Mon, 08 Jan 2007

A New Party?

Do we need a new party? Are the two existing parties moving to much toward the left and right to be effective? Is compromise dead?

All of these things have been going through my mind since the Democratic takeover of the U.S. House and Senate (barely). I really feel that both parties are moving too much to the radical elements in their parties. The Republicans are becoming too conservative and the Democrats to liberal to the point where they are unable to compromise and actually get anything meaningful done. I believe they are leaving the vast majority of the "American People" (whatever that is) wondering just which party they can vote for.

People want things done on the issues -- Iraq, education, health care, social security. They don't want some radical solution in most cases. I believe they would be happy with some compromise which worked to move those issues toward resolution. So what is the resolution?

Iraq - 3,000 Americans killed and nothing has been accomplished. Get our troups out, but leave something there for the Iraqis. What does this mean? I'm not sure, but I think it means have a plan to extricate our troups as soon as possible while leaving that country some hope of becoming stable and avoiding civil war (something I personally feel they are already in).

Health Care - It's a shame that we, as a leading industrialized country have so many of our citizens without health care. It's criminal that we have one of the poorest outcome rates of any industrialized country, given the amount we spend per person on health care. We need to fix the system and I don't believe that the private sector will do so alone. I hate it that insurance companies are some of the richest companies on earth, that pharmaseutical companies make record profits, etc.

Social Security - We need it, fix it. Enough said.

Education - Our kids don't compete in the world. "No child left behind" is leaving our country behind. We need to come up with new ways to education our kids? How are the other countries doing it?

In short, stop bickering, stop special interests and pork projects and get to the business of running the country or get out!

posted 11:06 [/Moderates] permanent link