JustHenry wrote:
Or maybe we shouldn't expect the government to solve all of our woes.  Maybe we should reeducate ourselves on what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they structured our government and the role they envisioned government having in our lives and take back some of the power WE THE PEOPLE have ceded to our government over the past years and decades.

With the technology available today, maybe we should demand our representatives work from their offices in their home districts where they are more accessible to their constituents and less accessible to lobbyists and the career politicians simultaneously pressuring and tempting the newbies to vote a particular way.  Keeping our representatives at home makes sense in numerous ways, including continuation of government after an attack by a terrorist or foreign government. 

And maybe, just maybe, we should be consistent when complaining about what our representatives do and don't do rather than reserving our criticism for the party we don't support.

I couldn't agree more!!

JustHenry wrote:
Or maybe we shouldn't expect the government to solve all of our woes.  Maybe we should reeducate ourselves on what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they structured our government and the role they envisioned government having in our lives and take back some of the power WE THE PEOPLE have ceded to our government over the past years and decades.

With the technology available today, maybe we should demand our representatives work from their offices in their home districts where they are more accessible to their constituents and less accessible to lobbyists and the career politicians simultaneously pressuring and tempting the newbies to vote a particular way.  Keeping our representatives at home makes sense in numerous ways, including continuation of government after an attack by a terrorist or foreign government. 

And maybe, just maybe, we should be consistent when complaining about what our representatives do and don't do rather than reserving our criticism for the party we don't support.

Congress should at least go on the record if they are or are not essential workers...or even workers.

LnN Studio wrote:

Congress should at least go on the record if they are or are not essential workers...or even workers.

They are part time workers with full time benefits.

LnN Studio wrote:
A good start would be if the Speaker of the House actually talked to the President at least once a year.

Maybe the president could put on his big boy pants and talk to the Speaker of the House whenever the need arises.  He is, after all, "a very good deal maker."  Let's face it, trump is way more interested in talking to Putin than Pelosi.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cii8BroxknI

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 91001.html

JustHenry wrote:
Or maybe we shouldn't expect the government to solve all of our woes.  Maybe we should reeducate ourselves on what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they structured our government and the role they envisioned government having in our lives and take back some of the power WE THE PEOPLE have ceded to our government over the past years and decades.

With the technology available today, maybe we should demand our representatives work from their offices in their home districts where they are more accessible to their constituents and less accessible to lobbyists and the career politicians simultaneously pressuring and tempting the newbies to vote a particular way.  Keeping our representatives at home makes sense in numerous ways, including continuation of government after an attack by a terrorist or foreign government. 

And maybe, just maybe, we should be consistent when complaining about what our representatives do and don't do rather than reserving our criticism for the party we don't support.

I guess you want to go back to work in the mines 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for a wage insufficient to support your family, and under conditions that would be predictable to send you to an early grave? 

I don't know a single person that would own the statement that they want the government to solve all their problems.  But there are problems the individuals cannot solve.  "We shouldn't expect the government to solve all of our woes," is just another one of those big lies the right tells itself about everyone else, all the while the right stands there with their hand out to collect money from the economic stimulus and to offset tariffs-  Jeez.  If trump hadn't instituted a trade war (which he lost) to solve the problems the right was complaining about, then he wouldn't have CREATED the need to provide relief to those impacted by the tariffs.

You might recall that we have a representative type of government.  You think that maybe the problems the government sets out to solve might be in keeping with the demands of those the politicians represent?

I am kinda curious about which problems the government 'solves' that don't need solving and those which you would like to eliminate the solution?

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
I am kinda curious about which problems the government 'solves' that don't need solving and those which you would like to eliminate the solution?

For starters;
Innumerable social programs intended to buy votes from midnight basketball under Clinton to free cell phone under Obama.
Payouts to Solyndra and similar companies.
Unrealistic CAFE standards.
Subsidizing private companies.  Yes that includes farmers sending their crops overseas and big oil companies.
Attempting to neuter or eliminate the Second Amendment.
Setting wages for private companies.
Wrecking the health insurance industry.
We can start there.

