The Federal Government should concern itself with the powers that are enumerated in article 1, section 8 of the Constitution. The rest should be local.
You mean like imposing taxes to promote the general welfare?
And if anything, it’s easier to ignore politics here than in New Zealand. Doesn’t NZ have mandatory voting?
Then why move to another country?
The interpretation that is a perversion of the Constitution.
No it doesn’t.
Not to have to watch this one get screwed up more and more.
The 16th Amendment, at any rate, is as much a part of it as the Bill of Rights.
So, I guess that’s a “NO” on answering the question DrumBum asked.
]Just checking.
I can bring the horse to water. Can’t make it drink.
That much is true, of course. Even bringing the water to the horse is apparently no guarantee of success. :rolleyes:
Good luck being allowed in.
I hope you either have the skills they are looking for under the skilled migrant category (especially experience in an "area of absolute skills) and can meet the points total, or you have $500,000 plus to invest in a business.
And your answer to this is to fuck off to somewhere you don’t care about. All class, aintcha, I’m sure NZ will be thrilled to receive your application saying that.
Not to mention that NZ is far more “socialist” than the US (according to my friend who lived in the US for 8 years and now NZ for 6). Are you ready for actual real proper Government funded health care? Higher taxes? Special breaks for racial groups?
You are aware that they have news services in NZ? Which mention US politics all the time?
I’m sure your answer to this will be “but I won’t watch them”; couldn’t you just do that where you are?
You should probably learn more about politics over here. The National Party, the center-right party, raised the GST to 15%, and the minimum wage to $13/hr. The income tax is progressive, a 30% rate kicking in at $48k/year. The most recent election saw a significant amount of outrage at the prospect of selling off state-owned assets (such as majority ownership in Kiwibank and Air New Zealand). I’m just guessing you might find things a bit liberal for your tastes.
Yes, I do.
Wouldn’t care. As I said, I don’t really care how screwed up New Zealand is or going to be in the future as long as I am comfortable. And as long as I can leave for another place when needed.
We will be sure to evaluate your political arguments in this thread and others in light of your expressed sense of civic responsibility.
Knock yourself out.
So you’re so upset with what you see as unfair taxes, liberal policies and government overreach in the United States that you plan to emigrate in protest, quite possibly to a country with higher taxes, even more liberal policies and greater government control.
Yep, can’t get any more airtight than that.
When I move, taxation minimization will be one of the goals. mostly on capital gains. I don’t much care about “liberal policies” and “government control” - as I said, as long as I can leave any time I want, “government control” doesn’t matter.
And no, my moving will not be “in protest”. It will be because US will lose its unique place that it had for people like me when I was growing up as a bulwark against tyranny, a beacon of individual freedom in the sea of collectivism, a counterpoint to the European hive mentality. Once it does, there’s no reason to stay.
I will certainly be voting for a third-party candidate this November. However, if some bizarre set of circumstances forced me to vote for one the two major-party nominees, I would probably choose Romney. I don’t say so lightly, as I’ve been a lifelong Democrat up to this point (except for that one time when I voted for Ralph Nader).
The two big things that turned me against Obama are his totally unwillingness to seriously acknowledge the problem of the national debt, much less do anything about it, and his attack on religious freedom by requiring health care plans purchased by religious institutions cover birth control. On the former issue, while he’s given lip service to the existence of the debt, actions speak louder than words. Obama’s budget forecasts show trillion-dollar deficits for years to come. He keeps proposing more spending in ways that are ridiculous and wasteful. Things like high-speed trains sound spiffy, but sometimes when you’re facing a coming financial catastrophe, you have to acknowledge reality. His proposal to solve the debt by raising taxes on billionaires is pure political theater. The tax hike that Congressional Democrats voted on earlier this year would erase, to the nearest percent, zero percent of the deficit.
Speaking of political theater, the birth control mandate is a classic example: an intrusive “solution” to a non-existent problem, serving no purpose other than to stoke a culture war battle and distract people away from the administration’s failures in other areas. Obama might as well have telegraphed us an announcement that he’s no longer interested in uniting the country, but is instead hoping to spark as many fights between his administration and interest groups as possible.
As for other issues, there are remarkably few differences between Romney and Obama worth noticing. Both intend to maintain a useless military-industrial complex almost as large as that of the rest of the world combined, to keep having a bellicose foreign policy, to ignore civil rights, to spend hundreds of billions on corporate pork, and for the most part to maintain the status quo in Washington. The only area where Obama’s stances are clearly preferable is global warming and the environment, but while he may be pointed in the right direction, his policies aren’t moving us very far in that direction.
As a Catholic, seeing women come under fire because the church is run by a bunch of idiots, I consider it a moral imperative that Obama wins, and wins handily.