Looked at his web site... "Let's talk about the issues". Seems like standard stuff, nothing impressive. Even though on your top link he says...
Quote:
...against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet no mention of miltiary cuts on his web page.
He's not really specify at all about cuts. What agencies and cuts of what size? Yes, I know politicians can't really tell us what they really believe. OTOH if they don't tell us what they really believe then that makes them "just another politician".
The educatiion issues he raises are peanuts to me. If states get $0.11 cents with $0.16 worth of strings... and states want autonomy it seems the simplist answer is to not go $0.05 in the hole for the priviledge of being under the thumb of the Fed. Something missing in this picture.
He obviously wants to cut SS, which I have an issue with. Twenty years ago I wrote a paper describing how my contributions up to 65 at a modest rate of return yielded a future value of over a million dollars. I'm not happy with the idea of people calling it an "entitlement" when entitlement connotes "welfare".
For all the people who want to steal my SS contributions to eliminate the debtI can give you the solution today. Default on all Govt debt immediately, not just the debt to senior citizens. This will also balance the budget because no one will loan money the US. I call it the "Reality Mandate". You can't spend it because you don't have it and that's reality. I will never support SS being cut unless the US defaults to it's bond holders first.
Drug policy? I applaud him for saying that we don't need to fill our prisons with drug users. But the biggest drug problem in the US is created by the biggest drug industries in the US along with the health care industry. The top cause for injury or death in 17 states is pharmaceuticals. The heathcare industry is the "only" suppler of these drugs. Even Meth is the result of the legal manufacture of drugs which are converted into meth.
He's got a good storyline going. We'll see how it's plays out.
"I applaud him for saying that we don't need to fill our prisons with drug users. But the biggest drug problem in the US is created by the biggest drug industries in the US along with the health care industry. The top cause for injury or death in 17 states is pharmaceuticals. The heathcare industry is the "only" suppler of these drugs."
I watched a story on ABC evening news last night that says Americans use 99% of the world's Vicodin. I find that shocking.
With a lot of candidates I can often find myself stuck on one key issue that I can't agree with the candidate and therefore can't support them. With Johnson it's different for me. He has many issues that I don't agree with, but I still like him, very much.
He is for legalizing marijuana, that will loose him a lot of Conservative votes, I dont mind that he is for that and I dont think he could get it passed if he was President.
Overall I like Johnson, but I am still doing my homework on him.
So far the best the R's have imo.
The article doesn't delve nearly far enough into the issues. Too much talk about drugs and education. I realize conservatives have a hard-on for education, but it's simply not a big enough part of the budget to put it on a pedestal. Only a candidate that can say what can't be said is good enough for me.
Name ONE candidate that has a better record for cutting spending and balancing budgets... I don't care about any of the social issues, they won't matter if we have a total economic collapse.
My political philosophy is no longer pointing to a pig at the trough and say that's the best sow. It's to state what I demand from my politician in hopes that others will see the light and do the same. I may like him better than any of the others, but it won't change my insistance on addressing the policy issues.
I consider myself to be pretty tuned in to politics WRT who's who.. yet admittedly, last night was the first time I'd heard of Gary Johnson. I thought to myself "who's that guy" then they threw a question at him and I said, "Oh! I've seen a thread about him on WW..." but I've never opened this thread because I didn't know who that was. thought it was a NASCAR driver or something... ha ha. I'll dig in to him a bit more now. I was a bit put off by his (in my opinion) whining about not getting any questions at first.
I wish Ron Paul wasn't so quirky. He really is smart and has stuck to his principles for YEARS! He really is more of a libertarian than a Republican... but that's not a bad thing.
Republicans in general used to more libertarian - now they're big business big gov't (in the guise of pointless defense spending) social-issue-neanderthals that somehow pull off the unenviable task of making the Democrats look good - not easy to do.. Ron Paul is great, but yes he isn't exactly "presidential" - he's like a little leprechaun lol.
