First, my apologies to the mods and admins if this is in the wrong forum.
I have a question for you. The reason I did not put this in GD is because I’m only interested in hearing what you have to say. I’m not planning on debating any of your points.
Let’s say that in the next election congress has a liberal super-majority. This means that no conservative or moderate can block, stop, filibuster, or whatever any liberal bill. Anything the liberals want will be passed by the House and Senate and sent to the president’s desk. Now let’s also say that the president is also very liberal. It could be Obama being more liberal or it could be a brand new president.
In this hypothetical situation, what laws do you want changed and what new laws do you want passed? What government departments, agencies, and projects do you want to be cut, and which ones do you want to have increased budgets? What new departments, agencies, and projects do you want to create?
Basically, what would a liberal America look like if you could have your way?
Oh boy. I rub my hands together and cackle evilly.
First, we put the world on notice. We’re ready for our peace dividend. In four years, we’ll begin a drastic downsizing of our military. When the downsizing is complete, we’ll have enough military to obliterate anyone who even thinks of invading us, plus we’ll have enough to provide a contribution to UN missions proportionate to our population. Y’all figure out what you want to do with this power vacuum.
Second, universal health care.
Third, we drastically increase the amount of preparation given to people who want to be teachers. We enact barriers to becoming a teacher, such that you have to be really smart and crazy-hardworking to do it. We set up an apprenticeship program such that new teachers work with a master teacher before getting their own class. We model ourselves after countries like Finland that are kicking our asses in education. And we pay teachers commensurate with the higher expectations of them.
Fourth, marriage (or some institution with identical legal rights) is available to any two consenting adults who are not otherwise engaged in a marriage.
Fifth, and this should probably be earlier in the priorities, a green energy program that competes with China’s for foresight.
I’m a little confused. Are you saying we need to cut back to only have enough forces to protect ourselves and then have other countries fill in the gaps left by us?
I’m a little confused by your restatement :). My proposal is that we will no longer police the world; we will no longer have a standing military capable of invading another country on our lonesome. We’ll ensure that our national guard is up to the task of defending our borders from an organized military invasion, and we’ll ensure that if NATO or another treaty organization asks for troops, we’ll be able to contribute to a joint venture proportionate to our population, but we’ll otherwise move our current military funding into peacetime ventures. Other countries may choose whether to fill in any perceived gaps, as they wish.
I once had a really, truly great health plan (when I worked for a large hospital). For two years, we had this plan, with an enormous list of providers–all our credentialed providers, plus many others. The copay was $10-$25, the ER copay was $50, and if you were admitted to a hospital in the network, your bill would be $100. Not $100 a day–$100. The catch was that, in order to be able to offer this great plan, a significant majority of employees had to select it–something like 78%–or nobody could have it. This apparently assured a large enough base to offset any other contingency. And the thing was, for those years the signup rate was very close to 100%, because the plan was not only better than the other plans offered, it was cheaper. Then some genius decided that we legally had to offer this plan to other employers as well (and that may have been the case, legally), and suddenly the cost increased, the percentage of people selecting the plan went down, and the whole thing went pfft.
I want that plan back, and I think if Congress could figure out a way to encourage (not force) people to sign up for such a plan, it would be such a great deal that people would stand in line for it. The only problem I see with it is that there is no way for a third party to get rich (a third party who doesn’t offer the health care or pay any part of it, but gets rich by limiting who does).
Only liberals would work this kind of thing out, I think.
The problem is that lots of Liberals even have somewhat conservative on some individual issues. With many (including myself) it’s gun control for example. However I’m not sure any laws supporting such would get past an “ultra-liberal” congress. Furthermore, how much are we supposed to factor in potential consequences in 2014?
As for issues I think Liberals could agree on…
[ul]
[li]A Public Option to compete with private insurance policies or outright Single Payer. I’d prefer the former as a stepping stone, but if I had only one shot at it (most specifically that my progressive monopoly is about to get demolished in 2 years), I’d go whole hog and let conservatives fight for field position for once.[/li][li]Legalize Gay Marriage.[/li][li]Drug policy is now a state matter.[/li][li]The Patriot Act is hereby repealed.[/li][li]The TSA is hereby dissolved.[/li][li]A complete withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan will be complete in 2 years. Complete, not “non combat personnel,” I mean NOBODY not on vacation.[/li][li]The US Military budget will be cut by half. Cuts will be focused on reducing our presence abroad similiar to what LHoD describes.[/li][li]PAYGO is the law unless approved by 60% of both houses.[/li][li]The $109K cap on Social Security is hereby repealed.[/li][li]Top marginal tax rate is raised to 50%. Bush tax cuts are initially extended then gradually repealed for others as economy recovers. (Taxes should be cut in the future but I highly doubt 2 years is going to be enough time to get things under control).[/li][li]National investment in clean energy and technology.[/li][li]Guest worker program.[/li][li]Normalize relations with Cuba.[/li][li]GOD DAMN FLYING CARS![/li][/ul]
I’ll bet these will probably have enough support from enough Democrats.
