Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues New Third Party The Common Sense Party

First taxes. I remain convinced that the taxes cannot be changed or adjusted for anybody. The taxes for business, however, would be on profit, pure net profit, after all expenses and charges.

The common sense party would also try and do something about a congress which is, obviously and publicly, bought and paid for. There are no other excuses for such things as:
Not dealing with guns for the insane and children.
Not getting drug companies under control (only industrialized country not to do that).
Continuing to support ethanol which costs the environment more than just plain gas, is destructive and manages to artificially mess with the price of corn which, in turn, effect the costs of food,

Media, by its own appraisal, saw fit to gift Trump with 2 (TWO) billion dollars of free exposure. I believe that this is how he got where he is today. As far as I am concerned media is responsible for Trump. I think that if media is going to go out of their way to support any given candidate with free exposure then they should also give other leading candidates the same 'favor'. To that end the common sense part would support a law that forced media to grant leading candidates the same free exposure as given to any other candidate for office. Seems fair to me!

I am sure there are many who would disagree with this one. The problem is that media proved, in 2016, that they can create a political candidate with massive, free, support to, I think, the detriment of our entire system. I think controlling media's urge to do this needs regulation and this is the best I can come up with.

The only way to get money out of politics is to elect a Democrat. What!? You say. Citizens United is a gift from the right wing. Until it is overturned, there is no hope of reforming campaign finance, and that can only happen with a more liberal (less right-wing) Justice. But...

Be careful what you wish for. Consider the "free" advertising that Trump got. How does one counter a demagogue?

I would add ethanol to the list of common sense things to fix. Its not good for the environment, its not good for your engine, it has raised the price of corn worldwide, and its costs us a pile of money and makes no sense.

Another addition would be to pass a law to force political advertisers to put their name(s) on their ads.

Citizens united. The decision was based on a 1971 (I think) decision (Buckley v. Valeo). Its also interesting that even the supremes said that the congress had the right to pass legislation to force them that politically advertise to put their real name(s) on it. Both parties have tried to fix this one, when they were in power, both failed.

A reminder. https://www.opensecrets.org/ will tell you who/what is spending the money on who.

Ethanol is not bad in and of itself. It transports well, stores well, and works with a majority of internal combustion engines if they have been designed for it. Given an unlimited energy source like hydrogen fusion, we would have the energy needed to make ethanol from air and water, and the reaction products could go back into the atmosphere as air and water. It's just an easily portable fuel for vehicles of all sorts. You can even make an ethanol fuel cell to run an electric car.

Making it from corn is stupid. Making it from oil is stupid. Using it in engines that have gaskets incompatible with it is stupid. Mixing it with gas is stupid if you then use the E85 in cars with the incompatible gaskets.

Get rid of the stupid, get hydrogen fusion, and ethanol will be useful.

News is not a public service and hasn't been since the early 1980's so the reason WHY Trump GOT all that free airtime is because he generated RATINGS, which translates to news dept profits, which is the ONLY reason news depts exist today.

Jeffery;
You are absolutely right. Still, however, any way you cut it Trump is president because of the free media. The Russians may have been involved but, in the end, MEDIA is the villian in this one! The fix, obviously, is a return to a system of fair play where anytime media gives x amount of free exposure to one candidate they must give the same to all the other candidates as well. We used to have this and, then, things changed (not for the better).

its interesting. Over the years OUR congress has been stripping virtually all of these kinds of things (including healthcare, education, etc) in favor of whatever. My own favorite is to use PBS to have a system of giving the top 5 candidates a prime time hour each, for free, for 2 weeks before an election and ban all other political advertising. I know, that is pure wishful thinking and will not happen. Still, its sometimes nice to do a bit of that. My reasoning on this one not happening is that I am not sure our media could survive without ads from politics and drugs)

But that was my point. The once heavy stone columns of the Fourth Estate have been cheap plastic ever since the press was transformed from a prestigious public service into a profit-seeking ratings driven division of the entertainment industry.
Once Reagan killed off The Fairness Doctrine he laid the hall bare for the entrance of the Grand Troika of Lies:

Rupert, Roger and Justice Powell.

You are right. If I remember correctly the tv news was once thought to be part of their public service for using the airwaves. Then can the net which did not use the airwaves and it all came apart (competition, ratings, get the money stuff). I will repeat, again, the difference between left and right. Liberals believe that people need regulation and, without it, will melt it all down. The conservatives, on the other hand, actually believe that people will always act correctly if just given a chance. I know, its not really logical but there you have it. Right now the right has the bit in their teeth and are doing whatever they can to allow people to do the right thing, act in their own best interest, and be free! If the members of the left can't get over not getting their own personal way, continue to fight over little stuff, put up lousy candidates, have no consistent goals or plans they too are doomed. I believe the left has the chance to be the party of the middle but they gotta take hold of their party and use a lot of common sense. Right now their main thrust seems to be to collect all the money they can. I remember when Hillary was running. My wife was making cold calls for them and some other stuff. She noticed that there were no Hillary signs in town so asked for one to put up and was told that would be 25.00 please. She gave up. If the Dems had more interest in getting money than winning what was the use.

Anyway, perhaps, if the left can actually take back gov (they are the obvious choice of those who actually wants gov to govern (rarely mentioned by the Dems)) perhaps they can actually put some stuff on the books that make sense. Then, again, they have been in charge before and just can't quite actually get together long enough to actually get much important stuff done. They could not, for instance, pass the truth in political advertising forcing them that paid for the ads to put their names on them, seems the unions didn't like that idea.

One last thought. Why in the world, given all the press the ACA (Obomacare) gets one would think that either the media, or one of the sides would mention that the ACA was amended, by the Republicans, with more than 160 amendments. These have been denigrated far and wide (something the Republicans are REALLY good at!) as not having much to do with the ACA. Think about it! 160+ amendments and they made no difference to the bill. I can remember, at the time, when those amendments resulted in, literally, hundreds of pages added to the bill.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-th...ublicans-who-then-refused-to-vote-for-it
https://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/hcr_amendments/
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...s_is_what_bipartisanship_looks_like.html

Not to mention that ObamaCare is almost exactly RomneyCare, except RomneyCare had bigger fines for not signing up. All of the major provisions are in RomneyCare, and the mandate was invented by The Heritage Foundation.