The Federal Reserve is majority owned by big bankers and not the government. Government hasn't printed its own money since 1913. And I'm pretty sure the current banking system we have today has been around one form or another since Renaissance Mercantilism. I forget who the man who made it all up was though.

People are also forgetting that Socialism is not a type or style of government. Socialism is the concept of paying taxes so that things can be paid for that the individual cant possibly afford. This is a good thing.

another thing that people forget is that there has never been a true communist state. attempts and perversions of it have existed but there are many great ideas in there that never panned out because of the ultimate desire for power.

Ultimately, it is complacency of the populace which has led to our current sad state of affairs.

Yes I don't say it's government run, it was passed in 1913 right before Christmas and is actually illegal since the Constitution says the power to coin money comes from congress. The Federal Reserve therefore should not exist unless a constitutional amendment is passed, which did not happen. Its an independent agency.

If people believe in communist in its pure state I have no problem with that, that's their ideals. However, if you trust the governments of today's world to be communist and run communist societies I think you are naive to place your trust in these corrupt individuals.

As far as socialism goes I will add this -

Imagine you have a room full of money where you keep your earnings, then somebody comes and takes it and gives it to others without your consent. Would that not be considered thievery?
Well when the government does it, we consider it to be okay because that's what taxes are, they are just the middle man.

I consider taxes more of a check and balance against greed. Real billionaires don't tend to spend even a tiny fraction of their money. They might as well be stuffing it under a matress. its not good for the economy and especially the middle class who made them who they are.

If some guy makes 3 billion dollars and the government takes 1, His lifestyle and standard of living doesn't change at all. The richer someone is, the more money they should pay so less fortunate people can live better lives. Yes there are deadbeats that use the system but at the end of the day the rich use it a lot more than the lazy portion of the poor ever could.

What I'm saying here is rich people need to pay up and the system needs better measures in place to punish freeloaders. the issue needs to be taken care of at both ends.

So to you, it's a conspiracy.... I know of a really intense conspiracy brutha.
Check him out. He's not really a conspiracy guy, but I think he's close enough. Fast-forward to approx 3min to hear him speak on health care stuff.



Not true. I was very interested in what you said. I read your entire post and then I chose to reply to you. - You'll have to excuse me about engaging you on other issues at this point. When fear encourages conversation on political issues (especially when I can see a conspiracy theory brewing) it's near impossible to come to a consensus...

As for the Ron Paul conversation the man doesn't let himself get ran by big businesses. Therefore you will hear his name little to none. The money just isn't behind him. So the ad space on TV, Internet, or Radio is for the more crooked
Politicians such as Romney and Obama. Therefore I try to get his name out there as much as possible through Facebook or chat forums such as this. People really need to look at this mans beliefs. We need to demand that he gets time in presidential debates. I have never understood why during a presidential debate you only see two parties get represented when there are several others that need their voices heard.

Well anyway if anyone want to take a look here is his website.
Ron Paul 2012

So if you don't get the service, you get charged $700 yearly. Calling that a penalty equates me to being a conspiracy theorist...

Your logic makes for one crazy hasty generalization.

When all else fails...

1. ignore the argument
2. refer to the person as a potential conspiracy theorist
3. bring up fear for no reason at all
4. make the conspiracy theory seem mysterious with italics even though none have been mentioned nor even considered.
5. cancel the argument and act like its beneath you.

after that you will succeed...

at trolling the internet.

the entire 700 dollar fine thing is something I'm only hearing come out of the mouths of conservatives. I haven't seen a shred of proof regarding a 700 dollar fine. So far all I keep hearing is, if you go to get care and you don't have the insurance, you have to pay a fee. It does not specify how much that fee is.

1.) No. Your own words makes you a potential conspiracy theorist. Here:



See? You are more than implying that there is some sort of secret plot at work, masked over by the science of semantics in order to get the bill passed into law. Not only that, you don't have good reasoning as to why you are implying such a thing. Especially because the new law is written out for you and everyone else to read for ourselves, AND the thread starter here spelled out what this thing is by providing multiple links to (iMo) straight-forward language for us.

2.) About the $700 or, rather specifically, $695 or, 1% (which ever is greater). As I interpret that information... that tax applies to folks who may be able to afford a healthcare policy under this new healthcare reform, yet refuse to get a policy. -- IF you are otherwise, or relatively "healthy," and are a full-time employee somewhere, and you refuse to get a healthcare policy from...somewhere, you will be charged the fee. That circumstance also means that you definitely fit certain income criteria to reasonably charge you for the services you will inevitably procure.

Again, if you still do not utilize one of the avenues (i.e. get insured through where you work, or pay for your own private insurance, OR identify yourself as one who lines up for one of the subsidies, rebates, or otherwise, based on the income parameters that they also have spell-out for us)....THEN you WILL pay that tax.

For a single person, that tax, the fee you and many others are mistakenly labeling a "penalty," is $695 or 1%...which ever sum is greater based on your annual income. (which frankly, is cheaper than 1 E.R. visit in my experience)

That fee, under the the specific circumstance that you may be charged, is completely understandable because no-body-wants-to-pay-your-doctor-bill IF you don't have insurance, finally get sick or hurt, and go to the doctor without any coverage. No-one wants to foot someone else's bill when everyone else is, or will be, subscribing to the new all inclusive, as completely transparent as it can probably get, healthcare reform.



You have expressed fear of being "penalized" numerous times in this thread without out-right saying so. All the other numbers you had in there I have addressed.

I pose the following question:

If Obamacare is so great, then why did Obama (as well as numerous members of our government) exempt himself from it?

Let's also not forget Fast & Furious. The guy is abusing his power so hard it's not even funny.

I definitely agree with the abuse of power argument but I have yet to hear about government officials exempting themselves from the plan.

Source batman!

Man its one of those it sounds good and even though its constitutional, doesn't mean its a great idea to be implemented, especially during economic hardships...

*sigh* its only a matter of time before a state threatens secession (again). I doubt secession is even allowed and I doubt the US will let any state go without a fight. Besides it'll probably be to costly and to difficult for a state to leave anywho.

It's just crazy and pretty laughable hearing people say secession is a good idea...

This video talks about it

that is a bit troubling...

Why isn't this talked about more? Agree or disagree that is extremely conspiracy like. How many bills and such have the politicians exempted themselves from that the rest of America has to submit themselves to?

I figured I wouldn't get an answer.

Texas can legally secede from the union. I think we are the only state in the lower 48 that can secede legally. There is no actual written statement that says any state can legally secede from the Union. But Hawaii and Texas were once independent nations and would definitely have the most right to do so. It is written however that Texas has to submit itself to the US constitution but not the US president or the US congress. So that could mean that we don't have to submit ourselves to the theft of our liberties and freedoms D.C. is taking from the American people. I think that's pretty cool.

Because the people who support him shout the loudest. Don't mean in that in a nasty way, just mean that his supporters are very vocal and very loyal to his libertarian view.

And even if he was elected, a huge majority of the things he would want to do would never get pass Congress. Seeing as he views the platform of the president as a small position in the way that it was viewed back in the 1840s, 1880s, it'd more than likely be Congress running the show more than likely because after all, it is Congress who creates and passes legislation, taxes and not the president.

I don't know. I don't have all the facts. Off the top of my head it looks like a sacrifice...looks like he did a deal of some kind to get the bill to pass as a tax. Politicians do deals all the time to get things done so, I have no reason to believe there is negative or positive intent, specifically. I don't really care to extrapolate beyond that.



Why not forget about it? Barack Obama is not a member of the New Black Panther Group, he had nothing to do with that situation directly, and again, there's not enough information out there about it for us to draw a logical conclusion.

