November 7, 2006= Average Joe wants change, options
November 9, 2006 at 4:10 am | Posted in Elections | Leave a commentRepublicans lost. Some are rejoicing. Some are mourning. Nearly all desire change. I’ve got a feeling that if you asked Average Joe how he feels about the direction of the country these last few years, he’d probably give you a negative answer. Average Joe saw all the negative news reports about Iraq, felt the pinch of rising gas prices, learned of the rampant spending of the government, and saw the need for change.
Average Joe did not like the direction this country was heading under its current leadership. Average Joe went to the polls and picked up a ballot with only two choices on it for most positions. Average Joe voted for change.
The problem lies not with Average Joe voting for change, it lies in the number of options given to him. In most cases it was Republicans or Democrats. Joe knows Republicans have been in control and does not like the way things have gone. Joe votes Democrat with the hope that their plan for America will work out better than the Republican’s.
The problem is that Joe voted for a party with just as few answers to the issues as the Republicans. Where the Republicans can be accused of not having an Iraq exit strategy, the Dems can be accused of having no strategy other than leave Iraq ASAP. Both parties are equally willing to spend the taxpayer’s money in a way that would get them fired in the business world. Both parties seem to believe that the best way to solve problems is to throw large amounts of money at it.
Joe wants change. What Joe is getting is more of the same. Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.
I think it is time that Joe had change. Joe needs another option when he goes to the polls. He needs to be given the option to vote for a candidate who is not in politics for a career because they are bound by term limits. He needs to be given the option to vote for a candidate that will do what is in the best interest of the country and not for lobbyists. A candidate who will represent Average Joe and not just the guy with fattest wallet. A candidate who will offer a true change of course.
If Average Joe is provided with a viable alternative that offers true reform and real change, I think Joe will vote that candidate into office.
It’s time to give Joe that choice. It’s time to give America options. It’s time for The Founder’s Party to make its debut on the political landscape and shake the Beltway out of complacency!
Proposed Party Platform
November 8, 2006 at 11:50 pm | Posted in Platform | 2 CommentsA brief outline of the party platform I’ve been thinking about:
My inspiration:
“We the people of the United States of America, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constituion for the United States of America.”
1.) “perfect union”
Congerssional term limits. This would have to come through a constitutional amendment, as the Supreme Court has ruled that states cannot pass this (U. S. TERM LIMITS, INC., et al. v. THORNTON et al., 1995).
a.) House: 5 terms
b.) Senate: 2 terms
c.) No more than 12 years in both Houses.
2. “establish Justice”
a.) Reform the judicial system, to the point where the justice playing field is equal again, NOT based on who has the most money and can hire the best attorney who can find all the loopholes.
b.) Tort reform
c.) Equality for all life, from conception until natural death; however, this is an issue that maybe should be left up to individual states.
3. “insure domestic Tranquility”
a.) Tax reform: flat tax, tax bracket recreation, simply tax code so a laymen can easily file his taxes on his own and get the same breaks as someone who can afford a tax lawyer
b.) Regulate only what is necessary for “the general welfare” (point 5)
c.) Social entitlement reform/Health care reform: Quit taking young workers’ money away from them; help people afford health care again.
4. “provide for the common defence”
a.) Deal with legitimate international threats accordingly (aka, North Korea, Iran)
b.) through congressional oversight (a constitutional duty), allow intelligence agencies to do what’s necessary to prevent further terrorist attacks
c.) circulate more intelligence to further prevent future attacks on US soil and her interests
d.) support our military and her families, through proper funding, training, time off, family support, and veteran benefits
5. “promote the general Welfare”
a.) gun reform: somewhere between allowing people to own weapons and restricting certain types of weapons…and shutting down loop-holes that allow criminals to obtain weapons: A BALANCE
b.) health care/entitlement reform (also fits under category 3)
c.) education reform: aka, not testing ends all debates, not “throwing money” at education problems, but accountability at all levels. At the same time, allowing states complete freedom to maintain their own standards, and never again forcing an unfunded mandate of NCLB’s magnitude upon the states.
d.) CUT THE FEDERAL DEFICIT AND NATIONAL DEBT!
e.) Cut federal spending, especially pork
6. “secure the blessings of Liberty…”
a.) protect the freedom of speech, balanced with the need to provide a common defence (aka, national security)
b.) protect the practice of the freedom of religion
c.) reform the election laws so they are not biased towards a two-political party system and allow ALL voices to have a complete say in the electoral process
Political winds a-changin?
