@DontTreadOnMe,
DontTreadOnMe wrote:
Foxfyre wrote:
And a nation who put a man on the moon should also be able to;
develop safe and clean sources of energy.
Which will happen if the private sector is given sufficient incentive to do so.
Quote:develop and provide a universal healthcare system that is inexpensive, efficient and far superior to that offered in other industrialized nations.
Well we already have that except for the inexpensive part and that will happen (again) if the government gets out of it.
Quote:should be able to develop and build efficient and safe high speed rail systems across the country.
Well lets see. It is roughly 2500 miles from New York City to Los Angeles. At 100 miles per hour, that's 25 hours on the train without making ANY stops for fuel or to pick up or drop off passengers. The same distance can be covered by air in a little under 3 hours and probably a whole lot cheaper. We are running a commuter train on the roughly 100 miles between Belen NM and Santa Fe NM now that carries a few hundred passengers, most of which previously utilized company busses and vans on not-all-that-crowded Interestate 25. The vans and busses were paid for by private industry or the passengers themselves. The train is heavily subsidized by the NM taxpayer and whatever federal grants it can get and that bill figures to go up substantially year by year.
Certainly in heavily populated urban areas commuter trains are the way to go and those areas should be able to justify them and pay for them without help from Maljamar NM or Two Guns AZ where the citizens probably will never need or even see a commuter train in their entire lives.
Quote:should be able to develop and provide not just adequate, but safe and superior public schools that develop minds in all areas of education, including the sciences and the arts.
Why is it that the more money the government pours into the school--highest per capita of any industrialized nation--the worse the schools get? Maybe turning that responsibility back to the states and local communities might net really great benefits?
Quote:develop and manufacture goods that are well made, reasonably priced and made in america by american workers.
Governments don't do that. Private industry does. Put enough regulation into place to ensure reasonable product safety and prevent people from doing violence to each other, lower taxes and implement a free market system in which business and industry calls the shots instead of government and unions and then watch us thrive.
Quote:develop and grow nutritious vegetables, grains, fruit and food animals that are of high quality, safe to eat and reasonably priced so as to be available to even the poorest so they aren't consigned to eating useless McFood with no qualities other than being terrific if you're trying grow a humongous ass.
The government doesn't do that either. But control our borders and put policies and incentive into place to make that happen in the private sector and it will. Also, there will be more jobs for those poor people. $10 trillion poured into the war on poverty should be enough of that experiement. Let's try something else.
Quote:develop, equip and maintain a military that can confidently go into combat without the need to write home for a flak jacket, or scrounge around for scraps of sheet metal to weld on to the glorified dune buggies they're expected to roll across booby trapped roads under heavy weapons fire.
No quarrel there. We do need to provide the best we can provide for those who go into harm's way on our behalf. I sure hope the President doesn't go through with his plan to severely reduce the Defense budget so that we are severely under equipped should we need to engage an enemy militarily.
Quote:develop and maintain a full time fleet of high orbit and space vehicles so that we don't have to beg russia for a lift up to our own space station.
No quarrel here either. I'm a passionate supporter of the space program so long as it is beneficial to the people.
Quote:develop and launch space vehicles capable of interplanetary travel so we can boost our learning about the galaxy and universe we live in rather than rely on explanations written by ancients who believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. hasn't it occured to people that it is entirely possible that we might find a source of safe energy that would be cheap to develop for our needs?
That would be good. Is it included in the President's $3.5 trillion budget somewhere? Look how much we could do if MACean principles were employed by the government.
Quote:develop and provide medical treatments unhampered by philosophical dogma.
That will happen when government gets out of the process altogether. Dogma goes two ways and it should not be a function of government from either camp.
Quote:understand that relying on "trust in god" may be comforting, but "e pluribus unum" provided more, and better results.
Which means that every citizen who is able should be required to take responsibility for and accept the consequences for his own choices and should not leave it up to the government or others to provide what he should provide for himself and his/her family. Every citizen should be paying some taxes into the system and have a stake in it. No government can be uncorrupt if those who vote have no stake in the outcome of an election other than to protect their cut of the government dole.