JustHenry wrote:
Or maybe we shouldn't expect the government to solve all of our woes.

Said just as the pandemic is approaching it's worst impact in the U.S...

There's such a thing as timing, and what's appropriate depending on the situation.

Protecting the public's health en masse during a global pandemic, plus making sure that the health care and emergency financial supports are there when the economy is in an extremely unusual pandemic situation (reduces the heavy negative social impact on the country and helps to speed up an economic recovery once the worst is over), is EXACTLY one of those times when you DO want the Government to be there.

The philosophy you stated has much more weight during "normal" times.  These are not normal times.



[EDIT] Spelling correction as per JustHenry [/EDIT]

IMAGINERIES wrote:
Maybe people in the congress and the white house should remember that they are paid by the people!

I disagree . . . the facts appear to differ greatly.

Senators, Representatives, Commissioner's, etc. are all paid under 200K

How do they manage to retire as multi-millionaires, unless they are making large sums of money off of their contacts and outside deals they make, having nothing to do with the people that they are supposed to represent ?

Ken Marcus Studios wrote:

I disagree . . . the facts appear to differ greatly.

Senators, Representatives, Commissioner's, etc. are all paid under 200K

How do they manage to retire as multi-millionaires, unless they are making large sums of money off of their contacts and outside deals they make, having nothing to do with the people that they are supposed to represent ?

I agree!

JustHenry wrote:
For starters;
Innumerable social programs intended to buy votes from midnight basketball under Clinton to free cell phone under Obama.
Payouts to Solyndra and similar companies.
Unrealistic CAFE standards.
Subsidizing private companies.  Yes that includes farmers sending their crops overseas and big oil companies.
Attempting to neuter or eliminate the Second Amendment.
Setting wages for private companies.
Wrecking the health insurance industry.
We can start there.

We could start there,  but it is interesting that you said in your first post in this thread:  "And maybe, just maybe, we should be consistent when complaining about what our representatives do and don't do rather than reserving our criticism for the party we don't support."  Yet here you are listing vague references to programs from under Obama and Clinton.  All this from a thread that opened with complaints about how much people have played golf.  Who complained the loudest about how much golf our last President played and which president has played far more?  I guess that is why the post hit your partisan nerve.  "Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf," trump tweeted Oct. 13, 2014.  You want a list of days trump played golf at the start of the Pandemic?  "Obama played 98 rounds of golf through this point in his presidency, according to data provided to CNN by Mark Knoller, a veteran CBS News White House correspondent who is known for tracking presidential activities. By contrast, Knoller said, Trump has spent all or part of 248 days at a golf course." (as of May 25, 2020) https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/25/politics … index.html     It is no wonder you don't want to look at things from a partisan angle.

However, the place we really should start is based on another thing you said in your first post in this thread; "Maybe we should reeducate ourselves on what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they structured our government and the role they envisioned government having in our lives  ...."  You change directions at that point in your sentence, hence the ellipsis. What did our Founding Fathers have in mind regarding all that jargon you put into that sentence?  When I read about the development of the Constitution and dismissing the age of the Articles of Confederation, I read about a group of men that fought tooth and nail over the form our government should take.  Hardly a group of one mind.  I read the Federalist papers and the opinions of the opposition and I do not see this nice neat little package regarding what our Founding Fathers wanted.  What you want, is to force your idea of what America WAS onto the rest of us for all eternity.  As long as you get to have your cake and eat it too.

There is one thing where there is little doubt about the Founding Fathers including in the form of the government that they designed for us, and that is, wait for it-  THE ABILITY TO CHANGE OUR FORM OF GOVERNMENT by amending the Constitution.  Know what else they thought was really important- oh you will love this one- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES." 

What does it mean to be able to amend the constitution and to petition the government for a redress of grievances?  Well, pretty simply, it means to be able to ask the government for help, to change a law, or to do away with the second amendment if enough of us agree to do that.  Consequently, you have made it abundantly clear that you DO NOT WANT TO "reeducate ourselves on what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they structured our government and the role they envisioned government having in our lives  ...."   You want some fantasy.

