Presidential Candidates

[mandysee_mandydo]

I'm still looking over everyone, but so far I'm very torn between Kucinich and Gravel. Both support same-sex marriage, as opposed to all the other Democrats who say no way to same-sex marriage but take the "politically safe" stance of "but there should be domestic partnerships." Both support universal health care. I won't even touch the Iraq war beyond saying it's pretty obvious this can't be used as a choosing point because no Democratic candidate that I know of is politically suicidal enough to NOT oppose the war.

One thing I find particularly interesting and compelling toward Gravel is that he is the ONLY candidate I've seen come right out and support transgendered people. From his website: "[Gravel] supports expanding hate-crime legislation and opposes laws that allow discrimination against sexual orientation, as well as discrimination on the basis of one's gender identity or expression."

In general I think I might have to support Kucinich in the primaries only because I think he has a better shot, though it troubles me to post that thought. I would hope that Kucinich would pick up Gravel as a VP candidate if he were to get the nomination, but one never really knows.

And now, while it pains me to quote from the only President elected from New Hampshire and certainly not someone for whom our state should be proud, it is a good quote, so...

"The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded." - Franklin Pierce

Comments

[srturtle.livejournal.com]

Ron Paul is a very interesting candidate. I've had the great fortune not only to see him on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but also on a local community access television program. I was very impressed with what he had to say and his overall integrity and character. He seems like a nice enough guy and has the decency to address issues and not make personal attacks. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but he's certainly the best looking Republican candidate as far as I can tell.

I have actually courted the idea of voting for him in the Republican primary in the hopes that I would see him against a decent Democrat and actually have an interesting choice for President. Ideally I'd love to see a race between Paul and Kucinich or Paul and Gravel, though realistically I know the darling press machines like McCain or Romney or Giuliani for Republican and Obama or Clinton for Democrats will be most likely to appear on the ballot.

Quite frankly I saw enough of Romney being Governor of Massachusetts to know he's no good, but not everyone in this country lived in or close enough to Massachusetts to see regular news about him to understand. It really irked me when he started courting the idea of being President that he was an absentee Governor and was out touring other states even when the Big Dig tunnel collapse happened.

Interesting idea about state-run health care. I'm not sure how or if it would work. I'll have to give it some thought. I can think of one issue that parallels what has happened with same-sex marriage: recognition of health coverage from state to state. If states controlled health care coverage, what happens if one state disagrees with your state's coverage and you're away on a trip to that other state?

[srturtle.livejournal.com]

Yes. Yes he is.

[srturtle.livejournal.com]

Coordinating efforts would be a challenge. Sometimes neighboring states don't play well together. Also another challenge to this would be state funding. In states like New Hampshire where the state government relies heavily on property taxes, creating unnecessary hardship on poorer residents, a spike in the property tax would be very detrimental, whereas any increase to the federal income tax would be spread over a much wider tax base. Also, on a federal level there can be more innovative tax programs that could fund Universal Health Care with minimal personal impact on the individual on luxury transactions that generate substantial revenues.

For instance, the federal government could implement a 1/2% tax on all stock transactions and generate hundreds of millions of dollars with very, very tiny impacts on the personal investor to the point of almost no impact at all. We're talking cents or fractions of a cent per transaction. If an individual state tried to do something like this, investors might just go to another state or go online.

I suppose some states could find innovative revenue solutions nonetheless. For instance, here in New Hampshire we could heavily tax luxury expenses such as the abundance of out-of-state property owners buying non-primary residences in this state. We could not only charge them the property tax on their vacation home but insist they pay additionally for the luxury of buying up our lakefront property or developing our mountainsides.

[(Anonymous)]

It seems shameful to me the major Democrat candidates fear to support same sex marriage, since marriage is a fundamental human right. Of course, legalizing same sex marriage will cause the immediate and irrevocable collapse of our civilization, but then that's a small price to pay for recognizing such a fundamental right. Besides which, what won't cause the immediate and irrevocable collapse of our civilization nowadays? Every time I turn around someone is saying our civilization is about to collapse for this reason or that reason. I've lost count of all the reasons. I've even begun to suspect the folks who say our civilization is about to collapse are way too optimistic.

- Sunstone

[srturtle.livejournal.com]

Yes, and that has been a major disappointment to me. Really it should be a non-issue, but when you have all candidates from both parties except two that say "no way!" to same-sex marriage, even now when we are supposedly more open, accepting and tolerant of GLBT issues, is frankly quite disturbing and indicative of the problems with the two-party system, as we've been discussing at your blog.