After seeing a couple responses about cutting the military, I gotta ask this. Suppose North Korea goes insane and decides to invade South Korea. Without the US military, what would you propose America do about it? Just sit back and go ‘Too bad about all that death and misery and shit. Oh well, I got my healthcare and government paycheck for doing nothing. Sucks to be them. Fuck em’
That’s my problem with liberals. A lot of liberals I know profess they want to improve the world and help their fellow man. Then they turn around and say they want to total destroy one of the few things that actually can improve the world and help their fellow man. Yes, you don’t like Iraq, I get that. But would the world really have been better if all of Europe fell under communist control, Japan was able to treat China like they did in WWII for decades, or places like Yugoslavia that were doing ethnic cleansing in a civil war were allowed to continue?
Anyway, I’m not a liberal, but here’s what I’d hope to get from a liberals paradise:
A military who’s missions are selected for humanitarian reasons rather than ensuring American dominance reasons.
A decent health care system. Doesn’t have to be universal health care, but something that isn’t the worst of capitalism combined with the worst of socialism like we have now would be nice.
Social safety nets that are designed to help people who are down, not encourage them to stay down
A removal from morality from laws. Gay marriage, selling booze on sunday, pot being illegal. All stem from someone thinks those are immoral. Quit legislating morality.
A tax policy which is progressive and helps the little guy, without feeling like it was designed by some prick on minimum wage going ‘this’ll fuck the rich good!’
And just my own personal little desire more than a ‘liberal’ thing, an amendment make ALL laws sunset. Regardless of what people think of the bush tax cuts, it’s nice that they had to be debated and repassed 10 years later rather than becoming law forever and ever. All laws should do that. After a decade we could sit back and debate if they served their purpose or not.
Again, what I propose is that we participate vigorously but proportionately in treaty alliances, no longer taking a leading role. I also have this idea about a UN program called “Worst Government Ever,” that every year takes a vote on what the most oppressive government in the world is, and gives that government thirty days to clean up their act in some specific manner or expect UN bombings of their government buildings and air support for any insurgents within the country. (No, it’s not a fully fleshed-out program, just the germ of an idea). I’d support US participation in that program.
WWII is a great example of why my proposal isn’t bad. We didn’t have an enormous standing military at the time that Pearl Harbor was bombed. Germany’s invasion of Poland got Roosevelt to increase the military to a quarter-million soldiers. By 1942, we were at more than five million soldiers.
We don’t need an enormous standing military. We need a small one, and we need to be able to mobilize in order to participate in our treaty organizations, but keeping a giant military around makes presidents itch to find a use for it, and it costs a tremendous amount of money that could be better spent elsewhere.
You can always make up some premise on why we need a huge standing army. What if Japan attacks Cuba? What do we do?
We are not the policemen of the world. If you have a huge well equipped army, you will justify it by using it. We have been in a permanent state of war since we decide to build and keep a huge army. It is a huge waste of resources. It keeps up being an aggressive nation.
We built up a huge army and munitions in WW2 when we needed it. It would be more difficult now because we have offshored a big part of our industrial manufacturing. We would have to rebuild that first.
We should be developing tomorrows technology and the new green industries. But if we did develop a greener energy source, the corporations would immediately offshore it. Gotta increase those profits you know.
Real campaign finance reform. Debate on all other issues is moot when our system is set up for legalized bribery. This shouldn’t be a liberal or conservative issue.
And, a real push toward energy independence on the scale of a moon landing plan. The left can wave the flag of environmentalism while the right can embrace not being dependent on the middle east. Again, shouldn’t be a left or right issue.
I agree. The United States should have an effective military and an effective intelligence system. These are necessary tools and if they’ve been misused we should fix the user not throw out the tools.
This isn’t the nineteen thirties. The reason the United States was able to get by without a military then was because other countries (primarily Britain and France) were willing to do it for us.
I don’t consider myself a Liberal, and here’s one reason why. I believe we need our strong military. We could stop the wasteful spending in the military, and stop using our military foolishly, but I wouldn’t want a drastic cut in military spending, just the same percentage cut across the board that should be applied to everything else. We could take some ships and planes and store them. Not scrap them, just stop maintaining full crews and paying for the maintenance of their usage. But they would be available if we needed them. We should also start charging the rest of the world for the protection they recieve from our military. Countries all over the world benefit from free trade because they can ship their products through safe waters, that we make safe with very little help from anyone else. We need to openly declare that we will not protect ships that do not pay us a fee for their protection. If pirates, terrorists, or anyone else attacks a ship at sea that doesn’t pay us, we will do nothing to help the owners of that ship. We may want to go after the attackers for our own interests, but if we recover stolen property, we keep it.
A Liberal idea I agree with is public healthcare, but not the one people imagine. This should be a minimal system that most people would want to supplement with private insurance. There should be caps on expenditures, and means based co-payment.
As far as rights go, I’m conservative. Everybody should have all of their constitutional rights, and acts of congress should not remove them for expediency. What’s that you say? That sounds liberal to you? That’s why I wouldn’t associate myself with political neo-labels that have nothing to do with political philosophies whose names they have appropriated.
And here’s the one where I disagree with both sides. Everybody in this country has to pay more taxes. We are a bunch of deadbeats, racking up a credit card will get cut up one day if we continue to spend more than we take in. We have outspent our income almost all of the time in the past century.
Wasn’t that mostly achieved by a draft? I don’t think anybody wants to go back to having to rely on a draft again if it turns out that our forces are too small to fight a war.
heaven forbid we should have a draft, then rich people might need to serve. We should just use our current system where once you join you keep being sent back in tour after tour until you are dead or too wounded to return. Why share the burden when we can concentrate it onto the backs of a few.
