have past campaigns. There appears to be no vehicle for ordinary folks like
you(sorry if you are extra-ordinary!) and me to actually impact elections or
to actually understand what each politician says he will do and hold them to
it once they get elected.
So I thought I'd take a swing at change. Here is a list of questions that
three of us on this list have. If I have reworded your question
inappropriately, please let me know.
I have access to John Anderson who ran unsuccessfully many years ago as a
center of the road independent candidate. I am going to ask him to help me
brainstorm a way to give the middle a voice in politics. I'd like to have a
starting point of questions about what people are interested in knowing.
While this will have 0 impact on this election, maybe, just maybe, we can gain
some voice in the future.
Are these the questions you'd like to see being discussed today from a
national perspective?
Foreign Policy:
What role should the US play in foreign policy? Should we play the role of
policeman and/or white knight? If so, under what circumstances? How do we
balance this against the role of the UN? What is the role of the UN? How
important is being liked in our decision making?
What are the boundaries to "pre-emptive" strikes?
What can we do to accelerate a peaceful resolution to the Israeli Palestinian
conflict?
What are the best approaches to getting us to the best possible outcome in
Iraq - And what is this outcome?
How should the U.S. respond to the nuclear ambitions of non-nuclear states?
Social Policy:
What are the basic principles that our tax code should embody and what
should we do to get it there?
What is the appropriate balance between fetal and maternal rights?
How do we balance the rights of free speech and privacy against the needs of
our society to protect itself? What costs are we willing to have for this?
How many deaths versus what infringement on free-speech and privacy?
How do we create an environment where our education system can be
significantly improved?
How do we create an environment where our healthcare system can be
significantly improved? What should be our goals be and how do we get there?
What is the proper balance between federal and state control and personal
choice?
What role should government play in caring for the elderly, and how will we
pay for it? If we do nothing, how well will Social Security and Medicare
provide for the needs in the future?
How do we balance our country's traditional role of land of opportunity with
the short-term and long-term impacts of cost of labor for both business and
laborers combined with local impact on education, healthcare and social
program costs?
How do we balance short term economic interest of our wilderness areas against
the value of long-term preservation? What is that value?
Shouldn't Native American tribes be entitled to manage their own money? Or at
least to an accounting of what the US government is doing with it? (Dana, I
have no clue what this issue is? I wasn't aware that we left Native Americans
with anything of value, let alone maintained control over what crumbs we left
them?)
What role can our federal and state governments play in reducing racial
tensions, sexual inequalities, and other "prejudicial" issues?
How well is our current policy on drug working from both a cost and
effectiveness basis, both internally and abroad? What is our goal, what makes
us think that this is reasonable, and how do we better achieve our goal?
Do we believe that the government has a role in governing personal
relationships? How does a "marriage" differ from a personal relationship?
What would be the impact if same sex marriages where allowed from an economic,
religious, and social perspective? What are the appropriate policies to
balance freedom in personal relationships with the impacts of same-sex
marriages?
Economy
What role should government have in business and how do we move towards that
direction?
What is the appropriate balance between corporate profit and public good?
What policies are appropriate to control the outflow of labor and what will be
their short long term impacts?
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