I've said before that I moved pretty far to the left in response to what has happened since the BS impeachment attempt of Clinton, the election in 2000, and the BS war in Iraq. I wasn't always this far to the left and, in fact, I still linger towards some traditional conservative view points. By traditional conservative I am not talking about the conversatives that hijacked the Republican party in the 90's. I believe in stronger state governments, for example.
Anyway, this is a short post that describes what I think happened to a lot of people, myself included, that shaped our views and pushed us further left than we were before.
I agree that partisanship will be with us for the foreseeable future and while that is a sad thing we need to adapt to it. Peeps like Liberman providing politcal coverage to the GOP crap need to be challenged and made to defend their views via contested primaries. It is a fundemental excercise in democracy and one that hasn't been taken advantage of enough. Do you realize the incumbency rate of federal Senators is over 90%? The only time a senate seat changes basically boils down to when the incumbent senator retires or dies. They aren't being challenged and are not being held accountable to the voting public. Joe Liberman's reaction to his primary challenge by Lamont is a good witness to this. He was totally offended that someone would dare - DARE - challenge him. What an ass.
Opps, went off on a rant there. Sorry about that. Anyway, what shaped your views politically?
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4 comments:
Maybe we need to move past this bipartisian crap and unite this country again. We are so seperated because we believe we have to. People need to leave there wallets at home and bring there brains and common sense to the polls instead.
Left? Right? Who cares. I'm the guy with the vote. I'm independant and do not consider myself "left" or "right" as each group has a rediculous voting history.
George Bush? The biggest joke of America. Though his competition wasnt much better, if at all.
We need a solid leader to shake things up and smack our congress back into shape. One that has no "financial" or "personal" agenda. His sole purpose needs to be to shake things up and put the congress back in order.
We do not need a new law every month. What we need to do is enforce the onces we already have. Our congress is so politically corrupt its insane. As Americans, its time for us to foster change and get us back on our feet, but most Americans could care less as long as they can do there lives with no interference. They are "Lemmings" for all intents and purposes.
There is a huge politcal machine and network that is setup that totally prevents any sort of fundamental shakeup by just the voters. The special interests that pump money into the system are a large part of the problem. Reform of how money influences politics, in my view, is the only way to start bringing some sanity back to it. That won't change as long as politicians think that after they are elected they are set until they decide to bounce. Thus the importance of challenging incumbent politicians whom are not being responsive to their constiutents, etc etc. It has to start small.
I agree. US needs to stop any and all campaign donations. All advertisments for political office need to be "free" as in the government should be alotted a certain amount of TV time "free", as in the stations that have alotted the tv time should get a tax break. This should also be spread to other advertisement mediums.
Any advertisement that "mud slings" should not allowed to be aired. Period.
All time/space alotted should be equally divied up between all candidates.
There should be no $10,000 per head dinners. There should be no type of fundraising at all. It only helps cloud a persons view.
Take the money out of the equation and you fix alot of things.
Who would determine what mud slings are and are not? As soon as you try to put some sort of governing body together you bring politics into it.
I'm not sure if it's even possible to remove the money from politics entirely, they are too attached together. The people that could remove it (the politicians) are the one benifiting most from it. I think the best you can do is keep reforming campaign finance laws and making them more strict. It would have to be an incremental thing, unfortunately. And until it becomes a priority with the voting public I don't see it going anywhere.
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