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Tag Archives: Iowa

Five Fixes For Our Primary/Caucus Fiasco

04 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by Paul Kiser in Government, Information Technology, Internet, Politics, Taxes, US History

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Caucus, Caucuses, Conservatives, Democrat, Democrats, GOP, Iowa, New Hampshire, Primaries, Primary, Republican, Republicans

Voting FAIL

Voting FAIL

For decades we have been given this advice about our system for electing Presidents:  “If it’s broken, don’t try to fix it.”

People get nervous about elections and major changes are automatically assumed to create new problems…and it’s true. Any change will create new issues; however, the question is whether or not the new issues are really significant, or whether they are just the Elmer’s in the room who try to find a problem even if it is absurd.

First, we have to accept that our current political system works for some people. People with money and power really, really like the current system because it is easy to manipulate. In addition, people who have more pull in the political system than they should have really, really like it because the current system gives a handful of Iowans and New Hampshirites much more of a punch to our political system than they should have under an all voices are equal” system.

But the United States of America is spiraling out of control because our system of electing our leaders has become a type of reality TV show where entertainment is rewarded and common sense is punished. So how do we fix it?

ONE:  Corporations Are NOT People
It is hard to fathom how absurd the justification was for the Supreme Court to rule in favor of Citizens United. Free speech is our greatest foundation of democracy. Each person has a right to voice his or her opinion. What the Supreme Court did was to dilute our voice and say that not only do individuals have free speech rights, but some privileged individuals can amplify their voice to have a greater access to free speech than the common individual. It’s a perversion of the First Amendment and everyone knows it.

The ruling has to be reversed if our political system is to be restored.

TWO:  Tax Big Donors
The mega-contributor to political campaigns is now the tail wagging the political dog. Our country’s dignity has been slowly eroded by the wholesale purchasing of politicians by wealthy individuals and organizations. Yes, that means unions and corporations.

Contributions that exceed $500 in a two-year period given directly or indirectly to a campaign or cause should be taxed at 100%. Give a million dollars  to a campaign, pay an additional $999,500 to the government entity the candidate or cause will serve or impact.

THREE:  Government Established Primaries
The idea that political parties can establish any method of choosing a candidate is ridiculous. It plays into the hands of the buffoon who suddenly  decides that the method was unfair and then we are off to the courts. Every State should have a Primary, not a Caucus and it should be done under the same rules in every State.

FOUR:  Fifty Primaries in Fifty Days
By lottery pull the names of each State. The first State pulled holds their primary on February 1st. The second State pulled has their primary on February 2nd, etc. Candidates can begin campaigning in a State three weeks before the primary for that State.

FIVE:  Use both Internet and In-Person Voting
Voting is going to be done by the Internet. It’s coming. Why not start with the primaries? Keep the in-person option available, but allow people to vote on a secure website.

Each registered voter is given a unique code for each election. They register for the election website and set up a password. On the election date they sign in, enter their unique code, and vote.

Bad News For Romney: He Might Win Iowa

29 Thursday Dec 2011

Posted by Paul Kiser in Politics

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Evangelicals, GOP, Iowa, Mitt Romney, Republicans, Romney, Ron Paul

Can Romney Pull Out A Loss in Iowa?

Winning in Iowa might not be the ‘kiss of death’ for a Republican presidential candidate, but it will certainly give the winner bad breath. The Republican party in Iowa is dominated by ultra-right wing, Bible-thumping, white zealots who have a 5-minute loyalty to whoever panders to them the most. A GOP presidential candidate in Iowa is like being in a dancer in a strip club. The patron’s affection is dependent on how far the dancer will go for them.

Mitt Romney has avoided that strip club and the national polls have shown it’s been a smart move. Now, despite his efforts to lose Iowa, he finds himself in the lead with only days left before the caucuses. The latest CNN poll shows Romney is now leading, not so much because he is moving ahead, but because Newt Gingrich is moving backward…fast. This can only be bad news for Romney who really needs to lose Iowa in order to appear to be a legitimate candidate to the rest of the nation.

Iowa has tarnished the reputation of many Republican candidates. Remember who won Iowa in 2008? Mike Huckabee, who then promptly faded into the political wallpaper. During the last 30 years, when there was not an incumbent GOP candidate, Iowa Republicans have selected the next President only once (George Bush in 2000.) 

Mitt Romney has 25% support in Iowa in the CNN poll, which is up 5% as Gingrich fell by 19% in three weeks. Romney’s best hope is that Ron Paul will continue to surge forward (up 5% to 22%) and overtake him. The penny on the rail is Rick Santorum. He gained the most from Gingrich’s holiday free fall and picked up 11%. Had some of that support gone to Paul, Romney wouldn’t have to sweat the next few days.

Romney could do one thing that would assure him a loss in Iowa and his eventual Republican nomination. He could announce that Evangelicals are pushing America into a Taliban-like society and they should be stopped before gangs of Christians are walking the streets looking for someone to stone to death. That would give him his Iowa loss and likely gain him the White House. 

This article first published as
Bad News For Romney:  He Might Win Iowa

on Technorati.com

Conservatives Weaponize Religion, Worship Wealth

02 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by Paul Kiser in Politics, Religion, Taxes

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

abortion rights, Conservatives, Dean Heller, gay marriage, Iowa, Republicans, Rick Perry, S.1931, tax breaks, The Family Leader, wealthy

First Conservative Church of America?

In the past two weeks Conservatives dropped any pretense about their goal of creating new laws that will be used as weapons anyone who violates their version of religion. At the same time Conservatives in Congress also continued to elevate the millionaires and billionaires to demigod status.

Few would deny that Evangelical Christians control most if not all religious conversations among Conservatives, but that was even more apparent on the Saturday before Thanksgiving when the Iowa-based, ultra-Conservative religious group, The Family Leader, hosted a round-table discussion with six of the most prominent Republican Presidential candidates. Prior to the start of the two-hour event, organizers spent 45 minutes outlining their plan for national domination by controlling who will be elected to a political office.

Groups like The Family Leader, Focus on the Family, and The Truth Project hope to create a “worldview” in the United States that uses local, state, and federal laws as their weapons to enforce their mythological beliefs on all citizens. It was hard to argue with their ability to control Conservative politics with six Republican candidates at their beck and call.

Paul Kiser

Conservatives have worked to pass laws that denied equal rights to Gay Americans, created impossible building codes for women’s health clinics that honored a woman’s freewill, and define birth control as murder. The Iowa event made it clear that Republican Presidential candidates have nothing but praise and support to groups who seek to replace fair government with interpretive mythology.

After the event, Conservative Presidential candidate Rick Perry joined Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum in signing The Family Leader’s Pledge to Marriage. The vow that implies that being Gay is a learned behavior (presumably that can be deprogrammed,) that African-Americans were better parents when they were slaves, and demands the candidate commit to 14 points, including an Amendment to the United States Constitution that forbids legal Gay marriage, and a rejection of Sharia Islam law.

Conservative's Deity: Wealth

In the same week Conservatives offered the economy of the United States as a sacrifice to the richest Americans by rejecting any plan to secure America’s future that would include a restoration of tax revenue from those who owe the most to this country for their wealth. Despite Conservative attempts to spin it as the fault of the Democrats, the simple fact is that there was only one issue that kept Congress from creating a solution to America’s current and future debt issue and that is imposing fair taxes on those with incomes over $1 million a year.

This week appointed Senator Dean Heller from Nevada joined in the worship of the rich by authoring Senate Bill 1931 (S.1931) which proposes legislation to temporarily extend tax cuts for middle and lower incomes by taking jobs and money from some of the very people the temporary tax cuts are supposed to benefit. Heller, a former Bank of America consultant and stockbroker who, according to the Las Vegas Sun, is worth between $2.5 and $11 million, offered the new law in order to shelter the wealthy, including himself, from the Democrats proposal that would re-establish some of the tax revenue that was cut during the Bush administration.

As an apparent joke to the wealthy and an insult to those who are not, Heller included provisions in the bill that millionaires; 1) could, if they felt like it, donate money to the United States Treasury to lower America’s debt, 2) would not be able to collect unemployment nor food stamps (we allow millionaires to collect unemployment and food stamps now?), and 3) make them pay more for Medicare, assuming they can’t afford private health insurance. All three provisions are symbolic gestures that pale in comparison to the jobs and wages lost by the rest of Senate Bill 1931.

Conservatives point to the Bible as their rationale for everything they do. The Bible says,

“Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
Matthew 19:24

It seems Conservatives like Senator Dean Heller, who scored a perfect 100% favorable rating from the Christian Coalition of America, are unconcerned about what the Bible says.

A version of this article first published as
Conservatives Weaponize Religion, Worship Wealthy

on Technorati.com

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