by liberal japonicus
We are coming up on the Japanese holiday period known as Golden Week. Which, being Japanese, is not really a week. Though I'm not a stickler for words keeping their god-given meaning, of course, I would prefer the translation of Ogata Renkyu. ('Have a nice Large Scale Holiday!'), but when I try it out on my students, it doesn't seem to work.
Still, a holiday is a holiday, and I'm travelling, so I'm putting this up a little early. Obviously, a holiday means you have time to develop yourself, so in case you want to master the Game of Kings, I add this informative video.
Hi gang! Can anyone — like, say, cleek — link me to the original statement of Cleek’s Law:
Here’s one variant. I don’t know if that’s the earliest one though.
that’s the Law.
but here is the original post.
… as Turb just posted. 🙂
Today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today, updated daily.
So, are you saying that liberals come up with new ideas everyday, and conservatives consistently think those new ideas are not so good? And is it different when reversed–when conservatives come up with an idea, liberals are open to discussion and negotiation?
Maybe it’s old ideas that must be opposed, McKTx. After all, the Constitution is an out-of-fashion document that’s maybe a hundred years old, or older.
So, are you saying that liberals come up with new ideas everyday, and conservatives consistently think those new ideas are not so good?
it’s not that “conservatism” thinks the new ideas are not so good on the merits, but that it finds ways to oppose the new ideas, simply because liberals think the new ideas are good.
you should be able to find plenty of evidence of this without trying too hard. a few high-profile examples of this popped up in the news this week, in fact.
And is it different when reversed–when conservatives come up with an idea, liberals are open to discussion and negotiation?
my ‘Law’ says nothing about its converse.
individual mandate
cap and trade
background checks
(Sorry, blog owners. I’ll stop now.)
i should point out that neither i, nor my law, are related in any way to cleeklaw.com.
(yipe)
The Iraq War and the Credit market implosion were not the result of a conservative ideology, they were the result of Criminal Stupidity.
Lets call what happened in West Texas what it was – The fireworks to celebrate Bush/Perry success with deregulation.
I have no idea where I fit in the liberal/conservative spectrum, don’t even know what those words mean anymore.
For now I am voting for candidates that at least try to present themselves as Smart and caring for the welfare of others.
I respect that this is not the place for my vitriol and please delete if I am not helping with the conversation.
It’s tribal.
Maybe it’s old ideas that must be opposed, McKTx.
They might not be old, even if they aren’t all that new. They could be pre-existing ideas that liberals (or Democrats) adopt. Such ideas become bad by virtue of said adoption.
“individual mandate”, “cap and trade” and “background checks”
If one Democrat, or one slice of the liberal community at one time supported something–I don’t know, say invading Iraq–may I freely and without objection impute that to every liberal and every Democrat and then accuse all liberals and all Democrats of agreeing to something and then, if it doesn’t go well, hypocritically acting as if they’d never agreed in the first place or pretending that, in their naivete, they simply weren’t fully informed?
I just want to know the rules on broad brush ad hominem.
how will knowing those “rules” disprove the law?
I don’t get how ad hominem applies. We’re talking about the nature of how some opinions are formed. You may not agree with how other people are characterizing that, but it’s not a matter of invalidating those opinions based on the identities of the people holding them.
No one is saying, for example, “Don’t listen to John McCain when he argues against cap and trade. He’s just a jerk, so he must be wrong.” No one is saying, “Don’t listen to all those Republicans in congress arguing against the individual mandate. They’re just a bunch of jerks, so they must be wrong.”
What I’m saying is, “Look at these ideas that were generally favored by conservative Republicans, but that suddenly became terrible ideas when put forth by (barely) liberal Democrats.”
We have a representative democracy here in America. Don’t the the naive merit representation? Actually IMHO a politician who blames their poor decisions on ignorance need to look for a new job.
I don’t get how ad hominem applies. We’re talking about the nature of how some opinions are formed. You may not agree with how other people are characterizing that, but it’s not a matter of invalidating those opinions based on the identities of the people holding them.
To me, it is self-evident that labeling one group’s thought process negatively because it reflexively opposes another group’s positive thought processes and ideas is ad hominem.
What I’m saying is, “Look at these ideas that were generally favored by conservative Republicans, but that suddenly became terrible ideas when put forth by (barely) liberal Democrats.”
I disagree with the premise–some Republicans, probably not conservative Republicans, supported some of these ideas at different points in time and in different contexts. A certain sitting president opposed the individual mandate. Does that make him a conservative, or a liar, an opportunist, or someone who, in a different context, has made a good faith and informed decision that what was once not a good policy decision merits a second look?
I do not remember a time when conservative Republicans generally favored background checks, individual mandates (always a subset of national healthcare and therefore almost uniformly opposed by conservative Republicans) or cap and trade (also opposed from the outset by most if not the vast majority of conservative Republicans, particularly in the context of Democratic proposal). So, I think your fundamental premise is mistaken.
For many years, up until very recently, the widely held view among Democratic public officials was that marriage was only the union of a man and a woman. Now, no one really believed that was Obama’s true view. It was opportunistic and deceptive, but probably necessary to avoid defeat at the hands of the otherwise eminently defeatable McCain/Palin ticket.
The more interesting change is the number of conservatives and moderate Republicans who have or are rethinking their position on this topic. Not in opposition to ‘liberals’, but rather in opposition to current Republican orthodoxy. What some would call independent thinking.
The self-laudatory groupthink that liberals have ideas, good ones for that matter, and conservatives don’t; they simply oppose whatever good ideas liberals have is hugely entertaining to someone outside the elect. To shorten future discussions on this and related topics, can we agree to call this “liberal privilege”?
The self-laudatory groupthink that liberals have ideas, good ones for that matter, and conservatives don’t; they simply oppose whatever good ideas liberals have is hugely entertaining to someone outside the elect.
Well, generally, people think their own ideas are good. That’s why they have them in the first place.
But I don’t think all liberal ideas are good, nor do I think conservatives limit themselves to opposing good liberal ideas, according to cleek’s law. Good, bad or otherwise are all up for grabs.
individual mandate
cap and trade
universal background checks
Don’t the the naive merit
representationexploitation?Now you’re talkin’.
Now, no one really believed that was Obama’s true view. It was opportunistic and deceptive, but probably necessary to avoid defeat at the hands of the otherwise eminently defeatable McCain/Palin ticket.
I agree. Obama’s a politician and a flawed president.
But Democrats, post-Southern strategy at least, haven’t been nearly as hostile to the ideas of gay marriage or civil unions as Republicans. They didn’t suddenly decide gay marriage was okay because Republicans suddenly decided it was bad.
People change their minds in good faith sometimes, including conservatives and Republicans. I don’t think cleek’s law applies to every change of heart. Some fall outside the pattern being described.
Actually, I’ll give you universal background checks, but not the other two.
cleek’s law applies to only the things that it are consistent with it; otherwise, not.
I used to think that about conservatives, but today I completely disagree.
Slarti: cleek’s law applies to only the things that it are consistent with it; otherwise, not.
Well, we’re talking social science here, not physics.
Actually, I’ll give you universal background checks, but not the other two.
Bush One may have looked at something, but that doesn’t mean the view was shared generally by conservative Republicans, nor does it mean that the regime he recommended approximated what is now being discussed.
Was the Heritage Foundation’s proposal–one think tank–sandwiched in a 2500 page bill?
Obama on the individual mandate–you missed that one.
President Obama claims to stand for a strong national defense. Does that mean all Dems share his view? Ditto drones, Guantanamo, still being in Afghanistan, blah, blah, blah.
Here’s McKinney’s Law: Reflexive ideologues think they are smart as shit and that their polar opposites are mentally differently-abled. They are particularly enamored of their own simplistic formulations.
Prove me wrong.
Here’s McKinney’s Law: Reflexive ideologues think they are smart as shit and that their polar opposites are mentally differently-abled. They are particularly enamored of their own simplistic formulations.
Prove me wrong.
I can’t. I agree.
President Obama claims to stand for a strong national defense. Does that mean all Dems share his view? Ditto drones, Guantanamo, still being in Afghanistan, blah, blah, blah.
Liberals are more likely to openly disagree with each other, generally speaking. That’s why they’re not as politically effective as they might otherwise be (not that I’m suggesting they should get into a closer approximation of lock-step – just noting what is).
I don’t see the parallelism between Obama’s adoption of the individual mandate and cleek’s law. Perhaps you have an example of something Obama supported but suddenly opposed once conservatives began supporting it.
can we agree to call this “liberal privilege”?
perhaps we can agree that some people have no sense of humor… ?
Liberals are more likely to openly disagree with each other, generally speaking.
HSH, if you had said “Liberals today…” you would have had a case. But I seem to remember the time, a few decades back, when liberals were at least as hysterically opposed to any heresy as conservatives are now. Just as I can remember a time when Democrats were as devotedly determined to be ideologically pure, no matter how many elections it lost them.
The Democrats eventually got over it; I expect the Republicans will, too. The only question is: how long, and how many lost elections, will it take? Since there seemed to be more non-liberal Democrats, even at the height of their ideologically-driven phase, than there are non-conservative Republicans today, it may take longer. But it will happen eventually.
Or someone will just piss all over the board ;).
Nice vid LJ.
Here’s McKinney’s Law: Reflexive ideologues think they are smart as shit and that their polar opposites are mentally differently-abled. They are particularly enamored of their own simplistic formulations.
that’s a fine law, as well. a little wordy, though. 🙂
but look at this:
this is why my little aphorism gets repeated. it’s this kind of stuff makes it completely obvious that “conservatism” is, in fact, driven at least in part by reflexive hatred of liberals. a solid majority of the country is in favor something, including many “conservative” representatives who nevertheless won’t vote for it because the idea was championed by a liberal.
and, remember, aphorisms like this are not unbreakable predictive laws, they are descriptive, illustrative. you can’t really prove something like that wrong, you can only stop it from being applicable. you have to stop it from a useful shorthand for what “conservatives” actually do and say. but as long as there are GOP lawmakers and pundits who acknowledge that they’ll fight common sense just because liberals like it (and there’s currently no shortage of those), it will be applicable.
do liberals oppose some things that have become “conservative” ? sure. but it doesn’t seem like its got quite the same urgency (?) as the converse.
If conservatives have had any construtive ideas about any issue of importance in the last thirty years, they’ve been keeping it pretty quiet.
But I think the term ‘conservative” is inaccurate in terms of the last thrity years or so of American politics anyway. “Reactionary” is a better word. Or even “righwing lunatic fringe”. The Repubicans in Congress are a truely contemptable collection of the ethically and intellectually impaired. Nasty people. Ideas? All they have for ideas are tactics because all they ahve for goals is the furtherance of their pursuit of power and wealth for themselves.
cleek: … many “conservative” representatives who nevertheless won’t vote for it because the idea was championed by a liberal.
cleek, “reflexive hatred of liberals” may be exaggeration but demonization of the term “liberal” was, as I’m sure you recall, a deliberate political strategy codified by Newt Gingrich back during the Clinton administration. Now we see the outcome of this strategy, perhaps magnified by the electoral success of President Obama, who surely pushes hot buttons just by existing.
I harp on this sometimes because I really resent it, just as I imagine McKinneyTexas resents being lumped into a liberal-hating group, which I feel sure is unfair to him.
I resent McKinneyTexas being lumped into a liberal-hating group too and I wish the ghouls who have taken over the Republican Party would stop demonizing him for being so lovably unlumpable.
[I live to be a straight man for the Count! Von, two three, ah ah ahh!!]
It’s those other guys. Douchebags, all of them.
you all realize you’re getting bent out of shape about a comment – not a post, a comment- that cleek made, on another web site altogether, almost three years ago, right?
just asking.
I’m not sure which of us are getting bent out of shape, but I am fairly confident I am not one of them.
I am amused. This is much more fun than the serious poo-flinging activities we engage in.
I try not to get bent out of shape unless I’m naked.
*RIMSHOT*
McKinney’s Law I will except as an axiom yet somehow feel personally offended. I may be simple minded and can’t control myself at times.
I know I’m ignorant however I once took a survey that rated me in the top 2% of Americans for political awareness. WE’RE DOOMED
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/02/house-of-un-representatives/
An essay on the subject of Republican extremism and the conservative philosophy of “If Obama is for it, we’re against it.”
What really annoyes me is the lack of intellectual honesty shown by voters and pundits who continue to pretend that the House Republicans are normal people with “ideas” within the boundaries of reasonable political discourse.
What really irritates me is the constant restating from the left that House Republicans don’t have ideas, then bounding the obviously inaccurate statement by using clever terms like “within the bounds of reasonable political discourse”. You don’t like their ideas. I get it. A majority of the people in the US voted for House Republicans, and Republican Governors, and Republican State Legislators. Their ideas are clearly within the bounds of reasonable political discourse.
A majority of the people in the US voted for House Republicans
that’s not true. the GOP won a majority of districts. but add up the number of people who voted for a R rep v the number of D reps, and the D’s win.
the GOP won the districting battle. but they’re losing the popular vote. as usual.
from Laura’s link:
Yeah, yeah yeah, popular vote blah blah. The majority of “communities” voted Republican? Pick a criteria. Even if I accept the assertion, I accept the possibility, the point I made is valid if Republicans lost by a few million popular votes.
The majority of “communities” voted Republican?
a Congressional district is a “community” ?
talk about picking your definition!
Well, I have to admit, if you look at Barney Franks district lines, you know the Republicans didn’t redistrict Massachusetts. 🙂
I actually wish that many of the opinions expressed by (R) members of Congress were weird outliers in terms of broad public opinion.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s so.
As Marty notes, redistricting or no, they actually do get elected and re-elected, year after year.
It’s true, I don’t like their ideas, but their ideas are far from outside the mainstream of American social and political thought.
There’s lots of polling info that indicates that their positions are outliers. the fact that Repulbican politicians have to misrepresent or code-talk their positions is also an indication of how far out of the mainstream they are.
Most Americans, includig most Republican voters support background checks for gun sales.
How many Americans want Medicare to be turned into a voucher system? How many believe that cutting taxes for the wealthy creates jobs? How many think that life should be defiined as beginning at conception? How many think birth control pills shouldn’t be covered by insurance?
It isn’t a fluke that House Republicans and many in the Senate believe in weird conspiracy theories, indulge in exaggerated and hateful rhetoric, deny global warming, and in other ways demonstrate defects of character and mental processing. For the last thirty years the Republican party has deliberately polarized issues as part of their effort to expand their base by pulling in fringe people who used to not vote. Now in order to survive a primary the Republican politician has to eithr be or pretend to be as stupid, hate-filled and paranoid as their new base of voters.
But most Americans are not conpriracy therorists or haters. Maybe most Republican voters are, but most Americans are not.
Michelle Bachman gets re-elcted year after year partly because there are voters in her district that are just as extremist as she is. But the other reason she gets re-elected is because there are voters who vote for her in spite of her extremism because they see something ( a tax cut? Tribalism? Habit of voting for Republicans?) for themselves that allows them to rationalize voting for a person who is clearly unfit for public office.
That kind of enabling of wacko politicians is in my opinion bad citizenship.
And another thing! Just because some politicians sayys something out loud doesn’t make the statement within the baoundraies of reason. One of the really harmful things Republica politicians are doig to us is desensitizig people by sayig out loud thigs that a reasonable person would be ashamed to say. Recent example: the claim that “the governemt” is buyig up ammunition to deprive gunowners of their right to bare arms.
That sort of wacko statemet is normative from House Republicans and not usual from Senate Republicans.
How many people wanted the ACA to pass? The polls don’t define positions defines outside the bounds of reasonable public discourse, or we would have quit talking about gay marriage a decade ago.
Background checks, well they sound great to everyone, but 75% of Americans are afraid of a gun registry. So the devil is in the details.
I respect your positions, and agree with some, but claiming mass intellectual dishonesty is just a step too far.
How many Americans want Medicare to be turned into a voucher system? How many believe that cutting taxes for the wealthy creates jobs? How many think that life should be defiined as beginning at conception? How many think birth control pills shouldn’t be covered by insurance?
IMO there are a very large number of Americans who whole-heartedly endorse every one of those things.
The Medicare thing, maybe less so, but certainly every other thing in your list. Hands down.
Unfortunately so, IMO, but nonetheless so.
I bet I could go into almost any public place in the US, swing a cat, and hit somebody who sincerely believes that the US government is buying up ammo in order to prevent private folks from stocking up.
I think that’s borderline certifiable paranoia. It’s also a mainstream opinion.
IMO it’s hard to blame Congresspeople for being nuttier than a fruitbar when the things they think and say are common as mud.
75% of gun owners in America are afraid of a gun registry sounds more believable to me.
Have several gun carrying friends who have no problem with a gun registry and no fear of the feds coming for their guns.
Republicans didn’t redistrict Massachusetts.
yes, it’s true: gerrymandering exists, and all parties do it.
however, that does not change the indisputable fact that most of the people who voted for a House member in 2012 voted D.
popular vote winner = Dems.
But then I live in the Republic of California where we already keep a data base.
Background checks, well they sound great to everyone, but 75% of Americans are afraid of a gun registry.
as i’m sure you know, a background check does not require nor imply a gun registry.
Jeff, yes we have a gun registry. Bu tnobody is coming for our guns. And you can, in fact, find a gun store (more than one) in such not particularly conservative places as San Francisco and Berkeley. Which makes the whole “they will use it to take our guns” meme seem more than a little out of touch with reality.
I’m really stunned by the idea that Republican ideas are mainstream. And I was mistaken when I said the party has no ideas: there’s Ayn Rand, Social Darwinism, the cult of privatization, the push to roll back the New Deal and bring back the Gilded Age.
But Republican politicians cannot honestly discuss trheir ideas because they kow their ideas are unpopular.
That’s why they need their own fake news station.
That’s why they have to distract the electorate with wedge issues.
That’s why they employ the tactics of voter suppression and gerrymandering.
For example: Ryan wrote a budget that called for turning Medicare into a voucher system, gutting the funding for Medicaid, makig unemployment primarily a state expense, tax cuts for the rich, of course. Every House Repub voted for and so did most of the R Senators.
So that list of extremist and highly unpopular ideas must be the party lie for Republican politicians.
But note: the ruining of Medicare was only goig to effect people not currently on Medicare. Why not? Because the R’s know that their demographic is old and likes Medicare. Also note how the whole party went into the Romney/Obama race spouting some manufactured crap about how OBAMA was cutting Medicare. Not them. Oh no not them!
Like Romney’s campaign staffer said: etchisketch. All Repubicans running for national office lie. They have to because their ideas are not widley supported.
Another example: the defict. Which the Republicans, Ryam among them caused. Their oft repeated lie is that the defict was caused by the Hate-the-Other-du-jour. The truth is that the R’s in Congress created it during the Bush years.
No, the party of religous fanatics and robber barons does not have mainstream ideas with wide support. That’s not their appeal.
SACRAMENTO — The state will send dozens of new agents into California neighborhoods this summer to confiscate nearly 40,000 handguns and assault rifles from people barred by law from owning firearms, officials said Wednesday.
[…]
California is the only state in the nation to operate a database that cross-references gun owners with those who are subsequently disqualified from owning firearms. But budget cuts have prevented the state Department of Justice from keeping up with the list, which grows by 15 to 20 names every day, officials said.
[…]
Jerry Brown OKs funds to seize guns held illegally: The governor approves $24 million to confiscate weapons from people who can no longer own them due to criminal convictions, restraining orders or mental illness.
I’m really stunned by the idea that Republican ideas are mainstream.
Me, too.
I will talk about social and political issues on blogs. In real life, I will not, because there’s no point.
With the possible exception of Medicare, all of the things you (Laura) have enumerated in this thread have widespread popular support.
Medicare is the exception, because anyone who lives long enough will benefit from it. SS too, to some degree. But in both cases, what is off limits is, as you point out, “MY Medicare” and “MY Social Security”.
If anyone figures out how to frame that discussion as “you’ll get YOUR Medicare / SS, we’re just gonna cut that OTHER guy’s”, those programs are toast.
We’re pretty close to that now.
The ideas espoused by Congressional (R)’s, including if not especially the House (R)’s, including if not especially the recently elected “Tea Party” House (R)’s, are solidly in the American mainstream.
If you want to know who’s marginal, check out the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Can anyone even name a single member? If you’re considering the Senate, it’s easier, because there IS only one member.
Social Darwinism, Ayn Rand, privatization, accumulation of private wealth into increasingly few hands.
As far as I can tell, these are actually pretty popular ideas.
Maybe people aren’t as nice as we might wish they were. Or, they’re just scared sh*tless. Or, maybe the just really believe, for whatever reason, that the very best way for anything and everything to happen is for everyone to do it for themselves, and let the chips fall where they may.
Either way, the end result is same / same.
I really think that you are mistaken, Russell. Unless I am misunderstanding you. There’s some poll data on the Washington Weekly on the subject of background checks. the jist of it is tht Dems in Red states should support background checks because the conservative opposition is small. Support for background checks is mainstream.Opposition is extermism.
I see no indication at all that there is support for the Ryan budget outside of Congress. Repulican politicians have to discuss it in terms of lies and distortions (reforming Medicare) because there is no support for voucherizing.
Issue by issue is like that. How many “pro-life” people want abortion to banned altogether? Even in missississippi and attmept o define life as beginning at conception failed. Heck evenmy fundamentalist neighbor knows tht women sometimes need to get a late term abortion for medical reasons. (She was aghast to learn about Republican attempts to interfere with medical pracitce. “This isn’t the Middle Ages” she said. I said, “Time to stop voting for those creeps.”)
I have another acquaintance who claims to be a liberatarian and reads Ayn Rand. He lives with his mother who is on SS and Medicare. He used to work for the state government as a seasonal firefighter and now is on disability. His daughter gets insurance through the state. He is vehemently opposed to Obamacare.
That’s the essence of Republican philosophy and appeal right there: government for me and not for thee and you pay for it.
That is a philosophy that has wide appeal on the abstract level. But the holders of tghat philosophy become less inclined to vote Republican when one of two things happens: times get so rough that they recognize that government assistance is needed, or Republicans start attacking their life support system.
That’s why Rand Paul had to say that he supported TVA (after making attacks on socialist government programs the mainstay of his pitch)
In other words when the Republican message is a generic and abstracted appeal to selfishness, sure, they get lots of votes. But when people start seeing what Repubicans actually do once they have the chance to enact policy…
Because real Republican policies aren’t popular at all. That’s why Republicans will votge against funding forFEMA in other states but demand it for their own.
There are gazillions of examples of this. Even Republican politicians don’t want to enact their own policies in their own states.
Republicans are very good at appealing to the worst in human nature and there is always a lot of that around. But the capacity to bring out the worst in people and get them to the polls fueled by their baser instincts is not the same thing as having popular policy proposals.
I have another acquaintance who claims to be a liberatarian and reads Ayn Rand. He lives with his mother who is on SS and Medicare. He used to work for the state government as a seasonal firefighter and now is on disability. His daughter gets insurance through the state. He is vehemently opposed to Obamacare.
You’re making my case for me.
I guess I don’t get how. But I think we are talking past each other.
He isn’t really a libertarian because he doesn’t want to apply the philosophy to himself or his family or anyone he knows. He just likes to think that he is “in the know”, smarter than other people, because he claims to believe things other people don’t believe. It’s a kind of contrarianism, a loser’s pretentiousness.
He has no idea what Repubican policies are. I remember one day he was all excited about the worthlessness of federal employees. It was that period when R politicians all decided to lay off bums on welfare for a while and assault unions by way of discrediting federal and state employees. So here’s this guy, falls for the rightwing meme immediately: “What are federal employees for anyway?” So I told him: forest rangers, the people who process your mom’s SS checks, FBI, etc etc. After a while he had to admit that federal employees do a lot of essential services. Of course that didn’t really change his mind. As a rightwinger he was supposed to hate on federal employees so he insisted that although the ones I mentioned were important there are all these other government employees that are overpaid and unnecesary…not having any clue at all, of course, that the Republican party was demonizing federal and state employees as part of the effort to extend right to work for less laws into the rust belt.
If a Republican said,” I am attacking government employees because often they have unionjobs with middle class pay and I can’t stand for that. I know that in many states they are the backbone of the economy and that the ripple effect on small businesses would be bad, but I don’t care. I just want to undermine unions and pass work for less laws because the corporations that fund my campaign want that” the Republican would be telling the truth, but would not get elected.
.
BTW here’s another example of how Republicans have to misrepresent their policies since there policies are bad and unpopular— the Family Flexibility Act which would allow businesses to require overtime but stiff their employees by giving them time off instead of time and ahalf pay, thus getting more work hours out of people for less pay.
So, no I don’t think there is much actual support for Repubican policies. I think Repubicans are very good at lying about their policies.
But I think we are talking past each other.
Could be.
I can’t really speak for the quality of the thought process of folks who espouse “conservative” ideas. Most likely there are some who hold them thoughtfully, and some who have no clue WTF they are talking about.
I also agree that, if folks did think through what the actual consequences of “conservative” policies would be, not least for them, those policies would be less popular.
Not completely, there are folks who recognize that they, personally, would be materially harmed by conservative policies, and who embrace them nonetheless. But I do think that, if folks actually thought about it for five minutes, “conservative” policies would be less popular.
What I disagree with is that the ideas and the positions themselves are, in any way, marginal or outside the mainstream of current-day American social and political thought.
As far as I can tell, they are not.
And, I’m not sure what folks are embracing are all lies, it seems to me that many conservative politicians and spokespeople are quite clear – crystal clear – about what they intend.
Many if not most libertarians are the RW equivalent of what over here was once called ‘salon bolsheviks’, people that publicly praise extreme ideology and justify the real world effects as long as it does not touch themselves.
” It’s a kind of contrarianism, a loser’s pretentiousness.”
This.
This is what disturbs me:
The quote is, famously, from Ernest Hemingway, who had seen the real thing.
What puzzles me is why so many people are disappointed.
Just check which rules supreme: greed or envy?
The first means: I want to have more than others, equal is NOT OK (keep ME up).
The second means: No one should have more than I, equal is OK (keep THEM down).
By tendency the former is Right* and the latter Left**.
*the idea of ‘natural’ winners 😉
**the idea of ‘natural’ losers 😉
It could be that we are making different assumptions about the word “support”. My assumption is that someone cannot support what they don’t understand–their support is for a fantasyy in their head, not what they think they are supporting.
OTOH, maybe people can support what they don’t understand.
In any case I don’t think the Repubican program of Social Darwinism, Ayn Rand ideology, religious extremism, fiscal irresponsiblity and corruption is popular. I think it is misunderstood the way Repubican poiticians intend that it be misunderstood: “reform” of SS, Medciare and Medicaid; vague-to-meaningless slogans about being pro-life or pro-family; vague-to-meaningless slogans about being anti-big government; anti-tax claims which are deliberately misrepresentated as attemtps to reduce taxes on the middle class when the real agenda is to shift taxes off the wealthy ad on to everyone else; and so on.
All this dressed up in hate and fear mongering, delivered through the filter of a fake news station and a network of extermist propagandists.
The point is to appeal to citizens who don’t think carefully enough when it comes to politics.
I don’t think it is, for most Americans, a matter of keeping these people up or these people down. For the Repubican base it is clear that they tend to see everything as a threat to their position, but that’s jus tthe thirty percenter prespective. To the R base, it’s a zero sum game: anythig other people get is perceived as taken from them. Gay people get married? Oh no! Our marriges are threatened! Voting rights protection? On no, those people are cheating whe they vote! Health insurance for people other than those Repubicans who are already on Medicare or vet’s benefits? Oh no! They just can’t grasp the concept that it might be possible to serve someone else’s legitimae interests without taking away from theirs. But that’s a minority perspective, the view from the hardcore Repubican voter.
I believe that the rest of us just want people to get a living wage for their work, have enough of us payig enough in taxes to support a decent, responsible society, and support government programs that deliever services that people cannot reasonably afford for themselves. yes, to do that rich people would have to pay more in taxes than they do now, but that’s not dragging people down. It isn’t even leveling the playing field. It’s just people payig their membership dues in a way that is porportional to their resources.
OTOH, maybe people can support what they don’t understand.
Yeah, I think they can and do. I think that’s the nub of any apparent disagreement we’ve had in this thread.
There are certainly some folks who hold what are now called conservative positions from an informed and thoughtful perspective.
But “the base” – the folks who continue to elect (R)’s to public office – I think don’t really have a very good grasp of what the real dynamics and consequences of the policy issues are.
Apologies in advance to anyone who thinks I’m insulting them. I’m just looking around and talking about what I see. That’s what I see.
What puzzles me is why so many people are disappointed.
I don’t find it puzzling at all.
Other than a fairly select group of white color professionals, in general nobody’s got any money. And a lot of people live at the mercy of dynamics that they, generally correctly, feel are outside of their control.
“Disappointed” doesn’t begin to cover it.
“The point is to appeal to citizens who don’t think carefully enough when it comes to politics.”
If you read through the comments, this gets said in several ways. Over and over. I think I consider all of these issues pretty carefully, understand both sides pretty well, and disagree with you often.
Your assumption, at its core, is the Republicans operate in bad faith and anyone who agrees with them is just not thoughtful or smart enough to figure it out. Or they are just bad people.
None of those things, on a wide scale, are true. We just come to different conclusions.
That just serves as proof that you don’t think carefully enough, Marty.
The majority of people in the economic condition you’re describing, russell, did not vote for Republicans. Most Republicans have money – the higher a voter’s income in 2012, the more likely the voter would be voting for Romney. Those people have no reason to be “disappointed.” Even the stock market went up under Obama.
The dynamics might have been a bit different in the Red states, which can just as easily be described as the neo-Confederate states. But I don’t think the votes there have anything to do with disappointment in the economy. Many just feel a cultural bond with the Republican party, based the Republican embrace of states’ rights and Bible belt rhetoric. And even in red states, many Republican Congresspeople won only because of gerrymandering. The majority of voters in the country voted for Democrats for Congress. (Gerrymandering certainly played a huge role in Virginia politics, where the majority of voters voted for Obama AND Democratic Congressional candidates, but Republicans were sent back to Congress.)
Wealthy Republicans aren’t disappointed – they just don’t want to pay taxes. Less wealthy Republicans have been persuaded by cultural rhetoric, but they don’t have any more reason to be “disappointed” than those who voted for more progressive government, other than the fact that someone who they don’t identify with is in the White House.
I agree with Laura that many of the “libertarians” who aren’t wealthy are contrarians who bought into the Ayn Rand mythology.
That just serves as proof that you don’t think carefully enough, Marty.
With all due respect to everyone posting here on ObWi, I will offer the following thoughts.
I’ve been participating regularly, if not daily, on political blogs for something like ten years. Lately here on ObWi, before that on almost purely conservative blogs, notably RedState.
I was on RedState, specifically, for a couple of years, each and every day almost without exception, back in the days of Krempasky and Domenech and Trevino and Erickson and Yousafzadeh and streiff and “Thomas Crown”.
All of you conservative folks here who think it’s tough going hanging out on ObWi, I can tell you that I feel your pain, and I can also tell you that whatever level of swimming upstream you think you encounter here is small beer in comparison.
And, I had a very good and cordial relationship with all of those guys, and was invited to post on the front page there quite a number of times.
So, I am comfortable saying that I’m not just hanging out online to point and laugh at stupid dumb-ass conservative yokels.
I also have a number of family members who are VERY VERY conservative including my mother (when she was alive), a couple of uncles, sister, and a couple of brothers in law.
I’ve also been alive and more or less paying attention throughout the Bush years, and through the recent Tea Party ascendancy.
What I have taken away from all of that is the observation that MANY MANY MANY folks who identify as conservative frequently are lacking in some basic information.
They’re not stupid, or incapable, but they are lacking information. Either they don’t have it, or what they do have isn’t very good. Or, frankly, in many cases, they don’t do much with what they have.
That observation is the product of spending many, many, many, many, many hours, conversing with conservatives, asking them to explain their point of view, and asking them to explain their reasons for why they think and believe as they do.
And, asking all of those things out of a genuine desire to know. Not to play some kind of weird game of “gotcha”, but to deal, frankly, with more or less daily episodes of finding myself asking “WTF?!?!”
A lot of folks who self-identify as conservatives aren’t working from very good, or very complete, information. And/or, they have not spent a lot of time putting what information they do have through anything resembling a critical thought process.
I will say that, on RedState, the one guy who I found the most thoughtful was the guy who posted as Thomas Crown. He was also the guy who viewed Pinochet is kind of hero. It was a curious experience, for me, to find myself with a sense of great respect and affection for a guy who thought Pinochet was kind of a good guy, but there you have it.
That perhaps gets into the “bad people” issue, but that’s probably another topic.
At any rate, at least he’d thought it through.
“What I have taken away from all of that is the observation that MANY MANY MANY folks who identify as conservative frequently are lacking in some basic information.”
I don’t doubt this true, I could restate it replacing conservative with liberal, or progressive, and have no doubt that it is true.
Politicians sell unicorns and fairy dust. It is the, what was that word used earlier…pretentiousness of those who believe that all the people that agree with them are the well informed ones that I object to.
I have a great deal of experience similar to russell’s where it concerns discussing things with self-described conservatives who run with bad, little or poorly connected information.
But I also have a few liberal friends who don’t seem to know much beyond the points of view they’re “supposed” to hold. They will agree with me on many things, but for reasons they can’t explain very well. So I, personally, recognize that people who agree with me aren’t always well informed.
I also recognize that there are very well informed people who disagree with me based on a fundamental disagreement, say, about some nuance of human – at what point do people change their behavior given some increase or decrease in some incentive? That sort of thing.
All that said, in this country, today, I think there’s more reflexivity on the right. It’s not everyone on the right, and the right doesn’t have a monopoly on it. It’s just that, if you find it, that’s where it’s more likely to be.
I’ll throw this out there, for whatever it’s worth: If someone in America is an abject racist, do you think that person is more likely to be conservative or liberal? I’m sure you can guess my answer, but I’m curious to see how our more conservative commenters would answer.
hsh,
You would have to define abject. If you mean vocal, obvious, then I would agree that they would tend to be conservative, although I have several acquaintances that would not fall neatly there.
As for racism at its most insidious, people who feel sorry for “those” people and promulgate the worst stereotypes, different answer.
But, then, that’s often the difference between racism in the north and south.
And since it is one of the two or three topics I have decided to never discuss on a blog again, that will be all I have to say on it.
Just didn’t want to leave your question hanging.
I don’t doubt this true, I could restate it replacing conservative with liberal, or progressive, and have no doubt that it is true.
I, personally, recognize that people who agree with me aren’t always well informed.
I have no disagreement with either of these statements.
I’ll even go further, and say that in virtually *any* context in life, it’s dead common for people to strongly hold points of view that they haven’t thought very much about.
There’s only so much time in a day, and for any given subject, most people have other demands on their time and attention that are, to them, more compelling.
I also recognize that there are very well informed people who disagree with me based on a fundamental disagreement
Likewise.
IMO the fundamental difference between the conservative and liberal points of view in the US is the degree to which you think people in a political or social community are responsible to, and for, each other.
And/or, what the boundaries of “political and social community” are.
Again IMO and only IMO, the rest is kinda noise.
Kindly note the repeated IMO’s. As always, MO and a dollar will get ALMOST get you a small regular coffee at Dunkin’s.
All of that to the side, what’s really clear to me is that the points of view held by most elected officials with an (R) after their name are (a) really what they think, and (b) pretty commonly held within the public at large.
So, not to pick a fight with Laura, but yes, I think that the standard set of Republican positions are solidly mainstream.
Well, I enjoy theorizing about people and their motives, etc., but it really doesn’t matter. When we’re talking about economic policies, there’s something that really shouldn’t be ignored: history. Austerity doesn’t build the economy. Tax cuts don’t create jobs. These kinds of things have been tried, and they haven’t worked.
Head Start has been shown to help kids. Why does anyone object to helping kids – they didn’t do anything wrong. People rely on Social Security and Medicaid. As a result, they don’t have to rely on their adult children as much as they did in the olden days. That helps families during the time that they’re trying to support their children: they don’t have to be the sole support of their parents too. The reality is that these are the kinds of programs that work very well, and they’re the very ones that Republicans keep trying to cut. It defies logic, history and experience, not to mention common sense.
Sure, maybe Warren Buffett could have done much better on his social security money than the feds. Blah, blah, blah. I am not as patient (obviously) as russell and hsh.
And as far as mainstream goes, I guess that depends on how you define mainstream. The Republican point of view is definitely a minority view. Unfortunately, because of our electoral system, it’s far too well represented in Congress.
I could spend the next several days unpacking a lot of what has passed here. This is why I like ObWi.
To illustrate why conservatives believe as they do, to the extent I can generalize, I will use Obamacare, taxes, the budget/deficit and the decision to invade Iraq as examples. Regarding social conservatives, I will use abortion and same sex marriage. Here goes:
Obamacare–The legislative process was objectively awful. No one actually saw or read the law before it was voted on. This was by design. Last minute deals were cut to get senate hold-outs to switch their votes. Obamacare didn’t outlaw slavery, so the fact that Abe Lincoln, according to a movie, went along with some unsavory stuff to pass the 13th amendment doesn’t cut it. All in all, the process was disgusting and expecting people to trust and respect the authors of that process is just BS. Sorry, no offense, but just as Bush and particularly Cheney do not get a pass on BS’ing everyone into invading Iraq, Obama, Pelosi and Reid do not get a pass on that sh*itty abomination. If you are true believer, maybe the ends justify the means, but for those of us who dissented, we were railroaded and having been railroaded once, don’t come looking for forgiveness going forward. That was bridge-burning writ large. If I am missing some key information here, feel free to enlighten me.
Leaving process aside, the substance of Obamacare, to the extent anyone understands it, is not solid grounds for trusting liberal judgment. Some number of thousands of pages of regulations have been passed to supplement the 2500 pages of legislation (I keep hearing 15,000, but that could be urban legend). No one is reporting a decrease in cost anywhere. If anything, the early indications are that OC will increase already increasing costs. I’m not going to go into an extensive litany of what is being said and reported about OC, but very little if any of it is cause for happiness. Just the opposite, in fact. If the bad news turns out to be true, if OC turns out to be a truly screwed up deal of unprecedented proportions, then everything that was said about it, pre-passage, by its supporters was a big-ass lie. Worse, it is a virtually irreversible burden imposed on generations of Americans.
So, if I am reflexively opposed to new ideas and initiative emanating from the same quarter, it isn’t without basis in experince.
During the run up to the vote on OC, if you can call it that, Republicans and conservatives were criticized for not being constructive, for not offering alternatives, for not trying to make it work. First, that’s hard to do when you are shut out of the legislative process. Second, if one is simply not on board with an idea, such as OC, it really is ok and really is not ignorance or venal to simply oppose it. One does not need to have a great alternative in mind when someone else comes up with a really bad idea.
For example, invading Iraq was a really bad idea, certainly in hindsight. The opposition didn’t really have an alternative, they just said, “no, it’s wrong and it’s stupid and you will be creating an even worse problem”. Ok, that was a fair response, particularly in hindsight. Why is it fair for liberals to simply oppose Iraq but not for conservatives to simply oppose Obamacare?
Put differently: Opponents of that endeavor were not wrong for failing to come up with an alternative for deposing Saddam. They were justified in arguing for the status quo and keeping options open even if Saddam himself was an unsavory bastard we could all live without. Not every problem, even every big problem, demands an immediate, untried, open-ended solution.
Conservatives, if not Republicans, don’t like sh*tloads of debt. They also don’t like high marginal tax rates, not because they love the uber wealthy (sorry Laura, but really, that isn’t it). Rather, on a macro basis, they either understand economics or, like me, they don’t understand economics but reasonably intuit, that sucking more and more money out of the private sector and funneling it through the public sector is a long term loser. Money taken in as taxes is money that is not available for investment (apparently, liberals love gov’t investing but the private sector, not so much). I am not saying that every excess private dollar goes into investments. Per Bloomberg, a certain former Vice President has a cool 200 million in the bank after selling his Apple warrants and his TV network. Maybe that is investment, after all, assuming that certain someone doesn’t just tie the proceeds up in a perpetual trust to ensure this his descendants, like the Kennedy’s, never have to actually get a job and live with the consequences of his philosophy. But, leaving that aside, on a macro basis, there are several million of us who do save and invest and when our taxes go up, there is that much left for us to put to that purpose.
Somewhat as an aside, conservatives like the private sector because they believe, on a macro basis, that creativity, hard work and the profit motive produce a better end result than, say, crony capitalism. The private sector produces more jobs and more money for more people than any other process in the history of the world. It is just plain better. And taking money away from that process and the benefits it produces for so many without a compelling reason is not only bad policy, it is wrong. Conservatives believe that people should be allowed to keep what they make except for true public needs. And we are a lot less inclined to find a *true public need* every time we look out the window.
And even that is an overstatement. Anecdotally, conservatives today are conditioned to pay income tax and social security tax. A tax rate up to 33-35%. plus FICA, is widely viewed as fair, among conservatives. Gov’t spending for SS, for scholarships for proven, deserving students who lack means, national defense, capital assets such as bridges and roads, a court system, law enforcement, etc. are all well within conservative values. A safety net for the truly disabled is within our means. Medicare, whether it is a good idea or not, is institutional now and can’t be eliminated. It has to be reigned in. It has to be means-tested, and its benefits have to be rationed. We just don’t have the money. So, with respect, it is simplistic, unthinking BS to say that most conservatives want to make the rich richer and leave everyone else to be entirely on their own. We do feel that, for the most part, the incentive of going hungry, going without shelter or clothing etc is a prime motivator for those who would otherwise live a subsistence existence on whatever they can get from the system and we believe it is better to force that limited class of person to experience life’s hard realities and make personal adjustments than it is to enable dependency. Most liberals live their private lives like this and force their children to go to school and get jobs and get the hell off the parental tit. They just don’t apply that personal experience to the rest of society.
Back on the private sector topic: How many start-ups got stimulus money, spent lavishly and then went belly up? Does anyone out there have a head count? How many owners of those start-ups gave money to Obama? Anyone see a pattern? In the private sector, you get to pick what you invest in, and if you lose, you lose. On the gov’t side, you are buying gov’t support (something your competitors don’t have) and taxpayers are underwriting the risk. Sorry, but conservatives think that’s stacking the deck and morally wrong.
So, in a nutshell, we don’t like high marginal tax rates because they retard the private sector, which we like a lot more than the gov’t deciding who wins and who loses.
Also, we like a reasonable degree of honesty from our national leaders. You may think Republicans speak with a forked tongue, and in many instances I would agree (which is why I am not a Republican), but for the life of me, I don’t see how anyone can take Obama’s words on fiscal responsibility, compare them to his policies and not conclude he isn’t the World’s Biggest Snake Oil Salesman. Seriously, there isn’t one f’ing non-defense program anywhere that can’t be just eliminated? Not one? After 5 years in office, after promising all kinds of economic pie-in-the-sky, he can’t cut anything? Jesus.
And what has he done to get people back to work? To get the economy going? I’m talking about the private sector, BTW.
On the social conservative side, yes, the Republican Party has an excess of religious zealots, many of whom are anti-gay marriage and pro-life (in varying degrees). However, views are changing on the gay marriage front, almost monthly. On abortion, they are changing too, but not in favor of the absolutist position of NOW and others. I’m a pro-life (with exceptions for heightened threat to the mother’s health, rape and incest), pro-gay marriage conservative. I’ve come to both of these positions, to paraphrase Marty, after much, much thought and deliberation. I’ve just reached a result with which liberals disagree.
Final note (directed at Russell, who I really like): life is uncertain and almost all of us are subject to whim and vagary to one degree or another. It has always been that way and always will be that way. Creativity and individual freedom are inherently uncertain and volatile. Some will always have more than others, in good ways and in bad. That said, there isn’t a time or place in history where *as many people* have lived as well as pretty much every person in America lives today, in terms of food, shelter, clothing and medical care. The bigger and more diverse a country becomes, the more friction you get at the lower, outer periphery. The fundamental problem I have with liberals is the damage the would do, unintentionally for the most part, to the vast majority by constantly trying tweak society at the outer edge.
Ok, end of rant. Have a nice day.
Ok, I just posted the World’s Longest Comment, twice, and after being told that it’s posted, it isn’t. I’ve saved it for posterity, but I’d like at least one person out their to have the chance to ignore it. So, if it’s in the spam trap, please, in the name of all that’s good and worthy about the human race, release it.
Interesting discussion. I tend to turn off when people raise these questions of the popularity of various programs or points of view, so to me, the question of whether policy X or program Y is popular seems like a diversion from does this program/policy make sense. I mean, it seems like Here comes Honey Boo Boo is pretty popular. (this is not to imply anyone here likes or dislikes Honey Boo Boo. My brief brushes with it leave me uninterested, so maybe I’m missing something)
In terms of electoral gamesmanship, popularity is, however, the gold standard, because you can’t get people to vote for things that are not popular. But if you hitch your wagon too tightly to popularity, you end up being like Jennifer Rubin. Which is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
And I just dropped into the dashboard and liberated McT’s comment, so none of this is related to what he wrote. I also noted a comment by Laura and one by Count-me-in, from 2 and 3 days ago respectively. I think that you both have posted them in revised form, but if you didn’t, let me know and I will take them out of the amber.
Obamacare–The legislative process was objectively awful.
It generally is.
No one actually saw or read the law before it was voted on.
