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Grex > Agora46 > #121: California's Governor Gray Davis facing recall election | |
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| 25 new of 264 responses total. |
gull
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response 155 of 264:
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Aug 21 13:38 UTC 2003 |
It's hard to find moderates who are capable of getting worked up about
it. :>
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albaugh
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response 156 of 264:
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Aug 21 16:58 UTC 2003 |
The Daily Show last night had a spoof about 2 candidates, dressed up in
"mascot" costumes, one a penis, the other a colored-over-red raising kind of
get up. :-)
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jaklumen
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response 157 of 264:
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Aug 22 00:30 UTC 2003 |
resp:155 shame, isn't it?
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richard
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response 158 of 264:
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Aug 22 02:10 UTC 2003 |
Arnold seems to be tryign to run for Governor without having to take any
stands other than general ones, and without stating at all any specifics
of what he'd do. The article I read today said he's promising only to
have a sixty day audit of the state's financial records and then, and only
then, say what he'll do, where he stands, what he'll cut and what he won't
cut.
Its risky to vote for a candidate who has never held political
office, has never had to be answerable to any constituency and has never
had to explain what he stands for. How can you be sure what you are
getting? A few years back, when Ross Perot was running for President, I
had some friends who thought he was like the ideal candidate. One friend
was a republican ( yes I do have republican friends) who thought Perot was
going to be this great conservative President. Another friend thought
Perot was going to be an independent liberal, basically Bill Clinton
without the partisan packaging. They were probably both wrong, and had
Perot been elected, one or both of them was going to end up very upset
because Perot chose not to define himself or take a great many political
stances.
And now Arnold, like Perot, also seems to think he doesn't need to. That he
is above politics as usual, and you should vote for him because he's ARNOLD
and not because of anything he stands for. Voters IMO deserve to know what
they are getting, they deserve to have candidates who define themselves and
run on understandable platforms. You know what you get if Arnold is elected
and defines himself after the fact, and upsets people who assumed he was more
liberal or more conservative than he really is? Yep, a bunch of irate voters
and yet another recall petition.
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johnnie
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response 159 of 264:
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Aug 22 12:31 UTC 2003 |
Yes, well, it's not like the other candidates are rushing forth with
plans that would eliminate a $38B deficit, either. It's a matter of
raising taxes and/or cutting popular programs, and the first person to
propose that is the first person effectively eliminated from the race.
Arnold ruled out tax increases and cuts to education, which puts him in
the position of having to cut every other single bit of state spending
to balance the budget.
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gull
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response 160 of 264:
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Aug 22 13:36 UTC 2003 |
There are going to be tax increases in California. There's no way
around it, and everyone knows it. Any candidate who claims they'll
balance the budget without raising taxes is a liar.
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mvpel
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response 161 of 264:
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Aug 28 00:58 UTC 2003 |
Dave - over the past five years of the Davis administration and thorough
democrat control of the state, the population has increased some 23%, tax
revenues increased 25% thanks to all the highly productive dot-commers, but...
... spending by the state increased by 40%.
We already pay 9.3% in the top income tax bracket, and an 8.25% sales tax,
plus fairly substantial property taxes (though not as high as Ann Arbor's,
I gather). Add to that the recent significant increase in corporate workers'
comp taxes to support paid leaves-of-absence out of the state's coffers
(which was undoubtedly one of the factors prompting 3Com to pull up stakes
and relocate their Santa Clara headquarters...)
It's not too hard to see that "low taxes" were not the reason a $10 billion
surplus was transformed into a $38 billion deficit over the past five years.
Did you know that the budget that was finally passed (after the Democrat's
scheming to delay it for maximum political advantage was exposed) spends
more this year than they did last year?
If you're in a hole, isn't the first step to stop digging? Apparently that
little bit of folk wisdom is lost on the Democrat-controlled legislature of
California.
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mcnally
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response 162 of 264:
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Aug 28 04:41 UTC 2003 |
> If you're in a hole, isn't the first step to stop digging? Apparently that
> little bit of folk wisdom is lost on the Democrat-controlled legislature of
> California.
Digs at the Democrats aside, it's not as if they hold a monopoly on that
particular failing. The current Republican approach seems to be if you
find yourself in a hole, hire Haliburton to speed up drilling..
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rcurl
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response 163 of 264:
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Aug 28 06:01 UTC 2003 |
Yes, I noticed the extreme hypocrasy of #161 which applies "in spades" more
to our current nationial administration than to California - who are
transforming a budget surplus to the largest budget deficit in history.
