An open farewell letter to President Obama.
You see, the only reason why you did so well in the first place is that as a person, you seemed way cooler than most other politicians. Wayy more cool than John McCain, even with his heroism and long record of public service. Most of those who voted for you didn't even really care about the details of your platform. They were willing to let any serious discussions of the impacts of what you were proposing slide, or perhaps even give it a try. After all, Bush and the Republicans had at it for eight years; eight tough years. Years during which the media continuously told us how bad things were, how bad Bush was, how terrible the wars were and so on. So everyone agreed it was time for a change. And as the very candidate running on change, you beat the milquetoast John McCain handily. Fine.
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Article comments
76 - Clavos
Glenn,
I was addressing your #65, and only that comment. Your other "point" in that comment was addressed to Baronius, so I saw no reason on that basis alone to respond to it. Your "question" in #65 asks why, women who instinctively love children, would be the strongest defenders of the right to abortion. The answer, of course, is obvious: Pregnancy involves their bodies, not the rapist's, not their boyfriend's/husband's. In the final analysis, it is they who will be stuck with the enormous burden of responsibility for the result if it's carried to term and is born.
Why are men so opposed to abortion? It represents the last vestige of the control over women that men have sought and wielded over women since time immemorial; today, even conception does not require the participation of a man, so once the right to prohibit abortion disappears, men's innate fear of being controlled will become a reality (at least in the minds of men insecure enough to need to control women, which a lifetime of observation leads me to believe is probably the overwhelming majority of them).
Women have always had the power of the sexuality of the vagina over men; men instinctively recognize that (there are any number of folkloric sayings related to the concept), and all the way back to prehistory, have sought other ways to maintain some semblance of control.
77 - Clavos
Oh, Glenn, I forgot to address your speculation in #74 as to my motives for not responding directly to your questions:
bullshit (and presumptuous).
78 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
You appear to support a woman's right to abortion, yet you vehemently oppose the side that protects that right - and the rights of LGBT's, too, not to mention the right of our children to go to school without being having religious dogma shoved down their throats.
Which is more important to you, Clav? The rights of women, LGBT's and children? Or your personal perceived rights to pay ever-lower taxes, to have all the guns you want, and to pay your workers as little as you can get away with?
That sounds crass, but please look past the admittedly rude tone to the overall point.
79 - Clavos
Don't oversimplify, Glenn (you are prone to that) my objections to the Democratic zeitgeist go way beyond women's issues and the religion thing, and even beyond taxes and guns (I don't hire workers).
My biggest objection to the Democratic philosophy is the almost single-minded dedication to putting everything in the hands of the least intelligent, least efficient entity in the land: the federal (and to some degree, state) government. Secondly, the eagerness with which Democrats, upon perceiving what they judge to be a failure in the system, immediately want to pass laws to "correct" the problem. We have more than enough laws now, and many of our society's shortcomings could be resolved without adding still more complicated and often wrongheaded (Prohibition?) laws, which only benefit the lawyers.
I could go on, but there's no point, because in your heart you know you're right and I'm one of those eeeevil apostates.
80 - Igor
@79-Clav: I disagree. It is no longer the government bureaus and bureaucrats who are the least efficient and most venal people in society, now it is the upper management of our pampered and protected private companies.
"Privatization" has failed. It's time we realized that. All the failures we see around us are failures of privatization, the attempt to replace government action with private companies funded with public money.
Whether it's Solyndra or the horrible NECC meningitis catastrophe, those are the failures of attempting to privatize essentially public actions.
Solyndra makes clear that we should have government entities, perhaps in the NSF or universities, developing the alternate energy modes that we surely need. Private entities, seduced by big money, simply have no resistance to corruption.
The nations health CANNOT be entrusted to venal corporations whose highest goal is to profit shareholders. NO market defense exists for the hapless citizen.
Admit that 'privatization' has failed and go back to the kind of government administered projects that built the great dams and the great highways and the great ports, etc., that nourished Americas great successes.
Privatization is a failure.
81 - Clavos
I completely disagree, Igor. While I won't argue against you in regard to the venality of some in the private sector, they are still far outnumbered by those who do well and do right in business, and those people are so far superior to anything the government does as to be not even in the same league.
But, I can see this issue is truly an opinion-based difference, so I imagine we'll probably have to agree to disagree on it.
82 - Igor
I cite a variation of Greshams law that "bad money drives out good". The last 30 years of business management has seen an onslaught of bad managers, enabled and cheered on by the protection that has been extended so freely to businessmen. We simply don't prosecute them anymore, and the extensive tort reforms that have been effected in the courts have insulated them from the bad effects of management malpractice.
