my rebuttal of www.imvotingrepublican.com

"We don't like shopping at small neighborhood stores...We don't like consumer choice...We love cheap Chinese shit."

Regulatory costs serving as barriers to entry and corporate tax structures are mostly responsible for corporate growth and consolidation. Typically coercive monopoly brings higher prices, not lower ones.

Fiscal policy, relying on spending more money than we have, is responsible for our continued trade deficit with China. Also to blame are labor laws and other industrial regulations, which don't allow us to directly compete. It seems like the liberal answer is to call for an embargo or protective tariff. This doesn't make us better off. It simply means we have to produce such stuff ourselves at greater cost. What would life be like if trade were completely eliminated, and you had to produce your own clothes, house, and food (and all the machines that you would use to help produce such)? It would suck. Division of labor happens for a reason - it brings economic efficiency. Why should this not apply across national borders? In real terms, imports must equal exports. The only way around this is constantly expanding debt or charity. Our government has taken on the debt required for us to continue buying Chinese stuff at cheap cost. This is much more than a Republican policy.

And the last time I went to Wal-Mart, it didn't look like Republicans that were eating up the cheap Chinese shit.

"I don't want a cure for AIDS or breast cancer"

This implies that all medical research is and can only be conducted by the government. Why? And name one cure that government research delivered.

It seems cures for AIDS and cancer would be largely demanded by the public. A free enterprise system would best provide such products, as it allows ANY individual to profit handsomely for creating one. However, we don't have a true free enterprise system, especially in medical care, and you can blame the democrats for that.

"I think new drugs should be made available immediately, whether they have been properly tested or not."

So...liberals hate the big pharmeceutical corporations that only care about "the bottom line"...then they love the regulations that are responsible for creating them? Does the FDA's costly 10-year testing period on all new drugs have anything to do with reduced market competition? Does this testing period ensure all drugs entering the market are safe? What liberals need to understand is that drug companies should be (and often are) held liable for unsafe products. Tort law, rather than bureaucratic regulatory agencies, ensures that drugs are both safe and make it to market most quickly. It is silly to think preventing terminally ill patients who will be dead long before a drug is available on the market create safety. Even sillier is the notion that regulatory safety tests only turn out safe drugs, as recently seen by the class-action lawsuits against Bextra and Merck for their arthritis drugs that caused heart attacks, which were only withdrawn from the market due to private studies by Merck, who wished to avoid such liabilities. The only reason such companies can survive such multi-billion dollar lawsuits is due to their competitive advantage through government regulations and tax codes, and democrats are as much to blame for these as republicans, if not more.

"I want my kid to be in a class room with 30+ children."

I assume this means that Republicans want less federal education spending (even after "no child left behind"...which liberals criticize in name without bothering to find out what it means). The implication is that costs will be cut by reducing teachers. This is silliness. Washington DC spends the most per child for their public schools. Does DC offer the best education? If federal spending were reduced, you should want a corresponding drop in federal taxes. This means more money for state taxes, or more money to privately use for schooling. Given that the federal Department of Education has shown declining education standards since its inception, while having an ever-growing budget, people should welcome its abolition. It's humorous to bad-mouth Republicans on this, however, considering Pres. Bush widely expanded federal education.

This another argument that relies on government being the sole provider of a service, then expecting resourceful allocation of funds within government bureaucracy, two things that are almost never true. Further it argues that a reduction in federal education spending would not reduce taxation, but simply divert the difference in funds into things nobody wants, like more nuclear missiles.

"Women just can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies."

I guess he's talking about abortion...which is a fucked up way to put it. By this logic, I guess a woman should be allowed to birth a baby, then torture it with an icepick, simply because the umbilical cord is still attached...or simply torture it in the womb.

Abortion is a fucked up issue that I can't side either way upon; however, to try to put the issue in a single blanket statement about bodily freedom is simply an attempt at a straw man argument.

A better argument about bodily freedom is the drug war, which neither democrats or republicans will oppose, because it vastly expands the government's power.

"Because using fossil fuels are more important than preserving nature."

I keep forgetting that liberals don't drive cars or buy plastic products...but regardless, how is using fossil fuels destroying our woodlands? Last time I checked, plants liked carbon dioxide. And I don't understand how we are experiencing global warming when our most accurate data shows the planet cooling for the past 10 years. Somehow economic freedom is blamed for destroying nature. Well, show me an ACTUAL example, and I'll show you a practical solution.

"We like a conservative majority on the supreme court. We like knowing that even if we're separate, we'll still be called equal."

Not sure WTF this is about, but given that it's the only segment to be said by black Americans, I am assuming they are saying a Republican Supreme Court would reimplement segregation. Not sure where this sentiment comes from.

"I need to be told who I can love."

This is conflation of love and legal status. I personally don't think the government should define what a marriage contract should be; only that they should enforce its terms. Polygamy, as well as homosexuality, is fine with me; it's not my business. However, the point here is that Republicans aren't stopping love; state laws are preventing gay marriage. Many of these states are not run by Republicans. Liberals like to make a federal case out of everything, because in many regards they are fascists and do not understand the concept of limited self-governance. Despite liberals hatred of large corporations and monopolies, they tend to advocate an all-powerful, monopolistic federal, or even world, government.

