There are so many points being made that seem redundant to just "me too" on, so I'll just try to list some of them: some sort of universal coverage, civil rights (including expression, identity, and not torturing, repealing PATRIOT Act, disengaging from unnecessary war), economic responsibility (including some tax hikes to help pay off our massive debt), and clean energy policy. I'll also tack on net neutrality and religious freedom (including atheists/agnostics). Actually, what I really like about this political discussion is that it really focuses on issues more than the politicians themselves (some of these political blogs are freakin' nuts).
Regarding Clinton v/ Obama (as that's what its down to at this point, because while McCain is the least offensive Republican, he's dumped most of his credibility as a moderate over the last eight years), I'm going to have to slightly favor Obama on the basis that he's gone to great lengths to explain his goals (even if not always specific policies) on a wide array of issues, and he's conducted himself well in a very heated race for the nomination (while hardly a deciding factor, the nuance he demonstrated in his pastor speech is very reassuring).
Quote from: tekla on January 20, 2008, 01:01:26 AMhttp://www.newstarget.com/z019659.html
Based on the content in the article, I'd question the prudence of eliminating the income tax in favor of a 33% sales tax. That comes in quite regressive (poor people buy goods, rich people buy services), and the US is already has the most inequality of all the developed nations. And the same goes with privatizing Social Security (imagine what that would have done back in 2000 right before the stock market crash). Squeezing the lower/middle classes will only accelerate a downfall by starving those groups of resources. Things *are* bad economically, but it's a little less dire than that (we are more likely to go out with a wimper of declining currency rather than a hard crash), and conservative solutions are essentially what got the US in this mess (national deficit as a percentage of GDP was stable/declining from the '50s to the '70s, but shot up under Reagan, Bush Sr, and Bush Jr).
Quote from: Chaunte on January 29, 2008, 09:38:22 PMKids today have nothing to spark the imagination - something that will interest them to go into math, science & technology. It's one of the main reasons why manufactureres are producing overseas - a better educated work force.
Regarding education in general, part of our success in educating children is having them be interested in it. It's not like there is anything intrinsically wrong with them -- however, many parents are often not taking an active role to support (not push, but support) them in this regard (sometimes out necessity due to other obligations, sometimes out of indifference), and you have the advertising market do their best to get their targets to put education aside and just buy buy buy without worrying about consequences.
Imagination and creativity in a broader sense can also be supported by (1) providing children a broader range of activities and possibilities and (2) having the wisdom to not prohibiting harmless behaviors (by actually caring to test and verify what's actually dangerous).
As for what government and schools actually have the power to do, obviously getting NCLB and other stratifying overhead out of the way will help, but introducing optional positive elements (adding a late round of bussing so that students can more easily participate in extra-cirricular activities, which will encourage and empower teachers to sponsor more of them, including a variety of seminars and surveys, formal and informal, on a variety of subjects... including voting methods).