That is objectively not true.
This was by design.
Assumes facts not in evidence, or is simply evidence of paranoia. Your pick.
Last minute deals were cut to get senate hold-outs to switch their votes.
Like the passage of Medical Part D under the GOP’s watch? I am gobsmacked.
Obamacare didn’t outlaw slavery, so the fact that Abe Lincoln, according to a movie, went along with some unsavory stuff to pass the 13th amendment doesn’t cut it.
Objection. Not relevant.
All in all, the process was disgusting and expecting people to trust and respect the authors of that process is just BS.
Sorry. That is just pure BS.
Sorry, no offense, but just as Bush and particularly Cheney do not get a pass on BS’ing everyone into invading Iraq, Obama, Pelosi and Reid do not get a pass on that sh*itty abomination.
The current of hysteria runs deep among conservatives.
If you are true believer, maybe the ends justify the means
Typically, the ends are used to justify the means by nearly everybody.
but for those of us who dissented, we were railroaded
No. Your side lost an election and a subsequent legislative battle.
and having been railroaded once, don’t come looking for forgiveness going forward. That was bridge-burning writ large.
Why, exactly, would I bother to?
If I am missing some key information here, feel free to enlighten me.
We could get into the weeds on the legislative history, the players, and the policy, but the lack of detail is stunning, and thus a detailed reply cannot be put down at this time.
Enjoy your next round, Tex.
Legislators who don’t read legislation (or have their staffers do it) aren’t doing their jobs. Period.
And Obamacare wasn’t jammed thorugh. The core idea was from the heritage Foundation, and had been tried out in Massachusetts with the approval many Republicans in Congress who considered it a modle of what their party should be promoting. (There’s a youtube of Boehner praising Romneycare in that light)
The rest was hammered out with repeated concessions to Republicans in Congress. Republicans were able to move the goalsposts several times, in fact.
No, that crap from Republican Congresspeople about not being able to influence the development of the bill or not knowing what was in the bill–just more lies.
Otherwise, they’d all be voting for libertarians. 🙂
McKinney, I’ve been so grateful for the common ground we’ve found on some issues lately.
I can’t agree here, however. Americans have so long been so far behind the rest of the democratic world in health care coverage. It was embarrassing to work for a company that had British owners and employees who got 6 weeks of vacation, and extensive health care benefits while their American counterparts (me) got “the usual.”
The fact that we’re even arguing about issues that support the basic dignity of the American people baffles me. As Laura pointed out, Obamacare was originally a Republican plan. If the left had been able to shove healthcare down the throat of Republicans, it wouldn;t have looked like Obamacare. Rather, it would have been something like Medicare for all.
And if it’s irreversible, it’s only because people won’t want to lose it.
“It was embarrassing to work for a company that had British owners and employees who got 6 weeks of vacation, and extensive health care benefits while their American counterparts (me) got “the usual.”
I am so sick of this argument. Europe is in the throes of their next recession, the unemployment in much of Europe is 20%+, they were forced to implement almost catastrophic tightening, their banks are under capitalized by half what the TBTF banks are here, their unions are in the street complaining about 36 hour work weeks and more and more companies are leaving most of Europe because it doesn’t pay to try to manufacture there. Every day someone on the news reiterates that people are investing here, even though our economy is practically stagnant, because we are the best house on a bad block.
Then, when Republicans say that we should make sure we don’t get into that position we are considered evil and told we should be more like Europe.
Then, in the next breath we get lectured about not learning lessons from the past. You don’t have to look at the past.
The outcome of liberal policy is there, real time, every day. It ain’t us that don’t learn from experience.
England isn’t Europe. And, yes, there’s been a worldwide recession, and austerity programs haven’t helped, nor has the fact that governments have bailed out banks which took huge risks on credit default swaps.
Maybe we should turn the conversation back to where we started – information, facts, and lack therof.
So it’s European healthcare that’s causing their economic problems, or was there some other point? I certainly wouldn’t advocate adopting every aspect of Europe’s economic structure, not by a long shot. But, looking at how they handle healthcare, I’d probably start by considering outcomes in that specific area.
“Maybe we should turn the conversation back to where we started – information, facts, and lack therof.”
Facts, nothing I said wasn’t a fact. No, England isn’t Europe, they just started their next recession. Yes healthcare along with every other social democratic supported policy, in toto, is the reason they are broke. Yes austerity has helped save the banks and the Euro, now they are loosening up to help the economy.
They are now implementing expansive monetary policy, along with fiscal austerity.
Do you have any facts that you think make any of my facts not true? No, except to say this particular program or that particular policy aren’t the cause. No, altogether they add up to the cause. Just like they are starting to here.
But now we have entered the circular discussion that paralyzes our country.
We should not spend more than we afford to pay for.
We didn’t cause the deficits.
We shouldn’t cut program a-z because some person benefits from it.
But we don’t have that much money.
Well, we didn’t cause the debt.
Well, we should raise taxes on the rich.
Well, even if that is a good idea it doesn’t make the least bit of difference in the deficit.
Well, we didn’t cause the deficit Bush did.
No, ACA is exploding the deficit.
But, it is still the deficit.
So we should tax the rich anyway.
OK we taxed the rich more and it didn’t change the deficit. So, what should we cut.
We should tax the rich more.
But, that still wont touch the debt.
It will reduce it some.
OK, but what should we cut?
We shouldn’t cut program a-z because some person benefits from it. Besides, Europe pays for all those things.
But they are way more broke than we are already.
Well I guess its ok to spend more than we can afford to pay.
On a slightly calmer note, the problem is like this. When economies are doing great everybody gets a bonus. When I got a bonus at work I didn’t buy a bunch of stuff that meant I had to get a bonus every year to pay for it. So the years i didn’t get a bonus i just didn’t have any extra money.
As a country, and in Europe, we get the bonus and buy stuff that costs us that much every year. Then the years come when there is a recession and we not only have to borrow what we expect to make, but the extra we added.
It doesn’t matter why we have a recession, at all, the problem is that we are still having to borrow the bonus.
And the infinite money supply doesn’t fix that. The debt eventually gets high enough you can’t borrow the bonus plus the interest.
Plus, Every program is like a puppy. Everyone likes puppies, they are good, everyone agrees. So, once in place, if you can’t afford them you become broke or a puppy hater.
You can talk about different peoples views of what we owe each other, the community, or whether some just hate puppies.
I think it speaks well of the folks whose puppy is the defense budget that they were truly worried enough about the debt that they gave up their puppy. If there has been a single thing that reinforces my view that there are serious people trying to solve what they believe is a serious problem, its that the defense cuts haven’t been overridden.
Facts, nothing I said wasn’t a fact.
You cited a couple of facts: (1.) Europe is experiencing high unemployment and (2.) well, not much else.
A society does not “tighten its belt” by throwing millions out of work. It commits economic and social suicide. Austerity is a disastrous policy choice and is not, by any means, dictated by economics. And if I see or hear one more time the claim that “we can’t afford it”, I’m going to puke on somebody’s shoes.
Said core idea was published to pretty much nonexistent enthusiasm on the right. But: Heritage Foundation! Automatic widespread approval on the part of Conservative sheeples!
And surprise, surprise: Romney is actually kind of liberal, in some respects. No one who has been paying attention would be shocked by this.
Said core idea was published to pretty much nonexistent enthusiasm on the right.
Well, back to this: many people on the right are just knee-jerk contrarians. Almost nobody (including those on the right), thinks that the pre-Obamacare health care system works well, or is cost-effective. Yet, they’ve never come up with their own policy option (or not one that they will own up to). They had six years under Bush with a Republican Congress and a Republican president, and the only thing they did about health care was the Medicare Part D option, the hugely costly (when deficits didn’t matter) boondoggle for pharmaceutical companies.
(But, of course, they really don’t hate the bene’s all that much – at least, not when they’re getting them.)
Yes, when we’re not mindlessly lapping up absolutely everything that Rush Limbaugh says.
You have us nailed, sapient. We’re whatever it is you don’t care for at the moment.
When economies are doing great everybody gets a bonus.
Not to set off another round of “Bush sucks! No, Obama sucks!”, but we had a bonus.
In the late 90’s, the economy was ridiculously strong, and we had a bonus. We had years where the budget was, if you squinted just right, balanced.
And that bonus got pissed away. It got pissed away on Medicare Part D, two wars, and a tax cut that we knew would put us back into debt AT THE TIME IT WAS PASSED.
So, we screwed up.
Now, we owe money and we need to pay it back.
And, not for nothing, but among the creditors are all of the people, including you and me, who spent their entire working lives paying extra into SS in order to build up a surplus to fund the dreaded boomer retirement that everyone is so freaked out about.
Remember? Reagan and Tip had lunch and a martini and they worked it out, back in ’83 or so.
I’m absolutely in favor of raising tax rates back to the Clinton-era levels. Because we had a bonus, we pissed it away, and now we need to pay the bills.
There is nothing in the current political discussion that makes me want to reach for my pitchfork more than the idea that people should have to accept limits and reductions on benefits that *they have paid for, over their entire working lives*, so that somebody making six figures and up won’t have to pay another nickel on their top marginal dollar.
Will it single-handedly eliminate the whole deficit? No. Will taking my lunch to work instead of buying at the cafeteria single-handedly pay off my mortgage? No.
Nonetheless, I brown-bag it.
With one hand, we built up a rainy day fund, and with the other hand we pissed it away. And, we knew we were doing it when we did it.
If you make six figures and up, you can find a way to pay another nickel. That includes me, so yeah, raise my taxes.
We spent the money, we knew we were spending the money, now the bill is due. Pay the freaking bill.
The Layman’s Case Against Austerity
The essential point is this: Foregoing output now (i.e., production of real goods and services) does not ‘create a surplus’ in the future, and the idea that the poor, the sick, and the elderly have to pay the price for conservative economic folly is pure madness.
lj: Thanks for thinking about us, but would that all of my comments could remain in “amber”.
When one of my comments doesn’t show up in the thread, I look at it as a default delete key and I’m relieved for all of us.
Course, most times I then go back and try to remember and replicate where I placed all of the “f” words in the vanished comment.
Anyway:
Slart wrote:
“Said core idea was published to pretty much nonexistent enthusiasm on the right. But: Heritage Foundation! Automatic widespread approval on the part of Conservative sheeples!”
It may have been that “nonexistent enthusiasm” was a species of automatic sheeple behavior, given that enthusiasm was “non-existent”, which implies uniformity , even though one of the lead rams misjudged their flock, which from the look of it, will never happen again.
Then, of course, “Death Panels!”, when sheepleness was imposed by the sheep themselves, from the bottom up.
Also: “And surprise, surprise: Romney is actually kind of liberal, in some respects. No one who has been paying attention would be shocked by this.”
I watched a goodly portion of the Republican Primary debates and was shocked to see Romney, the man behind the curtain, frantically pulling levers and spinning dials as he repeatedly pleaded (while gazing into Rick Perry’s lying eyes) that all of us “ignore that man behind the curtain”, despite the sheeplike behavior of his primary opponents to expose the man’s relatively pragmatic (looked liberal, but that’s O.K.) approach to governing Massachusetts.
Mitt Romney wore the most rarified look of mock shock of anyone at the mention of his “liberal” wolfishness during the entire election.
He ordered lamb every chance he got.
Most people, who have been paying attention would not be shocked either that Obama is actually kind of conservative in some respects, but getting folks to NOT pay attention is now the American art-form.
Marty:
“Yes healthcare along with every other social democratic supported policy, in toto, is the reason they are broke.”
Welp, the causes of depression in Europe varied country by country. For example, Spain’s (and to some extent Portugal’s) financial problems stemmed from an overheated, over leveraged real estate market, which collapsed the banking system.
Greece’s problems were the fruit of a largely corrupt government, not the least of which was a purposely porous tax collection regime which cratered revenues as government spending rose.
Germany has one of the most extensive social welfare and healthcare schemes on the face of the Earth (and they pay for it) and they seem to be doing pretty well, so Lucy has some splaining to do.
Ireland, the proving ground for anti-statist fiscal policy, went belly-up first, despite the facts.
Then, of course, you had the Euro and Brussels (Germany, let’s say) imposing one size fits all debt austerity on every country.
Also, “I think it speaks well of the folks whose puppy is the defense budget that they were truly worried enough about the debt that they gave up their puppy.”
On the contrary, only sheeples could eat their own wolf puppies and like it. I think that’s called cannibalism.
I’m so liberally anti-austerity, that I’m happy to manufacture useless weapons systems and then bury them in big holes, to keep the jobs.
Tell me how Slart being out of a job is going to stimulate anything.
MCKT: I can tell it’s been a good rant when I get to the end of it and discover I haven’t taken a breath since it started. 😉
Regarding the number of pages in the healthcare bill and the mysteries therein, it’s been roughly 1300 days since the bill passed, and I’m still hearing Republican legislators, and a few Democrats, say they don’t know what’s in the 2500 pages, because they haven’t read it.
That’s roughly 2 pages per day that could have been read over coffee since the bill was passed, since no one, legend has it, except for Sarah Palin poring over the death panels chapter like a teenager reading the naughty bits by flashlight under the bedcovers, had a shot at it during the year of legislative sausage-making.
You’d think it was Proust, for some.
I look at it like those wall length shelves of law books (sometimes I think it’s just a painting of law books) in any attorney’s library.
They are consulted on a case-by-case basis.
Anyway, I buy the general idea that Obamacare is not much more than a black box (it’s blackness purposely made blacker by those invested in blackness) sutured on to the Rube Goldberg monstrosity called our healthcare system, but the status quo wouldn’t do.
The accommodations made to tailoring the bill to give 50 states some flexibility made things highly complicated, which the Founders may or may not have relished.
We don’t know yet whether healthcare costs will be ameliorated by Obamacare, but given the American propensity to finagle ever damn thing into a honeypot, I won’t be surprised if healthcare inflation continues its rise, despite evidence already that it is slowing.
The devil will be in the details, but first the devils must read the details.
Maybe more later, but I’ll end with “what Russell just said”.
McKinney, I’ve been so grateful for the common ground we’ve found on some issues lately.
I can’t agree here, however. Americans have so long been so far behind the rest of the democratic world in health care coverage.
We’ll continue to agree or disagree as the issues vary–not a problem. We are ahead of Europe in other metrics, not the least of which is employment rates. You can’t eat health care, but you need a paycheck to pay the rent and put food on the table. There are limits–I’ve suggested 35% plus FICA–on what you can pull out of the private sector and not throw millions out of work. The left currently recognizes no limits, and we are way past the limit of sustainability, particularly when we have an administration that will not cut anything, anywhere from the non-defense budget.
If Europe maintains its pace of benefits, it will fail. Then, we won’t be behind Europe, we’ll be way ahead.
Several points I made remain unanswered. Was the passage of OC an abomination or not? I know the partisan response. I’m waiting to hear from those who think it is reasonable to require conservatives to acknowledge their mistakes/errors/etc, and I am asking the same. Seems fair.
Crony capitalism in the form of ‘gov’t investment’–why is this a good thing?
Impairing the private sector with ever-increasing tax burdens and mandates? This helps who in the long run and how?
I have another comment caught in “amber”, which addresses a little bit of what’s been presented, so I’ll await that one before most of my crap.
FWIW, I guess I have a small handful of comments about the comparisons to Europe.
First, “all of Europe” is not on the skids. Europe comprises a lot of countries, and a lot of economies, and some are holding up pretty well.
Next, one reason we are on a better footing than much of Europe is because we DID NOT take the path of austerity ca. 2008.
Another reason we are on a better footing than some European countries is that we have sovereign control over our currency. Counties in the Eurozone do not, and so some fiscal and monetary measures available to us, are not available to them.
Lastly, and as perhaps a bit of an aside, a seldom-discussed reason why our unemployment rate is so favorable relative to other countries is the sheer number of people in this country who are in jail. 2.3 million people, about 1.5% of the workforce, are incarcerated.
Europe has problems, but they are not, remotely, a simple function of their relatively more socialist economies.
“more” of my crap
“(But, of course, they really don’t hate the bene’s all that much – at least, not when they’re getting them.)”
This argument is just as silly as the argument that rich guys should pay taxes voluntarily. For ACA, if the Feds are going to take the tax money and spend it on ACA then no governor is going to disadvantage his state in the short term by refusing the money, no politician is going to go pay extra for their Childs insurance if they are under 26. Just like no rich guy(or russell) is going to send in an extra 5% because they think they should have to pay it.
if the Feds are going to take the tax money and spend it on ACA then no governor is going to disadvantage his state in the short term by refusing the money
so, their principles can be bought-away.
Pending my “ambered” comment, I suggested this might be the case:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/05/health-care-spending-growth-may-have-slowed-permanently—-with-huge-implications-for-the-economy-an.php?ref=fpa
We spent the money, we knew we were spending the money, now the bill is due. Pay the freaking bill.
what russell said.
underlined, all-caps, bold and italics. 800pt font, printed on the side of a semi and driven around Paul Ryan’s neighborhood for 18 hours a day.
Just like no rich guy(or russell) is going to send in an extra 5% because they think they should have to pay it.
Not that it’s anybody’s freaking business, but as it turns out there are tax breaks that I’m entitled to that I don’t take.
I didn’t forget, or make a clerical error, I just don’t take them. Because I support what the money pays for by and large, and I’m happy to pay what I owe, and I’m not looking to sweat the small change.
So, yes, I already do send in some extra $$$ to the feds.
You’re welcome.
I also regularly vote for and support stuff that will raise my tax rates, at the federal, state, and local level. Because, as noted above, I support the stuff that the taxes pay for by and large, and because I’m happy to pay my share.
So yes, my money is already where my mouth is.
You’re welcome, again.
You really took that wrong, russell. I was quite sure you voted for raising you’re taxes. As for not taking deductions, thanks.
And everyone else’s.
You really took that wrong, russell.
No worries Marty. You played into my secret agenda of pre-empting Brett. 🙂
So, thanks to you, also.
And everyone else’s.
Yep.
Better outcomes for less money (or, better yet, fewer actual resources) does not hurt anyone’s economy.
Parts of Europe did some really stupid stuff. Germany benefited from it, because people bought their products, and Germany wasn’t forced to borrow in what is essentially a foreign currency. The Euros flowed, net, into and not out of Germany.
But, yes, countries like Greece had too many people working for the government who didn’t actually do much of anything. One of the things they didn’t do was enforce their tax code. It’s a generally corrupt place. I don’t advocate the US becoming more like Greece, if that makes anyone feel any better.
Just because lots of things combined to cause Europe’s economic problems, it doesn’t mean everything did. If you want to assert that a particular social program was among the many problematic things, show your work.
Which is going to get harder for all governments to do. The gray economy in the US is estimated to be about 2 trillion dollars a year and growing.
In my comment stuck in aspic, I pointed out that Spain and to a large part Portugal’s financial debacle was caused by a cratering real estate market, inflated by the banks, which then came back and destroyed the banks.
Greece was as hstd pointed out.
Ireland, the poster child for anti-statist reform, collapsed first, after Iceland. All economic ideologies got creamed.
Germany is doing pretty well, for the reasons hstd states, and they have gold-plated social insurance and health insurance programs which don’t seem to be hindering their prosperity, and they pay for it through taxes.
The Scandanavian socialists made it through the debacle almost as well as the German socialists.
Income taxes, in general, in Europe, England, and here, have dropped considerably over the past decades. I see little correlation between that occurrence and the up and downs of their economies.
As to MCKT’s suggestion that 35% plus FICA is the upper limit, this is what is lovably unlumpable about him, because that is a position that would find NO agreement among the purified Republican Party as it is constituted today, especially among elected officials far and wide, or in the Republican media, nor in the Republican intellectual establishment such as it is.
Not two months, John Boehner reiterated that taxes are theft.
I’ve cited (my links are not clickable; maybe that’s the problem) historical income tax rates going back to WWII here, and 35% for long periods of prosperity, job growth, and entrepreneurial gusto were the coincident norm when the highest rate was north of 90%, with 35% being one of the lower of close to twenty tax brackets.
No one on the Left, that I have read lately, is suggesting returning to those levels, so the Left must have some limits.
Returning to the tax rates under Clinton (I would go somewhat higher), along with
On the Right, much lower tax rates, a flat tax system, and/or the wholesale destruction of the IRS and the income tax are daily pronouncements.
Clearly, there are many other “facts” beside taxes attendant to the economic situation we are in today.
By the way, the annual deficit is dropping, Federal spending tax receipts are up, the stock market is touching all-time highs (that could change within the hour, natch), the growth in medical spending is moderating, and spending on the discretionary side of the budget was flatlining even without the dumb sequester.
Put that last paragraph in Larry Kudlow’s mouth circa 1987 and the blasting would have started at Mt. Rushmore to add Ronald Reagan’s mug to the others.
The Democratic leghorns need better foghorns.
“along with”?
I don’t know. Fill in the blanks.
CharlesWT:
“Which is going to get harder for all governments to do. The gray economy in the US is estimated to be about 2 trillion dollars a year and growing.”
Which tells me that the the lower taxes go (at the Federal and State levels) as they have over the past 30 years here and in Europe, the larger the gray economy and income tax avoidance grows.
I don’t think that’s the correlation you were looking for.
Something else is going on too, not the least of which is the daily hammering on taxes as theft.
Propaganda works.
hsh,
The UK is addressing the costs of healthcare by privatizing much of it. In the opposite of the debate here the politicians are being accused of creating an inevitable “American style system”. This link is interesting, plus the links at the bottom.
And tax revenues, as a percent of GDP, have been almost flat for that period of time at about 19%.
A parallel private healthcare system is also developing in Canada.
The growth in wealth, mobility, communications and other technologies is making it increasingly more difficult for central authorities anywhere in the world to make individuals do as they wish.
Something else is going on too….
Well, lessee here. The lower orders have seen their wages stagnate since the 70’s. This could be cause for some frustration and possibly a little tax cheating here and there…but somebody working for wages has little opportunity to cheat on taxes other than a small working on the side taking in laundry, yard work, crossing state lines to avoid sales taxes, or bartering….in other words, peanuts. On the other hand, with financial wealth more concentrated you could expect more tax cheating. That’s what rich people do when they are not gambling with other people’s money. This should not come as a surprise.
“And tax revenues, as a percent of GDP, have been almost flat for that period of time at about 19%.”
Tax revenues beginning in 2000-01, have been much lower than the historic 19%, with 2013 coming in at 16.9%, I believe.
Since we’re tossing out blanket correlations regarding taxes, what accounts for the slowdown in GDP growth since the halcyon years of outrageously high tax rates and high growth rates, regarded fondly and wistfully through the gauze of conservative hagiography?
Ronald Reagan is the only American is history who quit his job and stopped being productive because of taxes.
I don’t believe him.
“A parallel private healthcare system is also developing in Canada.”
A parallel public healthcare system is also developing in the U.S., by public demand, too.
Maybe we’ll meet in the middle.
“The growth in wealth, mobility, communications and other technologies is making it increasingly more difficult for central authorities anywhere in the world to make individuals do as they wish.”
In some respects, that might be O.K. In others, good luck with that.
Do I get to NOT pay for things I don’t like, or is just you who gets the choice?
What exactly is a “central authority” in a representative democracy? Perhaps its the minority, individuals all (we’ll include those individuals now called corporations), who lost an election using wealth, technology, communications, and other technologies to thwart the representative decisions of the majority who won an election.
That can work two ways and again, good luck with that.
With consumer spending up with no apparent increase in income or increase in consumer debt, participation in the grey or shadow economy may be pretty widespread.
participation in the grey or shadow economy may be pretty widespread.
It is widespread.
The grey economy is what it looks like when labor goes Galt.
Will babysit for homebrew…
So we are becoming more like Europe.
Also:
The growth in wealth, mobility, communications and other technologies is making it increasingly more difficult for central authorities anywhere in the world to make individuals do as they wish
Seriously?
Growth in your personal wealth means the number of eyeballs on every dime you own also grows, perhaps exponentially.
Growth in mobility means somebody, somewhere knows where you are and where you’ve been, every time you bust a move. If you fly, they might even have a naked x-ray picture of you to along with all of the other information.
Growth in communications technologies means that somebody, somewhere knows who you talk to, when, for how long, what you read and where you read it, and where you stopped for your latte this morning.
Some of those somebody, somewheres work for governments, some for banks and credit bureaus, some for marketing organizations, some for some guy with a bright idea who wants to sell your eyeballs and each and every detail of your personal life and habits to his investors.
And all of them are doing their damnedest to move you in the direction they want you to go.
Brave new world!
A buddy of mine spent a couple of years squatting in a pole barn in some abandoned farm land in rural Indiana. He bartered for most of what he needed, did some odd jobs and sold some dope for what little cash he needed.
While he was living that life, he was well and truly immune to what the “central authorities” wanted him to do.
I have no problem with wealth, mobility, or technology, but I’m under no illusion that it is granting me anything like “freedom from central authority”.
Wanna be free from “central authority?”. Don’t borrow money, work for cash, and grow your own food.
It’s not for everyone, but it’s still available if you want it.
A parallel private healthcare system is also developing in Canada.
Do you mean a private system aside from the public system? That would be different from privatization of the public system. In any case, I’m not sure why anyone should object to a parallel system, assuming it means people have greater choice.
I’m not sure why anyone should object to a parallel system, assuming it means people have greater choice.
Nor I.
I get water from my tap via public infrastructure.
If I want Pelligrino, I go buy it.
Win/win.
Russell, you make some good points, but there are changes taking place that increasingly favor the individual at the expense of governments and other types of authority.
If you’ll forgive the source, here are two articles on the subject:
The End of Power: How wealth, health, cheap flights, and prepaid phone cards are undermining authority across the globe
In the Fight for Freedom, Technology Gives Individuals an Edge Over Governments: A cold civil war brews between empowered individuals and controlling officials.
, I’m not sure why anyone should object
because, it shows that government can’t do anything right and that the private sector is the best, and since liberals want the govt to have a greater role in health care … well, just see the first comment.
Until the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against it in 2005, private healthcare was illegal in Canada.
A parallel private healthcare system is also developing in Canada.
Even a cursory lookup on the wikki shows this claim as somewhat misleading. The modern Canadian health care system has traditionally been a two-tiered one.
All modern economies are experiencing increased health care cost pressure due to the marvels of medical science which allows us to live longer so we can consume more health care. There is nothing either surprising or shocking about this.
I’ve de-amberized the count’s comment. Of course, stays in the timeline, rather than moving down to the bottom, which gives the following comments the flavor of the cranky old man who complaining that no one is listening to him. If someone could develop a script to randomly do that to various comments, let’s talk.
I don’t mean to be dismissive, but nationalized healthcare is a lot like good sex, I’m afraid. You really don’t know what it’s like until you’ve had it. If I emperor for a day, I’d limit the healthcare debate to people who have had serious medical problems with inadequate insurance. Fortunately for me, that group of people is approaching a majority in the US.
If I emperor for a day, I’d limit the healthcare debate to people who have had serious medical problems with inadequate insurance.
I think it might also be useful to hear from folks who have actually lived under both – i.e., nationalized health care and not.
At least, I would be interested in that.
I’m not sure anyone hereabouts is proposing the total elimination of private health insurance. The most ambitious proposal, which is one I would support, would be public single-payer for a basic insurance package.
I’m not sure it’s actually worth debating if that would be a good or bad thing in the US, because it would be like debating whether flying cars based on a wonderful newly discovered anti-gravity element would be a good thing. Both are approximately equally likely to happen.
I’m just curious about what the comparative reality of both contexts is like.
Charles, thanks for the links, I will take a look. I appreciate you including them.
I have pretty damned good insurance, which limits my office co-pays to $20 and ER visits to $200. I actually recently had occasion to spend the night in the ER with what turned out to be a severe attack of diverticulitis, after which I missed three days of work on painkillers and antibiotics.
The bill from the ER, for a five-hour stay, a few doses of morphine, a CT scan and some blood and urine tests, was $6,700. I get to pay $200. I can’t imagine what that’s like for someone without insurance and less income than I have. Devastating, I assume.
Even a cursory lookup on the wikki shows this claim as somewhat misleading.
This statement applies to most of what CharlesWT writes, no?
I can’t imagine what that’s like for someone without insurance and less income than I have.
If you’re interested in some really nice drum gear, I can direct you to a guy who’s selling off a lot of his stuff. He had to have some stents installed, as an alternative to dying, and he has a $6K deductible to make.
It’s a fire-sale opportunity.
He’s lucky he has the gear to sell.
“I don’t mean to be dismissive, but nationalized healthcare is a lot like good sex, I’m afraid.”
Mark Sanford won in South Carolina, which proves that subsidized healthcare (for him now, on our ticket, but not for you or me) and good sex, via adultery, can coincide together, spooning, on the Appalachian Trail.
South Carolinians contract herpes outside marriage, the minxes, and visit a government clinic on the sly so the wives don’t find out, until the itching starts, and then indulge themselves in the underground economy extolled here to let the taxpayer foot the bill.
On principle, natch.
Strom Thurmond continues to f*ck posthumously.
From Bloomberg:
Borg[finance minster] last month cut his forecasts for Sweden, citing the krona’s impact on exports and unemployment. The Riksbank on April 17 said it needs to delay monetary tightening plans until the second half of 2014 as it forecast price growth won’t reach its 2 percent target until 2015. Borg estimates Swedish unemployment will reach 8.4 percent in 2014, the highest rate in Scandinavia.
I don’t mean to be dismissive, but nationalized healthcare is a lot like good sex, I’m afraid. You really don’t know what it’s like until you’ve had it.
Uh, wouldn’t the nationalized healthcare have to be really, really good to be like good sex?
If I emperor for a day, I’d limit the healthcare debate to people who have had serious medical problems with inadequate insurance. Fortunately for me, that group of people is approaching a majority in the US.
Thinking about this for about a minute and extending the logic to the poor, the unemployed, etc, it seems to me we know how the vote would go. But once the healthy and employed are out of money, where do folks go next for their needs?
Borg[finance minster] last month cut his forecasts for Sweden
Yeah, and Norway’s doing pretty well, likewise the GDR and Switzerland.
Iceland, too, in spite of kicking their bankers in the @ss.
Free-market heroes Ireland and Estonia are in the crapper.
I’m not sure what the point is.
There’s no particularly strong relationship between where on the free market -> social democratic continuum any given country’s economy lies, and their economic health, at any given moment. Not that I can see, and not that anyone has ever been able to show me.
Societies pay their money and they make their choice, based on their understanding of what’s important to them. That’s what the European countries do, and that’s what we do.
And that’s as it ought to be.
McTx: But once the healthy and employed are out of money, where do folks go next for their needs?
Don’t know, probably will be this kind of disaster.
Thinking about this for about a minute and extending the logic to the poor, the unemployed, etc, it seems to me we know how the vote would go.
Did it really take you a whole minute to generate that slippery slope? I’m not at all surprised that you are conflicted about conservatism! ;^)
Still, I’m amazed that the conservative reflex ends up as being expressed by an opposition to healthcare, given that every OECD country but the US has some sort of national system of healthcare that works in some fashion. This story (and the links to the other stories) makes me wonder if you really want to be the person claiming that the US has got this thing sorted. Not to mention the headline in this story.
McTx: But once the healthy and employed are out of money, where do folks go next for their needs?
The thing is, we already largely take care of people without the means to pay for their healthcare. We just do in an extremely inefficient and expensive way, by all too often waiting for them to be in excrutiating pain or on death’s door. Healthcare isn’t a zero-sum game and the market sucks at allocating it. Some things simply require some amount of central planning, Stalinist as that may sound, for them to work out in a reasonably good fashion.
We all pay in the end one way or another already. It’s just hard to see. But real resources are being consumed – too many for what most people are getting outcome-wise, so someone’s paying for them.
But once the healthy and employed are out of money, where do folks go next for their needs?
Given that we give those people a huge tax break and have for decades, I think they can afford to contribute a bit. I mean, surely you know McTex that people with employer provided health insurance get a huge tax break that is not available to people who buy insurance on the open market, right? My last employer provided me with an extra $11K per year in tax-free compensation.
russell, that would be the FRG not the GDR. The latter is not in good shape for the reason of having left the map for good a bit more than two decades ago 😉
Still, I’m amazed that the conservative reflex ends up as being expressed by an opposition to healthcare, given that every OECD country but the US has some sort of national system of healthcare that works in some fashion.
In the future, I will forgo subtlety. I was simply pointing out that limiting the decision making body to those who would benefit from others’ dollars will cause a near term absence of dollars to seize.
Given that we give those people a huge tax break and have for decades, I think they can afford to contribute a bit. I mean, surely you know McTex that people with employer provided health insurance get a huge tax break that is not available to people who buy insurance on the open market, right? My last employer provided me with an extra $11K per year in tax-free compensation.
Here we have the ‘talking out of both sides of the mouth’ problem. Lefties hate Walmart and similar operations because they hire part timers and don’t pay for health insurance. But, if an employer does pay for health insurance, *it’s a HUGE TAX BREAK*. Why? Because the person making 40-80K (or more or less) a year isn’t paying income tax on the FMV of his/her insurance benefits.
Here’s the thing about income: you get to take what’s left after taxes home and spend it. If you aren’t sick and don’t use you’re health insurance, your paying taxes on a benefit that did you no good. What is it about liberals that they have to tax every damn thing that moves? OTOH, liberals worry endlessly about the middle class, and almost every other class, but when these classes get employer-provided health insurance, they become leeches getting HUGE TAX BREAKS.
But then, I’m a love-the-rich, cut-their-taxes conservative.
limiting the decision making body to those who would benefit from others’ dollars
i thought the point was that those who have the most first-hand exposure to how the current system operates would be the best people to know how to fix it. they’ve become (probably unwilling) experts in how it functions.
But once the healthy and employed are out of money, where do folks go next for their needs?
Wait, is there some possibility of folks in the US running out of money?
Really?
And moving toward a public insurance provider is going to make that happen faster?
I am, straight up, in favor of a public single-payer model for basic health insurance.
Here is why.
Folks over 65, folks who are very poor, folks with certain very serious and expensive chronic illnesses, a lot of kids, and the military, all receive basic health insurance on the public dime. Now, today.
Private insurers are who we go to to insure the rest – folks who aren’t poor, aren’t old, don’t have any of the expensive ailments specifically covered by Medicaid, aren’t participants in public programs for kids that some states have.
And, the private insurance market fails to make insurance broadly available to that relatively lower-risk population at a price that regular folks can afford without some kind of hardship.
And even at that, they have to be forced by law to not do stuff like drop people for clerical errors as soon as they file a claim.
So I say, f**k it, take it away from the private market, because the private market isn’t getting it done, and it’s too important to leave undone.
We spend BIG HEAPING SH*TLOADS more money than other countries, and do not have heaping sh*tloads better health care.
It’s freaking stupid.
The reason we can’t have broadly available public health care in this country is because (a) there’s too much money in it for private insurers and they won’t let it happen, and (b) at a social and cultural level, a lot of people think the government shouldn’t do it.
They’re OK with the government doing it for old folks, the military, poor folks (maybe), and maybe, in some states, kids.
But any further is SOCIALISM and for some reason that’s just not a possibility here.
We ALREADY SPEND ENOUGH MONEY, right now, to make it happen, and then some, we just can’t get our heads out of our @sses far enough to do what every other damned country that has moved beyond agrarian feudalism has been doing for decades.
“Running out of money” is not the problem.
russell, that would be the FRG not the GDR.
D’oh.
Thanks for the correction Hartmut.
If you aren’t sick and don’t use you’re health insurance, your paying taxes on a benefit that did you no good.
Economists of all stripes recognize that company paid health insurance is part of employee income. It’s tax sheltered status is a historical accident. Given that even you recognize insurance has a “FMV” the assertion that pointing this fact out is somehow talking in some simultaneous manner out of both sides of one’s mouth strikes me as nonsensical.
Perhaps you can explain further.
There goes Turb, calling himself a leech again.
Perhaps the answer to this inequity regarding the tax treatment of employer-provided health insurance and individually purchased health insurance is to allow individuals to deduct their premiums from their income before taxes, rather than “taxing everything that moves.” Or, maybe it is to include the benefit of employer-provided insurance in the calculation of one’s income. Either way, the inequity is gone, but it doesn’t do much for people who work at Walmart and can’t afford to buy their own insurance, anyway.
I’m really not sure people hate Walmart so much as seeing that, since large companies can get away with such things to increase their profit margins, as one would expect some to do, creating a race to the bottom, there should be some level of labor-market management (or better safety net of some sort) to avoid these fallacies of composition making life relatively miserable for large swaths of the population.
Cheaper stuff is good, all other things being equal. It’s just that all other things don’t end up being equal, so cheaper stuff is only good to a point.
But once the healthy and employed are out of money, where do folks go next for their needs?
and
In the future, I will forgo subtlety. I was simply pointing out that limiting the decision making body to those who would benefit from others’ dollars will cause a near term absence of dollars to seize.
I guess this is pile-on time, but with all of us taking aim at this comment, it might be worth doing a little unpacking here. There is an underlying notion that we have this finite amount of resources that have to be parcelled out and if they are to be parcelled out, they have to be given to people who have somehow proven, because they have a job or they are healthy, that they deserve it. That is ‘conservative’ because that is a lot of what human history looks like. But looking at human history, we see that groups that are able to tap a wider range of diversity are able to do better. And it is not simply human history, it is a principle that permeates any kind of organization that operates on reproduction, be that intellectual or genetic. So it is conservative to cling to the idea that hoarding produces some sort of ideal result, but it is something that has been disproven so many times, one might think that folks would give up on it.
This is not to deny resources are finite in some sense, but when confronted with shortages, it seems that there is a liberal/conservative gap. Or, as the link says
The study (with all the usual caveats including sample size and nature) says something that both liberals and conservatives need to understand. Firstly, it’s clear that economic benefits often trump environmental ones for conservatives; at the same time, the fact that the environmental message blinded conservatives to the long-term saving says that ideology can also trump self-interest. From a practical standpoint though, this means that environmentally friendly technologies advocated by liberals are likely to be embraced by conservatives if they become cheap enough, irrespective of their attitudes toward liberal environmentalism.
More importantly, the study shows that the message matters. It tells us that liberals should perhaps tone down their big environmental message if they want to convince conservatives to adopt their products. This would be somewhat counterintuitive to the belief that a greater emphasis on environmentalism is the right way to win conservatives over to your cause. To conservatives the message is also clear; if the economics makes sense, try to ignore the political message. And the most important conclusion of this study cannot be ignored: if you really want to work together, leave ideology aside and focus on what you have in common. That’s the way to move forward.
“And the most important conclusion of this study cannot be ignored: if you really want to work together, leave ideology aside and focus on what you have in common. That’s the way to move forward.”
I don’t think it is possible to do that with either the core Republican base or with elected Republicans; the commitment to hate and fearmongering is too great. The Repubican party has, for the last thrity years, used polarization as a political tool tosuch an extent that now their base and many of their politicias actually believe their demonizing, marginalizing rhetoric.
Which is why they are making a big deal about the debt ceiling, which was not a big deal when Bush was PResident. Which is why they are making a big deal about Benghazi, but didn’t make a big deal about the 65-some attacks during the Bush years. Which is why they are blocking so many appointments. Which is why their current philosophy really is to do the opposite of whatever Obama suggests–to the point of rejecting their own health care proposal which Obama supported out of a desire to work with them and to compromise.
However, even though the Republican party is right down the drain, no longer worth the effort, they do only represent about thrity percent of the population and there are many people, independents and former Republicans, who are open and who would like to think practically about how to solve real problems.
If it wasn’t for Citizens United, gerrymandering, and voter suppression,and the coporate media I think the Repulbican party would be a regional party confined to the deep South and a few wealthy suburbs in the near future.
However, Cititzens Uited has givent eh Republicans unlimited money, and their politicans have already displayed an unlimited willingness to engage in lying, while the coporate media has shown a very low willingnes to engage in journalism. The combination of these factors will probably keep the R party going for a while longer.
In the end, though, global warming is goig to cuase such severe economic dislocations much that no one will be willing to vote for the party of serve-the-rich-ignore-all-real-problems-and-hate-the-Other. In times of widespread crisis people want a government that actually functions and actually serves their interests. Supsidizing oil companies and whiing about too much governemt spending is not goig to cut it when the economic impacts of global warming start kicking in.
Fifty years from now people will really hate the Repulbican party for their obstructionism. The Democrats could be faulted for not trying hard enough but the R party will be blamed for their utter failure respond responsibliy to any issue of which their global warming denialism is one of many examples.
focus on what you have in common. That’s the way to move forward.
Tell me what we have in common.
And no, that’s not an idle question.
“There is an underlying notion that we have this finite amount of resources that have to be parcelled out and if they are to be parcelled out, they have to be given to people who have somehow proven, because they have a job or they are healthy, that they deserve it.”
This is just backwards. Agree or disagree, at least disagree with reality. Conservatives believe that when finite resources get parceled out then the people who have earned what they have should be asked to give to people who actually need it. The discussion is always whether government adequately defines “need” it.
Outside of the safety net, it should be parceled out to the government based on what they are assigned to do. The disagreement is more obvious.
Note: Medicare and SS gal into the second category currently, Medicaid in the first.
This is just backwards. Agree or disagree, at least disagree with reality. Conservatives believe that when finite resources get parceled out then the people who have earned what they have should be asked to give to people who actually need it. The discussion is always whether government adequately defines “need” it.
I don’t mean to overparse your text, but the sentence
“The discussion is always whether government adequately defines “need” it.”
and it seems to me that the grammatical confusion there (I’m thinking it should read ‘who the government defines adequately “needs” it’, not whether) indicates a point of difference. It suggests that you are looking at healthcare as a binary choice, and the government either provides it or doesn’t. That is the sort of reasoning that gives Sarah Palinesque arguments of ‘government death panels’ and ‘rationing’. Everyone ‘needs’ healthcare, and if that healthcare is preventative, the costs go down. Unfortunately, improved healthcare means things like this.
The chronic-care focused system that Coburn is pioneering is more about nurses than doctors, more about home visits than hospitals, and more about human interaction than high-tech intervention. A system based on managing chronic care is a truly different system from the one we have today. Health Quality Partners was lucky to find a hospital that wanted to work with it. But many hospitals wouldn’t want to work with a program dedicated to sharply reducing their revenue stream. And without cooperation from the hospital and a patient’s doctors, the HQP model would fail.
No business is going to do something that would “sharply reduc[e] their revenue stream”. But that is precisely what governments do. Or at least should do. Vaccination programs, creating, fixing and maintaining road networks, etc etc etc. The goal is not to generate revenue, it is to do things that may reduce revenue streams because you try to solve problems, not try to find ways to profit from them.
That government doesn’t work the way we always want it to (which may be a reality, because what organization or group is perfect?) seems to lead liberals to the idea that we should fix government, and (many) conservatives to eliminate it. At least so it seems to me.
The discussion is always whether government adequately defines “need” it.
Probably not.
There’s always a gap between any definition of “need” and any other definition of “need’, and/or the resources available to address the need.
Plus, when anything is filtered through the public sector, it’s prey to the interests of any and every stakeholder involved.
Government’s not going to find the “optimal” definition for “need”, because that’s not it’s task. Government’s not efficient. It’s not the intent of government to be efficient. At it’s best, government suffices.
And sufficing is, in fact, an excellent goal. In many ways, it makes the world go round.
Think you could do a better job? I don’t think I could.
The discussion is always whether government adequately defines “need” it.
Also : allow me to turn this around.
What prompted the whole “health care reform” was the simple, salient fact that something like 15% of the population of the United States had no health insurance, at all.
Was the private insurance industry and/or the free market doing a particularly good job of deciding who “needed it”?
It’s not like all of this stuff emerged from some kind of vacuum. There was (and is) a context.
To clear any confusion, the question, if we make it specific to healthcare, is if the government adequately defines who needs “government paid for” healthcare.
The assumption is that is everyone who doesn’t have insurance. In fact, it is now defined as exactly that.
My original statement was broader than just healthcare. fwiw. And I didn’t mean to sidetrack the discussion. That was just a point I picked out of lj’s comment.
the question, if we make it specific to healthcare, is if the government adequately defines who needs “government paid for” healthcare.
I would say, probably not, for most people’s understanding of “adequately”.
In other words, any definition that can be codified and written into law will probably make most people unhappy, to some degree.
People who hate Obamacare need to spend some time defending the prior system, or suggesting their own alternatives.
Did anybody notice this? How much barganing power does a person with acute appendicitis have to shop around for “value” care?
Health care reform isn’t about the government deciding what people need. It’s about making a crazy, unworkable system into a more rational one. It’s about making sure that arbitrary occurrences don’t bankrupt people. And it’s about saving us all money so that we don’t have to pay for expensive emergency room care as the default option for the uninsured.
My original statement was broader than just healthcare. fwiw. And I didn’t mean to sidetrack the discussion. That was just a point I picked out of lj’s comment.
Well, like I said, I’m not really interested in piling on you or McT. I’m just amazed that two ‘conservatives’ who are seemingly thoughtful about the problems of conservatism hone in on healthcare as the hill to make a stand on. Or their point.
It’s not like I think that government should do everything. But in an area where the benefits of some sort of national system have been proven in any number of countries, this seems to be like the go to topic.
Government should provide things that yield positive externalities – things no one else would do because there’s no money in them, but that produce benefits for everyone, broadly. There’s not much money in preventive and primary medical care.
Both can provide great benefit, both directly to the people who receive them and indirectly to the people depend on those people or who are competing for the resources that would otherwise be used to care for those who lacked preventive or primary care.
The market sucks at broadly delivering preventive and primary care, because there’s not enough money in them.
(And “provide” can simply mean “pay for.” Or it could mean doctors working directly for the government. Whichever works best.)
Health care reform isn’t about the government deciding what people need. It’s about making a crazy, unworkable system into a more rational one.
You can’t do one without the other, assuming the latter is within the capability of gov’t, particularly our gov’t and a country our size.
Well, like I said, I’m not really interested in piling on you or McT. I’m just amazed that two ‘conservatives’ who are seemingly thoughtful about the problems of conservatism hone in on healthcare as the hill to make a stand on. Or their point.
If I had the time today–maybe tomorrow–I’ll get to LJ’s earlier comment direct to me. In the meantime, it isn’t healthcare per se that is the issue: rather, it is (1) we don’t have the money and (2) when you go from concept to practice, you get OC, which appears to not be shaping up so well. Further, it is terribly complex and convoluted. If, as appears likely, it turns out to be a train wreck, you asking us to trust the same wonks who, in closed rooms, worked up this program originally to then fix their mess. The third factor is the process. A few true believers believe that 3 days to read and debate a 2500 page bill is just fine. Most reasonable people see it for what it was: a bunch of back room deal cutting, never vetted, never modeled independently and, most of all, never debated, and then being jammed through the legislative process on a weekend. The question I was addressing was “why do conservatives distrust liberals”. I gave the answer. Instead of addressing that answer, we see a lot of “our system is crappy and the rest of the West all does this”. To me, that’s not much of an argument since the rest of the West is pretty much in the crapper financially. It wasn’t just the banking scandal. That may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but for economies to crash that hard and stay down for so long, there had to be pre-existing problems. The heavy social net favored by most European countries is not sustainable.
Marty and I are not picking healthcare to stand and fight on. We’re both fine with healthcare. It’s a question of economics, competence, process and effectiveness.
Screw it, I’ll take one shot now.
There is an underlying notion that we have this finite amount of resources that have to be parcelled out and if they are to be parcelled out, they have to be given to people who have somehow proven, because they have a job or they are healthy, that they deserve it.
Not at all, not in a million years, does this even remotely approach my or any other mainstream conservative thinking. Just the opposite. No one *parcels* out anything to anyone. Everyone gets the same chance at life, more or less. People make choices. Good luck and bad drive individuals’ lives. Perfect, or even approximate, equality is the liberals’ unicorn. A minimum level of guaranteed subsistence is Subset A of this unicorn.
We prefer a system where, guided and bounded by the rule of law, individuals make and live with the consequences of what the do and what they fail to do. Fail to take advantage of free schooling, plan to have a rough life. Max out your credit cards, don’t put anything away and lose your job–live will be tough.
Enlightened self-interest, or fear of being out on the streets, motivates a lot of people to choose extra hours, a second job or to relocate or retrain.
The chance to do really well motivates others to take risks–with their money and with money they can raise–to start a business.
Deferred gratification with a long term goal in mind causes some people to stay in school longer, or go to school at night, to make a better life for themselves or their families.
There should be no limits on how far in life someone can go. Gov’t has no business singling out the successful and confiscating half or more of their income to *parcel* out to others. Personal note: with the most recent rate increase and with imputed income from other states as a result of joining a national law firm last year, my marginal rate, exclusive of in-state taxes, is 49.5%.
The bright line between conservatives and liberals is that we will draw a line and say, “gov’t can have this much, but no more. It should be prudent and efficient in how it manages its money, just as we, in our own lives, should be prudent and efficient. If gov’t cannot or will not do so, then it ceases to be legitimate.”
Everyone gets the same chance at life, more or less.
Really? I don’t see that at all. I think chances are skewed long before you are a gleam in your mom’s eyes. That’s a problem if we want to maximize variability and diversity. Stephen Hawking as a poor black kid? Does the Hispanic Bill Gates get computer time in junior high school?
It always seemed to me that the strength of the US was its ability to draw from a wider range of peoples and cultures than other countries. More variability, more diversity, means more ideas and different approaches. Again, not trying to catch you out, but could you explain to me why that is mistaken?
The bright line between conservatives and liberals is that we will draw a line and say, “gov’t can have this much, but no more. It should be prudent and efficient in how it manages its money, just as we, in our own lives, should be prudent and efficient. If gov’t cannot or will not do so, then it ceases to be legitimate.”
if you think liberals don’t agree with every word in there, you don’t know, let alone understand, liberals.
name a liberal who thinks we should give the govt more money than it needs, who doesn’t think the money should be spent prudently, who thinks inefficiency is a good thing.
the only argument i could see you getting from most liberals i know is on your last word: “legitimate”; and that’s only because modern “conservatism” has gone all Patrick Henry and fancies itself a revolutionary army reserve *. and you’ve tied all your rhetoric to this radical political cleansing cosplay nonsense – and “legitimate” is one of its codewords. but that’s just a rhetorical issue. i don’t know anyone who would argue that a govt which abuses its position doesn’t deserve to be replaced by something better.
in other words: straw.
* – yes there are plenty of apocalyptic lefties
[i]Fail to take advantage of free schooling, plan to have a rough life[/i]
“And if you take advantage of it while my ideological comrades push through a curriculum that teaches Ronald Reagan was God, the New Deal a complete failure, and that cavemen rode dinosaurs 4,000 years go, well, that’s just your tough crap!”
I would have put a different distinction in, were I McKTx. I would have said something to the effect that liberals tend to want the government to enact policies that they think will make life generally better for people without what conservatives might think of as apppropriate respect for reality (to wit: government is Big and Stupid, while conservatives want to keep government from doing things that government wasn’t initially authorized to do, such as keeping marriage heterosexual.
But if I did that, I’d be as good as confessing that I harbor some kind of expectation or even desire that others might agree with me, which isn’t really the case anymore.
So I’m left wondering why I bothered. As are, possibly, the rest of you.
There’s a place in my last comment where this ) might have made sense.
Everyone gets the same chance at life, more or less.
No, really, they don’t. Which is sort of beside the point, I just didn’t want to let that assertion stand without being challenged.
Perfect, or even approximate, equality is the liberals’ unicorn.
I don’t think of myself or call myself a liberal. There are probably liberal folks who ascribe to some form of this particular unicorn, but personally, I am not among them.
There is no-one, anywhere, in anything like a position of public influence or note in the US who advocates for anything resembling economic leveling, or any other kind of leveling. Not one person.
If you think there is any danger of economic leveling occurring, I invite you to check out the range of disparity of wealth in this country. It’s approximately that of your average kleptocracy.
I don’t mind what point of view you hold, what I would ask is that you work from an accurate characterization of other folks’, if and when possible.
What you’re describing here doesn’t exist.
A minimum level of guaranteed subsistence is Subset A of this unicorn.
This is correct. And for “minimum”, read “minimum”.
I’m in favor of using public means to help keep people from starving or freezing. Even if they’re lazy shiftless idiots.
In another thread, you noted that even poor folks in the US enjoy a standard of living that would have been the envy of most people in history. I think there’s something to that.
And to the degree that that is so, it’s because we have decided to not let people starve or freeze to death, even if they’re lazy or incompetent.
with the most recent rate increase and with imputed income from other states as a result of joining a national law firm last year, my marginal rate, exclusive of in-state taxes, is 49.5%.
Well that does sound pretty crappy. I’m curious to know what your overall effective federal tax rate nets out to – i.e., what you actually end up paying.
I doubt my circumstances are as complex as yours (although my wife’s might be), in my case what I actually pay is about 1/3 of what my nominal top marginal rate is.
49.5% is scary number, but most folks don’t actually incur a tax liability equal to their top marginal rate, on their entire income.
I’ll also share, again, probably tediously, a thought that I’m prone to sharing at times like this.
I never cease to be amazed at people who find it difficult to trust their own government, but who have no problem putting their full faith and confidence in private actors and institutions.
We all have our unicorns. Each to his own.
As are, possibly, the rest of you.
I’m right there with you buddy.
name a liberal who thinks we should give the govt more money than it needs,
You are rewriting what I said. Gov’t’s ‘needs’ have no apparent limit. I said “gov’t gets this much and no more”. What limits on what gov’t gets does the left generally support? I’ve seen no consensus. No serious discussion, actually, of the point at which the left will say to its constituencies: no more.
Well that does sound pretty crappy. I’m curious to know what your overall effective federal tax rate nets out to – i.e., what you actually end up paying.
My effective federal rate, prior to changing firms, was 1/3 of my gross income, i.e. I could look at gross income and know that the feds would get a third because my personal deductions stay pretty constant. This includes self employment tax. It does not include state and local property taxes and franchise taxes, which are 8% of my gross. So, a gross gov’t tax liability of 42% pre-increase, pre-imputed income from other states. Now, I will pay just over 50% when the dust settles. I think that’s plenty.
I don’t get fussy over this stuff for nothing.
What limits on what gov’t gets does the left generally support? I’ve seen no consensus. No serious discussion, actually, of the point at which the left will say to its constituencies: no more.
I dunno, I feel like the left is pretty consistent about reducing defense spending. Actually, to be fair
Back in May, the Stimson Center unveiled the results of a new survey asking U.S. voters about their views on defense spending. As it turns out, Democratic, Republican and independent voters all want to cut military spending far more severely than the sequester would and far, far more severely than either party has proposed. Congress isn’t likely to pay much attention here, but it’s a reminder that defense cuts tend to be extremely popular.
link
I will pay just over 50% when the dust settles. I think that’s plenty.
I agree. Half of your gross to the public sector is a hell of a lot.
What limits on what gov’t gets does the generally support? I’ve seen no consensus.
the government should get enough to pay for what we want government to do.
and what limit does the right generally support on DoD spending? by their rhetoric, we know the current official $17,000/sec is too low. at what point does the right say “ya know, maybe we don’t need to spend any more money on the machines of death. maybe we could spend a few of those hundreds of billions on helping ourselves?”
never?
i’m guessing ‘never’.
No serious discussion, actually, of the point at which the left will say to its constituencies: no more.
we are a wealthy country. and despite the ridiculous “conservative” panic over overtaxation, we’re at historically low levels of taxation. if there is a point where lefties would all agree that we’re taxing ourselves too much, it’s certainly higher than current levels.
the government should get enough to pay for what we want government to do.
precisely.
we really do need 2 functioning parties.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/05/09/the-benghazi-party/
I’d like to get back to the unsustainability of our spending and debt. What real resources are we, or, more accurately, is the government depleting? We have some pretty powerful tools, should we choose to use them, to manage the financial system. So, I guess, when people talk about sustainability, why is it in reference to money rather than actual stuff? Or would environmental concerns look more important if we did that? (Obviously, we can’t have that….)
OK, so, on the topic of “Obamacare” and what a horrendous bollocks it is, here is the response from the Congressional (R) leadership :
FU
Laws? Only if we like ’em.
Nice.
Man, that is some low crap from the vermin Republican leadership.
Those Second Amendment remedies look more appealing every day.
Meanwhile, the African witchdoctor and Stalinist tyrant just isn’t very nice to Eric Cantor:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/quote-day-eric-cantor-says-obama-just-doesnt-understand-him
Laws? Only if we like ’em.
but, but, but….wouldn’t they have to have read the law to know they can do that?
What I should also add is that I generally agree with McK that Obamacare is a hot mess.
THere’s a really simple reason for that – there’s no consensus among the American people about what federal policy regarding health care ought to be. So, in order to ram something through at the federal level, it is almost guaranteed to be a legislative Frankenstein’s monster.
I was curious about what folks do in Estonia, of all places. Because Estonia is one of places that American conservative pundits regularly tout as a market-driven wunderkind – flat tax, no corporate tax (I think), EXTREMELY low national debt as a percentage of GDP.
Estonia has national health insurance, which if I understand it covers everybody. It funds about 2/3 of all health care there, the other 1/3 mostly comes from individuals.
The reason Estonia has national health insurance is this:
Estonian health insurance relies on the principle of solidarity.
No such principle exists in the US.
Estonia is a nation of 1.3M people, and is about the same size as Switzerland – about the same size as New Hampshire and Vermont, combined. So, a general “principle of solidarity” is much easier to come by.
But for whatever reason, we do not have it. When we discuss expanding health insurance to everyone, we bring guns to the table.
Literally.
That’s why Obamacare is a mess.
I hope it works out, if we can make health insurance broadly available and gain some leverage over the rate of increase in costs, it will only be good.
But the law is a mess, because the American people are a mess.
the government should get enough to pay for what we want government to do.
precisely.
This is a limit on what the gov’t can or should take from private citizens? Not at all, but it does illustrate the bright line between conservatives and liberals. Under a true liberal regime, gov’t taxes to the extent a majority of people desire more gov’t services, the limit being the extent of a simple majority’s desire. Which is no limit at all.
Nor is it solidarity, a phrase quaintly reminiscent of prior European, freedom-loving regimes. It is just the opposite: a simple majority compels the minority to deliver such sums as the majority desires on pain of confiscation of property if not imprisonment. That is the endgame. I want no part of it. A bright line on maximum, aggregate gov’t taking that leaves a taxpayer with the majority of what he or she earns can be born–whether it stunts the economy is another issue–but absent such a bright line, the confidence conservatives have in liberal good will and judgment is nil, and that is fully justified by the heavy-handed, non-democratic methods employed to pass Obamacare.
As for the refusal to appoint to IPAB, where is that lefty love of civil disobedience?
As for the refusal to appoint to IPAB, where is that lefty love of civil disobedience?
Um, this isn’t civil disobedience. More to the point, civil disobedience is a tactic, a means not an end. Whether it is good depends on what end it serves. Civil disobedience to fight racial prejudice? Good. Civil disobedience to fight mixed race marriages? Bad.
I’m surprised that you don’t understand the distinction between ends and means. By the way, where is the conservative love of 5-year-olds-shooting-their-2-year-old-sisters? I mean, conservatives love the second amendment and they love guns, right?
McKinney,
You want bright lines? Well, OK. First answer this question: “Where does the greed stop?”*
* From that famous barn-burner Senate speech by Ted Kennedy
It is just the opposite: a simple majority compels the minority to deliver such sums as the majority desires on pain of confiscation of property if not imprisonment.
So what you’re saying is liberals propose that a majority will tax a minority, such that the majority will not be subject to those taxes, but the minority will, and that the majority will reap the benefits of those taxes, while the minority won’t.
In essence, by voting for the tax, you exempt yourself from it, and, by voting against the tax, you subject yourself to it. Further, whatever services the tax funds will only be available to those who voted for the tax and not to those who voted against it.
Is this the true liberal regime you’re describing? It’s so kooky, it might just work!
As I read russell’s link (I take no position on the text of the underlying law itself), all that is required is that the President request that various Congresspeople nominate members of the, which he has done, but said Congresspeople are under no obligation to respond (which I imagine is by design).
Thus, there has been no law breaking and no civil disobedience. Even if there was law breaking, there isn’t civil disobedience as there’s a lack of personal consequences to said lawbreakers.
Nor is it solidarity, a phrase quaintly reminiscent of prior European, freedom-loving regimes.
So – Q.E.D.
Basically, you (McK) and I have profoundly different understandings of the purpose and function of government, and of the relationship of people to their government.
In my world, individual liberty always has to bound by, and balanced against, the responsibilities of individuals in a society to each other and to the society as a whole.
So, solidarity.
This is not a weird commie idea, which you will discover if you look at, frex, the constitution of the commonwealth of MA.
It’s just a really different idea, and understanding, than yours.
I make no value judgement, and have no opinion really about which point of view is “better” or “worse”. Government should do what the people who live under it want it to do. That’s the point of self-government, which is, IMO, what the American social and political tradition is ultimately about.
I understand your point of view, it’s just profoundly foreign to me. I can’t imagine living in a world governed on the principles you espouse.
Again, no value judgement, it’s just alien to me, at a fundamental level.
What I take away from all of this, and from basically the social and political history of the US during my lifetime, frankly, is that we may be approaching the point where the US is, basically, not governable in any kind of effective way.
I have no idea where we go from there.
Regarding specific points:
Under a true liberal regime, gov’t taxes to the extent a majority of people desire more gov’t services, the limit being the extent of a simple majority’s desire. Which is no limit at all.
We’ve actually had very liberal regimes, and the overall federal tax rate as a percentage of GDP was not notably higher under them than under very conservative ones.
So, as a sort of thought experiment, what you’re saying is kind of compelling, but as a scenario that might actually happen, not so much.
Wars bump up the federal takings, historically, liberal regimes less so.
As for the refusal to appoint to IPAB, where is that lefty love of civil disobedience?
When you engage in civil disobedience, you also sign up for paying the price of breaking the law. So, you go to jail, or lose your job, or pay criminal or civil fines. Etc.
That’s the point of civil disobedience. It’s a demonstration of the illegitimacy of a given law, and the weight – the valence, the moral authority – of the demonstration derives from your willingness to suffer the consequences.
Absent that, it’s called a “stunt”.
When Boehner or McConnell pay a personal price for their actions, I’ll be happy to call it civil disobedience.
This is a limit on what the gov’t can or should take from private citizens?
the notion that there needs to be some kind of predetermined numerical limit is absurd.
the limit is: can we, and do we want to, pay for what we say we want ?
the limit is variable.
it depends.
on what?
it depends on what the universe is doing.
Nor is it solidarity, a phrase quaintly reminiscent of prior European, freedom-loving regimes.
perhaps you prefer the Latin translation: “e pluribus unum” ?
Other than the simple majority thing, how does our current tax regime differ from what McKinney is describing? Isn’t the threat of confiscation and imprisonment already in place for people who fail to pay their due taxes?
And where are the liberals who are calling for this simple majority rule to replace our representative system of government? Is this a reference to people noting the fact that majority voting patters are so tenuously reflected in electoral outcomes because of Gerrymandering? Is that the liberal call for rule by simple majority?
Besides all that, I don’t see where wanting the government to do this or that is so strongly connected to what the government should take from its citizens. Balanced-budget amendments are stupid, no? I mean, you don’t want ever-increasing debt-to-GDP ratios ad infinitum (unless it’s asymptotic, I guess, if we want to get all mathy about it), but, if you’re getting things reasonably right in how you’re spending money (better yet, how you’re allocating resources), that shouldn’t happen, anyway.
Regarding limits, not a terrible concept in the abstract, and I understand and appreciate MckT’s bumping up against those limits taxwise, I ran across these remarks on a stock market site (MSN) this morning in an article about the private pharmaceutical sector feeling the pressure to pull capital resources away from the so far low yield research for an Alzheimers cure:
‘My sense is not that companies want to move away (from Alzheimer’s research) but that their shareholders are getting restive,” Eric Karran, the director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, told the newspaper in September. “That’s capitalism. There is nothing we can do about that. But there is a huge public need.”‘
In this instance, there is a limit so far in the effectiveness of compounds in drug trials, but there is no limit to the scourge of Alzheimers, given our present demographic predicament.
In another instance, the private sector in this country is provided an unlimited fire-and hire-at-will policy to run their businesses (not judging this at the moment, just saying), but when un- and underemployment rises as it has in recent years, we are greeted with howls (the howlers never seem to get laid off from their jobs as howlers) when limited public resources are stretched and enlarged to deal with the crisis.
The private sector could solve the problem of the expensive “dole” on its own by Monday morning if they wanted to, but they leave the government to ameliorate the mess, keeping the all-important and low-overhead task of whining to themselves.
I could go on. John McCain, conservative, knows no limits when it comes to dropping ordnance on every part of the world, blah, blah.
And I’m sorry, MckT, I can’t resist pointing out the your label of “civil disobedience” is applied to a childish (from children whose parasite children go to the doctor on my ticket) prank (to make any government run by Obama ungovernable) to hamstring a Federal panel whose ostensible goal is to find and apply reasonable LIMITS to Medicare spending, the largest, most expensive entitlement program we have, which earlier in the day you suggested applying limits to.
Are you representing the defendant or the plaintiff? 😉
Counselor, I must ask that you approach the Bench so that we may chew over whether you really want to continue with this line of questioning.
The President should appoint me to the panel, because I would be happy to take the Panel in the direction of the Right’s rhetorical characterization (give them — not you, MckT — what their fevered imaginations wish for) of Obamacare — Death Panels — by showing up at Sarah Palin’s elderly relatives’ front doors and taking them into the street and applying some means tests to the whining parasites.
“May we have your liver?”
Now THAT would be an occasion for civil obedience.
To call McConnell’s and Boehner’s “gesture” from the cossetted, gold-plated, subsidzed, Commie hammock (again, THEIR fever-dream characterization) they inhabit civil disobedience is like calling the the incident of the Occupy Wall Streeter who shat down the fender of a parked car Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail.
I’m in favor of fixing this spending redundancy too:
http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=eff680d5-f799-43c5-957e-4d0edf77010d
It seems the Armed Forces contracts for too much camouflage.
Of course, an unintended consequence of THIS cutback of the camouflage surplus would likely be where will libertarians go to get their natty picnic outfits?
More from Kevin Drum on the R’s “leadership” stunt:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/controlling-medicare-costs-now-un-american
That’s capitalism. There is nothing we can do about that.
First statement : true.
Second statement : false.
And no, I’m not talking about nationalizing the pharma industry.
What I am saying is that we don’t have to sit around on our hands waiting for the private sector to decide to do useful and necessary things.
There’s not always enough money in it for that to happen. Especially when stuff like developing pharmaceuticals (or, really, fill in the blank) is competing for investor money on an ROI basis with whatever whiz-bang financial gizmo the banksters have dreamed up this week.
Contra Margaret Thatcher, there is in fact something called “society”, and there is a public interest.
To me, this is rock-bottom basic stuff. I don’t really care if folks agree or not, I’m not interested in trying to persuade anybody away from their core beliefs.
What I am interested in is figuring out how to get sh*t done that seems to need doing. I don’t really care if the whole US joins in or not.
Personally, I’m fine with devolving a lot of this stuff to the states and local governments, because I’m tired of hearing about Jefferson and watering the tree of liberty every time a subject like “Gee, maybe we should invest public money in Alzheimer’s research” comes up.
Folks can live however they want, just as long as they stay the hell out of my way in doing the same.
I suspect McK will heartily agree with that last.
More from Washington Monthly:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_05/coming_soon_the_death_panel_fi044668.php#
Apparently Obama cribbed yet another conservative Republican idea for his Death Panels.
The man doesn’t have an original thought in his head. It’s like he takes old copies of conservative think tank recommendations and places them inside a fake book cover, entitled “Das Kapital”, just to feed Erick Erickson’s * rhetorical vomit sump.
Boehner and McConnell’s pathetic gambit is starting to look like Martin Luther King showing up before Congress in 1964 to commence a hunger strike against the Civil Rights Acts.
*So I was thinking t’other day how funny it would have been if Erickson’s protege’s wife, Mrs. Sanford, had brought out HER 3-D shotgun when Mark Sanford stopped by the house the other week conducting a Census on Argentinian Beaver sightings along the Appalachian Trail.
the thing is, they have to pull these stunts now. because once OC goes into full implementation, they wouldn’t dare screw with people’s actual health insurance… (right?)
An article on Romneycare and Obamacare, from a business and investor website:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/want-see-obamacare-look-massachusetts-142014735.html
We’re so (not) f8cked, despite wishes to the contrary.
Via Drum: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?hp&_r=0
By popular demand, that’s capitalism. There’s nothing we can do about it.
the notion that there needs to be some kind of predetermined numerical limit is absurd.
the limit is: can we, and do we want to, pay for what we say we want ?
Except the ‘we’ is not exactly all of us. If the consumers of gov’t services were paying even 25% of the cost of those services, the conversation might be different–or the services might be considerably less generous. The ‘we’ is actually someone else.
And I’m sorry, MckT, I can’t resist pointing out the your label of “civil disobedience” is applied to a childish (from children whose parasite children go to the doctor on my ticket) prank (to make any government run by Obama ungovernable) to hamstring a Federal panel whose ostensible goal is to find and apply reasonable LIMITS to Medicare spending, the largest, most expensive entitlement program we have, which earlier in the day you suggested applying limits to.
Suppose the enabling legislation to the Iraq invasion set up a bipartisan committee to run the war and an opponent of the war was asked to serve on that committee, how would that be different? It isn’t as if any of those refusing to serve agreed with the legislation.
Also, I agree, FWIW, that it isn’t true civil disobedience, although I also sense that in a similar situation, were the roles reversed, lefties pulling the same stunt would be cheered by most here at ObWi. Also, I agree it is childish and peevish. It is the one chance the Repubs have to make a difference and they are sitting it out. Bad call in my view, but not worth the hoo-rah I’m hearing here.
Folks can live however they want, just as long as they stay the hell out of my way in doing the same.
I suspect McK will heartily agree with that last.
I do. But when someone is voting to take even more of my money than I am currently paying, then it’s hard to say they are staying out of my life.
And, actually, I do believe in helping others out. I limit that by limiting how much everyone has to pay in. We do what we can within limits, kind of like the way all of us live our own lives.
Except the ‘we’ is not exactly all of us.
until science finds a way to extract money from those who have none, you’re just going to have to accept that poor people pay less in taxes that the well-off.
when someone is voting to take even more of my money than I am currently paying, then it’s hard to say they are staying out of my life.
I hear you.
Here is my solution.
Repeal ObamaCare. 86 it. Leave it to the states. If your state wants to spend public money time and effort on making sure your folks are insured, go ahead. If not, likewise.
We gave it the old college try, and ain’t nobody ended up happy.
Move on.
As far as I’m concerned, lather rinse and repeat with any federal program or regulation you care to name.
Leave it to the states, or local municipalities, or possibly to states working together at a regional level if that makes sense.
If you hate hate hate government involvement and the annoyance and cost it incurs, live without it. I won’t do so, but if you want to do so, I don’t see that I have any place to make you do otherwise.
The only thing I’m going to insist on is that folks who want to live without the annoyance, cost, and effort of active government keep the consequences of their choice within their own damned borders. If you can’t do that, we’ll have a problem.
Short of that, I’m good with it. Live your life.
Because arguing about stuff like this has gotten to the point that it’s counterproductive. Everything has to be a f***ing pissing match, and nothing gets done.
I don’t see that I have any basis of solidarity, to revisit that word, in a social and political sense, with folks in TX, or the southwest generally, or the folks in the deep south, or the mountain west, or the plains. And I’m not hearing anything back from folks there that makes me think they are feeling anything like solidarity with me. We’re just pissing each other off.
So why bother pretending?
I can see some common ground with the pacific northwest, and the states around the great lakes. Maybe we’ll do some stuff together.
I see, frankly, more common ground with folks in Quebec, and Ontario, and the Maritimes, then I do with at least half the population of the US.
It ain’t, remotely, personal, we’re just coming from places that are too different.
I think it’s time to step back and reflect on what the point of the federal union is. It’s like a bad marriage.
Peace out.
If governments were limited by how much they could tax their citizens, the World might have avoided two world wars, various military adventures and other unpleasantness.
No, we’d always find a way to kill each other. Even poor countries find a way to wreak havoc.
Yes, but it takes central banks and printing money to do it on a grand scale.
I don’t see that I have any basis of solidarity, to revisit that word, in a social and political sense, with folks in TX, or the southwest generally, or the folks in the deep south, or the mountain west, or the plains. And I’m not hearing anything back from folks there that makes me think they are feeling anything like solidarity with me. We’re just pissing each other off.
We’ve had this conversation before, and we agree: social spending is better handled state-by-state, let the citizens decide how generous they wish to be with themselves, or not, and live with the consequences either way.
MckT:
“Suppose the enabling legislation to the Iraq invasion set up a bipartisan committee to run the war and an opponent of the war was asked to serve on that committee, how would that be different? It isn’t as if any of those refusing to serve agreed with the legislation.”
We could suppose that about every single piece of legislation passed since 1776.
I’m pretty sure that except for the Civil War period, we’ve rarely seen this kind of across-the-board obstructionist behavior designed to prevent governance of laws already passed.
Besides, the many Democrats who voted for the Iraq War Resolution would have been available, in a bipartisan manner, to govern, having been decent sports, albeit numbskulls.
“If governments were limited by how much they could tax their citizens, the World might have avoided two world wars, various military adventures and other unpleasantness.”
And I thought I was the wild-eyed idealistic fantasist around here. 😉
O.K., it is hereby resolved that all government spending around the world on war planning and implements be halted. The United Nations (or is this one of those voluntary schemes libertarians talk about?) shall be given the task of implementing and enforcing the restriction via an array of killer satellites which will monitor the actions of government leaders and legislators everywhere.
I noticed you wrote “limited” rather than “eliminated”. So we still get Medicare here in the U.S., right?
I can see professional Republicans voting on this proposition to keep the entire apparatus of war-making because Medicare wasn’t touched.
“If the old aren’t abandoned to their own devices, medically speaking, as part of this Treaty, then we want to keep War as an ongoing option in the World,” they’d protest.
“Furthermore, we refuse to serve on the Commission to prevent War and its attendant costs. So there!”
It would just privatize war and leave everyone else undefended. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs would finance Saddam’s weapons and hedge the damage in the off-balance sheet derivatives market.
MckT:
“We’ve had this conversation before, and we agree: social spending is better handled state-by-state, let the citizens decide how generous they wish to be with themselves, or not, and live with the consequences either way.”
The country has had this conversation for 240 years and after 160 years and 190 years respectively it was resolved that handling the large job of social spending 50 different ways to leave your lover, wasn’t working, as in early death and poverty.
We decided not to live with the consequences.
We’re not going back.
The folks in Texas without health insurance, apparently the highest percentage in the Nation, live with consequences most of them had no decision in.
The folks in Texas without health insurance, apparently the highest percentage in the Nation, live with consequences most of them had no decision in.
True, as far as it goes. We have a high percentage of recent, undocumented arrivals. They are, for the most part, without insurance. Depending on one’s perspective, this is bad for them and ought to be fixed, or, as bad as it may be for them, it is a considerable improvement over the situation they left, or, one of the burdens of coming here without permission is that you are not entitled to the benefits of being here with permission. There is Medicaid for those without means, not perfect, and there is the law that says hospitals cannot turn those in need of treatment away. Again, not perfect, but not ‘nothing’ either.
But, to turn this around, we are four years downstream of passing OC–why isn’t everything good now? Because the Repubs won’t sit on the IPAB? That can’t be it. OC passed, what else is left?
Besides, the many Democrats who voted for the Iraq War Resolution would have been available, in a bipartisan manner, to govern, having been decent sports, albeit numbskulls.
Granted, but I posited that a Dem who opposed the war and voted against it was asked to participate in running it. How would that be different than the silliness currently holding everyone’s attention?
“There is Medicaid for those without means, not perfect, and there is the law that says hospitals cannot turn those in need of treatment away. Again, not perfect, but not ‘nothing’ either.”
Those are federal laws, no? Presumably, under the plan to delegate social spending to the 50 States, one or two (can’t guess which ones) would “experiment” with a policy to allow hospitals to turn away the indigent, just to see what happens, since we don’t have roughly two million years of available data on what happens when medical care is denied.
“Granted, but I posited that a Dem who opposed the war and voted against it was asked to participate in running it. How would that be different than the silliness currently holding everyone’s attention?”
Damn, I though I could slip that in before the weekend and let it go.
I’ll bet you Nancy Pelosi, who spiritedly opposed the Iraq Resolution, would have served on such a commission and her unpatriotic head would be asked for by Redstate every time she asked “yeah, but what about this?”
“But, to turn this around, we are four years downstream of passing OC–why isn’t everything good now? Because the Repubs won’t sit on the IPAB? That can’t be it. OC passed, what else is left?”
As pointed out on every page of the unread 2500-page legislation, much of Obamacare will not be implemented until beginning in 2014, which the exception of the coverage of dependents until age 26 and some other provisions.
Anyway, it’s vodka tonic time for me and wine time for you, so the silliness can resume on Monday.
Have a great weekend, all.
If the consumers of gov’t services were paying even 25% of the cost of those services, the conversation might be different
Really? You care to document this claim? Which services? Which consumers?
And answer this: Since you resolutely support public policies that concentrate income, why shouldn’t those (lucky ducky) beneficiaries pay for everything? After all, they now have all the money.
The folks in Texas without health insurance, apparently the highest percentage in the Nation, live with consequences most of them had no decision in.
As do we all.
If the folks in TX don’t like it, the folks in TX can do something to change it.
Among other things, I note that the general response to the explosion at the fertilizer distributor in TX is “no reconsideration of the regulatory apparatus needed, thank you very much”.
Folks live the way they like, by and large.
I’m in MA, I’m tired of arguing about it. 240 years is a long time.
O.K., it is hereby resolved that all government spending around the world on war planning and implements be halted.
Yay!!
If the consumers of gov’t services were paying even 25% of the cost of those services, the conversation might be different–or the services might be considerably less generous. The ‘we’ is actually someone else.
“The consumers of gov’t services,” he said. Hmmm hmmm ***strokes chin*** I wonder if we might unpack that a bit wot wot?
I mean either McK believes that he consumes government services at the 0% level; or that he genuinely foots not only at least 25% of the bill for what he does consume but some proportion of the bill for some shiftless poor person, too.
Please disabuse me of this notion, because either option is so hopelessly stupid that if someone said either of them to me in person, I’d go to a bar, buy a drink, take a swig, walk back to that person and do a spit take.
I am guessing that possibility makes McKTx vewy vewy nervous.
Sarcasm aside, I’d be very surprised if he could muster half a sh*t for what I think. Nonetheless, here we are.
It’s noteworthy that, as an attorney — and a litigator, no less — just showing up at work kinda blows that 25% number out of the water. How much did it cost the state of Texas for McK to call a rape victim crazy in open court?
Phil, that last line is way over the line and this is a warning. Stop it please.
I agree that Phil’s comment was uncalled for and rude. Filtering out the rudeness, I also think he raises a valid point.
We ALL pay for services we don’t use. If you don’t have kids, but own a house, you still pay for schools. If your house doesn’t actually burn down, or you’re not robbed, you still pay for fire and police protection. And so on.
MANY IF NOT MOST of us also receive, at some point or other, possibly for extended periods of time, services from the government whose value is far greater than what we personally pay for them.
Leaving aside for a moment the more inflammatory aspect of Phil’s comment, it is in fact true that, for example, McK’s livelihood is enabled and subsidized by money that WE ALL spend, to establish and pay for a public criminal justice system that is the venue for his profession. There’s nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with McK making his living in that environment, at all, it’s just a simple observation.
That is the way that public life works. It’s not a fee-for-service thing, it’s a matter of identifying what things are needed for us to have the society we want to live in, and then figuring out how to make those things happen.
It doesn’t work if we each start tallying up what particular services we, personally, have consumed, and how much we, personally, have paid to make those services happen.
And, as Phil has alluded to in perhaps the rudest imaginable way, there is often more involved in identifying “what we pay” and “what we get” than is obvious from a simple transactional view of things.
And, as Phil also alluded to in perhaps the rudest way imaginable, folks who are net beneficiaries of public services – i.e., folks who derive greater value from a specific good or service than they have paid for it – are not always the poor.
If we want to do a fee-for-service analysis of where public money goes, and we want to do so in a fair way, our analysis needs to extend beyond goods and services provided to poor people.
If we really want to play the “they’re taking my money and giving it to that guy over there!!” game, we may be surprised at who “that guy over there” turns out to be.
One of the biggest lies of all perpetuated by Republican politicians is the lie that the poor old rich and upper middle classes are being subjected to excessive transfers of their wealth to the poor.
It’s actually the other way around: the responsibility for paying traxes is being transferred down the economic hierarchy by replacing income taxes with a multiplicity of state and local taxes and fees.
Also, historically and curently, the red states where the greatest concentration of folks who do not want to pay their share live, are subsidized by a net outflow of federal taxes from the blue states, where there are more poeple who do want to pay their share.
I’m in the thirty percent bracket.
I’d be delusional if I thought that my taxes are high due to unlimited government assistance to the poor or to do-gooding social engineering proigrams. My taxes are high because all of us who pay taxes have to supportr corporations, the military idustrial complex and red state special interests.
There’s a moral issue here. I’ll state it bluntly: to suggest that one’s taxes could be cut by doing wha tthe Republican party wants to do–voucherize Medicare and gut Medicaid–is immmoral. I don’t give a rip what someone’s philosophy is. To put a philosophy a head of human life is egocentric.
Besides Republican politicians don’t believe in a philosophy of limited government. They just believe in subsidizing their own base and screwing people in other places.
Here’s a little story: A R Congresswoman from Arkansas was back iin her district ranting the party line about how Romney care was a socialist plot, big government interference in medicine, blah, blah, blah. This was last summer when a heat wave was ruining dairy farms. Farmers were selling thier herds for slaughter because drought was making their farms unviable. Any way the farmers asked the Congresswoman for help and here’s her response: she said she’d go back to Congress and seek legislation to provide herd insurance for dairy farmers affected by drought.
Yup.
Even Ron Paul does that. They don’t believe their own shit.
I am frankly more offended when “that guy over there” winds up being someone who doesn’t actually need help that is taking advantage of some bit of legislation or other to further enrich themselves. Or, worse: that person has managed to leverage an exception for themselves into the system. The solution, IMO, is not to try and publicly shame or boycott them into no longer taking advantage of perfectly legal recourse, but rather to take their perfectly legal recourse away from them. That’s the only thing that makes sense, as I see it.
Corporations and their shareholders really see tax avoidance as due diligence; if corporate leadership isn’t doing their job, tax-avoidance-wise, maybe their competitors are. If you put something in the law that enables people to take advantage of the system, most everyone except for russell will do that. IMHO. It’s human nature, for the most part. russell being mostly more ethically minded doesn’t come close to making up the vast remainder of mankind (as well as nearly all of lawyers) doesn’t come close to making up for human behavior.
I don’t see this as being terribly inconsistent with Republicans being upset that ag subsidies are enriching Florida sugar barons, frankly. But the response I get when I bring this sort of thing up is typically something along the lines of why worry about such trivial chunks of money?
A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about some real money. Right?
That’s the only thing that makes sense, as I see it.
No argument with this.
I don’t see this as being terribly inconsistent with Republicans being upset that ag subsidies are enriching Florida sugar barons, frankly.
Nor I.
A corollary to my opinion about “mutual responsibility” and “obligations to society” is that gaming the system is bad form.
At whatever point in food chain you happen to be.
russell being mostly more ethically minded
LOL. I saw what you did there!
russell: If the folks in TX don’t like it, the folks in TX can do something to change it.
Among other things, I note that the general response to the explosion at the fertilizer distributor in TX is “no reconsideration of the regulatory apparatus needed, thank you very much”.
Folks live the way they like, by and large.
Not sure it really works that way for reasons that I’ll discuss further down my comment.
Laura: Also, historically and curently, the red states where the greatest concentration of folks who do not want to pay their share live, are subsidized by a net outflow of federal taxes from the blue states, where there are more poeple who do want to pay their share.
Okay, about the South: there tends to be more poor people who live there than in the North. There are more African-American people who live there than in the North.
To say that historically less powerful and more disenfranchised people should “do something to change it”, sure – they’ve been trying in the South since the Civil War. Not so easy, necessarily.
The fact that our federal program dollars tend to go to red states doesn’t necessarily mean that the folks receiving it are the same people who are denying the benefit of receiving it. Just saying.
Just based on anecdote, and not on statistics, I would guess that the resentment level is greater in states with more disparity.
That said, I’m in favor of providing a minimally decent standard of living to everyone: basic food, basic shelter, basic education, basic medical care. That is what made our society a decent place to live for most of the 20th Century. From what I can see, Republicans want to backtrack to the 19th Century. I had grandparents who lived there, and from what they described, it wasn’t pretty.
Not sure it really works that way for reasons that I’ll discuss further down my comment..
Actually I am in general agreement with you.
Allow me to re-phrase.
What I’m really saying, I think, is that there’s a limit to what I, as a basically democratic socialist semi-urban northeastern dude, can do about it.
What I’m also saying, I think, is that there’s a limit to how much I’m willing to argue about it, and a limit to how far I’m willing to go to convince people that have a fundamentally different understanding of how people should relate their government than I do to think about things in any way remotely the way I do.
There’s a lot of history involved, and a lot of strong feeling involved, and frankly I have to recognize that I don’t, in fact, know everything there is to know about the subject. Whatever the subject is.
All I know is what makes sense for me.
So when I say “people live the way they want to live”, what I’m really saying is “there’s a limit to what I can do about how other people choose to live”.
I can say “for crying out loud, are you out of your f**king mind giving a gun to a five year old?”
I can say “don’t you want some kind of fire codes in your city?”
I can say “wouldn’t you prefer to let your people go to a doctor twice a year for a basic checkup, rather than go to the ER because their chest cold has turned into pneumonia?”
The list of what I might want to say goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
But I don’t live in TX, or MS, or OK, or SC, or TN, or any other place where people organize their public lives in ways that make me scratch my head.
And my general impression is that folks who do live in those places aren’t that interested in my opinion about how they should organize their public lives.
And, at a certain point, I get sick of arguing about it.
I’d like a federal single-payer health insurance program for basic health care, because I think it would be helpful and more efficient than what we do now.
I’d like the idea of corporate personhood to be limited, in the Constitution and by law, to the specific and limited set of privileges that we choose, by law, to allow, and not one bit more.
I’d like public universities to offer a good education at a price that folks making the median income could afford without going into significant debt.
And on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
But there’s a limit to the degree to which I can influence other people. So at a certain point, I have to recognize that limit, say “live your life as you see fit”, and move on.
That’s what “people live their lives as they see fit” means.
I agree with almost everything you said, russell. I guess the only complaint I have with your view is this: We are the United States of America. We aren’t a bunch of states in America. We need to figure out how to influence and enlighten each other (and, yes, the South has stuff to offer – a great African-American community, soul food, literature, music …). We shouldn’t think in terms of liberal federalism, because that’s another version of “I’ve got mine.”
And I know you don’t think of it that way, russell.
By the way, anyone who hasn’t visited the South lately should come on down. You [people] really should visit Virginia vineyards, North Carolina beaches, Charleston restaurants and art galleries, the Florida Keys. Don’t ever forget about Louisiana, especially New Orleans.
Never forget about New Orleans. JazzFest just occurred there, but every day is JazzFest.
Last time I was in Texas was for SXSW in Austin. Couldn’t have been in a better world.
Agreed, sapient.
I disparage, but as always, not you, those people over there.
American literature, without Southern writers and poets, would be poorer too.
If the South had left the Union, per the rhetoric, Walker Percy and Flannery O’Conner, to name two, trudging up John Cheever’s basement stairs in Ossining, New York while in exile until the troubles abated might have caused some severe writer’s block, to our collective detriment.
Though the conversation during cocktail hour, which I think ended and started in the Cheever household before noon, would have required a Boswell for its preservation.
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/koch-brothers-republicans-north-carolina-91200.html?ml=po_r
This thread started out with the principle that current Republican philosophy, at least at the national level, consists of doing the opposite of whatever Obama wants, which is obviously true. Then the conversation morphed into a discussion of whether or not the extrrmist policies of the party are have majority support.
I argued that they didn’t have majority support and that, furthermore, Republicans don’t support their own policies when those policies threaten to affect them.
The link above is to Politico’s summary of the state of politics in Noarth Carolina. Short version: the Koch brothers dumped tons of money inthe state, bought (based on misrepresentaion of policy) elections so that now a lunitic fringe of state level Repulbicans have a mojority and they are systematically screwing over nearly everyone. One of their goals is to politicize judicial elections so that they can buy judges to solidify their power.
This is the Republican party in action. I supposse the usual rationalizations will insue from people who expect to get tax breaks for themsleves and don’t give a rip about anythig else.
But this is how represtative democracies end, how they degenerate into oligarchy.
I still agree with your original point, Laura. And, again, the reason we have a Republican Congress isn’t because Republicans got the majority of votes. They didn’t.
let me just point out, in case anybody was wondering, that places other than the South elect people from the GOP, too.
OH, for example, has more GOP Reps than the Carolinas combined.
And, after TX and tied with FL the second most Republicans come from CA
Personally, I think it’s because Obama does the opposite of what Republicans want. And I have the strength of my own passionate belief in the truth of that as evidence.
Plus some old paper espousing ideas that never caught on.
One of those rare moments where I agree with sapient in a disagreement between sapient and russell. I hardly ever disagree with russell about anything, but I don’t want to see the United States start splintering on factional lines–we had that argument before, in the 19th century and then again in the middle of the 20th century with the Civil Rights movement. And it’s just not accurate to talk about how people down there want to live, because they don’t all agree down there and we don’t all agree up here. (I’m in the North, but grew up mostly in the South).
I don’t know of any evidence that state governments do a better job for all their people than the feds–again, if one looks at the civil rights movement, it seems to be the reverse. So I don’t see why, if the majority of the country favors certain policies, we should allow regional factions to veto them.
Thank you, Donald! You don’t have to apologize though! 🙂
Me too on the head scratching about the sudden love of federalism. If history since the Industrial Revolution taught us anything, it’s that the historical trend is towards scaling up. That can be good (the Green revolution, the internet, labor unions, non-violent resistance, yay!) and bad (weapons of mass destruction, automatic weapons, electronic surveillance, boo!) ( I realize that some folks might disagree with my classification of good and bad, but I hope you will acknowledge that the process of scaling things up is a double edged sword)
At the moment, political entities the size of the nation-state are where we are at, though Ugh’s recent post about stateless income makes one wonder how long that is going to last. And certainly, the problems of the EU suggest that scaling up is not simply a one way street, cause scaling up without mechanisms to prevent particular problems can end up with the whole house of cards falling down.
I don’t think it is possible to just have scaling up for the good things because the process of scaling up has some unavoidable side-effects (like stockpiling fertilizer) But I think that breaking things back down to the state level in most cases means giving up some of those economies of scale. Health care is the most obvious one. And when you think of something like textbooks (where California and Texas basically decide the nation’s textbooks because they are the largest) federalism is going to get you a lot of the bad effects of scaling up without any kind of oversight unless you happen to be in the places that drive the market.
I suspect there’s going to be quite a few economic and political devolutions as the Internet and other technologies cut out all kinds of middlemen.
I don’t want to see the United States start splintering on factional lines
Me neither.
Unfortunately, it seems to me that it’s kind of a done deal. I.e., the nation IS SPLIT on factional lines.
Not because of weird propaganda, or the nefarious influence of AM talk radio, or the sinister machinations of George Soros.
But because people in different parts of the country want different things from government, and have different understandings of how they ought to relate to government.
Isn’t that clear, at this point?
At the federal level, the government is barely functional on many fairly important points. Like being able to draft and pass a budget, for one. That’s one of many.
That’s the techno-libertarian take on things, and there certainly will be various things where individuals are granted a lot more power than they had previously had. Recent advances in terrorism prove that to be the case. But to do that, you are either going to have to really stick it to the man or you are going to have to go with the flow. And even if you stick it to the man, you are going to have to make trade-offs
In fact, it seems to me that a lot of this generalize outrage about life these days that is expressed by folks in general and the conservative-libertarians in particular is the fact that things are scaling up. This may seem like a paradox, but that the scaling up is revealing niche groups of people who are plotting their own devolutions suggests not that there is some sort of devolution going on, just that things are reorganizing within.
Isn’t that clear, at this point?
but that was clear before the 13 colonies became states. they decided to unite anyway, because, “e pluribus unum” or some shit.
personally, i think the problem is that there’s a lot of money to be made sowing dischord.
“I suspect there’s going to be quite a few economic and political devolutions as the Internet and other technologies cut out all kinds of middlemen.”
I’ve never known what this means.
I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t in the middle doing something, usually someone who says to wait a minute, let me talk to Bob, and I’ll get back to you.
Is Bob the guy on the end? No, but let’s ask Yvonne to weigh in on that.
There are probably two guys, one on either end, who avoid the entire mess, but I’ve never run across them.
Are we talking the Jeffersonian ideal here, because he got around things by having middlethreefifthsmen and a middlewoman to amuse himself when he couldn’t make ends meet, until his wife returned home and caught him in the middle of things.
I admit that while sitting at a bar I sometimes think about jumping over the bar and serving myself, thus cutting out the middleman, but somehow asking myself “What can I get ya, buddy?” and then listening to my own troubles isn’t quite the same, gibbering solipsist though I am.
I’m still waiting for the paperless office. What’s the latest on that? And where the hell is that middleguy who was going to fix my printer so that I can be the one produced the last piece of paper.
Sometimes I call a call center and ask to speak to the guy on the very end, but he’s never available, though I notice now the men in the middle are much farther away, east of Karachi.
As far as the internet goes, when we are rid of the middlemen, especially the salesmen, can they please take the banner ads, pop-ups, cookies, and viruses with them, or is that all on automatic pilot so that I can’t say “shut up!” to a real person, any old person, even one in the middle.
The 3-D weapon demonstrated the other day by the Texas wise-ass looks to cut out the middleman, but I’ll believe it when the inventor shoots himself instead of emailing the design to a criminal, who is looking forward to the demise of all the middlemen, who then shoots a bunch of innocent middlemen before showing up in Texas to go on a 3-D killing spree involving 3-D law students.
For some reason, the remark about middlemen reminds me of a bad joke, which goes, “I’m planning a threesome. I just need to find two other people.”
I admit that while sitting at a bar I sometimes think about jumping over the bar and serving myself, thus cutting out the middleman, but somehow asking myself “What can I get ya, buddy?” and then listening to my own troubles isn’t quite the same, gibbering solipsist though I am.
Hey, that happened to me recently! Not me jumping over, but a friend doing so, just because it had been 4.5 minutes, and I hadn’t yet been served! Nice bar. Nicer friend!
they decided to unite anyway, because, “e pluribus unum” or some shit.
To be clear, I’m not calling for the political disunion of the United States. I’m not calling for anything, really.
I’m making an observation, which is that folks in different parts of the country think differently about stuff.
As a practical matter, maybe that means that each state should figure out for themselves how they want to manage something like (for example) health insurance.
That will be good for some folks, and bad for others, but at least everyone will get what they think they want. If they change their mind about what they think they want, they can change their arrangement, and do so more easily than at the federal level.
What I can tell you is that I’m sick of arguments about stuff like this preventing the federal government from being able to function effectively.
If folks sincerely believe that federal involvement in the provision of health insurance is going to reduce them to tyrannized slaves of the state, then WTF am I going to do to convince them otherwise?
I mean, really, what?
We’re still fighting the freaking Civil War. We’re still arguing about the progressive regulation of the turn of the 20th C. We’re still arguing about the New freaking Deal. We’re still arguing about Jim Crow and the Civil Rights legislation of 50 years ago.
And on and on and on.
It’s not like any of this stuff ever gets resolved.
If folks want the feds out of their hair, so be it. There are some issues which I think it’s really worth going to mat over – slavery was, basic civil rights are, access to the vote.
Everything else, make your choices and live it out. All I ask is that you keep the downside of whatever choices you make out of my world.
There really and truly are a lot of people who DO NOT WANT what looks, to me, like “help”. They find it obtrusive and objectionable.
So be it. I’m tired of fighting about it.
Run your own health care regime. Inspect your own meat, pharma, water. Devise your own professional licensing standards, or have none at all. Pick your own school curriculum. Decide what building codes in your area should be. Pick your own speed limit. Decide what consumable substances will and will not be legal in your state or municipality.
Do your thing. Just keep it in your own state, please.
And let the rest of us move on as we see fit.
Seriously, enough is enough.
personally, i think the problem is that there’s a lot of money to be made sowing dischord.
No question about that.
For their to be money made, there has to be a buyer.
“Sowing dischord” is a product with a market. If that’s what folks want, and to be dead honest I think it actually is what folks want, there’s a definite limit to my ability to do anything about it.
personally, i think the problem is that there’s a lot of money to be made sowing dischord.
I agree with that, and that supports Laura’s larger point.
The fact is, this is a big country. The laws in each state are a bit different. The “culture” in various regions is sort of different (if you don’t account for the fact that people migrate, quite often, from one place to another because of work ,etc.).
But our history is important, and there were the 13 colonies, and there was a Civil War, and there were subsequent wars, and there have been racial, gender, and other cultural changes.
That doesn’t equate to a “done deal”. That means a continuing fight for what is right. I hate to be all Obamabot again, but “the perfect Union” is a process. Please join up.
“personally, i think the problem is that there’s a lot of money to be made sowing dischord.”
“No question about that.
For their to be money made, there has to be a buyer.
“Sowing dischord” is a product with a market. If that’s what folks want, and to be dead honest I think it actually is what folks want, there’s a definite limit to my ability to do anything about it.”
The Internet provides the Middlemen of Dischord.
When we talk about federal vs. state, we should also not forget state vs. communal/local. Some GOP state governments are currently quite active in crushing local regulations etc. In some recent cases they are not even content with that but they override or depose elected local officials. And I am not talking about the notorious Emergency Managers (= proconsuls, Reichskommissare) for localities in real or alleged financial trouble.
I’m making an observation, which is that folks in different parts of the country think differently about stuff.
Hesitate to be too rude, but you’re wrong. Sure there are different percentages here and there, etc., but could you please address the fact that gerrymandering along accounts for the number of Republican Congresspeople?
I live in Virginia. Sure, electing a Democrat isn’t a sure thing where I live. We have to work hard. But the fact is, there are plenty of people who think like you do. The problem is that gerrymandering has made it fairly difficult for those voices to be heard, at least in Congressional elections. That’s what accounts for the Congress being split.
The fact that “folks” (Hispanic folks) in Texas have been disenfranchised – sure, the Democrats lose there. They’re not “red” because all the “folks” are red.
Everything else, make your choices and live it out. All I ask is that you keep the downside of whatever choices you make out of my world.
You know, everyone (including me) loves you, russell. But this is truly your heartless side. Do you really think that poor people in Texas “make [their] choices”? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Shorter russell: I’ve got mine.
russell reminds me of someone I know regarding Bangladesh: “Why don’t they move?”
Strangely enough, or not, quite a few people in the US who moving are moving to Texas.
In my 2:47 comment, I was going to add something like ‘I share Russell’s feeling that you let other people do want they want and try to mind your own business, but when you express that sentiment, you often get accused of ‘not supporting X, Y and/or Z’, which is unfortunate because it is usually a shite way of arguing’. but didn’t because some folks who hadn’t posted might take it as attacking them. Truly surprised to see it whipped out by you (sapient), given that its been deployed against you any number of times.
Don’t know what you’re talking about, lj, but minding your own business might be a good thing in this instance, in that russell can definitely fend for himself. And since I am the most unpopular person on ObWi (although not at my bar, thank God), I don’t worry that anyone is too psychomangled.
Oh, and a side note, lj, (and maybe we should be Taking It Outside, so to speak) but I’ve always really liked you, and wonder why you’re becoming such a piss ant.
Shorter russell: I’ve got mine.
My first reaction is to be really rude, but I’m moving on.
Anyone who is interested in organizing their public life the way that, for example, we do up here in MA, are free to do so. Or, pick any “progressive” place you like, there’s nothing magic about where I live.
Any other state can do what any of the more progressive states do, any time they like.
For damned sure I will not get in their way.
Why don’t they all jump on the lefty bandwagon? They don’t want to. They’re not interested.
It might be tempting to say that that’s because the Koch brothers have mesmerized them with their buckets of lovely filthy money, but I suspect that there’s more involved than that.
You want to see change among the folks who don’t agree with your point of view? Take it up with them. Explain to them why their understanding of reality is deficient. Make your case.
Good luck!
Russell has turned the other cheek, but just to make things clear, I’m really sorry you feel that way, but you seem to be picking fights with one-liners. What is this ‘shorter russell’ codswallop? In your interactions with Russell, do you feel like he’s the ‘I’ve got mine, so screw you’ type? Maybe you honestly believe that, but I, for one, have never gotten that impression, so I’m left with the conclusion that you just wanted to underline your disagreement by being unpleasant. Or do you have some principled reason for suggesting that about Russell? You could say that it is the logical conclusion of his arguments that he doesn’t care about people living in the red states, just like people have said that it is the logical conclusion that sapient hates brown folks because he thinks drones are a good idea. I seem to recall you getting bent out of shape about that, so it’s interesting you’d deploy the technique when you have the chance.
Honestly, you piss and moan about ‘the people on the board’ (‘Since I am the most unpopular person on ObWi’? talk about self fulfilling prophecies!) and how you are not treated right. It is obviously because we just can’t stand the white hot truth of your comments and it can’t possibly be related to you getting in the backhanded crack when you disagree with someone.
I have said and will continue to say that I am sympathetic to the points you raise, but it sure seems to me that you are creating a situation that makes communication more difficult. Perhaps my piss-ant-edness is due to the fact that I agree with many of your points (like this last one, mirabile dictu!) but you always want to get that last little push in. If you don’t understand why I really don’t think I should have to deal with people acting like third graders on this board, I can’t really explain it.
Have a great weekend, all.
Meh. It was OK, and will end soon with a double Manhattan. Concocted at home, there will be no need for bar-hopping, and I shall sit and console myself mulling the probabilities of people changing their mind on any given topic.
Sh*t does happen. Just most times not as quickly as we would like. As Chou-en-lai remarked when asked to assess the French Revolution, “It’s too early to tell.”
That made me snort coffee on my keyboard. That was either intentional humor, or the byproduct of an overly rosy reading of history.
The US started out being factional. They were internally factional even while sorting out their separation from the British Empire faction. A hundred years from now, history books will have our current divisiveness looking a lot like the decades and centuries preceding it, is my prediction.
Sure, it’s depressing.
There is a temptation (possibly springing from American Exceptionalism) to brand out own time and place as uniquely good or bad.
Possibly it all seems exceptionally distressing because we’re soaking in it.
My no-dog-in-this-fight point of view has it that it’s sapient that has become more pissy over time.
But that might just be because I haven’t been having serious disagreements with anyone else.
Can’t we all just get along?
“That made me snort coffee on my keyboard. That was either intentional humor, or the byproduct of an overly rosy reading of history.
The US started out being factional. They were internally factional even while sorting out their separation from the British Empire faction. A hundred years from now, history books will have our current divisiveness looking a lot like the decades and centuries preceding it, is my prediction.
Sure, it’s depressing.”
Now that you mention it, I sorta wish it had been intentional humor, so I’ll pretend it was.
I read “Albion’s Seed” around ten years ago and it rang true. We’ve been factional from the beginning, but so far the unifying tendencies have won out–we even fought a war over it, you know. I think Russell’s view would represent a retreat.
“just like people have said that it is the logical conclusion that sapient hates brown folks because he thinks drones are a good idea.”
I wonder if that was supposed to have been me? Maybe it was someone else–my attacks on sapient on that issue have been on somewhat different lines. In essence, that blowing people up as a way of civilizing their society isn’t likely to work and is immoral and not something we’d accept if furriners decided to civilize us in that fashion and there’s a double standard here yada yada yada–maybe that’s where the “hating brown folk” meme is supposed to come in, but it’s not there. But I’m sure we’ll have that argument again sometime–in this thread I’m on sapient’s side, with the exception of that flurry of gratuitous one liners aimed at Russell.
“Sure, it’s depressing.”
Especially the “hundred years from now” part.
the unifying tendencies have won out–we even fought a war over it, you know.
The war was fought over the extension of slavery. I’d fight a war over that.
I’m not interested in fighting a war over somebody having to pay a federal tax penalty because they don’t have health insurance.
What are you willing to fight a war over?
People actually do have different understandings of how they and their government should relate to each other. Just read this thread, if you have any question about that. The US is a political unity, but we ARE NOT united by a common history, culture, or values.
I am, personally, in favor of a very robust public sector. I think it makes a lot of sense. And, I live in a very densely populated part of the country, with a long history and tradition (much longer than 240 years) of things being organized and sorted out via the public sector.
Other folks on this board live in parts of the country where there was virtually no meaningful public sector until relatively recently. When I say “relatively recently” I’m measuring by a clock that starts in the early 17 C, which is when the history of my state, my town, my church, and every other aspect of the public life I participate in begin.
I can make a case for why folks like, for example, my sister and her family, who live in AZ, should really be enthusiastic about a federally managed single payer system, but I can’t *make them* agree. They have their own reasons for what they think and why they think it, and there’s a limit to what I can do to persuade them otherwise.
At a certain point, the argument converges on “the reason you disagree with me is because everything you believe is wrong”.
And I’m not sure it’s my place to make that claim about them, or about anyone.
People really and truly do think differently about things. Yes, it’s measured in percentages, but percentages add up.
At a certain point, I just want the feds to be able to pass a budget, and staff out the Dept of State, and do all of the other normal, workaday operational things that NEED TO BE DONE. If the path to making that happen is devolving how health insurance gets paid for to the states, then I say so be it.
I’m probably further left than almost anyone on this board, but I also have to recognize that not everyone thinks like me, and in fact I might not be right about everything.
This, among a continually growing list of things, is why russell is one of my favorite voices here.
“I’m not interested in fighting a war over somebody having to pay a federal tax penalty because they don’t have health insurance.
What are you willing to fight a war over?”
I’m not sure we fought the civil war over slavery–or rather, the South began the war for slavery, but the North initially fought to hold the Union together though many were also anti-slavery. But not all. George McClellan, for instance, wasn’t fighting the war over slavery.
Anyway, no democracy could survive long if people actually think that every political struggle over taxation and domestic policy is going to have to be enforced by the military. There’s the threat of jail behind our entire legal system but it only works if most people are law-abiding most of the time. If people all decide to break the law whenever it’s convenient, the system will overload and we have Somalia.
But I’m not interested in discussing the likelihood of another Civil War. It seems like a pretty remote contingency. We’re just going to continue to have ugly politics and I’d rather the left, such as it is, not surrender.
The underground economy flourishes along with middlemen:
http://money.msn.com/now/post.aspx?post=1230261d-63d0-4415-a527-0b0bf7da55b1
This comment is long in the tooth. I had trouble posting it, so it may be redundant by now:
Isn’t russell allowed to be tired of arguing? Now he’s going to be tired of arguing (with people he otherwise agrees with) about why he’s tired of arguing (with people he doesn’t agree with).
My only question (for now) is, what the hell can we agree on? I mean, if we give up fighting over, say, health care, what else will we have to give up fighting over, and what’s going to be left? And, as was noted above (was it Laura or sapient?), all the stuff that (some) people said they wanted devolved to the state or local level, they kill once it’s there. Federalism is just a fig leaf for flushing stuff down the toilet altogether.
One other thing – there aren’t lots of poor, black people getting blue-state tax dollars in places like Wyoming. It’s not just the South.
Oddly enough, I am certain sapient isn’t the least popular person on Obwi. Or, out of the people still regularly commenting, there is a consensus view of who is.
“At a certain point, I just want the feds to be able to pass a budget, and staff out the Dept of State, and do all of the other normal, workaday operational things that NEED TO BE DONE. If the path to making that happen is devolving how health insurance gets paid for to the states, then I say so be it.”
I understand the political weariness expressed here, Russell, but implicit in this statement is the charge that the Republican Party’s throwing sand into the wheels of governance at every level (State Department and other agency appointees sandbagged, judicial posts unfilled, governance brought to a standstill), despite elections which instructed those governing to move forward, has been a unified, purposeful move to extort the abolishing of Obamacare, despite that law bending over backwards to give States leeway in its implementation.
I think this is wrongheaded placement of good faith in the Republican Party establishment, as it is constituted now.
I’d be interested to hear if the decent conservatives who opine here agree that the extortion implied in Russell’s comment is a political strategy they agree with, and whether caving to the extortion would result in the sweetness and light of political compromise.
IMHO, any shred of moderation left in that Party will disappear and the radical wing, their extortion rewarded, will win ascendancy for years.
Fresh demands for extortion will follow one upon the other. More appointments will be held up and funding for the implementation of policies confirmed in their popularity by the electorate will be refused.
The legislative gridlock will become worse, not more productive.
No.
And if “No” means, the republican base wants to take their splintering of the country to a secessionist and violent place, though I’m here to tell you the cowards haven’t got the guts or enough plastic guns to go there, bring it on.
I’m usually full on board with what Russell said, and while I’d sometimes like to chuck the whole deal and go somewhere and be left alone away from the hurricane too, I can’t go there now.
By the way, sapient, you’ll notice I’m agreeing pretty much with you, but your lame insults of peculiar and sudden origin aimed at Russell and lj are beneath you.
If you’re going to cast rude aspersions at your ostensible allies, even, at least steal from the best.
Example, from Kingsley Amis’ novel “Lucky Jim”:
“The bloody old towser-faced boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation, Dixon thought. ‘You bloody old towser-faced, boot-faced totem-pole on a crap reservation,’ he said.
That’s worth the price of the gratuity
Yeah, yeah, I know, I get away with murder.
I, for one, like you, Marty, so quit trying to claim the bottom spot.
My self-hatred puts me beneath you.
The blue state tax dollars that go into red states of the midwest and west don’t go to low income African Americans.
They primarily to the core of red state economies in the midwest and west: federal and state jobs.
Those are the jobs that pay at a sufficient level to give the jobholder some disposable income to spend keeping local buisnesses open.
Logging, ranching, and miniing take place on public land subisdized by publica tax dollars while employing few people. Logging and ranching employe fewere and fewer people all the time.
Farmers are subsidized as well and employ few people.
It’s the teacher, the game warden, the forest service officials, the doctors and nurses, the road repair crews, the state university staff, the administrators, yes the bureaucrats who keep the lights on in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. In a state like Iowa the dependence on governemtn jobs isn’t quite so stark, but neither is the tendency to vote for hypocritical Republican poiticians who demand tax dollars for their own state, demand tax cuts for themselves, and blame the resulting budget problems on the blue state “other”.
I’d be interested to hear if the decent conservatives who opine here agree that the extortion implied in Russell’s comment is a political strategy they agree with, and whether caving to the extortion would result in the sweetness and light of political compromise.
My vague recollection is that neither side, when not holding the presidency, gets high marks for working and playing well with others. Whether I am right about this is completely irrelevant, since both sides see themselves wearing the white hat and the ‘who has it right and who does not’ debate is entirely subjective.
If I were King of the Right, I’d identify and reduce my positions to two classes: negotiable and non-negotiable and I’d request the same from the Dems. Then, I’d propose a bipartisan committee to see what can be worked out on the ‘negotiable’ side. The same committee would then formulate the non-negotiables into stand alone pieces of legislation, publish the legislation with time for adequate public debate, and then have a vote.
If find the rhetoric on both sides tiresome. I don’t think either deserves an award for good faith or transparency.
I’ll agree that the Democratic Party practices at best middling faith and murkiness, and that good faith and transparency have never been achieved in politics, anywhere.
But, the Republican Party, as it is pulled to its worst instincts by the religious and secular anti-government radicals it has deliberately courted for 35 years, and who have vanquished all moderation from rearing its head in governance, is uncommonly and purposefully wedded to bad faith and darkness, or rather utterly transparent bad faith.
Surely, you’ve witnessed this MckT in your own state over the past number of years.
My state, Colorado, remarkably, has gravitated back toward the middle, where middling faith and murkiness live.
This commission you speak of, MckT, is not a bad idea.
However, Boehner and McConnell won’t be showing up for the meetings because Ted Cruz wants to know who made YOU King! 😉
Remarkably, Obama is at the table first thing in the morning with his list that pisses off the Left.
Obama is at the table first thing in the morning with his list that pisses off the Left.
which just proves how unwilling he is to negotiate with “conservatives”. how dare he try to find common ground with them!?!
Surely, you’ve witnessed this MckT in your own state over the past number of years.
I don’t spend a lot of time following Texas politics because they are pretty predictable. Our economy is doing pretty well-really well, actually–and, compared to times past, the legislative silliness is a at fairly low level. I supported Bill White against Rick Perry, but I suspect White would be an anathema to the progressive left. He’s a moderate Dem, honest and not too beholden to any one interest group. The progressives are fine with the last two, the first, not so much. Of course, he got slaughtered. One really shitty note is that a guy named John Devine unseated David Medina in the Repub primary for Supreme Court Justice. Medina was not without baggage: he was behind in his mortgage payments when his home mysteriously burned down due to arson. Oddly, neither he nor his wife were vigorously investigated. Then, along comes Devine who managed to get on the ballot. Devine won. There was controversy, Devine having been accused by another Repub former judge, of having claimed that he would beat Medina because “no one would vote for a Mexican”. So, I’m not really that into the state-wide stuff.
Remarkably, Obama is at the table first thing in the morning with his list that pisses off the Left.
Can you clue me in on specifics?
People actually do have different understandings of how they and their government should relate to each other. Just read this thread, if you have any question about that. The US is a political unity, but we ARE NOT united by a common history, culture, or values.
We are united by a common history, culture and values. Obviously, it’s also a very diverse country, but most countries are diverse these days. Because we have a large geography, some of people’s attitudes are based on what goes on in their part of the country, and our common history lingers in that “Red States” tend to reflect a historical antipathy towards the Federal government, dating from the Civil War.
That said, and as I mentioned previously (and as everyone knows), Democrats did quite well, by statewide popular vote, throughout most of the country in the last election. The reason they have a Congressional minority is because of gerrymandering. This fact argues against the idea that Democrats should throw up their hands and let “Red State” citizens take their bitter medicine, under the liberal federalism that russell advocates.
russell lives in Massachusetts, and has no need at all for federal healthcare reform, having had a state health care regime for many years. He has the luxury of pretending that the rest of the country deserves what it gets because they vote the wrong way.
Obviously, russell’s relatives believe in the Red State way, and vote accordingly, and perhaps they do deserve the government they have. But not everyone who lives in a red state does. The fact that I’m a United States citizen means a lot more to me than that I reside and vote in Virginia.
Obama wants a grand bargain. He’s not going to agree to something that includes 90% spending cuts and 10% revenue increases, which by the way was on the table for a time, but the Republican House rejected it as not lopsided enough in their direction.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/04/obamas_377_trillion_grand_barg.html
and
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-debt-ceiling-grand-bargain-documents-2012-11
Boehner calls taxes theft. Until that rhetoric is off the radar permanently, I see no point in dealing with derangement in a piecemeal fashion.
I’d like Boehner, at gunpoint, to explain to me why he would agree to steal 35% of your marginal dollars and call it victory.
What, in the real world, do conservatives shoot thieves on sight only if they break into their houses and steal 35% of their guns?
It’s O.K., Officer, he only stole 35% of my stuff.
I can see why you’re not into the State stuff. It doesn’t bear watching because the at the State level training and recruiting ground for national office things are so radical, it’s like watching the big Orc emerging from the mud.
On the other hand, I’ll bet we can look forward to either Medina, the arsonist (an apt bullet point on the resume; campaign slogan: “I hate the government’s debt so much that I’ll burn it to the ground”), or Devine the racist being up for judicial appointment in a future Republican Administration or running for the House of Representatives, because they are both right up the radical base’s alley.
Maybe they could agree to burn down a house full of Mexicans and call it a tie and share the seat.
Accch, I’d rather have Anthony Wiener tweet me his kielbasa.
Obviously, russell’s relatives believe in the Red State way, and vote accordingly, and perhaps they do deserve the government they have. But not everyone who lives in a red state does. The fact that I’m a United States citizen means a lot more to me than that I reside and vote in Virginia.
If we were to devolve on matters not expressly reserved to the feds by the constitution, e.g. interstate commerce, equal rights and voting rights, people would come a lot closer to getting the gov’t they deserve. Sure, I’m an American first and a Texan second, but I do prefer having as much of my fate decided locally as reasonably possible.
Russell’s point, and mine, is that people around the country see things differently. Federalism allows for differences of belief, the option to relocate and for more expedient change. Plus, it shifts the tax burden to those who have to pay it. For better or for worse.
Devine the racist being up for judicial appointment in a future Republican Administration or running for the House of Representatives, because they are both right up the radical base’s alley.
Well, it’s a swearing match as to whether Devine said that and, if there’d been time and media focus, I think it would have hurt Devine. Steve Munisteri, who I’ve known for years professionally, is head of the Texas Republican Party and is very much oriented toward diversity and it isn’t just lip service. I was illustrating why I don’t follow politics. Texas is no more corrupt or venal than, say, Chicago or NJ, all three have their issues, but also a lot of well meaning people across the political spectrum.
Yes.
I’ll let you have the last word on that.
Russell’s point, and mine, is that people around the country see things differently.
My next-door-neighbors see things differently than I do. Very little of why we see things differently has anything to do with where we live. Geography might have something to do with issues such as whether public transportation is supportable, or whether water needs to be rationed, or whether soil amendments need to be regulated. It has nothing whatever to do with a person’s need for medical care, food, shelter or education, or other things that are basic concerns of everyone, everywhere.
It has nothing whatever to do with a person’s need for medical care, food, shelter or education, or other things that are basic concerns of everyone, everywhere.
If people who see things one way are concentrated in one location vs another, there is good reason to treat those locations differently. The majority of Texans would do without things that are viewed as essential in other areas. We’d like to think we are forgoing short term advantage for long term sustainability. We could be wrong, the folks in MA and CA could be right, but why shouldn’t we decide for ourselves and let CA, MA, et al do the same?
If we were to devolve on matters not expressly reserved to the feds by the constitution, e.g. interstate commerce, equal rights and voting rights, people would come a lot closer to getting the gov’t they deserve.
I would rephrase this as “getting the gov’t they want”.
Look, if there are all of these people in the “red states” who really want a more vigorous public sector, all they have to do is vote for it.
And in spite of my own, personal preference for a robust public sector, it’s not clear to me that that’s a good solution for everybody, everywhere.
And, just like I vote for and support stuff that costs me money, even if I personally will get no particular benefit from it, there are also people who would materially benefit from public programs of various kinds and who *don’t want them*.
They don’t. They really and truly don’t.
I could insist that we all need to shove them down their throats for their own good, but I’m not sure that counts as self-government.
I disagree that we all share a common history and common values. I disagree that the only reason that there are a lot of (R)’s in the House is because of gerrymandering. And I disagree that, absent gerrymandering and Koch-funded propoganda, the red states would suddenly turn blue.
A lot of people in the US actually do not want what progressives think they ought to have. They don’t freaking want it.
They do not want it on a train.
They do not want it in the rain.
They do not want it in a box.
They do not want it with a fox.
They do not want it here or there.
They do not want it anywhere.
Why? I don’t know. Go ask them. They will surely tell you.
Look, if there are all of these people in the “red states” who really want a more vigorous public sector, all they have to do is vote for it.
They did. They voted for Obama. Obama won the popular vote and the electoral college.
I disagree that the only reason that there are a lot of (R)’s in the House is because of gerrymandering.
Well, you can disagree all day, but it is a fact that the reason the House is controlled by Republicans is because of gerrymandering.
More
They did. They voted for Obama. Obama won the popular vote and the electoral college
Technically, as in ‘actually’, the red states voted red. The point is that national elections go both ways and the house and senate change, when they do, by the outcomes in a finite number of states. Some states are perennially red, others blue and others are swing states. The Blues and the Reds have their own, very different ways of doing business. The Swingers, I am guessing, have more of a consensus. But, regardless, the character of the states is fairly constant. No one on the left wanted a Red State national gov’t, back in the day, and no one on the right wants a Blue State national gov’t. Russell and I would let locals work it out for themselves.
Check out the party affiliation of US state governors, or US state legislatures.
You’re wasting your time arguing with me, sapient, if there’s a problem here, I’m not it.
Election of state officials has nothing to do with what people expect of the Federal government. Isn’t that what we’re talking about?
And, by the way, during the period that Mitt Romney was Governor of Massachusetts, did that mean that the people of Massachusetts didn’t want Federal social services?
+3: TRVTH-level commenting
Or, you can believe that Republicans just don’t want what progressives want because the people voting for them have a D beside their name, and for no other reason. Knock yourself out. People believe all kinds of baffling crap.
That was Mitt giving the People what They wanted. It was also why not a whole lot more Republicans were gushingly enthusiastic about voting for him.
Myself included, of course. Although it doesn’t baffle me as much, being on this side of my eyeballs.
People believe all kinds of baffling crap.
for example, 39% of people who think Benghazi is the biggest scandal in American history don’t know where Benghazi is.
“Isn’t russell allowed to be tired of arguing?”
Yes. I feel the same way much of the time.
But on what people really don’t want, I wonder about that, because aren’t there people who want Social Security and Medicare but don’t want Big Government, which may in some cases translate into “we don’t want welfare for Those People? ” I know there were stories about people like that during the last campaign. How many people are like that would be an interesting task for pollsters or political scientists to take on. Americans in general are often clueless about the simplest things (and on some issues I’m right there with them) and may say they are for or against big government based on partisan prejudices.
“Remarkably, Obama is at the table first thing in the morning with his list that pisses off the Left.
Can you clue me in on specifics?”
Chained CPI, for one thing. This whole Grand Bargain idea is irritating to a lot of people on the left–the suspicion is that Obama is another centrist just itching to sell his liberal supporters down the river for the chance to be seen as “Serious” by the Washington types who worship centrist posturing. Whether that’s a fair suspicion is a separate question. But you asked.
47% of Obama voters didn’t know where Benghazi is. You’d think the smarter folks would know.
There’s certainly no outrage like fresh outrage.
“They do not want it on a train.
They do not want it in the rain.
They do not want it in a box.
They do not want it with a fox.
They do not want it here or there.
They do not want it anywhere.”
Sure they do.
They don’t want the Federal Government’s hands on their Medicare, which is a private company located near Benghazi, if you can find it. They want it on a train, in the rain, in a box, with a fox, and they’ll take it anywhere and everywhere.
I like my outrage fresh from the organic tap, but I’ll serve my revenge cold.
Speaking of not knowing where Benghazi is: “PPP’s newest national poll finds that Republicans aren’t getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton’s +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans remain very unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.
Voters think Congress should be more focused on other major issues right now rather than Benghazi. By a 56/38 margin they say passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is more important than continuing to focus on Benghazi, and by a 52/43 spread they think passing a bill requiring background checks for all gun sales should be a higher priority.
While voters overall may think Congress’ focus should be elsewhere there’s no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 10% of Democrats and 20% of independents share that feeling. Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a 74/12 margin that it’s worse than Teapot Dome, and by a 70/20 margin that it’s worse than Iran Contra.
One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don’t actually know where it is.”
Not only do the Repubicans who are ALL OUTRAGE ALL THE TIME not know where Benghazi is, the don’t know what the scandal is either. They just know that it’s EVIL OBAMA EVIL DEMOCRATS EVIL CLINTON FAUX SAYS SO SO IT MUST BE TRUE!
This is one example of why I don’t have any respect for the Republican party in its current incarnation. What is there to respect? The party has become rotten with extremism from top to bottom.
47% of Obama voters didn’t know where Benghazi is. You’d think the smarter folks would know.
Only if they bothered to care. After all, if you believe it to be the greatest political outrage in American history, you’d think one would take a few seconds to find out where it is.
Heck, Even I know where Mena, Ark., is. Flew over it myself in a black helicopter once.
It is important to have more than one political party. In fact, I think it is essential. But before we, as a nation, can get back to reasonable conversations about policly frm diverse points of view, we will have diminish or replace or reconstitute the party that actively sought to make itself the one-party of a one-party state–and that’s the Republicans. It is unhealthy to have our politics be a debate between the middle to progressive Democrats, with some hacks and some blue dogs on one hand and the party of crazy people being played for their votes and money by robber barons, on the other hand. The Repubica party is not a source of reasoned debate or policy any more. It can’t be, comprised as it is, of people who believe ridiculous stuff at the bottom, and people who promotre, whether they beieve it or not, ridiculous stuff at the top.
Instead of pretending the party hasn’t gone down the drain, it would be more constructive to recognize it’s advanced state of cancerous extremism, and try either to replace it or to clean it up.
Table 2: States with Highest Average Gerrymandering Scores
State Seats Average G
MD 8 150.3
NC 13 115.5
FL 25 90.4
PA 19 89.1
CA 53 80.6
NJ 13 77.6
IL 19 76.6
TX 32 68.6
AL 7 64.8
TN 9 62.9
MA 10 62.0
VA 11 55.7
NY 29 54.9
OH 18 51.0
LA 7 47.8
CO 7 47.2
WV 3 45.5
GA 13 44.5
AZ 8 44.4
SC 6 43.0
Gerrymandering and Legislator Efficiency (.pdf — page 11)
We’re Number Two! We’re Number Two!
(Signed): Conflicted in Carolina
As a point of quaint historical fact, the word “gerrymandering” derives from the name of Elbridge Gerry, a veritable Forrest Gump of the revolutionary period except smarter, and resident of the town where I live.
I live in the original gerrymandered electoral district.
We’re number 11 now, but we were here first!
Is it just me, or does the left play this game too? Because, from all the hyperventilation above, I thought it was heavily, heavily weighted on the right. Oh my.
BTW, whoever gerrymandered Texas did an interesting job. Currently, Harris County runs just about 50-50, yet the Greater Harris County congressional division returns two Repubs and 3 Dems. Maybe the Repubs rigged it elsewhere.
We are number 3! But fighting hard to climb back up.
Outstanding districts are:
District 22: D+4 (mildly Democratic)
District 3: (District 5 at the time of scoring) D+16 (socialists)
District 18: R+3 (mildly Republican)
District 20: D+28 (commies)
District 19: R+11 (reasonably well-armed lunatics)
Commentary above provided with humorous intent.
Overall, it looks like Florida Democrats are maybe doing a better job of gerrymandering than are Florida Republicans.
Or watch the news. But they probably knew in advance that at this point, what difference would it make where Benghazi is?
Obama voters: we are more proslactive.
A pretty good summary of the state of the Republican party from Micheal Tomasky:
“I think the notion of impeachment is industrial-strength insane. There is utterly no proof that the President Obama even knew anything directly about the shifting Benghazi responses, let alone did something about them (yes, folks; under the Constitution, the President must do something). And as for the Internal Revenue Service story, from what we now know, those transgressions were committed by IRS staffers in Cincinnati who have never been closer to Obama than their television sets. I always held a squishy spot in my breast for the Daily Mail because of the “Paperback Writer” mention, but as of this weekend they can go stick it up their punter, or whatever it is they say. Impeachment is crazy, the Daily Mail is crazy, and the idea that Obama has any direct culpability in either of these matters is, given what we know today, utter madness. Okay?
But this is my point: utter madness is what today’s Republicans do.”
Utter madness is what today’s Repubicans do.
Utter madness is pretty much the heart and soul of politics. Utter madness is why Scooter Libby was convicted and the guy who actually exposed Valerie Plame never was tried for doing so, even though Democrats wanted Karl Rove perp-walked out of the White House for purportedly doing that very thing.
It’s all about putting the people you don’t like in jail, or banishing them from where they can be effective.
Republicans have no monopoly on stupidity, is my point.
Obama voters: we are more proslactive.
i’ll take disinterested ignorance over destructive ignorant freakout any day.
i’ll take disinterested ignorance over destructive ignorant freakout any day.
Not to hijack, but when we talked about gun control some time back, what became readily apparent is that the proponents were, really and truly, ignorant of the subject they wanted to control. And, they were pretty emotional about it. So, maybe we have common ground here?
when we talked about gun control some time back, what became readily apparent is that the proponents were, really and truly, ignorant of the subject
essentially nobody is ignorant about what guns do to people – well, maybe the little kids who kill each other with them are. but they’ll have a lifetime to learn about what they’ve done.
essentially nobody is ignorant about what guns do to people
Yes, just like most people know an ambassador and others were killed at Benghazi, even if they don’t know where it is. What GC proponents are remarkably ignorant about are the differences between guns they say they don’t want to control and guns they do want to control.
So most people don’t know that there are certain types of guns that allow someone, who isn’t even highly trained, to kill lots of people really quickly, and that people have used them that way in random acts of mass murder against innocent bystanders on a number of recent occasions in the United States? Or that gun-homicide and -suicide rates are particularly high in the United States relative to other comparably economically and politically developed countries? (And why would people be emotional about a bunch of little kids being shot to death, anyway? Goofballs…)
If I were in charge of drafting gun-control legislation, I would be sure to learn a great deal more than I know about the minutiae of different types of guns and their uses. Since I’m not, I would expect (aspirationally, not with certainty) the people who would write such legislation to know or learn about such and employ that knowledge in good faith.
And all guns need some level of control, whether it be a matter of requiring nearly unconditional registration or a total ban.
But you have to keep in mind that we’re talking about people who think the Benghazi issue is the biggest scandal in American history. I don’t think gun control is the most pressing matter in this country, and I don’t know how many people do or what their level of gun expertise is, so let’s dispense with the false equivalencies.
THE BIGGEST SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!
What GC proponents are remarkably ignorant about are the differences between guns they say they don’t want to control and guns they do want to control.
what this critique blithely ignores is that there really does seem to be a preference by mass-shooters for “assault” weapons, and for the large clips which are considered a standard accessory for such weapons.
functionally, there may be little difference between assault-style rifles and the standard-style hunting rifle. but when it comes to killing lots of people at once, the killers favor the assault-style rifles.
now, of course, mass killings are just a blip when compared to the tens of thousands of dead, and many more tens of thousands injured every year. but, we try to do what we can, because human life is more important to us than your fetish objects.
Ted Nugent is so ignorant about heavy, murderous weaponry that he thinks they exist for Obama and Hillary Clinton to suck on.
Maybe it was just a hint about lollipops, or Ted’s mother’s personal life.
For his efforts, he was invited to sit a little closer to the President and Clinton with murder in his eyes, the subhuman vermin.
Lee Harvey Oswald and Squeaky Fromm should have been so lucky.
Maybe it was just a hint about lollipops, or Ted’s mother’s personal life.
I’m utterly ignorant about methamphetamines, except for what I’ve seen on “Breaking Bad”, so I’ll keep my uninformed opinions to myself.
The Texas law student with the 3-D weapons is so ignorant about his threatening body language in the video he made and the naming of weaponry (his is called the All-Day Liberty Sucker, I think), that he doesn’t realize that the people he is implicitly threatening might have their own guns and might show up and shoot him in the head as sort of a proactive self-defense.
The little kids and teachers at the Newtown school were so informed about weapons that they knew enough to fall down, bleed, and die on cue.
Not expanding background checks as a least radical, practicable measure (another conservative NRA position abandoned when Obama declared his conservative credentials) is designed to keep me ignorant about who owns guns and what kind.
A hint repeated is an order.
I’ve gathered a rather longish history of what my guns do to people, and it’s not really all that much, to tell you the truth.
Maybe other people’s guns are differently inclined. Maybe if I added a bayonet lug or a flash suppressor to one of my guns, it’d all of a sudden be more likely to kill someone.
I suppose it’s all in the attitude.
I’ve gathered a rather longish history of what my guns do to people, and it’s not really all that much, to tell you the truth.
somewhere in the range of 100,000 people will be injured of killed by guns in the US this year. as they were last year. and the year before. and the year before. etc..
maybe your guns weren’t involved in any of that. but the odds that the guns of someone you know were involved in it aren’t too bad.
My guns must have been raised right, and avoided any association with gangs and the like.
I’d have to guess that, of the gun-control regimes any given commenters here would advocate for, most would leave you largely unaffected, Slart, unless you’re a lot nuttier than I give you credit for.
So how do you feel about the vaccine hoax finally being over, or Obama’s having an imam curse the bodies of our dead soldiers?
I am still getting over the fact that we really did set foot on the moon, hsh.
I suppose it’s all in the attitude.
WTF, guns again?
Americans shoot themselves and each other a lot, way way way more than most other folks.
We have way way WAY more guns than almost anybody else on the planet.
Americans like guns, and they like to shoot them. Inevitably, perhaps, that means an unusually large number of Americans get shot.
You can look at that as:
a). a crappy situation, we should do something
b). a crappy situation, sadly nothing we can do
c). the price we pay for the privilege of owning guns
d). exactly the way things oughta be
And, in fact, American opinion covers pretty much all of those enumerated options.
If you want a gun, have a gun. Unless you’re a knucklehead or demonstrably prone to violence, most people have no problem with it.
Unfortunately, a lot of knuckleheads and people who are demonstrably prone to violence get guns.
I’m filing this one along with everything else in my neo-federalist file drawer.
I don’t want idiots owning guns anywhere near me, and I fully and wholeheartedly support the to-my-eye reasonable gun regulation regime we have here in MA.
If you don’t want to live under a regime like that, don’t move here.
Do whatever the hell you want wherever it is that you live. If I come visit, if you can resist the urge to shoot me, I’ll appreciate it.
Other than that, you’re on your own. Good luck.
I promise not to shoot you, russell. My guns, being the well-behaved sort, will likewise make the same commitment.
More on the slowdown in healthcare spending:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/our-amazing-slowdown-healthcare-spending-growth
And since the topics of the libertarian marvels of the internet and the withering away of central authority were mentioned (was it in this thread; humor me), Hendrick Hertzberg has some scary stuff about our new National Security State (should be plenty of fresh outrage from all points on the political spectrum) and then the second cite below details the incredible breadth of cyber crime now faced by individuals, corporations, and governments worldwide from individuals, corporations, and governments.
Cyber criminals are the new libertarians and individuals and corporations are turning to the withering thing — government — for relief.
Like everything, the internet is a blessing and a curse.
So write down your hundred or so passwords on a piece of paper …. wait… where’d all the paper go and watch it very closely.
Whither the withering?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/05/20/130520taco_talk_hertzberg
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/20/130520fa_fact_seabrook
“A more informal but similar soul-searching is taking place in Virginia, where the Republican establishment is worried the party will be better known for requiring women seeking abortions to get ultrasounds than for passing a sweeping transportation funding deal. A small group of Republican donors, business leaders, and former elected officials has met in Richmond twice since April about the tea-party’s movement’s impact on the GOP. According to a participant in both meetings, the group is concerned that Cuccinelli is too conservative to win a general election in state that voted twice for President Obama—and that was before Jackson joined the ticket.”
“If these guys were willing to say that they won’t vote for their ticket, I’d at least have a little sympathy for them. But it’s obvious why Republicans keep on nominating lunatics: It’s because lunatics do a pretty damn good job of representing the GOP base. And the the fact that the establishment still wants the lunatics to win shows that they pretty much the same page as their base when it comes to substance. The main thing that separates the two groups is that the establishment is smart enough to know that most people don’t see the world the same way they do. ”
This is from a current diary over at Kos. It pretty well sums up the current Republican party: extremists and people who recognize the extremism, but vote for it anyway, pretending to themselves that they are’t responsible for electing extremists (even though they vote for them)because they have mental reservations.