Elizabeth Warren's 11 Commandments for Progressives

[carlfense]

+1 to Luke and JJ.

 

tschu . . . I disagree about McCain. I shudder to think of how many wars he would have entered in if he is sincere in his warmongering and not just using it as an opportunity to criticize Obama.

[tschu]

+1 to Luke and JJ.

 

tschu . . . I disagree about McCain. I shudder to think of how many wars he would have entered in if he is sincere in his warmongering and not just using it as an opportunity to criticize Obama.

 

It seems that he is the only one that ever has stood up and gone "okay guys, really? let's take it down maybe just a notch here." Could be wrong.

[tschu]

Kaisch is a dark horse. Tiny chance, but a dark horse nonetheless

[BigRedBuster]

I used to be a big McCain fan. I started off supporting him for president. Then his VP choice has turned out so horribly that no way could it have been a choice based on actual brains.

 

On top of that he has made some statements since then on foreign policy that is totally in the wrong direction.

 

However, at least he attempts to work across the isle.

[JJ Husker]

I'm not a fan of McCain. Sort of liked him back when he ran but have since seen some fairly stupid things from him. Romney was/is useless and there just are no viable R candidates. Sort of liked Ryan.....at first but not so much now. Is it too much to ask for someone who is fiscally conservative and socially moderate to liberal? Both sides focus way too much on the big social issues like abortion, gay rights, etc. and not enough on the economy. I understand that is how they motivate their respective bases but damn. I may be to jaded at this point but I really don't see anyone from either party headed towards a palatable moderate middle ground. It will have to get much worse before our apathetic citizenry decides they've had enough bs. Unfortunately we are getting what we are cumulatively asking for.

[knapplc]

Here is the conservative one since you are wondering.

 

 

1. Protect the Constitution

Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill says.

2. Reject the EPA’s Overreach

Stop costly new regulations that would increase unemployment, raise consumer prices, and weaken the nation’s global competitiveness with virtually no impact on global temperatures.

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax hike.

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

Adopt a simpler, flatter, and fairer tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is easily understandable. Eliminate the death tax and cut the capital gains tax.

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington

Execute a full independent audit of federal agencies and programs. Assess their Constitutionality, and identify duplication, waste, ineffectiveness. Determine which agencies and programs are better left to the states or local authorities to reform or eliminate, and restore limited government consistent with the US Constitution.

6. End Runaway Government Spending

Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending that balances the budget within 10 years.

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

Defund, repeal and replace the recently passed government-run health care with a system that actually makes health care and insurance more affordable by enabling a competitive, open, and transparent free-market health care and health insurance system that isn’t restricted by state boundaries.

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

9. Stop the Pork

End all earmarks.

10. Protect American’s Privacy

Protect Americans’ privacy, including data and any other records from government intrusion by prohibiting and criminally punishing any private or political use of data gained or distributed by government officials.

11. Stop Unconstitutional Executive Branch Power

Develop a plan to sunset federal regulations and limit the Executive Branch’s power, which has grown substantially over the past decade.

http://contractfromamerica.org/

 

 

1. The fastest way to destroy what the founding fathers built with that document is to act as if it's a rigid, unchangeable creation. It needs to be adaptable to the needs of the country today. The 2nd Amendment in particular cannot be set in stone, and must be reshaped in light of the gun culture as it sits today. Think that's wrong? Sit back and watch the reaction to the underlined. If that doesn't prove the point, you should maybe stop voting.

 

2. Asinine. Basically saying that if we can't fix the entire problem, let's not attempt to fix any of the problem. Fossil fuels are killing this planet. This is the single most selfish plank in the conservative platform - it's robbing everyone's children of the future. We're already seeing climate change. It is going to get worse if we burn more fossil fuels. The EPA is designed to protect our environment, but in the interest of lobbyists and their big business cronies, conservatives are willing to curtail or eliminate this agency. Here's the path conservatives want to send us down by gelding the EPA. It isn't pretty, but it's the reality we face. Conservatives need to stop demonizing the very people trying to protect our environment from businesses who put profit over people.

