The trail of dead littering the Clinton path to dominance, both metaphorically and literally, predates Vince Foster
Glad I wasn't drinking something when I read this. Three separate investigations confirmed that Foster's death was a suicide. The man was clinically depressed. The Clintons did not kill Vince Foster, and I'd like to think such absurd conspiracy theories are beneath you. What's next, the Obama administration whacked Andrew Breitbart?
This is less a problem of Clinton particularly and more a problem of the democratic nomination process. Superdelegates are a problem, but do you really think that they'd go for Sanders if the opponent
wasn't Clinton? Say what you will about Obama, but at least he was a Democrat. Sanders ran as an independent for most of his political career, and only now is jumping to the democratic ticket. Is it any surprise the party elite is circling the wagon? I'm not going to say this is a good thing (indeed, it's short-sighted, stupid, and unlikely to drive up participation in the general election among those who feel utterly disenfranchised by it), but it's hardly evidence that the Clintons control the democratic party or something like that.
Where is the appreciable difference between the political positions of Sanders and Clinton?
Primarily? I'd say that Sanders self-identifies (incorrectly) as a socialist, and Clinton, up until recently, was something of a chickenhawk. Her record is far more conservative than her current campaign makes it out to be, and while Sanders is getting by almost exclusively on small individual donations, Clinton has a lot of major financial backers. This may not seem like much, but that last point really does make Sanders a very radical candidate in the modern political world.
What exactly are we spending 45 Trillion dollars on? College education over a ten year period?
Health care over a ten year period.
42 Trillion, actually, but yeah.
There exist no endless supply of money to fund the programs being proposed. The Democrat and Republican Parties are famous for claiming to save money from source A and then immediately spending it on program B.
While this is normally a valid complaint, there's not really much room for us to "take those savings", because the expenditure, first and foremost, is coming from the private sector.
I have little issue with the claim that Sanders's numbers don't add up. I've heard this from numerous policy wonks on both sides of the aisle - they don't
quite work. That's something that can be worked on, though, and it at least offers a somewhat realistic model, even if it is one that doesn't quite work just yet (unlike, say, Trump's plan, which basically can be summed up with "no really guys, the Laffer Curve will save us all!" and will
never work without essentially junking it and starting over).
That said, the Tax Foundation claim about a 10% drop in GDP is
nuts. They make the same mistake the WSJ made -
calculating the cost while ignoring the benefit. They calculate the negative effects of the tax increase, while ignoring that at the same time, people will have more money because they won't be paying for private health insurance any more. They also treat removing a tax credit which will no longer apply as a tax increase. There are some
real problems with this analysis.
The CBO is even predicting the percentage of the federal debt held by the public will exceed 100 percent by the year 2040. They cite this as a trend "that could not be sustained indefinitely."
This is probably not inaccurate. That said, the idea that this will become unsustainable within the next two decades seems implausible. The USA is not exactly breaking records with its debt to GDP ratio, and US debt is still a really hot commodity among people looking for a safe investment - because it
is a safe investment, among the safest there are, and there's not much evidence that that's going to change any time soon. Given that the cite you give is from Glenn Beck, you'll have to exclude my incredulity.
but the US Government does not invest, it does not create wealth
Wait,
what?
Okay, the first obvious example that comes to mind are the green energy loans the government gave out as part of the stimulus. Not only is that program
in the black, but it's really hard to argue that this wasn't: A) an investment and B) wealth creation. To put it simply, the only major difference between this program and a
private loan program is that the government was looking for a specific type of client and was willing to take more risks and put up with lower profit margins.
If either Sanders, or your, plan requires raising another 15 trillion dollars to implement, the return will, at least when acknowledging history, be negligible.
Okay, so just to be clear, your main source here is: "George Gilder,
co-founder of the Discovery Institute".
...Look, far from me to attack the messenger, but unless we're talking about a different Discovery Institute, this guy has absolutely no business being in any serious policy discussion whatsoever. But whatever, let's look to his arguments:
....There don't appear to
be any arguments presented. Mostly just vague assertions with nothing to back them up. So kind of a dead end.
Where is either the right or the guarantee of free birth control provided to female policy holders articulated?
From what I can tell it's not actually in the law passed by congress. Rather, it's within the numerous related resolutions, based on the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, who recommended the pill as part of basic preventative health care. I'm not exactly a buff on the legislation, you'll have to excuse me on that one.
You can't murder someone and then claim religious exception either. Even those who crafted the Constitution recognized obvious limits.
Wait, what? You just said:
The Constitution specifies the free exercise of religion beginning with the words "Congress shall make no law." The right to challenge or ignore such a law infringing on that right is explicit.
Look, it's simple. Either my faith-based beliefs can get me preferential treatment and the ability to ignore laws that violate those beliefs, or they can't. The RCC thinks that being forced to pay for a product for their employees that includes the option to acquire something that violates their doctrine is an infringement on their civil liberties. Is that legitimate? And if not, how about the Christian Scientists, who believe that all medicine goes against Church doctrine? How about the Witnesses, and their prohibition on blood transfusions?
Charging for a product does not equate to denying that product to customers. The Catholic Church has made no effort to deny women birth control, the church just doesn't want the government mandating they provide it for free. Particularly given birth control pills average about twenty dollars a month in cost. If what I say is wrong, then why does the mandate include for the provision of "morning after" pills, a device the church at large considers a form of abortion?
This doesn't have anything to do with the
intent, though. The reason these provisions are included is because independent analysis has concluded that they are in fact an integral part of women's health care, both as a prophylactic and as a therapy for certain ailments. You claimed that it was the
intent of these laws to target the RCC; I find that claim ludicrous. You keep ascribing the worst possible motivation to actions by the democrats, and I'm sorry, but that's just not reasonable. The world is not made up of cartoon villains. Most people find ways to justify things to themselves, even if they're wrong. Even if they're on the wrong side of things, they generally are there for the right reasons.
Public education is necessary. My opinion is the Federal Government should have stayed out of it. The examples I cited are not restricted to a few individual states or districts, they represent a philosophy endemic to the system.
Except the examples you cited are all on the state or local level. There's no federal mandate from on high saying "invite CAIR into your school" or "ensure that LGBT kids have positive role models and aren't demonized". Those were all at the state or local level. What does that have to do with the federal government, exactly? Keep it at the state level, and Cali is still passing the FAIR act.
