I still say this country can't decide whether it's a single nation or a nation of States. All our problems stem from this.
There's still nothing stopping liberal States from all getting together and making their own individual State ran Universal Health Care systems or implementing harsher private sector health reforms they just don't seem too keen on doing it, they want to force the whole country to do it. And while Republicans bitch and moan about Democrats forcing their agenda on them(which is true although whether it's for better or for worse is debatable) but Democrats are also whining about them being held captive which is not as true as they still have another avenue, the State avenue. The individual States can not over ride the Federal government, so States that don't want health care reform have no choice but to abide by Federal law, that is being forced but liberal States if they so wished could in fact have strivter laws than the Federal government or do Universal systems like the hand full of States currently but it seems they'd rather bitch and moan about them having no option but the Federal option.
I guess in a way it makes sense, this is a global message board so we're not going to get everything up for debate in every State, plus Obama is the President of the US not the Governor of New York so this is of course a national thread.
I just find it funny because I think people are missing the point of how this country was designed and why large Federal laws are hard to pass, fuck, why there's even a Senate in the first place. If you lose the health care debate on the federal level it's not over, in fact, you haven't even reached go yet, it should have started at the State level, where one actually has the most power and direct influence, it's where it should have started to begin with and a good place to start if it fails here now.
Anger directed at the Senate or the Filibuster I think is misdirected, if anything it should be directed rightly at the Constitution and the current system of government as a whole. They exist because States where meant to be States with power not just arbitrary boundaries to make school children have to memorize shit. When you say it's unfair for States x, y and z to influence the rest you're essentially sayin' they're not States or should have no power. Fine, if that's how you feel but lets be honest about it. I'm personally for abolishing the States or empowering them even more but it's this middle solution that I feel is holding us back from really doing shit. Empowering the States further isn't the worst idea ever but I feel it's a little, ok heavily, out of touch with modern living where people move around a lot for work and the like, I think a stronger national government is the way to go. That does of course come with a loss of real power from each citizen, the further up you consolidate power the less and less power each individual citizen actually holds, so there is an issue there that's "anti-American" to a degree but I think any loss of what little true power we have as individual citizens to begin with would be more favorably off set by the conveniences that come from every damn State being on the same page.
I also feel it's important that whether we talk local, State or Federal there's always a winner or loser. When some talk about our system sometimes they make it sound like everyone in the red states do not want health care or everyone in the blue states do want health care. Not true, whether it local or federal there's always people that lose and have to abide by the law.
When talking about an individual shaping their own destiny I feel that uniformity and convenience actually empower an individual as much if not more so than than a pinch of more political power.
Something I think red State people need to think about when thinking about their State is to compare our States with countries around the globe. You of course have the historically rich States like New York or California where businesses set up shop but you see a lot of businesses setting up shops now in States with much less strict laws. That's not entirely unlike what happens on the global scale with jobs lost to India or China. Everyone in heavily Republican areas seem to miss the fact that by attempting to be the most business friendly State and cannibalize industry from other States that they're in a race to the bottom, do we really want to have a little China(I guess that's a silly option) or India in the middle of the US? Is that where you want to go? Ultimately, so long as we have individual States with the power to set their own rules with relatively weak Federal rules you can cannibalize individual States but why bother? If everything were equal in the US it's not like we have much jobs left that can be outsourced, it's not like Texas or Tennessee isn't already a more expensive than India and yet jobs went there instead of New York, because it's relative, at the end of the day most of these jobs the individual States fight for have to be somewhere in the US, so why lower our standards further, which keeps States that want to raise their standards from truly being able to do so due to the risk of bleeding more people and more jobs? This is the real curse of the States in my opinion.
I thought Capuano was pretty awesome in that video. So the powers that be didn't like how harsh he was on the CEOs? :/