Why is this guy still in business?
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's volunteer investigation into documents pertaining to President Barack Obama's place of birth and citizenship now includes the services of a taxpayer-funded ...
The lies roll off the man's lips like music off Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Both are virtuosos - one a cellist, the other a liar.
A partial list.
Bush had nothing to do ...
Happy Friday.
The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor.
"Barack Obama supports same-sex marriage. Mitt Romney doesn't even support same-sex car pools." –David Letterman
"The head of ...
Republican Rep. Mike Coffman at a Saturday afternoon fundraiser in Colorado.
I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I ...
Rand Paul:
Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his [Obama's] views on marriage could get any gayer.
We won't call Rand cynical. Ignorant, bigoted asshole is more fitting. An adult using ...
Happy Friday.
The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor.
"President Obama came out with approval of same-sex marriage. He said that over the years, he has ...
I've never understood Log Cabin Republicans - gay conservatives who give their support to a homophobic political party that derides their sexuality and refuses to grant them equal rights under ...
Finally.
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own ...
Election roundup:
Indiana.
As polls forecast, the Tea Party's efforts to cleanse the GOP of any impure conservatives has Dick Lugar out and teabagger Richard Mourdock in. Mourdock is the new Republican ...
There are lies...and then there are lies.
My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what ...
From the papers captured last year at Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout comes this.
Like any public figures, bin Laden and his advisers were mindful of the media. Adam Gadahn, one ...
The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. Happy Friday.
"Today Mitt Romney visited a firehouse here in New York City. Of course, he was disappointed ...
It happened to Kerry. Can it happen to Obama? Nope says Margaret Carlson.
Obama’s belief system -- in that hopey-changey business and the post-partisanship thing -- has been altered by reality. ...
Sullivan:
What do Republicans call a gay man with neoconservative passion, a committed relationship and personal courage?
A faggot.
Exactly right, but then could one expect anything different from a political party that ...
And they claim that atheists are immoral?
The ugly side of religion shows its face once again. The words below were spoken at a Sunday sermon by Sean Harris, a pastor ...
It's been fun watching conservatives and Romney twist themselves into pretzels trying to undo Mitt's past words on GM and bin Laden.
Romney, April 2007:
It’s not worth moving heaven and earth ...
In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a couple of scholars from liberal and conservative think tanks, discuss the state of American politics.
We have been studying Washington politics and ...
Romney's VP-in-waiting, Marco Rubio, is perfecting the conservative sleaze play.
He has proposed his version of the Dream Act in which people who entered the country illegally as children will be ...
Beyond the rhetoric, the political BS, the lies - that is, the concerted effort by the right-wing noise machine to distort and misinform at every opportunity - is the very ...
“I’ve got real empathy for those who are unemployed, as most of you know I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters. I know that three of my brothers lost their jobs, I’m not sure whether they’ve found jobs, yet, so I’ve got a lot of empathy for those caught in this economic downturn.”
A ton of empathy indeed. So much empathy in fact that he cannot be bothered to call or send an email to find out how his three unemployed brothers are doing. And yet he expects people to believe that he and his Republican cohorts actually care about the millions of unemployed who have seen their benefits end at a time of economic depression.
What is most revealing about this little Boehner tale is the degree of disconnect between conservative politicians and the tens of millions they perceive as the unwashed masses. While every action from these guys screams out, “IF YOU AIN’T RICH, WE DON’T GIVE A SHIT!”, they believe that just adding “I’ve got a lot of empathy” at the end of a statement somehow makes it all good.
Heartless ignorant scum.
___
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If people are using their intelligence, they will realize that this economy has shrunk and is not going to recover any time soon. People are going to have to start small businesses to start digging out. I know this is not easy to think, but being on unemployment is not going to bring recovery. I was talking with 3 geo physicists from Germany two days ago. They said that everyone, (in the past) in Germany have worked for large companies. However, they are closing. Now, they are realizing that they are going to have to start small businesses in order to exist. They have never done so in her working time, and they are doing to anyway. So this is new to them.
Republicans want to extend benefits for unemployed, but not by raising debt. They want to have the benefits paid for in the budget. And, if you want to know, this is the first time in history that we have not had a balanced budget in Congress at this date. So, yes, they will pay for benefits to be extended, but they want to make a cut somewhere in order to pay for them. I have an idea, cut payments to illegal aliens. Why should your children and grand children have to pay the debt caused by the 3 year unemployment costs. I love the way that reality is phrased. Yes, big bad Republicans want to “Pay for through the budget unemployment” The sweet liberals want your children and grandchildren to pay for it by increasing the debt. There would have been not one second of delay if the liberals in Congress would have actually put it in the budget (for when it is actually passed).
Go ahead guys, keep wrecking the country for the future generation. When you are old, the young peole are going to hold you accountable. Let’s see how that plays out. At least I know that I haven’t tried to put my spending on their backs.
ngttia – I’m not exactly certain where you got the idea that “this is the first time in history that we have not had a balanced budget in Congress.” Your information is incorrect. Do a Google search on it. The only time we had a surplus (in recent years) was under Clinton.
And while the GOP wants to use Pay-Go to pay for the unemployment benefits in order not to increase the deficit, they have no problem in wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts that have already cost us $1.7 TRILLION dollars over the last 10 years WITHOUT off-setting those using Pay-Go.
Just imagine if Bush had not rammed through those tax cuts using his GOP controlled Congress – most of which were done while we were at WAR (and no one has ever done a tax cut during a war), where we would be in the deficit…there would not be one!
And what did we get for those tax cuts? Certainly no jobs were created during Bush’s 8 years. And since wages remained flat for the middle class during that period, we didn’t get any help there either.
The GOP also wants to end the estate tax. The changes recently made (which Sen. Durbin demanded by under Pay-Go) will cost 1/2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
So while this money is NOT going into Treasury to pay our bills, we are adding to our debt and the INTEREST we will be paying for it.
And while at this point we are not in critical mass, we’ve got to start doing something about it for the long term. We need to invest to get the economy growing now so people will have jobs, so they can generate revenue to send to the Treasury. Those who can afford to pay, need to pay. Those corporations who have off-shored theirs papers and there accounts need to pay up.
It comes down to this – somebody has got to pay for the two wars that Bush kept off the books (hiding the fact that he was WAY OVER his budget). If we don’t make these changes, we will be in trouble. But there is time to make them. Social Security is okay until 2037, but to continue to make this a viable program that pays for itself, we need to lift the caps. People making over $102,000K need to keep paying into the system.
The health care reform bill needs more done to get control of our health care bills so it can remain viable.
But one thing that no one ever mentions that needs to be said here is that our economy is not stagnant. As long as our economy grows and as long as our population continues to grow, the amount of debt will be reduced and spread over a larger population. We can’t grow our way out of debt, but we can’t cut our way out of debt either.
There is much to be fixed and a lot of waste that can be eliminated from the system — but don’t kid yourself into thinking that private corporations are any less wasteful than government. I’ve worked for them. I know better.
At least government is a non-profit entity – just wait until the private contractors suck us into low bid contracts that once there are no longer government workers to do the work, will steadily increase, costing the tax payers yet more money.
You are also misinformed about what undocumented workers get in the way of social help, as well. And what they contribute. Below is a list of helpful articles that will assist you in gaining more knowledge on these issues:
Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions -http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html
As far as Bohner is concerned – it’s time to tweet him about his brothers’ jobs! About all he knows how to tweet to the world is “Where are the jobs?” I think my response is going to be, “Brother, I need a job!”
Diana you have been punked.NGTTIA has to be a phony or a “KOOL-AID”drinking “DITTO-HEAD”who doesn’t have the brains to know “UP” from “DOWN”and can only parrot what it hears from the Right Wing Lying Machine.Keep trying to educate the misinformed but harbor no illusions that they want to listen or learn.
excuse me, I said “at this date”. I am totally correct. on that point, as I was with my Congressman on Saturday, and he gave me that information. He has been in Congress for over 20 years, and he is very concerned about it.
John Boehner says he has empathy, does that mean he is a socialist bent on the destruction of the American family? Isn’t that basically what Glenn Beck was on about? Now, ngttia, you ought to comment more often…seriously. Your comedy is great, I think you have a future writing sitcoms.
“At this date”….no partner, you are emphatically not correct. We aren’t close to a balanced budget now, and won’t be any time soon. And that is OK. Deficit spending during a demand shortfall, according to most professional economists, is a good thing. It adds money to the economy. There is no recovery without the addition of sufficient capital to stimulate demand. Of course, your German “Geo Physicists” may say different, but I think they need to stick with their field.
The German economy, by the by, is driven by many of the world’s most powerful companies…companies that thrive in an atmosphere of high taxes and powerful labor unions. They thrive because they haven’t handicapped themselves with whining Republican members of Congress who are busy making excuses for poor performance.
Run along now and tell your 20 year Congressman to retire.
ngttia, or is it Connie, you were incorrect no matter how you state it. And U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (that is who you were referring to, isn’t it) is smart enough to know that.
“Deficit spending during a demand shortfall, according to most professional economists, is a good thing. It adds money to the economy. There is no recovery without the addition of sufficient capital to stimulate demand.”
The counter-intuitive nature of that statement blows me away. Where do you think that capital comes from to begin with? It has to be taken out of the private sector economy before the government can “reinvest” it back into the private sector economy.
Michael, maybe you’ll have the courage to answer my challenge to read “New Deal or Raw Deal” by Burton Folson.
ngttia, I will happily associate myself with dinamic72. I’m certainly not afraid of Faux News’ big ole “terrorist fist bump” nonsense.
You are aware Bush on occasion “fist bumped,” too? LOL
I will not cower because some GOPer told me I should.
I will not be afraid so that I can make more corporations richer.
I will not be afraid so I can make the banks richer.
I will not be afraid so some in Congress can take away my Social Security (when I’m eligible).
I will not be afraid so some in Congress can take away my Medicare (when I’m eligible.)
I will not be afraid of so called “death panels” that don’t exist.
I will not be afraid of some ditto head Limbaugh follower. Or a Sarah Palin who doesn’t think READING is important to solve problems, and that bumper sticker slogans can.
I will not be afraid of Lee Attwater “southern strategy” tactics designed to divide the American people and make them afraid, just so some bozo can get a vote or a corporate campaign donation.
I will NOT give them the satisfaction of making me afraid.
See, the difference between Diana and me…I am more than glad to hold signs saying that Obama is a socialist,
Diana will “happily associate with Dinamic 72 and his actual comment that he is making a terrorist fist bump”
ngttia – Please stop using these socialist programs immediately!
-The US Military
-Libraries
-All interstate, state, city and county roads & bridges.
-If you live near a levee or dam, please move, unless is it a privately owned one.
-Please notify the fire, police and ambulance departments that you no longer require their socialist services.
-No trips to NASA to view the space program.
-Please turn off your water, unless it is delivered by a private corporation.
-Stop or decline to accept Social Security and Medicare – both socialist programs.
-If you receive any type of social assistance from the government, please advise them you no longer need assistance – or will at any time in the future.
-Schools – any public school including Community Colleges and State Universities.
-Please stop visiting ANY federal, state, county, or city park.
-Please notify your Post Office you no longer require their services to deliver your mail.
Terrorist “fist bump” —- ROFLMAO You’re just tooooo funny.
The difference between you and me is that I know the various definitions of “socialism,” whereas you have been brainwashed by the tools of those corporations who are going to turn this country into the United Corporations of America. They will then finish soaking up the rest of the wealth in this country and like the pariahs they are move on to another country to suck up their wealth. We will be the new overworked underpaid workers making products for the Chinese, while they will be the new middle class.
No, the main difference between Diana and you is that Diana is a rhetorician and you are a sophist. A rhetorician is a person who is skillful in explaining complex ideas in understandable terms. Good teachers are good rhetoricians. Sophists aggregate disparate anecdotal data and combine it in ways that enable a specious argument to sound reasonable, i.e., “I’m still unemployed, ergo the stimulus plan didn’t work,” or, implying that Diana and Dinamic are actual terrorists when everyone knows they were making fun of the preposterous “terrorist fist bump” phrase made famous by a vapid Fox News anchor.
So, reacting to an obvious joke as though it was meant in all deadly seriousness is sophistry and makes you a sophist. If, you didn’t know that Dinamic was making a joke, then you shouldn’t be trying to make persuasive arguments on a blog page filled with people clearly better informed than you. Ne c’est pas?
Diana – Here’s the difference between us; it’s the same difference that rises between the academic world and the pragmatic world. Economist’s are academics. Historians are pragmatists. Historians predict the future based on an analysis of the results of specific historical events. Economists predict the future based on formulas that are often only taught in classes.
Now, based on that distinction between the two groups, I read through the report that you linked to, and came to the conclusion that it was full of theories, not real world experience. In fact, looking through the biographies of the authors, they are all former government employees. None have practical, real-world business experience.
So that’s my retort to your dis of Burton Folson being a “revisionist historian”. I’m curious though. How did you come to that conclusion if you haven’t read his work?
Tommy,
Deficit spending is derived through the sale of Treasury notes. The average taxpayer isn’t buying treasury notes, not least because the paltry return isn’t worth much in a five figure portfolio. So where does the money for deficit spending come from? Institutional investors, sovereign funds, pension funds and the like… in other words, the very entities that can 1) afford the investment in the first place and 2) make large enough investments for the 4% return to be meaningful. Do taxpayers eventually have to pay it back? Of course, but this is economics 101 – destructive versus constructive debt. Money that is hoarded or spent on objects that have limited intrinsic value to the civilian economy (i.e., one-use items like ICBMs, non-investment-grade subsidies like ethanol, and obsolete programs like the V-22 Osprey) are drags on real GNP (not GDP, GNP). Investment in programs and infrastructure that actually brings a value-added return on the dollar (in the way that the interstate highway system was an instant value-added commodity in trans-continental shipping) are a net positive to GNP. Conservative economists spend far too much time being concerned with government finances and nowhere near the proper amount of time understanding personal finances. Government can take the hit, for a good long time, and not perish. Humanity cannot. THAT’S the difference.
I haven’t read Folsom’s book but I just scanned a couple reviews and it’s really nothing new from what I can tell. The most obvious counterpoint is that Hoover and company had ravaged the economy so much that even an aggressive spending program (by FDR) wasn’t enough to make a difference before the end of the decade (30s). And it fails to take into account the massive across-the-board tax increases that were necessary to keep the government running, which we don’t see this time around (and expiring the preposterous Bush tax cuts for wealthy elites doesn’t count – hoarding is destructive to GNP).
Say it with me now… hoarding is destructive to GNP. ;-)
I’ve heard of him — seen him on a couple of broadcasts and wasn’t impressed. He came across like an ideologue and that totally turns me off. I’m into facts.
And while there was much about the New Deal that didn’t work or that was just plain stupid, there was much that did. Of course, much of it didn’t work for the African American population thanks to those Southern Dems. And, of course, let’s not forget that FDR pulled back on some of his spending because the GOP was complaining loudly.
What we do know is that when WWII came along and the government poured millions/billions into buying planes, tanks, jeeps, etc. that the entire country went to work. The rich were paying a pretty good chunk in taxes, too – 75-80%.
And, of course, after we destroyed most of Europe and Japan, there was plenty to building to do that didn’t hurt us or Europe or Japan either. And by pouring all that money into rebuilding and paying people to go to work to do that rebuilding, every one of these countries generated revenue for their treasuries. Companies were created and more products were manufactured.
So it seems, based on history, that building a tax base requires people working. People who work buy things – houses, commodities, etc. When they spend, corporations make more and new products and make money and so the cycle goes.
What we have now is a downward spiral with companies hoarding 1.7 trillion dollars they could use to invest in this country. And they KNOW if they don’t invest, we will continue this downward spiral. So, if they hoard they take no risk – but who do they sell their products to, if there aren’t enough people working to buy? They just scrape by with those who are working?
What wonderful faith and patriotism they have for their country! Oh, I forgot. 2/3 didn’t pay taxes in 2007 with all those lovely tax loopholes they got…or was it they just moved their paperwork and their money to the Cayman’s so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes?
Hmmmm…
I’m curious how historians who are typically loathe to predict the future and whose profession is to record history as it WAS, not as they would like it to be (but, of course, our history books are already full of their propaganda and I see Texas is working on adding some more).
ngttia, too bad you have no clue what a socialist is. Hold up your sign and continue to demonstrate your ignorance to the world. The comment on the terroist fist bump obviously went way over your head. The saddist part of that is that it was at ground level.
Tommy, there are historians that learn from the past and there are historians the repeat the past. The current historians seem to be the latter. Doing the same things over and over again but expecting a different result is truly the definition of insanity.
The hoarding thing was one of FDR’s favorite class envy tools too. He actually had a tax passed on undistributed corporate profits. It was meant to force companies to distribute accumulated profits in the form of dividends or salaries so they could be taxed. It’s true result was to take investment capital out of the private sector, and thus limit the creation of new jobs.
“2. When, prior to the Revenue Act of 1936, corporations distributed their earnings to their stockholders, the dividends were subject to the surtax rates named in our income-tax law. When corporate earnings were not so distributed, the individual stockholders, while enjoying the benefit of these earnings in the form of more valuable investments, were enabled to avoid all payment of surtaxes thereon. Between 1923 and 1929, inclusive, more than 45 percent of the compiled net profits, after income and excess-profits taxes, of all corporations reporting net income was not distributed by the corporations and was therefore not subject to the individual income taxes, or their approximate equivalent, applicable to their stockholders. 3. Very large proportions of the incomes accruing for the benefit of members of the upper income groups in the United States had previously escaped the individual income surtaxes for long periods of forever in this fashion. Henry Ford, for example, has been liable for individual income surtaxes on only such portions of the profits of the Ford Motor Company as have actually been paid out to him. By allowing his profits to accumulate in and to be reinvested by the Ford Motor Company, he has been enabled to avoid individual income-tax liability for most of his share of such profits. The Federal Government need never get anything like the equivalent of the taxes avoided in this fashion by Mr. Ford (to continue the example), for at Mr. Ford’s death his estate will pass to his heirs without any tax liability for the huge capital gains incorporated in this estate, part of which arose through the Ford Motor Company’s retention of earnings; nor will the rates of tax applicable to the estate be at all higher than on estates of similar size that may have been created by individuals whose equitable incomes had been subject in much greater measure to our individual income and capital gains taxes.”