What else did the Founding Fathers envision?  High power semiautomatic weapons?  I doubt it.  Air, water and land pollution that is so bad that the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico is larger that some states and well water that kills children through cancer and birth defects??  Did they envision a Senate so corrupt that they would ignore multiple violations of the Constitution by the Chief Executive? 

What is your evidence that the Founding Fathers never envisioned a country that would invest in it's future with payouts to Solyndra and Boeing and private airlines and, well, here:  https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/0 … onors-52m/    Anyone that invests has some investments go bad.  Out of all of the companies that United States Government has invested in, why did you single out Solandra?  It is a rhetorical question.  We know the answer.

You must be against the interstate highway system; tunnels; bridges (we should go back to privately run ferries were a team of horses drags you across the river on a barge large enough for a wagon and a team of horses, but you may have to wait weeks for the flow from spring rains to subside); airports; shipping terminals; dredging channels to make commerce easier; the Panama Canal; National Parks (Funny how the Founders didn't mention National Parks); investing in miracle drugs; jet fighters and aircraft carriers, because the Founding Fathers sure as heck didn't foresee those things.  They did mention emoluments.  Oh, well.  Do you want to go back to what emoluments were for the first 44 presidents?

You must be against Social Security.  "Before Social Security, in 1934, roughly one half of seniors were estimated to be poor. ... Today, were it not for Social Security, the senior poverty rate would be 43.5 percent, ...."  Why is that Henry, and just exactly what is it you have against Social Security, a social program, which, BTW, is not socialism.  Might it be one of the "Innumerable social programs intended to buy votes."

You seem oblivious to the fact that the heathcare system was wrecked before Obama got into office, but you are right in a regard- Republicans have done everything they can to wreck Health Care for the average person while making sure the people that get rich off of health care continue to get rich.  I wonder why though, you should be concerned at all about the health care system.  The Founding Fathers didn't mention it so there shouldn't be one?  The health care system back then was getting sick and getting better or dying.  Maybe they would help you along by blood letting or applying leaches.  People were more likely to die from an infection than the wound itself.  Is that what you want to go back to?  It would align nicely with the Republican agenda regarding health care: Poverty and death.

You understand that you benefit directly and indirectly by the government setting a minimum wage and a prevailing wage?  Please show me in the Constitution where that is not permitted?  History shows us that the market tends to set the lowest wage and a few employers can keep multitudes in poverty.  Do you have any concept of the history of America's middle class?

How ironic, since it took 150 years before we actually created a broad middle class. Before the 1930s, most Americans were poor, or near poor.
And, yes, “created” is the correct term for how our middle class came to be. It was pushed by two historic forces of social transformation.
First, the devastation of the Great Depression created a grassroots rebellion of labor, farmers, and others against the careless moneyed class that caused the 1929 crash. These forces produced FDR and his New Deal of union rights, Social Security, and other tools that empowered ordinary Americans to begin rising up from poverty.
Second, the government’s national mobilization for World War II created an explosion of new jobs and opportunities for millions, opening people’s eyes, boosting confidence, and raising expectations.
unions-workers-labor-strike

A post-war rise in unionism, the passage of the GI Bill, a housing program, and other progressive actions led to a doubling of the median family income in only 30 years, creating a middle class that included nearly 60 percent of Americans by the late 1970s.
Then — phfffft — Washington’s commitment to a middle class suddenly fizzled.
In the 1980s, Reagan Republicans — and many Democrats — switched from supporting egalitarianism to backing the elitism of their corporate donors. Ever since, they’ve steadily disempowered workers and enthroned the rich, thus imposing today’s abominable, un-American culture of inequality across our land.
Just as progressives deliberately pushed public policies to create the middle class, so are today’s economic royalists [trump and Republicans] deliberately pushing plutocratic policies to destroy it. That’s the momentous struggle that calls us to action in this political year.

