Where is the money going to come from....

[unkachuck]

....to fund our domestic agenda?.....universal healthcare, daycare, environment, etc....

Are you willing to pay more taxes, (or give up some BushCo 'tax-cut')?....

Wanna tax the rich?....but those boys are hard to nail down....

Or are we just going to sit on our thumbs for the next four years and watch Kerry pay-down a deficit and finance a war?.....(assuming Kerry wins)....

[Robbien]

1. Where is the money going to come from

to support Bush and all his rich cronies?

Are we going to get another tax cut for the rich while the rest of us get a ten buck tax cut?

When Bush starts four more wars in his four more years for fun and profit of his defense contractor buddies, are you going to send in your kids to be the cannon fodder?

[MichiganVote]

3. Where should the money come from

It should come from the rich. The very, very rich.

So long as we have Bush, we have a deficit. So long as we have a deficit, middle class and upper middle class will pay it off, very very slowly. Our taxes go up in the states because the Fed's now do one thing very well. They exist to support the existence of major corporations. Revolutions in Russia and other parts of the world have begun with fewer of the super rich than we have in the US. We have the same amount of labor unions we had in the early 1900's. Among the poor and lower middle class, income has risen about 6% in the last decade. Among the super rich, they have tripled the value of their holdings.

We are being screwed in this country. Rise up middle class. Save the values and morals for later. The super rich will dictate everything to us if we continue this way. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G

Nobody gives anything without asking - ask for a regime change in the US, vote against Bush

[lapfog_1]

2. Despite what some seem to think of Big Dog here

(and I just read a few negative comments about him)...
he did get most of the economy right (should have pressured Greenspan
MORE to deflate the overblown tech bubble).

Anyway, YES, we rescind the tax cut for the wealthy. Supply side
was bogus in the eighties, and it's bogus now. Consumers drive
the economy, not investors. If Consumers have extra dollars, they
will spend them... and the investors will come crawling out of their
mansions to invest their money, EVEN at higher tax rates!

We need to recreate the middle class here (it used to be union
jobs in manufacturing). We do this by taking the service sector
jobs and paying those people a *lot* more money. Service sector
is hard to outsource, unfortunately its not skilled, so there
aren't barriers to entry (which means lower wages for everyone).

We invest in new technologies (as a federal FUNDED programs).
1. renewable energy
2. Nanotechnology
3. Biotechnology

We retrain our computer scientists to get the skills to move into
these areas (Info tech is, for the most part, done).

And we reduce spending on the military (and we CAN do this
without reducing our ability to wage war... it's just that any war
we wage in the future should have a majority of the population of
the PLANET behind us... sharing the costs and the risks)... which
implies a sensible and sane foreign policy.

Also, while we are talking about welfare (sort of), let's start
eliminating corporate welfare. We do not need to pay farmers to
not grow things, nor do we need to subsidize them growing things
where Nature did not really intend things to grow. Like, say,
rice in California... actually, a whole LOT of stuff in California.
That's not to say farmers shouldn't farm, we just need to be more
rational about WHAT they try to farm, and the amount of water needed
to farm in certain regions.

Within a period of 8 years we will be back to running a surplus
and reducing the debt. And we should be able to afford a basic
universal health care... but we should spend on preventative
health care... it's a whole lot cheaper to prevent than treat.

Oh, yeah, and we should start thinking about modifying some very
silly tax laws, like the basic home mortgage deduction. It
has artificially inflated the basic cost of home ownership (because
you can write off up to 40 percent of your payments)... this
has to done carefully to not cause a housing collapse, but we really
shouldn't have the federal gov doing social engineering.

And let's not let corporations avoid taxation by moving operations
overseas. In fact, let's tax them on what they SELL to U.S.
consumers, not on what they make or where they are based. Hmmm.
I also want to tax profits too, so this needs some thought. You
can't tax corporations too much as we need them, just as they need
us... I just don't want to see "them" turn into a bunch of
stockholders in developed nations around the world plus a bunch
of (pick your favorite overpopulated 3rd world country) folks
building the stuff to sell here and handling the service calls, etc.

Mind you, I *want* India and China to do well, we just need to move
a lot more gradually into the global economy thing. But I don't
have the answer to that.

