Thread: This Week's Political Developments

This Week's Political Developments
Monday, 03 December 2007
By John LeBoutillier

This was a busy - and important - weekend on several fronts:

1) The narrow defeat of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez attempt to hijack his democracy and make himself a ‘President for Life/Dictator’ is a huge development. Why? Well, a) because it means a slight majority of people down there had the courage to stand up to a bad guy who already has hurt their nation and b) he may blame his defeat on the CIA and Bush and thus try some sort of retaliation. He has mentioned “turning off the spigotâ€

I think more and more people are getting fed up with both major political parties. We've had some great moderate leaders in past times. I think there has been a major shift in American thinking over the last decades. "Work" has changed from being a strenuous effort to produce something of tangible value to just being something that gives you a paycheck and let the higher-ups worry about the implications.. America has always had a strong aspect of upward mobility, fueled by the influx of immigrants who would do the hard and dangerous jobs. But in the last half century this upward trend has taken an exponential tangent. Consequently our dependence on immigrants has also risen. Both parties seem to pander to the elites. Democrats may pander to a more cosmopolitan elite than Republicans, but the person who really produces tangible value is becoming regarded as a (replaceable) chump.

The difficulty with Independent politics is that you wouldn't have a political machine behind you: think tanks, policy wonks, PR people, advisors, lawyers, etc. I guess you would have to search for them in the moderate folds of both parties. If you were an Independent Presidential candidate how would you come up with a list of the thousands of appointed postions you would need to fill?

One thing I do appreciate about this board is that it has a good cross section of American citizenry,