I added [trump and Republicans]
https://otherwords.org/rise-fall-americas-middle-class/

Your complaint is there aren't enough poor people?  Are you so blind as to not see the Republican war on the middle class?

Your list is a grievance list of the benefits of government that other people get where you perceive no benefit.  You don't list the things that benefit you as a negative.  Could you run a photography business without a middle class?  Could you afford your sweet little toys from China and Japan?  (If Americans didn't demand cheap consumer goods, then American jobs wouldn't go offshore- But get real, we had what is considered full employment not long ago.  Who is going to do all those jobs that come back to America? (Another failed trump promise.))

More than you know, what you are demonstrating is a complete lack of understanding of what the Founding Fathers envisioned for this country.  They never envisioned what we have accomplished, but they also provided the mechanisms for us to prosper, grow, create and invent.  We are not obligated to live with 21st century toys and have the mindset of the 18th century uneducated, poor man, farmer.

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
More than you know, what you are demonstrating is a complete lack of understanding.

Arguing facts with those who won't accept them is futile. But I applaud your attempt.

Perhaps most ominously, one prominent Pennsylvanian identifying himself only as “An Old Whig,” wrote about this in Anti-Federalist No. 70, and is worth quoting at length:
“Let us suppose this man to be a favorite with his army, and that they are unwilling to part with their beloved commander in chief ... and we have only to suppose one thing more, that this man is without the virtue, the moderation and love of liberty which possessed the mind of our late general [Washington] – and this country will be involved at once in war and tyranny.
... We may also suppose, without trespassing upon the bounds of probability, that this man may not have the means of supporting, in private life, the dignity of his former station; that like Caesar, he may be at once ambitious and poor, and deeply involved in debt. Such a man would die a thousand deaths rather than sink from the heights of splendor and power, into obscurity and wretchedness.”

So why didn’t the founders plan for this particular scenario, of a president simply denying that he had lost an election? Because they couldn’t even fathom it, Engel said.
“They couldn’t fathom two things: a person who had become president who was so utterly lacking in classical virtue that they would deign or dare to put their own interests above the unity of the country. And the second thing is, I think they couldn’t fathom how any president who would so vividly display disdain for the unity of the country, and mock and undermine the legitimacy of American democracy, why that person [wouldn’t have] already been impeached and removed from office.”

[edits are not mine except for bold]
https://www.modelmayhem.com/forums/post_reply/980193

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
Founding Fathers had in mind when they structured our government and the role they envisioned government having in our lives

Interesting read through your response.
What are your thoughts on Madisonianism?

Hunter  GWPB wrote:

Maybe the president could put on his big boy pants and talk to the Speaker of the House whenever the need arises.  He is, after all, "a very good deal maker."  Let's face it, trump is way more interested in talking to Putin than Pelosi.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cii8BroxknI

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl … 91001.html

It takes TW parties to make a deal and he is too busy fixing the economy, fast tracking COVID supplies and vaccines etc to deal with a petulant millionaire woman Childe who is too busy playing politics to actually pass legislation in her house that the Senate will also pass.. If she won't talk to HIM talk to Mitch as he talks to HIM.

LnN Studio wrote:
It takes TW parties to make a deal and he is too busy fixing the economy, fast tracking COVID supplies and vaccines etc to deal with a petulant millionaire woman Childe who is too busy playing politics to actually pass legislation in her house that the Senate will also pass.. If she won't talk to HIM talk to Mitch as he talks to HIM.

It does take two, so why do you make a post to blame Nancy?  What does her wealth have to do with it when trump's wealth is supposedly much greater?  trump isn't too busy with anything regarding the pandemic, except denying it.  After all these months, if he is fast tracking supplies then why are health care professionals complaining about a lack of PPE during this much bigger wave?  Incompetence?  Is that better then his inaction?  What did trump do to facilitate Pfizer's vaccine?  tump is busy crying over a lost election and trying to subvert the will of the people.  He isn't working on the economy.  He couldn't make up his mind about stimulus.  Or do you deny his tweets?  Why isn't he facilitating the house and senate getting together and why do stimulus discussions have to got through Mnuchin?  Incompetence or inaction or both?  BTW, where is his oft promised replacement to the ACA?

