I am torn on this one, I really like Terri... However they both spoke well and made sense at the forum. Either I'll do some more research before Tuesday, or I'll bring a coin to flip...
In this case, Gaither's apparent support for the Marriage Amendment will likely have me voting for Bonoff. Given 2 moderates, I'll pick the one that supports personal freedoms.
Terri Bonoff for Senate
David Gaither for Senate
True North Gaither to Challenge Bonoff
Mtka Patch Debate
Vote Smart Bonoff
Also, here was an interesting opinion piece on the effective politician.
NYT Rules for Craftsmen
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Rural Republicans didn't do their suburban and exurban colleagues any favors when they put the marriage amendment on the ballot. If Gaither had any sense, he would break from his party on the issue.
--Hiram
I agree. Probably hard to do now since politicians usually get bashed if they learn and change. (ie flip flopping...)
Or worse yet, maybe he actually believes it is a good thing.
A lot of Republicans are campaigning against gridlock. One way to demonstrate their willingness to end the gridlock is to reject the transparently silly things their party in the legislature supported such as the marriage amendment, or the transparently partisan measures they supported such as the voter ID amendment. That would really help him make the argument that he is independent in Hopkins, but he didn't do it, and you are right it's far too late to do it now.
--Hiram
That's what I keep thinking about the Liberal:
- Tax the Rich
- One payer healthcare
- Pardons for illegal aliens
- etc
There isn't much room to move to the Right, but there is a long slide to the Left. Which could make compromise a four letter word and lead to a disaster like Greece or Spain.
G2A Continuum
We have to tax the rich or at least the well off because those are the folks with money. We do tax the poor as well, and obviously taxes are more of a burden to the poor than the rich, but there just isn't enough money there to pay for the things we need.
The individual mandate was a Republican plan. It was a concession to conservative interests. Along the way, Republicans abandoned but that had more to do with unwillingness to give Obama a political victory, than with the merits of their plan.
As for aliens, illegal or otherwise, this issue is one of our nation's great hypocrisies. Republicans have as little interest in any sort of universal solution to this problem than Democrats. And both parties know that time isn't on the side of any such solution, as more and more children of illegal aliens become taxpaying, voting, citizens, who would view with disfavor any politician who campaigns on a platform of sending mom and dad back to the old country.
We already have our Greece, areas dependent on the largesse of the federal government. Only we call them Texas and Florida.
==Hiram
That's the cool thing about "silly things their party in the legislature supported". Each group thinks they have rational and important reasons for what they want. Look how well you did...
Maybe we will stay grid locked.
Gridlock is a choice made by voters, not legislators. A choice for divided government, is a choice not to do anything about deficits. It's not a choice really about taxing the rich, because the rich will always pay the bulk of income taxes, just as taxes will always burden the poor more than the rich. It's a choice to do largely nothing about the problems that confront us. It's basically a Republican choice, because Republicans believe that we can't solve those problems, but that they will be solved by the invisible hand of Adam Smith.
--Hiram
By the way, David Brooks isn't describing the political craftsman, he is describing the political hack. And he is making the Mitt Romney argument, implied through much of the election season, and made explicitly the the other day which is "If you don't vote for me, Republicans in Congress will wreck the country.".
--Hiram
You started so well, I thought you were going to accept that all citizens (Liberals and Conservatives) and both parties were responsible for our mess...
Then you hit the reset button and returned to "its all the fault of those darn Conservative Republicans..."
From your perspective, what is the Democrat's contribution to the High Debt and High cost of government?(ie 40% of GDP) Or are they just the folks in the white hat to you?
You started so well, I thought you were going to accept that all citizens (Liberals and Conservatives) and both parties were responsible for our mess...
Americans made a disastrous mistakes 12 and 8 years ago, by electing George Bush as president. These are mistakes with which we will have to live now, and for years to come. I suppose in some respects we are responsible for those mistakes. But that kind of thinking doesn't get us anywhere in terms of elections. We as a people aren't on the ballot. And whatever responsibility we might have for those mistakes is in no way relevant, to how we apply the lessons we have learned from them going forward.
--Hiram
what is the Democrat's contribution to the High Debt and High cost of government?
Some Democrats voted for the destabilizing Bush tax cuts which frittered away the Clinton era surplus, and aggravated the debt problem resulting from a slow economy during most of the Bush years, which culminated in the near collapse of the economy in his final year in office.
Second, too many Democrats went along with a series of ward in the middle east which although conducted largely off the books, contribute to the debt today.
Third, Democrats did not insist that the prescription drug benefit enacted during the Bush years be paid for.
Fourth, Democrats did not insist that the tax cuts we extended to the supposedly job creating wealthy be used to create jobs.
I should note that the actual cost of government isn't all that high. The number of government employees isn't growing significantly, and isn't keeping pace with population growth. On the federal level, the only cabinet level department added in recent decades, the Department of Homeland Security, was added during a Republican administration, and in fairness to Republicans, was largely a combination of government agencies already in existence. Government isn't bigger, it just does more, largely as a consequence of economic circumstances beyond it's control. The government isn't bigger, for example, just because it sends out more Social Security checks to aging baby boomers.
--Hiram
Depends on one's definition of big. I think ~40% of our GDP flowing through the hands of the government is pretty big.
"Depends on one's definition of big. I think ~40% of our GDP flowing through the hands of the government is pretty big."
It does, and it surprises me that people who complain about the size of government never really raise that issue in their own mind. As I have said, the federal government spends money on three things, the military, Social Security, and health care. I don't dispute here that the military is part of the federal government. But is someone who receives a check from Social Security a part of government? Or who has a portion of their medical expenses paid by Medicare? And if they are, what does that say about the size of the government as a problem that needs to be addressed?
There was a time when we were a younger country, and when our medical costs were much higher than they are today, but that's in the past and we can't return to those days. Personally, I would like to take some steps to reduce some of those costs, particularly in the area of health care. But look what happens when we do that. The president has proposed a cut of 710 billion dollars in Medicare costs, not a definitive solution but definitely a step in the right direction. What happens? He comes under fierce attack from the Republican Party, supposedly the party of fiscal responsibility. So it comes down to basic things. You can't be a supporter of cutting spending, unless you actually want to cut spending. And it's very difficult to argue that government is too large while opposing measures that would make it smaller, and in fact, passing out blank checks, as Republicans seem to want to do with the health care industry, which would make the government even larger, always assuming of course, that recipients of Medicare and Medicaid are part of the federal government.
--Hiram
You apparently forgot that welfare allocation.
The first ring suburbs were solidly Republican 50 years ago, well run communities of hard working refugees from the poorly run, overbearing core cities. Their success soon brought swarms of liberal locusts that have brought the same ruination and decay. The cycle repeats now in the second, and soon the third tier suburbs. This is what Terri Bonoff represents, someone who brings more of the same to a once stellar area.
One other observation. Terri Bonoff is unique in her ability to speak at great length without saying anything. Not good or bad content, not left or right content, just zero content, words and sentences and paragraphs with no discernible underlying thought.
As I said, I would have loved to vote for Gaither however I am getting really tired of the Republicans doing whatever the religious right wants. Hopefully they figure out that they aren't an arm of the church sometime before 2014...
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