US Democratic program

[doc_bean]

Wasn't the balanced budget and the surplus of the late 90s mostly due to the economic boom ?

Don't forget that the republican wanted tax cuts, if they had passed the US would have run an even larger deficit after the .com stockmarket crash.
I really don't understand why Bush is handing out tax cuts to individuals when the budget is far from balanced and you are running a record deficit, why does Congress (and the Republicans in it) approve this ?

Cadillac prices for Yugo care.

A worldwide problem, check the evolution of doctors' income and compare it to the average workers' income, they rise much much faster. It will get even worse with the rising average age. There doesn't seem to be anyway to stop this. I'd suggest creating more scholarships for people studying medicine, but I doubt it will be sufficient.

The government here tried to do something about the gap and the doctors went on strike

My family's company got a large tax break directly due to Bush and weve expanded into several different cities and have been able to hire more people than we did during all the Clinton years because many of the taxes associated with expansion have been reduced or lifted.

Different presidents concentrate on different sectors, I don't think you can take one company as a way to judge an Administration.

And if health care is really and truly your #1 issue, do what the doctors and hospitals, never mind the insurance companies are telling you to do. Stop the predatory, destructive practices of the American Trial Lawyers association. It's a get rich quick scheme that drives health care costs up so that lawyers and the occassional unfortunate get rich off.

We're just starting to be able to break 'medical secret'. I almost died because of a doctors negligence and had to spent a month in the hospital. There was nothing I could do about it. Now this might have been an honest mistake, but some doctors just make too many of them. Cap the amounts patient can demand/receive, but don't destroy the system entirely.

They dont have a coherent agenda or and organized party.

Well, the republican party has the same problem to a degree doesn't it ? There seem to be 3 big subparties: the libertarians (no taxes !), the neo-cons (no dictators !) and Christian right (no fun!). I'd say the interest of the libertarians go against the interest of the other two. A strong foreign policy takes up a lot of money, and enforcing a christian morality (or enforcing anything) requires government action, which doesn't fit well with the 'minimal government' principle imho. Republicans also seem to have a thing for states rights, but I don't see this as a separate, major group.

The Democrats seem to have similar but opposite groups, the socialists (no poverty !), the environmentalists (no pollution !) and the liberals (no limits !). The interests also collide. socialism requires a strong economic backing, which doesn't go well with the environmentalists, the ideology (work together) is also completely different from the liberals (live for yourself). I was actually hesitant to include the environmentalists as a separate group, I think most of them probably left with Nader. There's also the idea of 'worker rights' but i'm not sure how powerful it is, and whether it should be considered separate from the socialists.

Both parties seem to get dragged down by their ideologic extremists, the Christian Right and the radical liberals. Although the Christian right might have a bigger support base nowadays, mostly because you can get away with anything these days, except for marrying someone of the same sex, and really, that's just symbolic, so the extreme liberals that are left are just that, scary extremists. Not too different from the Christian Right people from the American Taliban website (or their quotes at least).

What surprise me is that their is no 'moderate' liberal-libertarian party around. Both ideologies support the rights and duties of the individual. By moderate I mean that they don't need to push a liberal agenda even further, they just protect the freedoms that exist now. Okay, I'd just like to see the Republicans without the Christian Right I guess. Of course a moderate party, certainly in a two-party system, is probably just a nice dream...