Vanity: Your Three Most Important Issues

I am working on a project to enable people to get more involved in the political process with the hope that we can start making a difference. To that end I would like to get opinions on what are the top three issues of importance to each of you.

Please give me your top three issues. Mine are:

1. Taxes
2. Immigration
3. Government Accountability*

* This includes everything from the role of the federal government to having Holder and Rangel dragged off to the cells they should be in.

Thanks in advance.

4-26-98 ohiolawyer ......true then, true today

The “Four Ds” are the essential core of the conservative agenda:

Decreasing taxes;

Downsizing the government;

Diminishing the regulatory burden on America; and,

Decentralizing government by shifting power back to the states, and back to the people themselves.

If all conservatives learn the “Four Ds” and understand that the “Four Ds” are the essential core of the conservative agenda, conservatives can sell
the “Four Ds” and win the support of a majority of Americans. If conservative candidates would adopt and use the “Four Ds” as the central theme of the 1998 and 2000 elections, there could be unprecedented victories
for conservatives.

Mine are:
1. The right to life is the first issue. If we each do not have the right to life, nothing else matters. Yes, I am Catholic; I am also somewhat physically deformed, so naturally, removing the practice of un-beautiful from sight through abortion catches my eye. But I have a sister who is adopted, too. We are both mothers and wives. I look at our children and realize that abortion does not just kill one human being but all those generations to come. I turned out to be a fairly normal person in every other respect; my children are not, ironically - both have recently graduated with high honors from first tier universities they attended on academic scholarships. People are not end products to be sorted and used or discarded; we are all links in an ongoing chain. Break the chain, lose the future.
2 The ability to go where we please when we want and to live where we want in our country is a fundamental issue, and something I watch for with Obama and his administration now. If we lose our freedom of movement - to be able to pick up and go if we don’t like a place, as Americans- it is over, in my opinion. That can be achieved incrementally through extremely high gas prices, GPS taxation for miles driven, or any number of other indirect means, too. We don’t have to think of suddenly switching to a “Your papers, please” society solely. We are American citizens if we can move about and merely serfs if we cannot-— and the governing class must find this mobility inconvenient, especially in places like California, for instance, right now. Mobility is freedom.
3. My third major issue is hard to pick from a much longer, interconnected list. Personally, I think your over-taxation issue tends to solve itself in the long run; people rebel or the country is gutted and goes inert. Defense of the country is the basic issue I would choose, I think, as the third issue, in the end - defense by the individual and of the country from external threats both. I don’t believe this new administration appears to feel a major attack on our country is that unacceptable, especially with a subservient press to interpret the event; they look willing to risk an attack, and may well see it as another useful opportunity to push an agenda forward. I am also concerned that members of our armed forces will be risked thoughtlessly in the coming years.
I am a bit of an optimist, by the way; I think Obama is busy inspiring a whole new generation of conservatives. I was not shocked that the AP class at Mesa High expressed doubts in Dear Leader and his vision for their future after a recent speech at that location. It became important that the quotes from the students be scrubbed, from what I read about the day’s events —think of it, the students all saw what happened. They know. You think they are all new little Obama-ites now? Obama’s revolution carries the seeds of its own destruction, as a Dune character might put it.

1. We have no plan to take our country back. First, and foremost, we need a plan. "If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail."

2. We, the People, need a show of power that will scare the b'jesus out of our Congress. EnFORCEment of the Constitution. Consider these words:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —

3. Money policy-The Repsonsibility of Coinage and regulation of the value thereof should revert back to Congress and be taken away from private banks (The Federal Reserve). There is a direct fiscal accountability to the people. As it stands, our Congress is being used as a buffer zone to keep the Federal Reserve accountable to the people in its printing and loaning of money.

4. Campaign finance. Individual donations only. No soft money. It is through campaign finance that has our politicians bought by Ivory Tower elitists. I am for free speech, but someone buying speech at the expense of free speech from some else is not free speech. Speech paid for is not free speech. The People need an equalizer in campaign finance.

5. You know that money corridor between New York City and Washington D.C., it needs to be obliterated.

6. I believe in small business. Large, public corporations be damned. I have no sympathy for large public corporations. It was commerce that finance federal government in the beginning, and we should return to that policy since it is large corporations that directly benefit from their greater access to the legislative process. Large corporations creating language in bills that stifle the growth of small business must be eradicated. Eliminating soft money campaigns is a start, since it does lessens the candidate's obligation to pay them back with legislative language that gives them the edge over small business competition. Economies of scale dictates that small business cannot afford to keep the rules as established by large corporations. This is how large corporations stifles small business competition.

I guess I better stop. I have went over my limit already. But IMHO, I believe the biggest problem we have is the fact that we have no plan, no machination, to take our country back. Please note that the first two issues starts with us first. If WE have no ducks in a row, if WE have no synergy, if WE have no symmetry, WE have nothing.

I believe the biggest problem we have is the fact that we have no plan, no machination, to take our country back. Please note that the first two issues starts with us first. If WE have no ducks in a row, if WE have no synergy, if WE have no symmetry, WE have nothing.

I am full agreement with Arrowhead's post.

1. We need a plan. It is not enough to stage a handful of protests now and then or have a large protest in D.C. that the media will ignore. We need to look at the way the opposition is working and learn from their successes and failiures.

2. We need to start working together. The Obama campaign was very successful in reaching out to other groups and catering their message when needed.

3. We need the tools. The DNC / Obama Campaign has created an active online community through the use of email, forums, social applications. The numbers are really impressive.

Read this for more detail:

Obama Raised Half a Billion Online

There is no reason to wait on the RNC or any other group to get their act together on this. It will be 2012 before we know it and that is three years too late.

4. We need to all be on the same page in regards to what we are working for. That was the reason for my post. The Contract With America worked because it had focus. We need to have clear goals and we need to be focused.

Thanks to each of you for taking the time to share your thoughts and opinions on this. I really appreciate it.

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