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gull
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response 164 of 264:
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Aug 28 12:59 UTC 2003 |
Re #161: That argument is easy to make if you look at government
spending in isolation, pretending that all that money gets poured into a
hole somewhere and buried. But the fact is all of it gets spent on
services, all of which benefit *someone*, and cutting those services is
always politically painful. People hate taxes, but they also love
government services. Unfortunately both the California government and
the Bush administration seem to be telling people that they can keep the
current level of service without paying more in taxes, and with the
economy in the toilet that's just not true.
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tod
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response 165 of 264:
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Aug 28 19:57 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 166 of 264:
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Aug 28 23:48 UTC 2003 |
Sometimes I wonder why he thinks he's a Republican. ;>
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oval
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response 167 of 264:
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Aug 29 13:07 UTC 2003 |
i hope he wins.
and later becomes president.
how fitting to have the TERMINATOR as the leader of the USofA.
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jiffer
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response 168 of 264:
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Aug 29 14:20 UTC 2003 |
You would need to change some laws for Arnie to be President of the
USA...
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albaugh
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response 169 of 264:
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Aug 29 14:20 UTC 2003 |
Sorry, Arnold can never be *elected* president, since he's not a US citizen
by birth. I'm not sure if he could even run as vice president, for the same
reason. The only way he could become president is to hold a high office (e.g.
Sec. of State) and then terminate the others ahead of him in line of
succession. :-)
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tod
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response 170 of 264:
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Aug 29 17:25 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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remmers
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response 171 of 264:
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Aug 29 17:57 UTC 2003 |
Or Secretary of State, as a person with a vaguely similar accent
once was.
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tod
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response 172 of 264:
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Aug 29 18:05 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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scott
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response 173 of 264:
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Aug 30 00:02 UTC 2003 |
Re 172: The new (as of GW Bush) way to send email to the President involves
several web pages of questions. And the first question boils down to "friend
or enemy?". Eep!
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dah
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response 174 of 264:
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Aug 30 00:27 UTC 2003 |
Wash all hands.
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i
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response 175 of 264:
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Aug 30 01:06 UTC 2003 |
My understanding is that certain foreign-born Secretaries of State were
excluded from the "just in case" line to the Oval Office because of their
foreign birth.....yep, the Constitution specifies (II.1.5) that *only*
natural born Citizens are eligible to be President.
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dah
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response 176 of 264:
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Aug 30 01:22 UTC 2003 |
Help.
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scg
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response 177 of 264:
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Aug 30 06:55 UTC 2003 |
Schwarzenegger didn't exactly say he was against gay marriage. He said he
thinks gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.
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pvn
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response 178 of 264:
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Aug 30 08:11 UTC 2003 |
Next thing you know greeks are going to claim the right to marry their
sheep - and texans their heiffers...
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russ
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response 179 of 264:
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Aug 30 13:29 UTC 2003 |
Re #164:
>That argument is easy to make if you look at government spending in
>isolation, pretending that all that money gets poured into a hole >somewhere
and buried.
Government spending can be very destructive, if it chokes out more
efficient ways of providing the same thing. For instance, you could
"eliminate" unemployment by paying one half of the unemployed people
to dig holes, and the other half to fill them in again. The problem
is that the supply of goods and services demanded by those make-workers
wouldn't be increased in the slightest by the make-work, and everyone
else (the taxpaying public) gets poorer by the combination of higher
taxes and demand-pull inflation. If you can get the unemployed into
real jobs making desired goods and services, the public benefits.
>But the fact is all of it gets spent on services, all of which benefit
>*someone*, and cutting those services is always politically painful.
Was that intended to refute the idea that government money isn't as
good as poured into a hole? If so, it's a faulty argument. The
hole-diggers and hole-fillers will militate to keep their arrangement
intact because their senecure is at stake, while the taxpayers have
other concerns. This does not mean that the hole-diggers and hole-fillers
should not be pink-slipped at the earliest opportunity. Employing ten
thousand government workers to provide a given service when one thousand
will do IS money down the rathole; the public could otherwise enjoy the
services as well as more money in their pockets from lower taxes.
This is one example where the interests of public "servants" and their
unions are directly opposed to those of the people being "served".
"We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Reforming government might be harder than going to the Moon, but it is also
more worthwhile.
Re #166: I think that the problem is California. It's so screwy that
a few niggling PC transgressions get you thrown out of the Democrats,
and the Republican party is the only real game left.
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