People have asked me in the past what is conservatism? I didn't know although I could point to Adam Smith or Friedrich Hayek or John Locke or John Adams as exemplars. But what is the thread that runs through all of them?
This morning on BookTV a guy named Emmett Tyrell of the American Spectator was asked the same question. He said it was the right to pursue happiness, and that this meant a free economy. He had recently published a new book called Ronald Reagan: A Life.
I thought his answer was marvelously simple, and simply marvelous. An unfettered economy, both in terms of what we can produce, and what we can say, is the American dream in a nutshell. So, let's conserve it.
Against this are all kinds of leftists who want to control what we can produce, and what we can say.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
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163 comments:
another lie.
Locke was a democrat, moron
Simplistic aphoristic or proverbial nutball formulae are endlessly attractive. The power to summarize social or psychological abstractions as if they could be represented like mathematical equations (a la Einstein), has always held appeal.
Freedom--whatever you mean by it--isn't a justification for widespread theft and exploitation. I can't be free to gouge people with economic tools like complex derivatives. Usurers--like the credit card companies used by banks--shouldn't be allowed to build up people's balances indefinitely and charge them 35% interest rates. This is nothing but a mild form of debtors prison.
Kirby, if one of your children should come down with a really serious chronic disease, all of your resources and efforts couldn't keep you from destitution. In that event, you'd welcome the social safety nets our government has erected to protect you from hopelessness.
"Freedom" doesn't mean what you think it means. And it doesn't mean what the conservative shock-jocks say it does, either. We are a government of the people, Kirby, and we've made laws to constrain our greed and cruelty and selfishness. It's unseemly for you to disdain health care and pensions and environmental safeguards and so forth, while you and your family benefit directly from them.
It's important to remember that American business--"free enterprise"--isn't interested in expanding payrolls and "buying American." They're looking to cut payrolls, and bank their winnings abroad in safe havens. Americans aren't angry because they have to pay taxes--they're pissed off because the rich don't pay their share. If they did, we wouldn't have any budget crisis at all.
We have waste and fraud in government--you bet we do! But it's in the foreign wars and war profiteering that the real waste occurs.
The Republicans want to "put entitlements on the table" during the budget talks. Well, Americans have paid into a system that has a paper surplus sufficient to support retirees for at least another 20 years--even if no minor adjustments are made. This isn't "discretionary"--it's called insurance. The Federal Government can't simply "cancel" policy-holders in order to cut costs--it doesn't work that way. How would you feel if your teachers' retirement pension were...ah..."tabled for discussion" in the next round of the New York State Legislative session? How about a 30% cut to all retirees leaving after 2012? After all, everybody has to tighten their belt and spend more time in church and less time at the mall. Not that I'm advocating anyone spend time in a mall--I never go to them. But you get my drift.
people trying to hold onto the now, but they dont realize the now is always moving forward.
Poetry <3
Amusing rant, M Faville, with copious attention to generating as many examples as possible of simplistic thinking you purport to excoriate.
Not sure where Kirby argued in favour of removing all laws against theft and exploitation, nor against "health care and pensions and environmental safeguards" in general. Reevaluating entitlement costs, committments, and available resources, scrutinising tax policies to promote economic growth, balancing environmental protections while avoiding overregulation of industry and business, preserving individual freedoms, etc. are all matters that do concern our citizens and their chosen leaders of both major parties and over which we debate. But either/or propositions or appeals related to hypothetical personal disasters or losses are pretty poor substitutes for nuanced thinking on any of these issues.
You decry what Kirby offered as one simple expression of freedom, but didn't offer a alternative expression of what it means to you. Perhaps this then frees us to speculate on whether for you it might simply consist of jihad against all you call usurers, the rich, the defence stablishment, Republicans, business in general and of childish adoration of an all-powerful government that in taxes first taketh away and then giveth back to others what it deems "their share."
To bad Ed pulled his comment. I liked it.
I like Curtis's take too, which I'll rephrase from a faith-based perspective.
Who are the rulers of this world? The powers and principalities of darkness who stand against the Kingdom of God?
You see the government in this role, and certainly, at some times and places, it has fulfilled this role. I've seen unrestricted capitalists, the robber barons of the past and present, as sometimes fulfilling this role too.
It seems remarkable to me that you can speak with such evident esteem of Madison, and his wisdom and foresight in shaping our government according to the principle of checks and balances, and not see that checks and balances are at least as important in the market as they are in government. It seems to me that of all the ways to limit the powers and principalities of this world, having them limit one another through a systems of checks and balances, is the most elegant and reliable.
Yet in the name of a false freedom (and I agree fully with Curtis's analysis here), you'd throw away the checks and balances on the wealthy. This isn't conservatism, it is naïvety.
I'm glad James chimed in. I suppose I see the left as the great monolith (it's certainly been the rabble at least since the Fr. Revolution that has done the most damage to countries. I don't want Obama to have government at his command. That's what the Tea Party has been about.
I see Obama as wishing to enslave America, to destroy all sources of opposition, and to rule without any checks and balances whatsoever. He doesn't believe the judicial branch should have any say over whether his stealthcare law is constitutional. He proposes laws when it's not his business to do that, thus moving into the legislative branch as well.
Lincoln said in an 1854 speech in Peoria, Il:
"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."
I see good jobs as something to compete for, not something that should be doled out to political favorites, or to be given as set-asides.
Healthcare is something to worry about, but it ought to cmoe as a bnous from certain specific jobs, that we then compete for. I believe in meritocracy.
I don't have a pension. Most of the pension systems of higher education have vanished.
They still exist in the high school system.
I doubt if much of anything will be left for anyone in California. They will have to let go of the entire system.
The place is way too utopian, and their debt is out of control.
New York, the other big blue state, is somewhat more realistic. I think Cuomo will begin to tackle the huge budget crisis.
At present the wealthy (the top 3% of the country) pay more than half the taxes.
The bottom 50% pay nothing.
Most of the poorest are poor for various reasons but one of the worst is that they don't stay married. This means they are paying for two houses, or two apartments, and they don't pool resources. The kids who come up in those situations are doubly or triply poor.
People who stay married and pull together can always get rich in this country. Asians come here with nothing and within ten years are usually quite wealthy. But their divorce rate is 2%.
So the idea is to get one person into a job with good healthcare, and get the other person into a hig risk entreprenurial situation. America has always been great because of its entrepreneurs.
The Democrats want to kill the entrepreneurs and give their money to bums.
but real happiness has to do with taking one's talent and doing one's most with it.
If everything you do just gets taxed to give to people who just want to sit on their duff and watch Tv while chowing down on supersized burgers so that they grow to unheard of dimensions, I don't see the point of anyone working any more.
Obama even wants to take the money from doctors away, so there is no incentive to be a doctor.
I have no idea what he's thinking, but whatever it is it's going to wreck the country. We have to get that mindless parasite out ASAP.
He doesn't really have ideas. He mimics people who do, and many people have been taken in by this. I think his greatest talent is for mimicry.
Dear DeLater:
I'm never sure whether or not to be honored by your engagement, since it's almost uniformly offered in the spirit of condescension and contempt. Nevertheless, I wouldn't bother to post here if I weren't game enough to interact with people, no matter how unreceptive they may seem to ideas other than those they habitually regard as inviolable.
Kirby's scant paragraphs on "freedom" from the conservative side of the aisle invited nothing. My short diatribe was offered in response to the accrued backlog of Kirby's assertions over the last few years, and depended upon that memory (archive). It would be a bit much to expect anyone to be responsible for that much history, but my remarks were addressed to him, not his other readers, such as yourself.
Kirby has carried the conservative standard regarding government regulation, comprehensive health coverage, environmental safeguards, financial laissez-faire, and so forth, in many cases during this period. In debate, you get what you deserve in terms of the complexity or "nuance" (as you put it) of response. If you throw out proverbs, you can't expect well-constructed arguments in return.
Freedom is a very complex concept in the social and political realms, I'm sure you would agree. It wasn't appropriate to imagine that I would attempt to address it in a comment box. One important freedom, of course, would be the words you and I exchange here, or freedom of speech. That freedom is subject to Kirby's indulgence, the permission of the Blogging site, and to the other provisions of censure which are embodied in our laws at various levels. But it goes as far as the law will allow, which is probably further in this country, than in any other on the planet.
My recitation of random examples of abuse or excess by the interests of capital is pretty generic, and not comprehensive or buttressed by examples or argument. I wouldn't engage in a "jihad" since I'm not a Muslim. If you live in the South I could invoke, for instance, the KKK in your name, which you might find as offensive as I find the jihad remark. But let it pass. That's a cheap debater's swipe.
My wife works in the defense establishment, and I assure you I have no particular interest in discrediting the value of our national defense, or in the real benefits inherent in an effective military. The unwise use or misuse of our military, however, is at least as damaging as any wasteful expenditure our government makes, and has made over the last six decades since WWII. There are few who would disagree with that claim. Even you, I would presume. If I could have back the dollars we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan (dollars wasted, I would argue, in the long run), we'd not be in the fiscal pickle we presently find ourselves.
But your post was not in the distinct sense argumentative, it was simply a casual defense of Kirby. Kirby, I think, doesn't need defending. You should speak for yourself.
So what's YOUR definition of freedom?
It's unlikely that KO has even bothered with the cliffsnotes to Locke's 2nd Treatise (of Civ. Govt?)---had he done so, he'd discover one, Locke opposed the Tory ideology across the board. He supportered the popular vote, detested the magistrates, and massive estates of Anglo royals.
Locke did not approve of religious fundamentalists, aka enthusiasts, either. Voltaire and the french encyclopedists--and Jefferson & Co-classical democrats- are the sons of Locke, not the GOP (tho modern US politics has little or no relation to the politics of 1800). Locke also supported abolition (at least in theory). Smith often echoes Lockean themes such as the labor theory, and also argued for restraints on capitalism (ie, intervention when needed).
The Austrian creeps Hayek,etc are not Lockeans. They're like...Ayn Randians and libertarians. Some libertarians assume since Locke protected property rights he was conservative. Nyet. Locke's talk of rights was democratic--the small farmer/artisan was entitled to his product of his own hands. And has a right to vote. Entitlement's now a dirty word.
So in that sense Faville's not entirely mistaken. LOckean freedom and rights did not equal vegass liberatarianism, or the "just win baybe" ideology of a piece of mierda such as Ayn Rand.
Curtis, my other possible post for today was to wonder if Bush's push at Afghanistan and Iraq, and the consequent weak democracies which have gotten a start there (9 million new readers among women in Afghanistan is NOTHING to sneeze at in my opinion!), or the outpouring of new parties in Iraq (no one said a revolution would be a picnic without ants in the potato salad! or at least SOME lightning!), but it does make me wonder:
The uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere (even Iran may yet go back to being a pluralisticalalitarian democracy!), -- did Bush 2 set this off, the way Reagan set off the uprising behind the Iron Curtain.
Sometimes it may just require a new vocabulary: someone saying, your countries are garbage and do not entertain human rights. What are those, praytell, the nightmarish presses in such countries ask, and then it's already too late.
The house of cards has entertained the joker in the pack: human rights, which really means, BABY JESUS, who announced that the weak would take over the world.
The Romans scoffed at this and pounded Him to the cross.
But who had the last laugh?
(My main contention about the left is the same as that of James, so I appreciate his coverage of my politics, since he's so much more articulate than I am in many ways: he has a far greater grasp of the tradition of the right, having spent more of his life soaking up their vocabulary!).
I am a neophyte, a kind of pink-belt rightie struggling to get my kicks down pat, but he's a black belt.
At any rate, let's do hear your definition of freedom, James.
I liked very much that of Emmett Tyrell: freedom is not merely the freedom to not go hungry (even pigs have that, but they are destined for slaughter, and have no rights much), humans should have the right to make and sell according to their own designs (within the law -- meaning you shouldn't sell stuff that kills your neighbor -- shouldn't sell drugs or drug paraphernalia, for example).
The government does have the right to regulate commerce to the extent that it is fair and square goods, and is what it says it is.
People shouldn't be able to sell black market paraphernalia, or stuff that is designedly ungood for the folks.
NB: Although I am often sticking up for the right, I am myself dead center or just a bit on the authoritarian side when it comes to policy, but am in some ways still on the left with regard to freedom of speech except when it's completely witless, or requires the rest of us hours and hours to figure out like the demented scribblings of J.
(He got through yesterday by accident, but his copious rejoinders since then make me wonder if he isn't almost entirely a scrambled egg trying to present himself as whole.)
This is one of J's most recent babblings, more coherent than usual, but wrong I think in every detail. It just takes so much time to take all this stuff apart. Hayek for example really liked the English tradition and deliberately draws on it, citing not only Smith but Locke at many key points.
Locke is a fascinating entity who was indeed deeply involved with the Baptists (he WAS a Baptist, according to new research referred to in Kloppenberg's READING OBAMA -- unfortunately he doesn't offer a citation!).
I wonder why not.
Still I think if J can just be USEFUL here and there, I will let him through.
He's the ONLY person I've ever banned, and the whole moderation thing is simply an elaborate mechanism meant to keep him out of these conversations which he can't seem to enter without asking for duels (which are illegal in the USA), or linking anyone and everyone to either Ayn Rand or to fundamentalism -- reckless and useless assertions that simply derail the discourse here and create endless time-consuming rejoinders that get us nowhere.
Almost the entire conservative movement denies Ayn Rand's influence at this point. She was selfish.
Conservatives are often ballyhooed as selfish, but it's just an annoyance, as when they are simply dismissed as racist.
Conservatives ARE interested in freedom, and to some extent freedom from government control (especially in its more sinister Orwellian disguises), but it's a very small group that takes anything from Ayn Rand except a headache (among other problems is her wooden prose).
I do like that she massacred Stalin & co., but she was herself a creep. We've all said this many times here but J. doesn't listen. He's a broken record.
(My above post refers to the 4:51 post of J, which I let through only because it opens up so many bad ideas from J, which in turn are apparently from some edition of Cliffsnotes -- which edition and which copyright are left to the mind to guess.)
J writes that Locke disapproved of religious enthusiasts. I often wish he would quote what he's saying instead of summarizing (I don't trust his summarizations). I am not a Locke scholar, but have read most of the principle works, and have on hand some of the more current criticism. When I reviewed James Kloppenberg's book Reading Obama a few weeks back, he mentioned that Locke is now thought to be much more religious thanks to the uncovering of private correspondence that indicates how close he was to the Baptists. If anyone is an enthusiast, it would be the Baptists. Kloppenberg's book is generally very well-referenced, but I couldn't find a reference for the Locke-religion claim. I wrote to Kloppenberg about two hours ago, and he wrote back within ten minutes:
Dear Professor Olson,
Thanks for your message. The scholarship on Locke’s religiosity began to gather momentum decades ago with John Dunn’s seminal study of Locke. The best recent entry in this literature of which I am aware is Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought.
Best wishes,
Jim
It turns out I have the second volume on my shelf. The first page is about how Waldron intends to trace the notion of equality in Locke's principle texts from within a religious rubric which he thinks will tell us much about the way the concept is being used today from within a largely secular context.
At any rate, Kloppenberg is great for writing back and giving us these two texts (as a Harvard historian, I'm sure he had many better things to do than write to me, much less so quickly).
So, I'm not certain I can sit right down and read through these books. I do have about 200 student papers to read, and had better get at it.
But I might be able to read at least the first chapter this week.
If we wish to go beyond a mouldy Cliffs Notes edition and get into the latest scholarship, I suggest we start with Waldron and move back toward Dunn over the next few weeks.
Expect a review of Waldron's book within the next five weeks. And a review of Dunn over the next four or five months.
This is almost very important people. If we're going to claim that Locke is foundational to LS, then we have to read the latest scholarship, and see what it says.
the Marxists of course hate Locke because among other things he's rather open-minded about how gets to talk in government. They really hate that. They want to close out all others, and silence them, considering themselves the PROGRESSIVES.
This disgusting notion that one can appoint oneself as a progressive is beyond belief, and is a totally Pelagian concept.
But let's read Waldron on Locke, and see if he can also be read to support what Emmett Tyrell considers to be Conservativism: the enjoyment of making products and selling them, or providing service for a fee. To me, that's the beginning of the Protestant notion of a calling.
Just sitting around collecting a check while watching Jerry Springer is the communist version of human happiness.
Kirby, this is my frustrated face...
Saying that Obama wishes to enslave America...blagh.
You're smarter than that kind of shiat.
It'd be nice if sometimes you talked about specific policies in real terms instead of just parroting back the framing of the neo-right.
M Faville, you are quite game enough for posting on Kirby's site, and by doing so I should think you'd realise your remarks would be open to comment by others who frequent this site as well (such as stu, who approved your remarks). As you must know, emails and such better accommodate "a deux" exchanges.
I'll agree that Kirby's venue doesn't well lend itself to formal debates and extended development of specific issues, but rather, on political issues it tends to reflect attitudes, general approaches, and reactions to current events, all of which result in informal exchanges and ripostes to stated opinions. But I'll agree that this is an important manifestation of freedom of speech we share.
However, I expect we disagree on whether this constitutional freedom should extend to corporations (as reflected in the recent SCOTUS decision--and remember, the NYT as well as the Sierra Club are corporations), but it certainly includes lawful "bad speech," e.g., the leftists from Common Cause exercising their right to assemble (though there were a handful of arrests for minor offences) and picketing the Koch brothers' recent meeting who were caught on video advocating the lynching of Justice Thomas et al. This is the sort of scandalous rubbish the major media mouthpieces were hoping to throw at the millions of supporters who've attended Tea Party events but were unable to substantiate.
I applaud the Tea Party supporters for their spontaneous enthusiasm, their restraint in exercising their right to lawful and orderly assembly to address grievances, and their determination to oppose the political elites who are repeatedly lying to them, e.g., about the costs and consequences of the new health care system. While this doesn't define freedom in the abstract, it seems to me a clear manifestation of it.
Bret, what do you think of the massive Federal deficit that has doubled in the last ten years, and continuing to borrow TRILLIONS of dollars from Red China?
Isn't this putting ourselves in hock to a foreign power (and not a particularly pleasant one?).
Slavery is PERHAPS too harsh a term, but I don't know what else to call it.
I wish he'd just let go of Obamacare.
We can't afford it.
I'm no expert in budget slashing, but Obamacare seems like an easy thing to let go of.
Next, seal the border with Mexico.
We have to get this house in order.
James, what would you slash in order to get the budget under control? what ten precise things do you think need to be done, and which you'd want a president to do?
(I'm not going to ask the Democrats because they're presumably satisfied with the direction of sailing into increasing debt that the CIC has set for the country over the next ten years.)
I do think there must be an alternative to saddling our kids with trillions of dollars in debt to China of all places.
Based on this chart I would do the following:
Repudiate the debt. We are the moneyholders of the world and still the largest economy (unless you count the EU as one economy, but they don't). Folks will just have to deal.
Eliminate all discretionary spending. The Department of Education and the Sierra Club can find their own money.
Send Medicare/aid to the States. States can fund/do what they want. If folks don't like their state's medicare/aid system, they can move to another state.
Tighten up the Defense Budget and end all silly "nation-building" wars. We've sacrificed far too much on the altar of "universal human rights."
That way you can cut the budget to about 1/3 of its current size and entirely eliminate individual income tax.
Kirby,
What you (and much of the tea party) fail to understand or acknowledge is that the driving motivation behind PPACA (to use the correct designator for the recently pasted Health Care Reform law) was to slow the growth of the federal deficit. The fraction of the federal budget (and indeed, of the national GDP) that goes to health care has been skyrocketing, and PPACA represents a systematic attempt to get a handle on these costs, and so fits within Obama's general policy framework of getting the federal budget under control, and back on a sustainable footing.
As I see it, there are basically three arguments against PPACA.
The first is a libertarian argument, advanced on this forum mostly consistently by JADL, which holds that mandated coverage is inconsistent with the notion of personal liberty contained in the Constitution. This is not a crazy argument, although I think it was lost a very long time ago (c.f., the Civil War draft).
The second is a budget argument. "We can't afford this." This is simply false, and this is why the Republican majority in the House specifically exempted their efforts to repeal PPACA from CBO analysis and procedural rules that make it more difficult to pass legislation that tends to increase the budget. The truth is that PPACA will reduce the budget deficit, and that repeal would be a budgetary disaster.
The third argument is that Obama's a boogieman, and we have to associate as many things as we can fight with him personally. This is not really an argument against PPACA per se, but rather is a political calculation based on the notion that unified obstruction can be used to frame Obama as outside of the American consensus.
The third point explains the general stance of the Republican Party from 2008 through 2010, but it has become untenable with the Republican majority in the House, and this is immediately visible in a toning down of the rhetoric by House leaders against Obama. The simple reality here is that with the majority comes a responsibility to participate constructively in government. So, even though Kirby continues to push this point very hard, it's something that the Republican Party (if not the Tea Party) has recognized that it needs to move past.
What a responsible Republican Party (i.e., a party that was true to its ideology, and principally driven by the desire to advance its nation's interest) would do in the current situation is fairly clear. It would develop and propose an alternative to the PPACA which provided equal or greater long-term savings, but which was somehow "more Republican" in its conception. It has, in fact, promised to do exactly this, although the "replace" part of the execution has been notably lacking. The problems here are (a) that having demonized HCR and enabled the Tea Party, it's hard for the Republicans now to make the concession that PPACA was in fact a responsible policy initiative intended to advance US interests through deficit reduction; and (b) the existing PPACA reflects so many Republican ideas already that any ideological adjustment of would be essentially inconsequential, exposing the pre-election stance of the Republican Party as the cynical political posturing that it in fact was.
And, as usual, Kirby's problem isn't just that he's parroting Fox News talking points, but that's he's lost track of the conversation, and is in fact parroting Fox News talking points that are three months out of date. This isn't to say that Beck isn't still pushing them, but it is worth noting that Beck's jihad is inconsistent with current Republican Party aims, claims, and policies.
Kirby, there are a number of plans to reduce federal spending by amounts significant enough to move us toward a balanced budget in future years, on the conservative or libertarian side from Congressman Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" to the Cato Institute's "Handbook for Policymakers" (here: http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-4.pdf).
Needless to say, they don't factor in the enormous price of the new health care system, or wasteful federal "high-speed" rail projects, "stimuli" (union and other constituency payoffs for which in return the Ds get political contributions),crony-capitalist "bailouts,"
high-cost, uneconomical "green-energy" schemes, many cost-inefficient and environmentally-unsound recycling make-work programmes, and other federal spending the President and Ds are pleased to euphemise as "investments."
Some proposed cuts are eliminating farm subsidies, privatising AMTRAK, and eliminating the Department of Education. But since the SS system, Medicare, and Medicaid entitlements are key to reducing federal spending, other proposals include indexing initial SS payments to changes in prices rather than wages and providing for a system of personal retirement accounts (currently available to federal employees), increasing premiums and deductibles for Medicare B, allowing for individual medical savings accounts, and transferring Medicaid payments to states in the form of block grants. Eliminating taxpayers' subsidies of the CPB and Planned Parenthood wouldn't be a huge savings, but they're long overdue. States, virtually all of which have balanced budget amendments, are only now having to reconsider the enormous costs of their lavish public employee pensions and benefits, which will have to be renegotiated and reduced to gain a foothold on fiscal responsibility.
These are proposals, not finished programmes, so each cost-savings measure would have to be discussed and debated in great detail, but so far the Obama administration has been unwilling to treat alternatives with the attention they deserve.
The first is a libertarian argument, advanced on this forum mostly consistently by JADL, which holds that mandated coverage is inconsistent with the notion of personal liberty contained in the Constitution. This is not a crazy argument, although I think it was lost a very long time ago (c.f., the Civil War draft).
Because the war on slavery was a war for slavery of a different stripe.
GM,
Because the war on slavery was a war for slavery of a different stripe.
An interesting thought, but hardly one that places the South in a better light than the North. The South drafted too, and indeed, drafted first, although it exempted major slaveholders for most of the war, hence, the standard confederate private's lament, "A rich man's war, but a poor man's fight." It is scarcely surprising that a state devoted to enslaving one population would enslave another, although this is a theoretical analysis that escaped me until you so kindly pointed it out.
And had the North not drafted, then the separation between North and South would have been made permanent, meaning that slavery in the narrowest and most degrading sense, and not merely hyperbolically expanded sense that you give it, would have persisted into the present.
Why is the budget deficit going so skyhigh? What can we then do to turn it around?
Borrowing from an abusive country like China which is the sole client for many even worse states (North Korea, Myanmar, for example, and a major supporter of the worst aspects of Sudan and Zimbabwe), plus they've kept Taiwan out of the UN and Tibet from sovereignty it seems quite criminally complaisant to continue to do business with them, much less have dinner with their Fuhrer, and eat crow.
China is a human rights disaster.
I don't think we can just deny our debt without complete loss of our credit rating around the world.
James' proposals: cut the department of education, among others, it's hard to know what this would cut in terms of actual costs.
Curtis wants to get out of foreign wars, but God knows what this would cost us in the long run. The festering jihads in the Middle East that led to 9/11 already cost us trillions.
This state is in horrible shape thanks still to 9/11.
It's ahrd to know what Cuomo will cut.
Part of the big problem with stealthcare is the massive questions still surrounding its constitutionality (two states have ruled it unconstitutional and another 26 states have asked their attorney generals to sign up against it).
Maybe Obama can arrange to have a slam dunk at SCOTUS but it's not clear if he can do it.
The hidden costs are still there -- about 900,000 people will leave their jobs that right now they only keep for health insurance it was said on Stuart Varney's program. With free healthcare, many companies will lose their best employees.
We still don't really know about all the adjustments that will happen.
Britain at one point nearly collapsed and was said to have an economy weaker than that of Jamaica.
Part of fear of Obama is that we still don't know who he is. He has no track record to speak of. Some years with ACORN and twenty years in a funny church. A couple of vague memoirs. Weird parents.
He and his wife went to good schools, but neither one has ever run a business. Even to run a business and do it badly, as Bush did, means you have SOME experience in that area.
I just don't know what Obama is about even after all I've read about him.
He just seems to be guessing.
I think McCain would have been the better choice. Choosing Obama was like choosing the question mark in the candy machine.
I don't think we'll know what we got until after another twenty years.
Obama is a very secretive person, and he lies. He says one thing and does another. He has a whole wall of support from the MSM which tries to shield him from serious inquiry.
The biggest costs in the budget are SS and Medicare. I think those are probably untouchable as is DEFENSE. So I don't think there is anything much to cut except a few symbolic things. We might get less expensive monitoring of salmon, for example.
I don't have any further clarity.
I do think the emmett Tyrell distinction is a good one: that we ouight to keep as much free in the mercantile sector as possible, and that that is conservativism.
Socialism is th wrong road -- because it leads to slavery, or at least serfdom, as Hayek put it in the Road to Serfdom.
There's something festive about the Serfs Up notions of the Tea Party. (Serfs Up is an old phrase of a funny anarcho-sadist named Bob Black.)
Emmett Tyrell's has a brief Wikipedia entry. He apparently was raised in Chicago before attending the U. of Indiana. Lots of people from Chicago attend the U. of Indiana, apparently, although I odn't know the exact percentage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Tyrrell
Kirby,
Why is the budget deficit going so skyhigh? What can we then do to turn it around?
Why the deficit?
First answer: The Bush tax cuts. For GWB, tax cuts were the answer to good times, and the answer to bad times. But the current deficit, to a first approximation, is the integrated difference between Clinton-era income taxes and Bush-era income taxes.
Second answer: Fighting wars off the budget. The D's did in in Vietnam, the R's in Iraq and Afghanistan. You should give BHO credit for bring the wars "on budget," so that their budgetary effect is apparent, and not simple swept under the rug.
How to fix it?
There's no magic here. The deficit is expenses minus income. Bush greatly expanded expenses, and greatly reduced income. The current deficit is Republican policy, and its going to take some effort to fix, especially given that actual tax increases are very hard to pass. But I expect we'll see one in 2013.
If I were king? I'd kill the Bush tax cuts, and I'd limit DOD operations and management expenditures to their personnel costs. I'd get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly as possible. I'd add financial sector taxes intended to (1) recover the Bush-Paulson TARP gambling gift, and (2) set long term financial sector taxes at a level that corresponds to a reasonable insurance premium against the kind of systematic liability that only the government can insure against. Oh, and I'd go after those who benefited illegally. Whether taking every penny they have from them would reduce the deficit or not, it would establish the principle of responsibility.
And far from cutting the Department of Education, I'd invest in it, realising that our only long-term hope for maintaining a competitive economy against China (which is massively investing in education) is to do likewise, to preserve the lead where we have it.
I don't think we can just deny our debt without complete loss of our credit rating around the world.
Exactly right. You get sanity points here, GM loses them.
James' proposals: cut the department of education, among others, it's hard to know what this would cut in terms of actual costs.
There's a great interactive graphic here. Short answer: not so much, and only at a great cost to our national competitiveness.
With free healthcare, many companies will lose their best employees.
Given that the health mandate is largely provisioned through employer mandates, this is an indefensible statement.
I just don't know what Obama is about even after all I've read about him.
Then you're taking council of your fears, and ignoring reality. BHO is a policy-oriented center-left politician. A black Clinton without the sex scandal. This is evidently more than you can deal with.
Obama is a very secretive person, and he lies.
Bullshit, Kirby. Bullshit. And you should know better.
The biggest costs in the budget are SS and Medicare.
True enough. But they're not paid for out of general revenue—they're paid for out of separate taxes. You can't cut them without cutting the taxes associated with them, a simple political fact that the Ron Paul's of the world ignore. And you can't simply cancel the US dept to the SSA as GWB proposed without going into default, which you've already taken off the table.
I think those are probably untouchable as is DEFENSE.
Yes. Maybe even more so.
The solution is to be honest about our accounting. To recognize that expenditures are taxes, whether they're levied in the present or in the future. Of course, by this standard, GWB has been responsible for the largest tax increases since WWII. Deal with it.
Stu--
It was a jab, surely.
But there ain't no way slavery would have continued. It was getting far too expensive.
And England would have put pressure on the CSA to end slavery.
Besides, Lee would have been the second president of the Confederacy and he was not a big fan.
O's being black doesn't bother anyone on the right. It's the socialism.
Everyone liked Condi Rice. Same color, but she had a classier mind, and wasn't a socialist.
I think this is a dodge from the left, or a tactic in dodgeball. He's hors de combat on account of his color. Condi wasn't, on account of hers.
These people are the same as everyone else.
They have to be able to be discussed.
And we have to be able to be disgusted with their policies, and their extremely suspicious backgrounds, and their real agendas.
Obama lied about his campaign financing. McCain was in the prisoner's dilemma, and Obama took advantage of McCain's good word, and burned him.
That's just one of thousands of lies.
Reagan also liked the tax cuts. It got the country going, but it upped the deficit.
We seem now to have the worst of both worlds. The private sector is barely moving, the government is broke, and we seem to be in the doldrums. Much of this is because healthcare is so dubious, both constitutionally and financially. If Obama was less stubborn, he'd give it up and let the country get moving again.
GM,
But there ain't no way slavery would have continued. It was getting far too expensive.
This is highly conjectural.
The confederacy was founded on slavery, c.f., Stephens' cornerstone speech: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition." The Confederate Constitution stated, "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed." "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired." "No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due."
Moreover, southern whites did not believe that they could peacefully coexist with freed blacks, and often framed slavery in terms of "protecting" the slaves. The basic social reality of the south was that it possessed a large, enslaved population of blacks, and it believed that only through force would the relative position of the whites over the blacks be maintained. Slavery was both an economic system, and a form of privatized oppression. Indeed, if you look at the south post-reconstruction, pre-civil rights, what you see is a de facto transfer of oppression of the blacks from private hands (i.e., slavery) to the government (Jim Crow). In effect, the southern white attitude that the negro population must be controlled didn't change so much as the means used to do so adapted to new circumstances.
And England would have put pressure on the CSA to end slavery.
England was a de facto supporter of the confederacy through the war, for the simple but compelling reason that English mills were dependent on Southern cotton. This kind of commercial relationship makes the application of political pressure extremely problematic. By way of illustration, how is that Saudi democratization process going? How about human rights in China?
Besides, Lee would have been the second president of the Confederacy and he was not a big fan.
This might have happened, although it's less than completely clear. Lee was already showing symptoms of heart failure during the Gettysburg campaign. Jeff Davis's term as CSA President would have run until February 1867 (the CSA had a six-year, nonrenewable term for President), by which time Lee was a very sick man. He died in October 1870, so even on your time line, he'd have had 2 1/2 years as President, to do something that would have required a constitutional amendment, and therefore the concurrence of 2/3ths of the state legislatures. There were 11 states in the confederacy. He needs 8 states to get to 2/3rds. Looking at the list, it's borderline plausible that Lee could have convinced Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and maybe (granting an extreme stretch) Texas and Georgia to go along with emancipation. Now, you tell me where you think he gets three more votes out of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas, and I'll try not to laugh.
Esp. after the fighting they would not have given up so easily on the slaves. I appreciate the precise details of the wording of the Confederate Constitution that Stu dredges up here.
I also intend to get around to reading the hyperlinks Stu provided earlier in the discussion on the budget. I haven't had a minute all day except to talk a bit about Obama as a liar. I tend to see everything he says as fudging or slightly pushing a truth one way or another if not an outright lie.
I think this is how many people hear him.
He's very fast and very fluent, a very sophisticated person, but also a sophist. It's very difficult to discover his real commitments as a result. He is willing to throw Reverend Wright under the bus. He will throw his grandmother under the bus.
This is perhaps pragmatism a la Dewey and James (that's how Kloppenberg sees him). I see it as a lack of principle, a lack of true commitments.
I think D'Souza MAY BE RIGHT that his real commitment is to his father's postcolonial agenda, and that he is using a Saul Alinsky approach to pushing it through (whatever works), but nothing's clear to me about Obama. To me at least he's an enigma wrapped in a highly confusing cloud of rhetoric.
This is very helpful to him, or was, but is rapidly becoming his downfall.
Aside from the Democratic party regulars, confidence in Obama is way down.
No one knows who he is or what he stands for. Even Bill Maher doesn't think he says what he really believes, but only what is pragmatic (i.e., he will pretend to be a Christian as long as it gets him somewhere with the hoi polloi).
In general, I see the Republicans as much more out there about what they really believe. Not just Lincoln, but Hoover, and even Nixon. They lay their cards on the table.
With Democrats, because they have a much less united group, they need to obfuscate a lot more. Obama can't really say if he's for gay marriage or not, because once he does he might lose some of his African-American base (who are largely against gay marriage), or the other side -- since about two-thirds of gays are Democrats.
It's an enormous problem of juggling when you're a Democrat.
For the Republicans, you just say what you think, and you can be for Capitalism, and for free enterprise, and it's a lot more direct, and lot less vexing.
Republicans have always been the party of moral clarity ever since Lincoln.
Transportation Office of the Secretary is getting a 4000% increase for instance. So even when I see this, I don't know quite what it means. What's for what.
Did anybody else look through th eNYT pie chart that Stu provided in the hyperlink?
I'd be interested to see what anybody else could parse out of it. As I went through it I see increases in almost every area.
Even the DOD is largely gaining except in a few comparatively small areas.
One way to fix this is with a larger revenue stream.
I no longer trust the CBO because they waffled on the cost of healthcare. Until the thing was passed they had one number, and then as soon as it was passed they changed their numbers.
Now they say it will cost more money to cut it again.
It seems that someone in that office is getting the directives from the White House. Are they appointees in that office, or do they have standing like the Supreme Court?
I'd say if they are appointees they are just a sock puppet for the president.
Kirby,
Let me address a few of your points.
Aside from the Democratic party regulars, confidence in Obama is way down.
OK, let's look at Pollster.com, o.k.? BHO's approval ratings (by party affiliation) are 84.7/12.5 among Democrats, 48.2/44.4 among Independents, and 12.3/84.2 among Republicans. So what we see here is a essentially a split down the ideological middle, which favors BHO 49.3/42.8, because more folks identify with the Democrats (32.2%) than with the Republicans (24.9%). I know this must kill you. Independents, as usual, have the plurality (37.3%), and this is trending up a bit at the expense of both parties as we move out of the electoral season.
So your remark that "confidence .. is way down" is a bit hard to justify, even within the Independents. What is true is that confidence in Obama among Republicans is down, but this reflects the herd mentality of the minority party.
With Democrats, because they have a much less united group, they need to obfuscate a lot more.
There is truth to this. The Democratic party embraces diversity. Whereas todays Republican party does not, c.f., the decision of so many conservative stars to boycott CPAC over its inclusion of gays.
Obama can't really say if he's for gay marriage or not, because once he does he might lose some of his African-American base (who are largely against gay marriage), or the other side -- since about two-thirds of gays are Democrats.
True enough. What I don't see is how you can observe this, and still maintain a model of left-wing group-think. What you're arguing for here is a monolithic vision of the Republican party, where everyone thinks exactly the same thing, and divergent views aren't tolerated. All while you've argued in the past that you rejected the left because it doesn't tolerate divergent views. So now, it's a virtue? I'm confused, but not nearly as confused as I think you are.
For the Republicans, you just say what you think,
Indeed. And I hope you keep saying it, because honestly, that's the Democratic party's greatest tactical weapon: the Republican penchant for saying what they mean, a.k.a., foot-in-mouth disease.
Republicans have always been the party of moral clarity ever since Lincoln.
Sure. Homophobia. Ethnophobia. Class warfare. Vitter's diapers and Foley's pages. TARP, and the decision not to prosecute financial firms for gross malfeasance. The invasion of Iraq. The war on the EPA, the war against climate science. Do you know that South Dakota is considering today a law to allow a self-defense justification for the cold-blooded murder of abortion providers?
If this is the moral clarity you want, you can have it. I'll take constructive ambiguity any day over this.
Kirby, President Obama's budget proposal just released nearly doubles federal spending from just a few years ago during the Bush administration (from 2 to nearly 4 trillion dollars).
I don't know for how many more years the Ds can shamelessly try to get away with blaming President Bush for their own disastrous and irresponsible profligacy. And contra stu, most of the TARP loans seem to have been repaid with interest, so that the initial 300 billion dollar bailout will actually cost only 25 billion by CBO estimates (and even less according to Obama's own Treasury Secretary). Compare that cost to the cost of the Obama-era "stimuli," "investments," and bailouts.
The Ds simply went on a profligate spending spree to reward their constituents and to create more of them in order to ensure their political dominance in future and then blamed their budget-busting deficits on Bush and the Rs. And remember that candidate Obama confessed that he'd rather redistribute wealth than allow tax cuts that would actually increase deficit-reducing federal revenues. More stealth socialism to follow, if not now by legislative mandate, then by executive decree.
Even dependable liberal cheerleaders for Obama, e.g., at the Washington Post, have scored his ignoring of his own debt commission's proposed recommendations for reductions in federal spending and reform of entitlement systems.
Yet I was a bit surprised that stu should resort to the shabby D tactic of mentioning the President's race (which the pro-Obama Ds used just as shabbily against the Clintons in the campaign for the nomination) as a possible source for your scepticism about his programmes. Still, it's only one indication that the Ds are running out of steam with which to power their propaganda loco-motive.
At any rate, a pretty spot-on assessment of the Obama budget proposal (with a few slight agreements with it) may be found here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/259759/budget-bust-editors
Kirby,
Transportation Office of the Secretary is getting a 4000% increase for instance. So even when I see this, I don't know quite what it means. What's for what.
This is Obama's high speed rail initiative. You've spoken well of it in the past, here it is.
I'd be interested to see what anybody else could parse out of it. As I went through it I see increases in almost every area.
Look at the color coding. Green means increase, pink/red means decrease. There are modest (inflationary) increases in HHS (mostly medicare/medicaid), Defense (operations and maintenance, personnel). Increases that are significantly over inflation are in interest (not surprising, given debt growth), SSA (not surprising, given increased retirement tempo). That covers a lot of area, and there's not much discretionary there. There are big cuts in Labor (presumably centered on reduced unemployment insurance expenditures), and the IRS (which is a bit hard for me to figure out, although it might reflect the winding down of the census).
One way to fix this is with a larger revenue stream.
Yup. Which is to say, sooner or later our taxes will have to catch up with our expenditures. That's why I think the only reasonable position is that tax cuts are political theater, and have nothing to do with sound policy.
I no longer trust the CBO because they waffled on the cost of healthcare. Until the thing was passed they had one number, and then as soon as it was passed they changed their numbers.
Now they say it will cost more money to cut it again.
There were lots of adjustments to the law, and lots of requests by congressmen on both sides to run scenarios under different hypotheses. What you're seeing as waffling is simply the fact that scoring against different inputs (i.e., assumptions about economic growth, tax policy, etc.) going forward resulted in different outputs.
It seems that someone in that office is getting the directives from the White House. Are they appointees in that office, or do they have standing like the Supreme Court?
I'd say if they are appointees they are just a sock puppet for the president.
You know, it's not that hard to look up. The director of the CBO is jointly appointed by the Speaker of the House and the Present Pro Tempere of the Senate. The director serves a four-year, renewable term. The present director is Douglas Elmendorf, and filled the remainder of Peter Orzag's term before being reappointed at the beginning of this year, which is to say, he was nominated by both Boehner (R) and Reed (D) for his present term. Good luck fitting that into your narrative.
James, I really enjoyed the National Review article. It clarified a lot of things obscured by the NYT article and by Stu's stuff (including his attempt to argue that no one should question the president on anything on account of his color, and anyone who does is automatically a racist).
I liked the comments that came after the article too.
Especially the notion that an investment by definition means that you are getting a return on it. Or hoping to. Whereas spending is just that.
The claim that the Bush bailouts have all been paid back with the exception of 25 billion is quite different from the Trillion doled out by BHO, which went for wild things like the salt marsh harvest mouse in Pelosi's district.
I have no idea how that was supposedly an investment in American jobs unless now they're counting the employment of mice in the redistribution of monies and its payoffs.
Not sure in what sense you could say that an animal is employed, or employable.
As for moral clarity, I think Stu and all of us (with the possible exception of GM) would agree that slavery is a net evil, and has to be erased in America (there is still sexual slavery, but it isn't legal by any means). The moral clarity of the Republicans went against this.
Moral clarity on budget issues also has to come to the fore. we need to figure out what we are paying for, and where the money is coming from, and stop leaks into the pockets of predatory folks like ACORN.
We need clarity on who is a citizen and who isn't.
Only the Republicans are even thinking about that.
We need to decide once and for what a marriage is.
The language has to have clear moral force.
Otherwise we're going to end up with parachutists with fifty or more members jumping out of the sky with one insurance card for the lot of them.
Getting the war on to the budget is very important. This is something that Ron Paul has called for.
We also need an overall assessment of the business we're doing with China. It should be immoral or possibly illegal to do business with countries without a green light in terms of human rights.
Again, Republicans are leading the charge for moral clarity on that front.
I don't think we should be able to do business with Cuba. It's human rights abuses are way too far out there. Obama doesn't seem to care.
In terms of abortion, the degradation of human life must be stopped (and has to be done through the legislature). We can't leave enforcement of the border or other issues up to vigilantes. But this means clear moral definitions.
I don't think the Democrats can have clear moral yesses and nos any longer because too many of them have stopped believing in any and all sources of authority. Some still believe in the Bible, but it's a bizarre progressive Bible, that they've bowdlerized (most of St. Paul has gone out the window, for example).
What's left is some mumbling about change. Pelosi says don't look too closely. We'll see what the changes are and how they are going, and then we can talk about what we did, ok?
Not ok.
what I mean it was the moral clarity of the Republicans who abolished slavery in the CW.
Democrats went along with it, and thought it was somebody else's problem, must as they think about clitorectomy or women's rights in the Middle East.
Not my problem.
Human rights is costly, and there is a clear division within the Republican party on that front. Ron Paul wants to do the libertarian thing and pull back from any kind of engagement with the rest of the world, and just mind the shoppe.
That makes sense but only from the fiscal viewpoint.
I think America has to be a moral leader, too. This means we have to support free markets, and freedom of speech, and the other rights as declared in the UDHR around the world.
There are some points on which Democrats and Republicans agree: sexual slavery should be out, universal literacy in. But what are the mechanisms?
The UN doesn't really have a military. Originally they were slated to have an air force.
So that leaves economic embargoes. But Obama has dropped the embargo against Cuba, in spite of their human rights abuses. (4 years in prison if you own a computer not registered with the state. Only party members can have them. ...That's the tip of the iceberg... does Obama care? No, he just wants our medical system to be more like theirs.)
Stu--
Of course it's all conjecture.
And the Brits of the 1860s aren't the US of the 2010s.
We're not going to produce a Lord Cromer any time soon--no matter how much Egypt might need one.
JADL,
President Obama's budget proposal just released nearly doubles federal spending from just a few years ago during the Bush administration (from 2 to nearly 4 trillion dollars).
May we start here? Let's consider GWB 2008 US Budget request, for specificity. This was based on $2.7T income, $2.9T expenditures. You'll recall that the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not included in the budget, but instead were funded by special appropriations. FY2008 appropriations for this purpose were 190B, giving an overall budget (if we include the wars, so as to get a fair comparable) of $3.1T.
Against this, we have Mr. Obama's proposed budget of $3.7T, which has not yet been enacted into law. And as you know, President's budgets are often substantially modified (indeed, sometimes even ignored) by the congressional appropriation process. This is a 19.4% increase over Bush's 2008 proposal, which is substantial, but not even vaguely in the neighborhood of "nearly double." That's pretty shabby on your part.
If you're so eager to portray Obama's expenditures as pandering to his constituency, then you should be prepared to accept the parallel construction that Bush's tax cuts pandered to his constituency. It is the tax cuts which moved the US budget from Clinton-era surpluses to Bush-era deficits, and as I'm sure you'll admit, it is politically very difficult to increase taxes, even when they are very low by historical standards.
Kirby,
I really enjoyed the National Review article. It clarified a lot of things obscured by the NYT article and by Stu's stuff (including his attempt to argue that no one should question the president on anything on account of his color, and anyone who does is automatically a racist).
I said no such thing. Please retract this.
Moral clarity on budget issues also has to come to the fore. we need to figure out what we are paying for, and where the money is coming from, and stop leaks into the pockets of predatory folks like ACORN.
ACORN is dead, killed by Brietbart's lies. This is well established. Maybe it's time to stop beating it's corpse, and move on to the present.
GM,
Of course it's all conjecture.
And the Brits of the 1860s aren't the US of the 2010s.
You still need three votes...
South Carolina
Mississippi
Florida
Alabama
Louisiana
Arkansas
I don't think you have one. Not in 1870. Not in 1970.
JADL,
Just to follow up: a 19.4% increase over the course of four years is an annualized growth rate of 4.5%/year.
Now, just for giggles, in 2002, GWB's budget was $2.0T, and war costs (off budget) were $33B, which isn't significant. So... thats a 55% increase in budgets (not including the war) through the 6 middle years of the Bush administration, which is an annual growth rate of 7.5% in expenditures.
Yeah. BHO has "increased" the annual growth rate of the federal budget from 7.5%/year to 4.5%/year. I guess the end times really are upon us.
If Stu is right about the wars and their costs, and that it was in by special appropriation, and if Obama is folding that in, then that seems like a fairly good account of why the budget hasn't doubled. Do you accept that, James?
ACORN itself went out of business, but has resurged under new names. Wikipedia has a long article on ACORN including the (allegedly) selectively edited Breitbart videos, but at the very end of the article there is this:
"As part of a re-branding effort by ACORN leadership, ACORN International changed its name in 2010 to Community Organizations International.[106] As part of the effort by some chapters to stay afloat by severing ties with the national organization, California ACORN changed its name to Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment,[107] New York ACORN renamed itself New York Communities for Change,[9] and an offshoot of the ACORN organization called Acorn Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America[108] yet has retained the same tax and employee identification numbers that it held under its former name.[109]"
Can the leopard change its spots?
stu, I didn't specify the year when the proposed first Bush budget was 2 trillion dollars
(2002) and then 2.2 T (2003).
His last, as you noted, was 3.1 T, compared to Obama's 3.6 T last year and 3.7-8 T this year. Nothing shabby about comparing initial proposed presidential budgets, but there is in accusing Kirby and Rs in general of racism.
Stu, you implied that I could not handle a black president when you wrote this:
"A black Clinton without the sex scandal. This is evidently more than you can deal with."
the adjective BLACK is the active ingredient in this sentence.
You've used the same language against me several times before. That I can't handle a gay military hero who helped in the Gabby Gifford case, for instance.
You throw these allegations, but when confronted with them, move on to a new topic.
You should retract, preferably in both cases.
I think anyone can be a hero.
I think blacks can be wonderful conservatives (like Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas). I am especially grateful to have black conservatives because I know how they can rankle the left and make them reach for the necklace.
Not you, of course, Stu. You're happy to allow for ideological difference!
but then you would like to attribute it to homophobia and racism.
Except when called on it.
My only problem with Obama is that I think he's a socialist. D'Souza thinks he's a socialist. Even Kloppenberg thinks he was "trained" by Frank Marshall Davis (an out and out member of the CPUSA), and hopes he hasn't left their ranks.
Almost everyone outside the Democratic party sees Obama as a socialist.
Inside the Democratic party, many see him as a socialist.
Socialism is hard to distinguish in fact from the center left of the Democratic party. So hard, in fact, that their platform is almost identical to the platform of the CPUSA.
Obama himself says he sought out Marxist professors.
Had he sought out Lockean professors that would be quite different.
His heart is with the Marxists. That's where he gets his ideals from.
ACORN is dead, but ACORN is sprouting new shoots, and its thinking is of course far from dead.
It's just reconstituting itself into a new format, like the droid that's after the boy in Terminator.
I thnk the original appropriation for the wars was 700 billion.
Not sure what it costs now.
In addition to the funding for armamentation and housing and feeding troops in the two countries, there is infrastructural outlay I can imagine.
This is probably something that can be googled in Cost of War in Afghanistan or something.
Who's paying for the 9 million women's education in Afghanistan?
that's a good thing, but if we leave, they will likely be a gendercide in that nation the likes of which the world has never seen.
So there are all kinds of other hidden costs.
I know Curtis thinks we should have never meddled. But the war in Afghanistan is at least partially under UN auspices, I believe, so there are other countries there also footing the costs.
The coalition in Iraq is smaller.
Shortly someone is going to have to stick up for the Southern Sudan (apparently separate from the Darfur debacle). Will that be us, too?
I'm for all three in principle, although of course the costs are an outrage.
What drives me nuts is that we pay for all these things while buying cheap stuff from China which cleverly stays out of the war and yet CREATES human rights disasters in North Korea, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe while continuing to suck minerals out.
And yet they're on the security council (they got on after the war when their country was still ostensibly a democracy, I think, albiet a democracy that had decamped to Taiwan).
It would be dangerous to get away from them now, but I wish Taiwan was on the UN Security council instead of Red China.
Center for Defense Information offers a total expense of 1,291 billion dollars (for war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and war on terror costs):
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html
But please consider that the attack on 9/11 cost 500 billion in ONE day.
So perhaps this is comparatively cheap.
We still don't know what the turnover in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt will mean.
We used to have a huge Cold War to fund. We won it in 1989 when most of the communist countries except China turned over (China crushed their demonstrators, instead).
Iran started to turn over last fall but Obama waffled in terms of his support (McCain stood with the demonstrators, and for freedom).
If we start to get democracies and freedom of information in Muslim societies, I think we will begin to have the basis of universal human rights. This is what we sorely need throughout the world.
JADL,
Oh, this really is too much fun.
Here's a spreadsheet and graph. Worth more than a thousand words, that picture is.
I obtained the expenditures requests from the Wiki page United States Federal Budget. Check the section "Total outlays in recent budget submissions."
I obtained the special war appropriations from The Cost of the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11, c.f., Table 1. I'd forgotted about Obama's $35.1B "surge" appropriation, but it is included in the analysis above.
If you believe these numbers are in error, I'd welcome corrections with sourcing.
Kirby,
Stu, you implied that I could not handle a black president when you wrote this:
"A black Clinton without the sex scandal. This is evidently more than you can deal with."
the adjective BLACK is the active ingredient in this sentence.
I disagree. CLINTON is the active ingredient in that sentence. You guys couldn't deal with him either. It's the whole notion, illustrated by the chart I linked in my previous note, that Democratic administrations are indeed much more financially responsible than Republican administrations that you can't handle. Yet it is true.
You've used the same language against me several times before. That I can't handle a gay military hero who helped in the Gabby Gifford case, for instance.
OK, let's sort this out. As you know, I've defended you over precisely these points (racism, homophobia) to J very recently. Let me explain and admit a linguistic shift here, and one that many of us have been guilty of. We often address these comments to a particular member of our community, yet they're open letters, intended to be read by all. (We have offline email for communications that are intended to be private.) So a consequence is that "you" morphs from "you, Kirby, the individual," to "members of the group that are identified with you."
And so please take those remarks in the later sense. You might not have a problem with black or gays, but "you," i.e., the political movement with which you identify, has a large number of people who do.
I regret having written in such an ambiguous way, and apologize for any offense given.
I think blacks can be wonderful conservatives (like Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas). I am especially grateful to have black conservatives because I know how they can rankle the left and make them reach for the necklace.
Actually, Condi doesn't rankle me, neither does Powell or Sowell. They all seem competent, articulate, etc. I don't always agree with them, but that's ok. Thomas strikes me as a lightweight, especially given the office he holds.
The hour of carting children and wrestling practice has come so can't respond, but thanks for these clarifications, Stu.
I accept them.
But I rather liked Clinton, and voted for him, and probably would again, in spite of Monica.
I like how he had a sense of humor.
I miss that immensely.
You're assuming that the CSA would have kept its original constitution.
I don't think it would have--moreover, I don't think that, in light of pressure from Britain, SC/Miss/GA would have held out--and no one really lived in Florida, so it wouldn't have been as much of an issue as you imagine.
Obviously, some folks were "mad for slavery" but money talks.
Locke argued against Filmer that man does not have absolute domination over women after the fall. He claims they were equally punished and that the punishment accorded to women in genesis -- you will bear children and have lots of heartaches refers only to Eve, not the rest of women. It's funny how the bible was used to legitimate stuff.
Locke is a very clever reader.
Says children are equal to adults.
I haven't yet read his arguments against slavery.
I've always hated superiority theories of how one group is better than another.
It's part of why I came to hate the Democrats with their notions of women's natural superiority, or the notion that because some grouips have suffered more they are naturally wiser.
It's a bunch of rot.
GM,
You're assuming that the CSA would have kept its original constitution.
Not really. Just that any replacement constitution would have had to run the gauntlet of the original constitution's amendment process. And this gets us back to votes. They're not there.
The fact that Florida is small doesn't really matter. The only question is "ayes" vs. "nays" in the legislature. One state, one vote on amendment issues, and the state legislatures were the voters.
I just found a clerical error in my plot (I missed 2000), which had the effect somehow of making Bush's first year seem worse that it was. I'll get a corrected version out soon. But I thought it would be useful to add CPI data as well, to "inflation adjust" the series. I think this will help Bush too. We'll see soon...
stu, I'm glad you're having fun; I looked at the latter of your two links (the first wouldn't load for me) and noted that the entire outlay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (already cited by Kirby) and increased security measures over ten years is just a bit less than the Obama administration's projected deficit for next year. Thanks.
In answering Kirby earlier (before you magniloquently exonerated him individually) that the Republican Party is the party of "homophobia" and "ethnophobia," you've indulged yourself in an unsubstantiated smear against later only slightly-reduced and nebulously-invoked "large numbers" of Rs. And again, I answer: "shabby work."
I might have suggested a few of your ideological confreres at Common Cause who picketed the Koch brothers' meeting and who expressed the desire for Justice Thomas et al to be lynched (you think he's a "lightweight"; a Common Cause leftist nitwit goes you one better in thinking he should be made to seem corporally weightless) or sent "back into the fields" or mutilated might better exemplify expressions of raw prejudice and bigotry than the allegedly "large numbers" of Rs you've groundlessly smeared. Nevertheless, I expect the CCers' vehemence was grounded in misguided ideology, not racial bigotry. But you see in several examples (including your own) that "foot in the mouth disease" is no respecter of ideological differences.
Actually, this election brought into national and state offices a number of new minority Republican political figures (African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American), among them Black Congressman Allen West of Florida, a tough and articulate Iraq War vet, who's been promptly accused by the lib-left of . . . "Islamophobia." Uh huh.
OK, I have the corrected, inflation adjusted version of the US Budget Expenditures spreadsheet and graph up. Enjoy.
I'll note that the CPI re-baselined in January 2011. The number I used was based on a 3.6% reported increase year over year, which I've extrapolated into 2012. These two numbers are indicated in red on the spreadsheet.
As expected, including the inflation data tended to help Bush more than Clinton or Obama, although basic picture remains similar.
What would be the fear of not appearing to be politically correct that is the deepest fear of Democrats (deepest fear for Republicans is actually, da dum, socialism).
JADL,
stu, I'm glad you're having fun; I looked at the latter of your two links (the first wouldn't load for me)
No problem. I took a screen shot at posted it here. You should have no trouble loading it (it's just a PNG), whatever trouble you may have with the content.
and noted that the entire outlay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (already cited by Kirby) and increased security measures over ten years is just a bit less than the Obama administration's projected deficit for next year.
Well, that deficit was largely built up by GWB, but what the heck. The real problem with the Obama budgets is that the income side got creamed by the 2008 recession, which has driven deficits. But your side is focussed on the expenditure side, and I thought it would be nice to have an honest debate about real numbers. Certainly, if you look at expenditure growth since 1996, it's clear where the major responsibility lies.
In answering Kirby earlier (before you magniloquently exonerated him individually) that the Republican Party is the party of "homophobia" and "ethnophobia," you've indulged yourself in an unsubstantiated smear against later only slightly-reduced and nebulously-invoked "large numbers" of Rs. And again, I answer: "shabby work."
Well then, explain why half of the Republican 2012 Presidential lineup took a pass on CPAC this year. The public explanation was that they didn't want to appear with GOProud, a gay Republican group. I'd say that speaks for itself, and I'll I'm doing is letting it. Likewise the immigration debate.
And then there's the recent sustained racist attack on the Black businessman and conservative radio talk-show host Herman Cain by a writer (not a blogger) at AlterNet (that features other lib-left writers like Bill Moyers, Robert Reich, Eric Boehlert from Media Matters, Robert Dreyfuss of Mother Jones, etc.) in which Cain is called a "black garbage pail kid" and the "monkey in the window," etc. The story, including Mr Cain's response to this vicious abuse is here:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/15/the-strange-racist-attack-on-herman-cain/
Anecdotal?--Sure, but in contrast to stu's large charge of "large numbers" of "homophobic" racists among Republicans, at least my examples are substantiated.
I think the Republicans are meritocrats (hard work and talent equals big rewards), while Democrats want to redistribute especially to people who don't want to do any real work but want to whine that some ancestor of theirs did work four thousand years ago that needs to be addressed. Democrats want to be paid for their injuries.
Republicans think this is nuts, and they want to argue purely and simply for excellence.
Also, republicans want enduring institutions to stand -- churches, families, and businesses.
Democrats want to level all three of the major institutions. They want to tax businesses into the ground, break up families, and turn churches into institutions that help with the breakup of the other two.
They are two very different groups with very different suppositions.
I don't think racism is even a minor part of the Republican ideal-set, but since anti-racism is so important ot he Demolitioncrats they see everyone who's not resolving that issue as a racist.
The free market allows for excellence as the sole criterion of longterm good business.
This is the best idea, so I wish our country would stick with it.
Everything else is just nonsense.
POETRY CONTEST VOTING IS NOW!
Kirby RE: the deficit -
Most of the current deficit is either structural, comes from the tax cuts for the rich, or comes from the stimulus package.
I think Dems and Repubs are about equal here - the stimulus package from the left, the tax cuts for the rich from the right...
And both have played a role in the structural deficits.
To put the deficit at the feet solely of Democrats, who left the presidency in 2000 with surpluses, and came into office in 2009 with an economic crisis on their hands thanks to the previous administration dropping the ball...
Well, that seems not only unfair but untrue. If the republicans were as serious about the deficits as they always claim to be when out of power, they would have let the taxes on the rich go back to the rates they were at under Clinton (which were much, much lower than under Ike...that socialist weakling!)
Fact of the matter is that we can't have a massive military, social security, and medicare without having at least somewhat progressive taxes.
Call it socialism, but then you're Ike a socialist. This feels weird, and thus is weird.
"We also need an overall assessment of the business we're doing with China. It should be immoral or possibly illegal to do business with countries without a green light in terms of human rights.
Again, Republicans are leading the charge for moral clarity on that front."
The first thing you say is legit - the second thing you say here is all, like, false and stuff.
"Democrats want to level all three of the major institutions. They want to tax businesses into the ground, break up families, and turn churches into institutions that help with the breakup of the other two."
If this were true, i'd be a Republican too, Kirby.
It just seems like if you had a better grasp of reality, you'd be Democrat.
You say you want specific things, and those specific things are almost always Democratic in nature.
It's just that you get out to labeling/talking point level, and turn into a good vs. evil Beck type...
JADL,
Sure, but in contrast to stu's large charge of "large numbers" of "homophobic" racists among Republicans, at least my examples are substantiated.
1. There are homophobic racists of all political parties.
2. I provided examples.
3. In this country, homophobia is strongly correlated with conservative/fundamentalist religious belief. Wellsboro is an almost universally despised example of how far that can go, but Dobson is more along the line of what I'm thinking about. And conservative/fundamentalist religious believers are strongly correlated with a Republican political affiliation.
4. Likewise, when the South flipped from "D" to "R", a consequence of both LBJ's support of civil rights legislation [the support of northern R's is gratefully acknowledged here] and Nixon's "southern strategy," all of the old racists changed party to. If you're going to as a party embrace the Strom Thurmonds of the world, you get the baggage that goes along with doing so.
I don't believe that most Republicans are racist or homophobic. I do believe that most racists and homophobes are Republican. Moreover, the essential political compromises that were made to keep the Republican party competitive (i.e., embracing and empowering evangelicals and folks on the white-supremacy continuum) are causal, and will continue to corrupt the Republican Party.
I don't believe that most Republicans are racist or homophobic. I do believe that most racists and homophobes are Republican.
Grr.
First off, nearly everyone in this damned country is still a "racist." There are those who hate people because of their skin color and there are those who love people because of their skin color.
Both types are racists.
Ditto to GM's comment on race for homophilia. You have to take each person on their own terms. Are they contributing something, or are they just an ass?
Judge them on their CHARACTER, as King said, which has to do with the kinds of actions they choose.
If they are choosing to be drunks or lechers and to live off others, that's evil. If they are doing their best to support their families in law-abiding careers, then that's acceptable.
If they're using the CDC's coffers to patch up their vile lifestyle, then that's killing children who need that money to help them with Lyme and other diseases.
You have to see the bigger picture. The left just wants to judge us on the basis of whether we accept the reversal of the old racist notions.
You have to look at things from a moral perspective. The left doesn't have at this juncture a true moral perspective. They are just reversing the immoral perspective, and creating and legitimating new kinds of immorality.
GM,
Grr.
First off, nearly everyone in this damned country is still a "racist." There are those who hate people because of their skin color and there are those who love people because of their skin color.
Both types are racists.
I agree that people who give or delete points for race are racist. I don't believe there a meaningful difference between the definitions we're using. That said, I don't consider myself to be racist. For me, "black" and "white" are adjectives, not value-carriers.
It is also my sense that the kids tend to be color-blind in this same sense. They know the cultural correlates of race, but they're more likely to think of them as arbitrary rather than genetic/racial, especially because they can often wear more than one culture naturally. I've seen my kids slip effortless across that cultural barrier, and their friends too. This isn't a new skill, but what is new is its ubiquity. That's a cultural phase shift, a gap that we can't fully understand between our past and their future.
And the youngsters increasingly outnumber us geezers, a trend that I can guarantee is going to continue.
stu, I'll agree with (1), but (2) is a weak claim if you mean to cite your example of the non-appearance of some GOP leaders at CPAC, for disagreeing with the GOPround agenda, say, on gay marriage or DADT does not constitute hatred of gays simply for who they are (I have to assume by the catch-all term "homophobia" you mean this more than some literally-translated irrational fear of gays). Some GOP leaders who balked at attending may also have declined due to the over-representation of Ron Paul fringe partisans.
I'll concede the plausibility of
(3), that fundamentalist Christians are more inclined than many to negative views of gays (from simply believing homosexual acts are sinful to the indulgence in crass bigotry), but
(4) doesn't really allow for the gradual changes in attitudes in the South over the last forty years. Even an old racist like Sen Thurmond for much of his long life, like Sen Robert Byrd on the other side of the aisle, seems to have altered his repugnant views on race long before his death. One indication of this welcome change is that the Black conservative Tim Scott of South Carolina defeated Thurmond's son Paul in the SC Republican primary and went on to victory in the general election in a white-majority district.
Your last claim is glib and shouldn't go without challenge. First, it ignores the possibility of non-white racism, and second, if you mean to include opposition to gay marriage among indicators of "homophobia," how then to explain to the polled majority of Hispanics (53%) and strong majority of African-Americans
(70%) in California who voted against allowing gay marriage? And what might a poll of other minorities like American Muslims or Orthodox Jews yield?
James asks good questions of Stu, as he examines some in the rainbow coalition who are less than delighted with others in the rainbow coalition.
African Americans voted overwhelmingly against gay marriage in California. This trend was little remarked in the MSM but got more coverage at Fox and other stations that saw it as a good chance to divide and conquer.
But the kind of fear that the left traffics in is that there is a right-wing conspiracy that will lead to new pogroms or concentration camps for left minority groups. This is why they were so excited by Jared Loughner, hoping that finally the shooting that they had longed claimed Sarah Palin was instituting or at least instigating had finally taken place.
I don't think this is ever going to happen in America because Americans are pretty decent. We're never going to have Killing Fields here. The communists who are hell-bent on dividing and conquering the right are mostly university professors. Most of them can't even kill a mouse. They get one of those little plastic traps and take the mouse down to the river and give it a piece of cheese before releasing it.
They read Gary Snyder and are all sappy about nature, not realizing that as they turn the back on the mouse a spotted owl has already targeted the defenseless creature and begun its swoop.
Are these people going to be able to run concentration camps? I don't think so.
Even if they hired cartel members of Mexico to behead the conservatives, I don't think there would be enough money in this for it to become effective state policy.
Meanwhile, who among the right could hurt the leftists, and start to extinguish the various threads of the rainbow coalition? A few people have hurt others, but it's generally in remote areas like Texas where someone hurt a black man, or bombed a church. These are almost always lone individuals, and they spend the rest of their lives haunted by what they did.
There are a few individuals deranged enough to shoot abortion doctors. I think there have been seven such shootings altogether.
With seven individuals, it's going to be hard to run anything like a massive extermination camp.
The country is pretty solidly against these things. Abortion doctors do run extermination camps, in that people like George Tiller brag that they've offed 60,000 individuals, but they never had to look at the face of the child.
I don't think we're going to ever get to the point of extermination as with the hutsis and the tootsies or whatever they were in Rwanda.
There's a huge hope that the right is going down that path, but I don't see it. The right is busy running things like Kiwanis and Rotary clubs, and are more concerned with their lawns than with gunning people down en masse or gassing them.
We don't really have enough bastards in this country as Ceausescu was able to mass produce bastards and get them to run Securitate.
Bastards are in short supply.
This is a country that lives for Valentine's Day and Christmas, with very few exceptions (Manson had hoped to ignite a race war with his killings in LA, but it only initiated a campaign to get him and his ilk off the street). Sure, they were bastards, but there weren't enough others to join them.
Most of his followers have turned Christian and feel bad about what they did.
It's going to be hard to get any real hatred going in this country.
Some people don't like the gay lifestyle or the diseases that they have spread and that the CDC is trying to clean up.
But most of us have gay friends, and would defend them to the death.
Some don't like black gangs or the violence of inner cities, but most of us have friends of all kinds and would defend them to the death.
It's just not going to go in the direction that the psychos of left and right want it to.
So the main question is: are we going to have a free market, or are we going to go down the road of the Kenyan post-colonial dad of Obama?
I think we're going back to the free market, and that Obama is going to sign on, too.
He is, after all, an American (or is he?).
To be a true American, you have to be for a free market, don't you?
I've been continuing my little exercise of trying to produce a reasonable coherent view of the budget. Here's a new document that shows US budgeted revenue and expenditures, from '96 to '12. Again, the '96 date is simply the cutoff from the Wiki article on the federal budget. Here's a PNG image for those who can't access document above.
Analysis.
The Clinton years (from '96 on) were characterized by budgetary stability, with rough equality between income and expenditures. The oft cited Clinton surplus to me looks like a transient consequence of the internet bubble. This is a lot clearer once if you consider the 2001 and 2002 revenue numbers, and not just 1996-2000 in isolation. Even so, the bursting of the bubble (visible in the decreased revenue from 2000 to 2001) did not result in a structural deficit.
As we pass into the Bush years, we see steady sustained increases in expenditures (averaging 4.8%/year over inflation). At the same time, we see the effect of the Bush tax cuts on the revenue side, with the tax cut (the decrease in revenue from 2001 to 2003) having roughly twice the impact of the bursting of the internet bubble. The combined effects of increased expenditure and decreased revenue created a structural deficit, the size of which was masked by the Bush-era housing and credit bubble, which in turn was exposed by the revenue drop from 2007 to 2009.
Moving into the Obama years, we see a few features of note. The first is the jump in expenditures (the stimulus). The second is the decrease in revenue from 2010 to 2011, i.e., the tax reduction component of the stimulus. The second is significant progress in closing the structural deficit going from 2011 to 2012, although there is still a long way to go. Here, I'll note that the Obama 2012 deficit (expressed in constant 1982 dollars) is $474B, which is actually 15% less than the Bush 2009 deficit of $548B expressed in the same terms.
Moving on to some specific policies, I thought it might be interesting to compare Medicare part D with the stimulus. This is tricky, because the stimulus is a one-time expenditure, whereas Medicare part D is a continuing expenditure. Note that there were (so far as I can determine) no additional taxes or fees levied to pay for Medicare part D. Briefly, I brought the two onto the same scale by multiplying the size of the Obama stimulus ($787B) by a slightly pessimistic long term treasury rate of 4.5%, arriving at the cost of an "interest only loan" extended to infinity. In this model, the stimulus costs $35.4B/year, whereas Medicare part D expenditures were $49.3B in 2008, the inflation adjusted equivalent of $52.4B today. So the budgary impact of Medicare part D is roughly 48% greater than the stimulus, and this is going to widen, because the stimulus cost is constant in nominal dollars (and therefore decreasing in real dollars, assuming inflation rather than deflation) while the Medicare expense is not.
The PPACA has no effect on this picture (it won't have a budgetary impact until 2013), but it's budget impact should be small in comparison, as its expenditures are paid for out of increased taxes, fees, and offsets (corresponding reductions in other parts of the budget), rather than increased debt.
JADL,
Your last claim is glib and shouldn't go without challenge. First, it ignores the possibility of non-white racism, and second, if you mean to include opposition to gay marriage among indicators of "homophobia," how then to explain to the polled majority of Hispanics (53%) and strong majority of African-Americans
(70%) in California who voted against allowing gay marriage? And what might a poll of other minorities like American Muslims or Orthodox Jews yield?
Let me take this up, because while you raise some valid points, I still stand by my general conclusions.
First off, I concur that there are non-white racists. Tribalism is an equal-opportunity sin, and race is certainly one way that tribalism gets expressed. And I agree that there have been changes in the South, and that racism is less pervasive and less virulent than it was, and let's all join in the hope that this trend continues. While we're at it, it's clear that there's a characteristic Northern racism too, different in character than Southern racism (I assume we all know the uppity/close joke). Like the South, Northern racism is less pervasive and virulent than it was, and again, let's all join in the hope that this trend continues.
But with a full acknowledgement of all of these caveats, it seems clear to me that (a) whites are still a demographic majority, (b) whites are more likely to be racist than members of (most) other racial groups, (c) that southern white racism is still more pervasive and virulent than northern white racism, and (d) that there are some odd theologies found in the Protestant right (not Kirby's kind, here I'm thinking of separate creation of the races and dispensationalism) that are fertile ground for racism, and therefore the overall claim that most racists are Republican is still a reasonable conclusion.
Second, I there is considerable merit to the claim that the black church (which tends to be theologically conservative and literalistic) has a corresponding strong anti-gay lean. "Homophobic" is not too strong. In the case of Hispanics, the tie in is religious, but through the RCC, and therefore considerably more subdued. Still, the fact that these beliefs are correlates of conservative religious belief puts you in a difficult spot, because I don't think you're going to be able to bend the numbers to the point where religious conservatives are anything but majority Republican.
Yes, a free market is a pretty standard view among Americans...
You earlier referred to a 'free market' that was free, but still had to follow the laws...
Where do those laws come from?
Progressives in power, that's who -
The problem is that the framing you've accepted, Kirby, is that Republicans = free market, and Democrats = non-free-market...
Which is a simple, false binary choice. You need to take it issue by issue... Should we be subsidizing oil companies? Farmers? Researchers? Artists? No one? Should we require corporations to be responsible for the harm they do to the environment and/or our national security? Should we create infrastructure, and by doing so not only create jobs in the present but also help the economy down the road through better and more environmentally-friendly transportation?
And on and on...
The reality is that we're dealing with two parties who have different views on how to regulate, tax, and subsidize a free-market system.
The right says we have to choose between those who are pro-free-market, and those who are anti-free-market.
A false framing that you've bitten on
Brett, these are interesting scenarios, and like you say, quite various. I'm not totally in favor of a free-market. I don't think that those countries that don't have an internal free market should have an external free market.
Therefore I think for instance that Cuba, North Korea, and Red China should all be quarantined until they become pluralist states in political terms, and allow for private property (private property is the basis for any true freedom since if only the state owns anything, only the state can give food, shelter, or medical care, thus denying all freedom to anyone else).
The zombies of Zimbabwe should also be quarantined.
Stu, you seem sanguine about the possibility that racism will vanish. But as long as there are race hucksters, racism and sexism can never go away. This would mean that the meal ticket of people like Sharpton would disappear. When racism disappears, there will still be hopeful incidents like the Tawana Brawley incident.
In the same way, the left has to hope that Jared Loughner means that their critiques of Sarah Palin as an instigator of extreme political violence will be borne out.
One could say that this is reverse discrimination, but for many people this is not true discrimination because whites are superior in demographics (for a few more years, and only in rural areas) and thus can never be discriminated against.
The Democratic party lives on racism, classism, and sexism. Without it, they have no causes. Therefore, these things will always exist, and new instances will always be sought.
It's almost a great tragedy for the Democrats that Loughner turned out to not have ideological origins for his murderous rampage (or he did, but the dots can't be clearly connected to Sarah Palin or to rednecks).
A similar idea to the one that Republicans are all racist homophobes is that Republicans are stupid and less-well-educated than Democrats.
So the left really believed that W. for instance was far less intelligent than Kerry.
Then the NYT published an article that said that W.'s IQ was about 130. That of Kerry, 119.
Leftists went nearly out of their minds at this revelation and were unable to believe it.
They were also unable to believe that the Tea Party was better educated than most Democrats, and also a little better coiffed.
Even when the paper of record for the Dems reports something that they don't believe, they will refuse to believe it.
Long after the climate business has been debunked, Democrats will continue to believe it.
They are basically people who are impervious to new facts that challenge their paradigms.
Many people are like this, but Democrats seem especially impervious. I don't know why that's the case. Groupthink is especially endemic to this group. It's one of the chief reasons I had to get out. You really can't argue with them.
They have these codewords that they return to like buoys or landmarks that they huddle around like frightened children. The notion of "homophobia" can seemingly never be rooted out for instance.
Unless someone likes everything about gays, including the disastrous AIDS rate, and the disastrous effect it has had on CDC funding, and on hospital care, then you are a "homophobe."
If gays have hundreds of partners in a year, you have to love it or you are a "homophobe."
If Foucault tells us that it's ok to molest children, it's still homophobic if you point out what he has said, still homophobic if you point out that Ginsberg was a member of NAMBLA (a proud member).
You have to either accept it, or at least never mention it, or else you are a homophobe.
There are more and more people like this. If they get a bad grade on a test, it's racism, or sexism, or whatever.
These places are like shelters into which no reason can reach.
I'm glad that Stu denies that he does this, but he nevertheless does it again, almost as soon as he's done denying that he does it.
I wonder what's going on with the left.
At least with the right there's not these circular problems.
I don't see the same set of problems at least.
I do see redneckism, but it's usually gratefully acknowledged (the blue collar comics).
There's some anti-intellectualism as in the NASCAR crowd, but they never claim to be anything that they aren't. So I guess I find it more acceptable.
If they are choosing to be drunks or lechers and to live off others, that's evil. If they are doing their best to support their families in law-abiding careers, then that's acceptable.
Alcohol, tobacco and lechery have served me well, much better than hard work and the belief that marriage and children come to those with the means to afford them. I believed in hard work until I was 35, when I married someone who could afford rent, food and student loan repayments. Slaving over a seven figure investment portfolio is tedious, but tolerable with the consolation provided by cigarettes, whiskey and wild wild women.
Kirby,
Look, I know the debate isn't going that well for you, and that you're not prepared to actually look at actual numbers in discussing the budget. But I still think it's a bit early for you to surrender and play the jingoist card.
stu, I've looked at your budget figures with some attention, but I'm not sure how to accord these with the OMB figures that the Bush-era deficits were all under 500B, while the Obama-era ones (two figures and one projection for 2011) are nearly triple the Bush-era yearly deficits, and more, with the percentage of the federal debt compared to the GDP that varied in the Bush era from c. 32% to just over 40% but in 2010 will stand at over 62%.
I know there are a number of vagaries haunting budget analyses and projections, e.g., the claiming of "cutting" deficits that actually add considerably to the rising federal debt, "freezing" expenditures at abnormally high levels, not counting unfunded obligations (to GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) or to federal entitlement programmes, basing mandatory ten-year budget figures on overly-optimistic and questionable economic projections, etc. that the proposed Obama federal spending plan is said to include and has promptly been criticised even in the Obama-friendly major media.
This is not to include the severe budgetary crises in many states, some of which will doubtless be asking for federal bailout money (California, Illinois, etc.). Some governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey and Scott Walker of Wisconsin (perhaps Kirby could enlighten us more on Cuomo in New York) are dealing with these crises on a state level especially by reducing the powers of teachers' and other unions' resistance to shared sacrifice with private sector employees during the recession and state budget crises.
Not sure how I was either losing the debate (I don't think of this as a debate, but as more of a discussion between the blind men and the elephant), not sure also how I was purportedly jingoistical instead of engaging in the discussion.
Busy with lots of details until about 3 pm, then shall try to get up to speed and meanwhile will keep putting comments that seem to forward the discussion through (I'm still blocking J's comments, who seems to be having his own conversation with himself, featuring lots of anti-semitic slurs -- with my name as now ending in -Stein all the time).
jingoism: n. extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked esp. by a belligerent foreign policy (Webster's)
How do I fit into this definition again?
What exactly is the argument that I'm losing?
I thought the debate we're having is What Is Conservatism?
Which I think I tried to define as the free market.
Brett accepted this definition.
Stu, do you not accept this definition? Is the definition jingoistic? Do you mean that since I said that China and North Korea and Vietnam are not on board with this definition that that was somehow being mean to these wonderful countries?
James, I'm not sure what Cuomo has in mind for the budget. He has to get rid of billions of dollars of debt. Exactly how this is going to be addressed is not yet clear. Some people will lose their jobs, but it hasn't all been ironed out yet.
Our campus will lose about ten percent of its funding, we think. We think we may be able to achieve these cuts without too much blood among permanent faculty lines (which would in turn mean the inability to staff necessary classes and offices).
Paterson tried 5% rollbacks on a mandatory basis but a state judge blocked it as against the contract.
So first there's going to be a new budget, and then there will almost certainly be legal challenges.
Obama's trying to cut back on help for heat to the very poor and this has caused a lot more rhetorical heat.
I tried to watch Hannity last night, but he was so angry I couldn't watch.
I turned to MSNBC and he was even angrier at Obama but from a left viewpoint (older man with massive jowls whose name I didn't get but it wasn't Doberman -- who I think got the boot a few weeks back).
Later I came to MSNBC again and she was ranting about how there were no abortion doctors in Wichita since Tiller got whacked in the pew of his Lutheran church there by an apparently unrepentant anti-abortion doctor, and now in S. Dakota somebody is trying to pass a law that says that killing abortion doctors should be as legal as shooting deer in open season.
The problem for me right now is I'm snowed under. I'm putting the campus literary magazine together, I have a novel that I'm wrapping up, and have poems coming out, and am coaching a wresting team, and I am on very important committees around campus, etc., and am struggling to keep up with the reading for my classes.
I still find time to be entertained by some of the various problems at the national and state level.
There's been a whole new round of the Birthers' and their questions. Apparently Obama was born in Hawaii to a father born in Kenya when Kenya was still under the British. According to their laws, he was a British citizen sinc his father was British or in a country and from a country that still belonged to the crown.
James, would you consider Obama to be a socialist, or a free market capitalist?
Stu says he's a center-left Democrat. But he doesn't say what that means in terms of the free market.
That's all that interests me here.
Is Obama for the free market, or not?
Is this a central plank of the Democrats now?
Do you see, James, any major Democrats who are primarily free market in their thinking?
How about the Republicans?
Which one or ones are the most likely to go along with Hayek's principles as advanced in The Road to Serfdom?
JADL,
stu, I've looked at your budget figures with some attention, but I'm not sure how to accord these with the OMB figures that the Bush-era deficits were all under 500B, while the Obama-era ones (two figures and one projection for 2011) are nearly triple the Bush-era yearly deficits, and more, with the percentage of the federal debt compared to the GDP that varied in the Bush era from c. 32% to just over 40% but in 2010 will stand at over 62%.
I suspect that the analyses you've read associate budgets with each President's years of service, rather than their years of proposal. But this is an error—the reality of the complexity of the federal government, together with the nature and timing of the proposal/appropriation/authorization process means that every President spends their first year living with their predecessor's budget. So I'm thinking that the analyses you're depending on associate 2009 with Obama rather than Bush.
I wonder, in passing, whether these same analysts billed 2001 to Bush or Clinton. After all, Clinton looks like a budgary genius if you move 2001 from his column to GWB's, and it's much easier to argue that structural deficit is entirely GWB's creation if you do that. Please note that I've approached this issue consistently, associating a budgetary year with the President who proposed it.
The reality is that a President can do little to influence the budget of their first year in office. It takes time to enact new measures (e.g., the 2009 stimulus debate was actually about the 2010 and 2011 budgets, not the 2009 budget). Presidents have a tiny bit more latitude in terms of reducing discretionary expenditures during that first year (e.g., by instructing their secretaries to hold expenditures below appropriations), but not much. I believe that my identifications (also Wiki's) represent a more equitable analysis.
In any event, I've gotten my numbers from public sources. I started with the Wiki numbers, and then found (via google) newspaper articles (and sometimes budget documents) that provided more precision. This was important for my earlier year-by-year rate of change analysis, but not so important for second "overall picture" analysis. There was only one case where the Wiki number was not a rounded version of the more precise number (I think it was 2004), but even that was close, and since it was an interior year, it doesn't affect the kind of analysis I've done here.
If you can find (and source) significantly different numbers within this data, I'll adjust. I hope to continue to improve the quality of the underlying data and its presentation as a means of grounding the debate. I believe the facts of the matter favor my position.
Certainly, part of my issue here is the disconnect between the rhetoric of the right and the reality that these numbers testify to. The reality is that if you consider the years 2009-2012, the inflation adjusted rate of growth of expenditures is 1.3%/year. And the rhetoric from the right is that Obama is a socialist who is unconstrained and irresponsbiity in his spending. On the other hand, if you do the same for Bush, and consider the years 2001-2009, the inflation adjusted rate of growth of expenditures is 4.9%/year, or 4.3%/year if we eliminate the war appropriations (which I'm not convinced is reasonable, given that Iraq was a war of choice and most of the expenditures are in that theater). So what do you guys have to say about Bush? And why weren't you saying it with three-times the volume when he was President (i.e., proportional to the rate of increase), instead of one-one-hundredth? What signal am I supposed to read in the difference?
The particulars of the budget as well as the overall sum are hotly debated. Many on the right claim that BO spent as much in his first two years as all the rest of the American presidents combined. I have heard this at least ten times from different representatives of the right.
The numbers are so high and since Stu has an obvious dog in the fight, it's hard to trust his numbers.
Usually, James has the numbers. I'd also like to hear from George Grady, Picklesworth, and Barghest before deciding this.
Plus, I need to do research. Generally, Stu is hiding something. Once it's pointed out, he generally retreats and never mentions the topic again.
He probably actually believes his numbers. Maybe they're even correct.
But I'd like to hear from at least a few more people who are not as devoted to his outcome as he is, first.
Kirby,
jingoism: n. extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked esp. by a belligerent foreign policy (Webster's)
How do I fit into this definition again?
Just the "I'm right on everything, you're wrong on everything" post. 8:07 PM. There didn't seem to be any arguments there, just a retreat into bluster and stonewalling.
Stu, do you not accept this definition? Is the definition jingoistic? Do you mean that since I said that China and North Korea and Vietnam are not on board with this definition that that was somehow being mean to these wonderful countries?
I don't buy your identification of conservatism with the free market. It seems to me that the trial definition fails on two counts: there's more to conservatism than free markets, and conservatives will as a matter of practice place limits on who can participate in the national market, making them thereby less than free.
Aren't budget discipline, a strong national defense couple with a tremendous reserve in projecting it, and self-reliance conservative values? But they have nothing to do with free markets per se.
OTOH, I people who call themselves conservative railing against NAFTA and its ilk, and arguing for increased protectionism. Limiting who can participate in the national market, and on what terms, makes our markets less free.
I'll also note that there's a general (albeit not universal) consensus in this country that state has an interest in education. Until recently, this was seen as a conservative value, c.f., Vannevar Bush, William Buckley, and William Bennett. Indeed, as an English Professor at SUNY, you are a cog in the state's education machinery. Isn't that a bit difficult to reconcile with a "free market über alles" weltanschuuang?
As for China, North Korea, and Vietnam, I don't see a much to admire. But I do wonder that China sees a future in investing in education and is actively building new universities, while many modern conservatives are advocating for unilateral educational disarmament on our part. Is JADL in the employ of the Chinese? It seems implausible, but on this issue, he might as well be, and to your disadvantage.
There's been a whole new round of the Birthers' and their questions. Apparently Obama was born in Hawaii to a father born in Kenya when Kenya was still under the British. According to their laws, he was a British citizen sinc his father was British or in a country and from a country that still belonged to the crown.
Maybe so, but why is this relevant? Under our constitution (14th Amendment, Section 1), "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." You've already stipulated that he was born in Hawaii, and that ends the matter. He is a natural born citizen of the US, and therefore meets this qualification to serve as President.
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Stu says he's a center-left Democrat. But he doesn't say what that means in terms of the free market.
Sigh. I gave what I thought was a nice, concise theoretical account very near the top of this thread. Because of the way comments get "chunked" by the moderation process, it was pretty widely ignored. The comment in question is the 6th in this thread, 2:20pm. Might I suggest that you read it now?
I believe that in most (but not all) situations, private enterprise is more efficient than government, and so favor market-based solutions as a general rule. I'll note the military, police, judiciary as examples that this is not aways so. I don't think you'd want a libel case tried at Walmart. But I don't think we want government issue toilet paper, either. Too many staples.
I also believe that an unrestrained market is subject to abuse. If the market is to be efficient, it needs regulation -- the madisonian checks and balances that I referred to earlier. Whether the robber barons own the railroads or the financial sector, only the government has the power to hold them accountable.
Plus, I need to do research. Generally, Stu is hiding something. Once it's pointed out, he generally retreats and never mentions the topic again.
No, this is crap. "Poisoning the well," and "ad hominem" if you want the official names of the rhetorical errors embodied herein. The numbers are there, and I invite you to pick away. But don't claim that I'm hiding something on the basis of no information at all. This is not how I debate. My entire argument is out there in front of you. If you think the numbers are wrong, challenge me with correct numbers. If you think that something hasn't been accounted for, make your case. Or admit that your mind is closed on this issue, and that you don't give a damn about facts.
I won't write much for several reasons.
1) after you guys post I don't want to always be the one with the last word
2) I don't know the numbers game very well, and wish someone like Picklesworth, Grady, and Barghest (sounds like a law firm) would weigh in.
3) I walked in today (it's almost sixty degrees), and I have to walk back and take the boys to wrestling.
Suffice it to say that the numbers game is baffling to me. The right claims BO has spent more than all the rest of America since the beginning, and he's only two years in.
Stu claims Bush spent more than all the others since WWII.
Creative accounting appears to be afoot, but what do I know?
I simply don't even know how to attack Stu's numbers, but that doesn't mean I accept them. Are they accurate? Can someone check?
I think he presents a reasonable case, but why is the other case made so strongly on Fox, and in WSJ that BO has spent more than anyone else since the Revolution against King George III?
Is this creative accounting?
Have the numbers been adjusted for inflation?
Something doesn't add up, but I don't know what it is, and don't have all day to find out.
I don't trust ANYBODY with numbers, especially in this highly partisan environment.
On a small thing like the salt marsh harvest mouse I think we might be able to get to the bottom of it, but when the ENTIRE budget is in play, with the thousands of departments, and simply no non-political source to get free information, I wouldn't know where to begin the accounting chore.
Kirby - the same people who decided that the wars shouldn't be part of the budget are the same ones who say, as Stu pointed out, that 2009 - the year that Bush's budget was still in play - was Obama's budget.
That's where the fudging is...
Its' the same sort of fudging that makes people think their taxes have gone up and that Obama passed the bank bailouts, both of which are demonstrably false.
Fox News says those things over and over again, Kirby, because they have a decided viewpoint, and the numbers in this case don't support it if looked at objectively, so they confuse their audiences by playing on our ignorance as a populace of the way our government works (which is the fault of most all media sources, our schools, ourselves, and our parents).
Conservatives act as though the greatest economic downfall in our nation's history since the Great Depression was Obama's fault, even though it started well before he came into office, and even longer before his policies could be implemented.
And I'm not sure I Did buy your definition of conservatism as free market... Both right and left in this country are for a free market, but with certain regulations and stipulations and governmental involvement - it's just a matter of kind, and Maybe scope (though the right plays up a difference in scope to an unreal degree).
Kirby,
My budget fact gathering and analysis has been carried out in very neutral terms. I went out of my way to make the analysis as nonpartisan as possible, even chosing adjustments (inflation, and CPI rather than PPI) that favored Bush. Believe me, if I wanted to cook the numbers, I could. But I don't want to have to backpedal later. If I'm making a bad case, it should be easy enough to refute -- find a spreadsheet cell that has the wrong computation, or accounts of the underlying data that substantially differ. I don't want to add that risk to my analysis, and didn't.
The problem we face isn't that "Democratic" spending/taxing strategies are unworkable (both are higher, but they're in balance) or that "Republican" spending/taxing strategies are unworkable (both are lower, but they're in balance), so much as that combining "Democratic" spending with "Republican" taxing is a disaster. And that is where we're at.
This reason for the scare quotes is that both the spending increases and tax cuts that drove the budget out of balance occurred during the Bush administration, and while the PAYGO rules were suspended. The moral hazard here is that spending increases (in isolation) are popular, as are tax cuts. So Bush benefited politically from the inconsistent and unsustainable budgetary changes he made to both. But this is bad policy, and eventually the wheels fall off, as they did. This left Obama with the politically punishing job of decreasing spending, and increasing taxes, all while dealing with an economy that is in extreme distress. And this is what he's done, within the limitations of the tools that are available to him.
The question really is whether or not you take the national debt as seriously as you say you do. If so, Obama should be your hero, because he's been willing to pay the political price to do something about it, whereas Bush reaped the political rewards for causing it.
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Now, you want to talk about shenanigans in the presentation of this kind of information. Let's talk shenanigans.
First off, there's JADL's claim that Obama "almost doubled" the budget, which involves (a) looking at Bush's first year budget (which he states was 2002, so I guess he concurs that 2009 was Bush's too), (b) while ignoring the massive expenditure increases that took place during the Bush years, (c) ignoring the inflation that took place during the Bush years, so (d) giving the knowingly false impression that Obama was responsible for Bush's increases. That's shenanigans.
Next, let's look at debt normalization calculations. A typical approach to dealing with really big numbers (like the national debt) is to scale them against other big numbers (like the national GDP). After all, what matters isn't so much the absolute size of the debt as it is our ability to afford it. Make sense? Usually it does, but it can be abused.
Now, if you look at the debt vs. gdp curves Wiki: United States Public Debt, what you'll see is declines from 1946 until 1980, increases until 1996, decreases to 2001, and then increases, with a very sharp in 2009. That must be Obama, right? He must have spent like a drunken socialist with a credit card, right? Not really. Yes, there was additional spending as called for in the Bush 2009 budget. But there was a huge change in the GDP which had been trending up by an nominal average of 4.98%/year from 2001 through 2007 suddenly decreased by 1.27%. That's a 6% swing, and that's a huge part of the inflection in the debt curve. So the argument that the debt explosion that took place in 2009 is Obama's fault rests entirely on Bush's budget, and on a financial crisis (and attendant GDP drop) that was well underway when he took office. That's shenanigans.
A few notes:
Yes, I realise that the fiscal year is different from the calendar one, and also that, as I said, budget stats and economic projections are pretty malleable in the hands of partisans of all economic persuasions.
And there are a number of conservative economists with credentials as good as, e.g., Paul Krugman's who dispute his raw Keynesian government spending approach to curing deep recessions. In fact, Krugman is appearing more and more as an outlier in this whole game in his vociferous demands for more and even greater government "stimuli," after his decade-old praise for the housing bubble as a "cure" for the bursting of the tech-stock bubble now earns him a retrospective "yeah, sure." His recently excogitated attempt to connect the economic recession with global warmist ideology hasn't exactly stimulated raves of approval either.
It should also be mentioned that by awarding praise to President Clinton for fiscal responsibility one also implicitly praises the Republican-controlled Congress in that time for theirs. Same goes for the Bush-blamers who neglect to mention the Democrats controlled Congress 2007-11, not just for the past two years.
I and other conservatives opposed a number of Bush-era spending measures (e.g., NCLB and the Medicare Drug plan as later with the Obama-era "stimuli," "bailouts," and mutton-dressed-as-lamb "investments." I suspect many Ds who supported Bush-era spending plans overcame their reluctance to vote for measures that might increase his popularity by reminding themselves that any federal spending aside from defence is inherently a good thing.
One of the main issues Ds in Congress in 2005 were utterly unwilling to discuss was federal entitlements, which now loom ever larger and more menacing to future economic growth. It's becoming evident that bipartisan interest in entitlement reform is imperative, though President Obama and hard-line Ds continue to choose to ignore the report of the President's own debt commission and look the other way. I don't think now the President and Ds in Congress (including what's left of them in the House) will as easily treat, e.g., Congressman Ryan's plan for reforming entitlements with the contemptuous indifference his proposals received a year ago.
No, stu, I've yet to receive remittances from the Chinese; I really don't think they'd be much pleased to hear my views about their authoritarian government, suppression of human rights, active supporters of some of worst regimes imaginable, or that they are by far the greatest technology and patent thieves in the world, but I'd quite understand why they'd rather send their remittances to much friendlier personages like Presidents Clinton and Obama.
Wonder how much the Chinese are "investing," e.g., in university ethnic and gender studies or sociology departments, or LGBT offices? Got any figures on that?
What I hear businessmen say is that they can't plan in the current environment. No one knows what the healthcare bill really says, and it hasn't been given a green light as to constitutionality. Secondly, the various provisions in the 1200 page bill aren't very clear in terms of what they are going to mean.
This means that everyone is sitting out until some of the wrinkles are ironed out.
Admittedly, I hear these businessmen talking like this in places like the WSJ, which leans right.
Your version of things does make sense, that Bush went hogwild and then dumped the mess on Obama, who has to take the blame.
There is a psychological side to the idea that everything is up in the air and people have stopped investing, because they don't want to get caught up in the spiders' webs that might be in the healthcare bill.
Or it could be some combination of these two.
Not being a businessman, and not really knowing how these things work, I wouldn't know. It would be great if Grady or someone who could equal your numerical ability would weigh in.
Barghest would be ideal because he's more of a centrist than most of us, and I tend to value his thinking as neutral.
I know you don't think you're spinning things, and that bias is not part of your calculations, on the other hand, there is no way that you would ever implicate your party in anything.
I don't know of any neutral parties in this debate.
On another matter, Hayek doesn't completely do away with all government and let things go toward a free for all. He doesn't even completely drop the poor out of governmental commiseration or remedial relief. But his paragraphs on this are scanty.
Sometimes I move toward Luther's line that no one in a company should make more than ten times anyone else.
But I don't know all the ramifications of such a move. I am making slow progress in this area, but have not landed at a point of omniscience by any means.
At best I have a few inklings, largely gleaned from others. The Emmett Tyrell definition of conservatism as belief in the free market struck me as wonderfully clear.
You denounce that position. Brett has now denounced it.
Craig is being facetious.
I wonder what James thinks on this topic.
Let's hope Barghest or some other numbers champ will drop in and elucidate the big numbers from another viewpoint, just so we have the benefit of stereo.
I thought it was unfair of you to paint James as a stooge for the Red Chinese. It wasn't that funny, so I didn't know why you did it. After all, he fought the reds in Vietnam.
But James, when you did this, were you thinking about how you wanted to retain free markets in Saigon? Did the soldiers in general think about things like this?
I've never been in a fight, so I don't know if you can fight with bullets and napalm or whatever and keep clearly in mind your economic principles and a notion of best outcomes in terms of Hayekian lore.
We hear very little about what goes on in Vietnam these days. The MSM really does wasn't to revisit the disaster they made of that country.
If they did revisit the disaster they made of that country, they might think more clearly about the disaster they're making of this country.
JADL,
It should also be mentioned that by awarding praise to President Clinton for fiscal responsibility one also implicitly praises the Republican-controlled Congress in that time for theirs.
Indeed, PAYGO works. So why is it that the Republicans drop it whenever they're in charge? As they just did?
Same goes for the Bush-blamers who neglect to mention the Democrats controlled Congress 2007-11, not just for the past two years.
Right. And if you look at the data, and do the arithmetic, you'll see that the rate of growth of the expenditures inflected down at 2007, from over 5%/year, to under 2%/year, on an inflation adjusted basis. I'd be happy to go through the calculation if you like, which would give you the ability to look at other intervals that might suit your arguments better.
I and other conservatives opposed a number of Bush-era spending measures (e.g., NCLB and the Medicare Drug plan as later with the Obama-era "stimuli," "bailouts," and mutton-dressed-as-lamb "investments."
There's a challenge here for both of us. TARP was a Bush era initiative, and as you point out, it's largely been repaid. The "bailouts," by which I think you're referring to GM, Chrysler, etc., were an Obama era intiative, but now they've largely been replayed. It seems to me that the parallels are pretty strong. As for the stimulus, 1/3 of it was tax relief. I believe this was ill advised, but it was an attempt at compromised by adapting Republican ideas. The rest is something that economists will argue about for generations. Even so, it's substantially less expensive than Medicare Part D. Or the unnecessary Iraq war.
I suspect many Ds who supported Bush-era spending plans overcame their reluctance to vote for measures that might increase his popularity by reminding themselves that any federal spending aside from defence is inherently a good thing.
I certainly would not take the argument that any federal spending increase is a good thing. The question is always, did we get value for the expenditure which exceeded the cost. Some expenditures have this character, many don't. But good value or not, you have to be able to afford them, and the R's showed no leadership there. Honestly, Bush had the D's buffaloed. More spine then would have been better.
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One of the main issues Ds in Congress in 2005 were utterly unwilling to discuss was federal entitlements, which now loom ever larger and more menacing to future economic growth.
The entitlements argument is almost entirely false. Entitlements are associated with revenue streams. The expenditures and revenues need to be in long-term balance, and in the main, are. Relatively modest adjustments to SS will ensure solvency. The only real threat to SS is default on treasury notes purchased (as required by law) by the SSA.
No, stu, I've yet to receive remittances from the Chinese; I really don't think they'd be much pleased to hear my views about their authoritarian government, suppression of human rights, active supporters of some of worst regimes imaginable, or that they are by far the greatest technology and patent thieves in the world
I didn't think you were. A guy's allowed a joke or too, and I hope it was clear that the suggestion was ludicrous. But maybe you should file a claim, just for kicks.
Wonder how much the Chinese are "investing," e.g., in university ethnic and gender studies or sociology departments, or LGBT offices? Got any figures on that?
Gender or LGBT? I'd assume nothing. Sociology? That's not so obvious. China has sociological problems, which it approaches in a manner that is often both scientifically informed and brutally heavy handed. Ethnic studies? Maybe. It's a harder call, but China isn't all Han. They have their minorities, and attendant social issues.
I'm thinking of investments mostly in technological or engineering universities. E.g., Tsinghua, the new "Chinese MIT," which my department competes against both for students and faculty. The era in which US Computer Science programs were swamped with Chinese graduate students is now largely past: they mostly stay in China.
Kirby - JADL's lack of response to Stu's numbers should be partially proof that they are pretty spot-on.
Yes, there are many of us who do praise the Republicans in congress in the late 90s for helping to curtail the budget and bring us a surplus...Those Republicans who are willing to praise the congress for this should also be willing to praise Clinton as well...
In 2006-2008, the Dems in congress should have rolled back Bush's tax cuts for the rich, stopped the wars, and stopped the unpaidfor medicare drug benefit during the years they were in charge in congress. Given the structure of our government and the politics of the time, would this have been feasible?
It doesn't seem that it would have been...but maybe I's wrong.
JADL is smart to point out the non-conservative policies of the Bush administration, but he still seems unwilling to notice that these ill-conceived policies led to the ballooned deficit and the economic crisis that greeted Obama when he entered office.
We did not have the intractable financial collapse that was very likely immanent - the stock market has basically doubled since Obama's policies have been put in place.
Private employment has steadily increased, a reversal of the trend that was there when Obama came to office.
And even given the circumstances, Obama has done a better job of balancing the budget than Bush.
Let's face it - fiscal responsibility is now the purview of Democrats...Obama came into office facing huge structural deficits and a severe economic crisis while also inheriting two wars...He was in emergency-response-mode for his first two years, yet the Republicans act as though he was dealing with normal, ho-hum economic times.
Kirby,
What I hear businessmen say is that they can't plan in the current environment. No one knows what the healthcare bill really says, and it hasn't been given a green light as to constitutionality. Secondly, the various provisions in the 1200 page bill aren't very clear in terms of what they are going to mean.
The uncertainty isn't a function of the legislation per se, it is largely a function of the legal challenges against it. And the question of constitutionality ultimately rests on whether the SCOTUS will follow historical precedent, or decide on a purely partisan basis. And anyone who says they know is blowing smoke.
But yes, this is a change. And change involves costs, and incurs risks. But that isn't an argument against all change, so much as an acknowledgment that transients have to be accounted for in cost-benefit analyses.
Your version of things does make sense, that Bush went hogwild and then dumped the mess on Obama, who has to take the blame.
Hogwild is too strong. Undisciplined is not.
There is a psychological side to the idea that everything is up in the air and people have stopped investing, because they don't want to get caught up in the spiders' webs that might be in the healthcare bill.
I think the investment argument is overblown. The DJIA bottomed at 6547.05 in April 2009, and has recovered to 12318.14 today, and a "bubble" high of 14164.53. If you look at a long-term plot of the DJIA, we're pretty much back on the long-term line. So I'd argue that investment is now "neutral," not overvalued as it was during the bubble, nor undervalued as it was at the bottom of the collapse.
Now, the DJIA isn't a perfect surrogate for investor sentiment, but I think it is more objective than anecdotal reports from people who have a partisan lean.
I know you don't think you're spinning things, and that bias is not part of your calculations, on the other hand, there is no way that you would ever implicate your party in anything.
Actually, I believe I've called their faults fairly in this debate. The D's are not above criticism in this. But their responsibility for the current situation is minuscule compared to the R's, as is very apparent from the numbers.
Sometimes I move toward Luther's line that no one in a company should make more than ten times anyone else.
I'm not sure that 10 is the right number, but I do think that unbounded growth in social inequity will, if allowed to continue indefinitely, result in a violent correction. The companies I admire the most reward their employees proportionately for their successes. These are also the companies that I invest in. Social justice issues notwithstanding, it's an investment strategy that works.
You denounce that position.
I argued against it. What do you think of my arguments?
I thought it was unfair of you to paint James as a stooge for the Red Chinese. It wasn't that funny, so I didn't know why you did it. After all, he fought the reds in Vietnam.
I think it was obviously facetious. And James did not fight the Chinese.
BTW, I wonder if Brett realizes he won the poetry contest..
Kirby, you've touched on a number of questions in your last posting to which I'll just respond with a few comments.
Don't remember squeezing off a round in Vietnam whispering to myself--"this one's for free markets!", though I suppose that's implicit in dutifully serving one's country and the ideals it represents against a determined communist aggressor.
I know stu's made a strong effort to blame President Bush for the recession and crisis in government financing, but I'll reiterate my contention that budget analyses and projections are quite malleable and especially when political points are being argued. Leaving aside the blame game about the source of the debt problem, the question remains what to do in future. In general, for stu it seems raising taxes and increasing federal spending is the cure; for conservatives it's lowering taxes and decreasing government spending. Perhaps stu has a preferred list of sources for his approach, while mine might include The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Ludwig von Mises Institute, The Hoover Institution at Stanford U, and the like.
A recent example of what I contend about political prevarication regarding budget deficits comes from the President himself when he said to an interviewer in Cincinnati:
"[My] budget freezes spending for five years, and what that does is it solves the short-term problem by saying, we're not going to spend any more money than we're taking in."
Compare this statement with page 171 of the President's proposed ten-year budget and one reads the deficit from 2010 to 2012 (1.1T-1.645T in yearly deficits) and for the remaining years through 2021 no yearly deficit under 600B. So just another lie that perhaps the President believes the public will simply shrug off as they have so many others he's served up. Perhaps also by ignoring his own debt commission's report on the entitlement crisis, the President and the Ds would prefer to let the Rs do the dirty work on entitlement reforms that will set the stage for further class demagoguery from the Ds on this issue. But as in serving in wars, someone's got to do it.
JADL,
I know stu's made a strong effort to blame President Bush for the recession and crisis in government financing, but I'll reiterate my contention that budget analyses and projections are quite malleable and especially when political points are being argued.
This is pathetic. It is, in effect, a refusal to argue. If you really believe what you wrote above, show me. Use these numbers (or other sourced numbers that we can vet) to make the argument that Bush was not responsible, and to try to shift the blame to the Democrats. Then we can put your arguments up against my arguments, and thrash them out.
In general, for stu it seems raising taxes and increasing federal spending is the cure; for conservatives it's lowering taxes and decreasing government spending.
The first part isn't a fair or accurate characterization of my views, and the second part isn't conservative. Let me work through this. First, I think that our current problems are mostly on the "taxes are too low" front. On the expenditure side, there are investments I'd make, a few improvements to the safety net, and a few deletions from the welfare state. In the main, this would be expenditure neutral tuning.
But you don't deserve the mantle of conservative if you're arguing for broad-based tax reductions in the current environment, because this makes our debt unaffordable. It's the moral equivalent of a householder who is pressed by bills taking a few months off from work "to get their head together." This said, I think it is consistent with the conservative position to think hard about revenue-neutral changes to the tax code that are more efficient, i.e., which are less burdensome to the economy, permitting revenue growth through economic growth.
As for the Obama budgets going forward... I'm not going to try to get in his head and justify his statements, but I can try to work out budget implications of what he's proposing going forward.
I'd like to see some actual numbers. The Tapper article (the probable source of your quote) claims that Obama's numbers depend on 3.9% growth, which is indeed optimistic. But is the claim actually true? If we use the Clinton years and the 2007-2012 budget changes as a model, it seems more likely that the assumption is that growth+inflation are at least 3.9%. The Fed would like a managed inflation rate of about 1.5%/year (it's over 3% now....), and then what's required is a growth rate of 2.4%/year, which seems like an eminently reasonable bet.
Second, as the Tapper article concedes, Obama does plan to limit spending (as opposed to interest payments) to actual receipts, so your claim that Obama lied depends on interpreting what he said in a particular way, without acknowledging that there is a reasonable interpretation of his words under which they're truthful.
This brings us to the question of whether financing the interest on the debt is a responsible approach, and that's not as clear as you would have it. If growth+inflation exceed the long-term treasury rate, then "financing the interest" actually results in the reduction of the debt/revenue ratio, and is sustainable indefinitely, whereas, if growth+inflation is less than the long-term treasury rate, then the debt/revenue ratio increases. My best guess here is that growth+inflation will be about a half-point less than the treasury rate, so the Obama plan amounts to 0.5%/year expansion of the debt/revenue ratio. This isn't sustainable indefinitely, but it does by us another 10 years to sort this out.
I'd prefer a plan that resulted in long-term retirement of the debt, but I do think that starting with a "stop the bleeding" strategy makes sense, and I'd challenge you as to why Obama should have to pay a deeper political price than that for the fiscal malfeasance of the Republican party.
I don't know about the numbers, but the framing seems the most important thing here, and James' attempt to reframe the issue seems to be the best answer.
The numbers get us all focused on the sheer insanity of their height.
But we should instead be focused on their legitimacy.
Not whether or not BO is lying, necessarily, but what truth is he hiding, or less than willing to divulge?
The business community didn't want to invest when he was the sole arbiter. Once the November election came, a few more investors came out.
When he was about to get in, business got cold feet and stood back.
Think of the psychology of investment. With massive changes afoot, who wants to get into the market until things settle down.
Obama says crazy things: he calls bankers "fat cats" for example. This draws opprobrium down on the business community.
Then he hectors the business community into chunking trillions into the economy.
I suppose I see what's happening as at least partially an emotional issue and that the numbers are secondary.
I'm with Stu to some degree on the need to invade Iraq. It wasn't closely connected to terrorism (although WMD had been declared, and Hussein HAD been lobbing scuds into Israel, and he had gassed his Kurds and whey).
What seems like it might have been the idea was to topple through a domino effect the Arab-Islamic world by toppling two key areas on either side of Iran.
This does seem to have had a shaking effect, although it's only this last year that many Arabic governments have started to fall.
Either Kaddafi is in trouble, and his government is more draconian than Kim Jong-Il's.
We don't really know what connects where, or where the fault lines run.
We see it differently, and we see it emotionally.
Kirby,
The business community didn't want to invest when he was the sole arbiter. Once the November election came, a few more investors came out.
If we look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), (I'm using this page as my data source), it hit a market high of 14,164.53 on October 9, 2007, well before the major party candidates were determined. From that point, it fell (with the usual rallies and drops) to a low of 6,626.94 on March 6, 2009, [N.B. actual market highs and lows may be a bit more extreme, I'm just using the values from this data set, which have a 1 week granularity.], and it's been increasing (again, by fits and starts) since. Looking at the data doesn't give an impression of movement around the elections, although one might argue that the results in both 2008 and 2010 were widely anticipated, and "priced in."
I do think that the business community (or at least the rational side thereof) leans Republican (because the impact of taxes is more promptly felt on their bottom lines than the impact of expenditures), but given that, actually prefers a divided government like we have now to a purely Republican one, on the theory that single-party control of the executive and legislature means that that usual checks and balances are ineffective.
The problem with the status quo is that Republican threats to "shut down the government" are injecting a huge amount of uncertainty into the mix. Will businesses that have government contracts be paid? How about businesses that cater to senior citizens? If the government is shut down, there are no Social Security checks.
The question of the day is whether or not the house majority can find a way to participate constructively in the government. If all they do is throw wrenches in the machinery, they shouldn't expect support from the business community going forward.
When he was about to get in, business got cold feet and stood back.
There's really not much evidence of this in the DJIA time series. I've certainly heard this anecdotally, but I wonder if there's an objective data set that makes this argument. I don't know of one, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one.
I'm with Stu to some degree on the need to invade Iraq. It wasn't closely connected to terrorism (although WMD had been declared, and Hussein HAD been lobbing scuds into Israel, and he had gassed his Kurds and whey).
I take it you haven't been following the "Curveball" story. The WMD evidence seems to have come from a single Iraqi turncoat, and was "confirmed" by multiple agencies—all of which were interviewing the same source. Powell's staff knew that the evidence was weak, and told him, but he went ahead anyway, and actually elaborated (i.e., "punched up") one of the transcripts that he relied on at the UN. Powell is throwing a huge fit over this, but really, he seems more like a sinner than sinned against in this matter.
What seems like it might have been the idea was to topple through a domino effect the Arab-Islamic world by toppling two key areas on either side of Iran.
Yeah. A "reverse domino effect" into the Islamic world captures neo-con thinking (to use the word generously) of the time.
I see these budget debates as part of the long term trend which has developed since the Carter years.
Republicans have traditionally fronted for business, the corporations, war materiel, bankers & finance, and the interests of the rich.
Democrats have traditionally sided with unions, the lower and middle and working classes, safety and environmental protection, small farmers, etc.
As the rigid partisanship has increased over the last three decades, respective sides have hardened into ever more cynical strategies.
The way I see it, deficit spending has become a weapon designed to force opponents into concessions, based on a fake "deficit" crisis. Each side tries to spend faster and faster on its own funding agenda, driving the mutual budget deficit higher and higher. Conservatives keep the war machine going, and the liberals keep raising "social" program spending.
The ante, however, for this game, has been raised to a level that previous administrations (and Congresses) would have found incredible. No one really believed that we could have guns and butter forever, but the brief period of fiscal prosperity which accompanied the Clinton years, led both sides into thinking that the only way they could prevail, in the long run, was by out-spending their opponents. If the Republicans could get two wars going, and keep them alive, the Defense budget would suck up all the available cash, forcing the Democrats to pay the bill on the backs of the taxpayer and the beneficiaries of the social largesse. If the Democrats could put enough "entitlements" in place, they could overwhelm the budget, forcing cuts in Defense spending.