 

3. Conditionally a good idea, but once again...

 

4. See #3

 

5. This is a flat-out lie. Conservatives don't want smaller government, they want a government that focuses on what they want - free rein to big business, and an increasing gap between the nation's wealthy elite and the poor. And again with Constitution-thumping, and again with the same answer - it's a living document, intended to reflect the needs of the time, not the needs of the 18th Century projected to modern times. Audit federal agencies? Sounds like a great idea, and conditionally I'm all for it. Waste is stupid wherever we see it. But who does the auditing, and why should we trust them, because the implication here is that "the other guys" are the fiscally irresponsible ones, and honey, that's utter crap. None of the conservatives were worried about fiscal responsibility when they allocated trillions upon trillions of dollars for W.'s pet war. And in case anyone thinks that's in the past, nope - it continues today, for purely political reasons. Conservatives cannot with a straight face rail against fiscal irresponsibility with this on their record.

 

6. Another flat-out lie. Conservatives have zero interest in cutting their pet projects, top on the list being the military, whose spending dwarfs that of the next three highest-spending nations combined. What they mean is, stop spending money on the people, privatize as much as possible, less oversight, which will lead to yet more abuses by the private sector. "Government spending" is the talking point - the goal is to allow big business (with no elected officials accountable to the people) to run amok. Basically, the Koch Bros.' wet dream.

 

7. Yet another whip-up-the-base BS party line. It's been well-established that Obamacare is substantially similar to conservatives' healthcare plans of the past, and not-so-recent past. The utterly dumbfounding thing about the conservatives' bitchfest over Obamacare is that it's transparently political, has nothing to do with the plan itself, and the constant votes to repeal it is wasting ungodly amounts of governmental time and money - something they seem to be upset about in #6. The biggest sham in all of this - the word "replace." There is no conservative idea ready to roll out - or if there is, Washington Republicans have done an utterly awful job of pushing their idea to the forefront of the conversation. What would have been FAR better than Obamacare would have been to have an open debate between the merits of Obamacare and the conservatives' plan(s?), and let the people decide. But that never happened, because they never bothered to roll out a plan. All they ever intended to do was waste time & money trying to block anything Obama did. And this can all be traced right back here, which constitutes one of the most despicable wastes of government time & money in my lifetime (after W's Iraq war fiasco).

 

8. Horrifying. How bad does the environment have to get before we ween ourselves off fossil fuels? We have more than enough NEARLY FREE CLEAN ENERGY BOMBARDING US DAILY, yet for some reason conservatives continue to champion the primacy of fossil fuels. America would be far-better served by spearheading the development of non-fossil-fuel technology, becoming the world leader in the field and exporting that technology, but sadly that lobby isn't lining the politicians' pockets.

 

9. This has to be a straight-up joke. Again, the implication is that conservatives aren't the ones guilty of pork-barrel spending, tacitly laying the blame at the feet of liberals, but that just ain't so.

 

10. Great idea. Only problem is, the NSA and domestic spying span decades, over several presidential administrations, over congressional control by both parties, and nothing was done by either party to curtail the problem. It's great to promote this, and everyone's all for it, but this is hardly a conservative idea, and not one conservative in Washington is going to stop governmental spying.

 

11. Another flat-out lie - at least in the implication that it's Obama we should be pointing the finger at. As we've covered in other conversations in this forum, Bush issued far more executive orders than Obama (thus far in his presidency). Conservatives aren't interested in curtailing the Executive Branch, they're interested in curtailing Democrat presidential executive power. If Romney were in office today we wouldn't be hearing one word about this.

 

 

 

 

This is why people like myself, JJ, BRB & LukeinNE no longer self-identify as Republicans. All of us were once registered Republican, none of us have ever registered Democrat, and in general we're all (presuming a bit on Luke, he's kinda new to these conversations) moderate-to-conservative.

 

It wasn't that we left the Republican party. They left us, to ally with big money political contributors and special-interest wing nuts.

