This article was 12 years too late, unfortunately.

Exactly, Chuck - where were these people in 1994?

Bill Clinton was not without his flaws, but one reason why his presidency will grow in stature with the passage of time is that Clinton was one of the few people in Washington at the time willing to call Newt Gingrich on his bullshit.

completely delusional belief that Atlas Shrugged was a blueprint for society

Any more dead laissez-faire capitalist philosphers you want to step on before you go to sleep?

yeah, quit insulting Al's heros, Kevin. now he's gonna have to go lock himself in his room and listen to 2112 with all the lights off.

At the very least, anyone who reads Atlas Shrugged needs to follow up by reading Lord Of The Flies.

Good luck getting that one programmed into the Al-bot, but one can hope...

wow. msm journo hates republicans. Who knew?

Next posting, please.

2018?? Hope that was a typo, and you meant 2008! I can't wait that long...

I wrote the following email to CBS. [Note: "Against the Grain seems to be the name of the feature/segment/column in which the piece appeared.]

"This is a story I should have written 12 years ago when the "Contract with America" Republicans captured the House in 1994. I apologize."
That's pathetic.
"Against the Grain" is clearly a misnomer. "With the Flow" would be more appropriate, since that's clearly how you like to operate. Only when a Democratic win last week made it safe to say these things did you come out and say them.

That's an injustice to the chess club.

DNS is on the mark, "Against the Grain" is clearly a misnomer. "With the Flow" would be more appropriate, since that's clearly how you like to operate. Only when a Democratic win last week made it safe to say these things did you come out and say them.

Can someone explain how the Contract with America embodied what Ayn Rand was (supposedly) calling for in Atlas Shrugged? [This is a serious question -- I'd like to know.]

12 year lags for journalists? I know some historians who want to wait 20 years - but at least historians strive to be accurate and above the politicis of the day.

It's a powerful statement and I respect the writer for coming forward with this. I just wish they'd published it when it was written, in 1992.

...and their intellectual wanna-be spawn have been inhabiting the Green Zone for the last three and a half hears.

The one thing I feel we can say with certainty about the Gingrich generation of Republicans -- even if we assume the best of motives -- is that they are utterly devoid of intellectual humility. They are/were incapable of stopping in mid-thought, mid-tirade, mid-polemic, and asking themselves, "Can I be sure I'm right about this?" Gingrich and others of his ilk certainly have intellect, as did many people I sat next to in grad school whose normative positions I completely rejected, but they have no intellectual humility. Most thoughtful people are willing to admit they might be wrong, and will therefore proceed with caution. Not Gingrich, not Delay, not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, not Bush.

Interestingly, I think the disease of the moderate left politicians in this country (Gore and Kerry are the leading examples) is that they have taken intellectual humility to an extreme (and mixed it with a too-strong dose of turn-the-other-cheek Christian morality) and convinced themselves that the need to admit the possibility of error deprives us the right to call an asshole an asshole and throw back in his face the shit he throws at us. It is perfectly consistent to say "I may be wrong" and at the same time say "I know you're dead wrong."

Why do our moderate-left leadership elite think that thoughtful on substance requires being weak in argument? It REALLY pisses me off.

I wish someone had had the balls, back in the early Reagan years, to say "You call me a 'liberal'? Damn right I'm a liberal, and here's why..." It might have made a difference.

I myself had a close encounter with AynRandism as a teen. I got better.

--
HRlaughed

Any more dead laissez-faire capitalist philosphers you want to step on before you go to sleep?

Yeah....Milton Freedman!

Bedtime!

Can someone explain how the Contract with America embodied what Ayn Rand was (supposedly) calling for in Atlas Shrugged? [This is a serious question -- I'd like to know.]

welfare reform, moratorium on federal regulations, and "frivolous" lawsuit reform ?

Somehow the link above got weirded up on me, so I try again...

I myself had a close encounter with AynRandism as a teen. I got better.

--
HRlaughed

Oh yeah, and I'm guessing it included tax cuts for the wealthy.

B:
Thanks. Makes sense. Warped Spencerian survival-of-the-'fittest' thinking. Rand was little more than a Nietzsche wannabe who never understood what Nietzsche was really saying. Like Adolf himself, in that regard. Nietzsche probably would have supported public funding of the arts and public education because it helps to identify and nurture excellence that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Anyone out there who can set me straight on Nietzsche, feel free, but I'd be willing to fund a night of single-malts to hash this out in good company.

quit insulting chessplayers. we're not THAT lame.

Keith G,
You stole my line. Friedman is as big a fraud as Ayn Rand is. The CBS guy was only partially right. Greenspan was actually part of Ayn Rand's inner circle. Yeah, I am calling Friedman and Greenspan crack pots. There is plenty of proof for it too.

And if I recall correctly, the Contract With Amrica also called for the abolition of the Dept. of Education. I think, Energy, too.

Ghost of Tom Joad >"...I am calling Friedman and Greenspan crack pots..."

Nice !

An honest ghost

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

Yeah, but I'll bet that lesbi pulp novel of Lynn Cheney's was better than Anthem.

Kevin, this ad hominem garbage is beneath you. If you want to argue in favor of big government, go ahead. But, calling those with different beliefs "weirdos" is not an argument.

The argument that these three were not businessmen is even dumber, because advocates of free markets believe that the whole society is better off with more economic freedom.

