VIDEO: Rep. Alan Grayson Talks To Papantonia About How Dems Can Fight Back

Conservatism is the main reason this country hasn't progressed. These knuckle draggers want to take the country back to the stone ages. They are like an anchor on America's bow, constantly dragging it down. I really believe the best solution for this country is to divide it in half. Conservatives can keep the entire south plus Alaska and liberals keep the north and west (except Utah, Idaho and Wyoming). Until this country is split in half, it will alweays be in jeopardy of being ruled by these dumb ignorant conservative neanderthals.

Lots of issues here to be cleared up.

First of all, the health care bill will be the largest takeover of a private economy in the history of the world, just to pay for less than 8 million that actually need healthcare. The $1.2Trillion is only over the next 10 years, and thats only an estimate. Looking at the history of other governement programs, there has never been a program that I can think of that came to or below their projected costs, including medicare! That means that eventually, even the so called "rich" wont be taxed high enough to pay for all this! Eventually, the average JOE will have to jack up their taxes by an additional 10-20% higher tax rate, on top of the average 24% tax rate now. That directly shows that President Obama is lying to the American population that it wont raise their taxes.

I agree that we have a big issue with manufacturing here in the USA. The problem is that the liberals have pushed various taxes onto the so called rich companies. Companies are not stupid. They will outsource to survive! Higher taxes on materials, healthcare, higher environmental regulation, illegal immigration which drives down employee wages because there is a surplus of people, are all just a few issues that companies have to deal with. Since most jobs are made by individuals with small businesses, these people are often hit the hardest with taxes. This is mostly because if the business (including small farms), does over $250,000 in income, that is often added to the individual income tax bracket for that small business owner. When taxes go up on them, they have to either seek cheaper products, raise their prices, and/or lay off workers.

When the FEDS print $2trillion in new paper money, they also drive down the American dollar on the international trade market, thereby hurting business here. But that is what the FEDS have had to do to pay for these stupid bailouts and healthcare!

Remember when everyone was shocked that we were at $6trillion in national debt? Now we are aproaching $12Trillion with no brakes on this rocket! Republicans lost badly in 2006 and 2008, and rightly so for this outragous spending! Sadly, the Democrats didnt learn from that. They had the opportunity to be a responsible party, but have gone to the dark side of liberalism with drunken spending, even worse than the Republicans did. Hopefully, they loose badly in the 2010 election when the moderates vote them out too!

Because that will be after the 2012 election... If we get pi..ed off at the health bill they pass when we really find out what it really does the major election will be over...
All these policy does at this time is force Americans to buy a policy at any price the health and Drug companies charge , so they can afford to add 2% new Americans to buy policies..
This is a win -- win for the health and drug companies..

The universal single payer system is the ONLY way to go...
Just ask all the citizens about us on the health care list and they will tell you..

They claim they can not afford to give a single payer option to Americans ,, but they can afford to give our tax money to our countries which have a much better health care system for their citizens.

We could pull soldiers from Iraq.
Cost for a single soldier to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan is about $775,000 per year.
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2008/12/31/cost-for-a-singl -soldier-to-fight-in-iraq-or-afghanistan-is-about-775000-per-yea /
We could reverse the tax cuts Bush gave to the top wealthiest Americans.
a $1.6 trillion tax cut.
We could renegotiate the free trade bill
Which has outsourced over 7 billion jobs along with just about every one of our manufacturing plants..
Can you imagine U.S. going to a real war with a country with real WMD and we would have no manufacturing plants to create war equipment , medicine , food and other necessary products we need..

#6
In my remarks of #5 I was referring to a quasi recall option . Some thing other than elections . In the case of health care , if the numbers are true , 45K people/year die because of lack of care . While we wait 2 years or 6 years for an election of lower house or upper house representatives as many as 90K or more than 1/4 million will die from the lack of health care . I personally think it is very serious when that many Americans die just to prop up the existence and income of corporations .

The Republican Party contiues to prove itself to be the most un-American organization in the United States.

#5

The Constitution rather clearly spells out such an option, which is more commonly referred to as "an election" wherein said constituents can fire said employee.

#4 Re; You want more Graysons and Paps?
Elect them.

I'd vote for that !
I agree with you about Congress never giving up the power they have , but with things as they are , without some concerted effort what is on the next page does not look like a good future for America . I do not believe our Constitution allows the public the option to remove a member of Congress but this lot has certainly not represented their constituents . More than once I have heard a member of Congress say "they were voting their conscience" and not as the majority of their constituents requested . On any other job they'd be fired .

#1 & #3

Of course, there are other alternatives, some of which were proffered by Uff. Thing is, those ideas are items that would need to be passed into law through a Congress consisting of many of those same members relaying on the funds that would need to be removed from the system.

In other words, good luck with that.

There's also another alternative already widely available: primary the bums out of the system.

You want more Graysons and Paps?
Elect them.

With the public making the decisions on our laws there'd be a huge cut in corporate funds to members of congress so that would to a great degree fix the campaign finance situation . The corporations would then be spending more of their money in advertising to convence the public decision makers . This is government by the people but as it stands now we have government by the corporations and most of our representatives are just puppets with no regard for the electorate . We need more Graysons and Papantonias .

You can fix the corporatist stranglehold quite simply---eliminate all campaign funding except for that from the government. Set a limit for how much each candidate can spend at each level, for example $20 million for a House race, $40 million for a Senate race, and $100 million for a Presidential race. These are just sample figures; the actual ones could be a bit higher or lower. Require all tv stations to provide a certain amount of time to each candidate for speeches about their platform. In addition, there would be a fixed minimum number of debates. Politicians who leave office will be banned from any lobbying for a minimum of 5 years after leaving office.

This two-part approach will take away two very strong hooks that corporations have in politicians. Right now, politicians are in a virtually perpetual state of raising funds for their campaigns, and corporations and their executives are the biggest contributors, shutting out the average person. Therefore, when it comes time to vote on a bill, the legislator is far more likely to support the side that lobbyists and their corporate sponsors favor, as they know that will ensure the continuing flow of campaign cash. Take that away, you've gotten rid of one big corporate hold on our political system. By putting a long-term ban on lobbying, you will eliminate shameful incidents such as that with Billy Tauzin, who pushed through Medicare part D, and was rewarded with a million dollar lobbying job as soon as he left congress shortly after the bill passed. If politicians don't need corporate cash to campaign, and if there is no immediate reward for doing a corporation's bidding, we will see our political system begin to return to the people, instead of the corporations.

If you are serious about fixing the corporatist strangle hold on our country you might suggest that all laws be made by public voters approval . If you do make such a suggestion I'd suggest you wear a suit of armor because the lobbyist will use you for dart practice .