California contingent -- Will California become America's first failed state? -- Accurate?

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Very interesting topic

Thanks for a most interesting topic guys, could I ask, as a person from another country who is not too sure how your system works intricately, I believe in the case of a President acting illegally for example he or she can be removed by the Congress by impeachment I think it is called, but if there were a protracted dispute between the President and Congress, does the President have the power to sack the congress and force it back to the polls?
I agree with the comments about the growing power of the executive, and the same thing is happening here in Australia as well, we have this iron clad party discipline which requires M.P.'S to always support their party on the floor of Parliament, and virtually every vote is won by the government of the day, wether Liberal/National or Labor as the government will always use it's numbers to win any vote or debate.
There is also 2 motions which need removing from the Parliament in my view and that is the gag and the guillotine, the gag is frequently used by governments when they want debate stopped,especially if the motion is embarrassing to the government, the guillotine is used when the government of the day rams it's agenda or legislation through under the weight of numbers.
The other problem is I believe that the Governor-General and State Governor in the case of a state parliament simply sign whatever is put in front of them, under the guise of "following the advice of ministers".
Where our system has fallen down I believe is that during a parliamentary term,there is virtually no way to get rid of a hopelessly perfoming government other than a vote of no-confidence passed by the lower house of the respective parliament, guaranteed to fail based on the above mentioned party discipline and use of numbers.
There are provisions for the Governor-General federally and the State Governors in a state sense to actually sack a government and force another election, but these situations are quite rare an d would likely be the result of blocked budget bills or in an extreme case, a government knowingly and continually acting illegally.
I dare say that democracy requires a diligent and aware public,which sadly in most cases is not the case.
 
The Executive Branch (our president) does not have constitutional authority to sack anyone in our other two (Legislative and Judicial) branches, or to force any elections. Short of a formal declaration of martial law, there is no provision for the president to bypass any constitutional power of Congress.

Also, impeachment by itself is not removal from office, it's just the first stage of the removal process. A charge or set of charges is made by the U.S. House of Representatives against a president, who is then tried in the U.S. Senate. The most recent example is Bill Clinton, who was impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate, so he was allowed to complete his term in office. Prior to that, the House filed articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, but he resigned his office rather than face certain conviction in the Senate.
 
The main problem

The main problem here in California, and in the United States is that there are too few people actually paying in to the system and too many taking out. In California we have 10% of the US population but 25% of the welfare cases.

Nationwide we have a huge proportion of people getting Social Security, SSI, government penstions, and military pensions. We also have people on Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Hospital system. There are too few people paying in and fewer in the future. It was easy to set up all of these systems and promise certain benefits, few actually calculated what would happen in the future, and if they did it was ignored.

We really need to sit down as a nation and decide how much everyone will get, how much they will pay in. Many want to pay nothing in and that includes the rich and those on welfare. Many others want to take out, including those on Social Security and Medicare, without realizing that what they paid in went to someone else, it is gone. They are being supported by those still paying in, they should be nicer and more greatfull to the younger generations.

Probably we will need higher taxes and lower expectations, we will be working beyond 67 years old undoubtedly. We need to look at the rest of the developed world to see what works and what doesn't work. Very likely we will have a national value added tax for health care instead of the way we are paying for it (or not). I though perhaps a BTU tax would be one way to go. With the VAT tax the large consumers would pay more, but everyone would pay in some.

Like I said we need to decide what we expect, do we want libraries, parks, public schools, public transportation, higher education, health care? I would like to see a computer simulation of this, how each factor raises taxes. The LA Times had one for California to see if you could balance the budget. The only way you could do it is to eliminate every program that is possible to eliminate, or raise taxes.

We also need to talk about how many people we want to keep in prison. As long as drug users are kept in there is a cost associated with it.

Martin
 
Martin, if you're claiming Social Security is now running in the red, or has ever run in the red, that's entirely incorrect. Today and since its inception, far more people pay into the SS system than take out of it, and while we keep hearing dire predictions about 2017 or 2047 or whatever year in the future, the program is SOLVENT, and it always has been. To the point where billions of dollars of surplus in the SS Trust Fund is routinely raided.

It is true that SS will face a temporary shortfall at some point, where that point is depends on which numbers you choose to believe, but the bottom line is that just a 4.9% increase in SS taxes would guarantee the program's solvency basically forever, or at least until the current generation of baby boomers pass on.
 
Socail Security...

as of Sept 28th this year, officially pays out more than it takes in. It's claimed it may not be long term and will possibly be profitable again in 2012, but there are many baby boomers taking early retirement due to the severe cut backs in pay, specifically government/state/county employees. There's a whole lot of baby boomers out there to support in the very near future! Realistically, I don't see social security generating surplus anytime in the near future.......unless National Health Care passes and the government starts killing off grandma and grampa over minor health issues.

 
> as of Sept 28th this year, officially pays out more than it takes in <

Where are you getting that claim?
 
Where are you getting that claim?

Yahoo's featured articles. I checked the archives and it only goes back to Oct 5th. Too old to extract.
 
Actually Social Security went into the red several times in the past 30 years. Each time a hike in the rates and cut-off limit restored it to health. Don't know what is next in that vein.

But as for National Health care sending the elderly to early graves - that's a bunch of BS based on right wing scare tactics. If anything they will live longer, because they'll be getting better health care when younger as well.

One need only look at the statistics: nations with so called "socialized medicine" generally have longer lifespans and healthier populations for 1/2 or less the cost of what we pay per capita. Our health care system is seriously messed up when it comes to keeping the entire population as healthy as possible. And Obama isn't even proposing socialized medicine - at most he's trying to make sure that every has adequate health insurance so that they can get preventative care, emergency care, acute care, and chronic care when they need it without having to go bankrupt.
 
Isn't 'health insurnace' the problem?

If our healthcare system is unsustainable, it's because costs are completely out of control.

Since throughout my life I have heard people say 'I don't care what it costs I have insurance.' Well certainly I don't care if I need something to save my life, which doesn't seem unreasonable.

But 'health insurance' without taking a look at how the health system is structured, that matters.

Wouldn't giving everyone 'health insurance' simply make the insurors rich and not provide better care? If not, why not?
 

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