November 7, 2006 at 10:46 pm | Posted in Elections | Leave a commentI’m struggling with mixed emotions, observing from the outside this election cycle for the first time in six years. The past two election nights (’02 & ’04), I was in OKC, at watch parties at downtown headquarters, celebrating/commisserating each time. Tonight, I watched returns from Secretary of State/Election Board online results, and read a few Internet stories, as I don’t have cable (who wants to pay TimeWarner’s price, anyway)? How much times change….
Part of me wants to scream and vent in frustration the inevitable, not because a new party will probably take over tonight, but more so because more than anything, I don’t want Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker’s Chair. Period. But that’ll happen anyway.
Another part of me recognizes the Republicans are getting what they deserved. They forgot about the middle class. Focused “on the safe route” so they could get re-elected and in the meanwhile, deconstructed their political power. They’ve paid lip service to their grassroots supporters, to their base, and raised spending, pork, and floundered on Iraq. They’ve refused to fix Social Security and Medicare, refused to reform the tax code, refused to listen to their base. They had this coming.
But still, even though I am this close to saying I could really care less about what happens the next two years in our government, deep down I know I care. Why else would I want to cry when I realize Jim Ryun won’t be in the House anymore? More than any other congressman, he is one of the kindest men in the House. Why did he have to be the one whose opponent’s signs read, “Had Enough? Vote for Change”? They appear to have worked, as he’s behind 52-44 (something like that). Why him? Why not the power-hungry, money-grabbing, special-interest-attracing men and women who are in the House and Senate for the glory and power? Why a man like Jim Ryun who is quiet and pulls away from the public eye and instead performs his duties away from the public eye?
The pundits and media are going to be proclaiming that a new wind has swept the country, that the voters have spoken, that a Democrat revolution is coming upon us. But is this really true? Did voters really support the Democrats or did they just choose between the lesser of two immediate evils?
When will we have legitimate, strong candidates, who will argue about the ISSUES and not past history, not tax returns, not cronies, not connections, not side comments taken out of context, not caricatures, but the actual problems facing this country? That, my friends, is why I don’t give up. I hope for those days. I pray for those days. And that’s why I pray that The Founder’s Party will get off of the ground somehow, someway, and challenge the political power structure currently in place today. An impossible dream? We won’t know until it’s tried.
Lou Dobbs’ latest column
November 2, 2006 at 11:06 pm | Posted in Media Columns | Leave a commentI’m not normally a CNN fan, but after trying to find campaign finance stats I heard this morning on the news (governors’ race costs have increased over 700 percent in the last four years — something like that), I stumbled across the following column. I’ve posted the entire column below, but bolded the important sections. Is Lou Dobbs’ reading our minds? Some of his comments made me think that the middle class is becoming more and more the tenants and peasant slaves of the manor, err, corporate America. I think the time has come for the peasants to leave the manor or at least demand equal rights from their king, err, government. Anyway, here’s Dobbs’ column:
Dobbs: U.S. is best democracy money can buy
POSTED: 8:29 a.m. EST, November 2, 2006
By Lou Dobbs
Editor’s note: Lou Dobbs’ commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com.NEW YORK (CNN) — We’re now less than a week away from our midterm elections, and Republicans and Democrats are down to their final tens of millions of dollars in media buys, their hyperbolic rhetoric all but expended and their candidates all but exhausted.
It’s amazing what a mere $2.6 billion can buy in a democracy. That’s what the two parties will have spent in their campaigns leading up to these midterm elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And most of that money for Democrats and Republicans alike comes from corporate America. So what will be the outcome of this election? The only certainty is that corporate America will get what it’s paid for, and that’s more of the same.
Whether the Democrats or Republicans take control of the House and Senate, corporate America has just bought a license to outsource more middle-class jobs to cheap foreign labor markets, to continue unabated so-called free trade and the destruction of more manufacturing jobs, and most likely to promote amnesty for the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens living in this country.
So, no, I’m not real excited about what some see as a potentially tectonic shift in political power in the House of Representatives or U.S. Senate.
While the name of the party in charge may change from Republican to Democrat, it’s really only a branding issue. And just as my friend James Mtume says, it’s still the same bird, just a different wing. And believe me, middle-class America will still be getting the bird.
Neither party at the national or local level is talking about what to do about the education crisis in our public schools. Both parties seem to think a 10-year plan to measure the decline of our schools through the No Child Left Behind law is an adequate response to what is an outright emergency.
Both parties seem happily content to give their multinational corporate masters exactly what they want in the form of so-called free trade, which has cost millions of middle-class Americans their jobs to outsourcing and off-shoring of manufacturing production to cheap overseas labor markets.
And God forbid we should disturb the orthodoxies of both parties that insist that we not secure our borders and ports, despite radical Islamist terrorist threats, the multibillion-dollar illegal drug trade and what is nothing less than an invasion of illegal aliens into this country.