Meanwhile tax cuts were being touted by both sides as, on the one hand, "stimulus" to the economy (for which there is no proof whatever), and on the other, as remedy for "tax-and-spend" "big government" evils.
But in point of fact, both sides were spending irresponsibly, often for the opposite reason(s). The grim irony of course has a remedy, and that would be runaway inflation. My guess is that the long term strategy of both sides is that inflation will be the only acceptable answer to the ballooning deficit, since neither side is willing to consider the draconian measures necessary to address it.
One other thing. Those reactionaries who are now crying for blood from "entitlements" should know that the Social Security Trust Fund is NOT part of the general budget. In the late 1960's, it was added to the mix as an accounting trick, but the RSI (Retirement, Survivors Insurance) Trust Fund is in excellent shape. The real problem lies in the medical insurance programs (Medicare, Medicaid, and the new Health Coverage legislation). There is nothing in any of those programs that promises to "control" costs. Cost over-runs can be expected indefinitely, especially as the baby-boomers mature into retirement. It is THESE entitlements that threaten the Federal Government, not the monthly benefit entitlements of the Social Security Program.
The greatest danger I see in these medical programs is that they have virtually no way of controlling mushrooming costs. Benefits are constantly being expanded, and the "going rate" is never challenged because there is market fixing and profit-driven pressure.
The big picture scenarios are not so Manichean as we might believe, or as Curtis suggests.
Bankers need solvent workers.
Solvent workers need solvent banks.
The very rich need solvent workers in their factories.
There is pressure, and tugs-of-war, between the different sides, but the two sides must continue to meet in the middle.
When Obama calls bankers "fat cats" it hurts the bankers' feelings. No one likes to be called fat, and no one likes to be likened to an animal. Obama has himself said he didn't like it when he was talked about like a dog, so why does he turn around and talk about people as if they were cats? You'd think he would have learned his lesson from how he himself has felt.
But then he turns around and asks those whom he has described as "fat cats" to help him out of the dog house, by investing.
I would think that bankers and other wealthy people would have their feelings hurt by the way he barks at them and be less than willing to comply with his wishes because of all the names he has called them.
But let's not forget that the theatre of left and right is good business in itself. It sells newspapers, it sells TV programs, it whips up excitement. But underneath this frothing, seemingly rabid surface, there is the greater need for the wealthy and the middle-classes to play ball with one another in a polite and stable fashion so that the economy can continue to grow, and yet the country remain liveable.
We don't want businesses to pump cancer into our homes, because it would kill our dogs and cats, which would in turn sadden us, so that we were unable to do our job so effectively.
These checks and balances are important, and we don't want one side to prevail. So the stalemate that Stu says the business community wants, is also to some extent what I want -- because it means that the checks and balances are working.
Meanwhile, let's hope that what happens in Wisconsin stays in Wisconsin.
Our children need an education, and those who do the job need unions, and need to be able to count on a decent retirement.
I'm not sure where to cut in this state's budget. The SUNY system will lose about 270 million dollars. This is not quite a disaster, but will make staffing quite difficult going forward. Well, it will make much of our staffing issues impossible, as there will be a hard freeze on new hiring.
It's going to rain cats and dogs tonight.
Stu's point that the economy began to tank before Obama's anointment is well-taken. Perhaps this was not a valid point I had made that Obama coming and saying mean things to bankers and other industrializers made them pull out of the market.
I do think he should just stop calling people names, though.
The financial crisis was a failure of checks and balances. The war in Iraq was a failure of checks and balances. The Drug Bill was a failure of checks and balances. Our open borders are a failure of checks and balances.
Virtually any wasteful expenditure you could name is a failure of government to prevision the consequences of sweeping changes and legislation, or to vote in such a way that the greatest good is visited on the greatest number.
Frankly, if a banker takes home ten million dollars a year, he can damn well stand to be called a fat cat. No one is worth that kind of money. But to facilitate it and forgive it is not the answer.
You're always complaining that the Democrats are "buying votes"--well, baby, that's what democracy is all about. The difference is the Republicans are bought with big money, and the Democrats are bought with the votes of those who don't have lots of money. Big difference. Greatest good for the greatest number. Why should big money get to control governance?
We aren't a government by the dollar, but a government of the people. Big difference.
Curtis' notion that bankers worth ten million a year make up the basis of the Republican party just can't be supported by facts. I don't know how many people make up the ten million a year crowd but it must be far less than 1%.
I doubt if it's even the rich who make up the great majority of the Republican base.
The crowds that flocks to Palin's get-togethers are hardly the rich.
Meanwhile, some uber-wealthy people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or that Soros fella are wealthy beyond the dreams of most of us.
I don't think we have this simple breakdown of right equals rich and left equals poor.
Free market equals Republican, I think we can say.
But I don't think there is any neat binary division on the basis of class. Business owners tend to be Republican, but not all business owners are wealthy, or are pulling even a hundred grand in a year.
People who work in government offices probably tend to be Democrat.
But those people working in big government offices have to remember that the ones paying taxes are in the private sector, and thus their jobs are dependent on the robust health of the private sector.
That's at least partially why I'm a Republican.
The wealthy DO pay about 50% of the taxes. That's good, I think, and we want people to continue to be wealthy. Even Obama now recognizes this.
Curtis,
Republicans have traditionally fronted for business, the corporations, war materiel, bankers & finance, and the interests of the rich.
Democrats have traditionally sided with unions, the lower and middle and working classes, safety and environmental protection, small farmers, etc.
This is a fairly traditional view. I believe it lacks nuance.
Conservatives keep the war machine going, and the liberals keep raising "social" program spending.
I'm not aware of any mainstream Democrat that wants to shut down the military. Both parties want a strong, effective defense. Our historical experience is that we need one, and if Pearl Harbor wasn't reminder enough, then perhaps 9/11 was. I do see a difference, though, in approach and understanding. Democrats are more receptive to questions of military pay, veteran's benefits, etc., whereas Republicans are more receptive to weapons procurements, forward basing, etc.
There's a major thread of Democratic thought that sees national service as something that should be a part of every citizen's experience. The WPA is long gone, but the military continues to scratch that itch by providing a collective experience focussed on national service, while conveying valuable job training, discipline, etc. Is there anyone from either party who doubts that the military forms citizens? There are ways in which investing in the military is investing in people, and Democrats generally support these ways. Republicans tend to think of military service in more explicitly patriotic and sacrificial terms, which is curious, because they tend to think of everything else in economic terms.
Procurement is trickier. Everyone's a hawk when the industry in question is in their district, and congress isn't above pushing procurement programs onto the military in order to move money into certain districts. I'll point to the alternate engine program for the F-35 as a current example. I'm not mentioning the party because it's immaterial: there are skeletons enough in both party's closets.
As for raising social spending, again, the question is more complicated than "Democrats aye, Republicans nay." The welfare state was dismantled by a Republican congress working "in dynamic tension" with a Democratic adminstration. Medicare part D was an initiative of a Republican administration working with a Republican congress. It is arguable that Medicare Part D is really welfare for pharma, but this gets at an ambiguity that Kirby just noted—it's a benefit to people too. My argument with Medicare Part D is that it wasn't paid for, and so has played a significant role driving the expansion of medical costs and the contribution of medical entitlements to the deficit. As such, it has been a vehicle for "putting into play" properly funded entitlement programs that serve our nation efficiently and well, like Social Security. It is arguable that that was the real goal, and that Republicans drove entitlement expansion to set the stage for a entitlement reduction. Cynical, but credible.
At some level, I think there is merit to the idea that we have to understand the budgetary impact of entitlements, and that benefits and revenues must balance. My issue with JADL's language of "entitlement reform" is that doing so tends to pre-frame the question in terms of benefit cuts, and that's certainly how Simpson approached the issue.
And I don't at all buy your theory that the R's started wars to carve out budget space. If so, they'd have put the expenses of doing so on the budget, instead of hiding them in special appropriations. (This makes the expense more resiliant when the war winds down). We're in Afghanistan because Omar Mullah protected bin Laden before and after 9/11; and we're in Iraq because childish neo-cons believed that intervention would be a fast and painless way of bringing western values and western political systems to the Islamic world.
Yay!!!
I wons, I did!
I've been of necessity out of the exchanges most of today and only now just catching up the postings. I like Kirby's humorous diversions on fat cats, dogs, and marsh mice, and wasn't put off by stu's jest that I'm a paid Chinese agent (as was President Carter's brother of Libya). stu does lament the loss of the numbers of Chinese students in whose education we might invest; perhaps when they would have returned to their homeland to exercise their invested talents after which the U of Chicago might receive some of their grateful contributions to their alumni fund, but somehow I've a few doubts on that score.
I think stu has provided some nuanced and plausible defences of the President's optimistic picture of economic recovery, though as usual mixed with the usual partisan blather against the Rs and conservatives, and though the President's shown no nuanced grasp of economic issues himself, and though his "Summer of Recovery" and forecast of 8% unemployment last year proved wrong, and though his record of talk, whether about transparency, earmarks, public campaign financing, closing GITMO, ending renditions and drone attacks, deadlines for withdrawing combat forces from Iraq, etc. have proved pretty smoky.
I am interested in some of the figures, however. Perhaps stu might provide some numbers and analysis of the GM bailout and how sound is the claim that, like the TARP bailout he earlier decried, nearly "replayed" (not to jest at what seems a homonymic typo, but seemed also a poignant slip). What has been repaid, what lost, and what are the economic consequences of such actions?
There are a few other questions I'd like to take up, but the thread comments permitting, I'll have to wait till later.
Yes, Brett did win, and yes, Stu did make a Freudian slip of a kind.
And glad that James saw the humor in my doggedly catty remarks.
Do we have a DEFINITION OF CONSERVATISM yet?
Emmett Tyrell said it was free market economics.
Stu thinks its racist homophobic people pretending to be about free market economics (though he backs off on this when it's put so baldly).
Brett at first agreed with the free market thesis and then he took it all back.
Craig said he had a giant investment portfolio.
Curtis thinks Republicans are rich people on financial steroids.
There's something to be said for CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS, as being somewhat different from economic conservatives.
JH hasn't weighed in a while, but he's a conservative Christian (doesn't want women at the altar, or at least ont he presiding side of the altar), and yet he's very much not free market in economics.
So of cuorse he's a Democrat.
No one understands Ed, least of all, Ed.
And the three wise men -- Barghest, Picklesworth, and Grady, are AWOL.
Not sure what GM thinks. does he buy the free market thesis?
JADL and Kirby,
I am peculiarly subject to homophonic substitutions these days. Not Freudian. Would that it were...
I look back at my own posts, and see to/too, whose/who's, and any number of more esoteric but similar substitutions, some of which are frankly ridiculous, and am disturbed and humiliated. I didn't do this five years ago. I remember my grandfather, who had two proper nouns at his disposal: "what-cha-ma-call-it" and "thing-a-ma-jig." And he was a Bell Telephone pioneer, an engineer whose responsibilities included the DEW line and essentially every microwave relay tower that AT&T built east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason-Dixon between 1940 and 1965. Someone who could talk about heterodyning frequencies, but who couldn't always remember the word for "pencil." My father escaped this. He's in his eighties, but there's no aphasia, no anomia. Would that I were following his track, and not his father's. The problem is not, as James once suggested, one of "tending the garden." It's the gardener who needs tending. But whatever my problems with nouns, I'm good with verbs: I figure that I'm one of maybe six people still living who still believes that the subjunctive future tenses are a viable part of English discourse.
When I was a pup, I used to finish other people's sentences. (Yes, I was that unthinkingly arrogant. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.) These days, I hope the pups will finish mine, because heaven knows, I can't always. My only solace is that they can't start 'em.
James, I'd like to call your attention to this article: Obama Praises GM Bailout as Shares Gain 4% in IPO. I recognize the weakness of the source (it's just low-hanging google-fruit, after all, but can do you expect on a Friday evening?), but I've read this in other places too—the government is in the process of selling off their stake in "Government Motors," and it's realizing a profit. Not really surprising: they bought at the bottom of the market after all. There are commercials on TV today for Chevrolet, for Cadillac. They have good products, they're employing American workers. They're not fully up to Ford yet, and Ford's not up to Toyota, but they're all in the hunt. In your world, the only domestic automotive maker today is Ford, and they're wobbling. Explain to this Grosse Pointe South HS graduate how that's a better world than the one we live in.
Kirby, I'd still like you to respond to my earlier argument, that there's more (and less) to conservatism than free markets. Noting my denial isn't enough.
Kirby, I'm confused as to where you think I said free market = conservative?
Among other things, I said this:
...
You earlier referred to a 'free market' that was free, but still had to follow the laws...
Where do those laws come from?
Progressives in power, that's who -
The problem is that the framing you've accepted, Kirby, is that Republicans = free market, and Democrats = non-free-market...
Which is a simple, false binary choice...
The reality is that we're dealing with two parties who have different views on how to regulate, tax, and subsidize a free-market system.
The right says we have to choose between those who are pro-free-market, and those who are anti-free-market.
A false framing that you've bitten on...
...
All of that seems to go Against your claim that I initially took your definition of conservative as the truth.
'conservative' is about as slippery a term as 'liberal.'
It's about not changing, and about hanging onto the past.
There are a few problems with conservatism from this angle:
1) 'conservatives' Redefine the past quite often to suit their own present purposes...(for instance, parts of the right seem to sell the idea that the founders were all evangelical Christians, and all in agreement with each other)
2) The past wasn't always so grand.
3) The present is not the past, and therefore the same systems don't work.
4) Once progressives have made progress, conservatives have to figure out where the line is of the way things were that they're trying to hold onto, and it gets confusing... They want things to be like the 50s, and then claim they don't want a progressive tax.
Which is like saying you want things to be like New York City, but don't want buildings, subways, or sarcasm.
"Nuanced" propaganda--as everyone here seems to prefer--involves convincing people of things that aren't true, or in diverting their attention from things that do them real harm, towards things that awaken their sense of indignation (such as abortion, gun rights, bi-coastal "elites" and so forth)--instead of real issues which may seem vague or have longer term effects.
A smokestack industry may have cash to hire people NOW, but the cancer rate for kids living within a mile of the factory may be 100 times the national average. Republicans will always argue that it makes more sense to keep quiet and bury the truth about this, even though the actual cost of "fixing" the pollution is less than 1% of the gross revenue of the company, and the amount the company pays the Congressperson to keep a lid on it is only 1% of that 1% of potential remedy. And when the mine or demand for the crap they produce is played out, they walk away from the place (now a superfund site), and lay off everyone on the plant, the pensions dry up, and the stock-holders move their chips onto a different place on the board. Was any of it worth it? Ask the mother of the boy dead of brain cancer.
But the real problem here is the company decides that America's a bad place to do business, so it moves its whole operation, lock-stock-and-barrel, to Nicaragua, where there are no environmental regulations, no unions, no labor laws, no banking restrictions, no taxes, and all that's required is a little protection money in the right hands to grease their way. Then the profits are siphoned off to the Caymans where they can be invested tax free in--wherever--Taiwan or Indonesia. Meanwhile, back in America? Fuck America! Who needs it? The only money that finds its way back to the States is earmarked for the lobbyists who are working the aisles on behalf of lower corporate taxes and eliminating "entitlements" and so forth. The major stock-holders live up in the Rockies in "compounds" and their kids go to school in Switzerland. They open a bottle of Chateau Whatthefuck (at $475 a bottle) and sit out on the veranda cussing about the mosquitoes and trying to decide whether to spend the weekend at the vacation-home, or to pop into town to fuck the local mistress. Only the best!
how does the notion of
the pursuit of happiness and
a free economy match up with
jesus' existential perogatives
on the sermon on the mount
beatus = happiness
jesus seems to insist on a different take
following radicaljewishjesus' teaching seems to suggest you could be in utter destitution but still attain to happiness it is not contingent upon physical well being - but contingent upon something else
it may be the devil
or it may be the lord
but you got to serve somebody
maybe it all boils down to who and what you're willing to serve
ultragrand conversation
i've been battling viruses
in cyber space and
in my respiratory system
i've been "virtually" yadda yadda yadda distant for over a week
i think we should smash all the computers have a grand old smash the computer day
everyone drops theirs from the highest possible building
it's ok
there will always be more
it'll all be done on wrist bands before long
hey everyone
give blood
get sterilized
your body your machine
those everchanging biobes
is anyone reading any good books??
jh
Stu, I don't know if you should sweat the small stuff. We know what you're saying, and maybe it's just because you're focused on what you're saying, rather than on how you're saying it, and also, when the conversation heats up, it's fun to toss your comment in without checking for niceties.
After all this we still don't have a good definition of the conservatives.
JH says we ought to have a free market and the ability to pursue happiness (the only one to go back to the original comment by Tyrell thus far, but maybe this is due to his coming in late after having been laid up all week).
Curtis insists that Republicans don't care about pollution, only profits, and that this is part of the conservative issue. Many hunters and fishermen are conservatives, and they do care about conservation, another aspect of the conservative deep dish.
But then I read Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative two weeks back and he really did suggest that we use tactical nukes in Vietnam. That would have been rather short-sighted, but probably no more short-sighted than using Agent Orange to defoliate the trees that the north was hiding under in order to get their caravans of arms supplies to the south.
I wasn't crazy about this notion of Goldwater's, I have to say.
Perhaps there are many working definitions.
Keeping things the way they are is one aspect of conservation.
Now that might mean locking in the racism of the recent and near past, and is perhaps a part of the conservative movement, and it might also mean locking out gays and women from substantial positions of power.
But I didn't hear anybody on the right complain about Condoleeza Rice's top position within the Bush 2 administration.
Not one peep.
All the flak at her came from the left.
The big pushes right now seem to be on several issues:
1. keeping the Constitution -- this is the Ron Paul push, and the central thrust against Universal Healthcare mandates (two judges so far agree that it overrides the Commerce Clause)
2. We need to have UNIVERSAL human rights.
Democrats on the other hand want to look the other way -- citing costs -- but Ron Paul also says we can't AFFORD the wars to rebuild nations in our image.
This is a very confusing issue. Feminists should be on the side of universal human rights, but they are confused by the notion of respect for relativism, and for the notion of each culture to maintain its own logic, even if that logic is misogynistic, as is the logic of the entire Islamic world.
3. Respect for human life as a universal.
Democrats again argue cost. They claim this puts young women at a disadvantage in terms of getting and keeping jobs and challenging the glass ceiling on wages if they are forced to have unwanted babies.
Pulling the plug on granny -- same problem.
Republicans think that all humans have an ontological sanctity that cannot be abridged by the state or by others.
On these and many other issues I see Republicans as the idealists, and Democrats as the realists.
I see this as going back to the Civil War and to Lincoln's idealistic notion that we ought to rid the country of slavery, and we ought to do it right now.
Democrats cited costs, and said, we're not going to risk our bodies for them n^*&*&*^.
Now they're saying the same thing with regard to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. That's their problem. Let them A-rabs figure it out.
Republicans see it as a human rights issue.
So let's go beyond the Tyrell framing of conservativism where he simply argues for the free market definition. There's more to it.
There are other principles at stake.
Many others.
And I think that realism and idealism and to some extent (why not?) surrealism are all intertwined in both parties.
To shunt one party off into an angry definition doesn't help us to see the good in the other group. Each party really does see itself as in the right, and the other party as having the wrong ideals, or ideals that will lead us down a bad path.
Curtis may not be willing to see this, but we can still work with him on the immigration question, one of the few that touch him personally, since he's in California. In that one area, he's adopted a conservative position: he wants a wall, and he wants it stopped.
JH is largely to the left, but on the topic of abortion, and on women pastors, and probably some other areas, he's a conservative.
I see Brett and Stu as center-left and ideologically aligned in most areas.
JADL is very far off to the right on most issues, but in terms of freedom of speech, and cultural freedom, I think he's a centrist, and may even take what used to be a leftist stance that everyone should be able to speak (they closed the door on that in academia after they got the majority hold on power, which in turn may mean defunding of the universities as a result of them appearing to more or less everyone as a bastion of totalitarian thought or at least as a closed shop -- a very dangerous position to be in when Republicans are up in all state legislatures, and angry as heck and the need to cut expenses is just obvious across the country).
Craig is to the left but isn't arguing seriously here.
Barghest has vacated.
As has Grady and Picklesworth.
Palmer is very far to the right on some issues, but he's also a total peacenik, doesn't want ANY wars, and is presumably for gun control.
So it's hard to know which way he's going to go in any given thread.
his conservatism is probably unlike any other.
So who defines conservatism?
Merriam Webster defines it thus:
"a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change" (that's from the 1977 edition)
Also, conservative: a cautious or discreet person.
The wild changes of the hippies gave way to the Progressive Movement -- tie-dyed t-shirts, long hair, sex out of wedlock, drug usage, a kind of communalistical philosophy, as perhaps compared to those who remained square throughout the period -- preferring monogamous marriage, holding oneself back, saving money in the bank, versus the live for today let the government bail us out viewpoint
But I think these got intertwined.
Culture isn't static, and squares in the 80s did wife-swapping, and went wild.
I'm not sure we can arrive at one universal definition. But let's continue to try it.
stu, I meant to suggest your slip "replayed" for "repaid" concerning the GM bailout reminded me that there's a strong PR spin by the President and the Ds to portray the bailouts as triumphs of the practice of government bailouts and takeovers of private companies.
Now we all make typos in fast-moving exchanges on blogging sites. While I liked the old conventional view that writing errors of spelling, grammar, and syntax were a discourtesy to readers, I've suspended that judgement for blogging purposes. I'd rather have the informal exchanges than the polished prose.
But back to "replaying" the GM-Chrysler bailouts and takeovers. I read the short article you linked with the President cheerleading the GM bailout and the modest increase in GM stock price. On the other hand, there is a more comprehensive and far more critical assessment of the auto industry bailouts by Prof Ellis Washington ("You won't believe what you paid for [the] GM bailout") here:
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=237885
(Disclaimer: I've owned a Ford for years now)
stu, I do commend your much more reasonable and nuanced answers to Curtis Faville's pigheaded nonsense indiscriminately rubbishing American business and capitalism in general. We disagree on many issues (probably including our respective views on the existence of public sector unions, about which I'm with FDR that they shouldn't exist), but making a bad case by waving "bloody shirts" about (as Faville often does) doesn't help advance any sensible liberal or leftist critique of business or capitalism.
I've worked for a multi-national corporation (3M Company) and found the company quite fair to its employees and to the communities where their facilities are located. Unfortunately, my mum, who worked for them for nearly a quarter-century, will lose her retiree health coverage next year due to the passage of ObamaCare.
A theoretical definition linking free markets and conservatism that confirms Kirby's general identification of the two may be found here:
http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Free-market+conservatism
Of course a completely unregulated economy doesn't (and probably shouldn't) exist in practice; it's a question of how much regulation promotes the economic general welfare, and that's where nuances are effective and where we tend to differ.
Curtis has a sensible side but has a tendency to go hogwild when he's overloaded. There is a kind of left that makes Glenn Beck look very rational and sensible and careful in his investigations. I actually don't mind Beck, because he often is after something in his wild way (I watched him talking about the 12th Imam yesterday -- something that Ahmadinejihad keeps talking about) and I have to admit -- at least his material is generally fresh.
Curtis tends to recycle myths from the 60s about the entrepreneurial class. But it's not as if he doesn't have teeth. He often does get his teeth into something that matters.
But you talk Bush or Republicans and he just becomes an enraged bull.
Not sure why that happens.
It doesn't take much to set some folks off, which is why I ban them. However, I don't in general feel that way about Curtis, and am surprised when he goes bonkers.
I still want to stick with the free market as an aspect of what conservatism wants and means. The ability to control prices generally throws things way out of line, but is something the left really wants to do, as they really do want to set what can be made, and by whom, which makes government into a monopolizer instead of governance. Cuba or N. Korea are pure examples. We probably don't have a pure example of the other kind of government, that is to say, totally unregulated.
Maybe Somalia.
I don't think either Cuba or Somalia are ideal.
Here is the definition James found, which I find useful:
"Free Market
A system of economics that minimizes government intervention and maximizes the role of the market. According to the theory of the free market, rational economic actors acting in their own self interest deal with information and price goods and services the most efficiently. Government regulations, trade barriers, and labor laws are generally thought to distort the market. Proponents of the free market argue that it provides the most opportunities for both consumers and producers by creating more jobs and allowing competition to decide what businesses are successful. Critics maintain that an unfettered free market concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, which is unsustainable in the long term. In practice, no country or jurisdiction has a completely free market. See also: Deregulation, Classical economics, Keynesian economics, Marxism, Monetarism, Chicago School, Austrian School."
There are rabid definitions of the other side, and then there are definitions from "within" the other side. Which have more legitimacy?
JADL,
I've looked at the Ellis Washington article you cited, and quickly came to the conclusion based internal inconsistencies and transparently false framings that it was fundamentally dishonest. I am honestly surprised that any critical reader could have been impressed by it, even one who was predisposed to accepting its conclusions, let alone be so self-deceived as to recommend it for consideration by a critical reader who you rightly expect to be predisposed to reject its conclusions.
Having done a bit more research, I now understand that this initial impression was too generous. But first things first. What were the internal inconsistencies and false framing that were so apparent on a first reading, and which evidently you missed?
Let's start with the first bulleted claim: The concept that secured creditors can be punished while favored political allies such as the unions can be rewarded. One might reasonable expect that the subsequent bullets would provide more detailed evidence of these claims. But the remaining bullets, while mentioning (a) tax-loss carry forwards, (b) that GM's production capability remained with GM, instead of being liquidated, and (c) that the creditors claims were cut dropped from $54B to $15.6$ (basically, 29 cents on the dollar), goes on to mention (d) that GM's contractional obligations to retirees was also cut from $20B to $9.6B (48 cents on the dollar).
So here's the question, what evidence has been presented that the intervention "favored political allies such as the unions" were rewarded? Not a damn word. Instead, we find that union retirees had their benefits cut. Tell me how you reconciled the general accusation with the specific.
Moving on, he next says, Based on these calculations, GM's creditors (the taxpayers) will come up some $30 billion short when the balance sheet for investments, loans, repayments and other money transfers is totaled, analysts say. Where does this come from, and how is it related to the "real cost" list he just gave. I'm a mathematician, and I can't tell you. There's a huge lacuna here. And I find the attempted shift here, from "creditors" to "tax-payers," to be telling. If we look at this from a tax-payer's point of view (as opposed to other creditors), there are two plausible answers. The first is in the tax-loss carry forwards. At GM's scale of business the tax rate is 35%, so those loss credits cost the government $15.7B, but only if GM survives to make $45B in profits. In Ellis Washington's world, this doesn't happen. Instead, GM enters Chapter 7 (liquidation), it's assets are sold, and the proceeds are divided by the secured creditors. In his world, what the federal government just gave up was the future right to tax GM's corporate earnings in perpetuity, rather than just the next $45B. The second is in the extent to which the governments own loans will not be repaid. More on that in a moment.
Next we find this, Bankruptcy law routinely mandates companies going through bankruptcy lose those. I find the juxtaposition of "routine" and "mandate" in this context to be jarring at odds with one another. "Mandate" is a requirement, not an option. Washington is evidently not willing to commit himself to the claim that this has never been done before. So presumably, the question of carrying tax-loss carry forwards through bankruptcy is left to the discretion of the bankruptcy judge. So he chose to exercise his discretion one way in this case, and not another. At some level, I see in both cases (the usual loss of tax-loss carry-forwards, and the case of GM getting to retain them) a common theme: the government looks after it's own interests in bankruptcy cases, and aways has. How does he fit universal governmental self-interest into a theme of Obama administration malfeasance?
(1 of 2)
(2 of 2)
I'll give one more citation, and then move on to post-reading research. Washington writes, "Instead of 'buyer beware' the message here seems to be 'creditors beware' – it may be bad business to invest in large U.S. companies that may be subject to government bailouts," said one commentator. Here is a classic false framing. The unnamed commentator (possibly the author himself) presents the intervention of the Obama administration as having been responsible for the financial loss experienced by GM's creditors. But this ignores the fact that there was no scenario under which they get repaid in full. The continued operation of GM outside of bankruptcy was never a possibility. The creditors lost their money in any scenario, not because the government intervened, but because GM was going to go through bankruptcy. The only question ever was "fast or slow." It's their failure of due-diligence as lenders that cost them, not governmental intervention.
So, with Washington's article exposed, let's carry the debate further forward. What was the GM bailout, and who did what?
Briefly, there are two distinct events, that folks like Washington are trying mightily to conflate. The bailout began as a part of TARP (a Bush administration initiative). Congress approved $25B in emergency loans to the auto industry, with GWB authorizing $13.4B to GM. As GM's finances continued to unravel in '09, it became clear that bankruptcy was inevitable. The Obama administration arranged for a "fast-track" bankruptcy, and in the process provided another $30.1B of debtor-in-possession financing in return for a 66% interest in the automaker. This had the legal effect of valuing all of GM's possessions at the time of bankruptcy at $15B, and effect of constraining all pre-bankruptcy claims against GM to that $15B sliver. This includes retiree benefits, creditor interest, etc. In particular, the original Bush era loan became a part of that $15B tranche.
In all of this, I'm still puzzled. Where's the beef? Did the stockholders lose their equity? Yes. Did creditors lose see their claims partially canceled? Sure. Did retirees lose benefits? Indeed. But how the hell you blame this on Obama is a mystery. These adversities were not consequences of government intervention, they were consequences of bankruptcy. The effect of the Obama initiatives is to ensure that there is still a GM left, that it's workers are still employed, its suppliers still have a market, and which shows every prospect of showing future profits, and generating future taxes.
We haven't defined the progressives, either. I wonder if a closer look at what's going on in Madison would help us find a definition.
At church this morning it was mentioned that Obama is sending 70,000 organizers from Chicago into Wisconsin.
http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/02/shocker-obama-administration-is-behind-the-day-of-rage-in-wisconsin-students-used-as-props/
There are lots of stories like this on the net.
What exactly is the charge? Is it something like unions must be able to set their own wages, even if they bankrupt a state?
I think it's important to remain balanced, and to think about both the poor and the rich, and not be biased, but to try to find a compromise that keeps the system sustainable.
I think this is why left AND right lay claim to Locke.
He's one of the very few that's functional from whatever angle you look at him.
If we could ever define conservativism and then define progressivism, then, according to the ol' Venn diagram approach, we might be able to identify where the two overlap.
If, that is, they do overlap.
There are probably at least some areas where the two sides are willing to sit down and talk to one another toward a workable solution on at least some relatively small matters.
I don't think the progressives can even discuss many things, the border situation, gay marriage, etc.
And I don't think the conservatives can talk about certain things: abortion, and some other topics, are not up for discussion.
stu, you're blowing smoke again about the Washington article, which covers far more ground than your initially-cited puff piece (though to your credit you yourself hardly claimed much for your proffered piece anyway). I merely cited another article that brought to light a number of briefly touched on concerns that might impugn Obama's triumphal claims about the success of the auto industry bailouts.
Washington's article cites a number of sources in framing his piece to address not so much the cost of the auto industry bailouts (we won't know this with confidence for years yet), "but of the precedents that have been produced when an elected politician intervenes in a company's decisions to the benefit of some and harm to others. Some even go so far as to suggest that the intervention has been used politically." A fair, not dishonest claim, and I think justified.
I should think it obvious that the GM-Chrysler taxpayer-financed bailouts (including the tax carry-overs) gave them an unfair competitive advantage in relation to other companies such as Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc. (in fact levying an implicit tax on competitors).
And I took EW's remark that "secured creditors can be punished while favored political allies such as the unions can be rewarded" to refer to the government's enabling of GM's avoidance of undergoing normal bankruptcy procedures that favour payments first to preferred creditors over claimants of lesser priority, as the Obama government did. The bailout also guarded against the possibility that the Obama-favoured UAW (a heavy contributor to Obama and the Ds' campaigns) might have had to make considerably greater concessions in an independent bankruptcy court. (Not to mention the plausible accusation that the Obama administration ordered the closing of many targeted dealerships according to political calculations, a point not mentioned in EW's piece).
Further, your suggestion that the "unnamed commentator" is EW himself is a pretty accusatory suggestion, since EW frames the source in quotation marks. Best leave off that.
The rest of the article and what I think is EW's main concern in the article about the wisdom of government interventions in the private economy (developed from the ideas of Frederic Bastiat and illustrated by a number of current commentators) you didn't bother taking up. This ignores the major contention of his whole article, which is to question the competence of politicians and bureaucrats efficiently, properly, and fairly to intervene in the private sector economy.
JADL,
I'm glad your still reading the thread. I was concerned the discussion would go stale.
I think if Washington had limited himself to concerns about political interventions in the market, he'd have been on more defensible ground, but I'll get back to this in a moment. He did not. His first sentence starts, "President Obama will have lost many billions of dollars..." Clearly, this is intended as a hit piece on Obama, one that ignores the Bush administration's actions ($13.4B isn't chump change,it's about 1/3 of the total federal commitment), and one that presumes that there will be a loss to taxpayers (which is plausible, but not certain).
Next, you phrase his statement on what happened as having been made contingently, i.e., Some even go so far as to suggest that the intervention has been used politically. Some might say that, but he goes much further a few paragraphs further down, The concept that secured creditors can be punished while favored political allies such as the unions can be rewarded. Nothing contingent about that. And for the second part, he offers no proof. He is responsible for the stronger (and unsupported) claim.
I should think it obvious that the GM-Chrysler taxpayer-financed bailouts (including the tax carry-overs) gave them an unfair competitive advantage in relation to other companies such as Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc. (in fact levying an implicit tax on competitors).
Fair enough, but there's a lot of precedent for governmental intervention into the market, by both Democratic and Republican Presidents. Bailouts are nothing new. There's no new precedent set here, and Washington's claim that there is, is false. This is the standard lie: that somehow Obama is acting in ways that his predecessors of both parties have not.
And I took EW's remark that "secured creditors can be punished while favored political allies such as the unions can be rewarded" to refer to the government's enabling of GM's avoidance of undergoing normal bankruptcy procedures that favor payments first to preferred creditors over claimants of lesser priority, as the Obama government did.
This presumes that "normal bankruptcy procedures" were not followed. Certainly, the bankruptcy was expedited, but there are limits to what any administration can do. In this case, they had to work with a bankruptcy judge who was the final arbiter. Presidents sometimes lose these cases, famously including FDR in '35. The Obama administration won this one. As always, it is subject to appellate review.
The bankruptcy also had the effect of eliminating pending product liability cases against GM, and other classes of potential claimants. Truth be told, the secured creditors will probably do better under this scheme (because GMs assets are most valuable to, and therefore most likely to be monetized by, GM) than they would have under Chapter 7, although it will probably take more time.
The bailout also guarded against the possibility that the Obama-favoured UAW (a heavy contributor to Obama and the Ds' campaigns) might have had to make considerably greater concessions in an independent bankruptcy court.
Explain to me why this isn't slander against Judge Robert E. Gerber.
Not to mention the plausible accusation that the Obama administration ordered the closing of many targeted dealerships according to political calculations, a point not mentioned in EW's piece
The Obama administration had influence over GM as it went through bankruptcy, but there's zero evidence of targetting. If you think you've got it, drag it out. As it is, GM and the Obama administration had some substantial (and public) disagreements on which GM prevailed, e.g., on whether to continue development on the Volt.
Sorry if I added new posts too soon. I think the smaller posts that attempt a difficult defintion sometimes draw more comments, and more real work from contributors.
Stu knocked Emmett Tyrell'[s definition of conservatism.
Then he suggested homophobia and racism, instead.
James then called Stu on this, and Stu backed off somewhat and said NOT ALL.
But we didn't get an active aghreement on what conservatism is.
James and I agree that it has something to do with free market ideology (Hayek) but like Hayek don't know where government itself should intervene.
Hayek's later work was a response to Keynes who asked him to clarify this area. But I haven't read the later work.
So I don't know what he suggests.
Brett weighed in but I don't think he drew any clear lines. I don't think anybody did.
I'm just saying that I think we failed to find a clear definition of conservatism that would work for all of us.
Stu and Brett haven't read Hayek, so I don't think there is any place to begin.
For the left, where would you begin? You'd have to begin and end with Marx, I should think.
But which book?
Probably The Manifesto of the Communist Party.
I don't think there are any other active books for the Democrats at this point, although most of them don't realize this.
Kirby,
Stu knocked Emmett Tyrell'[s definition of conservatism.
Then he suggested homophobia and racism, instead.
Here's the answer I gave earlier, and which you've so far steadfastly ignored:
----------
I don't buy your identification of conservatism with the free market. It seems to me that the trial definition fails on two counts: there's more to conservatism than free markets, and conservatives will as a matter of practice place limits on who can participate in the national market, making them thereby less than free.
Aren't budget discipline, a strong national defense couple with a tremendous reserve in projecting it, and self-reliance conservative values? But they have nothing to do with free markets per se.
OTOH, I people who call themselves conservative railing against NAFTA and its ilk, and arguing for increased protectionism. Limiting who can participate in the national market, and on what terms, makes our markets less free.
I'll also note that there's a general (albeit not universal) consensus in this country that state has an interest in education. Until recently, this was seen as a conservative value, c.f., Vannevar Bush, William Buckley, and William Bennett. Indeed, as an English Professor at SUNY, you are a cog in the state's education machinery. Isn't that a bit difficult to reconcile with a "free market über alles" weltanschuuang?
Stu, you seemed to jump from point to point in this, and well, it almost seemed dotty as in the guy who writes with dots. But I couldn't connect them.
You mean, because illegal aliens can't get into America, we don't have free markets?
I just didn't know what any of this meant. Still don't. How did you suddenly connect NAFTA to English departments?
There is a further problem of lots of misspellings and articles left out, so the logic was difficult to follow.
Then you bring in these obscure people you've brought up before once or twice like this V. Bush fellow. I forget who this is.
Could you be somewhat more clear?
I don't think free can mean ENTIRELY free as in Somalian lack of governance.
Or as in the Wild West that the Mexican border is becoming.
Smith kind of free, is what I'm thinking. Government makes sure of the legality and quality, but doesn't demand equality of outcomes. Quality rises, rather than equality of outcomes, in a free market.
I think we all still believe to some degree in quality rather than mere equality.
I think that's part of the rub.
Free market allows some to fail.
It's more Darwinian in that respect.
Strangely, when everybody survives no matter what, there is no emphasis put on survival of the fittest. I thought it was the left that believed in evolution.
Categories are all over the place.
On the border issue some group that sends their news to me said that all Republicans stink on the matter except for Michelle Bachmann, who gets only a B-.
I think you are trying to edge that whole problem of the border into an economic issue that goes against the free market, but this just muddies the issue.
Also, you threw in this Nazi stuff -- which is where you seem to always want to bring any definition of conservatives. It's just a huge mess of tar babied language, and I didn't want to deal with it, any more than I wanted to deal with the other dotty leftists who check in and out of their various mental wards to drop in here from time to time.
It just doesn't seem helpful to start bringing in uber alles, and weltanschaung and all that, so that if I respond I'm immediately proclaiming myself a Nazi if I say yes or no, or whatever I do.
It's a kind of poisoning of the well, to put it mildly.
Kirby,
You mean, because illegal aliens can't get into America, we don't have free markets?
No. I mean that Republicans (at least these days) sometimes argue against trade treaties like NAFTA, and in favor of trade restrictions (protective tariffs, etc.)
How did you suddenly connect NAFTA to English departments?
I didn't. But I point out that it's a bit peculiar for a state employee, working in a sector in which both private and public institutions are to be found, to be making a free market argument. Your argument seems to be that private solutions are always to be preferred over public ones. It seems to me that the questions, "Why then, state Universities?," and "Why do you chose to work in them?" seem in bounds.
There is a contradiction between what you say, and what you do.
There is a further problem of lots of misspellings and articles left out, so the logic was difficult to follow.
THBFFFFTH!!!!
Then you bring in these obscure people you've brought up before once or twice like this V. Bush fellow. I forget who this is.
The guy who proposed and built the National Science Foundation, which is the model for other successful educational/research foundations.
I don't think free can mean ENTIRELY free as in Somalian lack of governance.
Well, now we're in the old Churchill joke. "We've already determined what you are, madam. We're just haggling over the price." You accept the need for some regulation. You're a state employee. Our differences are of degree, not of kind.
Smith kind of free, is what I'm thinking. Government makes sure of the legality and quality, but doesn't demand equality of outcomes. Quality rises, rather than equality of outcomes, in a free market.
Equality isn't acheiveable. Equity is. So is justice. That's all I've ever asked for.
Free market allows some to fail.
Happens all the time... And (as you point out) it's not always a bad thing.
Kirby,
Also, you threw in this Nazi stuff -- which is where you seem to always want to bring any definition of conservatives.
"Weltanschuaang" is German for "World View." It is a philosophical word that conveys the notion of perspective, but does so with comprehensible root forms. It is more concrete. It is not a Nazi concept. "über alles" just means "over everything." Yes, the Nazi national anthem was "Deutchland über alles," "German over everything." But that's hardly an appropriation of the phrase "über alles," which is a cognate in any event.
Not a damn thing to do with Nazi's, and I don't recall ever identifying conservativism with Nazism, even in the face of your inane provocations that liberalism is just another word for communism.
I guess the whole thing just went over your head.
stu, I still hold (and you seem to agree) that Washington's piece introduced the potential losses to taxpayers as a prelude to his main concern (massive government interventions in and takeovers of private sector industries) that you failed to take up.
And his claim that in the GM bailout/bankruptcy case a huge transfer of wealth from private investors (e.g., bondholders and pension fund recipients) to the unions stands, though it's true he didn't produce the the figures you demanded of him post facto. Washington's concern seems to be that this is an egregious abrogation of contracts that will discourage lenders and raise the price of capital formation due to fears of future politically-motivated government interventions and confiscations.
Leaving aside the wisdom of government takeovers of private businesses, I don't think they're as common as you suggest. There are cases like AMTRAK as well as hybrid GSEs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (these three hardly what one could call financial success stories, as taxpayers continue to subsidise their losses), but takeovers where company CEOs are fired, company stock shares assumed and redistributed, and production targets set (as with the case of the government-touted production of the Chevy Volt, whose sales amounted to a whopping .2% of all GM's sales in January 2011, and that's including government purchases--though in fairness, the President did make a 10-foot test drive in pronouncing it a success worth a $7500 taxpayer subsidy) are hardly common, and for good reason.
Your accusation of my "slander" of the bankruptcy judge in the GM Chapter 11 bankruptcy case is just wacky; I referred to the political aim of the Obama administration in promoting this form of GM filing, not the particulars of the presiding judge's decision. Don't shoot yourself in the foot here, considering you've already prejudged the SCOTUS decision on ObamaCare--that if SCOTUS justices find for the dozens of states contesting the insurance mandate as unconstitutional, then SCOTUS has made a "partisan political" decision.
On the claim that the Obama administration targeted auto dealerships especially in Republican areas, there is an interpretation (albeit politically pitched) based on TARP Inspector General Neal Barofsky's report here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/race_played_role_in_obama_car.htm
Switching into German and using the phrase, "uber alles" had NOTHING to do with the Nazis?
I do think that there's a trend in the left to think of anyone to the right as a Nazi, and there's a trend in the right to think of anyone on the left as a communist.
Perhaps that's the ultimate discovery to be made about where one side wishes to push the other.
But if we use NAZI as the ultimate definition of Conservatives (although you're trying to deny that your definition goes anywhere like that, Stu), then how is it that it is the right that supports Israel through thick and thin, and the left far more willing to see the legitimacy of Hamas and other Islamic quasi-terrorist groups. I think Howard Dean has even said we should call them soldiers rather than terrorists (did he extend this designation to cover Al Qaeda?).
I do think that communist thought permeates the Democratic party even at its highest level.
The president has said he "sought out Marxist professors" and even his staunchest defenders such as Kloppenberg stress to what extent he has "been trained" by Marxist operatives such as Frank Marshall Davis.
Kirby,
Switching into German and using the phrase, "uber alles" had NOTHING to do with the Nazis?
NOTHING. Not a damn thing. It never occured to me that you'd default to a German = Nazi equivalence. Certainly I don't. This is entirely your problem.
I do think that there's a trend in the left to think of anyone to the right as a Nazi, and there's a trend in the right to think of anyone on the left as a communist.
Well, you exemplify the later. As for the former, in the present case, what we're seeing is projection. You're coming expecting me to accuse you of being a Nazi, something I don't believe and have never done, and take the very first opportunity that can be twisted in that direction to start throwing accusations of poisoning the well my way. Your problem, Kirby, your problem.
But if we use NAZI as the ultimate definition of Conservatives (although you're trying to deny that your definition goes anywhere like that, Stu
DAMN STRAIGHT I'm denying it. Look at the content of my definition. I note some real positives in describing conservatism: belief in a strong national defense, caution in foreign policy, fiscal discipline, self-reliance, and you twist a good faith effort into something very different. Nothing like taking a hand of piece, and dropping a turd on it to add heat instead of light to a discussion.
"I do think that there's a trend in the left to think of anyone to the right as a Nazi, and there's a trend in the right to think of anyone on the left as a communist."
The thing here is, Kirby, that on this blog, you consistently do the latter, and Stu and I never do the former...
Your grocking of the zeitgeist of political hardliners is somewhat accurate, but your understanding of your place within it is off.
JADL,
I still hold (and you seem to agree) that Washington's piece introduced the potential losses to taxpayers as a prelude to his main concern (massive government interventions in and takeovers of private sector industries) that you failed to take up.
No, this is primarily a hit piece on Obama, the libertarian issue is a means, not an end.
And his claim that in the GM bailout/bankruptcy case a huge transfer of wealth from private investors (e.g., bondholders and pension fund recipients) to the unions stands, though it's true he didn't produce the the figures you demanded of him post facto.
Clue: the pension recipients are members of the union. And you haven't yet given an iota of evidence that the union benefited disproportionately. The accusation begs for evidence, and finds it only in repetition of the accusation, both in Washington and in you. Bring some facts to the table, and we can argue. Until then, we're just dealing with your preconceptions, not the real world. And I'll note that the very fact that Washington brought other numbers in play (to give a truthiness to his accusations about taxpayer loss) indicates that he understood that he had a burden of proof, so the "post facto" crap is crap.
And you're confused about the Volt. Obama wanted it discontinued, but is trying to make the best of GM's decision to continue it. The subsidy you mention, b.t.w., applies to all PZEVs, up to a per manufacturer maximum. TMC has long since received the full benefit. And the 0.2% number is pretty meaningless for a first year production run of a new technology. Market shares start small.
Your accusation of my "slander" of the bankruptcy judge in the GM Chapter 11 bankruptcy case is just wacky; I referred to the political aim of the Obama administration in promoting this form of GM filing, not the particulars of the presiding judge's decision
No, you denied the independence of the court. (And I should have written "libel," ah, well.) The government is often a participant in bankruptcy cases where it feels there's a compelling national interest. "The political side" remains an accusation wanting evidence.
on't shoot yourself in the foot here, considering you've already prejudged the SCOTUS decision on ObamaCare--that if SCOTUS justices find for the dozens of states contesting the insurance mandate as unconstitutional, then SCOTUS has made a "partisan political" decision.
If it goes that way by a 5-4 vote, then yes, c.f., Bush v. Gore. If it has a 6-3 or greater lean either way, then no. It seems like a reasonable test, doesn't it?
On the claim that the Obama administration targeted auto dealerships especially in Republican areas...
Hmm, what I saw was (a) a directive to close a certain number of dealerships, and (b) a directive to prefer woman and minority-owned dealerships for retention. GM's distributorship network has long been "an old boys network," so I can see the point. But these directives interacted in a way that meant closing more dealerships in rural areas than in urban areas.
But as for the claim by a single GM official that "not a damn cent would be saved," etc., this seems pretty ridiculous. A perfect case of good cop/bad cop language. A big part of GM's problem was declining marketshare, and an infrastructure (including distribution) that was right-sized a much larger market share than it had, or was likely to have. It served GM's interests to have fewer, stronger dealerships, than more, and weaker. So the government had to play bad cop in the cull, but remember, the reason that companies go through bankruptcy is really to part with contracts that are pulling them down.
There are some differences between GM and Borders, but its very significant that the primary remedy Borders is seeking in bankruptcy is to be able to get out of long-term leases at stores that are losing money.
stu, whether public or private, most academic institutions of higher learning ideally exist to promote scholarship, open inquiry, teaching, and academic freedom (both Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit).
It's peculiar you should think it peculiar that those teaching at public universities would support free markets. But I'll just consider it an extended bit of jesting.
On the "haggling over the price" jest, I've always thought that was G B Shaw's, but I could be wrong.
I wish someone like JH would pop back into the discussion, or Sally, or someone on the left who's a bit older, and talk about the meaning of UBER ALLES, and the German song, "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber alles," that was sung by the Hitler youth, and which everyone associated with that movement.
I can't believe Stu is trying to wiggle out of this.
I never denied I see the left as a communist movement. I do it, and I know I do it, and I think it's clear as a bell.
Obama has VERY clearly been inspired by Marx and Marxists, including not just professors that he deliberately sought out, and high school mentors, but even in the very church he chose to attend.
Liberation theology is 100% Marxist.
Now Stu says I'M dropping a turd on the discussion because of linking UBER ALLES with an accusation of Nazism, and this turd, is somehow adding heat instead of light.
HIM saying UBER ALLES was light, but my noticing the background to this term (why are we suddenly using GERMAN, and in particular a phrase that is very strongly associated with that movement unless we are in fact referring to that movement).
Now Stu AND Brett are claiming that it was just a randomly chosen phrase, and that it had no overall allusion within it. This is either extraordinarily dumb, or it's just a lie.
I know that Stu is NOT extraordinarily dumb, so I think it's a lie, or at the very least an EVASION at having been caught red-handed at trying to link conservatism with Nazism.
I'm baffled. If we went before any sane judge, I think they would see the link.
It may just be an unconscious link on Stu's part.
It may be extraordinarily insensitive writing (not everyone feels the echoes in words).
I don't know what it is.
I remain open to hearing other takes on Stu's use of that phrase.
Apparently the president of Chile used the phrase Deutschland Uber Alles without realizing its Nazi connotation, too. He got into a lot of trouble for using it. The phrase has been taken out of the German National anthem, and is no longer used.
Here's an article about the Chilean president. Apparently, it's possible to not know the background of the phrase, or how it was used prominently by the Nazis:
"Sebastian Pinera wrote 'Deutschland uber alles' or 'Germany above all' - a phrase that became infamous under the Third Reich and was removed from Germany's national anthem as too nationalistic after the Second World War.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323883/Chilean-president-apologises-Germany-using-Nazi-slogan-Berlin-visit-playing-football-miners.html#ixzz1Ed0dyw6D"
In general it's a reference to a supremely contemptuous nationalism and supremacism, just in case any of you guygs decide to innocently drop it into any of your future conversations.
It would require an almost completely mindless ignorance not to know this phrase, and how it was constantly referenced during the Nazi era. I really find it hard to believe that Stu and Brett didn't know the phrase, or how loaded it was, and makes me wonder what I'm dealing with here. I've never felt this kind of ignorance in general in this conversation before, but I will try to adapt and realize that I'm dealing with people who are political neophytes and innocent of many different things.
Kirby,
There's nothing loaded about "über alles." There is something very loaded about "Deutschland über alles." The later is an allusion to the Nazi national anthem. You'll note that the President of Chile, in the example you misleadingly raise, used the full phrase.
Trust me Kirby, if I wanted to call you an Nazi, I'd call you a Nazi. In the past, when I've said more than I've intended, even in cases where the interpretation is other than what I intended but is reasonable, I've owned up to it. So there's signal to the fact that I'm not "owning up to it" now. Because I intended no such allusion, and because I consider your projection on what I said to be entirely unreasonable.
While we're working on your liberal education, I'd like you to look up the word "eisegesis," and contemplate the meaning thereof. It's a Greek word, but that doesn't mean that I'm accusing you of being a fisherman.
I've never felt this kind of ignorance in general in this conversation before, but I will try to adapt and realize that I'm dealing with people who are political neophytes and innocent of many different things.
Bull. The neophyte is the guy whose taking any reference to German to be a Nazi allusion. Not everything to have come out of Germany is bad. Luther, for example. I'd add bratwurst, saurkraut, and beer, too, although I understand that you deny these fine things.
If you say your opponent is saying "uber alles" you are putting your opponent into a Nazi framework. Trust me on this.
If you didn't mean to do it, then it's just extraordinary.
I forgive Brett for not knowing the phrase, or for thinking it's simply a neutral phrase.
I think it's either total stupidity on Stu's part (or else just some bizarre inability to hear the echoes of words).
It's possible, but it's a freak, and I hope it doesn't happen again. I'm not talking with idiots, I see no point in it.
If it's not Deutschland "uber alles" (the extra e in uber that Brett cites is because he apparently doesn't know any German -- you put an umlaut over the u).
I'm flabbergasted that Stu would not have known what he was doing, or that this would be a metonymic way of framing your interlocutor as a Nazi.
I'll not grant that Stu did this by accident, or think that somehow using a very well-known Nazi phrase was used for no reason at all was just some fluke, but I'll have to put it down to either an unconscious act of nastiness, or else some kind of brain damage. I don't think it's possible to have arrived at Stu's level of education and experience without knowing what he did.
It makes me doubt the entire context of these last years of conversation, and makes me extremely bitter.
I grant that Brett is a dumbkopf at times, but is generally on the up and up. I cannot believe anyone would think this phrase is merely neutral German thrown random into the conversation.
Even using German has a connotation.
But using this specific phrase is SO LOADED that you would have to be an utter imbecile not to know it. I'm mad about it, and won't let it go.
It's not possible that grownups can be this stupid. Is it?
If everyone agrees that I'm wrong, then I'm willing to back off this.
It's not even a nuance. It's like a brickbat to the forehead. I won't stand for this level of ignorance. If you guys continue to insist on it, and if others chime in and agree, then I'll grant that others didn't know, too, and that maybe having conversations in this sphere is useless, and I'm not sure I can continue to have any conversations here. It wouldn't be worth it to me.
I'm weighing this incident, but am deeply shocked, and deeply hurt by it.
I'm not sure I can go on in good faith.
We've hit a debacle on the German phrase.
To me, saying this word is just like any other German phrase, and it's of absolutely no consequence to suddenly use it, or to insist on German, or to use German when we are talking about the difference between right and left, is just plain wrong.
Brett's response that the phrase had been used before the Nazis is similar to saying that the swastika was used before the Nazis, and that it goes all the way back to ancient India, so using it, or stamping it on someone's forehead, has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
At this juncture, I foresee a dead halt to the conversation.
I foresee the conversation continuing with only a few possible occurrences:
1. Stu were to say he WAS referring to the Nazis, but only in jest, and he didn't mean it to hit me so hard.
That would be acceptable.
However, since he denies ANY possible connection between what he says and the Nazis, and since to me the connection is as obvious as the use of the swastika itself, I could say to myself, well, Stu is less sensitive to words, or hears them differently.
I'm not willing to do this, because I would feel like a fool, even if Stu swears on the Bible that he meant nothing by it. I now doubt the sincerity of both Brett and Stu, and can't do anything about it.
2. If others were to weigh in and say that they too would have never thought about the Nazis -- if ofr instance if Curtis were to do this, and JH, and GM, and Sally, and a few others, who are willing to do it, then I might be willing to continue, but it will be extremely difficult.
I just really don't know what to do. I'm thinking of shutting the blog down entirely. Or continuing on without comments.
It is also possible that Stu will either stop commenting either in this thread or in the blog.
I obviously don't want this to happen, but I think this is a mortal offense, and something's got to give.
I cannot retract my comments. Stu cannot retract his.
Let's give this 24 hours, and see if sleeping on it will allow some new insight, or allow it to take on a smaller importance.
At this point, I am absolutely gravely wounded by this incident, and cannot do anything but shut myself down and pray for guidance.
This is an "Et tu," moment. Of course, "Et tu" had some more words that went with it, and of course it was used by other Romans in other contexts, but I think we all know the reference. Or don't we?
I'm suddenly and purely flummoxed.
We can all continue to comment on it, I think, as we work through it. But I'm not going to give on this until my heart says. If this means the blog stops, or that Stu leaves (in which case I almost feel like stopping the blog altogether since he's now one of the most integral commenters) then so be it.
I can do no other.
Kirby, I left off for now (mostly) the debate with stu over the GM bailout to check on stu's use of "ueber alles" in the passage that so offended you (I utterly missed it earlier).
Hasty thinking on stu's part revealed in hasty errors at least, that come after some hot earlier exchanges on the alleged racism, "homophobia," and jingoism of the Rs. Then just before his erroneous dabbling in incorrect German the unwise personal mock that "you are a cog in the state's education machinery."
On stu's "free market ueber alles weltanschuuang [sic, sic, sic]" crack (stu, matey, it's "Weltanschauung"--I read German somewhat indifferently, but the error caught my eye at once--then in presuming to define a term everybody knows, you again misspell it "Weltanschuaang"), I honestly don't know how to judge it. stu insists he meant no Nazi reference, and I think he may be right, though he is ever quick to doubt the honesty and integrity of others with whom he disagrees. Example: on this thread he claims to know my real intention in mentioning an "independent bankruptcy court," when the reference he calls a "slander" and a "libel" didn't at all cross my mind. I know enough not to prejudge a legal opinion without examining it, but stu prefers the stance of invincible ignorance in devining my thoughts better than I and in himself prejudging SCOTUS's legal opinion (if adverse to his views) as "partisan politics." Again, hasty and reckless thinking.
Still, I value the opportunity for exchanges on LS and Kirby's sponsorship of them, and harbour no sense of personal grievance against anyone. May we all prosper and continue. . . .
I see the blog as promoting friendship and mutual understanding, not a warlike attitude between contending parties.
We have that anyway enough in the country.
Maybe this isn't as bad as I thought.
I'm sorry for my part in it.
Kirby, you seem to be very sensitive these days -
This is quite hypocritical of you...
You consistently compare the Democrats to Chairman Mao, and Stalin - you say we are stupid, that we want to destroy America, and on and on...You call Obama a vampire, a Communist, a Marxist - you say the left is destroying America, sometimes you say they're doing it purposefully.
You say we're like Mao and Pol Pot. It's a continual refrain.
Maybe Stu has been visiting Althouse's blog, because the commenters there seem to say "uber alles" rather frequently, and you never mutter a peep of objection.
You consistently listen to, and espouse support for, rightie talkingheads who make Nazi comparisons.
When Tom used the phrase a few years back, you apparently just read right over it without responding...(did you not know what it meant back then?)
You believe that Stu intentionally used this phrase to call you a Nazi...
It's a somewhat tenuous attack - if you look around the internet, it's pretty clear that people use this phrase not as a direct link to Nazism but as a way of pointing out when others have a steadfast and unwavering devotion to a certain ideological issue...
I see its use from both the left and the right out there...
Have you been listening to political talking heads too much? Out of one side of the mouth, you continuously make comparisons between those who disagree with you on policy and some of the most destructive humans to ever exist. You, for instance, directly compared Silliman to Pol Pot
...While at the same declaring a victimized outrage over even the whiff of a possibility that you might be in the ballpark of someone using a word that was used by evil people...
I guess it's true what they say - those on the left just have much thicker skins than those on the right:-)
So here's the reality -
You often directly connect others to evil people.
You say "Ron Silliman is like Pol Pot."
What Stu did, at worst, was say:
"Kirby Olson has a worldview that puts one idea over all others."
"The Nazis had a worldview that placed their country over all others."
"Therefore, the way that Nazis placed their country over all others is analogous to the way that Kirby places one idea over all others."
Meanwhile, you're calling me stupid for disagreeing with your claim of understanding of what goes on inside of Stu's head...(And yes, I already did know what Uber-Alles meant...I was being facetious about 'not knowing what it meant, and I'll google it!' so sorry if my jokiness there didn't come through...I didn't immediately take offense to it, or think that it was an off-color use of the term...but I wanted to check up on where it sits as a phrase in the world these days, and it's a pretty mixed bag..
I was merely talking about the fact that both its Original use And, often, its present use, are not directly connected to Nazism the way the Swastika is. This may be what You link it to, but other groups of people seemed to have moved beyond that...
It's like the fact that I can say MotherF@#$er without it actually being about somebody fing their mother...it could even be a compliment.
"That guy is one badass MotherF'er"
You said :
"Nazi stuff -- which is where you seem to always want to bring any definition of conservatives."
Now, if you had said "I know you weren't directly comparing me to Nazis, and you and I both know that the term 'uber alles' has some negative connotations, so I would appreciate it if you didn't use that word,' then all would be well in the world.
Instead, you accused Stu of doing something which wasn't true...
Your claim was Not that the phrase was insensitive, but rather that Stu was claiming that conservatism is defined in terms of Nazism...
If your claim had been that the use of the word was insensitive or inflammatory, you may have had grounds...
If this is the way a poor choice of words makes you feel, I do think this is at the least a time for you to step back and realize the vitriol of much of your rhetoric...
You've been calling my side stupid Maos for years now...
Mirror-time!
A fun closing analogy!
- This is like a crackhead condemning a family-man for accidentally drinking a little too much communion wine.
I'm fine if Stu was jokingly calling me a Nazi. But he now claims he meant no reference whatsoever to Nazis.
Was he being facetious?
You now (Brett) admit that you DID KNOW the phrase uber alles. I thought I had fallen into an alternative universe there for a minute where all my bearings were lost.
You ask why I don't police Althouse's blog. Althouse's blog is a nightmare. The commenters are hilarious, sometimes intelligent, but beyond believe. It would be like trying to police traffic on the NJ Thruway without even the status of a police badge. I'm not going down that route.
I don't have time.
I still can't understand Stu's viewpoint here. YOU KNOW uber alles, as does everyone else. Stu claims he doesn't.
Is he pulling my leg?
I don't understand this.
It's ok to call me a Nazi, or to say that the whole conservative movement is Swastika oriented, but just openly say it so we can evaluate the truth of this assertion.
What drives me nuts are insinuations which when called out into the open sneak back. It's like the claws of cats that disappear back into the paw while the cat looks all sleepy eyed and is just drinking his milk innocently even though you have a bloody scratch on your arm to prove otherwise about the cat.
I'm cross.
When I make assertions about Silliman or others I'm usually at least half-joking. I like Silliman. I even admire him.
and I'm sorry I called you a dumbkopf, Brett. I was thinking about the old program Hogan's Heroes.
the Nazis wanted to hold the world in bondage, as slaves.
I think Communists want to do that, too.
Republicans want the world to be able to be free businessmen, with responsible and clear rules of engagement.
My problems with Stu did not extend only to the "uber alles Weltanschaung" phrase, but to a general triumphalism in his tone when he thought he had won an argument.
In this thread, he said just to me, that I should "extend my Humanities education by learning that Luther was a German and had been a German before the Nazis" or something to that effect, which was a TONE that I resented, and seemed unnecessarily inflammatory.
There have been other similar remarks about my lack of logic, and about how "What you ... fail to understand..." which seems to me an unnecessarily combative tone which implies superiority of judgment, and knowledge, which I think is arrogant as well as aggressive and dismissive, and is something I often hear in the liberal tone toward conservatives.
I resent it.
I think he often presumes to speak for very large constituencies -- he speaks as the mouthpiece for the entire Republican party.
He has written in one comment that I must talk in numbers or else admit I have nothing to say. (4:12 pm).
But what I challenged was not his numbers, but his framing of the numbers. He tried to argue that this was irrelevant, and only positions me as a bonehead.
In general, I like Stu, but find that he gets way too triumphalist.
The "uber alles Weltanshaung" comment was seemingly another attempt to wipe all viewpoints except for his own off the table.
I find that objectionable.
in his remarks to JADL he dismisses an article that JADL had forwarded and implied that JADL should get a clue, when he said,
"Clue:
And then went on to provide a clue for the apparently clueless JADL.
I find this objectionable because of its supercilious and cutting quality.
I expect this from J., because he's an idiot and can't do better, and has no patience, and doesn't want to know anything outside of his own barely educated mind.
With Stu, I expect a better performance.
I realize that I reach for Mao and Pot and others, when I do argue, but I try not to say that my argument is a universal one. I always try to say, this is what I see.
We are probably all universalists here, but universalism can tend toward arrogance. The good part of it is that it gives us something that's worth arguing about.
How to argue for a universal while allowing relativism seems to be the problem for me here. If anyone can help me to understand that, I'd like to know how to better facilitate that effort.
I don't like cutting methods of discussion.
I think it wrecks friendship, which should be our ultimate goal.
We can't convince anybody of anything if we first hurt them.
And if we feel too far above someone to address them in a civil manner, then I don't think we can arrive at friendship.
By friendly, I mean something like showing goodwill, and as an antonym I'd say that belligerence is what we should seek to avoid.
JH is probably the exemplar of this spirit (it's not a spirit I always embody, but I do try to learn from him). Sally, in spite of few sallies on this blog, also exemplifies this spirit.
J is the exact antithesis of this spirit.
I don't mean to ban clowning around especially at our own expense.
It's not so much the content of what's said as the tone. It's something all of our parents taught us. To my mind, there's nothing worse than the supercilious tone.
Well, there is: it's the blatantly murderous tone.
But to my mind those are related, as they both kill the spirit of friendship: which thrives on laughter, sharing of insights, gossip, and learning.
I do like learning all the stuff that Stu knows, and all the stuff other people here share. That's the reason I have the blog. I feel broadened by it.
But I don't want to feel humiliated, put down, or silenced by it. the rest of you can go away if you don't like it here. I'm kind of stuck here, and have to moderate it so that I can continue to enjoy it, or else I wonder why I am doing this, since the only payment I receive is friendship, and learning.
"the Nazis wanted to hold the world in bondage, as slaves.
I think Communists want to do that, too.
Republicans want the world to be able to be free businessmen, with responsible and clear rules of engagement."
Democrats agree with this - except we see that Republicans often promote irresponsible and unclear rules of engagement...
I'm sure the Repubs think the same of Dems...But we don't call you Nazis. But you do call us Maoists. What to think?
You accused Stu of calling conservatives and by association you NAzis.., when that's not what he did - It's a phrase that has seemed to emerge a bit from its Nazi roots to take on a new meaning that is related to the dogmaticness of an ideology, not to the nature of the ideology...
It's a connotation that means that you are as steadfast in your views as the Nazis were in theirs...
This is wholly different from what you do, when you say that our views are Maoist.
You can see this distinction, right?
I don't understand your idea that somehow you're talking from a point of view and Stu isn't? I don't see a salient difference between your approach and his in terms of this...
There's some conflation or lack of clarity going on here from you that's hard to parse out... From my point of view, the way you express your point of view is often just as 'objective' or whatevs as the way you feel Stu expresses his point of view...
"When I say these things, it's different because..." and then it seems like your main answer is that it's different because it's you saying it and not him?
And there's also the 'honesty' claim that you seem to be upset about, but remember that Stu is a very specific-minded guy...
You accused him, however, of doing something he did not do, and definitely did not intend, and that is where you were at fault...
Oh, and as the resident summer-camp counselor specialist, I acknowledge the following -
It is a truth that should be near-universally accepted that whenever there is a vicious argument, both parties are at to some degree at fault, and both could have handled the situation with a more positive approach...
A vicious argument is a series of responses - And in each of these responses, there are things either party could have done differently to make the situation more peaceable.
Uber Alles was a somewhat loaded phrase that was probably used poorly... What matters in language is not only how things are intended, but how they land...
And Kirby, your response was both an overreaction, and false in the claim you made about what Stu had done.
It's like if a boy was being careless and tripped a kid, and that kid sprang up and punched the boy in the face and claimed that the boy had kneed him in the balls.
The boy should have been more careful, And...
The kid shouldn't have punched him in response and exaggerated what he had done.
(corrected version -- what a howler...)
I'm going to slip in a quick post, and then I'm going to take a long break.
First, I want to express my appreciation to Brett, who has tried to be a peace maker. Blessed indeed are the peace makers. Thank you.
For the record, I don't read Althouse's blog, so I have no idea how "über alles" is used there.
Kirby seems intent on seeking a Godwin's law victory here, and he's willing to use a scorched earth approach to get his "win". The problem with scorched earth strategies is that if you win, you have a few seasons of having to live off of barren, burned, unfruitful earth.
This was a safe place to air our differences, to disagree, even vigorously. But now I find my words are twisted, embued with a meaning that was never intended, and which, moreover, I consider to be fundamentally unreasonable. While I regret that my words were the trigger for this, this has become one long ad hominem, and for me, anything but a safe place. I hope that Kirby can find healing for the woundedness that is so evident in this thread, so that this might become a safe place again.
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