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Showing posts from April, 2009

Arlen Specter (R or D)

What, what, what? Arlen Specter , the 30 year US Senator from Pennsylvania was a middle-republican his entire life, but this morning he dropped the GOP and wants to be a Democrat. I despise political parties and believe they have a tremendous negative effect on progress and democracy. I believe that once elected everyone should be forced to be an independent and not have any political affiliation. And I don’t care if he changes his party, but what is important is whether he changes his politics. It would have been more appropriate if he just become an independent. However, Specter has no interest in fairness, democracy, his constituency, or anything else except for his own ability to get re-elected. He stated, with all honesty, that the only reason he is doing this is because he feared losing the next republican primary. I don’t know why he didn’t learn from Lieberman than he could have run as a Republican and if he lost than run again as an independent. I believe Specter w

Born to be a Politician

"What we require is that those who take office should not be lovers of rule. Otherwise there will be a contest with rival lovers. What others , then , will you compel to undertake the guardianship of the city than those who have the most intelligence of the principals that are the means of good government and who possess distinctions of another kind of and a life that is preferable to political life?" - Plato Plato explained that our political leaders must first be trained and educated before they ever have the opportunity to be corrupted. That is that our young students should be taught the beauty and usefulness of math , science , history , philosophy , and the arts. The brightest should be chosen to further study economics , governments , law , and diplomacy. The best of those should be chosen to participate in the public sector (even at a young age) to get real exposure to the realities of effective and ineffective governance. The most talented and capable o

Gold

The US Department of the Treasury has 11 Billion dollars in gold . What is this for? Are we just showing off? Shouldn't we sell this instead of borrowing money from other countries or raising taxes? I know it's not that much money compared to the rest our spending, but its something. It's not enough money to be an emergency fund, so why bother having it at all. Plus, what is the cost to house and protect our precious gold. I think we are only a decade away from achieving the alchemist dream and turning lead into gold, making our stash worthless. Start selling now and give the money to homeless veterans, abused children, cancer research, malaria nets, new road construction, or cheaper Yankee tickets.

Justice or Karma

Ted Stevens, the crazy, former US Senator from Alaska was convicted of seven felony counts of ethics violations last year. Based largely on this trial, he narrowly lost his re-election bid last November. Today, the US Justice Department is dropping all charges because they “discovered a new instance of prosecutorial misconduct”. Basically, the prosecutor illegally hid evidence from the defendant. Now, let me be clear that I despise Ted Stevens. He was a conservative who spent 40 years putting the interests of the Republican party and Alaska above the interests of the United States. Consistently he would drive tax payers’ money (money from all 50 states) to Alaska. Alaska takes twice as much federal funds as it puts in. This is the inherent problem with the US Senate; giving equal power to someone representing 350,000 people and someone who represents 18,000,000 people. And Ted Stevens abused this undemocratic system to the detriment of the other 350,000,000 people in the US. An