 

The worst of it is, it's not like we can say, "Republicans, you're no longer representing my beliefs. I'm going to join the opposite party because, opposed to you, they must be the 'good' party now." because the freakin' Democrats aren't much better (only 73% crap, as opposed to the GOP's 84% crap ).

 

The one thing this list has right is when it strongly implies that government is broken and needs fixing. It just doesn't grasp how it's broken, or in what way(s) it needs fixing.

[BigRedBuster]

Knapp...

 

Very good post. I am going to suggest one correction.

 

In your numbered list, you say talk about "conservatives". I would change that word to Republicans. There are one heck of a lot of conservative leaning people like us who don't want anything to do with this. It is the Republican party who has taken what they consider the conservative movement and taken it to la la, whack job, freak show, loony tune level.

 

I still consider myself more conservative than liberal. However, I have no desire to be associated with anything in the Republican party.

[knapplc]

BRB, how would you compare my use of "conservative" to the way the word "liberal" has been used throughout this thread, and in other conversations in this forum?

[BigRedBuster]

BRB, how would you compare my use of "conservative" to the way the word "liberal" has been used throughout this thread, and in other conversations in this forum?

I probably don't have a good answer for that. Maybe you are right about using the word conservative but we are at the point where we need a new word for what we are. Not too long ago the word liberal was a bad word to be associated with in politics so that side started using the word "progressive".

 

Maybe the word conservative needs to stay with the whack job tea partiers and I need to be called something else.

 

Great....thanks a bunch....now, not only am I a man without a party, I'm a man without a label. You jerk.

[knapplc]

 

Being label-less is liberating. I strongly recommend that anyone dissatisfied with the way Washington functions registers Independent. Maybe if these nimrods see their registered ranks dwindle and the ranks of Independents swell, they'll start to realize that we don't feel represented in their parties anymore.

 

You have more voting choices as an Independent in Nebraska, too. You can choose from two (three?) different ballots in the Primaries, whereas if you're registered Republican or Democrat, that's the ballot you get, no choice. Choices are a good thing.

[BigRedBuster]

Oh...I'm definitely registered as an Independent.

[carlfense]

Unfortunately we are getting what we are cumulatively asking for.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -George Bernard Shaw

[carlfense]

<snip>

This is why people like myself, JJ, BRB & LukeinNE no longer self-identify as Republicans. All of us were once registered Republican, none of us have ever registered Democrat, and in general we're all (presuming a bit on Luke, he's kinda new to these conversations) moderate-to-conservative.

 

It wasn't that we left the Republican party. They left us, to ally with big money political contributors and special-interest wing nuts.

 

The worst of it is, it's not like we can say, "Republicans, you're no longer representing my beliefs. I'm going to join the opposite party because, opposed to you, they must be the 'good' party now." because the freakin' Democrats aren't much better (only 73% crap, as opposed to the GOP's 84% crap ).

<snip>

Post of the Year, knapplc. Post of the year. I'm bummed that I can only give you a single +1 for it. (Referring primarily to the line by line takedown of the so called Contract from America.)

 

You could add me to the list of people who were registered as Republicans and never registered Democrat. I'm just fine as an independent thank you. Plus it seems to cut down on the political calls/mailings.

[LukeinNE]

 

This is why people like myself, JJ, BRB & LukeinNE no longer self-identify as Republicans. All of us were once registered Republican, none of us have ever registered Democrat, and in general we're all (presuming a bit on Luke, he's kinda new to these conversations) moderate-to-conservative.

 

I think I'm a fairly typical 20-something conservative: fiscally conservative, free market-leaning, socially liberal, hawkish on foreign policy (though Iraq cured me of my teenage nation-building neoconservatism fairly quickly). I am still technically a member of the Republican Party, but that's pretty much a function of my desire to weigh in on Republican primaries (ie the ones that matter) for state and local offices in Nebraska. For presidential elections, I'm pretty reliably Republican, for everything else, I'm pretty reliably unreliable.

[StPaulHusker]

So I will ask the question again. Did she call them commandments or was that just what the writer called them?