• Not a republican
• Unsure if I’m a democrat
• Feel like a libertarian
• a realist in the sense that I do not see how the Republican view will ACTUALLY work to the betterment of America and its people.

…

Am I a democrat?  I don’t feel like one. I believe people should EARN a living, not have it handed to them by some entitlement program.

Having said that, though…

I don’t see how de-regulation will help the middle and lower classes.

Why?   Because any amount of extra income created by de-regulation will manifest as shareholder profits.  READ: more money for the rich.

I don’t begrudge the rich their wealth, but the simple truth is that unless they pay the same %tage rate in taxes that I pay, there is not any equity in the system of levying taxes.

Think of it this way: If I pay 15% and it forces me closer to living out of a cardboard box, does that same 15% force the rich to face the same reality? Or is THEIR reality something different: unable to afford manicures and shoe shines at the airport terminal?

Okay. I will admit that migh be a bit “over the top” as a characterization. And yet, there is a kernel of honest truth there.

Let’s say I am rich and make in excess of one million dollars per year. My friend, by contrast, is poor, and makes ten thousand per year. After I pay 15% in taxes, I still have 850,000  dollars! My friend who makes 10k / year has, after taxes, $8500. I’m sorry, but when I look at the available cash of both of these people, 850,000 is a hell of a lot more money than $8500!

So who should pay more dollars in taxes: 1) the rich? or the 2) not as rich?

To understand the answer to this question, let’s look at the impact.

A family who is forced to live on $8500 / year (in our theorhetical example) is living a life that is far below the quality of that enjoyed by the family who is earning %85,000 / year (after tax).

What’s wrong with the rich paying their fair share of taxes??!!

Answer: Not a damn thing, except the element of greeed.

These days when you are referred to a specialist or start
with a new family practitioner, you are invariably handed a clipboard with a
medical history form clamped firmly in place. The form asks for information
like current prescription, past surgeries, allergies, and so on. You are
expected to show up to the appointment fifteen minutes early to fill out such necessary
paperwork. If you’re reading this and wondering why I am providing so much
detail, you’ve missed the point. Go back and see if you can spot it.

If you did and had trouble, don’t feel like you’re alone. I
imagine hundreds, if not thousands—or even more—people would give the same
answer. In earlier days I made that same error of omission. Now, ask yourself,
how many times have you had to fill out one of those forms? I know it is every
time you see a new doctor, but how many times was it? Perhaps as many as ten in
the last 12 – 24 months?

So here’s where  I
call bullshit: my family practitioner has that information, why do I have to
provide the same information to any other doctor I might need to see. Just take
the form I filled out and fax a copy along with the referral. Easy, huh?

Apparently not, because as I recently found out, the family
practitioners do not send that information when they send a referral. It gets
amazingly worse. To initiate the referral, I was told the doctor’s staff enters
a few bits of info, such as name and telephone number,  along with a brief description of why you’re
being referred, into a web site and the doctor you’re being referred to will
schedule the appointment.

But here’s my gripe: (BS!) The information exists, its in my
medical records, it was collected by the family doctor…so, why can’t it be
included in what is sent to the doctor being referred?

So I call bullshit.

Why do I have to do the doctor’s job for them, when they
make a hell of a lot more money than I do. If I am handed a new project, I have
to review the material and get up to speed. If a doctor gets a new patient,
apparently they want the patient to fill out a bunch of forms to get them up to
speed. The information exists in my records, but I have to duplicate it in
brief on a form to save the DOCTOR time?!

Bullshit.

Let the doctor do his or her job and read the flippin’
medical records. You might learn something about the person standing in front
of you asking for help.

But we have been brainwashed into thinking that its just the
most normal thing in the world to do: fill out the medical history form…again
and again…so the doctor can speed customers through the assembly line. As you
sit in the doctor’s office on your next visit, pay attention to how many times
that clipboard gets passed out to collect medical history information that
exists in people’s medical records already, but because the doctor is too lazy
to do his job and has somehow convinced you that this is okay, people will sit
down, sigh and begin filling out the form.

Bullshit.

Here’s a suggestion: next time you get handed the clipboard,
ask the nurse why you have to do your doctor’s job for him, then refuse to fill
out the form.

It will likely result with you walking out of the office
without having been seen, so you’ll need to plan for that and gauge your own
ability to make that choice based on your own health condition. At the very
least, speak out. Tell your doctor that you didn’t appreciate having to tell
him what he should already know based on the information in your medical
records. And don’t let him wiggle his way into making it an issue of your
non-compliance.

Bullshit.

This is about doctors who think the customer is the
insurance company, and we are so much medical baggage that must be borne. We
are CUSTOMERS! We might also be patients, but make no mistake that WE are the
customer. We deserve to be the benefactors of a doctor’s services, not play
runner-up to the insurance companies. So, don’t let the doctor turn the tables
on you. Stick to your convictions.

Hand them the empty form and direct them to your medical
records.

Why?