Oh yeah, we should have automatic bracket adjustments built into
the income tax code based on inflation, as well as regional adjusters.
You cannot live in the Bay Area (northern California) on less than
$36,000 per year. That's poverty line here. We shouldn't
even tax people making this much. After rent and car and insurance,
gas, food, and electricity (thanks, Enron), $3,000 a month is gone.
And that's long before savings or kids or school. My pet peeve.

[unkachuck]

6. Yes, but I bet you....

....as soon as Kerry takes the oath of office, the cry will go out to the Left, 'Love to help you buddy, but we've got a deficit and war to fight'.....and to this we reply?....

[Robbien]

7. No change for many of us

Many of us are supporting Kerry through to the election, and the election only.

Once he is in, he is no longer our guy. I truely expect a rise of a third party, a progressive party.

[unkachuck]

8. I'm not holding my breath either....

....waiting for Democrats to deliver new social programs....we've been living off of the social programs of the 1930's through '60s and I always thought those programs were the bare minimum.....

If the Dems couldn't do it when Clinton had the House and Senate in his first term, will they ever be able to produce new social programs this country so desperately needs?.....

[Robbien]

10. No, the Democratic Party has given up the populist programs platform

Clinton was the first one to abandon that plank. Both the Republicans and Democrats are for capitalists and globalization.

[sandnsea]

11. Actually, that's bullshit

New social programs and improvements to others have been happening consistently for a long time. Medicaid has been constantly expanded and improved, with SCHIP being Clinton's improvement which was originally written by Kerry. Clinton also passed an immunization program, AIDS programs, nursing education assistance, early childhood programs, and a whole lot more. And a whole lot of them came right from John Kerry. Sometimes I think we have too many small programs and would be better off if some of them were merged so they wouldn't cost so much in administration.

[unkachuck]

13. Yes, but....

.....if they had passed Universal Healthcare 90% of what you said would be there plus 43 million people would have health coverage....

[sandnsea]

14. yes, but....

The American people DON'T WANT SINGLE PAYER. The best we're going to get is expanded coverage, a little at a time. And when people see it works okay, then they'll be ready to change.

[unkachuck]

15. yes, but, but.....

....the American people I know would LOVE a Single-Payer system.....only the people and corporations making money off the current system don't want it.....and of course they spend big money in Washington to help our representatives to think accordingly....

[sandnsea]

16. Not the ones I know

We voted it down in Oregon even, 60/40.

[mmonk]

4. How about a little

less money for WMD's and more for domestic programs and the actual needs of our troops like body armor? We can only destroy the world so many times over.

[Massacure]

5. The Military is a money hog filled with a bunch of arrogant bastards

It needs an overhaul.

Then you need to pay of the national debt. Once the debt is paid off, you start loaning money out to other people instead of borrowing it. You earn money on the itnerst from that, which will allow us to have lower taxes.

[Djinn]

9. could it be more expensive than Bushco's permanent warfare?

and apparently (I havn't looked into it all that much) your current system of half baked healthcare is no cheaper than the fully funded public system in place in countries across Europe and in Australia.

It also isn't THAT hard to make the VERY rich and corporations pay their taxes, generally laws already on the books just need to actually be enforced, for all their threats to leave if taxes are too high are these people REALLY going to want to go live in Botswana to aviod paying tax? You can also leave the tax level as is and just stop paying MASSIVE amounts in corporate welfare, how about diverting the public money being given to companies to screw the enviroment back into repairing it - with no change to the bank balance at all?

Besides what exactly is it that Americans have got against paying tax? - and it's not just a republican thing apparently - most Americans would die if they saw the tax portion that comes out of an Australian's pay packet each week (we pay our tax each payday rather than getting a big bill once a year) yet for that relatively small amount we know that when our elderly relatives get sick they'll get treatment regardless of whether they have insurance and they wont get a bill in the 100,000 range for a transplant. Our schools have books in them not metal detectors (although certainly schools in poorer areas probably have less resources - it's nothing like some US schools) and kids know how to read and write when they leave them. It's not that bad a deal when one looks at all the stuff our taxes pay for - sure some of it is crap, personally I'd prefer NOT to spend taxpayers money on the Institute of Sport, but that's what a community is, for everyone not just for some.

[Zorra]

12. I dunno. But I notice Canada hasn't elected a conservative government

for quite some time, and they have national health care, subsidized daycare, subsidized education, environmental protections, etc. Most Canadians I talk to are grateful that their system is so much better than ours.

Then again, their Prime Minister didn't just spend gazillions of dollars on a useless war.