You see what happened to health care bill? Campaign finance reform is now the most important issue!

[levander]

There's finally a socialist country who understands economics enough that they can use their control over the markets to foster the markets rather than implement a bunch of screwy, ideologically based non-sense, trying to buoy the well-being of their citizens. This country is China. That country's GDP is supposed to grow 8-10% for the next 20-30 years. And, I have 20% of my retirement portfolio invested over there in mutual funds, despite it being a very volatile investment.

Not that anyone wants to rewrite the Constitution and model our government after what the Chinese do. But, there are things we can learn from them. And, the most notable advantage the Chinese have that America completely lacks is control over the country by the government. Not that we'd want our government to have as much control as China, but our government definitely needs more.

You saw what happened to the health care bill? Industry gutted that thing. There's no damn good reason no to import drugs from Canada other than to protect the profits of pharmaceutical companies. And, the pharmaceutical companies managed to kill it. From following this board, I know other DU's could rattle off entire lists of things that were most likely killed due to industry pressure. I'd love to hear people list some of the things industry killed in this bill in this thread. Howard Dean broke the silence and admitted to us the reason that health care bill had no tort reform was because the Democrats didn't want to take on the trial lawyers. That's another one.

Basically, let's learn a little from China and restore some more power to our government. Silly nonsense keeps happening in Washington, and a lot of it is due to industry pressure. But, if our politicians didn't have to go begging and pleading to industry for money to run their campaigns on, industry wouldn't have so much power.

Watching this health care failure, campaign finance reform is my new number one issue. It used to be our outlandish deficits being the mortgaging of our children's future. But, I've become more convinced we can't solve these problems if our politicians are beholden to industry and don't have the leeway to do more of what they want.

Our Constitution prevents the politicians from having too much power. We don't need the additional manipulation by industry to protect their profits when Washington is trying to fix something.

Support campaign finace reform! Are we ever going to be able to fix the problems in our country without it?

[polichick]

1. We'll have to draft candidates who are willing to run on that...

Can you imagine this Congress going for it?!

[bigwillq]

2. I agree

But it'll be tough to pass with the slime that's in Congress now.

[levander]

3. Washington doesn't have any power any more...

What were the last really aggressive things done by our government? The financial industry bail-out, the economic stimulus, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan... All of these things benefit industry greatly. I just don't think Washington is as powerful as industry is anymore. They're not capable of fixing any problem unless there's direct benefit to established industries. It just has to be done.