I was also touched at the concern about my absence. I love you all.

 Reply

that was awful. i'm sorry.

 Reply

1. A new direction for the two wars we are in

2. Some revamped tax policy

3. Slightly different approach to our Capitalistic-Private markets (slightly more regulation)

4. Return to the Constitution as it is written. Specifically in regards to Torture, Due process and Habeas Corpus (Guantanamo Bay), VP Rights and Responsibilities, Signing Statements, and Privacy Rights.

5. Less Government Spending on the DOD, HLS, CIA,...

Socialism is NOT what I am voting for, and I don't believe I'm alone on this. I can tell you, If Republican claims that Obama is taking us towards Socialism turn out to be true (and not the fear mongering I took them for), then he won't be getting my vote in 2012. I am NOT for eliminating private property rights. Nor am I going to accept a government thats bent on taking over private industry. Regulating our private markets to prevent them from self-destruction , yes. Socialism is a joke, here's why:

1. It doesn't reward the entrepreneurial attitude.

2. Private industry is usually more efficient then state run (see Katrina response, both public and private)

3. As long as the State is run by humans, the State cannot be trusted to properly administer people's property (it's where Greed fouls up the whole model).

4. State focused groups tend to drown out the cries of individuals in need.

Socialism isn't a dirty word, it just sucks (for the driven individual). If you're content on the State making your decisions for you, vote for Socialism (or move to France).

 Reply

Besides, it's never been a dirty word to me, just something I don't particularly agree with.

Finally, if this article doesn't prove my point that "whatever we want to write about" should be the new "theme" for io9, then nobody's paying any attention.

Or is this "Urban Fantasy"?

-Kle.

 Reply

So, who's the socialists?

 Reply

McBama is nothing more than two symptoms of the same disease: An excessively large, unconstitutionally powerful, disastrously expensive and dangerously intrusive federal government. Regardless of what word you use, "socialist" or whatever, Senator Obama represents outright statism while Senator McCain is statism-lite. Modern Republicans trying to attack Obama by calling him a socialist is like the Zerg accusing the Phalanx of being assimilationists.

Another disturbance I'd like to throw out there into The Force is the falsehood of this idea that it was insufficient government involvement that led to our financial market cluster-fuck. Largely, what happened was the opposite.

It was the U.S. government who passed and repeatedly expanded The Community Reinvestment Act, forcing banks to make loans to lower-income borrowers who normally represent bad credit risks and encouraging a loosening of lending standards by banks. It was the U.S. government who, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, pressured a distortion of mortgage standards in order put people into homes they couldn't afford just for the sake of scoring political brownie points. It was the U.S. government who created the Federal Reserve System, an all-powerful cartel of secretive, unaccountable, and privately owned banks that over the last decade encouraged irresponsible lending in addition to inflating property values with an easy money policy that floods our economy with an artificial glut of credit.

Did the federal government fail to properly police the market place so as to ensure transparency, integrity and soundness in the operations of financial and housing institutions? Of course they did. The Securities and Exchange Commission seems to have mysteriously teleported itself into another dimension. And the Justice Department only recently decided to get off their asses and open an investigation into the national embarrassment known as Washington Mutual.

A precision-based and carefully limited regulation of our financial market IS needed. You do this by enforcing laws already on the books, investigating and prosecuting fraud, allowing dying institutions to file for bankruptcy or go into receivership, and eliminating certain regulatory policies that only impede the ability of companies to function competitively. There is a vast difference between effective, streamlined regulation and simply "more" regulation.

I do not consider the Congress, instead of letting the market correct itself, taking over a TRILLION (not 700 billion) a TRILLION dollars of our tax money just to shift the burden of economic loss from irresponsible borrowers and lenders to the rest of us as an act of targeted, streamlined, effective market policing.

We are staring into the maw of The Lord of The Deep here folks. And in his cavernous gullet lies over 100 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare, a 9.5 trillion dollar national debt, a half-trillion dollar deficit, and future bail-outs for many other industries encompassing multiple billions of dollars each.

 Reply