Do you have confidence in the US government?

[Rixirite]

I personally do not have any confidence. I am not happy with the vague additude they use in speeches, etc. Politics can suck when people are vague or indirect with thier speeches or comments. It bugs the hell out of me cause i have to spend a extra moment of thinking to decipher the government's language. Plus the fact that this is the historical example of Rome how they became such a great empire and spanned for over a thousand years BEFORE falling down. I think that is happening to america cause this country is not what it used to be that's for damn sure.

 

Also, in my opinion the government is wasting the money they get from someone like me, or you.. I mean, do we need all these government programs? They are typically useless and just a way for the government to have more power.

[sumoftwosins]

I don't think the system is flawed. If there is a flaw, it is always human. I think of all the decisions that have been made since I've been old enough to understand them. There might only be a dozen that I may have agreed with. I know this is usually the same with most people I know. We all tend to share the same views and most every can grasp the logic in situations. So why does it seem like 90% of the things our government does is against the general will of the public? Just think of all the laws made in the last century... how many of those actually make sense? And out of those, how many did we actually need?

 

There hasn't been a radical change that was positive in a long time. That's why we have only four presidents on Mount Rushmore. Yeah we can say there isn't enough room, but honestly? Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln.... we all know they kicked ass as leaders. Not literally in terms of war heroes, but their actions were world shaking and country altering... for the better. Roosevelt is my favorite. He seemed solid down the middle and didn't get pushed by back room politics. He shut down monopolies, built the Panama Canal, started conservation of wildlife and land, and got better conditions for workers.

 

So no I do not have confidence in the elected. But I do have confidence in the American people... to survive.

[dragonpen61]

I am Australian so I will not answer your poll.

 

But I can say that as an Australian I have very similar doubts about my own government. Such doubts seem to be normal with peoples and nations around the world even in those places where people are forced to hide their doubts.

[TheAngrySocialist]

I find Bush did far too much for what I dislike and that Obama does very little for what I want, so no. I want a more Lincoln-esque leader in the near future

[gpstr1]

Well, as has been pointed out already, if the question is simply whether or not I have confidence in them, I'd say yes, but it's that-- yes, I have confidence that they will continue to do exactly what the few, the wealthy and the powerful pay them to do and NOT what is best for the nation or the people.

 

But since that's clearly not what you meant-- NO, I have absolutely no confidence in them whatsoever. The government is composed entirely of people whose day-to-day job is to accumulate power, then to sell it to the highest bidder, and the higher you go in the government, the more skilled they are at the parallel tasks of overtly selling their influence and convincing the people that they're honest and upstanding representatives of the will of the people. They're scum, without exception.

[Micko]

I think they got no right to tell an adult that he/she has to wear a seat belt.

 

Why don't they?

 

Having a license to drive isn't found at the bottom of your Cornflakes box.

 

You earn it and then you obey the rules to keep you and the other motorists safe.

 

If you choose not to wear a seat belt and get splattered all over the inside of your car you might think it's fine but what about the paramedics that have to come and try to save you and the cops that have to come and fill in reports etc.

 

All of that costs taxpayers money that could have been saved along with possibly your life by wearing a seat belt.

[dezdimona]

Our pseudo-democratic governments are in reality fascist:

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power."--Benito Mussolini

 

We're not a democracy. It's a terrible misunderstanding and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we're a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy." -----Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General

 

But that's the whole point of corporatism: to try and remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run —which include production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything—are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.— Professor Noam Chomsky, interviewed in Corporate Watch

 

"As political theorist Michael Parenti points out, historians often overlook Fascism's economic agenda--the partnership between Big Capital and Big Government--in their analysis of its authoritarian social program. Indeed, according to Bertram Gross in his startlingly prescient Friendly Fascism (1980), it is possible to achieve fascist goals within an ostensibly democratic society."---Richard Heinberg http://www.nexusmagazine.com//corporations.html

 

 

 

"It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power." -- John Adams, 1788

 

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be. "Thomas Jefferson

 

"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust." -- Demosthenes: Philippic 2, sect. 24

 

"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." -- Tom Clancy on Kudlow and Cramer 9/2/03

 

"It's important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want."-- Harry Browne

 

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." -- Pericles, 430 B.C.

 

"Give government the weapons to fight your enemy and it will use them against you." -- Harry Browne

 

"Give a good man great powers and crooks grab his job." -- Rick Gaber

 

"Overload the police with victimless crimes and other minutiae and eventually only creeps and bullies remain cops." -- Rick Gaber

 

"Power draws the corrupted; absolute power would draw the absolutely corrupted." -- Colin Barth

 

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -- Tacitus, Roman senator and historian (A.D. c.56-c.115)

 

"The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be." -- Lao-tzu, The Tao Te Ching (believed written in China, 6th century BC).

"An oppressive government is much worse than a man-eating tiger." -- Kong Fu-Dzuh ("Confucious")

 

"A moderate is either someone who has no moral code of his own, or if he does, then he's someone who doesn't have the guts to take sides between good and evil." -- Rick Gaber

 

"Intellect annuls Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free....The revelation of Thought takes man out of servitude into freedom." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Fate"

 

"Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box." -- Ambrose Bierce

 

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all." --Frederic Bastiat, ca. 1837

 

"The State is the coldest of all cold monsters, and coldly it tells lies, and this lie drones on from its mouth: 'I, the State, am the people'." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra, 1883

 

"People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men." -- H.L. Mencken

"Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible." -- Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong

 

"Crime does not pay … as well as politics. " --Alfred E. Newman

 

Democracy is when two wolves and a sheep vote on what they will have for lunch. http://www.wealth4freedom.com/truth/chapter1.htm

 

"Politics is a means of preventing people from taking part in what properly concerns them." Paul Valery (1871-1945)

 

"When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we, in essence, accept that the state owns our bodies." ~U.S. Representative Ron Paul

 

"...somebody has to take governments' place, and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it." - David Rockefeller - Newsweek International, Feb 1 1999.

