In a world where giving your word is synonymous with breaking your word, I'm getting very sick of politics. I just started voting, for goodness sake. I hear campaign promises and then nothing gets done. Democrats want to fix the world by giving all the money to people who already have enough, in order to buy votes. Republicans seem to have some sort of investment in this war, and want to see a return on it when in reality there may be no return. There may no longer be any reason for us to be in Iraq except to keep it from falling apart. If we leave, it falls apart. If we stay, it holds on by a thin strand of hair. But the Iraqis can't agree on anything because they don't know how to be a democracy yet.
I love the market system. I know it has a few drawbacks, but for the most part, things people need are created through the market system. If I need food, I can go to the store and buy it because the market decided it was worth producing, and at such and such a price. If I need anything, I can go and buy it. If I want something that hasn't been created yet, I can put my own money into inventing it myself, put it into someone else inventing it, or get people to fund me inventing it. If you can't get funding, it's not worth creating, because nobody will buy it anyway (or you're talking to the wrong people).
Regardless, the government has a very specific role in this kind of system that our current government has overstepped. The government should provide a system for obtaining common property that is needed and, if left to the individual, the individual most likely could not afford. So, the pooling of funds is the only way to get that need filled. Everybody pays something, someone who has more is required to give more, and he who has less is required to give less.
This is all spelled out in the Constitution, down to specific needs the Federal government is designed to fill. The government has since expanded beyond it's original intent, creating laws that are unnecessary, and creating programs that do things that should be privatized.
Strangely enough, even though the government refused to keep its hands out of health insurance, welfare, and retirement, none of which it does a decent job of, it is willing to be hands off in at least one specifically defined area that should be kept GOVERNMENT.
The military may be government employees, but the government also includes as defense spending military production and certain contractors who are providing the services that the government has failed to provide for us. The government is not willing to take care of our defense by itself, as it should. It gives away the money to contractors at extremely high margins that can only be called 'wasting our money' when you realize that the government should be doing this themselves. Why can't the government privatize other programs it doesn't even have the power to create, when it is willing to privatize a large part of the military? Hire your own soldiers, build your own bombs, and stop giving out military secrets to civilian contractors. Hire them onto the military and give them huge salaries if you want, but they should not be civilians. And if they won't give you their assets, seize them with eminent domain and finally be the government you need to be. And stop being the government you shouldn't be.
Honestly, the whole thing makes me sick. You have a bunch of people in power who WANT to give profits to specific people instead of wanting to pay employees a decent wage. See, if you paid each soldier extra salary instead of giving it out in profit margins, you've just spread out the net income to a whole bunch of people. Isn't that what you want, the rich to stop getting richer and the poor to finally get a break? No, that's not what anybody wants - not anybody in power, anyway. They want the rich to get richer, because they are the rich. They just build the tax system in such a way that it won't effect them, while it effects people who have to work for a living, or to get to the point where they don't have to work. Hey, if I didn't have to work for a living, I would have time to run for office too. I could probably find time to do it even with working, but only local office. I need my paycheck. But because your earning aren't from a paycheck, you pay at least 25% less taxes than someone who does. No wonder you don't want a flat tax - then you'd have to pay as much as the rest of us on your UNEARNED income.
What's the point of even voting - all you're going to get is a democrat or a republican. And they've both sold out to themselves and maybe even big business. The only thing a vote effects, is which big business gets the laws it wants today. Which contractor gets the no-bid contract. Which judge gets to make their own laws for the rest of their life.
I'm going to vote anyway, though. If I don't vote, a third party will never reach the 'respectable' level. Or Hillary might get into office. Maybe the states should stop sponsoring the parties we do have, and sponsor a couple new parties. But who controlling the states is going to vote for that?