To argue about it is only going to mean more extrapolating on the mysteriousness of the situation. I'm not interested in doing that.

-- As for him abusing power... I think IF that's the case, it's about time. When Barack Obama came into office, his first whole year was plagued with people talking about how he might've been "too soft of a president because of how slow his decision-making processes were. People also criticized his leadership style as weak, because of how much everyone else in the world-leaders-circle liked him. They thought he might've been a push-over. Now, we can obviously see he's not. --- So, I don't have a problem with him seeming like he's abusing his power at this point. At least all the nay-sayers will respect the fact that he has such power instead of under-minding the guy.

Furthermore, nobody can make everybody happy.... At this point I am more concerned with whether the choices he's making reflect what he said he wanted to do when he came in; and if those ideals happen to change, I need to be able to tell that they are logical changes based on the parameters of the system we all have to live with in America, or in the Inter-National arena. Then, once those changes are made to the original ideas, I need to see that the changes should relate to the original idea, and I need to see whether they are effectively the correct choices (much more than simply being the "right" choice because there is a difference) for the country.

He succeeds to an enormous degree on all those fronts atm. Since this is the 4th year of his term as president, iMo, he has had an extremely successful 4yrs as president. He's probably the most positively productive president to date. I think given the circumstances, he's kinda had to be.

EDITED: 7/5/2012 @3:20pm CST

I didn't feel like entering this thread simply because politics. Regardless, I'd like to throw in my two cents here before my money is sucked probably to Greece. Not to downplay Greeks or any others by any means.
I've got to say though that while USA is debt-laden, unlike its counterparts Russia and China, it will most likely survive its financial crisis according to the stats. I'm not an America expert but I don't think that any state will secede actually while some states may have contemplated about it.
I could say it's twice as likely that some of the EU countries will take off or at least get rid of the euro currency. Places like Ireland, the inland Greece and South Italy are pretty messed up right now. Portugal and Spain are in problems too and more are coming, like Cyprus. Warning: I may speak about my homeland too, essentially – so I might be a tad subjective.
On the bright side, if the EU will survive the financial crisis, it will really unify us more into one. I'm not sure if I'd want that though, even if it's better out of the bad options. Finland's celebrating its 100th Indepence Day in a few years, but it feels like we're becoming just a state of a federal country.
To overcome the financial crisis in the EU, it demands great collaboration and to do that we would need to get rid of crooked leaders like Berlusconi (thankfully he resigned). Europe is gonna be comparably action-packed.

I wanna tell a fun story about the crooked ex- prime "mafioso" minister from Italy, Silvio Berlusconi. In around 2009 or so, he visited Finland and we offered him our food and pizza. Soon after, he officially stated "Finland's pizza tastes like shit." In the next year, our pizza franchise company, Koti Pizza, entered an international pizza competition and actually won it with a pizza entitled "Berlusconi". Now they're advertising the pizza with slogans: "Berlusconi – The world's #1 pizza" and "Fakta: Berlusconissa ei ole munaa." which translates coevally to "Fact: Berlusconi has no egg." and "Fact: Berlusconi has no balls." During his second visit he told it wasn't that bad after all.