A good manager simply can't compete with a lying cheating bad manager, and Boards have been subverted by crooked managers.
Bad managers DO drive out good.
83 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
My biggest objection to the Democratic philosophy is the almost single-minded dedication to putting everything in the hands of the least intelligent, least efficient entity in the land: the federal (and to some degree, state) government.
And that's your greatest mistaken paradigm, that government is inept, incapable, et cetera...and I suspect it comes from your failure to realize that people are people are people, that those who work in the public sector are every bit as good and as faulty as those who work in the private sector. You've glorified the profit motive in the past, as if that and that alone is some kind of panacea to all the world's ills, yet you look at altruism with utter suspicion.
You point at the cost of Medicare fraud, yet you ignore the fact that nearly all Medicare fraud is committed by those in the PRIVATE sector...and that's not even addressing the corruption within the oh-so-trustworthy private sector. The greater the hold that the profit motive has on a person, the greater the chance that person will be corrupt.
And when the private sector does you dirt, Clavos, what do you do? What CAN you do? If you live in a nation where government is weak and small and deregulated, there's absolutely SQUAT you can do. The government is, always has been, and alway will be the ONLY protection you have against the vagaries of the private sector.
So...if you want to go where government is weak and small and deregulated so you won't have nightmares that the government might tax you a few more cents on the dollar, go ahead! Just remember your choice when you go there and find that the reason you can't fight city hall is because it's owned lock, stock, and barrel by not-so-nice people. We had our Tammany Hall, sure...but you'll find that outside the socialized democracies of the non-OPEC first-world nations, Boss Tweed is more of a rule than an exception.
84 - Clavos
Glenn,
Those who work in the public sector are no different from us private schmucks, true, but the structure in which they work is radically different. Public sector employees are held to much lower standards than private; they are not held responsible for outcomes to the same degree (in many cases, not at all), they are not subjected to disciplinary measures to the same degree (except in the military), it is nearly impossible to fire line employees, etc., etc. I didn't make this up, Glenn, the whole country knows how inefficient and mistake-prone most government agencies are; the poster child for inefficiency is your local DMV; everybody in the country makes jokes about it, and everywhere it's used as the symbol for inefficiency and poor performance. There are innumerable stories about cost overruns in government projects; shoddy work, as in New Orleans' disastrous levees that broke during Katrina.
Again, I didn't make it up; it's real.
It's immaterial WHO's committing medicare fraud, Glenn. The salient point is that medicare (the government) does way too little to prevent or control it; on the contrary, Medicare's very inefficiency and ineptitude attracts the rip-off artists; the level of fraud is so high precisely because it's so easy to pull off!
The government doesn't have to be big and powerful and controlling to serve its people: on the contrary, when it is all those things is when it begins to swing out of control. A perfect nearby example of a government that is too powerful and at the same time tightly overregulated is Chavez' Venezuela: he has a tight hold on the people, and little else. the result? Rampant corruption and lawlessness (on the part of the government, not the private sector), to the point that the citizens' personal safety is at risk. And to top it all off, because Chavez has virtually no controls on him, the country's financial condition is perilous despite being in possession of the world's largest known petroleum reserves.
Yep, that's what you get with a strong, highly regulated and powerful government.
You say:
The government is, always has been, and alway will be the ONLY protection you have against the vagaries of the private sector.
To which the obvious reply is, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
85 - Baronius
I look at this a little bit differently.
I've talked to a lot of military people over the years, and they'll tell you that DoD civilians aren't necessarily bad, and that uniformed personnel aren't necessarily good. What it usually comes down to is actually being there. No one has respect for the admiral who always stays on land, or for the bureaucrat who sends an anchor to an Air Force base instead of a desk calendar because that's what the requisition form said (and there's a true story along these lines).
The person who understands the situation best is probably not going to be the regulator. It's going to be the guy in the shop who figures out a way to cut his costs 4%. He's innovating, and innovation is unpredictable. Regulators live in a world of risk reduction, but they don't live in the actual world where things get done.
One thing that the Occupiers as well as the Tea Party can sense is that this problem is everywhere. Big Government, Big Labor, and Big Business are all hugely powerful but incapable of doing a good job on the detail work. The three of them keep each other in check. But business, as long as government doesn't declare it "too big to fail", has to stay innovative. Government and labor have to, as well, but in a different way. Arizona became the new California because the government was better. Microsoft trounced IBM because they understood the detail better than the corporate suits did.
There are elements in both parties, and in business and labor, who would like to see us drift into corporatism. Public-private partnerships, everyone having a seat at the table, it sounds good. But it's unresponsive to changing situations. It's like a committee trying to write poetry.
I mentioned the military earlier, and not just so Glenn would read this. The military is known as the one sphere of government that's capable of being innovative. Why? Because it's very easy to measure its failure when it falls one step behind.
Now, government definitely has a role in our lives. I suppose there'd be a way to privatize food inspection, but I wouldn't want to see it happen. Regulating financial markets smothers some good ideas, but can block some really crooked things from happening. So it's not a 100% government or 100% non-government solution for society. But we've got to be really careful about how much power we give to an unresponsive organization like the government.
86 - Jet Gardner
Jet's latest Electoral data averages: 10/29/12
-41 sources averaged together give this result...
Electoral votes - without Virginia...
Obama 290
Romney 235
Virginia tied
Alabama-9 Romney 54% - 36%
Alaska-3 Romney 62% - 36%
Arizona-11 Romney 52% - 44%
Arkansas-6 Romney 58% - 31%
California-55 Obama 53% - 40%
Colorado-9 Obama 50% - 46%
Connecticut-7 Obama 52% - 42%
Delaware-3 Obama 62% - 37%
Florida-29 Romney 49% - 47%
Georgia-16 Romney 51% - 43%
Hawaii-4 Obama 62% - 38%
Idaho-4 Romney 63% - 27%
Indiana-11 Romney 51% - 38%
Iowa-6 Obama 50% - 46%
Illinois-20 Obama 55% - 36%
Kansas-6 Romney 57% - 42%
Kentucky-8 Romney 53% - 39%
Louisiana-8 Romney 50% - 37%
Maine-4 Obama 52% - 39%
Maryland-10 Obama 60% - 36%
Massachusetts-11 Obama 57% - 38%
Michigan-16 Obama 50% - 43%
Minnesota-10 Obama 51% - 46%
Mississippi-6 Romney 56% - 43%
Missouri-10 Romney 53% - 44%
Montana-3 Romney 51% - 43%
Nebraska-5 Romney 51% - 41%
Nevada-6 Obama 51% - 47%
New Hampshire-4 Obama 50% - 46%
New Jersey-14 Obama 53% - 41%
New Mexico-5 Obama 53% - 44%
New York-29 Obama 61% - 34%
North Carolina-15 Romney 50% - 47%
North Dakota-3 Romney 53% - 37%
Ohio-18 Obama 50% - 45%
Oklahoma-7 Romney 58% - 33%
Oregon-7 Obama 49% - 42%
Pennsylvania-20 Obama 50% - 44%
Rhode Island-4 Obama 58% - 33%
South Carolina-9 Romney 46% - 40%
South Dakota-3 Romney 52% - 43%
Tennessee-11 Romney 47% - 40%
Texas-38 Romney 58% - 39%
Utah-6 Romney 71% - 20%
Vermont-3 Obama 68% - 23%
Virginia-13 ? 48% - 48%
Washington-12 Obama 53% - 42%
Washington, D.C.-3 Obama 88% - 8% !!!
West Virginia-5 Romney 52% - 38%
Wisconsin-10 Obama 50% - 47%
Wyoming-3 Romney 65% - 33%
87 - Igor
Milton Freidman claimed that fraud was impossible (or at least unsustainable) in a Free Market. But he was wrong, and even Alan Greenspan now admits it.
The problem is that monopolies soon dominate any free market (it is inexorable) and outside agencies are incapable of controlling them, e.g., the "revolving door" that assures that all regulators are pre-corrupted.
"Privatisation", the great hope of 50 years ago, simply doesn't work, and, furthermore, it CANNOT work.
As an aside, I went to the DMV to straighten out a bunch of auto licenses (I always seem to own too many cars), some in arrears, transfers, old parking tickets, etc., and it took me just a few minutes and the guy who helped me reduced the fee total to about half.
By contrast, our privately operated US airlines have become so uncomfortable to fly and so insultingly obdurate that I have sworn to not fly them again. I'll take Air France until it gets swept up in the US exploitation madness, or maybe I'll just take a slow boat to Europe, after all I'm in no hurry, at my age, to get anywhere.
Privatisation is a failure!
88 - Baronius
Unsustainable, I could understand. No fraud is sustainable. But impossible? I'd have to see documentation of that statement. But Friedman did get carried away sometimes. That kind of absolutism sounds silly from either side. I mean, if you find yourself defending the RMV as efficient, you're probably taking a stand on ideology rather than reality.
89 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Those who work in the public sector are no different from us private schmucks, true, but the structure in which they work is radically different.
And it is necessarily different, because one is driven by the profit motive, and the other MUST NOT be driven by the profit motive.
Public sector employees are held to much lower standards than private;
Bullshit. You're going on your own assumptions but NOT on reality. Check out what it takes just to get hired on to federal jobs, especially places like the FBI and CIA. And then what kind of qualifications does it take to become a teacher or a social worker? Really, Clavos, can you name a single major private industry out there that requires the level of education for a majority of their workers as do the examples I gave? I don't think so - even in hospitals, a majority of the workers don't have college degrees. Furthermore, the government is structured so that nepotism - while it will always be there in all walks of life - is much less prevalent than in the private sector.
they are not held responsible for outcomes to the same degree (in many cases, not at all),
And how many people from BP or Transocean spent time in jail for the billions and billions of dollars in damage to our national economy - not to mention the eleven lives lost? I can show you example after example after example of corporations getting away with fraud and even with murder.
they are not subjected to disciplinary measures to the same degree (except in the military),it is nearly impossible to fire line employees, etc.,
What's the disciplinary measures in the private sector? "You're fired"...and that's about it. I'm not about to claim that the public sector is a shining knight in this area - you yourself have seen me rant on the teachers union - but again, you're going on your own assumptions. All supervisors have to do in most of the public sector - if they really need to fire a subordinate - is to counsel them several times, log proof that the subordinate isn't doing their job over a period of time, and then present it to their own supervisors...and then they can fire the subordinate. It ain't that hard. The reason why most aren't fired is because the government generally (but not always) has a lot of people competing for the same job and has the opportunity to hire the best...and - again, generally speaking - we have a relatively low level of misconduct.
the whole country knows how inefficient and mistake-prone most government agencies are;
Thanks to people who Just Know how bad the government is, and a "news" network that Just Knows how bad government is...and all the while those who Just Know how bad government is are doing the bidding of corporations who are telling them that the government is oh, SO bad.
Take Medicare, your favorite bugaboo. Its admin costs are about five percent (as compared to an average of about TWENTY percent admin costs of private health insurance companies). Yes, a lot of private health insurance companies defraud Medicare - and you blame the victim, of course - but think on this: even with all the Medicare fraud added in, the TOTAL admin costs of Medicare (which covers almost everything) is about the same as the average of private health insurance (which does NOT cover everything)...and that's assuming that there's NO corruption that adds cost to the private company!
There's a reason why England celebrated their National Health Service, Clav. No, they're not perfect and yes, they've got their own problems, but England - which spends less than half the amount of taxpayer dollars than we ALREADY do per capita - has a higher national life expectancy. And DON'T give me any crap about America's national diet - have you seen what the English eat???
the poster child for inefficiency is your local DMV; everybody in the country makes jokes about it, and everywhere it's used as the symbol for inefficiency and poor performance.
Crap. You are making broad-brush statements and sweeping generalities...and you've got jack to back it up. How about going to work for the DMV for a while so you can see the OTHER side of the story, and then maybe you can give some rational and detailed criticism on how they can do it better. You've gone to great lengths before pointing out logical fallacies in the arguments of others - why don't you apply that to your own arguments?
There are innumerable stories about cost overruns in government projects; shoddy work, as in New Orleans' disastrous levees that broke during Katrina.
And WHO is it that performs the VAST majority of government projects? PRIVATE COMPANIES doing SHODDY work and doing their damnedest to short-change the taxpayer as much as possible. But YOU, on the other hand, blame the victim again and again and again. You use the New Orleans levees as an example. Yes, there were faults in the design of the levees by the Army Corps of Engineers...but that's only half the story. The other half is the FUNDING, like when Dubya proposed less than twenty percent what the ACE said was absolutely necessary for the stability of the New Orleans levees. It's like I keep telling you, Clav - you get what you pay for...and if you pay squat, that's what you're going to get: squat.
Again, I didn't make it up; it's real.
Except that you never seem to see the other half of the story.
It's immaterial WHO's committing medicare fraud, Glenn. The salient point is that medicare (the government) does way too little to prevent or control it; on the contrary, Medicare's very inefficiency and ineptitude attracts the rip-off artists; the level of fraud is so high precisely because it's so easy to pull off!
As I pointed out above, look how eager you are to blame the victim. What you are NOT getting is that when the profit motive is involved, the temptation becomes to great for some...and the greater the pressure to increase profits, the greater the likelihood that a lot of those profits are going to come from illegal sources - ask your governor Rick Scott - he knows all about Medicare fraud. And all one has to see to prove how inefficient private health insurers are is to see how much hell they raised over being forced to use at least 80% of their revenue to pay for actual health care.
But let's blame the victim, yeah! It's not the criminals' fault! It's always the victim's fault!
90 - Clavos
Glenn,
You can't call bullshit and immediately follow it with examples like the CIA and FBI. It takes few brains and only enough education to read and write to deliver mail, be a park ranger, push paper in an office, etc. As for teachers: I recall the old saying (which like most old sayings has more than a grain of truth in it) "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. And those who can't teach, teach teachers."
The most severe problems of the american educational systems are the interference of the unions and the consequent low level of skilled teachers we wind up with because of the union work rules, especially seniority and job retention rules, not to mention their opposition to holding teachers to standards.
[Medicare's] admin costs are about five percent (as compared to an average of about TWENTY percent admin costs of private health insurance companies).
Bullshit. That's a canard spread by you liberals. The truth is that Medicare is not held to the same accounting standards as the private sector; much of their overhead is charged elsewhere, not to Medicare.
And WHO is it that performs the VAST majority of government projects? PRIVATE COMPANIES doing SHODDY work and doing their damnedest to short-change the taxpayer as much as possible
And who the hell is supposed to oversee them and make sure that doesn't happen? When I hire someone to do work for me, I manage, I don't say, OK, there's the problem, fix it," and just walk away, waiting for them to finish; I supervise. I make sure they're doing it right, safely, economically and on time. The government gets cheated as much as it does because it doesn't manage or supervise well enough, and it doesn't hold either its own people or contractors to tight enough standards to ensure good work, most likely because the doofuses that work for it don't know how.
when the profit motive is involved, the temptation becomes to great for some...and the greater the pressure to increase profits, the greater the likelihood that a lot of those profits are going to come from illegal sources
One more time, Glenn: YOU DON"T LET THEM. If they work for you, you have the responsibility to safeguard the taxpayers' money -- my money!! -- AND ENSURE THEY DON'T CHEAT YOU.
It ain't rocket surgery...sheesh!
91 - Glenn Contrarian
Clav -
How easy it is for you to look down your nose at other professions and assume that it's easy work, or not work at all. You know how much work you yourself have put out over the years, yet you ASSUME that because someone works in a relatively low-level position, that they must be uneducated or simply don't how to work hard.
And when it comes to teachers, I remember you once saying you never had kids. If that's the case, then that's precisely why you have so little respect for the profession.
You don't want private companies to cheat the government, yet what happens when the government doesn't have the funding for enough inspectors, or doesn't have the legal oversight authority they need (because someone hates regulations), or - as what apparently happened with the Big Branch mine explosion that killed 26 miners - the company bribes the inspectors? Are you going to lay the blame on the eeeeevil guv'mint as a whole because an inspector was bribed? And how many from Massey Mining went to jail? None that I know of, even though they were from an oh-so-disciplined private company.
You referenced Chavez in Venezuela as an example of what's wrong with government...but by doing so, you're not comparing apples and oranges - you're comparing apples and corn shit. Why? Because here we've always had a multiparty system - even it is only down to two - but there you've got a freaking dictator. Our government does not have the authority to nationalize Big Oil or any other major industry. Even in WWII we didn't nationalize Big Oil, so your example of Chavez is completely off base.
And you asked, "who watches the watchers?" (it took me a half minute, but I figured it out - no Google cheating). That's easy - the Fourth Estate. You knew the answer when you typed the question. And what's more, even with the slow-but-inevitable downfall of MSM news, the Fourth Estate is stronger than ever, thanks to a little something called the Internet. Love it or hate it - as both you and I do - it gives us a voice we would not otherwise have even in the heyday of 'real' journalism, whenever that was. Wikileaks comes to mind....
92 - Clavos
Because here we've always had a multiparty system - even it is only down to two - but there you've got a freaking dictator.
Nope. In the recent election a few weeks ago, he was nearly beaten by a challenger. He keeps his job by borrowing a page from the US Democratic party handbook: he steals from the rich few (including the oil companies), and gives everything to the poor (and himself, of course).
And you asked, "who watches the watchers?"...That's easy - the Fourth Estate.
Hmmm, not so much anymore. At one time, yes, but increasingly the American press has become partisan and turns a blind eye to the peccadilloes of whichever side they favor. Ironically, I think it's the rise of the internet that has led to that -- with its lack of standards and principles, the internet press has shown the MSM what it can get away with.
93 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
You're still comparing apples to oranges. Chavez has the power to nationalize industries, which tells me he has far more political power in his country than the US president has in ours.
94 - Zingzing
Clavos, have you ever looked into the areas where the private sector's bottom line has created inferior/dangerous products? Or are you just ignoring that bit of reality? Or do you really believe the private sector is as you seem to think it is? I think you're knowingly leaving out a bunch of things, but I'd like to know why you would. What does that help? Why can't we be honest in political arguments anymore?
95 - Igor
@81 - Clavos: No, I don't have to agree to anything. I think you are wrong and I think my position is stronger. For one thing I have much more experience than you and I have been more intimately involved in the history of the past 60 years, especially in the capitalist world.
In the past I have used the same arguments you use today, but I have seen the deterioration of the business community, the denigration of good management, and the progressive destruction of the best in the business community.
At the same time, there has been a never-ending blind fight against government agency that is nothing but ignorant.
Your condescending attempt to placate me is pathetic.
No, I don't have to agree to anything you propose.
96 - Clavos
Sorry, Igor, I didn't mean to offend you.
I don't think business has deteriorated nearly as much as you seem to. I seem to recall from history when the robber barons dominated american business, that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of the have nots then too, and subsequently the anti-trust laws and other regulatory legislation were passed to ameliorate the situation.
In any case, if your worldly experience sums 60 years, you do have more than I, but not, I suspect, as much as you think you do.
The "never-ending blind fight against government agency" is, I must say, a neat turn of a phrase, but unfortunately, pretty much backwards. The never-ending fight in this country (again looking back in history) was begun by the ("ignorant?") Founders, who built into their magnificent document, our Constitution, any number of checks and balances to control that "government agency," lest it grow in size and power to control the people, instead of vice-versa.
Unfortunately, modern "americans" ever in eager pursuit of all that "free" largesse flowing from the seemingly bottomless government teat, coupled with their deep psychological need to be "Mommie'd" and shielded from want and adversity (not to mention reality) from cradle to grave, are terrified of having to stand on their own feet and fend for themselves have allowed (even encouraged) the government to grow in size (Largest employer in the nation) and power to the point of peril for the citizens. Such legislature as the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the indefinite detention of citizens, and warrant-less surveillance (by executive order) which can use GPS devices to monitor every move of targeted citizens without securing any court order or review, so-called "extraordinary renditions" -- applicable to both US and foreign citizens, the list goes on. These new laws have come with an infusion of money into an expanded security system on the state and federal levels, including more public surveillance cameras, tens of thousands of security personnel and a massive expansion of a terrorist-chasing bureaucracy. Talk about pathetic!
Anyhoo, Igor, you may rest calmly tonight, secure in the knowledge that I will never again dare to suggest to you that you should agree with me about anything, pathetic as I am.
I am in fact, at a complete loss as to why I persist in paying you any attention at all, you offer nothing but bitter words and a sour old man's obsolete point of view.
97 - roger nowosielski
And I thought you were the cynic ...
98 - Igor
@96 - Clavos
"... I didn't mean to offend you."
Then stop using trite cliches, like:
"wailing and gnashing of teeth..."
"have nots..."
"mommied to death..."
"government teat..."
"cradle to grave..."
"stand on their own two feet..."
"anyhoo..."
It seems there is no room for original thought left in your head, and your statements are made up entirely of tired old snatches of cliches from republican speeches.
99 - Dr Dreadful
Is there such a thing as a non-trite cliché?
100 - El Bicho
Igor, you left off "govt schools are bad"
101 - Zingzing
I wonder if clavos believes we should even have a government, and if so, what it could possibly do. Obviously, surveillance of the population is no one's idea of good government, but really, that's all you've got? Government has to check itself, and it has those checks. Maybe they don't always work like they should, but they're there. Big business, however, needs its check as well, and it doesn't have one past a certain point... At that point, there's collusion, not a system of checks, not even A check. The consumer is just another sucker to huckster.
If you're going to criticize the gov't for growing out of control, you have to realize the same thing is happening in the private sector. There isn't some random relationship between these things. Rein in the private sector to a reasonable degree, and the gov't won't have to grow in order to keep up with its abuses.
102 - Clavos
Rein in the private sector to a reasonable degree, and the gov't won't have to grow in order to keep up with its abuses.
The government isn't growing in a direction that will result in reining in the private sector; in fact, it isn't doing much at all about reining in the private sector. Didn't this administration just bail out the auto industry at the behest of the unions and giving them substantial ownership? And didn't it also bail out many of the Wall Street thieves?
103 - Clavos
Igor:
Next time I'll label the sarcasm for you.
I should have known your desiccated brain wasn't up to the task...
104 - Igor
Whoever told Clavos he was as clever as Jonathan Swift and should write satire was wrong. Clavos has a leaden hand. Maybe someone was trying to flatter his frail ego.
105 - Zingzing
Clavos, I never want to hear you talk about over regulation or "gov't takeover of healthcare" then. Really this is quite a change from the usual right wing schtick.
As for your auto union stuff, please don't regurgitate romney's blatantly false bullshit. the uaw got zilch, but its members got their retirement fund back. No vote on the board, no stock. If you begrudge them that, I don't know what to tell you.
106 - Clavos
What, zing? No comment about bailing out Wall Street?
Does that mean you're OK with that?
And are you aware GM is once again faltering?
Or that the first bailout is costing much more than originally proposed? According to HuffPo, "The U.S. Treasury Department has said the auto industry bailout will cost taxpayers $3.4 billion more than previously thought."
Treasury now estimates the 2009 bailout will eventually cost the government $25.1 billion..."
$25Billion, zing, that's a hell of a lot more than was needed for the workers' retirement fund.
And for what? If it goes under, they'll have their retirement , but no job, at a time when 23 million other workers are already out of work. And if we decide to bail it out again, where does it stop? When do we quit throwing good money after bad, vainly trying to save a loser?
107 - Zingzing
"What, zing? No comment about bailing out Wall Street? Does that mean you're OK with that?"
I hope you apply the same strenuous logic to everything.
"that's a hell of a lot more than was needed for the workers' retirement fund."
Clavos and the Moving Goalposts: A Cock and Bull Story by Clavos.
"When do we quit throwing good money after bad, vainly trying to save a loser?"
I don't know. It's hard to tell what you want out of this anymore.
108 - Clavos
Well, I certainly didn't need it in quadruplicate...:)
zing, you didn't even mention the wall st bailout; what conclusion am I supposed to draw from that? Did you know those jackals paid themselves bonuses with some of that money?
What's a "cock and bull story?" That the money paid to "bail out" GM is considerably more than what was needed for the pension fund? Or that it (GM) is failing again? You know otherwise?
109 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Your same arguments could have been made - and likely were made - against Reagan's bailout of Chrysler. I can see you then saying, "We're throwing good money after bad, and if Chrysler goes under, what good will that have done?"
But Chrysler stuck around for nearly 30 more years under American ownership, and now - even though they're owned by Fiat - they're still employing Americans making cars in America. There were a lot of people then who Just Knew that bailing out Chrysler was a bad idea, just like you Just Know that bailing out GM was a bad idea.
You should be looking at it like this - the bailout (which was a LOAN, remember) was what, about $25B using your number? That's a little over $10K per worker, since it's credited with saving about 2M jobs. Now think about that, Clavos - the taxpayer spent 10K per worker to save 2M jobs...
...but that was effectively a one-time payment by the taxpayer, and since then, each and every one of those taxpayers will have paid in much more than 10K in state, local, and federal taxes on top of GM repaying most of their bailout loan...not to mention the fact that the people still have jobs and are still spending money keeping their lives and their local economies intact, day after day, year after year.
That, Clavos, is a classic example of how a Keynesian stimulus works...and it DID work, no matter how much you want to deny it.
And what about the flip side of the coin? What if - as conservatives such as yourself wanted - we'd have let them go bankrupt? That would have been 2M jobs down the tank - and Romney's claim that it should have been a 'managed bankruptcy' is a fantasy because there was no private money to be had, remember? So in the three years hence, what would that $25B in tax savings have really done for America, esp. since that would have been just $25B that we didn't borrow, and the American taxpayer wouldn't have seen a penny in real tax savings in all that time? And let's not forget that the state and local governments would have had 2M fewer jobs in their districts...and that much less tax income to pay for little things like police and schools and firefighters.
Clavos, $25B is chump change in the federal budget and you know it...but that chump change enabled 2M people to keep their jobs - and (contrary to Romney's claims that they're closing down Jeep plants and sending them to China) they're hiring more people, according to this article by right-leaning NewsMax.
In other words, Clav, it's time to stop worrying and learn to love the stimulus...because Keynesian economics work. That's why non-OPEC first-world nations are, well, first-world nations.
110 - Igor
I have to keep reminding people hat Keynes was NOT in favor of constant stimulus. Keynes advocated COUNTER-CYCLICAL policies, that is, go against the flow. In other words, withdraw money from the economy during good times, and inject money during bad times, even if you have to borrow.
Thus, GWBush violated Keynes in 2001 when, during good times, he gave away tax money to his rich friends instead of paying off more of the debt, as Clinton had done.
111 - Glenn Contrarian
So was Reagan in violation of Keynesian principles when he bailed out Chrysler?
