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04-12-2008, 10:50 PM
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#16 | | Member
Join Date: May 2006 Location: Waterloo, IL
Threads: 6
Posts: 363
| So does that include each Congressmen or women who also voted for the war? You trying each and every one?
You also going to try each and every politician who has ever lied or thought to have lied while in office? | 
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04-12-2008, 10:53 PM
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#17 | | Member
Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: South Portland ME (born in Singapore; soon to be Charlottesville, VA!) Gender: Male
Threads: 132
Posts: 981
| Quote: |
Indict the people responsible, try them as war criminals, and have them pay the debt.
| I still have to roll my eyes at people who call for impeachments of policymakers they don't like.
Note that impeachments are for high crimes and misdemeanors, such as maladministration. Incompetency is not one of them. The proper remedy for incompetency is not re-elect them, or to ask for a recall, not impeachment (a criminal affair).
Impeachment of officers for voicing their beliefs is a very bad step. You should investigate the "chilling effect". | 
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04-12-2008, 10:54 PM
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#18 | | New Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Threads: 0
Posts: 0
| "So does that include each Congressmen or women who also voted for the war? You trying each and every one?
You also going to try each and every politician who has ever lied or thought to have lied while in office?"
I assume there was a process after WW11 to determine whom and how to try.
Perhaps John Yoo has some ideas. | |
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04-12-2008, 10:57 PM
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#19 | | New Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Threads: 0
Posts: 0
| "I still have to roll my eyes at people who call for impeachments of policymakers they don't like.
Note that impeachments are for high crimes and misdemeanors, such as maladministration. Incompetency is not one of them."
Roll those eyes all you want. High crimes haven't been in doubt for a long time, no matter how one defines them. | |
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04-12-2008, 11:00 PM
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#20 | | Member
Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: South Portland ME (born in Singapore; soon to be Charlottesville, VA!) Gender: Male
Threads: 132
Posts: 981
| You seem to be someone who prefers consequentialism to deontological ethics. | |
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04-12-2008, 11:09 PM
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#21 | | New Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Threads: 0
Posts: 0
| Too late for me to argue ethics, but try me tomorrow, galoisien. | |
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04-13-2008, 12:42 AM
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#22 | | New Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Threads: 2
Posts: 1
| Quote:
15% across the board budget cuts...most departments won't even feel it
Dept of Defense: all spending in South Korea...they don't want us there anyway...removal of bases from Europe. European countries need to raise their level of defense spending as we lower ours. We're currently subsidizing their defense.
Eliminate Dept of Education: $68 billion
Federal Crop subsidies: $10 billion
Stop rebuilding of New Orleans and any sea-coast areas : $127 billion
| Even Republicans figured out cutting the Departmet of Education is a horrible idea.
Why not re-build New Orleans? Because it has hurricanes. Well California has earthquakes. There's tornados in the middle of the country. Pretty much everywhere in the world has some form of natural disasters.
As for 15 percent budget cuts, can you point to actual programs that you want to get rid of , or does it just sound like a good number. | |
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04-13-2008, 10:44 AM
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#23 | | Member
Join Date: May 2006 Location: Waterloo, IL
Threads: 6
Posts: 363
| Quote: |
Why not re-build New Orleans?
| Because it's 10 feet UNDER sea level!! | |
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04-13-2008, 11:42 AM
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#24 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Ohio Gender: Male
Threads: 25
Posts: 141
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(#22)...As for 15 percent budget cuts, can you point to actual programs that you want to get rid of , or does it just sound like a good number...
| - All the billions spent on federally funded 'bike paths'...if people want bike paths have the states fund them.
- Via the Heritage Foundation: A Strategy to Eliminate Wasteful Federal Spending
- State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) (about $6 billion annually)...We already have Medicaid and SCHIP is used for families over the poverty line...sometimes as much as 300% over the poverty line. That's $82,000 for a family of 4 in some states.
- Via Washington Post: GAO Report Points to Pentagon Waste
- Via CBS News: Meet Congress' "King Of Pork":
Quote:
According to an estimate by Taxpayers for Common Sense, he's [Congressman Murtha] steered more than $600 million in earmarks to his Pennsylvania district in the past four years and $2 billion since 1992. But what's been good for Murtha and his district is not always good for taxpayers...