I want to say that while Obama is constantly accused of overusing his power; the same accusations occur all along in Europe right now. In a crisis you must act – quickly. Obama is a good president in my opinion, better than Ron Paul and Mitt "Mittens" Romney would be. Ron Paul has some good opinions, he's strict and determined, but he is way too radical. I don't see him as a marvelous diplomat necessarily. Pros and cons...
That's a funny nickname – "Mittens" – by the way, even though it doesn't really describe him, LOL. Why not call Obama "Baraka" here (funnily)?
USA is not the land of liberty any longer. Far from it. I thought at least Julian Assagne would have shed light on that for everybody. United States is a militaristic country today, whereas Europe is more of a pacifist area today. It used to be vice versa before however; there seemed to be constant wars in Europe every now and then, e.g. the classic Great Britain vs. France wars. Let's not forget that Russia invaded to Georgia in 2008 though.
It's worth mentioning that United States put a stop to the Yugoslavian slaughter in the late 90's. I don't understand why countries like Turkey, Germany, France or Russia couldn't have done that by themselves.
So, that's a great deed of USA. However, it seems that for every good war; USA instigates four questionable, amoral wars. Ending a war and starting a war are different. USA seems to prefer the latter quite frankly.
Ain't that funny when there are riots in the western controlled countries; the media tends to talk about anarchy and violence, but when the same happens in the Mideastern countries: "They attempt to break free."
Media... Don't swallow it as is. Also – I think I'm getting to Obamacare soon – the media exaggerates many things. Did you take the H1N1 cure? Was it grave necessary? The American citizens eat more pills and antidotes than any other nation. That's part of the corporatism. Break free.
I don't say that you shouldn't take your critically important medicine if you do have e.g. a chronological illness. But the next time you'll think of taking a placebo pill for a headache: think twice. The less dependent you are of medicines, tobacco, alcohol et cetera – the healthier you are. I for one haven't taken a single pill for almost a decade (I would if I should though) and have never had to stay from school or work for being sick in my life.
The people who thought about moving to Canada: they have their reasons. Canada is one of the world's best countries to live in, and while it has a universal healthcare like the Nordic countries do, it's a whole lot of different. The universal healthcare barely costs you anything there as far as I'm concerned – unlike Obamacare. It's basically free in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland and Switzerland at the least.
USA is forcing the common citizen to be a little sick sometimes. As if it were completely normal (it seems to be nowadays). Corporations rejoice. In addition, when you pay the bill perpetually, you will feel that "Nah, I've paid the insurance, nothing can stop me now." and you'll become more fearless about clear dangers. When you have no insurance for your life you want to take care of yourself by your own and live more responsibly.
Obamacare won't even work "ideally". The majority of people will probably prefer paying the fine all the way before they start feeling sick. Then they will start to pay the insurance to the day they begin to feel healthy again.
That's not what the American government intended. Obamacare restricts people, takes away from their freedom. How is that supposed to be a good thing? It does secure some people and they will certainly find it very handy, but for a common, healthy citizen it isn't beneficial for what it costs.
The taglines that made USA a good country are mostly illusion today. Not to scorn my American fellows though. There are nearly 750 imprisoners per 100K citizens in the US, in Finland for instance it's mere sixty (60).

Obamacare: Something had to be done; but out of the all the options, it's not good for a common, healthy citizen. The solution to the financial issues isn't taxing the riches either. The government expects that the rich people will help poor ones and that way balance the thing. In lieu of helping people out of poverty they expect the wealthy men to mend it.

I was relatively subtle to avoid any long political debates. I'm sure I could write circa a shit ton of text but that would be too time consuming. Plus we are in an MK site. Which is, if you ask me, quite ashtounding that we have these topics in the first place. Kudos for that. Even then: over and out.

Hey Zmoke. Please tell me what you find so radical about Ron Paul? Because I have never understood this argument.

I can answer that one.

Ron Paul wants to get rid of many of the major government departments. commerce, transportation, FBI, etc.

no one would let him get away with these things.

speaking of which. I didn't celebrate independence day yesterday, I don't consider myself free in this country anymore. and I'm as liberal as you can get. Its usually the right wingers that say that.

I don't agree with every one of Ron Paul's ideas, but I agree with the majority of them. He is a little off his rocker if he wants to get rid of some of those government programs. The way he talks about makes it seem like a sane thing to do but I really couldn't imagine getting rid of the FBI. A lot of those ideas would never see themselves through. But Ron Paul truly believes in equality for everyone, a reduction in the power of our government, minimizing our Debt, securing our borders, legalizing a harmless substance which is marijuana, and he doesn't care one way or the other if Gays get married. I love most of his views which I can't really say for Romney or Obama.