112 - Zingzing
"zing, you didn't even mention the wall st bailout; what conclusion am I supposed to draw from that? Did you know those jackals paid themselves bonuses with some of that money?"
Draw whatever conclusion you like from anything i don't say... And yes, I know about the bonuses. Do you think I'm a big fan of wall street? No?
"What's a "cock and bull story?" That the money paid to "bail out" GM is considerably more than what was needed for the pension fund? Or that it (GM) is failing again? You know otherwise?"
You said Obama gave "substantial ownership" to the uaw, which is just some lie Romney said. I called out the lie and you changed the subject. Did you think a bailout would only include the pension fund the employees had worked for? (and I hope you agree that was the worker's money.) No? Then what am I supposed to say to that rather meaningless "point"? I have no idea why that would surprise you.
As for gm, I hope the best for them. And you should as well. I dunno what to do about it, but you certainly are standing around at the grave just waiting for the death. Are they certainly doomed? I dunno. Doubt you do either.
113 - Zingzing
And a cock and bull story is an idiom for a tall tale, although I take it from Tristram shandy, an early novel written by some priest told from the pov of a rather unreliable narrator, who bumbles from point to point without bothering to make any connections apparent to the reader (although they might be there in the narrator's mind).
114 - Clavos
I wasn't asking for the definition of a C & B story; I know that. I was asking for which of the things I wrote was one in your opinion. As an English major, I read Tristram Shandy in college.
You're right; the unions didn't get ownership, the government did (That's what I get for believing a lying scumbag republican). Obama paid $53 a share for 500,000,000 shares in the bailout. GM closed today at $25.68 a share, giving us taxpayers a loss of $27.32 a share. To make matters worse, GM is again sliding into the commode, according to Forbes, so it's unlikely we will ever see that money again.
115 - Clavos
As for gm, I hope the best for them. And you should as well
I should because...?
116 - Igor
Personally, I'm against all bailouts, and that includes favored contracts to military contractors (which I've studied quite a bit in the past).
They return very little value to the employees, costing typically $500,000 to $1,000,000 for every $100,000 job saved.
But they DO indemnify the Bondholders, who are the last line of defense in the corporate fortress.
But why save the *sses of those bums? Why not just payout a settlement to employees? Or why not just take over the operation (nationalize the broke outfit, or run it thru chapter xxx bankruptcy)?
117 - roger nowosielski
"And a cock and bull story is an idiom for a tall tale, although I take it from Tristram shandy ..." #113
That's how it became an idiom, unless you have an alternative explanation.
118 - Igor
@111-Glenn: good question, but difficult to answer:
"So was Reagan in violation of Keynesian principles when he bailed out Chrysler?"
Bailouts were uncommon and small in years past, so it wasn't really a consideration. It is only in recent years that we considered it important to outright bailout the entire financial industry. IMO that reflects the extraordinary power of large corporations in modern politics.
Anyway, here are a couple blogposts by Mark Thoma (a well thought of econ prof) that may shed some light on Keynes.
What would Keynes do?
What Would Keynes Do?, by Bruce Bartlett, Forbes: Every day that goes by makes clearer the parallels between the current financial crisis and the one that led to the Great Depression. Then, as now, the core problem was one of deflation... What few people understood at the time was that the Federal Reserve was primarily responsible for the deflation...
In its initial stages, the Fed might have been able to prevent a full-blown depression by being a lender of last resort. It should have been aggressive about buying every financial asset it could lay its hands on and created as much money as necessary to do so. But it ... was passive and, as the value of financial assets collapsed, banks closed and vast amounts of wealth simply vanished.
...
Keynes was a conservative
Bruce Bartlett argues that the conservative position that governments "do nothing in the face of the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression" would endanger the very thing free market ideologues are trying to preserve, the capitalist system itself. This was something that Keynes understood very well.
Though this argues that Keynes was a conservative, I don't think it much matters what label we attach to Keynes, it is the idea that government intervention preserves rather than destroys the capitalist system that is important....
119 - Zingzing
Roger, according to the straight dope: "The first known use of the phrase was in John Day's 1608 play Law-trickes or Who Would Have Thought It: "What a tale of a cock and a bull he told my father." But the term was evidently proverbial before that."
120 - roger nowosielski
Come to think of it, you're right, zing. Should have checked with the OED before posting.
121 - El Bicho
Dear Obnoxious: You Lose
122 - Clavos
Dear Bicho: The Whole Country Lost.
123 - El Bicho
No, your mindset lost
124 - Clavos
No, your mindset lost.
Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way; I didn't realize I have a "mindset," whatever that is.
Well, in that case, I'll just sit here while y'all go ahead and do your thing. Have fun!