 

"Government is big business, with the face of democracy."--Jim West

 

"President George Bush held a Washinton dinner...for 2,000 of his closest friends...(it) was sponsored by the tobacco and oil industries. But the big bash was the one given by Vice President %&$! Cheney....The guests were lobbyists for the nuclear power, natural gas and oil industries."--Toby Moore (Daily Express 24 May 2001)

 

Obvious in vaccine world:

Vaccine Conflict of Interest quotes

 

Just a few media stories:

Monsanto employees and government regulatory agencies employees are the same people

Bush Nominates Drug-Industry Insider To Head Office of Management and Budget

US drug companies help pay for Bush inauguration

 

Which is why people are cynical over governments:

"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping, and unintelligent. --H. L. Mencken

 

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -H. L. Mencken

 

 

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." --Thomas Sowell

 

 

 

"...the world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not themselves behind the scenes." - Benjamin Disraeli (1801-1884) Prime Minister of Britain

 

"The Establishment decided Thatcher's ideas were safer with a strong Blair government than with a weak Major government. We are given all these personalities to choose between to disguise the fact that the policies are the same."--Tony Benn (Sunday Times Oct 6, 2002)

 

"The planet is being controlled, to an alarming extent, by elites, or, as I call them, cartels. There are many cartels, but 7 are the most powerful. They evolve, they learn from one another, they both compete and cooperate. Unfortunately, the trend is more towards cooperation. These 7 cartels represent the following areas: GOVERNMENT, MILITARY, INTELLIGENCE, ENERGY, MONEY, MEDIA, AND MEDICAL.....I came to this map of cartels through my own research on the medical monopoly. That's where it started, in 1986. .. Once you understand these cartel elites, you can begin to separate out information into loose layers of importance, as in, which layer of the control game are we talking about? Because it's all about layers. And at most layers, the players are forwarding agendas which they do not realize fit into higher and more destructive agendas."--Jon Rappoport

 

"The constitution has broken down. We have no enemies except the ones we select and direct towards the nearest nuclear bombs. They need an enemy to provoke, a diversion. This is the mentality of tenth-rate people who are in politics because corporate America likes them. They are malleable. They give them contracts to build missile shields that will never work. It's deeply corrupt."--Gore Vidal (Observer magazine 12 Aug 2001)

 

"The State is the coldest of all cold monsters." [Nietzche]

 

 

 

While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.

Lenin, "State and Revolution", 1919

"Effectively they said we were either dotty or lying. For 13 years the authorities have said this whole thing is just in our minds."--Elizabeth Sigmund, Camelford resident

 

"Believe nothing until it has been officially denied."--Claud Cockburn

 

"The art of government is the organisation of idolatry."--George Bernard Shaw.

 

"Democracy allows mediocrity to rise to the top."

 

"He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career."--George Bernard Shaw.

 

"A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw (1944)

 

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."--HL Mencken.

 

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

 

"Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority."--TH Huxley.

 

"Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power."--George Bernard Shaw.

 

"The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong."----George Bernard Shaw.

[Varus Torvyn]

My vote is no. It's the same sad story, Congress always acts like two brothers who are sibling rivals. :P

[jaosals42]

Both parties seem to be for expanding government, and large government doesn't mean better government. It means more bureaucrats running and making choices about peoples lives.

 

This is probably necessary as there are just far too many corrupted companies out there taking other people's money (R.E: Banks and overdraft fees). Now I do understand it if they expand to increase the control they have over company and bank regulation and prevent them from growing too big or to greedy, as then they make prey out of their own customers and other smaller companies (attracting their customers). Plus a lot of these larger companies make their stuff in China, and you know how a lot of those products turn out... high lead levels, malfunctioning objects, etc.

 

Quite honestly I'm pissed with both political parties right now. I think they got no right to tell an adult that he/she has to wear a seat belt.

 

So effectively, they have no right to enforce people from (indirectly) killing themselves. Okay...

Personally, that's something that should be enforced. No question about that. Otherwise, it's comparable to saying, they can't tell people not to kill one another.

 

I also believe its none of their business what you do in your house behind closed doors.

 

Completely agree with you there. People have the complete right to their own privacy. No further comments.

 

I believe any person should have the right to consume or put anything in their body that they want.

 

As with the seat-belts thing, they should enforce not letting people consume certain things as to prevent from killing themselves. However, some things like alcohol (which I hate with a passion), shouldn't be banned as they are an important part to many cultures. Good thing for the public smoking ban as that drove me crazy having to smell that stuff. Still it's legal for them to smoke at home though, and if they have children, those kids have to put up with that.

 

And I sure don't like the idea that I can be wiretapped without a warrant, all they gotta do is label you a terror suspect, they could label anyone a terror suspect.

 

Me neither. Now with the terrorist crap going on though, everyone gets so paranoid that they blame any strange terror act on anyone who just looks strange: it's like the Salem witch trials again, except in a modern society with modern reasons.

 

In the end, I don't know really what to think of the government. They are doing a lot of improvements in many ways, but at the same time, they need to make many other changes that they still have not made. For now, my viewpoint on this is neutral.

[UncleRoe]

My confidence that my government is disorganized and quick to act on horrible intelligence gathering is aboslute.

 

 

My confidence that the Agents,Operatives,Soldiers,Marines, and others to be unnamed;will with out a doubt accomplish their mission denying obstacle and impossibility in order to survive themselves,their brothers,and their country, is absolute.