...His most notorious project is the government agency that the government doesn't want: The National Drug Intelligence Center, also in Murtha's hometown. Every year the White House tries to close it because they already have a Drug Intelligence Center. But Murtha keeps the duplicate open using half-a-billion dollars in earmarks. | - Via Arizona Tribune: Cotton growers gain research site for free
Quote:
Arizona cotton farmer lobbyists have won a generous gift from taxpayers this holiday season: A research complex in east Phoenix worth several million dollars.
Absolutely free.
Congress, led by almost all of Arizona’s delegation, recently approved the transfer of 7 acres and 37 buildings that make up the Western Cotton Research Laboratory...
| - Via Heritage Foundation: Top 10 Examples of Government Waste:
Quote: - The Missing $25 Billion
Buried in the Department of the Treasury’s 2003 Financial Report of the United States Government is a short section titled “Unreconciled Transactions Affecting the Change in Net Position,” which explains that these unreconciled transactions totaled $24.5 billion in 2003. - Unused Flight Tickets Totaling $100 Million...
- Embezzled Funds at the Department of Agriculture...
- Credit Card Abuse at the Department of Defense...
- Medicare Overspending...
- Funding Fictitious Colleges and Students...
- Manipulating Data to Encourage Spending...
- State Abuse of Medicaid Funding Formulas...
- Earned Income Tax Credit Overpayments...
- Redundancy Piled on Redundancy...
| - Many, many more in this vein
Last edited by StitchInTime : 04-13-2008 at 11:47 AM.
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04-13-2008, 02:07 PM
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#25 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Dad of 2 in college, 1 in HS in California
Threads: 53
Posts: 787
| StitchinTime, let's cut the programs you use first, OK? We'll start with the dams, roads and highways near your house. We'll cut all funding which helps your police, fire and EMTs. We'll eliminate the border patrol. Anything else that benefits you that you're willing to cut, so you can self-fund it? Or are you just opposed to government spending that helps people other than yourself?
There's waste in every budget. There's waste in my household budget - and in yours, too. Yes, we need to keep fighting waste (and fraud) in government spending. And no, we'll never succeed 100%. But the idea that suddenly, some yahoo with a website is going to figure out a way to balance the budget by eliminating "only unnecessary" government spending - like no one has ever thought of that before - is childish. | |
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04-13-2008, 02:18 PM
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#26 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2006
Threads: 20
Posts: 885
| ^^^
*Applauding* | |
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04-13-2008, 02:53 PM
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#27 | | Senior Member
Join Date: May 2006
Threads: 95
Posts: 1,334
| Quote: |
But the idea that suddenly, some yahoo with a website is going to figure out a way to balance the budget by eliminating "only unnecessary" government spending - like no one has ever thought of that before - is childish.
| I really hope you see the irony in this and the thread title/OP. | |
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04-13-2008, 03:55 PM
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#28 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Ohio Gender: Male
Threads: 25
Posts: 141
| Quote: |
(#25) StitchinTime, let's cut the programs you use first, OK? We'll start with the dams, roads and highways near your house...
| History has shown us that histrionics and hyperbole are not a substitute for rational public policy. | |
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04-13-2008, 04:06 PM
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#29 | | Member
Join Date: Jun 2007
Threads: 18
Posts: 343
| I'm with you stitch. If only we can keep politics, neo cons, neo liberals, cronys, nepotism, revolving door executives, out of the the process.
limburger for everyone. | |
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04-13-2008, 04:08 PM
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#30 | | Member
Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Dad of 2 in college, 1 in HS in California
Threads: 53
Posts: 787
| Cutting your programs is a rational public policy from my standpoint, Stitch. Unfortunately, we have this whole system of government which decides what is funded and what isn't, and they don't seem inclined to just cut the programs that benefit you - any more than they seem to be inclined to make the cuts you feel should be made because you don't think they're worthwhile. And somehow I think you've missed history's actual lesson on this subject. Anyone who can write stuff like "15% across the board budget cuts...most departments won't even feel it" and lecture others about "histrionics and hyperbole" has an interesting perspective on the world.
By the way, I did notice that your suggestion about bike paths simply shifts the taxpayer's burden from one branch of government to another, saving nothing. Good work. 
Last edited by kluge : 04-13-2008 at 04:21 PM.
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