Here
and
Now

opinions

Facing tough midterm elections, Democrats want a year of achievements

3 Comments
By ALAN FRAM

The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.

© Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


3 Comments
Login to comment

How do you become better at governing when you have to work with a party that attempted a coup d'etat? And With 1/3 of the nation wanting to try again?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The Biden administration has undone much of the fascistic damage that joe's predecessor did. Yet much more has to be done.

sf2kJan. 25  02:39 am JST

How do you become better at governing when you have to work with a party that attempted a coup d'etat? And With 1/3 of the nation wanting to try again?

Trump and his cohorts are not Republicans nor are they democrats or Indies or Greens. They are fascists and traitors, and they must be held accountable for their crimes. It's not truly a 'partisan' issue, it's moral.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Tax cuts are a terrible way to help genuinely poor people. If you are poor, a few % here or there on small amounts of income means nothing. Politicians who have never been short of cash or food will never understand that.

Tax tweaking only ever benefits the comfortably off, who don't need free money. If they wanted to help the poor, they would need to focus on subsidising the basics: food, medicine, rent, energy and education. That would be a welfare issue and have nothing to do with tax. Tweaking tax is just a way to curry favour with comfortably-off voters.

These are all very large sums of money going on the national credit card for the next generation to worry about. I guess Washington is trying to emulate Beijing in the state funding of society. It's not actually going that well for Beijing at the moment.

Operating a Brexit-style migrant labour policy - STEM experts only - to nick other nations' tech skills but keep everyone else out, is a recipe for inflation, increased costs, poverty and shortages. Given the level of unemployment in the US, migrants would not be stealing the jobs of locals but optimising the economy. Anything under 5% is effectively 'full employment', as the remainder are not looking for work, unable to work or unemployable. Political attacks on ad hoc employment are also inaccurate. They can be abused, but abuses can be regulated. The flexible options they offer tend to increase the amount of cash available to poorer sections of society. A stricter 'closed shop' approach increases costs, prices and locks too many people out of employment.

The Democrats should have tried to re-establish the political centre and move forward with more, smaller reforms that had consensus backing. Consensus is the basis of civil society. The alternative is ugly, violent and unpicks the fabric of nations.

Most Americans couldn't find the Ukraine on a map, and care not one whit about it. It has taken years for Washington to build up public enmity against China and create a cold-war style external threat, reviving the reds-under-the-bed mentality of the 1950s. A new cold war is not a solution to America's problems. It is just a convenient sticking plaster. It usually comes at the expense of other nations' economies and stability, and lots of victims. This time around, rattling the sabres will cost humanity any chance of a concerted global reduction in the pace of climate change and hammer several more nails in the coffin of the global economy.

Opposition parties have the luxury of a focussing upon politics. The party in power should accept the duty of governance, which limits politically convenient solutions. That is why regimes lose votes in power unless they are really good. So maybe the Democrats should concentrate at being better at governing America.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites