and they are afraid. Read Peoples History of the US by Howard Zinn. That will give you quite an education.

socialist organism ...

There are some very Socialist aspects of the NFL. And it works. And people keep coming back year after year to watch.

They play, many times, in cities that have taxed the citizens to pay for their arenas. So yeah, in many ways you have a good point.

no matter how much their teams suck ... they all get the same amount ...

You can't understand today without knowing how we got here. Zinn does a fantastic (if a bit dry at times) job of spelling out how America went from being an Enlightenment experiment in rights and liberties to a corporatist state.

I gave it to my daughter for her sixteenth birthday. Now she's in her freshman year in college, and she's an officer in the Young Democrats club.

I need to start somewhere...thanks for the suggestion of the book.

Capitalism is fine, it is in fact the most successful system, when it is strongly regulated. That regulation has to come from the government. It is the only entity large enough and powerful enough to keep the capitalists in check. However, if the government goes too far and adversely affects the ability of business to adapt and grow, capitalism stops working, the government stops working and the people stop working. What that begins, you democratically adjust the government through elections, maintaining an efficient balance. Socialist/communist governments did not have the option of reforming themselves, so they collapsed. Purely capitalist systems, oligarchies, do not have the capability or will to reform themselves and usually wind up being overthrown by the impoverished lower classes.

There is nothing in the constitution that says we cannot be a democratic socialist state - it is focused on the 'democratic' side of the equation. And it does, to a degree, support democratic socialism in that the preamble states one of the goals is to 'provide for the general welfare', which when written meant 'well being, economic health' not welfare as government giveaways.

there's my $.02.

to buy her products.

That's why we did better in Bill's time with his tax cuts for the middle class instead of the super rich.

Democrats cut taxes for those earning less than 200,000 per year so we can go buy stuff and stimulate the economy.

They just love to whip this out at election time.

The fact is that they just love to put up the guise of socialism when they don't want to give their money to the government by way of taxes. They LOVE to tell you that you should be able to choose to whom you donate, but forget to mention that they most always donate to charities and foundations that give you a tax refund for those donations, so no one is really getting any money out of the deal.

I tend to ask those "socialist" screamers if they enjoy driving on roads, having safe bridges, police and fire departments. It really puts them off because they know those things are paid for with TAXES. They can't just use things for free and not have to pay for them. That's as bad as the "bums" that don't want to pay taxes.

The Free Market people always say that socialism is bad, until they want to socialize their loses and have the tax payers bail them out. But how dare we ask for them give back! Those profits are private!!

and what about schools, special education, etc etc. I wonder if they would they turn down disability or welfare if the need arose for them or their children?

and i really hate being told what to do.

more democrats signed on for that....and not so much the republicans.

Apparently your friend believes in welfare.. well.. welfare for corporations. The corps are bleeding the country dry by putting their biz in tax free shelters overseas, thereby avoiding paying taxes that would be fueled back into the Country. INSTEAD, it's people like US who have their taxes raised, and pay more for property tax, car taxes, etc.

You are a democrat and you can vote any damn way you please. If your friend believes that corporate CEOs should make over 50 times what their average employee makes, while avoiding taxes by using tax-free offshore shelters (aka corporate welfare), then your friend must be filthy rich. If they're not filthy rich, then they're being screwed over by the republicans.. and they don't even know it.

Vote democratic. The economy and the stock market ALWAYS fares better under Democrats. Tell your friend to stuff it. :)

but it's fine if a corporation does

weird

This is simplified but...

is it better for everyone in the community to pay $1,000 in taxes

or

is it better for the super rich guy to pay $10,000 in taxes which he'll never miss and everyone else in the community to only pay $500? That extra $500 in their pockets is going to go much farther IN AMERICA than the rich guy's will. That's 18 people that can get their roof fixed or use as downpayments for new cars or spend at Walmart or on dinner or playing miniature golf, or all of the above.

The rich guy may even hire an extra person at his company or give the 10 people who work for him a raise if he has that $9,000 back but an extra $500 in 18 people's pockets could be seed money in 18 new businesses that will one day hire people and all adding something to the community.

ost Americans don’t know it but Thomas Jefferson, along with James Madison worked assiduously to have an 11th Amendment included into our nation’s original Bill of Rights. This proposed Amendment would have prohibited “monopolies in commerce.” The amendment would have made it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, or to give money to politicians, or to otherwise try to influence elections. Corporations would be chartered by the states for the primary purpose of “serving the public good.” Corporations would possess the legal status not of natural persons but rather of “artificial persons.” This means that they would have only those legal attributes which the state saw fit to grant to them. They would NOT; and indeed could NOT possess the same bundle of rights which actual flesh and blood persons enjoy. Under this proposed amendment neither the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, nor any provision of that document would protect the artificial entities known of as corporations.

Jefferson and Madison were so insistent upon this amendment because the American Revolution was in substantial degree a revolt against the domination of colonial economic and political life by the greatest multinational corporation of its age: the British East India Company. After all who do you think owned the tea which Sam Adams and friends dumped overboard in Boston Harbor? Who was responsible for the taxes on commodities and restrictions on trade by the American colonists? It was the British East India Company, of course. In the end the amendment was not adopted because a majority in the first Congress believed that already existing state laws governing corporations were adequate for constraining corporate power. Jefferson worried about the growing influence of corporate power until his dying day in 1826. Even the more conservative founder John Adams came to harbor deep misgivings about unchecked corporate power.

A few years after Jefferson’s unsuccessful attempt to incorporate this amendment into the Bill of Rights, the fourth Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Marshall, unilaterally asserted the Court’s right to judicial review in the seminal case of Marbury v. Madison in 1803. In practice this meant that the Supreme Court would have sole and unchecked power to determine what the Constitution meant. Jefferson was aghast. His fear lay in the knowledge that an unelected branch of government, one which is not subject to the will of the citizens, and is effectively immune from check by the two elected branches of government (Only one Supreme Court Justice has ever been impeached—none have ever been convicted and removed) was now solely responsible for determining the meaning of the Constitution. The meaning of the Constitution, and hence the very nature of our political system, was now in the hands of an un-elected and effectively uncontrollable body. “The Constitution has become a thing of wax to be molded as the Court sees fit” Jefferson lamented.

In 1886 Jefferson’s twin Constitutional nightmares collided in a train wreck which has effectively derailed true democracy in this nation and indeed across the globe as other nations have either copied our unfortunate example, or have fallen under the dominion of our multinational corporations—or both.. The precipitating event was the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. This case is cited to the present day as having conferred the status of “natural” as opposed to “artificial” personhood upon American corporations. In fact the Supreme Court declined to rule on the issue. J.C. Bancroft Davis, the Clerk of the Court, an attorney, who curiously was also a former railroad company PRESIDENT, used his position to simply write this conclusion into the head notes which summarized the case. Ever since this fateful event; this sleight-of-hand rewriting of the Constitution, corporations have had the status of “actual” persons whose rights are fully protected by the Constitution. It was a coup against democracy which succeeded because there were no real external checks and balances on the Court, and because the Court itself chose not to act to repudiate Davis’ rewriting of the Constitution. The thing stood. Precedent was established. Jefferson’s “thing of wax” nightmare had come to pass.

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