Saturday, February 19, 2011

Day 1 - Battle of the Budgets

Ok, so today I am frustrated by something.  Before I jump into it, let me first explain my political perspective.  I am, by nature, a liberal.  I believe in spending money in R&D for safer, newer technologies.  I believe that the "more fortunate" should help the "less fortunate", because in the end, we are all human beings.  However, I do have a conservative side to me.  I was born and raised catholic, went to all my classes, church every Sunday, heck I'm even confirmed.  I believe in the GENERAL laws/guidelines that religion has "bestowed" us as a society.  I believe that there needs to be responsiblity and sound decision made when expending money, just as I have to do with my wife and our family.  I am totally against the use of unions, in their current form.  I, as most, believe they were needed to establish some fundamental worker's rights, however, they have become bloated and obsolete, and in my opinion, cause a lot of today's current corporate outsourcing.

All that being said, I have a major issue with what is happening in DC right now.  I know there are always arguments and disagreements.  I know the health care bill has it's flaws and I know that the current (before the Republican takeover in the House) administration has done some unnecessary spending.  However, I am completely taken back by the proposed budget from the House!  I mean, the thought is, spend less money, keep government out of our lives, and let small businesses grow and hire.  But that doesn't seem to be what they are fighting for... and here are my points of contention:

1) We continue tax cuts for the wealthy:
        -OK so this, even though I am not sure of the actual outcome, may have SOME merit.  If you give tax cuts to the wealthy, they will have more money, which in turn SHOULD trickle down to the "less monetarily endowed".  There are a whole lot of "IFs" and "SHOULDs", which makes me skeptical, however, we'll let this slide.

2) Defund Planned Parenthood and begin pushing Pro-Life bills throughout various areas in the country
       -This is where I start getting lost.  If the idea is to keep government out of our lives, then why push pro-life?  Wouldn't pro-choice be the belief of people who actually believed that government should stay out of your life?  Also, defunding PP??  I mean, this valuable resource helps thousands of people (I'd say millions, but I really have no hard numbers).  Heck, there were times I'd run in and grab a handful of condoms, isn't that necessary?  Doesn't that help people from having to make the difficult decision of pro-choice/pro-life?

3) Moving on... all of this is absolutely useless!
      -None of this is going anywhere... House says a bunch of stuff, Senate gives them the finger... It is all SYMBOLIC!!  Seriously??  So for the next two years, I'm going to go to work and just talk about everything I am going to do, the extremem measures I'll take to do it...but I won't actually DO anything.  Let's see how well that fairs...

Anyway, I'm done with this, it's frustrating and annoying.  Look, believe in God, believe in old world ideals, but this isn't the 1800s anymore.  The world is moving forward, we need green technologies, we need new technologies, and we need to accept that Catholiscism has no place in our government, it has place in your home.  As far as keeping government out of our lives?  Sorry, it's not going to happen, large masses of people need some organization and somebody driving the bus and only a transparent, coherent government will make that happen, otherwise we might as well institute the Mafia in our local towns.  It may sound like Socialism, but it is what it is.  This country was found on moving forward with new ideas, not falling back on old ones.

1 comment:

  1. I could not agree with you more. Though I personally do not like or want anything to do with our government (or anyone's for that matter), I do understand that it is necessary. Unions were a tool that was required to solve a problem, that problem is now solved. Religion was a tool used to solve a problem, that problem is now solved as well. Science is the current tool, and I am sure, in the future that problem will be solved. The point being that when you no longer need a tool to solve a problem, you don't keep using it on new problems. You open your mind and use the right tool for the problem, even if that means thinking outside the box...

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