Because the Republicans turned the debt ceiling into a political bargaining chip and the world at large sees it as a dimension of the US’s economic stability that cannot be trusted.

Don’t agree? Read this CNN article.

And while everyone is pointing fingers, blaming congress, Obama, political parties, our political system in general, the stark truth is that the debt ceiling has become a political hockey puck.

I have grown disenchanted with the Republican party—which is not to say I have become enamored of the Democratic party. I haven’t. But clearly the Republicans are all about digging in their heels and refusing to do anything that might reflect well on the President—even if it means screwing the American people.

Thank you, Republican Party, for all you’ve done to us.

How else could it possibly turn out differently? Think about it. In order for the non-wealthy un-elite 98% to have an increase in their economic condition is if the wealthy elite 2% deign to share their profits with them. Given the well-known and long-established fact that the goal of businesses and those who own them is to increase their own economic condition and pay as little as they can in costs—in salaries and compensation. If they pay more to the 98%, their profits decrease (assuming nothing else changes, of course).

So how do the Republicans figure the 98% are going to prosper?

But here’s an even better question: If the people don’t have excess money to spend, how will they buy the products and services that sustain the economic status the wealthy are trying to protect?

So here we are in the middle of an economic downturn (softly stated, I know) where people don’t have excess cash to spend and businesses are tightening their belts. They’re cutting back, letting people go, eliminating positions, downsizing, consolidating—all manner of business decisions aimed at further decreasing the 98%’s ability to sustain the 2%’s economic status.

Yep. Republican trickle-down theory works. 

O.O

In theory, trickle-down economics works because if businesses are doing well, then so are the people who work for them. If big business can be super-profitable, then they will ensure people have competitive wages and compensation. So if that is true, why are companies who make ginormous profits creating jobs overseas by outsourcing the work to foreign countries? Where are the jobs for the US workforce?

This isn’t rocket science: if you give companies tax breaks and profit incentives to send jobs overseas, then they will send jobs overseas.

If the republicans are as committed to helping people get jobs, then why are they supporting legislation that gives companies tax and profit incentives to move jobs overseas?

See, this is what I don’t understand. So can someone please explain it?

There is a fundamental republican precept that people should live according to their earning power; that they should not be given “a free lunch” and handouts. In principle I agree with this philosophy and considered myself a republican for a number of years. But then my mother got ill and was no longer able to work. She had to rely on government programs for her subsistence. Were it not for Medicare, Medicaid, and other government-funded programs, she would not have been able to continue living independently. As I watched the G.W. Bush administration continue to erode government assistance programs, I watched my mother get closer and closer to being forced to either move in with other family members or be pushed into the street.

The republican view of the world requires that the CEO’s and other people in top positions of big business be something other than singularly focused on making a profit; be something other than all about the bottom line profits. It requires they be beneficent men and women who understand their role as national stewards of prosperity for someone other than themselves. As long as big business is allowed to seek profits at the expense of the American worker, their plans for economic recovery will fail.

I don’t like big government either, but tell me another way that big business can be encouraged to help the national condition and I’m all ears.

If you’re going to control big business, isn’t there a corresponding need on a fundamental level to do so through big government?

I don’t trust the average CEO enough to feel comfortable putting my opportunities for success completely under their control, and that is what I keep seeing as the ultimate conclusion of the republican agenda.

So can someone please explain how helping big business get bigger helps me, too?

I’d have some sympathy for her plight, if it weren’t for the fact that after making one of these well-publicized gaffs she then proceeds to try and defend what she gaffed about in the first place.

I’m not sure how she connected the dots between John Wayne and Waterloo, IA, but she did. I’m sure she was trying to convey an image and got a bit confused or tongue-tied or simply misspoke, but I couldn’t help wondering as I watched the left go out and make a big deal out of it (for the wrong reasons, I might add), if she would make similar mistakes when face to face with foreign leaders.

I’m not sure how she made the incredible leap from John Quincy Adams to Founding Father, but she did. And when called to task about it, proceeded to try and defend that position.

I could go on, but let’s leave it at simply these two. I wouldn’t want the right to think I’m attacking her unfairly, afterall.

So let me ask a question: Will she be face to face with foreign leaders and cling to some notion of having not said or done something incorrectly/inaccurately?

If she is viewed by the right as being in any way presidential, then we are in big trouble as a nation. I don’t know about the rest of you, but the kind of person I want running for the office of President of the United States to be someone who:

• Admits the mistakes he/she makes
• Has enough personal integrity to refrain from mudslinging and finger pointing
• Focuses on getting results in a bipartisan system
• Calls people to task directly for obstructionist loyalty to political party and disregards the national condition

I don’t care if you’re a Republican, a Democrat, a Tea Partyist, Independent or a member of any other political party–real or imagined–but I do care if you put loyalty to your party over loyalty to our Nation. We have a President in office who has been the target of obstructionist partisanship since the day he was sworn in.

You tell me what is unfar.