You can read more on the site, but for all the complaining your doing, it was reduced and ultimately repealed within 3 years of its implementation.
No one said FDR was perfect – but a whole lot of people did not starve to death under his watch.
I can just imagine where we would be under GOP rule — more hobos and Hoovervilles?
They want to offset the unemployment benefits, but have zero problem with NOT offsetting the Bush tax cuts they want made permanent.
They complain about the debt/deficit but are willing to deny the Treasury necessary revenue to get us through this and come out on the other side reasonably well off.
We are in much better shape than most of Europe – our debt ratio from a recent article I read is considerably less than Germany, England, Ireland, and many, many others.
It’s simply more fear mongering while the GOP pushes their typical meme so they can privatize Social Security and Medicare for their insurance and Wall Street buddies.
The deficit is 10% of GDP and as long as we continue to grow, cut back on spending (by say, ending the war or reducing the MIC crap we don’t need) and our population grows and returns to work, it’s not going to be that bad. More people means we share more of the cost of the debt reducing the amount each of us owes. Which, by the way, spread over our working lifetime isn’t going to amount to much more than we’re already paying.
Tommy I do respect your voice, but you seem (my opinion) to labor under the notion that all liberals are somehow naive, timid, and lacking in real world experience.
You are incorrect.
Your arguments as a libertarian have constitutional merit, but you suffer when you stray into economics. This isn’t entirely your fault, because there is a mountain of data which refutes every principle you and individuals like Folsom cling to. This nation came out of the Depression, before WWII…the economic data, from industrial capacity to GDP is absolutely clear on this. The only hiccup in the major statistics came in 1938, after federal spending was reduced in 1937.
This nation won WWII and Korea; built an interstate highway system; build a national system of locks, dams, and levees; won the space race; underwent a massive expansion of public schools up to and including college; and won the first 35 years of the Cold War; all with tax rates double what we have now.
This nation has spent the last thirty years cutting taxes. During that time we have allowed our infrastructure to fall more than $2 trillion behind in maintenance and upkeep. During that time we have gone from a net exporter to a net importer. During that time working class families and small business owners have seen their discretionary incomes stagnate. During that time we have seen millions of jobs outsourced. During that time we have destroyed the support system that once enabled the best teachers in the world to effectively educate the best students in the world.
Do you expect people to purchase and read an entire book in the time it takes for any given subject to come and go in the blogosphere? Do you always expect people to purchase and read every book you say will finally make the argument you have been failing to make, despite having read the book you want us to purchase and read, so you can make your point? Is this really the circular logic you want to employ? Reading reviews enables busy people to focus their energies on material that will actually edify them.
“The hoarding thing” is not a class envy tool. Dismissing economic imbalance as a fantasy created by poor people’s jealousies is both a flagrant dismissal of economic history and a false economic Darwinism, defending an ideology that is the least fit to survive in a truly free market. The “welfare state,” as we know it, is dwarfed by the amount of money spent by the taxpayers, the very people you purport to defend, on corporate subsidies and making up the shortfall caused by off-shoring in all its forms, not to mention absorbing the deferred costs of environmental and human degradation left in the wake of profiteering enterprises. If you need examples: Union Carbide in Bhopal, GE in the Hudson River, and of course, Exxon in Alaska and BP in the Gulf, just to name a very, very few of the many, many examples available to us. If you really want to protect the taxpayers, you should be concerned about all the off-budget items our tax system defrays, masking the true cost of our lifestyle choices and the true profits of corporate multinationals.
“It was meant to force companies to distribute accumulated profits in the form of dividends or salaries so they could be taxed. It’s true result was to take investment capital out of the private sector, and thus limit the creation of new jobs.”
This is utterly preposterous on its face. First, dividends paid to private shareholders and salaries paid to private sector employees are, by definition, paid into the private sector. Only a portion of that private sector transaction is paid to the government in the form of taxes. For the entire investment pool to be removed from the private sector, the effective tax rate would have to be 100%.
Ironically, the highest rate ever in the US, 92%, coincided with one the fastest and biggest economic expansions in American history, aka, the 50s (http://www.slate.com/id/2245781), but that rate only applied to the highest bracket and most people didn’t make anywhere near $400k per year in the 1950s. Also, back then, the average executive earned around 30 times the average rank and file worker, whereas today, that average has been pushed close to 600 times – executives who once earned thirty times more than their workers are now earning twenty times more than that! And very few people believe that corporations even know what they’re doing anymore, from corrupt energy companies and incompetent telecoms, to gadget geeks that put antennas in the wrong place and a corporate agriculture machine that just might kill you… accidentally, of course.
And the one thing all of these private sector enterprises have in common in outsourcing, from manufacturing in Asia to importing undocumented workers to till the fields in California, all while still enjoying generous, taxpayer subsidies, incentives, waivers and bailouts. Have we not learned that these people will always complain about tax rates and never change their behavior no matter what rate they have to pay. High rate or low rate, they will: sell in every market open to them; outsource where possible; ignore regulation where possible; off-shore profits; limit full time employment, overtime, and extended leave among the rank file (mainly by using mostly part-timers and freelancers); use any cost savings/revenue enhancements for executive bonuses; bail in a golden parachute when the kitty is running dry. Has anyone missed that movie? And these are the people that represent the “private sector” of which you speak? These are the knights in shining armor that will magically create jobs if the 10% tax cut they got from Bush remains, but not if it expires?
Shouldn’t taxpayers get a chance to build something for themselves? Shouldn’t we use some of the money the corporate elites squander on gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted cell phones to increase funding for the Small Business Administration, modernize our crumbling schools and libraries, create public-private-academic partnerships in science, engineering, the arts and humanities, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, leap ahead of the world in clean energy and high-speed rail, and build a suitable replacement for the Space Shuttle? Maybe even go to Mars soon, like this decade? These are the jobs of the future. Not Apple – the upstart that will finally beat Apple. Not GM, not even Toyota anymore… is Tesla the next great leap? Are those the jobs? “The hoarding thing” prevents us from finding out. No company or person has a monopoly on all the good ideas, no matter how much some may think so. America’s success is in this dynamic churn of an actual free market, with everyone pulling their own weight, not in propping up ancient and obsolete oligopolies.
And finally, those who earn the most have derived the most benefit from the social contract we ALL live by, ergo, we all pay but they pay more because they got an outsize benefit. Even the best idea can’t exist in a vacuum – everyone gets help along the way, everyone pays back when they hit it big. That’s a fair economy. If we devolve into some Ayn Rand vision of economic Darwinism, we sow the seeds of a kind of anarchy that will make the Civil War look like a mild disagreement. Americans will not go so quietly into that good night and strange political bedfellows are born in the darkest of times. Be very careful of what you wish for.
PEWestlake – You’d have more time to read books if you weren’t so busy writing one every time you commented.
“Shouldn’t we use some of the money the corporate elites squander on gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted cell phones to increase funding for the Small Business Administration, modernize our crumbling schools and libraries, create public-private-academic partnerships in science, engineering, the arts and humanities, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, leap ahead of the world in clean energy and high-speed rail, and build a suitable replacement for the Space Shuttle?”
What happened to personal liberty? What happened to the idea that what a person earns is his to keep, or to spend on what he pleases? Who the hell are you to decide where the money earned through the hard work or good investment of one person, should be spent? What an arrogant, jealous ass you are.
Diana – Ditto to you.
Michael – Spending money on infrastructure is good. I agree with it (to a point). You forgot to mention how much entitlement spending has increased over the last 50 years. That’s been the drain on the budget. Add to it, the increased salaries and benefits for public sector employees, increases that far outstrip the pace of the private sector worker. It’s my opinion that both of those have been increased with the intent of creating a class of citizen who will continue to vote for a politician willing to promise more of the same. It’s a form of political patronage, the same tactic used heavily by FDR with the federal funds that were under his control.
I think liberals use compassion to control people, Michael. Compassion reminds me of the Ring of Power from Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Compassion looks like something that a person with a good heart can benevolently use for the good of all, but it has a dark side. It only has one Master. You, nor I, can say with certainty that giving to someone under the label of compassion has actually helped the person. It may have prevented them from learning something new. It may have stopped their growth. Taking from someone in order to give, may hurt the person taken from, and possibly a string of people for generations. We’re just not capable of predicting such things. Individuals should help individuals as best they can, but using the power of government to force compassion is equivalent to the Ring trying to find its way home.
All three of you believe the government is the answer to our economic problems. I believe the government is the cause of our economic problems. I don’t expect to change you minds. You won’t change mine.
Cute comeback but I write faster than you think… literally.
“What happened to personal liberty? What happened to the idea that what a person earns is his to keep, or to spend on what he pleases? Who the hell are you to decide where the money earned through the hard work or good investment of one person, should be spent? What an arrogant, jealous ass you are.”
Are you kidding me!? Who the hell do you and your neo-con buddies think you are that you can still command American policy despite having LOST THE ELECTION! Who am I? I AM THE MAJORITY!!! AND I WILL ROAR!!! And if you don’t like that, WIN AN ELECTION!!! You can try to sell us on your tinkle-down, neo-con BS, but you’re not in the majority. We are. We sat back and watched neo-con fantasies dominate American policy for 30 years, watching as it literally DESTROYED the fabric of our economy and civic life and you have the balls to come in here and ask who the hell I think I am!? Who the FUCK are YOU to tell me ANYTHING!?
And now you quote Tolkien? Tolkien!? What’s next, one of Yoda’s speeches? Compassion has “only one master?” What the fuck are you talking about? Using compassion to control people IS possible with some sophistication… and you believe the Democratic party is THAT sophisticated? Our party wasn’t sophisticated enough to win an election it had already won! (How quickly they forget Bush v. Gore!). I know it helps gin up all the white people over fear of a black nation but remember the Will Rogers quote: “I belong to no organized party, I’m a Democrat.”
Enough with the BS neo-con talking point that government is the problem. First of all, Reagan said that in his inaugural, not his campaign. If he had said that during the campaign, he would’ve lost. He was barely electable to begin with. I’m old enough to remember that. Second, Reagan didn’t even live up to his own hype. Yes, he gave massive (and I mean MASSIVE!) tax cuts in his first year in office, and then, perhaps realizing what a dumbass idea that was, he raised taxes in every one of the seven years of his term after that. He also exploded the deficit faster and higher than any previous president in history, and that includes the WWII era. Wrap your head around that one.
Carter gets a bad rap for the malaise on his watch, but literally ALL the economic problems of today are easily, factually and conclusively drawn to Reagonomics, whether enacted in his term or in subsequent GOP administrations. Whereas, the two Democrats in that mix, are the only Presidents since Reagan to attempt to lower the deficit (Clinton successfully, Obama through bills that need to play out still). GOP call Dems the “tax and spend” party but at least that’s responsible (and honest!). GOP is the “borrow and spend” party – when the GOP has the White House. But as soon as a Dem gets in there, they decide we can’t afford anything anymore. The GOP unbalances the budget when they have control and demands the Dems balance it when they’re out. It’s all money-grubbing BS and you know it. Everyone totally knows it and here you are defending the indefensible.
It’s really a very simple concept: some things are the JOB of government. For instance, if we had a fire department that wasn’t responding to fires and houses were burning down, would we replace the fire department with a swim club? Would that get the fires put out? How about a corporate marketing unit? Would they do any better? Of course not. The answer is to fix the fire department, right? Because we don’t really have an alternative. So what’s your alternative to government? If government is the problem in all instances, what do we get to replace it? We shit-can all the Congress Critters, do away with our imperial presidency, deep-six the courts… what takes their places? What is the process you would put in place of the Constitution? What are the entities that would exist to promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? Where would they come from?
You defend the indefensible with psychobabble from fantasy novels and Ayn Rand pamphlets and conclude that I’M the ass? Get an education and then come talk to me. Not before. I’m done.
PS – When you said “ditto” to Diana, you also called her an ass. Not cool, bro.
Government is not the answer – nor is business – nor is “personal responsibility” — unless you can get everyone to agree with your position.
Life and our economy are not black and white issues — there are many, many variables and unless you can get an entire block of people to do things one way and take your so called “personal responsibility” to heart, then we the people cannot solve our economic problems.
Nor can business — sure there are a multitude of businesses with more buying power than people, but they, too, are trying to protect their own interests, and therefore will not (as we have seen) get on board to help solve our economic problems.
And while government alone cannot solve our problems, it is in a better position to do so because of its size, its ability to use tax codes and other laws to entice people to spend and businesses to grow. The government also has rule over trade policy – something that neither the people, businesses, or states Constitutionally have control over.
What you’re looking for is a Utopian dream that simply does not fit in the reality of life. Ahh, that it would, we would all be buying gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted telephones.
Not every one can receive the same educational level – not everyone can be as productive as someone else. If that were the case, we’d all be CEO’s or all changing the sheets at the local Super 8.
Years ago, states (or counties) took care of their poor – establishing “poor houses” that were little more than slave labor (especially for blacks) in some places. When the federal government took this over, it took some of the burden of the expense off the states and made it more humane — not completely — and it was not perfect, but there are few things in life that are perfect — maybe the Mona Lisa?
Mistakes were make – they always are — there is no perfect system of government, nor is there ANY business that is totally efficient…that’s a myth the GOP pushes. I know – I’ve worked for big business and they waste as much, if not more than government and get by with it because all they have to do is raise prices – there are no watchdogs crying about their “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Let’s take your example using the banking industry.
Years ago we had usury laws in place in nearly every state in the union. The banking industry chose to locate in states that had no usury laws (or managed to get them repealed) and using the courts, successfully obtained a ruling that they would not be subject to other states’ usury laws, just the ones (if any) in the state where they were domiciled.
Hence, the credit card industry now has the ability to charge any rate they choose to charge you.
Last year the banking industry collected $38 billion dollars in overdraft fees alone – $36.00 or more for being $1.50 overdrawn…rather than a percentage of the amount, a flat fee that made them an exceptional profit on a $1.50. And, of course, there is the other extreme, but a percentage of the overdraft amount would be more fair than the flat fee. But it was always the banks choice as to how much they could charge. (Recent legislation is going to now make them do things differently.)
In the 70′s & 80′s they dropped a credit card in every mail box in the country. It didn’t matter if you could afford to pay it back, had a good credit rating or even had a job (does that sound familiar?). And those of us who paid their debt got charged high interest rates to pay for those who didn’t pay.
Then in 2005, the banks, not liking that too many were filing bankruptcy, got the laws changed so that if you had ANY resources at all, the court could change your filing and force you to pay a percentage of the debt (whether you could afford to or not — especially after having been hit with medical bills from a major illness).
The credit card scheme worked so well, they repeated the strategy in the 90′s & 00′s – only this time it was sub-prime loans. And since they couldn’t spread the debt through interest rates — they did it with CDO’s and the like (but, of course, they bought insurance (CDS’s)to back up these bad debts, knowing some day they were going to need to collect).
So what they’ve done is turned us into consumers, marketing to others among us to take the wealth out of our homes and re-fi into these sub-prime loans and then spread this massive amount of bad debt throughout the world like a virus. And when it all came crashing down, they’ve had to go to the tax payers (yet again) to be rescued.
And instead of doing what banks have done for centuries – reinvest in the community, they’ve reinvested in money to make money off of money…screw the community because they’re too risky.
With foresight, they KNOW this is bad for the country and will ultimately be bad for them, but it’s about NOW/TODAY and we’ll move elsewhere, if need be to “do God’s work.”
And you think these people are ENTITLED to get their gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted telephones? Those who have scammed and schemed and sucked the wealth out of the citizens of this country so they could get paid 600 times the lowest paid workers in their companies? That they are ENTITLED after having caused so much harm to so many of our citizens (and their children) because of their own GREED?
You remind me of Greenspan…”it wasn’t part of my model, I never thought anyone would do something that would not be best for their company…”(paraphrased).
So tell me — after they’ve sucked up most of our wealth – now owning 63% of the GDP, and put millions out of work because of their greed and we the taxpayers have saved their asses, how should we treat those who have suffered because of their greed?
Oh, I know, we’ll just let them die on the streets from starvation and lack of shelter. And when the time comes, will you be willing to send a government employee out to scrape their cold dead bodies off the sidewalk, or would you rather privatize that too?
You claim compassion – but deep down you really have none. You’ve bought into the “I have mine, screw the rest of the world” mentality that thinks everyone should be like you and life is black and white.
And sure there will always be people who take advantage of the system…just ask Greenspan. He gets it now. It’s not just the poor taking advantage, the rich do it, too. Except when they do it, more people get harmed.
Government is not the cause of our economic problems, Tommy. It’s just plain old fashioned greed.
And the private contractors line up every single day to munch from the public trough, while the GOP screams “the government doesn’t create one single job!” What a farce. http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/index.php?reptype=a
If life were as simple as you would like it to be, Tommy, I’d think the founders would have have been able to incorporate it to the Constitution. Thankfully, they understood all too well the failings of man.
I don’t like the gold shower curtains Tommy, they are too difficult to keep clean. But I love how you were able to align compassion with the evil of Sauron. That brings the comments full circle…all the way back to John Boehner and his not-Glenn Beck approved empathy.
(Note to Westlake…Tommy and I are not aligned on politics, but I can tell you he is nearly as far from the neo-conservatives as you and I are).
Too bad your one measly little purchase on Ebay won’t do anything to help the economy — especially if it was a used curtain or government surplus that was being sold!
Tommy isn’t a serious person. He isn’t here to debate the actual points being raised. He’s here to defend an ideology he directly benefits from now or that he hopes to directly benefit from in the future. He has no counterpoint to anything we raise. He only raises more straw man arguments and red herrings, when not interrupted by fantasy drawings and delusions of grandeur. Sophistry at its finest.
