It never made much sense to me that we had to send money to the fed gov’t, then write up a litany of paperwork (ie costing money and time) begging to get some of the money back, and then if you are lucky enough to get some of the money back it will come with many strings attached. Why not just keep the money in your community in the first place. This is also a big way they reward their special interest groups and make people that are receiveing the grants feel like they are getting something from the federal gov’t. To me though it is like filling a bucket of water on one side of the pond and then walking around to the other side losing some of the water as you go (drinking some and giving some to your cronies) and then pooring the remaining in the pond and telling the people just how much good you are doing in filling the pond, yet for some reason the pond just seems to be getting smaller all the time. The politician then says just give me more control and I will fill it up even more, and we do, but the pond still just keeps getting smaller. The politican just blames everyone else, but themselves. At some point you would hope that we would figure it out, but there are many people who are having a bucket thrown in for them or their cause so they find it hard to give up that bucket not seeing the cost of all the other buckets.

That’s why I picked easy ones just for starters.

Hmm. Interesting if completely vapid in understanding that a protest in itself is an act of political maneuver. Protests tell the politicos that the peasantry, um excuse me, the citizenry are angry at their behavior. Providing a constructive alternative is not the mobs job.

And as was aptly proven by the Obots election of the President Obama, they weren’t forging a constructive answer to the politics of the last 8 years, but throwing the bums who didn’t listen to them out.

Right now you need to build such a movement, not worry about purity.

As long as the movement doesn’t include the hypocritical Republicans who helped get us into this mess.

If that continues, I think they will have the stomach for it because, frankly, they aren’t the people impacted by cutting things like military welfare for Europe, Dept of Education, Health & Human Services, etc.

Honestly, before you can be for something new you have to be against something that already exists. It’s the only way to move most people out of their conservative state.

FYI, the American Revolution was never supported by as much as 50% of the colonists. I believe the numbers were more like 10 to 20 percent. You could bring about huge change in this country with 20 percent of the population backing you. Most Republicans and Democrats go along with the herd that they identify with. Obama was able to get elected with much less than that portion of the population actively backing him.

So, the real issue is that the people most likely to take action and have the stomach for that action are the ones who, up till now, felt comfortable with where things were. Or, rather, not too uncomfortable. As more of the population edges towards being “too uncomfortable”, things will change. THat is, for example, how the populist overthrows of East Germany, Czechoslovakia and the USSR happened.

I think you ought to stop sneering at the “populist” movements and start figuring out how to create one.

I cut any spending that is not authorized by open legislation where the reasons for the spending were fully debated.

I would cut any funding where the majority of the legislators voting for it can not pass a college-level written examination inquiring about the reasons for, beneficiaries of, and expected outcomes from the legislation. (“Pass” means more that 75% correct.)

I would cut funding for any “non-government” agency.

I would cut funding to many program that has run for more than 5 years unless re-enacted.

Then I would hope that I had had time to find the really big chunks of waste and go after them.

Except for the DoE, those are the easy ones (although cutting off aid to Israel is likely the other third rail of American politics)

I just question whether the public as a whole has a stomach for what needs to be done.

No more bailouts or stimulus packages

Eliminate the Department of Education

Eliminate military welfare for countries like Germany and Japan

Then the list gets very long, indeed.