[unspecified] Thursday, May 08 2008
Slashdot | Presidential Answers, Round One (two libertarian party members) Okay, so I don't keep up on my politics much and I had no idea who the Libertarians were...so I read this and their website, and I'm amazed at how liberal they were. Question 1: The War on Drugs has been a consistently neglected topic in discussions surrounding this federal election. My question is, do you believe the War on Drugs has been an unqualified success, and if not, what would you change about it if elected president? Answer in short: End the war on drugs, legalize and educate and treat. Incredibly liberal, and unfortunately this opinion is so incredibly unpopular that I have serious doubts any Libertarian will get elected into any important government position. Question 2: What will you do to protect the rights of atheists and those who hold minority faiths, such as Wicca, Santaria, Shinto, et al? Answer in short: Preach family values, make sure no one forces any religious values on anyone, "I am an atheist" Again, very liberal. Granted, I'm siding WAY more with these guys than Bush, but again such an unpopular opinion I couldn't see them getting elected for anything... Question 3: With the surplus, everyone has been saying "Let's have a tax cut, Let's have a tax cut." In the meantime, Alan Greenspan and friends are trying to keep inflation and the speed of the growing economy in check so it doesn't burst. Which they are doing by raising interest rates periodically. (6 times this year) A tax cut flies in the face of what Greenspan is trying to do. A tax cut will inject more money into the economy and do what Greenspan is preventing. Why is a tax cut so big? Wouldn't the money be better spent on the deficit so when worse times roll along, a tax cut can be easily given by not paying as much on the debt? Answer in short: Bush and Gore are lying about the deficit. According to them there is no deficit, but in actuality there is a deficit but it's not being reported because social security is being added into it. We have another way... This is an incredibly good point. Ever since a little over a year ago when Clinton said we decreased our deficit blah blah, I actually did a little bit of research and watched real news shows when they discussed it. The reason Clinton was able to claim that we had no deficit is because in his budget what he did was add social security to our country's available money. That way he can say we made more than we spent and voila! there is a surplus of money! So what did Clinton do with that surplus? He spent it! Oh wait, where did that surplus come from? Yes, social security. Oh wait again, did I just say Clinton spent that money? Yes, yes I did. I'll admit, I like Clinton and the majority of the things he's done in office, but this one was horrible. If the other presidents follow in Clinton's footsteps and keep reporting (and spending) the social security money, when it comes time for people to retire in 10-20 years, there won't be any money there for the government to give them. That's why I'm starting my 401K this year so when the government says "sorry we can only pay you ten bucks a month" I won't be in too big of a bind... Question 4: Some people, especially those that favor '3-rd' party candidates, have called for the ending of the electoral college system to be replaced by a simple purely popular vote, or at least allowing for splitting the electoral votes by each state. The best recent example was the Bush-Clinton election. Clinton received 43% of the popular vote (but a sufficient majority of the electoral vote), whereas Perot got at least 10% of the popular vote but zero electoral votes. If memory serves, Vermont is the only state which does currently allow for its votes to be split; if someone wins 60% of the Vermont popular vote, they get 2 votes and the 40% candidate gets 1. This in contrast to California, where someone can get 51% of the popular vote, and therefore gets 53 (or whatever it is nowadays) electoral votes. What is your position on this issue? Answer in short: Get rid of the electoral college, find a better way to do things. I totally agree, but until a good way is figured out, the electoral college is a necessary evil. I am 100% against a full popular vote, since there are too many people who believe the commercials they see on TV. Commercial: "Bush is a child eater and a rapist, don't vote for him!" Dumb ass: "Aww shucks honey, we can't vote for Bush, he wants to eat our babies." Question 5: In this age of the Internet, intellectual property has become a very important concept to many people. Many companies make their living on the artificial scarcity provided by intellectual property laws, selling information that they have either created or aggregated. Some others, mostly in the Free Software world, make their living seemingly in spite of these laws, selling their services based on information that is freely given. Do you feel that our current system of intellectual property is a good one? Which parts of it (e.g. trademarks, patents, copyrights) do you feel are well suited to the world of the Internet and which do you think need to be changed (and, if changes are needed, what changes are needed)? Answer in short: Not sure, don't know enough about it. That's about where I stand. I don't know enough about intellectual property laws either. Question 6: Many tech people think that strong encryption is one of the best ways we have to protect freedom both now and for future generations. For example to preserve information that future not so friendly governments may think we don't need to have and to make sure that things we want to have remain private remain private. Given this what would you do to help preserve our right to privacy through the use of strong encryption? Also in a related question what are your thoughts and what do you plan to do about the fact that we can not export many forms of strong encryption? Answer in short: Encrypt all you want, there should be no export laws. Really I don't see encryption as our "defender of future freedoms", so I have nothing more to say. Question 7: In the last year or so we have seen a tremendous escalation in the quantity and size of political protests against globalization and the rising power of corporate multi-nationals. Do you believe that these people have reason to be concerned? If you do believe that they have reason for concern, what steps would you take as president to deal with their concerns? Answer in short: Free trade among countries, help other countries fight for working rights, support international organization of working people. Again, I don't know enough, but my gut feeling would be towards free trade... Question 8: Would you renew funding of programs to research and develop global defense systems against asteroids or other such threats from space? Answer in short: Let's not repeat another star wars. Give money to private companies to develop this system for us instead of the DoD. I'm gonna have to agree. Star Wars was a crock, and the DoD has spent 17 years not doing anything spectacular. A private company could get it done faster and better than the government, but the only problem with that would be people who worked on it who held sensitive information that might possibly sell that information to someone who isn't a fan of the US. But then again, that could happen even if the DoD did make it. Question 9: I'm very concerned with the future of the country, and about what our national mission seems to be. Looking back through American history, every period seems to have a defining popular mission - like the "manifest destiny" movement in the 19th century, the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. During these times, there would be one struggle or idea that captivated the attention of the nation, sort of providing a national mission. I'm a little confused as I look around today. What is our mission? To me, it seems to be "to watch TV and use the Internet." What would you say the defining national mission of today is? What should it be? Furthermore, how would you show this in your activities as a lawmaker? (For instance, if our national mission is the pursuit of science, then would you increase funding for scientific pursuits in the budget?) Answer in short: We don't need a national mission. We aren't going to make you do anything by providing a focus. Let's get rid of government scientific funding. "Government is politics, not progress. Government is bureaucracy, inefficiency, and brute force." Our mission should be freedom. Okay, I agree about not needing a national mission. But I am 100% against removing scientific funding from the government budget. If the government didn't do it, there wouldn't be many other people who had enough money to do it. No company is really doing any space exploration, so if there was no NASA there'd be no space exploration. And I want Star Trek god dammit!