Diana, nice work. Enjoyed the themes you employed very much. ;-)
Michael, I appreciate your point but employing neo-con talking points is close enough for me. The Folsom book is in the Ayn Rand mold, espousing Rand-like contempt for “humanists” as Keynesian charlatans. When a person brings that BS into a debate, using the term “neo-con” is me being nice. ;-)
Checked the tax code lately? There is NOTHING “free” about the “free enterprise” system. There’s a tax break, tax loophole or tax subsidy in there for everyone.
You get one as an individual, too – your mortgage interest rate, deductions for your spouse, your kids, etc.
“Free enterprise” just more political spin to make the masses BELIEVE in something that clearly does not exist.
Well now, it appears that Ms. McGinness and Mr. Westlake have administerd enough Pane killers to nearly completely alleviate my Tommy Pane headache ;)
But that aside, where in the Constitution do you find “free enterprise”? And what exactly is “free enterprise”? I am a small business owner that has done very well under the “Capitalist” system and luckily I am in a business that is almost devoid of large corporations. The downfall of Capitalism has been Corportatism. Because of my ability to participate in the Capitalist System my personal income tax bill every years is well above the median anual income of any state in the nation.
I write my check out every year with a smile on my face because I am blessed to be able to return a small portion of what I have been granted. The only part of my 35% tax that I am angry about is that Bush and Chenny blew it on a senseless war and useless tax breaks that I don’t need. I didn’t spend any more after the tax breaks than I did before. If I want it, I buy it. If I have money left over after that I bank it. Tax breaks do not stimulate spending unless you give them to the poor.
I still don’t know what conservatives think about the original post by Mario. Minority Leader Boehner showed us a lot about his humanity by his own statement that he is “not Sure” if 3 of his own brothers had found jobs.
Free enterprise isn’t perfect, but what’s the alternative. I’ve asked similar questions before, without anyone answering them. Maybe our two long-winded commentators would like to take a crack at it.
As for my brother, I haven’t talked to him in years. Maybe Boehner’s the same.
Diana, Cloudancer, OC Liberal, three comments, three instances when the phrase “wish I’d said that” popped into my head. Kudos.
Getting back to Mario’s original point: Compassion is good economic policy – society’s return on investment in a human being dwarfs its return on investment in an industrial process. What is more valuable to us, the telephone or Alexander Graham Bell? The cotton gin or Ely Whitney? The light bulb or Thomas Edison? Stars and Stripes Forever or John Philip Sousa? Industrial processes can only ever do what they’re designed to do. Human beings keep inventing for a lifetime.
Free enterprise does not and cannot work. Without some sort of regulation greed and corruption eliminate competitive trade. Corporatism is a direct result of the failure of free enterprise. If there were no government regulations there would be price fixing and in many cases one large corporation owning every thing. Can you imagine what it would be like if there were only one airline, one oil company, one Insurance company, one bank, etc.? How about price fixing? What if all the grocery stores got together once a month to compare and decide what to charge for everything they carried? It is only because of government regulation that we have(had) true competition. Basically, free enterprise is just like communism, looks good on paper but fails miserably in practice.
Tommy, this is the last question of yours I’m answering until I see you step up to answer the questions that have been posed to you by me and others.
Investment in human beings:
Unemployment Insurance
Public Schools
Pell Grants
WIC Checks
Food Stamps
Student Loans
Community Colleges
Medicare
Medicade
Small Business Administration
FDIC
I could go on and on and on.
Investment in industrial processes (destructive):
Tax incentives for antiquated industry
Tax policy that depresses wages, reducing demand
Investment in industrial processes (constructive):
Public infrastructure (roads, rails, water, power, etc)
Tax incentives for emerging industry w/ broad public benefit
This may shock you, Tommy, but I’m an investor. I was even a day trader once. Terms like EBITDA are not foreign to me (and 48% ROE is no joke, either!). I understand how the economy works and how money flows. If you want to know where all the money is, look at the trend lines of corporate profit and median income over the past forty years. If you overlay those two lines, you will see a giant less-than sign emerge (<). In between those two trend lines is where all the money is going and it's only getting worse with every passing budget. Your paeans to personal responsibility and personal liberty ring hollow 1) in the face of a blatant and ubiquitous lack of corporate responsibility, from AIG to BP and 2) in a land founded on the principal that government's role, among other things, is to promote the general welfare. Saying otherwise is simply un-American.
As Clouddancer stated it is a “capitalist” system, that has been overrun the the giant corporations. He’s lucky in that his particular business has not yet been overtaken by them.
We have less than a dozen banks controlling 63% of our GDP.
We have less than a half dozen who have majority control over the movement of our food.
We have less than a dozen who have majority control over our pharmaceutical industry.
We have less than a half dozen who control the majority of our food production.
If for some reason any one of them fails, it will bring stress to our system.
And, with those few controlling such a large part of a particular segment of our economy, one must always be concerned as to whether there is collusion or competition?
Then we have the problem of them having amassed so much wealth they have the ability to influence our government’s leaders.
What we end up with is the mega corporations controlling the system, self-regulating themselves and we end up with one product after another than hits the recall list of the FDA or USDOT or any number of federal agencies who “ASK” the company to do the recall.
We allow companies looking for oil using a process called “fracking” to contaminate our water systems.
What we have ended up with is the Plutonomy Citibank reported to its high end investor class back in 2005:
This is not “free enterprise,” Tommy. This is control over our government and our economy so they can glean as much from the system as possible in order to feed their own greed.
There a corporations like Cloudancer all across this country – but, unfortunately, those who have the majority control are the ones calling the shots.
Why is it do you think the banking regulations were slowly removed from the statutes over the past 30 years? To create some BS “free enterprise” system? No, Tommy.
You need look no further than Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy. After enacting rules and laws that caused great harm to our economy, where did they end up? Wendy went to work for Enron upon leaving the CFTC. You can read the details here:
Husband Phil was the prime mover and shaker to get the repeal of Glass-Stegall, the final link in the chain of regulation that sent us back to the roaring 20′s and another great financial meltdown.
Many Dems sold out to help move this along as well.
This is not “free enterprise” – this is manipulation of a system that has and will continue to cause great harm to our country if we don’t put a stop to it. We cannot have so few having so much control.
They’ve sold you on a marketing pipe dream that simply does not exist, Tommy. And they’re not going to stop until they have it all.
Tommy, in short, “give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” Investing in human beings is simply providing training and assistance to help them become self sufficient. Once they are trained and able to support themselves, they become “TAXPAYERS”.
Not that I think there is any room to sway folks like Tom.
If one worships at the alter of Libertarianism, one is by definition not concerned about such trivial things as John Boehner and the obvious hypocrisy of his statements. The point is that he used his family as an example to show his personal connection to the issue of unemployment. The joke here is that he went on in his statement to ruin his own argument that he feels anybody’s pain – he didn’t even know if his brothers had found jobs! That is just stupid.
BTW Tom, using your own situation of not having contact with your own brother says nothing and you know it. Nobody was faulting Boehner for not having contact with his huge, extended family.
You simply don’t care if your elected representatives have any compassion for their constituents. As long as they fight for “free enterprise” they get your vote.
Diana, dang lady I think I love you;))) (my wife would never let me keep you tho) Your facts and statistics on corporatized American industy were spot on. I remember driving across South Dakota on back country roads several years ago visiting television stations and seeing all the mom and pop farms crumbling in ruin because corporate farming had run them out and taken over the land. That really brought home the failure of “free enterprise” to me. Other examples throughout our great land are right there for the anyone with an open mind and desire to see.
I too have been in the corporate system having spent the first 22 years of my professional life as an aeorspace engineer mostly in management. People that wonder why there is so much waste in government need to look at the corporations that are plundering the system to find the real answer. Wish I were in Washington so I could vote for you. Good luck in Novemeber.
TheCloudancer — ahhh story of my life! LOL I wouldn’t do well as a kept woman anyway. haha
When I started this endeavor I thought of myself as being pretty informed about most issues, then I began expanding into issues I knew a bit about, but needed to know more (and I will continue to learn more about each as time goes by).
As I began to piece together more and more of the global picture of things, it’s clear we made some huge missteps in the past (some that I knew about and some that I didn’t) and we have much to do to put us on a responsible path to maintains the balance between businesses/corporations we MUST have and the people who deserve better than our government has given them.
Rather than protect the people from corporate abuse, our government has become dependent upon the corporate donations and many have sold their souls to the detriment of our people and our form of government.
So while corporations have been given more and more with regard to personhood, each decision or law made has reduced our own rights under the Constitution.
And this has been done on both sides of the aisle. No single party is to blame. And those who stood by and watched the sellout are to blame as well – rather than going public to stop it.
So while bills called the “Clean Air Act” that actually allow more pollution, rather than less, the corporations got the right to pollute more, while we as citizens lost the right to breathe cleaner air.
And, rather than $200 billion on an unnecessary second engine for the F35, would not that money be better spent on education in science technology engineering and mathematics? These disciplines will be the ones creating the new jobs of the future — but not, if we fail to invest in them today.
But what has troubled me more than anything I have read is the rhetoric and the political spin.
We’ve been taken down the rosy path by the spin. It comes from both parties. And I understand that everyone wants to put a good face on any piece of legislation or an idea or even their ideology. But bumper sticker slogans and spin will not solve our problems.
I would like to see a blog, Mario, called “Politics Unspun” – take the spin and turn it around on them. They deserve it and the public would be better for it, if they understood it for what it is.
We are all aware of Lee Attwater’s southern strategy many years ago, that is, indeed – as we are seeing it repeated today, alive and well and is working in some quarters.
The rhetoric has gotten progressively ugly since Palin stepped onto the stage with her “real American” talk and the accusations of Obama “palling around with terrorists.” While those in politics understand this is all kabuki theater – there are many who do not, and we saw many of them showing up last summer with guns on their hips, as one lie after another was told about the health care reform bill.
When you don’t have facts on your side and your only argument is fear, you may win (unfortunately), but a what cost? If you claim to love your country and to be a patriot, then how is fear mongering and lying showing respect and love for your country?
As we know, it doesn’t – it shows a lack of respect for the people you are trying to scare and, indeed, a hatred for your country — as it it NOT about the country, it is about your own desire for power along with your own greed in aiding and abetting the plunder of public monies.
This is the message that needs to be taken to the American public. That anytime fear is being used to rile you up, then beware, because you are being used for someone else’s gain.
And TheCloudancer – I wish you were here, too. I need all the votes I can get :-) But at least I will (I hope) push the incumbent a little bit to the left!
Diana: “While those in politics understand this is all kabuki theater – there are many who do not.”
Bingo. A real emotion based on truth is indistinguishable from a real emotion based on falsehood. And the consequence of a reaction to kabuki theater is just as real as the consequence of a reaction to truth. When real policy is made, it has real consequences, irrespective of the truth or falsehood that led to its creation. So when I’m given the choice, I prefer truth with my policy.
I was so absorbed in the debate that I neglected to do my due diligence on Diana McGinness. Best of luck and skill in the campaign. I like your approach on the website a lot. I hope you get some multimedia in there soon. I’m way too far away in NYC to be any help to you but if you have any video you want edited into viral content, I’d be happy to lend my skills. Just followed you on Twitter. Send a DM any time.
Cloudancer: “People that wonder why there is so much waste in government need to look at the corporations that are plundering the system to find the real answer.”
PEWestlake – Thank you very much! I appreciate your support. We started way too late to have much impact on this election. But it was an excellent foray into the world of politics and I’m not planning on folding my tent come August 17 (primary date). We start again in January. There is much unhappiness with our corporate incumbent, but without the massive war chest he has, we must have the grassroots…which we should have begun pursuing a year earlier. But you learn; as they say no pain, no gain! :-)
I’ll keep you in mind. We’ll be making some changes in the website in the near future. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
“Investing in human beings is simply providing training and assistance to help them become self sufficient.”
I realized that I haven’t made my point of view very clear. My view is that the Federal Government should not be involved in this issue. It’s best handled by state and local governments (or private charities), where individuals have more control of how much money is spent relative to their local needs. I believe that centralized government is a dangerous thing.
This is same old States Rights argument. The weakness in leaving it up to the individual states is that this is one country, not 50 countries in a lose coalition. If we don’t set standards and invest in the well-being of the country as a whole, we are greatly weakened, especially in global competition.
Personally, I don’t want to see a state decide that they don’t want to have a minimum wage (something I bet you would abolish) or equal rights or any of the many issues that have only been workable on a national basis.
I celebrated the national implementation of Hate Crimes legislation ( I am a Progressive) because I don’t want to send my tax dollars to states that sweep such crimes under the rug. If some states ( you know who you are) don’t want to stand up against violations of civil rights because it isn’t their priority or they just don’t care, they don’t deserve the benefits of being financially supported by states like California, where we have had those laws for years.
Many things like the “investment in human beings” need to be done nationally or we end up with a country that is even more stratified than it is now.
As you can see there are states who require employers to pay more than, less than, the same as or who simply have no laws pertaining to the minimum wage for those NOT covered by the FLSA.
Let’s try education. To my knowledge each state has not only a State Education Board, but many have county (or district) boards and I’m guessing most all of them have local school boards.
“Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States. It is States and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation. The structure of education finance in America reflects this predominant State and local role. Of an estimated $1.1 trillion being spent nationwide on education at all levels for school year 2009-2010, a substantial majority will come from State, local, and private sources. This is especially true at the elementary and secondary level, where about 89.5 percent of the funds will come from non-Federal sources.”
And it the same way with Medicaid and other federal programs. Basically the feds contribute money and leave it up the to the states as to how the money is used. The feds do include requirements that must be met, but the states run almost all of these programs, contributing their own funds as well.
So what you are asking for “best handled by state and local governments (or private charities), where individuals have more control of how much money is spent relative to their local needs” is in reality what is going on in most cases. Of course, there may be exceptions, but for the most part it IS the states who are in control.
And, personally, if my tax dollars are going to any of these programs, I want some federal involvement to set the standards on how my money is going to be spent. I want the most bang for my buck. Now, we’ll all probably agree that doesn’t always happen, but it doesn’t happen with state or local governments either. And until we eliminate people from the process, it is always going to be be that way. People are not capable of NOT making mistakes or letting their own ideology get in the way of what may be bad, better or best in any given situation. But that’s how it is and changing it is likely not going to happen no matter how much we or the politicians rail on and on about it.
What we should do, however, is put the ideology aside and look at the whole picture. We should identify the problems (usually that’s pretty easy), do the research to find possible solutions (harder), and then choose a solution that will solve the problem better than the rest and that will cause the least amount of damage; there are always counter effects (just like in pharmaceuticals) to any solution. No legislation solves all problems, be it federal, state or local, there will always be dissatisfied voters.
If you haven’t read The Federalist Papers, I highly recommend them. There is much discussion about faction (even then) in this country and that there always would be faction. There is also much discussion on the need for a strong federal government, along with the many reasons why.
I am against the minimum wage law. It infringes on an individual’s right to sign a contract of his choice.
I’m against the Dept of Ed. It interferes in the rights of the local school boards. Education in this country hasn’t improved with its existence.
We are one country, but we are 50 independent states. Each has a right to set their own standards, the ones that the citizens of that state agree with. If a citizen doesn’t agree with the standards of a state, and can’t live with them, he has the right to move to a state that does meet his standards. Once standards are federalized, the individual’s choice has been diminished.
Tommy the Constitution provides for a number of “standards” that are “federalized”. They are numerous, they are spread throughout many functions, and they are (of course) open to debate. I am not sure where anyone gets the idea that the States are “independent”…we operate under the Constitution, not the Articles of Confederation.
Local school boards have tremendous latitude on curriculum, with standards (related to entrance requirements) imposed by private and state colleges having far more impact than the Department of Education. But I think your thoughts on that department are worth exploring, and are usually shouted down reflexively. The percentage of American students progressing to post-secondary education has risen dramatically since the advent of that department, but it can be argued that primary and secondary standards have regressed. Cause and effect are open to question on both sets of results. The President and Secretary of Education, at any rate, appear to share some agreement on that score, and have taken steps to decentralize some functions. They also both appear to want grant-driven processes instead of the mandate and fund (threaten) process of the past.
Minimum wage is always an interesting conversation…economic theory supports the notion that wage floors are inherently flawed, and I agree. But if we are to end the minimum wage, we must also remove all restraints on individuals to collectively negotiate those contracts you point to.
Which leads me to my final point…a point that you and I usually get to. Free markets, left unimpeded, always progress towards cartel and monopoly. Cartel and monopoly inevitably impede individual choice. If individuals choose to regulate collectively organized institutions (for example, unions or corporations) in order to prevent them from reaching a point where choice is lost, who are libertarians to argue with?
States are independent in the same way counties are independent, or cities are independent. They can each dream up and pass their own set of rules under which the citizens are obligated to live. If the citizens don’t like it, they can change it, or leave. This is actually the genius of the American system of government. Once the rules are federalized, they have no where else to go.
“Free markets, left unimpeded, always progress towards cartel and monopoly.”
I love the way liberals use examples of the extreme to justify encroachment. Balance bro, it’s all about the balance.
And while I’m on a roll, I don’t think there should be any collective bargaining unions associated with the public sector. Do you disagree with that Diana?
“Rugged individualists,” like Tommy, labor under the false pretense that nobody ever changed their diapers, nobody ever helped them with their school work, nobody ever gave them a free ride to practice, nobody ever gave them any extra help of any kind – they came into the world fully formed, fully cognizant and fully adult, ready to take on the world and any who stand in their way. It’s BS. We are social creatures. With extremely rare exception, we live together or we die alone.
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons was a single panel that pretty much sums up the whole problem with “individualism:”
A small tribe of primitive cave dwellers in animal skins are standing at the top of a high cliff. One member of the tribe is in the process of being thrown off the cliff by two other members of the clan while the Chief is asking the group, “does anyone else feel as though their ‘needs’ aren’t being met?” Silence.
If my memory serves me correctly PEW, it was my parents who helped me with all those things. I think liberals want the government to take over all those roles so they can feel somehow fulfilled.
I was just reading through this thread, and I found something I missed before.
“Human beings keep inventing for a lifetime.” PEWestlake
Why do you suppose Alexander Graham Bell, Ely Whitney and Thomas Edison invented the things they did? To make money! Wow, they were all greedy. So is Steve Jobs. So is every other rich inventor, liberal or not. Gordon Gekko was right, greed is good.
No, Tommy, liberals don’t want to change your diaper. Even if you went to private school, someone had to create a curriculum that turned you into a productive citizen instead of just slave labor. Someone had to think about how to design the school, the roads, the sewers, the courts, and so on. These trappings of civilization make it possible for you to stroll to dinner or the movie without worrying about being attacked by wild animals or roving bandits. It enables co-eds to wear mini skirts on the quad without wholesale gang rape being committed. It enables regular mail delivery with armed guards (like the Pony Express) or without (like everything today). It is the social contract that enables you to even have your say about the anarchistic worldview you call liberty.
You talked of balance. Yes, that’s what’s going on here, striking a balance between personal liberty and the general welfare, defining the line where rights end and privilege begins. The definitions I keep hearing out of you are totally unbalanced, falling exclusively on the side of private enterprise as the only reliable means to run our society. Tea Partiers call Obama a dictator and openly worry about being enslaved by his alleged socialist takeover of the banks and health care and on and on. While right before their very eyes they can see private enterprise that rapes the environment, the economy, and the political process, then blackmails the taxpayer into paying for ever more of their malfeasance, even as they move jobs overseas while paying their top executive ever-more bloated salaries and bonuses. And this is the group you trust so much? These are your heroes? We balance free-enterprise with regulation, liberty with law enforcement, disaster with safety nets, thus preserving the stability of the social contract AND the economy.
Yeah, some inventors create things purely for profit, but most that I’ve studied have done so for the love of the creation. And the world is filled with works of art and science that haven’t made anyone rich, created for the love of the creation and the advancement of human knowledge and beauty. But most such endeavors at least indirectly lead to profit, to new inventions, to further refinements. Greed is good up to a point. But curiosity is far more powerful. Greed can be sated… not for all, but for most. Curiosity, once sparked, is almost always insatiable. THAT’S my point with inventors. Each invention is wonderful but the fact that great inventors KEEP inventing is what makes them special. And America can better create more people like that if we worry less about things and money and more about knowledge and quality of life. “Do what you love, the money will follow” applies to more than just individuals.
Tommy, there was a time on Earth when the entire population was divided into just a few groups – royalty, serfs, and mercenaries. That actually wasn’t too long ago and the tribal divisions are still relatively intact (it still exists in some parts of the world). Liberals tend to think from the serfs perspective. Conservatives tend to think from the mercenaries perspective. That’s totally understandable. The problem is, none of us is the King or his friends (and Obama isn’t the top of the pyramid either). The royalty of today is far beyond the cameras and way behind the scenes but we catch glimpses of them now and then: Richard Mellon Scaife, the Carlyle Group, CitiGroup’s plutonomy clients, etc. Mercenaries always think they have a real seat in the palace but they don’t and they’re just as disposable as the serfs. Think: Bernard Kerik.
This is what we’ve been trying to tell you. Your goals are probably not all that different than ours. But the goal posts on what you call personal liberty have been moved and redefined as corporate liberty in the guise of individualism. We both want personal liberty. I want an end to the drug war and the overbearing “stop and frisk” policy that blankets the Brownsville section of Brooklyn EVERY NIGHT, for instance. Talk about a police state! But I want freedom from corporate monopolies, too, not just overbearing government.
Remember, the real Boston Tea Party was partly a protest against a corporate monopoly (East India Co.). Americans have always been wary of large private enterprises but decades of corporate propaganda has shifted the debate to the point where the Supreme Court is willing to ignore all history and precedent to establish that a fictional entity and a human being are one and the same (CU v. FEC). We can vote governments out. We can’t do anything to corporate monopolies without government or bloodshed. The serfs have seen enough blood, thank you.
[But make no mistake, there are more serfs than mercenaries and royalty combined. We're pacifists but I wouldn't advise sending a contingent of armed Tea Partiers into New York City like they did down in Virginia. Some gang bangers may not take too kindly to threats on their turf. And they have Tec-9s. ;-)]
I can name one without looking too far: Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine – he gave it to the world for free – he did not seek a patent on it because he wanted it to be inexpensive.
I’ll up your fictional character, Gordon Gekko, with two of my own. Do you not recall Dicken’s Ebenezer Scrooge or Eliot’s Silas Marner?
Are you aware that Alexander Graham Bell inventions were primarily to help the deaf? The telephone and the microphone were two of those. Were you aware that he used the money from the Volta Prize from France that he won for the invention of the telephone to create the Volta Bureau, a library on deafness. And that in 1890 he created the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, which later became the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Henry Ford found himself involved in a lawsuit with his stockholders, the Dodge brothers because he wanted to reinvest the profits into the business in order to employ more people and reduce the price of the car so more could afford it.
This is the first lawsuit that deemed the goal of a corporation was to make money for their stockholders at the expense of all else.
And while the end result for many of these inventors was that they became rich – not all of them were inventing for the purpose of becoming rich. Most saw a need, fulfilled it and were smart enough to get a patent on it before someone else did.
One would think, Tommy, have seeing the result of our current financial meltdown – Wall Street greed (not to mention that same greed back in ’29) and, seeing how harmful to people that it was then and is now, that you would think greed was bad.
Do you ever get beyond your gated community and see the poor and downtrodden in this country? Have you stopped by a food bank lately?
Have you checked RealtyTrac to see how many homes are in foreclosure in your county?
Were you aware that one million were newly homeless at the beginning of school last year and there will undoubtedly be more this year?
Tell me – is it easy to study as a child when you’re living out of your car with your parents or 14 of you are crammed into a small house?
Are you aware there are not enough Section 8 vouchers available to help the people who have lost their jobs and their homes to help them pay for housing?
And while there isn’t enough money for that we can pay $200 billion for a second engine for the F35 so workers at GE/Rolls Royce can make huge profits for their companies, building an engine the Department of Defense doesn’t even want.
Do you honestly believe that everyone has the wherewithal to be as smart as you? Or to get the educational advantages you may have had? Do you know that there aren’t enough jobs out there that pay a living wage (and since you believe there should be no minimum wage, that today would be a race to the bottom for employers)?
Did they not teach you in church about Jesus and the money lenders?
Or that it is better to give than receive?
And I do believe it is very unfair of you to attach your own motives to those of someone else.
I posted this yesterday on another site and I think it’s an appropriate response to you:
“When the greed of a few are more important to the majority of people and the politicians who enable their bad behavior, we are on the wrong track.
Greenspan claimed he had never considered in his “model” that CEOs would do things that would not benefit their companies (i.e. be greedy) [paraphrased].
Pulling yourself up by your own boot straps is one thing – pulling yourself up by stepping on the bootstraps and backs of others is a whole different ballgame.
Too many have done the latter, crushing those below who are trying to pull themselves up.
It is not healthy for our society or, as we have seen, for our economy.
When man’s greed is considered good – as it has been – we have failed to live up to our ideals as a country.”
Sadly, you will never agree – to you greed at everyone’s expense should have no boundaries…that the satisfaction of a person’s own needs are the greater purpose of life. Tell me, Tommy, when that person’s own needs cost the lives of others, is that okay, too?
Because that is exactly what has happened. Many have died or will die because of the greed of others. Because they have come to worship money. Isn’t idolatry still a sin?
Well said, Diana. While we’re at it, Andrew Carnegie invented the modern library system for purely charitable reasons, and gave the Carnegie libraries the motto, “let there be light.”
And speaking of death, eleven died in the Deepwater Horizon rig as a direct result of greed. Fifteen died in a refinery explosion in Texas just a few years ago, also directly due to BP’s greed. Nuff said.
Two things I live by having been screwed by an insurance company (twice) and having worked for two different ones totally 35 years of employment.
1) Unions will never get in the door of a business or company if the employees are well compensated.
2) Government is reactive – not proactive. There (as I told my bosses many times) is not a regulation on the books that got there because some government bureaucrat thought about what might happen. They were all in response to what had happened. Case in point – Check your local intersections to see how many died before the city put up a stop sign or created a left turn lane. (I’ve seen first hand evidence of that as well.)
So to answer you question, Tommy, I believe in collective bargaining. The unions gave us a 40 hour work week, safety regulations, health care, etc. And as long as there are companies like BP cutting corners to make a buck we’re going to need unions to stand up for the workers.
Unions haven’t always been perfect (and probably many still aren’t), but corporations are not magnanimous either.
But not to worry, Tommy, there’s a bright future for you ahead. You see, our kids won’t have the luxury of working for a company for 30 years like I did. So unless unions soon figure out they need to organize around people, not jobs, they may soon die out.
PEWestlake – yes, indeed, there are a vast number of inventors/entrepreneurs who recognized that they couldn’t take it with them and their kids had more than enough. We have many charitable endowments made throughout our history by those who understood what “the greater good” meant. The establishment of our National Parks can be counted among those as well — a good government at work!
I often find myself wishing I had a magic television to see the parallel universe envisioned by rugged individualists like Tommy. They are so sure that everything would be just fine if we could just relieve ourselves of all this Government control of our lives. I would pay a lot to see how it would turn out because I am just damn curious.
I am really stunned that an obviously smart guy would advocate for independent states doing as they like. What would Alabama have done in Selma? I guess in 1860 Tommy would have told the South, “So fine! Go ahead and split! We never liked you anyway!” I wonder how many countries we would have now? 50?
Let the states decide how to run education with no national controls? Wow. Things suck in American education already. How bad would that be?
This is one country for a reason. We are a Super power because we stick together. It has worked pretty well for over 230 years.
All the main arguments I have heard for States Rights are based on the conservative states thinking it would be just great to live in Sarah Palin’s, Jesusland. They boil down to the desire to create a Christian Country run by the Ten Commandments. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but it seems like the folks who want less Federal control mostly want to throw away Civil Rights and the Separation of Church and State.
Diana, my rep is Yvette Clarke, a typical Brooklyn back-bencher. She votes mostly along liberal lines but she’s boring, never puts up a fight, and recently signed a letter with dozens of other Congress Critters to demand the FCC NOT regulate Net Neutrality. I didn’t care much until that one! Now I want her out but it’s too late for this election. And the real problem is, this is a gerrymandered district and she has a long family history here. So she would probably overwhelm any primary challenger that isn’t independently wealthy. Looks like I’m stuck with her for a while longer. (sigh!)
OC, I think there’s a big apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster in the making there… “Mine, Mine, Mine!” The story of how one nation indivisible, became fifty nations un-unitable.
Yes, it appears they want to abandon the rule of law created by the voters (or those who legitimately represent us) and who are the true government of this country (except we act like in some cases that we don’t remember that), so we can have rule by the Bible that:
1) various denominations can’t agree on it’s interpretation
2) religious leaders within denominations can’t agree on it’s interpretation and
3) and, my personal favorite, was written by men (there are no testaments by women, as you will note) so we could be kept in our place (followers).
One can only wonder — if they could come to an agreement, would they choose to rule by the Old or New Testament? Methinks the Old; clearly those tenets of “love thy neighbor” and “caring for the poor and sick,” and all those “that shalt nots” have been abandoned by many (I hope not all) of the religious right today.
And what of those who set themselves up to be new prophets? Will they be types like Jim Jones, the Bakers, or the fool out there telling people to pray to get rich (while, of course, HE is the one getting rich). Maybe we can have the return of Ted Haggert? Or will it be the woman in the clip who should be arrested for child abuse, in my opinion.
And then they can pass out the Kool Aid when the congregation gets restless…
We can have our own American Taliban!! (heavy, heavy sarcasm!)
PEWestlake
Mine is Rick Larsen, who also signed that letter. He does the same thing – been there 10 years – not chairing a single committee; keeps his head down and brings home the bacon in time to get the votes.
DO NOT RELY on the “he/she votes 95% with the party” nonsense. Most of those votes are naming post offices or some other “easy” bill. Drill down in each category to get to the votes that count. Those are the ones that should be used to educate the voters about who they are really working for.
Also, you can check out maplight.org. They only had 2005-2007 data for his campaign contributions but at that time he was getting 86% of his money from OUTSIDE the District.
We have to find people to replace them…and soon!
Going to make one last comment here — gotta run
Re corporations. There’s a history out there that is also not taught. That the founders were not willing to give corporations the power they have come to have today. It is a history we should be aware of…how they came to their current power. At one point in our history, government had the power to walk into a corporation and confirm they were honest brokers – that they weren’t cooking the books (i.e. ENRON). Ahhh…those were the days, Tommy!
You guys have a dark view of human nature. I see people as wanting the best for each other, not the worst. I see them self-governing whenever possible, and using our court system when they don’t.
As for Palin’s Jesusland, I’m not much of a Christian, but I recognize that although we’re not a Christian nation, we’re a nation of Christians. To try to preclude the Christian view from political discussions is unrealistic, and will cause more harm than good. Resistence is the fertilizer of every problem.
On a personal note, I just want to congratulate everyone for helping me achieve a goal. This post is now on the list of the top 5 most commented posts on Mario’s website. I thought it was time to add some fresh meat to that list.
I agree whole heartedly about religion. I am NOT anti religion myself. I am certainly VERY much into the separation of church and state for just the reasons you point out. AND of course the denominations would tear each other to pieces over the details.
Tommy,
People DO want the best for each other much of the time. That is fashionable. It is also common to see people become hostile and uncaring toward those they perceive as “different” from themselves. Human nature. We all have to work hard on respecting those who are different, that isn’t natural. Just look at history to get a good hit of human nature. I personally agree with Plato – human nature never changes.
OC Liberal -my beef is not with with God, it is with religion. (Having married into a family of ministers, didn’t increase my respect for it either.)
My trip to MS after Katrina dropped me in both Biloxi and, then, Hattiesburg. MS in notorious for being the poorest state in the Union, yet street after street, block after block was one church after another, all the size of a city block.
One must ask — if the state and it’s people are so poor, how can their be churches of this magnitude? Obviously, they are not getting it from the state (I hope), so that brings us to the citizenry. In addition the ministers were all driving around in high end vehicles – Cadillac Escalaides and the like. Considering the poverty, I found the size of these churches to be repulsive.
I like to go with the Declaration, “that they are endowed by their Creator.” “Their” is a powerful word here. It means I get to chose my Creator (or not). Doesn’t say “the” or “our,” so when the right claims we are a Christian nation, they have taken it upon themselves to make choices for others and that disrespects the founding documents of our country they so patriotically claim to want “back.”
Tommy, we are not JUST a nation of Christians. Every religion on earth is represented in this country – not just Christianity. And, then there are those who choose no God.
Unfortunately, there are those (and there always will be) who believe only their religion is the right one, the old “my way or the highway” group (think the Church of England). It is these people who disrespect those who do not agree with them and they are the reason the word is “their.” And I will resist their imposing their beliefs on anyone else. If the day comes when they can impose their beliefs, we will no longer be a free country.
Diana, I mostly agree with all you’ve written, but in your last paragraph, your statement “And I will resist their imposing their beliefs on anyone else. If the day comes when they can impose their beliefs, we will no longer be a free country.” caught me by surprise.
Don’t you think that imposing of beliefs has been happening already for decades? Maybe you aren’t part of the groups that religion has been fearful of so haven’t really been impacted; for example, the right to choose abortion, the right to a gay marriage, the repeal of DADT. Religious beliefs are all being used as excuses to be against these issues. This is why liberals and progressives are truly the people’s representatives. They are more real and empathetic and realize that a diverse population requires more liberal, sensical solutions – and religious beliefs are an individual, optional right.
However, Mario’s article is about John Boehner’s continued idiocy and further proof that this man is disconnected. A man named Justin Coussoule is running against Boehner this fall. Personally, I’d like to see a 4th Boehner brother unemployed. If his brothers are anything like John is, it may explain their lack of employment. John Boehner is not only out of touch with his brothers, but with his country. Time to give someone else a shot at that job. Go, Justin, go!
MatrixKape You are quite right, of course. All these issues are being prevented from resolution because of the greater religious community. I’d like to see the Hyde Amendment put to the test (that I believe will fail). DADT and DOMA are a disgrace.
I’m frankly tired of the “keep government from taking away my liberty” nonsense when much of these offenses are already in place because of the right (and the sell out Dems who voted with them).
Government needs out of to be out of the bedroom unless it involves a minor.
Justin has the vote of my friend who lives in Cincinnati. I sure hope he wins. What does the polling look like, do you know? When is your primary (or is it over).
If there is one crybaby I’d like to get rid of in Congress, it’s Boehner.
Finally fully back online today. Whew, what a trip & a day without A/C! Thank goodness we don’t need it in the NW.
Looking over my above comment, I painted a very broad brush re religion. There are those among the community that do support the rights of everyone. As with everything, there are few things that are black and white. To those I no doubt offended, I apologize.
I do believe, however, we cannot allow religion to override our Constitutional rights. Religion belongs in a church, not at the helm of government and that one is black and white.
I’ll do my best to not use that broad brush that’s so easy to do at times, however. :-)
If people are using their intelligence, they will realize that this economy has shrunk and is not going to recover any time soon. People are going to have to start small businesses to start digging out. I know this is not easy to think, but being on unemployment is not going to bring recovery. I was talking with 3 geo physicists from Germany two days ago. They said that everyone, (in the past) in Germany have worked for large companies. However, they are closing. Now, they are realizing that they are going to have to start small businesses in order to exist. They have never done so in her working time, and they are doing to anyway. So this is new to them.
Republicans want to extend benefits for unemployed, but not by raising debt. They want to have the benefits paid for in the budget. And, if you want to know, this is the first time in history that we have not had a balanced budget in Congress at this date. So, yes, they will pay for benefits to be extended, but they want to make a cut somewhere in order to pay for them. I have an idea, cut payments to illegal aliens. Why should your children and grand children have to pay the debt caused by the 3 year unemployment costs. I love the way that reality is phrased. Yes, big bad Republicans want to “Pay for through the budget unemployment” The sweet liberals want your children and grandchildren to pay for it by increasing the debt. There would have been not one second of delay if the liberals in Congress would have actually put it in the budget (for when it is actually passed).
Go ahead guys, keep wrecking the country for the future generation. When you are old, the young peole are going to hold you accountable. Let’s see how that plays out. At least I know that I haven’t tried to put my spending on their backs.
ngttia – I’m not exactly certain where you got the idea that “this is the first time in history that we have not had a balanced budget in Congress.” Your information is incorrect. Do a Google search on it. The only time we had a surplus (in recent years) was under Clinton.
And while the GOP wants to use Pay-Go to pay for the unemployment benefits in order not to increase the deficit, they have no problem in wanting to extend the Bush tax cuts that have already cost us $1.7 TRILLION dollars over the last 10 years WITHOUT off-setting those using Pay-Go.
Just imagine if Bush had not rammed through those tax cuts using his GOP controlled Congress – most of which were done while we were at WAR (and no one has ever done a tax cut during a war), where we would be in the deficit…there would not be one!
And what did we get for those tax cuts? Certainly no jobs were created during Bush’s 8 years. And since wages remained flat for the middle class during that period, we didn’t get any help there either.
The GOP also wants to end the estate tax. The changes recently made (which Sen. Durbin demanded by under Pay-Go) will cost 1/2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
So while this money is NOT going into Treasury to pay our bills, we are adding to our debt and the INTEREST we will be paying for it.
And while at this point we are not in critical mass, we’ve got to start doing something about it for the long term. We need to invest to get the economy growing now so people will have jobs, so they can generate revenue to send to the Treasury. Those who can afford to pay, need to pay. Those corporations who have off-shored theirs papers and there accounts need to pay up.
It comes down to this – somebody has got to pay for the two wars that Bush kept off the books (hiding the fact that he was WAY OVER his budget). If we don’t make these changes, we will be in trouble. But there is time to make them. Social Security is okay until 2037, but to continue to make this a viable program that pays for itself, we need to lift the caps. People making over $102,000K need to keep paying into the system.
The health care reform bill needs more done to get control of our health care bills so it can remain viable.
But one thing that no one ever mentions that needs to be said here is that our economy is not stagnant. As long as our economy grows and as long as our population continues to grow, the amount of debt will be reduced and spread over a larger population. We can’t grow our way out of debt, but we can’t cut our way out of debt either.
There is much to be fixed and a lot of waste that can be eliminated from the system — but don’t kid yourself into thinking that private corporations are any less wasteful than government. I’ve worked for them. I know better.
At least government is a non-profit entity – just wait until the private contractors suck us into low bid contracts that once there are no longer government workers to do the work, will steadily increase, costing the tax payers yet more money.
You are also misinformed about what undocumented workers get in the way of social help, as well. And what they contribute. Below is a list of helpful articles that will assist you in gaining more knowledge on these issues:
Illegal Immigrants Are Bolstering Social Security With Billions -http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/business/05immigration.html
Undocumented Immigrants and Health Care – http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/8995/
Checklist Of Federal Benefit Programs Available To Documented And Undocumented Workers – http://www.workingforamerica.org/documents/checklist.asp
Facts About Social Security for Undocumented Immigrants – http://www.factcheck.org/2009/03/social-security-for-illegal-immigrants/
Facts About the Cost of Undocumented Immigrants – http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/cost-of-illegal-immigrants/
As far as Bohner is concerned – it’s time to tweet him about his brothers’ jobs! About all he knows how to tweet to the world is “Where are the jobs?” I think my response is going to be, “Brother, I need a job!”
Diana you have been punked.NGTTIA has to be a phony or a “KOOL-AID”drinking “DITTO-HEAD”who doesn’t have the brains to know “UP” from “DOWN”and can only parrot what it hears from the Right Wing Lying Machine.Keep trying to educate the misinformed but harbor no illusions that they want to listen or learn.
I know Morton, but unless we attempt to enlighten, they win. And when I consider what that will mean to us…I must try.
On a lighter note, I have been having much fun asking the GOP to be sure to help Bohner’s brothers get a job! LOL #brotherineedajob
excuse me, I said “at this date”. I am totally correct. on that point, as I was with my Congressman on Saturday, and he gave me that information. He has been in Congress for over 20 years, and he is very concerned about it.
John Boehner says he has empathy, does that mean he is a socialist bent on the destruction of the American family? Isn’t that basically what Glenn Beck was on about? Now, ngttia, you ought to comment more often…seriously. Your comedy is great, I think you have a future writing sitcoms.
“At this date”….no partner, you are emphatically not correct. We aren’t close to a balanced budget now, and won’t be any time soon. And that is OK. Deficit spending during a demand shortfall, according to most professional economists, is a good thing. It adds money to the economy. There is no recovery without the addition of sufficient capital to stimulate demand. Of course, your German “Geo Physicists” may say different, but I think they need to stick with their field.
The German economy, by the by, is driven by many of the world’s most powerful companies…companies that thrive in an atmosphere of high taxes and powerful labor unions. They thrive because they haven’t handicapped themselves with whining Republican members of Congress who are busy making excuses for poor performance.
Run along now and tell your 20 year Congressman to retire.
ngttia, or is it Connie, you were incorrect no matter how you state it. And U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (that is who you were referring to, isn’t it) is smart enough to know that.
You obviously missed his point (whatever it was).
Thanks Diana for explaining some of the most important facts of the present economic mess in a clear clean way so that almost anyone can understand.
A great big terrorist fist bump to you from me;)
dinamic72, you are a in sync with terrorists.? Not surprising. Guess the rest of you can determine how you want to be associated with Dinamic 72.
“Deficit spending during a demand shortfall, according to most professional economists, is a good thing. It adds money to the economy. There is no recovery without the addition of sufficient capital to stimulate demand.”
The counter-intuitive nature of that statement blows me away. Where do you think that capital comes from to begin with? It has to be taken out of the private sector economy before the government can “reinvest” it back into the private sector economy.
Michael, maybe you’ll have the courage to answer my challenge to read “New Deal or Raw Deal” by Burton Folson.
ngttia, I will happily associate myself with dinamic72. I’m certainly not afraid of Faux News’ big ole “terrorist fist bump” nonsense.
You are aware Bush on occasion “fist bumped,” too? LOL
I will not cower because some GOPer told me I should.
I will not be afraid so that I can make more corporations richer.
I will not be afraid so I can make the banks richer.
I will not be afraid so some in Congress can take away my Social Security (when I’m eligible).
I will not be afraid so some in Congress can take away my Medicare (when I’m eligible.)
I will not be afraid of so called “death panels” that don’t exist.
I will not be afraid of some ditto head Limbaugh follower. Or a Sarah Palin who doesn’t think READING is important to solve problems, and that bumper sticker slogans can.
I will not be afraid of Lee Attwater “southern strategy” tactics designed to divide the American people and make them afraid, just so some bozo can get a vote or a corporate campaign donation.
I will NOT give them the satisfaction of making me afraid.
Yeah, but I want to know if you’ll eat green eggs and ham?
Next time Purina serves them up – you bet! Ever seen them? I have – also in blue and red.
See, the difference between Diana and me…I am more than glad to hold signs saying that Obama is a socialist,
Diana will “happily associate with Dinamic 72 and his actual comment that he is making a terrorist fist bump”
Tommy, I think I’ll get my economic opinions from an economist, rather than a revisionist historian.
Even Bernake — who is a student of the Great Depression — and a real live economist, stated yesterday we need to keep investing in jobs.
Let me see – #1 Economist? #2 Historian? Door #1 please!
Here’s a excellent article on the debt: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3238&emailView=1
ngttia – Please stop using these socialist programs immediately!
-The US Military
-Libraries
-All interstate, state, city and county roads & bridges.
-If you live near a levee or dam, please move, unless is it a privately owned one.
-Please notify the fire, police and ambulance departments that you no longer require their socialist services.
-No trips to NASA to view the space program.
-Please turn off your water, unless it is delivered by a private corporation.
-Stop or decline to accept Social Security and Medicare – both socialist programs.
-If you receive any type of social assistance from the government, please advise them you no longer need assistance – or will at any time in the future.
-Schools – any public school including Community Colleges and State Universities.
-Please stop visiting ANY federal, state, county, or city park.
-Please notify your Post Office you no longer require their services to deliver your mail.
Terrorist “fist bump” —- ROFLMAO You’re just tooooo funny.
The difference between you and me is that I know the various definitions of “socialism,” whereas you have been brainwashed by the tools of those corporations who are going to turn this country into the United Corporations of America. They will then finish soaking up the rest of the wealth in this country and like the pariahs they are move on to another country to suck up their wealth. We will be the new overworked underpaid workers making products for the Chinese, while they will be the new middle class.
ngttia:
No, the main difference between Diana and you is that Diana is a rhetorician and you are a sophist. A rhetorician is a person who is skillful in explaining complex ideas in understandable terms. Good teachers are good rhetoricians. Sophists aggregate disparate anecdotal data and combine it in ways that enable a specious argument to sound reasonable, i.e., “I’m still unemployed, ergo the stimulus plan didn’t work,” or, implying that Diana and Dinamic are actual terrorists when everyone knows they were making fun of the preposterous “terrorist fist bump” phrase made famous by a vapid Fox News anchor.
So, reacting to an obvious joke as though it was meant in all deadly seriousness is sophistry and makes you a sophist. If, you didn’t know that Dinamic was making a joke, then you shouldn’t be trying to make persuasive arguments on a blog page filled with people clearly better informed than you. Ne c’est pas?
Diana – Here’s the difference between us; it’s the same difference that rises between the academic world and the pragmatic world. Economist’s are academics. Historians are pragmatists. Historians predict the future based on an analysis of the results of specific historical events. Economists predict the future based on formulas that are often only taught in classes.
Now, based on that distinction between the two groups, I read through the report that you linked to, and came to the conclusion that it was full of theories, not real world experience. In fact, looking through the biographies of the authors, they are all former government employees. None have practical, real-world business experience.
So that’s my retort to your dis of Burton Folson being a “revisionist historian”. I’m curious though. How did you come to that conclusion if you haven’t read his work?
Tommy,
Deficit spending is derived through the sale of Treasury notes. The average taxpayer isn’t buying treasury notes, not least because the paltry return isn’t worth much in a five figure portfolio. So where does the money for deficit spending come from? Institutional investors, sovereign funds, pension funds and the like… in other words, the very entities that can 1) afford the investment in the first place and 2) make large enough investments for the 4% return to be meaningful. Do taxpayers eventually have to pay it back? Of course, but this is economics 101 – destructive versus constructive debt. Money that is hoarded or spent on objects that have limited intrinsic value to the civilian economy (i.e., one-use items like ICBMs, non-investment-grade subsidies like ethanol, and obsolete programs like the V-22 Osprey) are drags on real GNP (not GDP, GNP). Investment in programs and infrastructure that actually brings a value-added return on the dollar (in the way that the interstate highway system was an instant value-added commodity in trans-continental shipping) are a net positive to GNP. Conservative economists spend far too much time being concerned with government finances and nowhere near the proper amount of time understanding personal finances. Government can take the hit, for a good long time, and not perish. Humanity cannot. THAT’S the difference.
I haven’t read Folsom’s book but I just scanned a couple reviews and it’s really nothing new from what I can tell. The most obvious counterpoint is that Hoover and company had ravaged the economy so much that even an aggressive spending program (by FDR) wasn’t enough to make a difference before the end of the decade (30s). And it fails to take into account the massive across-the-board tax increases that were necessary to keep the government running, which we don’t see this time around (and expiring the preposterous Bush tax cuts for wealthy elites doesn’t count – hoarding is destructive to GNP).
Say it with me now… hoarding is destructive to GNP. ;-)
I’ve heard of him — seen him on a couple of broadcasts and wasn’t impressed. He came across like an ideologue and that totally turns me off. I’m into facts.
And while there was much about the New Deal that didn’t work or that was just plain stupid, there was much that did. Of course, much of it didn’t work for the African American population thanks to those Southern Dems. And, of course, let’s not forget that FDR pulled back on some of his spending because the GOP was complaining loudly.
What we do know is that when WWII came along and the government poured millions/billions into buying planes, tanks, jeeps, etc. that the entire country went to work. The rich were paying a pretty good chunk in taxes, too – 75-80%.
And, of course, after we destroyed most of Europe and Japan, there was plenty to building to do that didn’t hurt us or Europe or Japan either. And by pouring all that money into rebuilding and paying people to go to work to do that rebuilding, every one of these countries generated revenue for their treasuries. Companies were created and more products were manufactured.
So it seems, based on history, that building a tax base requires people working. People who work buy things – houses, commodities, etc. When they spend, corporations make more and new products and make money and so the cycle goes.
What we have now is a downward spiral with companies hoarding 1.7 trillion dollars they could use to invest in this country. And they KNOW if they don’t invest, we will continue this downward spiral. So, if they hoard they take no risk – but who do they sell their products to, if there aren’t enough people working to buy? They just scrape by with those who are working?
What wonderful faith and patriotism they have for their country! Oh, I forgot. 2/3 didn’t pay taxes in 2007 with all those lovely tax loopholes they got…or was it they just moved their paperwork and their money to the Cayman’s so they wouldn’t have to pay taxes?
Hmmmm…
I’m curious how historians who are typically loathe to predict the future and whose profession is to record history as it WAS, not as they would like it to be (but, of course, our history books are already full of their propaganda and I see Texas is working on adding some more).
PEWestlake
Thank you kind, sir, for the compliment. Perhaps teaching should have been my career instead of fighting fraud.
PEWestlake
Had to leave — wanted to add that your response to Tommy was spot on!
ngttia, too bad you have no clue what a socialist is. Hold up your sign and continue to demonstrate your ignorance to the world. The comment on the terroist fist bump obviously went way over your head. The saddist part of that is that it was at ground level.
Tommy, there are historians that learn from the past and there are historians the repeat the past. The current historians seem to be the latter. Doing the same things over and over again but expecting a different result is truly the definition of insanity.
My pleasure, Diana. And thank you. Seems to me that fighting fraud and teaching aren’t all that different. Good stuff.
Won’t read the book, huh?
http://mariopiperni.com/political-mind/the-wingnut-mind-broken-and-beyond-repair.php
The hoarding thing was one of FDR’s favorite class envy tools too. He actually had a tax passed on undistributed corporate profits. It was meant to force companies to distribute accumulated profits in the form of dividends or salaries so they could be taxed. It’s true result was to take investment capital out of the private sector, and thus limit the creation of new jobs.
A little research on the subject yielded this information:
http://www.taxhistory.biz/Civilization/Documents/UPT/HST8668/hst8668-1.html
Under “Rationale”
“2. When, prior to the Revenue Act of 1936, corporations distributed their earnings to their stockholders, the dividends were subject to the surtax rates named in our income-tax law. When corporate earnings were not so distributed, the individual stockholders, while enjoying the benefit of these earnings in the form of more valuable investments, were enabled to avoid all payment of surtaxes thereon. Between 1923 and 1929, inclusive, more than 45 percent of the compiled net profits, after income and excess-profits taxes, of all corporations reporting net income was not distributed by the corporations and was therefore not subject to the individual income taxes, or their approximate equivalent, applicable to their stockholders. 3. Very large proportions of the incomes accruing for the benefit of members of the upper income groups in the United States had previously escaped the individual income surtaxes for long periods of forever in this fashion. Henry Ford, for example, has been liable for individual income surtaxes on only such portions of the profits of the Ford Motor Company as have actually been paid out to him. By allowing his profits to accumulate in and to be reinvested by the Ford Motor Company, he has been enabled to avoid individual income-tax liability for most of his share of such profits. The Federal Government need never get anything like the equivalent of the taxes avoided in this fashion by Mr. Ford (to continue the example), for at Mr. Ford’s death his estate will pass to his heirs without any tax liability for the huge capital gains incorporated in this estate, part of which arose through the Ford Motor Company’s retention of earnings; nor will the rates of tax applicable to the estate be at all higher than on estates of similar size that may have been created by individuals whose equitable incomes had been subject in much greater measure to our individual income and capital gains taxes.”
You can read more on the site, but for all the complaining your doing, it was reduced and ultimately repealed within 3 years of its implementation.
No one said FDR was perfect – but a whole lot of people did not starve to death under his watch.
I can just imagine where we would be under GOP rule — more hobos and Hoovervilles?
They want to offset the unemployment benefits, but have zero problem with NOT offsetting the Bush tax cuts they want made permanent.
They complain about the debt/deficit but are willing to deny the Treasury necessary revenue to get us through this and come out on the other side reasonably well off.
We are in much better shape than most of Europe – our debt ratio from a recent article I read is considerably less than Germany, England, Ireland, and many, many others.
It’s simply more fear mongering while the GOP pushes their typical meme so they can privatize Social Security and Medicare for their insurance and Wall Street buddies.
The deficit is 10% of GDP and as long as we continue to grow, cut back on spending (by say, ending the war or reducing the MIC crap we don’t need) and our population grows and returns to work, it’s not going to be that bad. More people means we share more of the cost of the debt reducing the amount each of us owes. Which, by the way, spread over our working lifetime isn’t going to amount to much more than we’re already paying.
Fear, fear, fear — it’s all the GOP has.
Tommy I do respect your voice, but you seem (my opinion) to labor under the notion that all liberals are somehow naive, timid, and lacking in real world experience.
You are incorrect.
Your arguments as a libertarian have constitutional merit, but you suffer when you stray into economics. This isn’t entirely your fault, because there is a mountain of data which refutes every principle you and individuals like Folsom cling to. This nation came out of the Depression, before WWII…the economic data, from industrial capacity to GDP is absolutely clear on this. The only hiccup in the major statistics came in 1938, after federal spending was reduced in 1937.
http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=5&ViewSeries=NO&Java=no&Request3Place=N&3Place=N&FromView=YES&Freq=Year&FirstYear=1929&LastYear=1942&3Place=N&Update=Update&JavaBox=no#Mid
This nation won WWII and Korea; built an interstate highway system; build a national system of locks, dams, and levees; won the space race; underwent a massive expansion of public schools up to and including college; and won the first 35 years of the Cold War; all with tax rates double what we have now.
This nation has spent the last thirty years cutting taxes. During that time we have allowed our infrastructure to fall more than $2 trillion behind in maintenance and upkeep. During that time we have gone from a net exporter to a net importer. During that time working class families and small business owners have seen their discretionary incomes stagnate. During that time we have seen millions of jobs outsourced. During that time we have destroyed the support system that once enabled the best teachers in the world to effectively educate the best students in the world.
Yeah…I guess that about sums it up.
Well done, Michael — that sums it up nicely!
Tommy,
Do you expect people to purchase and read an entire book in the time it takes for any given subject to come and go in the blogosphere? Do you always expect people to purchase and read every book you say will finally make the argument you have been failing to make, despite having read the book you want us to purchase and read, so you can make your point? Is this really the circular logic you want to employ? Reading reviews enables busy people to focus their energies on material that will actually edify them.
“The hoarding thing” is not a class envy tool. Dismissing economic imbalance as a fantasy created by poor people’s jealousies is both a flagrant dismissal of economic history and a false economic Darwinism, defending an ideology that is the least fit to survive in a truly free market. The “welfare state,” as we know it, is dwarfed by the amount of money spent by the taxpayers, the very people you purport to defend, on corporate subsidies and making up the shortfall caused by off-shoring in all its forms, not to mention absorbing the deferred costs of environmental and human degradation left in the wake of profiteering enterprises. If you need examples: Union Carbide in Bhopal, GE in the Hudson River, and of course, Exxon in Alaska and BP in the Gulf, just to name a very, very few of the many, many examples available to us. If you really want to protect the taxpayers, you should be concerned about all the off-budget items our tax system defrays, masking the true cost of our lifestyle choices and the true profits of corporate multinationals.
“It was meant to force companies to distribute accumulated profits in the form of dividends or salaries so they could be taxed. It’s true result was to take investment capital out of the private sector, and thus limit the creation of new jobs.”
This is utterly preposterous on its face. First, dividends paid to private shareholders and salaries paid to private sector employees are, by definition, paid into the private sector. Only a portion of that private sector transaction is paid to the government in the form of taxes. For the entire investment pool to be removed from the private sector, the effective tax rate would have to be 100%.
Ironically, the highest rate ever in the US, 92%, coincided with one the fastest and biggest economic expansions in American history, aka, the 50s (http://www.slate.com/id/2245781), but that rate only applied to the highest bracket and most people didn’t make anywhere near $400k per year in the 1950s. Also, back then, the average executive earned around 30 times the average rank and file worker, whereas today, that average has been pushed close to 600 times – executives who once earned thirty times more than their workers are now earning twenty times more than that! And very few people believe that corporations even know what they’re doing anymore, from corrupt energy companies and incompetent telecoms, to gadget geeks that put antennas in the wrong place and a corporate agriculture machine that just might kill you… accidentally, of course.
And the one thing all of these private sector enterprises have in common in outsourcing, from manufacturing in Asia to importing undocumented workers to till the fields in California, all while still enjoying generous, taxpayer subsidies, incentives, waivers and bailouts. Have we not learned that these people will always complain about tax rates and never change their behavior no matter what rate they have to pay. High rate or low rate, they will: sell in every market open to them; outsource where possible; ignore regulation where possible; off-shore profits; limit full time employment, overtime, and extended leave among the rank file (mainly by using mostly part-timers and freelancers); use any cost savings/revenue enhancements for executive bonuses; bail in a golden parachute when the kitty is running dry. Has anyone missed that movie? And these are the people that represent the “private sector” of which you speak? These are the knights in shining armor that will magically create jobs if the 10% tax cut they got from Bush remains, but not if it expires?
Shouldn’t taxpayers get a chance to build something for themselves? Shouldn’t we use some of the money the corporate elites squander on gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted cell phones to increase funding for the Small Business Administration, modernize our crumbling schools and libraries, create public-private-academic partnerships in science, engineering, the arts and humanities, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, leap ahead of the world in clean energy and high-speed rail, and build a suitable replacement for the Space Shuttle? Maybe even go to Mars soon, like this decade? These are the jobs of the future. Not Apple – the upstart that will finally beat Apple. Not GM, not even Toyota anymore… is Tesla the next great leap? Are those the jobs? “The hoarding thing” prevents us from finding out. No company or person has a monopoly on all the good ideas, no matter how much some may think so. America’s success is in this dynamic churn of an actual free market, with everyone pulling their own weight, not in propping up ancient and obsolete oligopolies.
And finally, those who earn the most have derived the most benefit from the social contract we ALL live by, ergo, we all pay but they pay more because they got an outsize benefit. Even the best idea can’t exist in a vacuum – everyone gets help along the way, everyone pays back when they hit it big. That’s a fair economy. If we devolve into some Ayn Rand vision of economic Darwinism, we sow the seeds of a kind of anarchy that will make the Civil War look like a mild disagreement. Americans will not go so quietly into that good night and strange political bedfellows are born in the darkest of times. Be very careful of what you wish for.
PEWestlake
That settles it – if you are anywhere Seattle, lunch is on me — for both you and Michael!
Or if you’re anywhere near St. Louis or Columbus, OH in the next two weeks.
Oops – make that Cleveland, not Columbus.
Diana,
Awesome! Unfortunately, those are all long commutes from Brooklyn but I’m honored by the sentiment. Thanks for props. Nice research!
PEWestlake – You’d have more time to read books if you weren’t so busy writing one every time you commented.
“Shouldn’t we use some of the money the corporate elites squander on gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted cell phones to increase funding for the Small Business Administration, modernize our crumbling schools and libraries, create public-private-academic partnerships in science, engineering, the arts and humanities, rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, leap ahead of the world in clean energy and high-speed rail, and build a suitable replacement for the Space Shuttle?”
What happened to personal liberty? What happened to the idea that what a person earns is his to keep, or to spend on what he pleases? Who the hell are you to decide where the money earned through the hard work or good investment of one person, should be spent? What an arrogant, jealous ass you are.
Diana – Ditto to you.
Michael – Spending money on infrastructure is good. I agree with it (to a point). You forgot to mention how much entitlement spending has increased over the last 50 years. That’s been the drain on the budget. Add to it, the increased salaries and benefits for public sector employees, increases that far outstrip the pace of the private sector worker. It’s my opinion that both of those have been increased with the intent of creating a class of citizen who will continue to vote for a politician willing to promise more of the same. It’s a form of political patronage, the same tactic used heavily by FDR with the federal funds that were under his control.
I think liberals use compassion to control people, Michael. Compassion reminds me of the Ring of Power from Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Compassion looks like something that a person with a good heart can benevolently use for the good of all, but it has a dark side. It only has one Master. You, nor I, can say with certainty that giving to someone under the label of compassion has actually helped the person. It may have prevented them from learning something new. It may have stopped their growth. Taking from someone in order to give, may hurt the person taken from, and possibly a string of people for generations. We’re just not capable of predicting such things. Individuals should help individuals as best they can, but using the power of government to force compassion is equivalent to the Ring trying to find its way home.
All three of you believe the government is the answer to our economic problems. I believe the government is the cause of our economic problems. I don’t expect to change you minds. You won’t change mine.
Cute comeback but I write faster than you think… literally.
“What happened to personal liberty? What happened to the idea that what a person earns is his to keep, or to spend on what he pleases? Who the hell are you to decide where the money earned through the hard work or good investment of one person, should be spent? What an arrogant, jealous ass you are.”
Are you kidding me!? Who the hell do you and your neo-con buddies think you are that you can still command American policy despite having LOST THE ELECTION! Who am I? I AM THE MAJORITY!!! AND I WILL ROAR!!! And if you don’t like that, WIN AN ELECTION!!! You can try to sell us on your tinkle-down, neo-con BS, but you’re not in the majority. We are. We sat back and watched neo-con fantasies dominate American policy for 30 years, watching as it literally DESTROYED the fabric of our economy and civic life and you have the balls to come in here and ask who the hell I think I am!? Who the FUCK are YOU to tell me ANYTHING!?
And now you quote Tolkien? Tolkien!? What’s next, one of Yoda’s speeches? Compassion has “only one master?” What the fuck are you talking about? Using compassion to control people IS possible with some sophistication… and you believe the Democratic party is THAT sophisticated? Our party wasn’t sophisticated enough to win an election it had already won! (How quickly they forget Bush v. Gore!). I know it helps gin up all the white people over fear of a black nation but remember the Will Rogers quote: “I belong to no organized party, I’m a Democrat.”
Enough with the BS neo-con talking point that government is the problem. First of all, Reagan said that in his inaugural, not his campaign. If he had said that during the campaign, he would’ve lost. He was barely electable to begin with. I’m old enough to remember that. Second, Reagan didn’t even live up to his own hype. Yes, he gave massive (and I mean MASSIVE!) tax cuts in his first year in office, and then, perhaps realizing what a dumbass idea that was, he raised taxes in every one of the seven years of his term after that. He also exploded the deficit faster and higher than any previous president in history, and that includes the WWII era. Wrap your head around that one.
Carter gets a bad rap for the malaise on his watch, but literally ALL the economic problems of today are easily, factually and conclusively drawn to Reagonomics, whether enacted in his term or in subsequent GOP administrations. Whereas, the two Democrats in that mix, are the only Presidents since Reagan to attempt to lower the deficit (Clinton successfully, Obama through bills that need to play out still). GOP call Dems the “tax and spend” party but at least that’s responsible (and honest!). GOP is the “borrow and spend” party – when the GOP has the White House. But as soon as a Dem gets in there, they decide we can’t afford anything anymore. The GOP unbalances the budget when they have control and demands the Dems balance it when they’re out. It’s all money-grubbing BS and you know it. Everyone totally knows it and here you are defending the indefensible.
It’s really a very simple concept: some things are the JOB of government. For instance, if we had a fire department that wasn’t responding to fires and houses were burning down, would we replace the fire department with a swim club? Would that get the fires put out? How about a corporate marketing unit? Would they do any better? Of course not. The answer is to fix the fire department, right? Because we don’t really have an alternative. So what’s your alternative to government? If government is the problem in all instances, what do we get to replace it? We shit-can all the Congress Critters, do away with our imperial presidency, deep-six the courts… what takes their places? What is the process you would put in place of the Constitution? What are the entities that would exist to promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? Where would they come from?
You defend the indefensible with psychobabble from fantasy novels and Ayn Rand pamphlets and conclude that I’M the ass? Get an education and then come talk to me. Not before. I’m done.
PS – When you said “ditto” to Diana, you also called her an ass. Not cool, bro.
Tommy,
Government is not the answer – nor is business – nor is “personal responsibility” — unless you can get everyone to agree with your position.
Life and our economy are not black and white issues — there are many, many variables and unless you can get an entire block of people to do things one way and take your so called “personal responsibility” to heart, then we the people cannot solve our economic problems.
Nor can business — sure there are a multitude of businesses with more buying power than people, but they, too, are trying to protect their own interests, and therefore will not (as we have seen) get on board to help solve our economic problems.
And while government alone cannot solve our problems, it is in a better position to do so because of its size, its ability to use tax codes and other laws to entice people to spend and businesses to grow. The government also has rule over trade policy – something that neither the people, businesses, or states Constitutionally have control over.
What you’re looking for is a Utopian dream that simply does not fit in the reality of life. Ahh, that it would, we would all be buying gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted telephones.
Not every one can receive the same educational level – not everyone can be as productive as someone else. If that were the case, we’d all be CEO’s or all changing the sheets at the local Super 8.
Years ago, states (or counties) took care of their poor – establishing “poor houses” that were little more than slave labor (especially for blacks) in some places. When the federal government took this over, it took some of the burden of the expense off the states and made it more humane — not completely — and it was not perfect, but there are few things in life that are perfect — maybe the Mona Lisa?
Mistakes were make – they always are — there is no perfect system of government, nor is there ANY business that is totally efficient…that’s a myth the GOP pushes. I know – I’ve worked for big business and they waste as much, if not more than government and get by with it because all they have to do is raise prices – there are no watchdogs crying about their “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Let’s take your example using the banking industry.
Years ago we had usury laws in place in nearly every state in the union. The banking industry chose to locate in states that had no usury laws (or managed to get them repealed) and using the courts, successfully obtained a ruling that they would not be subject to other states’ usury laws, just the ones (if any) in the state where they were domiciled.
Hence, the credit card industry now has the ability to charge any rate they choose to charge you.
Last year the banking industry collected $38 billion dollars in overdraft fees alone – $36.00 or more for being $1.50 overdrawn…rather than a percentage of the amount, a flat fee that made them an exceptional profit on a $1.50. And, of course, there is the other extreme, but a percentage of the overdraft amount would be more fair than the flat fee. But it was always the banks choice as to how much they could charge. (Recent legislation is going to now make them do things differently.)
In the 70′s & 80′s they dropped a credit card in every mail box in the country. It didn’t matter if you could afford to pay it back, had a good credit rating or even had a job (does that sound familiar?). And those of us who paid their debt got charged high interest rates to pay for those who didn’t pay.
Then in 2005, the banks, not liking that too many were filing bankruptcy, got the laws changed so that if you had ANY resources at all, the court could change your filing and force you to pay a percentage of the debt (whether you could afford to or not — especially after having been hit with medical bills from a major illness).
The credit card scheme worked so well, they repeated the strategy in the 90′s & 00′s – only this time it was sub-prime loans. And since they couldn’t spread the debt through interest rates — they did it with CDO’s and the like (but, of course, they bought insurance (CDS’s)to back up these bad debts, knowing some day they were going to need to collect).
So what they’ve done is turned us into consumers, marketing to others among us to take the wealth out of our homes and re-fi into these sub-prime loans and then spread this massive amount of bad debt throughout the world like a virus. And when it all came crashing down, they’ve had to go to the tax payers (yet again) to be rescued.
And instead of doing what banks have done for centuries – reinvest in the community, they’ve reinvested in money to make money off of money…screw the community because they’re too risky.
With foresight, they KNOW this is bad for the country and will ultimately be bad for them, but it’s about NOW/TODAY and we’ll move elsewhere, if need be to “do God’s work.”
And you think these people are ENTITLED to get their gold shower curtains and diamond encrusted telephones? Those who have scammed and schemed and sucked the wealth out of the citizens of this country so they could get paid 600 times the lowest paid workers in their companies? That they are ENTITLED after having caused so much harm to so many of our citizens (and their children) because of their own GREED?
You remind me of Greenspan…”it wasn’t part of my model, I never thought anyone would do something that would not be best for their company…”(paraphrased).
So tell me — after they’ve sucked up most of our wealth – now owning 63% of the GDP, and put millions out of work because of their greed and we the taxpayers have saved their asses, how should we treat those who have suffered because of their greed?
Oh, I know, we’ll just let them die on the streets from starvation and lack of shelter. And when the time comes, will you be willing to send a government employee out to scrape their cold dead bodies off the sidewalk, or would you rather privatize that too?
You claim compassion – but deep down you really have none. You’ve bought into the “I have mine, screw the rest of the world” mentality that thinks everyone should be like you and life is black and white.
And sure there will always be people who take advantage of the system…just ask Greenspan. He gets it now. It’s not just the poor taking advantage, the rich do it, too. Except when they do it, more people get harmed.
Government is not the cause of our economic problems, Tommy. It’s just plain old fashioned greed.
And the private contractors line up every single day to munch from the public trough, while the GOP screams “the government doesn’t create one single job!” What a farce. http://www.fedspending.org/fpds/index.php?reptype=a
If life were as simple as you would like it to be, Tommy, I’d think the founders would have have been able to incorporate it to the Constitution. Thankfully, they understood all too well the failings of man.
“Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.” Will Rogers
While you guys were writing, I did my part to stimulate the economy. I bought a gold shower curtain off eBay.
I don’t like the gold shower curtains Tommy, they are too difficult to keep clean. But I love how you were able to align compassion with the evil of Sauron. That brings the comments full circle…all the way back to John Boehner and his not-Glenn Beck approved empathy.
(Note to Westlake…Tommy and I are not aligned on politics, but I can tell you he is nearly as far from the neo-conservatives as you and I are).
Thanks for the support Michael. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m in the running for a diamond encrusted telephone.
Too bad your one measly little purchase on Ebay won’t do anything to help the economy — especially if it was a used curtain or government surplus that was being sold!
Tommy isn’t a serious person. He isn’t here to debate the actual points being raised. He’s here to defend an ideology he directly benefits from now or that he hopes to directly benefit from in the future. He has no counterpoint to anything we raise. He only raises more straw man arguments and red herrings, when not interrupted by fantasy drawings and delusions of grandeur. Sophistry at its finest.
Diana, nice work. Enjoyed the themes you employed very much. ;-)
Michael, I appreciate your point but employing neo-con talking points is close enough for me. The Folsom book is in the Ayn Rand mold, espousing Rand-like contempt for “humanists” as Keynesian charlatans. When a person brings that BS into a debate, using the term “neo-con” is me being nice. ;-)
PEWestlake – I benefit from the free enterprise system; sometimes well, sometimes not so well. What ideology do you benenfit from?
“Free enterprise” hahahahaha lol.
Checked the tax code lately? There is NOTHING “free” about the “free enterprise” system. There’s a tax break, tax loophole or tax subsidy in there for everyone.
You get one as an individual, too – your mortgage interest rate, deductions for your spouse, your kids, etc.
“Free enterprise” just more political spin to make the masses BELIEVE in something that clearly does not exist.
ROFLMAO
Well now, it appears that Ms. McGinness and Mr. Westlake have administerd enough Pane killers to nearly completely alleviate my Tommy Pane headache ;)
But that aside, where in the Constitution do you find “free enterprise”? And what exactly is “free enterprise”? I am a small business owner that has done very well under the “Capitalist” system and luckily I am in a business that is almost devoid of large corporations. The downfall of Capitalism has been Corportatism. Because of my ability to participate in the Capitalist System my personal income tax bill every years is well above the median anual income of any state in the nation.
I write my check out every year with a smile on my face because I am blessed to be able to return a small portion of what I have been granted. The only part of my 35% tax that I am angry about is that Bush and Chenny blew it on a senseless war and useless tax breaks that I don’t need. I didn’t spend any more after the tax breaks than I did before. If I want it, I buy it. If I have money left over after that I bank it. Tax breaks do not stimulate spending unless you give them to the poor.
Well, isn’t this lively?
I still don’t know what conservatives think about the original post by Mario. Minority Leader Boehner showed us a lot about his humanity by his own statement that he is “not Sure” if 3 of his own brothers had found jobs.
Wanna step up on THAT one Tommy?
Free enterprise isn’t perfect, but what’s the alternative. I’ve asked similar questions before, without anyone answering them. Maybe our two long-winded commentators would like to take a crack at it.
As for my brother, I haven’t talked to him in years. Maybe Boehner’s the same.
Diana, Cloudancer, OC Liberal, three comments, three instances when the phrase “wish I’d said that” popped into my head. Kudos.
Getting back to Mario’s original point: Compassion is good economic policy – society’s return on investment in a human being dwarfs its return on investment in an industrial process. What is more valuable to us, the telephone or Alexander Graham Bell? The cotton gin or Ely Whitney? The light bulb or Thomas Edison? Stars and Stripes Forever or John Philip Sousa? Industrial processes can only ever do what they’re designed to do. Human beings keep inventing for a lifetime.
PEWestlake – Please explain “investment in a human being”.
Free enterprise does not and cannot work. Without some sort of regulation greed and corruption eliminate competitive trade. Corporatism is a direct result of the failure of free enterprise. If there were no government regulations there would be price fixing and in many cases one large corporation owning every thing. Can you imagine what it would be like if there were only one airline, one oil company, one Insurance company, one bank, etc.? How about price fixing? What if all the grocery stores got together once a month to compare and decide what to charge for everything they carried? It is only because of government regulation that we have(had) true competition. Basically, free enterprise is just like communism, looks good on paper but fails miserably in practice.
Tommy, this is the last question of yours I’m answering until I see you step up to answer the questions that have been posed to you by me and others.
Investment in human beings:
Unemployment Insurance
Public Schools
Pell Grants
WIC Checks
Food Stamps
Student Loans
Community Colleges
Medicare
Medicade
Small Business Administration
FDIC
I could go on and on and on.
Investment in industrial processes (destructive):
Tax incentives for antiquated industry
Tax policy that depresses wages, reducing demand
Investment in industrial processes (constructive):
Public infrastructure (roads, rails, water, power, etc)
Tax incentives for emerging industry w/ broad public benefit
This may shock you, Tommy, but I’m an investor. I was even a day trader once. Terms like EBITDA are not foreign to me (and 48% ROE is no joke, either!). I understand how the economy works and how money flows. If you want to know where all the money is, look at the trend lines of corporate profit and median income over the past forty years. If you overlay those two lines, you will see a giant less-than sign emerge (<). In between those two trend lines is where all the money is going and it's only getting worse with every passing budget. Your paeans to personal responsibility and personal liberty ring hollow 1) in the face of a blatant and ubiquitous lack of corporate responsibility, from AIG to BP and 2) in a land founded on the principal that government's role, among other things, is to promote the general welfare. Saying otherwise is simply un-American.
Tommy, there is NO “free enterprise” system.
As Clouddancer stated it is a “capitalist” system, that has been overrun the the giant corporations. He’s lucky in that his particular business has not yet been overtaken by them.
We have less than a dozen banks controlling 63% of our GDP.
We have less than a half dozen who have majority control over the movement of our food.
We have less than a dozen who have majority control over our pharmaceutical industry.
We have less than a half dozen who control the majority of our food production.
If for some reason any one of them fails, it will bring stress to our system.
And, with those few controlling such a large part of a particular segment of our economy, one must always be concerned as to whether there is collusion or competition?
Then we have the problem of them having amassed so much wealth they have the ability to influence our government’s leaders.
What we end up with is the mega corporations controlling the system, self-regulating themselves and we end up with one product after another than hits the recall list of the FDA or USDOT or any number of federal agencies who “ASK” the company to do the recall.
We allow companies looking for oil using a process called “fracking” to contaminate our water systems.
What we have ended up with is the Plutonomy Citibank reported to its high end investor class back in 2005:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigroup-Oct-16-2005-Plutonomy-Report-Part-1
This is not “free enterprise,” Tommy. This is control over our government and our economy so they can glean as much from the system as possible in order to feed their own greed.
There a corporations like Cloudancer all across this country – but, unfortunately, those who have the majority control are the ones calling the shots.
Why is it do you think the banking regulations were slowly removed from the statutes over the past 30 years? To create some BS “free enterprise” system? No, Tommy.
You need look no further than Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy. After enacting rules and laws that caused great harm to our economy, where did they end up? Wendy went to work for Enron upon leaving the CFTC. You can read the details here:
http://www.apfn.org/enron/gramm.htm
Husband Phil was the prime mover and shaker to get the repeal of Glass-Stegall, the final link in the chain of regulation that sent us back to the roaring 20′s and another great financial meltdown.
Many Dems sold out to help move this along as well.
This is not “free enterprise” – this is manipulation of a system that has and will continue to cause great harm to our country if we don’t put a stop to it. We cannot have so few having so much control.
They’ve sold you on a marketing pipe dream that simply does not exist, Tommy. And they’re not going to stop until they have it all.
Greed knows no bounds.
Tommy, in short, “give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime.” Investing in human beings is simply providing training and assistance to help them become self sufficient. Once they are trained and able to support themselves, they become “TAXPAYERS”.
And Phil ended up at UBS.
PEWestlake & TheCloudancer – here! here!
Damn! Talk about a concise argument.
Not that I think there is any room to sway folks like Tom.
If one worships at the alter of Libertarianism, one is by definition not concerned about such trivial things as John Boehner and the obvious hypocrisy of his statements. The point is that he used his family as an example to show his personal connection to the issue of unemployment. The joke here is that he went on in his statement to ruin his own argument that he feels anybody’s pain – he didn’t even know if his brothers had found jobs! That is just stupid.
BTW Tom, using your own situation of not having contact with your own brother says nothing and you know it. Nobody was faulting Boehner for not having contact with his huge, extended family.
You simply don’t care if your elected representatives have any compassion for their constituents. As long as they fight for “free enterprise” they get your vote.
Great jobs deconstructing the false free-enterprise system we’re in. That Citi report is scary stuff. Reading up on it over at KOS, too: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/4/789523/-Citigroups-Shocking-Plutonomy-Reportsh-t-Michael-Moore
OC nailed it on the contradiction within the same sentence in Boehner’s speech. Didn’t even have to wait five minutes for it. Whamo!
But Cloudancer is making one thing clear that Tommy might be right about, though… I could be more brief. ;-) Teach a man to fish, indeed! LOL
Diana, dang lady I think I love you;))) (my wife would never let me keep you tho) Your facts and statistics on corporatized American industy were spot on. I remember driving across South Dakota on back country roads several years ago visiting television stations and seeing all the mom and pop farms crumbling in ruin because corporate farming had run them out and taken over the land. That really brought home the failure of “free enterprise” to me. Other examples throughout our great land are right there for the anyone with an open mind and desire to see.
I too have been in the corporate system having spent the first 22 years of my professional life as an aeorspace engineer mostly in management. People that wonder why there is so much waste in government need to look at the corporations that are plundering the system to find the real answer. Wish I were in Washington so I could vote for you. Good luck in Novemeber.
TheCloudancer — ahhh story of my life! LOL I wouldn’t do well as a kept woman anyway. haha
When I started this endeavor I thought of myself as being pretty informed about most issues, then I began expanding into issues I knew a bit about, but needed to know more (and I will continue to learn more about each as time goes by).
As I began to piece together more and more of the global picture of things, it’s clear we made some huge missteps in the past (some that I knew about and some that I didn’t) and we have much to do to put us on a responsible path to maintains the balance between businesses/corporations we MUST have and the people who deserve better than our government has given them.
Rather than protect the people from corporate abuse, our government has become dependent upon the corporate donations and many have sold their souls to the detriment of our people and our form of government.
So while corporations have been given more and more with regard to personhood, each decision or law made has reduced our own rights under the Constitution.
And this has been done on both sides of the aisle. No single party is to blame. And those who stood by and watched the sellout are to blame as well – rather than going public to stop it.
So while bills called the “Clean Air Act” that actually allow more pollution, rather than less, the corporations got the right to pollute more, while we as citizens lost the right to breathe cleaner air.
And, rather than $200 billion on an unnecessary second engine for the F35, would not that money be better spent on education in science technology engineering and mathematics? These disciplines will be the ones creating the new jobs of the future — but not, if we fail to invest in them today.
But what has troubled me more than anything I have read is the rhetoric and the political spin.
We’ve been taken down the rosy path by the spin. It comes from both parties. And I understand that everyone wants to put a good face on any piece of legislation or an idea or even their ideology. But bumper sticker slogans and spin will not solve our problems.
I would like to see a blog, Mario, called “Politics Unspun” – take the spin and turn it around on them. They deserve it and the public would be better for it, if they understood it for what it is.
We are all aware of Lee Attwater’s southern strategy many years ago, that is, indeed – as we are seeing it repeated today, alive and well and is working in some quarters.
The rhetoric has gotten progressively ugly since Palin stepped onto the stage with her “real American” talk and the accusations of Obama “palling around with terrorists.” While those in politics understand this is all kabuki theater – there are many who do not, and we saw many of them showing up last summer with guns on their hips, as one lie after another was told about the health care reform bill.
When you don’t have facts on your side and your only argument is fear, you may win (unfortunately), but a what cost? If you claim to love your country and to be a patriot, then how is fear mongering and lying showing respect and love for your country?
As we know, it doesn’t – it shows a lack of respect for the people you are trying to scare and, indeed, a hatred for your country — as it it NOT about the country, it is about your own desire for power along with your own greed in aiding and abetting the plunder of public monies.
This is the message that needs to be taken to the American public. That anytime fear is being used to rile you up, then beware, because you are being used for someone else’s gain.
And TheCloudancer – I wish you were here, too. I need all the votes I can get :-) But at least I will (I hope) push the incumbent a little bit to the left!
Diana: “While those in politics understand this is all kabuki theater – there are many who do not.”
Bingo. A real emotion based on truth is indistinguishable from a real emotion based on falsehood. And the consequence of a reaction to kabuki theater is just as real as the consequence of a reaction to truth. When real policy is made, it has real consequences, irrespective of the truth or falsehood that led to its creation. So when I’m given the choice, I prefer truth with my policy.
I was so absorbed in the debate that I neglected to do my due diligence on Diana McGinness. Best of luck and skill in the campaign. I like your approach on the website a lot. I hope you get some multimedia in there soon. I’m way too far away in NYC to be any help to you but if you have any video you want edited into viral content, I’d be happy to lend my skills. Just followed you on Twitter. Send a DM any time.
Cloudancer: “People that wonder why there is so much waste in government need to look at the corporations that are plundering the system to find the real answer.”
Amen.
PEWestlake – Thank you very much! I appreciate your support. We started way too late to have much impact on this election. But it was an excellent foray into the world of politics and I’m not planning on folding my tent come August 17 (primary date). We start again in January. There is much unhappiness with our corporate incumbent, but without the massive war chest he has, we must have the grassroots…which we should have begun pursuing a year earlier. But you learn; as they say no pain, no gain! :-)
I’ll keep you in mind. We’ll be making some changes in the website in the near future. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.
Tommy,
Ronald Reagan deficit spent…
“Investing in human beings is simply providing training and assistance to help them become self sufficient.”
I realized that I haven’t made my point of view very clear. My view is that the Federal Government should not be involved in this issue. It’s best handled by state and local governments (or private charities), where individuals have more control of how much money is spent relative to their local needs. I believe that centralized government is a dangerous thing.
Tommy,
This is same old States Rights argument. The weakness in leaving it up to the individual states is that this is one country, not 50 countries in a lose coalition. If we don’t set standards and invest in the well-being of the country as a whole, we are greatly weakened, especially in global competition.
Personally, I don’t want to see a state decide that they don’t want to have a minimum wage (something I bet you would abolish) or equal rights or any of the many issues that have only been workable on a national basis.
I celebrated the national implementation of Hate Crimes legislation ( I am a Progressive) because I don’t want to send my tax dollars to states that sweep such crimes under the rug. If some states ( you know who you are) don’t want to stand up against violations of civil rights because it isn’t their priority or they just don’t care, they don’t deserve the benefits of being financially supported by states like California, where we have had those laws for years.
Many things like the “investment in human beings” need to be done nationally or we end up with a country that is even more stratified than it is now.
Tommy,
Contrary to popular belief, the states have apparently done quite well in maintaining their rights that you fear have been diminished.
Let’s take the minimum wage laws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._minimum_wages
As you can see there are states who require employers to pay more than, less than, the same as or who simply have no laws pertaining to the minimum wage for those NOT covered by the FLSA.
Let’s try education. To my knowledge each state has not only a State Education Board, but many have county (or district) boards and I’m guessing most all of them have local school boards.
From: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
“Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States. It is States and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation. The structure of education finance in America reflects this predominant State and local role. Of an estimated $1.1 trillion being spent nationwide on education at all levels for school year 2009-2010, a substantial majority will come from State, local, and private sources. This is especially true at the elementary and secondary level, where about 89.5 percent of the funds will come from non-Federal sources.”
And it the same way with Medicaid and other federal programs. Basically the feds contribute money and leave it up the to the states as to how the money is used. The feds do include requirements that must be met, but the states run almost all of these programs, contributing their own funds as well.
So what you are asking for “best handled by state and local governments (or private charities), where individuals have more control of how much money is spent relative to their local needs” is in reality what is going on in most cases. Of course, there may be exceptions, but for the most part it IS the states who are in control.
And, personally, if my tax dollars are going to any of these programs, I want some federal involvement to set the standards on how my money is going to be spent. I want the most bang for my buck. Now, we’ll all probably agree that doesn’t always happen, but it doesn’t happen with state or local governments either. And until we eliminate people from the process, it is always going to be be that way. People are not capable of NOT making mistakes or letting their own ideology get in the way of what may be bad, better or best in any given situation. But that’s how it is and changing it is likely not going to happen no matter how much we or the politicians rail on and on about it.
What we should do, however, is put the ideology aside and look at the whole picture. We should identify the problems (usually that’s pretty easy), do the research to find possible solutions (harder), and then choose a solution that will solve the problem better than the rest and that will cause the least amount of damage; there are always counter effects (just like in pharmaceuticals) to any solution. No legislation solves all problems, be it federal, state or local, there will always be dissatisfied voters.
If you haven’t read The Federalist Papers, I highly recommend them. There is much discussion about faction (even then) in this country and that there always would be faction. There is also much discussion on the need for a strong federal government, along with the many reasons why.
Yea. What she said. :)
I am against the minimum wage law. It infringes on an individual’s right to sign a contract of his choice.
I’m against the Dept of Ed. It interferes in the rights of the local school boards. Education in this country hasn’t improved with its existence.
We are one country, but we are 50 independent states. Each has a right to set their own standards, the ones that the citizens of that state agree with. If a citizen doesn’t agree with the standards of a state, and can’t live with them, he has the right to move to a state that does meet his standards. Once standards are federalized, the individual’s choice has been diminished.
Tommy the Constitution provides for a number of “standards” that are “federalized”. They are numerous, they are spread throughout many functions, and they are (of course) open to debate. I am not sure where anyone gets the idea that the States are “independent”…we operate under the Constitution, not the Articles of Confederation.
Local school boards have tremendous latitude on curriculum, with standards (related to entrance requirements) imposed by private and state colleges having far more impact than the Department of Education. But I think your thoughts on that department are worth exploring, and are usually shouted down reflexively. The percentage of American students progressing to post-secondary education has risen dramatically since the advent of that department, but it can be argued that primary and secondary standards have regressed. Cause and effect are open to question on both sets of results. The President and Secretary of Education, at any rate, appear to share some agreement on that score, and have taken steps to decentralize some functions. They also both appear to want grant-driven processes instead of the mandate and fund (threaten) process of the past.
Minimum wage is always an interesting conversation…economic theory supports the notion that wage floors are inherently flawed, and I agree. But if we are to end the minimum wage, we must also remove all restraints on individuals to collectively negotiate those contracts you point to.
Which leads me to my final point…a point that you and I usually get to. Free markets, left unimpeded, always progress towards cartel and monopoly. Cartel and monopoly inevitably impede individual choice. If individuals choose to regulate collectively organized institutions (for example, unions or corporations) in order to prevent them from reaching a point where choice is lost, who are libertarians to argue with?
States are independent in the same way counties are independent, or cities are independent. They can each dream up and pass their own set of rules under which the citizens are obligated to live. If the citizens don’t like it, they can change it, or leave. This is actually the genius of the American system of government. Once the rules are federalized, they have no where else to go.
“Free markets, left unimpeded, always progress towards cartel and monopoly.”
I love the way liberals use examples of the extreme to justify encroachment. Balance bro, it’s all about the balance.
And while I’m on a roll, I don’t think there should be any collective bargaining unions associated with the public sector. Do you disagree with that Diana?
“Rugged individualists,” like Tommy, labor under the false pretense that nobody ever changed their diapers, nobody ever helped them with their school work, nobody ever gave them a free ride to practice, nobody ever gave them any extra help of any kind – they came into the world fully formed, fully cognizant and fully adult, ready to take on the world and any who stand in their way. It’s BS. We are social creatures. With extremely rare exception, we live together or we die alone.
One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons was a single panel that pretty much sums up the whole problem with “individualism:”
A small tribe of primitive cave dwellers in animal skins are standing at the top of a high cliff. One member of the tribe is in the process of being thrown off the cliff by two other members of the clan while the Chief is asking the group, “does anyone else feel as though their ‘needs’ aren’t being met?” Silence.
If my memory serves me correctly PEW, it was my parents who helped me with all those things. I think liberals want the government to take over all those roles so they can feel somehow fulfilled.
I was just reading through this thread, and I found something I missed before.
“Human beings keep inventing for a lifetime.” PEWestlake
Why do you suppose Alexander Graham Bell, Ely Whitney and Thomas Edison invented the things they did? To make money! Wow, they were all greedy. So is Steve Jobs. So is every other rich inventor, liberal or not. Gordon Gekko was right, greed is good.
OK, this is my last novella on the subject. ;-)
No, Tommy, liberals don’t want to change your diaper. Even if you went to private school, someone had to create a curriculum that turned you into a productive citizen instead of just slave labor. Someone had to think about how to design the school, the roads, the sewers, the courts, and so on. These trappings of civilization make it possible for you to stroll to dinner or the movie without worrying about being attacked by wild animals or roving bandits. It enables co-eds to wear mini skirts on the quad without wholesale gang rape being committed. It enables regular mail delivery with armed guards (like the Pony Express) or without (like everything today). It is the social contract that enables you to even have your say about the anarchistic worldview you call liberty.
You talked of balance. Yes, that’s what’s going on here, striking a balance between personal liberty and the general welfare, defining the line where rights end and privilege begins. The definitions I keep hearing out of you are totally unbalanced, falling exclusively on the side of private enterprise as the only reliable means to run our society. Tea Partiers call Obama a dictator and openly worry about being enslaved by his alleged socialist takeover of the banks and health care and on and on. While right before their very eyes they can see private enterprise that rapes the environment, the economy, and the political process, then blackmails the taxpayer into paying for ever more of their malfeasance, even as they move jobs overseas while paying their top executive ever-more bloated salaries and bonuses. And this is the group you trust so much? These are your heroes? We balance free-enterprise with regulation, liberty with law enforcement, disaster with safety nets, thus preserving the stability of the social contract AND the economy.
Yeah, some inventors create things purely for profit, but most that I’ve studied have done so for the love of the creation. And the world is filled with works of art and science that haven’t made anyone rich, created for the love of the creation and the advancement of human knowledge and beauty. But most such endeavors at least indirectly lead to profit, to new inventions, to further refinements. Greed is good up to a point. But curiosity is far more powerful. Greed can be sated… not for all, but for most. Curiosity, once sparked, is almost always insatiable. THAT’S my point with inventors. Each invention is wonderful but the fact that great inventors KEEP inventing is what makes them special. And America can better create more people like that if we worry less about things and money and more about knowledge and quality of life. “Do what you love, the money will follow” applies to more than just individuals.
Tommy, there was a time on Earth when the entire population was divided into just a few groups – royalty, serfs, and mercenaries. That actually wasn’t too long ago and the tribal divisions are still relatively intact (it still exists in some parts of the world). Liberals tend to think from the serfs perspective. Conservatives tend to think from the mercenaries perspective. That’s totally understandable. The problem is, none of us is the King or his friends (and Obama isn’t the top of the pyramid either). The royalty of today is far beyond the cameras and way behind the scenes but we catch glimpses of them now and then: Richard Mellon Scaife, the Carlyle Group, CitiGroup’s plutonomy clients, etc. Mercenaries always think they have a real seat in the palace but they don’t and they’re just as disposable as the serfs. Think: Bernard Kerik.
This is what we’ve been trying to tell you. Your goals are probably not all that different than ours. But the goal posts on what you call personal liberty have been moved and redefined as corporate liberty in the guise of individualism. We both want personal liberty. I want an end to the drug war and the overbearing “stop and frisk” policy that blankets the Brownsville section of Brooklyn EVERY NIGHT, for instance. Talk about a police state! But I want freedom from corporate monopolies, too, not just overbearing government.
Remember, the real Boston Tea Party was partly a protest against a corporate monopoly (East India Co.). Americans have always been wary of large private enterprises but decades of corporate propaganda has shifted the debate to the point where the Supreme Court is willing to ignore all history and precedent to establish that a fictional entity and a human being are one and the same (CU v. FEC). We can vote governments out. We can’t do anything to corporate monopolies without government or bloodshed. The serfs have seen enough blood, thank you.
[But make no mistake, there are more serfs than mercenaries and royalty combined. We're pacifists but I wouldn't advise sending a contingent of armed Tea Partiers into New York City like they did down in Virginia. Some gang bangers may not take too kindly to threats on their turf. And they have Tec-9s. ;-)]
I can name one without looking too far: Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine – he gave it to the world for free – he did not seek a patent on it because he wanted it to be inexpensive.
I’ll up your fictional character, Gordon Gekko, with two of my own. Do you not recall Dicken’s Ebenezer Scrooge or Eliot’s Silas Marner?
Are you aware that Alexander Graham Bell inventions were primarily to help the deaf? The telephone and the microphone were two of those. Were you aware that he used the money from the Volta Prize from France that he won for the invention of the telephone to create the Volta Bureau, a library on deafness. And that in 1890 he created the American Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, which later became the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.
Henry Ford found himself involved in a lawsuit with his stockholders, the Dodge brothers because he wanted to reinvest the profits into the business in order to employ more people and reduce the price of the car so more could afford it.
This is the first lawsuit that deemed the goal of a corporation was to make money for their stockholders at the expense of all else.
And while the end result for many of these inventors was that they became rich – not all of them were inventing for the purpose of becoming rich. Most saw a need, fulfilled it and were smart enough to get a patent on it before someone else did.
One would think, Tommy, have seeing the result of our current financial meltdown – Wall Street greed (not to mention that same greed back in ’29) and, seeing how harmful to people that it was then and is now, that you would think greed was bad.
Do you ever get beyond your gated community and see the poor and downtrodden in this country? Have you stopped by a food bank lately?
Have you checked RealtyTrac to see how many homes are in foreclosure in your county?
Were you aware that one million were newly homeless at the beginning of school last year and there will undoubtedly be more this year?
Tell me – is it easy to study as a child when you’re living out of your car with your parents or 14 of you are crammed into a small house?
Are you aware there are not enough Section 8 vouchers available to help the people who have lost their jobs and their homes to help them pay for housing?
And while there isn’t enough money for that we can pay $200 billion for a second engine for the F35 so workers at GE/Rolls Royce can make huge profits for their companies, building an engine the Department of Defense doesn’t even want.
Do you honestly believe that everyone has the wherewithal to be as smart as you? Or to get the educational advantages you may have had? Do you know that there aren’t enough jobs out there that pay a living wage (and since you believe there should be no minimum wage, that today would be a race to the bottom for employers)?
Did they not teach you in church about Jesus and the money lenders?
Or that it is better to give than receive?
And I do believe it is very unfair of you to attach your own motives to those of someone else.
I posted this yesterday on another site and I think it’s an appropriate response to you:
“When the greed of a few are more important to the majority of people and the politicians who enable their bad behavior, we are on the wrong track.
Greenspan claimed he had never considered in his “model” that CEOs would do things that would not benefit their companies (i.e. be greedy) [paraphrased].
Pulling yourself up by your own boot straps is one thing – pulling yourself up by stepping on the bootstraps and backs of others is a whole different ballgame.
Too many have done the latter, crushing those below who are trying to pull themselves up.
It is not healthy for our society or, as we have seen, for our economy.
When man’s greed is considered good – as it has been – we have failed to live up to our ideals as a country.”
Sadly, you will never agree – to you greed at everyone’s expense should have no boundaries…that the satisfaction of a person’s own needs are the greater purpose of life. Tell me, Tommy, when that person’s own needs cost the lives of others, is that okay, too?
Because that is exactly what has happened. Many have died or will die because of the greed of others. Because they have come to worship money. Isn’t idolatry still a sin?
Well said, Diana. While we’re at it, Andrew Carnegie invented the modern library system for purely charitable reasons, and gave the Carnegie libraries the motto, “let there be light.”
And speaking of death, eleven died in the Deepwater Horizon rig as a direct result of greed. Fifteen died in a refinery explosion in Texas just a few years ago, also directly due to BP’s greed. Nuff said.
To respond to an earlier question, Tommy.
Two things I live by having been screwed by an insurance company (twice) and having worked for two different ones totally 35 years of employment.
1) Unions will never get in the door of a business or company if the employees are well compensated.
2) Government is reactive – not proactive. There (as I told my bosses many times) is not a regulation on the books that got there because some government bureaucrat thought about what might happen. They were all in response to what had happened. Case in point – Check your local intersections to see how many died before the city put up a stop sign or created a left turn lane. (I’ve seen first hand evidence of that as well.)
So to answer you question, Tommy, I believe in collective bargaining. The unions gave us a 40 hour work week, safety regulations, health care, etc. And as long as there are companies like BP cutting corners to make a buck we’re going to need unions to stand up for the workers.
Unions haven’t always been perfect (and probably many still aren’t), but corporations are not magnanimous either.
But not to worry, Tommy, there’s a bright future for you ahead. You see, our kids won’t have the luxury of working for a company for 30 years like I did. So unless unions soon figure out they need to organize around people, not jobs, they may soon die out.
Let’s hope they don’t.
PEWestlake – yes, indeed, there are a vast number of inventors/entrepreneurs who recognized that they couldn’t take it with them and their kids had more than enough. We have many charitable endowments made throughout our history by those who understood what “the greater good” meant. The establishment of our National Parks can be counted among those as well — a good government at work!
The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it – Business Insider via Yahoo Finance:
http://yhoo.it/aiUiGO
PEWestlake – Tragically, this will the future for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
As long as our government remains captured by these mega corporations, they will continue to sell us out.
My own representative is, unfortunately, one of them…but not for much longer :-)
I often find myself wishing I had a magic television to see the parallel universe envisioned by rugged individualists like Tommy. They are so sure that everything would be just fine if we could just relieve ourselves of all this Government control of our lives. I would pay a lot to see how it would turn out because I am just damn curious.
I am really stunned that an obviously smart guy would advocate for independent states doing as they like. What would Alabama have done in Selma? I guess in 1860 Tommy would have told the South, “So fine! Go ahead and split! We never liked you anyway!” I wonder how many countries we would have now? 50?
Let the states decide how to run education with no national controls? Wow. Things suck in American education already. How bad would that be?
This is one country for a reason. We are a Super power because we stick together. It has worked pretty well for over 230 years.
All the main arguments I have heard for States Rights are based on the conservative states thinking it would be just great to live in Sarah Palin’s, Jesusland. They boil down to the desire to create a Christian Country run by the Ten Commandments. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but it seems like the folks who want less Federal control mostly want to throw away Civil Rights and the Separation of Church and State.
Diana, my rep is Yvette Clarke, a typical Brooklyn back-bencher. She votes mostly along liberal lines but she’s boring, never puts up a fight, and recently signed a letter with dozens of other Congress Critters to demand the FCC NOT regulate Net Neutrality. I didn’t care much until that one! Now I want her out but it’s too late for this election. And the real problem is, this is a gerrymandered district and she has a long family history here. So she would probably overwhelm any primary challenger that isn’t independently wealthy. Looks like I’m stuck with her for a while longer. (sigh!)
OC, I think there’s a big apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster in the making there… “Mine, Mine, Mine!” The story of how one nation indivisible, became fifty nations un-unitable.
OC Liberal
Yes, it appears they want to abandon the rule of law created by the voters (or those who legitimately represent us) and who are the true government of this country (except we act like in some cases that we don’t remember that), so we can have rule by the Bible that:
1) various denominations can’t agree on it’s interpretation
2) religious leaders within denominations can’t agree on it’s interpretation and
3) and, my personal favorite, was written by men (there are no testaments by women, as you will note) so we could be kept in our place (followers).
One can only wonder — if they could come to an agreement, would they choose to rule by the Old or New Testament? Methinks the Old; clearly those tenets of “love thy neighbor” and “caring for the poor and sick,” and all those “that shalt nots” have been abandoned by many (I hope not all) of the religious right today.
If you want a glimpse of what it might be light, check out this video: http://www.atheistnation.net/video/?video/00118/atheist/jesus-camp/
Beware – it will simply make you ill.
And what of those who set themselves up to be new prophets? Will they be types like Jim Jones, the Bakers, or the fool out there telling people to pray to get rich (while, of course, HE is the one getting rich). Maybe we can have the return of Ted Haggert? Or will it be the woman in the clip who should be arrested for child abuse, in my opinion.
And then they can pass out the Kool Aid when the congregation gets restless…
We can have our own American Taliban!! (heavy, heavy sarcasm!)
PEWestlake
Mine is Rick Larsen, who also signed that letter. He does the same thing – been there 10 years – not chairing a single committee; keeps his head down and brings home the bacon in time to get the votes.
Here’s a really good website to see how they vote: http://progressivepunch.org/
DO NOT RELY on the “he/she votes 95% with the party” nonsense. Most of those votes are naming post offices or some other “easy” bill. Drill down in each category to get to the votes that count. Those are the ones that should be used to educate the voters about who they are really working for.
Also, you can check out maplight.org. They only had 2005-2007 data for his campaign contributions but at that time he was getting 86% of his money from OUTSIDE the District.
We have to find people to replace them…and soon!
Going to make one last comment here — gotta run
Re corporations. There’s a history out there that is also not taught. That the founders were not willing to give corporations the power they have come to have today. It is a history we should be aware of…how they came to their current power. At one point in our history, government had the power to walk into a corporation and confirm they were honest brokers – that they weren’t cooking the books (i.e. ENRON). Ahhh…those were the days, Tommy!
Also, would someone comment on this article: http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/05/06/interview-with-randall-wray-truths-and-myths-of-the-federal-reserve-10452/
You guys have a dark view of human nature. I see people as wanting the best for each other, not the worst. I see them self-governing whenever possible, and using our court system when they don’t.
As for Palin’s Jesusland, I’m not much of a Christian, but I recognize that although we’re not a Christian nation, we’re a nation of Christians. To try to preclude the Christian view from political discussions is unrealistic, and will cause more harm than good. Resistence is the fertilizer of every problem.
On a personal note, I just want to congratulate everyone for helping me achieve a goal. This post is now on the list of the top 5 most commented posts on Mario’s website. I thought it was time to add some fresh meat to that list.
Diana,
I agree whole heartedly about religion. I am NOT anti religion myself. I am certainly VERY much into the separation of church and state for just the reasons you point out. AND of course the denominations would tear each other to pieces over the details.
Tommy,
People DO want the best for each other much of the time. That is fashionable. It is also common to see people become hostile and uncaring toward those they perceive as “different” from themselves. Human nature. We all have to work hard on respecting those who are different, that isn’t natural. Just look at history to get a good hit of human nature. I personally agree with Plato – human nature never changes.
Only what’s fashionable…
OC Liberal -my beef is not with with God, it is with religion. (Having married into a family of ministers, didn’t increase my respect for it either.)
My trip to MS after Katrina dropped me in both Biloxi and, then, Hattiesburg. MS in notorious for being the poorest state in the Union, yet street after street, block after block was one church after another, all the size of a city block.
One must ask — if the state and it’s people are so poor, how can their be churches of this magnitude? Obviously, they are not getting it from the state (I hope), so that brings us to the citizenry. In addition the ministers were all driving around in high end vehicles – Cadillac Escalaides and the like. Considering the poverty, I found the size of these churches to be repulsive.
I like to go with the Declaration, “that they are endowed by their Creator.” “Their” is a powerful word here. It means I get to chose my Creator (or not). Doesn’t say “the” or “our,” so when the right claims we are a Christian nation, they have taken it upon themselves to make choices for others and that disrespects the founding documents of our country they so patriotically claim to want “back.”
Tommy, we are not JUST a nation of Christians. Every religion on earth is represented in this country – not just Christianity. And, then there are those who choose no God.
Unfortunately, there are those (and there always will be) who believe only their religion is the right one, the old “my way or the highway” group (think the Church of England). It is these people who disrespect those who do not agree with them and they are the reason the word is “their.” And I will resist their imposing their beliefs on anyone else. If the day comes when they can impose their beliefs, we will no longer be a free country.
Diana, I mostly agree with all you’ve written, but in your last paragraph, your statement “And I will resist their imposing their beliefs on anyone else. If the day comes when they can impose their beliefs, we will no longer be a free country.” caught me by surprise.
Don’t you think that imposing of beliefs has been happening already for decades? Maybe you aren’t part of the groups that religion has been fearful of so haven’t really been impacted; for example, the right to choose abortion, the right to a gay marriage, the repeal of DADT. Religious beliefs are all being used as excuses to be against these issues. This is why liberals and progressives are truly the people’s representatives. They are more real and empathetic and realize that a diverse population requires more liberal, sensical solutions – and religious beliefs are an individual, optional right.
However, Mario’s article is about John Boehner’s continued idiocy and further proof that this man is disconnected. A man named Justin Coussoule is running against Boehner this fall. Personally, I’d like to see a 4th Boehner brother unemployed. If his brothers are anything like John is, it may explain their lack of employment. John Boehner is not only out of touch with his brothers, but with his country. Time to give someone else a shot at that job. Go, Justin, go!
MatrixKape You are quite right, of course. All these issues are being prevented from resolution because of the greater religious community. I’d like to see the Hyde Amendment put to the test (that I believe will fail). DADT and DOMA are a disgrace.
I’m frankly tired of the “keep government from taking away my liberty” nonsense when much of these offenses are already in place because of the right (and the sell out Dems who voted with them).
Government needs out of to be out of the bedroom unless it involves a minor.
Justin has the vote of my friend who lives in Cincinnati. I sure hope he wins. What does the polling look like, do you know? When is your primary (or is it over).
If there is one crybaby I’d like to get rid of in Congress, it’s Boehner.
Off to bed. Full day tomorrow.
Finally fully back online today. Whew, what a trip & a day without A/C! Thank goodness we don’t need it in the NW.
Looking over my above comment, I painted a very broad brush re religion. There are those among the community that do support the rights of everyone. As with everything, there are few things that are black and white. To those I no doubt offended, I apologize.
I do believe, however, we cannot allow religion to override our Constitutional rights. Religion belongs in a church, not at the helm of government and that one is black and white.
I’ll do my best to not use that broad brush that’s so easy to do at times, however. :-)
Diana…I agree!