"Corporations should not have to pay to clean up environmental damage. The EPA is an outmoded idea. If people want clean water, buy it in a bottle."

How does the EPA force the government to stop damaging the environment? It doesn't, and the federal government, especially the military, is the largest polluter in the nation, bigger than any single corporation. Has the EPA even been able to force GE, a regularly subsidized business who also produces nuclear weapons for the government, to clean up its environmental damage? It seems like the more connected a polluter is to government, the more likely he will be above the law. Liberal ideals of growing the government, especially by nationalizing industries, will do more to exacerbate the problem than solve it. The EPA and other bureaucratic regulatory agencies will continue to soak up tax-payer dollars while failing to prevent environmental damage. Only a government that is more connected to its people's well-being than big business, who allows tort law and protection of private property to function unhampered, can stop pollution. Liberals need to look at the government as the biggest corporation there is, rather than the anti-corporation solution. When not acting AS a corporation, government acts FOR the corporations, who spend billions lobbying Congressmen.

And for a little humor, tap water is often cleaner than bottled water because the EPA does better work than the FDA.

"I don't want to know if the food I'm eating has been genetically modified or exposed to radiation."

Everyone wants to know if the food they are eating is unsafe. Liberals will often jump on fear bandwagons, exclaiming that corporations are increasing profits by downplaying safety standards. Phrases like "genetically-modified" or "exposed to radiation" are simple means to exacerbate such fears without any knowledge of their effect on safety. Again, liberals act like producers have no fear of liability for potentially unsafe products. The bottom line is no producer or vendor wants to be held liable for selling unsafe products, or even have the market prejudiced against them for such. All the FDA and other regulatory schemes can hope to do is restrict the market, especially against smaller businesses. We have seen failure after failure of the FDA to prevent unsafe products from reaching consumers. Ultimately, it is consumer choice and tort law that truly police the market. The FDA only restricts competition, which leads to higher prices and lower quality, including safety standards. Whether food is genetically modified, radiated, or laced with bits of sharp metal should not matter. If it causes bodily harm, it is not performing its intended use and is liable for damages.

It should be noted that the biggest pushers for such "product advisory" labels are not consumer advocacy groups, but business competitors.

"I really enjoy being screwed by the utility companies."

I assume this means less energy regulation would mean more monopolistic practices, yet this is precisely the opposite of what actually happens in an unregulated competitive environment.

"We need more minorities in prison."

Not sure how this is attached to Republicans or how Democrats aim to fix such. The best means to do so would be to end the war on drugs, which neither party advocates.

"Because hybrid cars really suck."

Probably true, but how is this tied to Republicans? Are Republicans making laws that raise the cost of hybrid vehicles? No; more likely, liberals are whining that hybrids should be subsidized by government, making them cheaper, by the means of taxes on those who choose not to buy them. Why should any product be subsidized by taxes? Why should the federal government decide if hybrid cars are good or bad, and why should they force consumers to buy such over cheaper, more favorable options?

If they claim it's to fight global warming (ahem...climate change), why not force consumers to buy other things more important to safety? Climate change has thus far killed no to few people at most, while cardio-vascular disease has killed millions just in this year. Should we apply a tax to red meat? Moreover, why should we be trying to distort the market to accept solutions the government has chosen? If we want to reduce carbon emmissions, we should apply a carbon tax, just like if we wanted to regulate diet, we should apply a fat tax. Using government force to tax and subsidize things like ethanol and hybrid cars will probably be revealed to cause larger problems, wasting vasts amounts of energy and resources along the way.

The main thing here is that there is little proof showing damages related to carbon emmissions. If there were actual, direct damages from carbon emmissions, we wouldn't require any tax or subsidy scheme for developing alternative energy. There would be private liability on using property that output carbon emmissions - essentially similar to a carbon tax. Eventually, alternative energy would be cheaper than gasoline. Liberals don't want the responsibility of relating actual damages to the global warming mantra they believe, thus they hand the problem over to government to deal with.

"I don't feel I deserve health insurance."

First, few Americans are getting health insurance. They are getting health care. The differnce is that insurance is for unforeseen circumstances, with medical costs higher than one is able to make, while health care covers any and all medical procedures, including regular check-ups. Big government has pushed for health care, rather than insurance, even mandating its provision from larger employers. This third-party payment system is incapable of limiting costs. Patients always seek to spend the maximum amount, as they aren't directly responsible to pay. This, along with the similar systems of medicare and medicaid have made the medical sector's costs rise faster than almost all other goods and services.

Regulations and licensing have prevented supply from increasing along with demand. Hospitals operate at around one to two percent profit, meaning that few are willing to invest in expanding the medical sector.