Incidentally, on the day after Milton Freidman's death, one can look back at the many improvements from the type of deregulation he espoused. E.g., airline flights today are cheap and affordable, benefitting the middle class who can afford to fly coast to coast. Under the old regulated system, flights were very expensive, unaffordable to the middle class.

Bellicose? Dick Armey was the single most effective opponent of the Authorization to Use Force.

Hypocrites? Delay, for all his flaws, is not a chickenhawk in the domestic culture wars. He and his wife have devoted thousands of hours to working with troubled foster kids -- the primary casualties of our free form family structures.

Never made any real money? By your yardstick Rush Limbaugh is 1,000 times smarter than you are.

Mmmmmm... lesbi pulp....

airline flights today are cheap and affordable, benefitting the middle class who can afford to fly coast to coast

Good point. Not only are the flights cheap, but the airlines are a great model of laissez-faire capitalism suriving just fine without government interference, bailouts, pension guarantees, etc.

Also, we haven't instituted his policy on drugs and prostitutes and they're still expensive.

It never ceases to amaze me that the political representatives of the immoral Party of Death are the ones with the 30 year marriages to the same person, while the upstanding members of the Family Values crowd are all serial philanderers and closeted homosexuals who strangle their mistresses when they are not doing drugs with whores and teenagers.

Golly, a person might start thinking that the screaming crackpots on the Right are all a bunch of hypocrites, if a person were, you know, paying attention.

Kevin - Why are you spending so much time bashing Republicans?

Seriously. It's getting weird.

Do you have anything positive to talk about?

daCascadian,

Was that the same George Bernard Shaw that said reports of a Ukrainian Terror Famine had to be invented because there was plenty of food in the hotels when he visited?? His powers of observation rivaled yours.

It's pretty funny hearing Kevin Drum and Dick Meyer talk about Republicans who are weird and hypocritical.

Ever take a close look at your beloved Democratic party, Kevin??

For starters, there is John Edwards, one of the leading WalMart-bashers in the Dem Party. The very day he makes an anti-Walmart speech, one of his staffers calls WalMart to arrange for a Play Station 3. (Guess Edwards' staff noticed Walmat has cheaper prices.)

Then there is Alcee Hastings, the guy who was impeached for taking bribes. Looks like Pelosi will put him on the Intelligence Committee.
(Because, well, Hastings can be TRUSTED.)

And I have to mention John Kerry. After he gave a speech complaining about "gas guzzling SUVs," a reporter asked Kerry about the SUVs in his driveway. Kerry said, "They don't belong to me, they belong to my family."

Free market unregulated capitalism is among the weirdest cults of our time, you would think that we would learn something from the depressions and robber barons of a century ago. But every so often this social darwinist crap gets recycled in a slightly different package.

...screaming crackpots on the Right are all a bunch of hypocrites...

Haven't you heard? Hypocrisy is now a Christian virtue. If you're not a hypocrite you must be a shameless liberal sinner.

"...philosphers..."

Haha, "philosopher". Good one, Al.

Is it just getting too damn hard for the mainstream media to keep pretending they haven't been the buttmonkeys of the Democratic Party for years? Is that why this kind of thing is starting to leak out around all the edges?

Get a clue, CBS. You haven't been fooling anyone for a long time. Why not just re-hire Rather again?

Anybody with the brains of a squirrel can see that the Republican Party that lost the last election had damn little to do with Gingrich, his ideas, the Contract With America, or anything else about real conservative/libertarian values.

Dick Meyer's colossal ignorance about the philosophies he's spitting on is evident in every line.

Now for two years we can see how moral titans like Ted Kennedy and the Clintons run things, along with a party that hasn't had a consistent political philosophy in thirty years.

I suspect raising the minimum wage is pretty much going to exhaust them intellectually. God forbid they try to handle any of the real problems.

Even with the typo, there's no way our Al could come up with a line like "dead laissez-faire capitalist philosphers". Far too complicated and irony-rich.

The real Al takes his texts directly from Turd Blossom, then dumbs them down some more. And then— you know what, kids—he believes them!

The worm turns.

I read this article the other day and shared it with my very liberal brother-in-law. I think it may be one of the best commentaries on the modern American conservative movement ever written!

E.g., airline flights today are cheap and affordable, benefitting the middle class who can afford to fly coast to coast. Under the old regulated system, flights were very expensive, unaffordable to the middle class.

the airlines are a great model of laissez-faire capitalism suriving just fine without government interference, bailouts, pension guarantees, etc

First of all, you guys obviously don't fly out of Minneapolis, where Northwest has used the Airport Commission to keep out low-cost competitors. They've had "loans" from the state which have been written off. The state builds facilities for them. They get more "welfare" than all the poor people in the state.

John Edwards, one of the leading WalMart-bashers in the Dem Party. The very day he makes an anti-Walmart speech, one of his staffers calls WalMart to arrange for a Play Station 3.

Wow, how can any American put up with such hypocrisy? It's too bad Edwards isn't in office, because then we could impeach him.

didn't the contract on america also call for...

term limits?

how did that work out?

First of all, you guys obviously don't fly out of Minneapolis

mine was a snark

the government interferes with the airline industry once every 18 months

Ayn Rand - free market fantasies hooked to wild and free sex. Yep - the chess club who didn't get any in high school hated the Bill Clinton type - the type who did get some in High School. Tribal revenge.

"airline fares are cheap"

Well, I suppose President Jimmy Carter, