Small minded ignorant troll. Intellectual midget orbiting the dunce stool. If anybody is 'lumped in' with neo conservative ideologues it's you.
Damn. You had to remind me. Four more years of preventing a crash, adding jobs, investing in alternative energy, fixing a broken health care delivery system, winding down the wars, addressing the immigration problem, promoting equality -- regardless of gender or orientation, funding education, incentivizing small businesses, reducing the nuclear stockpile, keeping tax cuts for the average wage earners, improving world diplomacy, going after corporate chiseling and corruption, cutting tax breaks for the insanely wealthy, protecting the environment and investing in science, education, technology and renewable energy. It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine.
Communist countries did't go from being wealthy to being total shit-holes overnight. They also were made up of a LOT of good intentions. They even killed as many "dissidents" as they possibly could and it took generations for Progressive Socialism to completely erode tens of generations worth of capital that had previously built up. Don't worry, you'll get to see the live action version - and actually you are.
It's not true, children never need to be spanked and if they are being spanked it's a failing of the parent. Eighty years ago wives were 'disciplined'. They were literally thought of as children who needed, on occasion, some 'tough love'. IMO once you even accept the premise that spanking is even an option the entire dynamic is f*cked. The relationship is soured right then and there. It's like saying, I'm really keen on this iPad, I'm willing to work hard for it, but if I don't make enough money this month, and I have to, then I'll steal it. Do you think such a person is going to REALLY work as hard as they can when they know they can steal it? Or saying, I'm willing to give this relationship a go, but if worse comes to worse and I have to, then I'm going to rape you - I reserve the right to do so. Do you think such a relationship is going to be healthy? You don't think such a person would give off the creep vibe and ruin the relationship? Peacefully raising children requires a lot of upfront work, but, once that investment is made it's a lifetime of enjoyable parenting. To practice such parenting spanking can not BE an option and both the parent and the child must know this from the beginning.
Neo-Con Chicken Hawk or Progressive Welfare Queen ....two sides of the same coin. For you it don't really matter naw does it? You had yir vote, now you can git back to yir stall and produce some milk for your betters in the Banking and Finance or War Industry. Just work and work and work and work and work and then die .... all for the State. That's what good little State-Owned Tax Cattle moo, err do mooo dooo dooo mooo moo moooo.... Your defense of State is called Stockholm syndrome you may want to look it up Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
What exactly do you disagree with Progressive ideology? Saying 'main stream economic policies' is saying you're Keynesian. Both Neo-Cons and Progressives are Keynesians. Even pjdude1219 thinks of you as Progressive. If you're just 'mainsteam' that's like 'flying blind' - IOWs there's no foundation though which to base your opinion. I'm, for example, rational. I make my decisions based on reason. If that aligns with 'mainstream' then it's mainstream that became rational, not me that became mainstream.
just so we are clear I'm saying he is a progressive based on what the word actually means and not your lies. joe believes in regulation of buisness you don't. the way you use progressive your the progressive not joe. You use progressive as meaning the same as neo consertavive when they are diametricly opposed to each other not to mention in most of the world " libertarians" are socialists not free market extremists like yourself bull fucking shot you base your ideas on whatever the mises institute produces and don't even bother thinking about it. there is no reason at all in your thought process. you have a religious like devotion to your pet idieology and wish it implemented no matter how badly it will destroy the country.
This thread seems to be morphing into a discussion of role of government, liberty etc. (and the Ron Paul thread is sinking into the archieves) so here is main points of concern to Ron Paul in his farewell adress to Congress delivered on 14 Nov 2012: 1) The continuous attack on our civil liberties which threatens the rule of law and our ability to resist the onrush of tyranny. 2) Violent anti-Americanism that has engulfed the world. Because the phenomenon of “blow-back” is not understood or denied, our foreign policy is destined to keep us involved in many wars that we have no business being in. National bankruptcy and a greater threat to our national security will result. 3) The ease in which we go to war, without a declaration by Congress, but accepting international authority from the UN or NATO even for preemptive wars, otherwise known as aggression. 4) A financial political crisis as a consequence of excessive debt, unfunded liabilities, spending, bailouts, and gross discrepancy in wealth distribution going from the middle class to the rich. The danger of central economic planning, by the Federal Reserve must be understood. 5) World government taking over local and US sovereignty by getting involved in the issues of war, welfare, trade, banking, a world currency, taxes, property ownership, and private ownership of guns.
Brucep is certainly expressing the very orthodox POV. I.e. that letting the banks fail, instead of bailing them out with huge debt increase for the tax payers was by far the lesser of two evils and is almost always the "solution" choosen. But this POV is based only on theory. The only case where the people said no to "socializing losses and privatizing the profits" for the benefit of the very rich and powerful is Iceland´s crisis, which proportionally was dozens of times worse than the crisis of the US in 2008. Iceland had only three large banks, and they had gained more than ten times the entire GDP of Island by paying higher interest on deposits than European banks did. Billions of dollars flowed to them from the EU and they were not able to invest it well enough for this "quasi-Ponsi" scheme to avoid failure. Everyone predicted, in accord with the orthodox economic theory, that Iceland would be destroyed for decades if the people voted "no bail out" in the referendum, but here is what has happened, according to recent IMF review, now that three years have passed: Contrast these Icelandic results with what is happening to the US now: (1) Iceland´s debts are shrinking vs. US´s growing at about 10% of GDP annually and now are re-payable only in greatly weaked dollars, if at all. (2) Iceland´s children, grandchildren (and those not yet born) can expect a more prosperous life style than their parents had. (3) Iceland´s rich and powerful, especially those bank related, have lost huge sums. They were not rewarded for high risk policies that lead to bank failure with multi-million dollar bonuses. (4) Iceland´s unemployment is declining, not held static only because millions of jobless discouraged people are not counted as part of the labor force. (5) Iceland´s currency is growing stronger, and most in Iceland no longer wants to join the Euro. (6) Iceland has recognized that it is "collective madness" to borrow and assume later generations will pay back the loans. (7) Iceland protected its social support systems for the poor, even thru out the crisis, and unlike the US is not considering any decrease of "entitlements." (8) Iceland is rebuilding its economy on the solid foundation of its natural resources (fish and clean geothermal energy, included), not on a “big house of cards” of growing debts, much of it borrowed from China. (9) Instead of economy destroying "austerity" as the EU is now imposing and US soon will do (to avoid the "fiscal cliff"), Iceland put the losses on the shoulder of those who made them. (10) The gap between Iceland´s rich and poor is actually decreasing, not growing faster than every before as in the US where the top 400 get 16% of all income and the top 2% get 24% of all income, now.* ("All" includes considerable federal tax-free-state bonds. This is not in conflict with the 1% getting 17% of the TAXABLE income data below.) SUMMARY: Only time will tell which is the better approach to banks in trouble but thus far, based on Icelandic experience, the orthodox approach, which is based on theory only, appears to be a very inferior choice. It certainly sends the wrong “moral hazard” message. – The too big to fail in 2008 banks are much bigger now, and still managed by the same self-serving jerks who made the current economic mess. *More income and tax distribution data:
Perhaps a slight digression The question I always have when viewing this sort of case study is one of scale. Key to Iceland's recovery was $2.1 billion? American debt, both public and private, rivals or possibly exceeds the sum of all the money in the world. Ours is not an economy that the world can specifically bail out as the IMF helps smaller nations. The American problem, in the immediate term, is consumer spending. Top-down redistribution, as we saw with the Wall Street bailout, is a questionable route insofar as consumers are still left with underwater mortgages and not enough money to keep spending as they did in the fat years. We hear from the left all the time about how real wages are stagnant; add to that state-level austerity resulting in public-sector layoffs, and the mystery of the sluggish private-sector recovery is laid bare for all to see. American consumers kept the economy afloat by taking on insane debt. We can certainly tax our way out of this hole, but we need a stronger revenue base in order to do so. That means some restoration of lost public-sector jobs, better real wages for workers, and less of this pansy Galtian Revolution in which rich people whine about having to slow down their gathering of even more wealth. People's livelihoods are now political props for a pseudo-revolution that is nothing more than a bunch of rich people having a tantrum because they aren't getting everything they want. $2.1 billion? I'm glad it worked in Iceland, but the question of scale is daunting. The U.S. can waste two billion dollars by sneezing. The state of Washington, which has the thirteenth largest population in the nation, is facing a two billion dollar shortfall for the next biennium, and that's at a minimum. A couple billion and a forced reorganization of our public fiscal and private banking standards might be helpful, but the IMF hasn't enough money to make a meaningful offer to the U.S., and there is virtually no chance that the states, even if authorized by the federal government to take part in such a plan, would go along with it. We've created a unique problem in the U.S., and that requires unique solutions. We can get ourselves out of this jam, but that requires a broad-spectrum overhaul of our societal priorities that the wealthy will fight every step of the way.
To Tiassa (et. al) I agree with all your post 690. There is no source of funding like the 2.1 Billion that IMF gave Iceland to significantly help the US. My point was that the widely believed orthodox approach to failing banks, makes the probelm worse, not better - No punishment but rewards instead for those taking excessive risk when tax payers eat their losses and the big banks grow even bigger. If the QEs do any good, it is too little to stop the Debt to GDP ratio from increasing, etc. US debt is now past the point of possible recovery. I foresaw that when GWB still had two years more as POTUS, but ofcourse he did many other stupid things that made my prediction of a run on the dollar on or before Halloween 2014 easy to make. Back then one could tell with certainty that about 10,000 baby boomers would now be switching from the largest class of tax payers to Social Security collectors EVERY DAY! Even if Obama gets the US out of GWB´s needless wars, the cost of them will continue long after GWB is dead (Vets in hospital for life, payments to widows, etc.) His tax relief for the very wealth helped them build the more modern and much lower production cost factories in Asia, which closed or out-sourced US jobs. etc. The GWB depression is inevitably coming - I doubt Obama can kick it down the road until after his current term ends - Why I could not vote for a Back man getting the blame for GWB´s destruction of the US economy. - I worked too hard in the civil right movement to do that. Yes this is somewhat off thread, but it is what Obama must try to cope with, so not inapprobriate.
Huh, no Michael. You are the guy who has repeatedly been unable to explain your notions in any kind of cogent manner. So you have been repeatedly reduced to name calling as illustrated in this post and many other posts.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Sorry for interjecting with facts about how Obama has actually done with the country's finances. Carry on... GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
So every child can be peacefully raised, they are all the same and respond the same to the same child raising philosophy? ...yeah good luck with that LOL! Some children are born demonic, just a luck of the genetic gamble, in such cases a parents going to have to sacrifice the child love and endearment so that the child grows up to become a functional adult. Take my brother raise by my San Fransisco yuppie step mother who didn't believe in spanking either, nor my father because he is a pussies. oh they followed all the modern child raising books and so my brother was and is a complete shit, he in JV now, 14 years old! I lost count of how many times he told his mother and my father to "shut the fuck up, you fucking cunts!" or "fuck you bitches!" he could not even sit still and do his homework for 5 seconds, it was just "fuck you, I'm going to go out and sell weed, what that dangerous, what the fuck you cunts know!?, suck my dick!" yeah that didn't work out to well for him... ah the product of peaceful raising! Oh what that my step mother and father didn't do it right, perhaps they were to lazy? well I rather they have taken the lazy way out and spanked him or sent him to military school, now the fucking state doing their job! Now sure you can start out peaceful raising, use time outs and calm strictness, and for many children that all that is needed... but if the little monster is particularly evil or satanic you as a parent and a citizen got to do what needs to be done to prevent another thug criminal from entering our society.
Who's this 'we' Ron Paul is worried about? If he were worried about civil rights for the oppressed American people of the past four centuries, he would seem to need to sing praises for the Civil Rights Act which requires the tyranny of federal judges and marshals to whip the violators into compliance. Given how tyrannical the alternative had already proven to be, the use of force to protect victims from bullies would seem to have run its course and given us this as the best of conceivable outcomes. That sounds as naive and oversimplified as (1) above. Anti-Americanism was at its peak during the era of greatest expansion in history -- the settlement of the US West. And I don't know who Ron Paul thinks he's outsmarting. Considering the wealth of experts in the US on the sociology of the people who harbor terrorists, I would simply rely on their expertise if I were him. What makes him so special? It sounds pretty self-serving to me, even if he is retiring. Which has changed dramatically since the Bushies were ousted--so much that Obama was given a Nobel prize for rekindling multilateralism. So here Ron Paul is behind the times. This is selective amnesia. It was capitalist outlaws who brought the economy to its knees, not the Fed. And without the Fed's response, we'd be having this conversation from a tent city a la 1929. The obsession with a central authority is idealism at its worst. If he thinks the municipalities were going to bail out their local disasters, then he's obviously been living in a bubble. If he thinks victims should be left to die--then he's living in the Byzantine era. What does that even mean? That for once the US isn't pulling all the puppet strings in Banana Republics and the like? Who is this world government that poses such a threat to us? The UN? The same world organization he thinks has been circumvented in (3) above? The EU - our best buddies? Like taking out Al Qaeda? He served in the Viet Nam era, and then got into politics in the party of Richard Nixon. He's evidently conficted. Welfare is to protect indigent people from a certain death. A large segment of the beneficiaries are children, the sick and the elderly. Where does Ron Paul leave them in his Utopian society? In baskets on top of Mount Olympus? Like the Euro? Where else in the world is there such a dense cluster of sovereign nations who collectively own such a large share of the world economy? So what if they formed an alliance, and where else would this have a likelihood of taking root? Considering the real problems that face civilizations, why would this even be on anyone's list of priorities? When have there never been taxes? They're as old as civilization. Who should build the roads, test the foods and drugs, provide for the defense, control interstate crime, try the cases of federal law, mint the currency, staff the foreign posts, control air traffic, provide aid in civil emergencies, regulate transportation safety, control the airwaves, manage the national parks, and on and on...? The 14th Amendment preserves this right. So even when a municipality or state violates your rights, you have recourse. Ron Paul would be obstructing the right to property by opposing the federal law and institutions that preserve it. Does he mean assault weapons? They're illegal in the states and municipalities as well. The local cops don't want to be mowed down any more than the federal marshals do. Earlier he was forecasting an Armageddon, and here he's casting us as bands of militia hiding out in the mountains. That's more than just being cynical. Sounds like Ron Paul is seriously out of touch.
The US´s modern style of government. I think he is mainly concerned with the changes that have taken place after Clinton ceased to be POTUS, not with period prior to that, except to wish Fed, etc. were more restrained as it was earlier so no need to reply to most of your post. Also it, like my 688, is only about R.Paul, so off thread.
Well I guess I missed your point. You seemed to be enumerating Paul's apocalyptic vision of America as if they were your own, and I took it that these were talking points for the sharp contrast with Obama's agenda. In any case, I think Ron Paul's paranoia and detachment, and his pretense about understanding economics (his training is in medicine) did a lot to fan the flames of obstruction against proactive government. (Notice how many people who simply have no clue now consider themselves experts on the subject.) So I guess, in steering back to how this relates to Obama's legacy, can we conclude that economics is best left in the hands of experts? And isn't that Obama's view? And I think it was a consensus view in the lame duck period of 2008, when the shit was hitting the fan. And Obama's vision of what the Right calls Big Government, is nothing more that the bodyguard for the downtrodden. And if anyone in recent memory has made inroads on expanding civil liberties it would have to be Obama, his picks, and the Democratic legislature. In my mind that goes in the Obama file as a retort to the Ron Paul style of cynical idealism that took root after Clinton.
Why not? They paid millions via lobbyist to get special tax breaks. You don´t like fact the IRS code now fills 73,000 pages (or is that volumes, I forget)? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Something rather concerning was recently signed by Obama http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/ndaa-indefinite-detention-bill-rand-paul_n_2347774.html
This is not new. The law expires in one year and is renewed annually as it has been for more than a decade. The offending clause in this law has been the law of the land for more than a decade. It began with George II and his Republican Congress and renewed every year since. The primary purpose of this bill is to fund our military, but as with all laws it is loaded with extraneous provisions. President Obama has signed this bill with this particular clause into law each year for the past 4 years as George II did before him. And every time President Obama signs this particular bill into law, he notes his Constitutional objections to various clauses in it with a signing statement. Given all the other urgent business before Congress, President Obama has made the decision that it is not worth fighting Congress on this issue. President Obama would rather use his political capital on higher value objectives like preventing a national default and saving the nation’s economy and ensuring every American has access to affordable healthcare. As the article you cited noted, the clause only exists because Republican neocons in Congress want it there.