Yes, I said “country.” America really is a nation, but you couldn’t convince those who lead the Democratic and Republican Parties of that. Both parties now see America as nothing more than an economy, a marketplace, and not a sovereign nation. They don’t see you and me as citizens of this great nation; they see us as units of labor, consumers and taxpayers.
Corporate America long ago quit talking about corporate citizenship and corporate responsibility, and with both the Democratic and Republican Parties as its tools, corporate America wants you and me to forget that we are first citizens, and that America is first a nation.
Only 15 percent of eligible voters turned out to cast a ballot in this year’s primary elections, according to an American University study. Never before have so few of us bothered to vote in primary elections. And it’s no wonder. Our middle class is beginning to get the joke.
Most Americans understand that all the major decisions have already been made. It is now clear to all but those who will not see that both political parties and their corporate masters have placed our middle class in direct competition with the world’s cheapest labor, leaving it only a tenuous and failing grip on the American Dream.
Until all of us who care about this great nation and the world’s greatest democracy find the energy and commitment to insist on political choice and true representation in Washington, then the very idea of America will remain in peril.
Unfortunately, the choices we’ll be permitted to make on November 7 will do little to mitigate that peril.
Welcome
October 31, 2006 at 10:30 pm | Posted in General | Leave a commentA friend, Caleb, suggested this name, The Founder’s Party, on his blog, as a possible new political party, because, in his words, “I haven’t had the time to sit down and think about details, but the more I learn about the people who founded this country, the more I realize how much we have distanced ourselves from their legacy. I think a political party based on a return to the ideas that founded this country would be a breath of fresh air in a stagnant political climate.”
Well, the party has begun. There is a Facebook group, now a blog, and hopefully in the future, a website. For the group of authors on this blog, at least, we’ve had enough of the same old two choices, Republicans and Democrats, forfeiting our future by running expensive campaigns that consist of belittling the opposition, name-calling, and dirty tricks, instead of discussing the issues. When they’re in office, they do the same thing, this time with our so-called laws.
Enough is enough. Join the new generation’s solution to the nation’s political woes: leave the old stagnant nags of parties and join The Founder’s Party.
Author’s Note: Please bear with us as we get this site up and running; there may be some growing pains and some content changes. Let us know what you do and don’t like about the website.
Platform Ideas
October 31, 2006 at 9:19 pm | Posted in Platform | Leave a comment1. Cut Government spending- The main way to do this is by eliminating pork and also by cutting back many bloated government programs (this will also make #2 more relevant and plausible because the government will not need to take as much of the people’s money to function).
2. Cut taxes- The people know how to spend their money better than the government. Tax cuts will also increase spending which will strengthen the economy which in turn will create new jobs.
3. Term Limits- There will be no career politicians in the Founder’s Party and efforts should be made to enact term limits for the house and senate as a whole.
4. Military- Understanding that the military is vital to the defense and preservation of this country, and also understanding that the military is stetched thin, I think an increase in the size of the military would be good. I think this is especially true of the Marines and Active Duty Army. By increasing the number of Active Duty soldiers, it would help keep more member of the National Guard in the States so that they are on hand to be used in times of national crisis. As it is now, roughly fifty percent of the Army that is deployed overseas is National Guard. We need to keep as many of them home as possible so that they can help with natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
5. Energy Independence- Encourage development of energy sources that are renewable. I think this is a place where government spending might be appropriate because our dependence on foreign oil is a huge national security threat. Perhaps this could be done by providing research grants to companies and universities that would be given to programs that research new forms of energy.
6. Education- I understand the need for a set of national education standards, however, I don’t believe that standardized tests are the answer. I don’t know much about this issue so I will refrain from saying more. I hope that some of you will post some ideas on this topic in response to this post.
7. Pro-Family- The biggest political hot-button that this encompasses is abortion. I am firmly anti-abortion. Period.
8. Gun Control- People have a right to own firearms. Responsible, gun-owning, citizens will lower crime rates and discourage criminals. The police can’t be everywhere all the time. Guns are just a tool, it is people who misuse them.
9. Develop Economic Independence- As a country, we should strive to grow enough food, produce enough products, and engineer enough electronics that we are not completely dependent on imports. I understand this is a global economy but do we want to be completely dependent on other countries? We need to wean ourselves away from our love of cheap imported goods and be willing to put the time, effort, and money into developing those industries here at home.
10. Tax Brackets- The tax brackets are decades old. What would have made a person rich thirty years ago no longer applies today. The tax brackets need to be adjusted to account for the increase in income so that average Americans, who would have been considered rich thirty years ago, are not being overly taxed.
What do you think? Add to it, critique it, do those ideas point us back in the direction the founding fathers intended this country to go?
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