There are many ways to make a point of view crystal clear. I present my point of view here. I am concerning this diary with the issues of China, the debt, War on Terror™, tax policy, political influence among other things. I am using flow charts.
China policy will be a huge issue for our next president. Good and fair trade agreements require leverage. This chart shows that we have very little leverage when it comes to China. We are dependant on their loans to finance our War on Terror™ and provide us cheap goods through Wal-Mart. If we decide not to buy their products because they are too dangerous, they can retaliate by not buying our debt diversifying into other currencies. Not good for us at all.
China and the WOT
We must influence our lawmakers to have better priorities and push for better policy. Political influence seems to be somewhat of a closed system, as shown below. If you consider that K street is almost a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate World. (Remember it is not Corporate America anymore. They transcend boundaries.) We democrats, liberals and progressives are going to open up this closed loop when we keep the Congress and win the White House. Do you think that publicly funded elections are the best way to do this? Current reforms on lobbying are not really getting at the problem.
Political Influence
The extent of the effectiveness of the political influence loop is shown by our tax policy. Taxes are paid to get good government that lift up everyone and secure our freedoms. I think we could do much better. The fallacy of welfare and "entitlements such as Social Security and Medicaid being a problem is dwarfed by bad priorities (WOT™), corporate welfare, waste and financing our debt.
Taxes, Government, People and Corporations.
So please discuss what priorities that you see for the next Congress and President.
Update: I changed the title from Trade to China.
Update: I made changes to the tax flow chart as suggested by astute commenters below.