I don't think Gary Johnson did very well last night. I didn't watch the debate, only listened, but my boss said that he has funny mannerisms.
I did like what Herman Cain had to say though. If we nominate Herman Cain we take about half of Obama's followers away due to the race argument. We might be able to educate some low income minorities too.
Unfortunately Sam, you cannot be black AND republican. Cain might peel off 5% of Obama's black support... 10% tops! Unless he makes issues of his race (e.g. targeting the black community specifically, "pandering" to JJ, Al, etc) he'll be labeled (if not already labeled) as an uncle tom.... If given the choice between a mixed race black liberal who promises the moon and stars, or a conservative who happens to be black and believes in self reliance.... the choice to me (for them) is obvious. maybe i'm wrong...
I'm a huge fan of Johnson. I just heard of him last night on the debate, so I may be wrong, but he seems to support entitlements and welfare programs such as SS, Madicare, Medicaid, etc. He did better in the debate than most of those worthless sacks of neocons.
Most of those schmucks dodged questions as best they could. The only guy who said absolutely nothing the whole time is Cain, may as well have been a no show so he didn't take time from the others. He's out I'm sure, even neocons can't be dumb enough to support him... Though Obama supporters might.
I'm a huge fan of Johnson. I just heard of him last night on the debate, so I may be wrong, but he seems to support entitlements and welfare programs such as SS, Madicare, Medicaid, etc. He did better in the debate than most of those worthless sacks of neocons.
Most of those schmucks dodged questions as best they could. The only guy who said absolutely nothing the whole time is Cain, may as well have been a no show so he didn't take time from the others. He's out I'm sure, even neocons can't be dumb enough to support him... Though Obama supporters might.
I just found out that Herman Cain was a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City. That is not good to me, it says he's an insider. His stand on the audit the fed bills is bad too.
From reading through some of the stuff on his site, he seems a lot better than some of the others. I could not support him though. He supports "reforming" medicare, medicaid, and SS. This in unacceptable to me. These things need to be repealed. They are tremendously expensive entitlement programs.
Medicare/medicaid, just need to be eliminated. They amount to welfare programs we cannot afford and I should not be forced to pay for. SS should be eliminated, and everyone who has paid into it thus far should get at least the amount they paid in, accounting for inflation, paid back when they retire. This avoids cheating those who have been forced to pay in. Of course that won't happen, so an acceptable solution to me would be to be allowed to opt out, and never pay another cent into SS, and get what we have paid in thus far returned upon retirement. Kids can choose whether to pay into SS when they start working and opt to leave at any time, getting the "benefit" of what they paid in, but never being allowed to pay into it again after opting out.
This country has serious financial problems that will plague us for generations unless serious solutions are put in place. The only serious solution I see is cutting the size and scope of government back to only absolute necessities as defined by our Constitution... Or tax increases across the board (say a flat tax) for anyone making more than $x... Say $25k, $30k, or wherever you want to draw the line.
Aside fomr that, he seems to support the TSA and other neocon "papers Comrade" types of government organizations. This is worse than his stand on SS/medicare/medicaid. All Americans should be able to travel freely in their own country. At least rolling back to pre-Sept. 11 security would be required to get my support. As far as airline security, my thoughts are this should be left to the airlines. I can pick which airline has an acceptable level of security for my tastes. I would choose to fly whichever airline subjects me to the least security... And likely get the best priced flights because of it.
Your never gonna get..."just let the old people get sick and die" paradigm to fly. You should be advocating a plausible solution. Other modern countries pay half what we do for healthcare and have as good as or better avg lifespans.
What we should do is simply look at why and cut our healthcare costs for not only old and poor people but for everyone. It's reasonable to think we could cut healthcare costs for everyone a minimum of 25%. If you don't then healthcare costs are going to continue to ravage our economy and paychecks. It's a system gone terribly wrong.
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