Our Platform for Outlining Colorado’s Future

Reasons  to agree: Rich people use cocain. Poor people use crack. It is wrong to punish the poor people more.

"Obama will work to ban racial profiling" ~ Campaign booklet, "Blueprint for Change", p. 48-49 Feb 2, 2008 Reasons  to agree: Race should only be considered when it is used to describe a specific suspect in a specific crime and only when used in a manner like other physical descriptions (e.g., hair color, weight, distinguishing marks). This is often referred to as the "be on the lookout" (B.O.L.O.) exception. "If we know that in our criminal justice system, African-Americans and whites, for the same crime, receive--are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, receive very different sentences. That is something that we have to talk about. But that's a substantive issue and it has to do with how do we pursue racial justice. If I am president, I will have a civil rights division that is working with local law enforcement so that they are enforcing laws fairly and justly. But I would expect a white president or a w...

Reasons  to agree: "How many times in the last year has this city lost a child at the hands of another child? How many times have our hearts stopped in the middle of the night with the sound of a gunshot or a siren? How many teenagers have we seen hanging around on street corners when they should be sitting in a classroom? How many are sitting in prison when they should be working, or at least looking for a job? How many in this generation are we willing to lose to poverty or violence or addiction? How many?" "Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities." "But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child--i...

Reasons  to agree: "One of Obama's most poignant missed opportunities was in not using the historic $787 million stimulus package to reorder state and local government's spending priorities. As states and cities continue to spend ceaselessly and without results on education and healthcare, they're crowding out investments in the physical infrastructure that the private sector needs to rebuild the economy. "In the stimulus, of the more than $200 billion that went directly to states and cities, nearly 70% went to education and healthcare spending. Only 24% went to infrastructure spending. "But the states and cities in the most trouble already spend way too much on education and healthcare, pushing taxes up and sending private industry away. They don't spend nearly enough on infrastructure, which attracts the private sector and builds the real economy. "As David Walker, former comptroller general of the US, said at the Regional Plan Association'...

Poor people are usually democrats, because they think they will get more money from the government if they support democrats. Rich people tend to be republicans, because they think they will keep more money if they support other republicans. It has nothing to do with what system people thinks works best, or what type of government works best. It usually has all to do with self interest or greed. Obama openly promised that he would raise taxes on the very rich and give more to the “middle class”. On video tape he said he would "spread the wealth around". Self interest is a bad motivation, because if everyone only acted on self interest, bad things would happen. We need people to act out of what they think will be best for their grandchildren. Republicans would say that Rich people don't want to keep more of their money, they think that this is the cart before the horse. Republicans will say that people who are self reliant, and don't want anything from the government, ...

This is republicans disagreeing with Obama because he is a Democrat, even when he is doing conservative things. This is democrats defending Obama, even if they would have attacked Bush for doing the same thing. The cause is political laziness and the result is issue crossover.  Issue crossover is when you agree with Obama on one thing, and so you tend to give him the benefit of the doubt on other issues. This is only natural, but it can lead to bad policy.  It is like giving Hitler the benefit of the doubt on his policy towards invading his neighbors, because you like his progressive environmental policy (OK you idiots; I am not comparing Hitler to Obama. I am using a good logical debating technique of proving a point with an extreme case).  This means that democrats and republicans need to work with each other when they agree, because the other side has to be right some of the time, no matter how bad they are. And this also requires democrats and republicans to oppose people from thei...

When I say that someone is motivated by liberal guilt towards the environment, I mean it as a bad thing. I'm talking about the guilt that knows we have been bad to the environment in the past, and assumes that everything that we do to alter the environment is going to harm it. It assumes it is impossible for mankind to help the environment, even if evidence contrary to their guilt, suggest that an action might increase biodiversity, or the quantity of animal or plant life.