Frodo
Atlas Star
Posts: 24,698
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« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2007, 11:48:15 AM » |
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« Edited: February 17, 2007, 09:41:19 PM by Nomad »
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On social/cultural hot-button issues, I am a states' rights kind of guy -or, more accurately, a cultural federalist. Whatever my personal views on them, issues like abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia/doctor-assisted suicide, medical marijuana, voting access, and the like are best handled at the state-level, and then by the legislatures. For this reason, I support the appointment of federal judges and Supreme Court justices who hold sacred the doctrines of federalism and judicial restraint.
On economics, I am quite mixed. I support the basic progressive nature of the income tax, and wholeheartedly support sacrificing some of Bush's tax cuts towards the wealthy to either scrapping the Alternative Minimum Tax, or at least having it pegged to inflation. On the other hand, I also support carving private retirement accounts out of Social Security, as well as using the free market to significantly reduce the costs of prescription drugs (not to mention my opposition towards socializing the American health care system in the Canadian/western European model). I also strongly support the welfare reform law passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996. And as far as education goes, I am just as ambivalent. I would like nothing better than to have public higher education subsidised once again to the same extent it was in the 1960s and '70s, but I also support school vouchers for parents trying to get their kids out of deteriorating public schools in the inner cities, and approve of efforts by mayors in taking control of their school systems out of the hands of school boards.
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