I can list verifiable things that the Speaker of the House has been working on. 

You seem to think that if the house and senate disagree, then it must be the house that folds.  Nonsense.  The senate Republicans are doing exactly what they want to do- creating an economy that is so bad that people will blame the new Democrat executive and vote out Democrats up and down the government.  But your supreme leader, as previously pointed out, is a good deal maker. Yet there are no deals.  He couldn't make many deals when the house and senate were both Republican majorities.  Consequently, your ability to discern what is going on is obviously compromised.

If you want to have a conversation, then please come back with facts and defend your points of view with rational discussion.  This Nancy did this and trump did that garbage will accomplish nothing.

nwprophoto wrote:

Interesting read through your response.
What are your thoughts on Madisonianism?

I have expressed views on it prior to this.  I am not interested in answering a broad question for the hell of it.  If you have something to discuss, say it.  I will participate if I see fit.

What else did the Founding Fathers envision?  High power semiautomatic weapons?  I doubt it?  Air, water and land pollution that is so bad that the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico is larger that some states and well water that kills children through cancer and birth defects??  Did they envision a Senate so corrupt that they would ignore multiple violations of the Constitution by the Chief Executive?

I've always been curious as to what trump knows about these guys. Some say that they are afraid to question trump because it will cost them their seats. I think there is more to it than that.
Is Lindsay Graham afraid that trump will out him?

63fotos wrote:

I've always been curious as to what trump knows about these guys. Some say that they are afraid to question trump because it will cost them their seats. I think there is more to it than that.
Is Lindsay Graham afraid that trump will out him?

I think it's more that a sizable portion of the whites are racists and trump has their support.  And Congressional Republicans are afraid of challenging trump for fearing of losing their next election.

LnN Studio wrote:
It takes TW parties to make a deal and he is too busy fixing the economy, fast tracking COVID supplies and vaccines etc

He is too busy playing golf and tweeting. He hasn't done [b]anything[/n] positive regarding Covid-19.

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
Why isn't he facilitating the house and senate getting together

Because it is a kabuki dance?

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
The senate Republicans are doing exactly what they want to do- creating an economy that is so bad that people will blame the new Democrat executive and vote out Democrats up and down the government.

John Maynard Keynes?

Hunter  GWPB wrote:
Why isn't he facilitating the house and senate getting together

nwprophoto wrote:
Because it is a kabuki dance?


John Maynard Keynes?

Federalist Papers #2

edit:
How does anyone have any doubt that any failure of the Senate and the Executive to fail to talk to the House is anything other than the fault of the morally corrupt Republicans as they daily spurn the peaceful and efficient transfer of power?   There was some concern about the corrupt and morally bankrupt trump refusing to participate in a peaceful transfer of power, as he refused in 2016 to agree to disavow a third party run should he lose the primaries.  Now it is clear, though it should have been to any decent person long ago, Republicans have abandoned democratic principles across the board.  What level of loathsome disgust is obtained when the bully Chris Christy is a voice of reason?

Tony From Syracuse wrote:
Honeymoon Already Shaky: Joe Biden Hits A Nerve On Twitter With Money Plea

Maybe Biden can do a garage sale next lol


https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-bide … My_YiGtaq2

love some of twitters response...

Axelle Carolyn
@AxelleCarolyn
Replying to
@JoeBiden
Man, we’re the ones who need *your* help.
8:34 PM · Nov 20, 2020·Twitter for iPhone



Ed DeRosa
@EJXD2
·
Nov 20
Yikes. Hard pass. We already fund it with taxes. Come on with this.

And you aren't insightful enough to understand that trump has caused this problem, country and people be damned?  No.  Of course not.  Enjoy your chortle.