The culmination of these policies is the unfortunate circumstance when prices increase until working men cannot afford health services. Ultimately, we would like to think we all "deserve" health insurance; but this is not true. We may need it, but we cannot force medical professionals to perform work for us. We must pay them what they ask or go without. There are measures to make health care cheaper, however. Reducing medicare and medicaid over time will reduce demand paid by taxes, dropping prices. Removing restrictions to direct payment, such as removing constraints on employers to provide 3rd-party payer systems and allowing individuals to keep untaxed health savings accounts are starts. Removing licensing restrictions to allow nurses to perform more work and putting more doctors in the field are also smart moves. And as costs and care are re-aligned, profits can increase, which means that investment and expansion will follow, which will further drop prices.

Nationalizing health care, often touted by liberals as the solution, simply makes the entire industry more unsound. It further institutionalizes and bureaucracizes it, resulting in greater costs with less output and further separating consumer payment from producer service. It creates a monopoly. Liberals often over-emphasize the profit motive in the private medical industry, yet profits are low while regulatory costs are high. Nationalization will increase costs, not lessen them. These costs will be passed onto producers, in the form of taxes. This hurts the overall economy, restricting investment and making goods cost more in all other industries. Additionally, there are still medical shortages. Rather than being "priced-out", patients will be "waited-out". Everyone will have "access," if they are willing to wait for weeks to months for simple appointments and procedures. For major surgeries, you may wait years. This is how nationalized care deals with the shortage of professionals it has to deal with the limitless demand at a "free" price; it uses another price system not in terms of dollars but in terms of wait times. This works well when everyone is unemployed. Then you can see who is truly needy by how long they are willing to wait in discomfort. Yet, when people could be better spending their time working, the system breaks down. Those who can pay the most should have nearly immediate access to care. This is simply the most efficient way to do things, which promotes expansion and lowers prices until nearly everyone can afford them. Automobiles and computers are two examples of this actually happening.

"Because Texas needs more billionaires."

WTF

"Because the constitution is one big, inconvenient headache."

I don't think the Democrats have ever read the Constitution or the opinions of its framers and ratifiers. Neither major political party is keen on following this document, which was designed to limit the power of the federal government. Liberals often tout the bill of rights as the prohibited powers of the federal government, but it is rather Article I Section VIII that does this, which specifies the ONLY powers of Congress, the only branch granted authority to make law. Liberals touting constitutional restraint can't whine about breaches of privacy when they seek to regulate the entire economy from a federal level. Federal welfare programs, drug prohibition, and commerce regulation are all unconstitutional (despite what a liberal supreme court may have said in the past). Will liberals trade these powers to protect privacy? No, but they will still whine.

"The whole world should be run by one big corporation."

Again, the biggest corporation of them all is the federal government. It employs more people than any private company. It pollutes more than any private company. It simply dismisses cases of fraud or crime leveled against it. When it is successfully sued, it pays its debts with your tax money. It consistently misses its budgets by hundreds of billions of dollars. And it is a monopoly. Liberals crying for bigger government and nationalized industries are simply naive to think the problems of large corporations will be solved by one even larger corporation.

Nevertheless, the liberal mantra against corporations rages on, without any understanding of economics and why large corporations can dominate a marketplace. They will cry about things like private ownership of the means of production and free trade, but they won't suggest adopting the Soviets' or North Koreans' economic model.

They should be crying about regulatory barriers to entry, artificial credit, corporate tax structures, and limited liability. All of these government-created entities have not simply allowed but suggested that corporations expand and consolidate. For example, buying a company who had a loss in its last year can offset a corporation's own profit, so it pays no corporate income tax. Dividends are double taxed, so few companies pay them - this leads most companies to reinvest their profits rather than distribute them. These aren't monopolistic practices attempting to exploit the market; they are simply attempts to retain the most income, which was earned through the market.

Another factor is variations in laws between nations. Multi-national corporations have come about to "exploit" differences in homesteading, labor laws, etc. between nations. For companies to be multi-national requires that they have a huge size to operate as such. Why couldn't a bunch of companies, each operating from a different nation, operate together in a similar manner? Because the laws favor one business, who can bracket all its costs into the nation with the lowest taxes or similarly avoid tariffs and other government-imposed costs. We can either fight this through huge tariffs or similar instruments to make such activities unprofitable, sustaining greater economic inefficiency, or we can get rid of our restrictive laws here, allowing smaller local businesses to have similar competitive advantage.

In short, liberals are silly to think a one-world corporation should be replaced with a one-world government.

"All other nations are inferior to us. We should start as many wars as needed to keep it that way."

Democrats started American involvement in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. The most popular Democrat spokesmen do not speak out against our occupation of 130+ nations. Even Barack Obama wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. Democrat-controlled congress has done nothing to end the Iraq War. American militarism is far greater than the neo-conservative Republican Party. This is not a defense of Republican militarism, only an exposition of Democrat hypocrisy on the subject.

"So I can stay in Iraq. So I can go to Iran."

Have the Democrats given any hint that they will actually leave Iraq or avoid a conflict with Iran? No. They simply want to move our Iraqi troops to Pakistan and Afghanistan. I don't know if liberals have a map, but that's the other border of Iran...