To Donald, a lot of us are only a few years from being able to vote, some of us can. Knowing what's going on in your country is kind of important.
Riley: I was going to reply to your huge post, but it's way too long, so I'm going to pick some things out and put them in quotes.
"cap and trade will make energy prices sky-rocket, how is that good for the economy? the government running 1/6 of the economy? how does that create jobs? the private sector obviously does the best job of that."
The idea of cap and trade is kind of weak, it's basically "we didn't pollute enough this year, so here,this company can buy our pollution from us." Regardless, the bill has an important meaning within it, that something has to be done about the environment. I won't listen to people who deny climate change, it's an absolute fact, and I'm not a treehugger..but something has to be done about the environment. And as far as the private sector creating jobs...right, they create them and ship them overseas to exploit poor people. I don't see the value of that.
"6 agree, except healthcare. what country has government healthcare been good?"
http://wolafen.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/cost-of-long-life.jpg , every other social democracy in the world has universal healthcare that works. We spend the most, and have one of the worst healthcare systems, it's absolutely broken.
"i just want to say this. if somebody doesn't have enough money to pay for a life-saving operation, the state pays for it. nobody is dying from lack of healthcare. NOBODY. and we already have medicare/medicade which are already government healthcare!"
That's simply wrong, people die daily from being denied treatment.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/25/business/fi-cigna25 , Cigna denies treatment, patient dies. Simple as that.
"he's taking a step twards socialism greg."
What's so bad about a social democracy? He's not taking a step towards socialism, he's taking a step towards a social democracy, there is a HUGE difference that nobody understands. Every eastern country, whether it be Norway, Sweden, France, etc, has a social democracy with a national health system and government regulation on the economy. I can't remember who exactly it was that said it, but when Gramm was pushing through his deregulation 10 years back, the senator said "We'll look back on this and see how big of a mistake it was", that's paraphrasing, but regardless it was deregulation that destroyed our economy. The reason people are so scared of government here is because we don't feel like we're getting anything out of it, in eastern countries people gladly pay high taxes because they get a lot of out them (adequate healthcare, paid time off work, etc). Here, our money goes towards wars and killing people. Government really could do a LOT of good, as proven by Europe and the likes.
"bush spent money on the war in iraq, AND afganistan, which actually cost more than iraq."
This is wrong,
http://www.costofwar.com/ , besides, that amount on that site is weak estimate,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-10-23-wacosts_N.htm , 2.4 trillion is a closer number.
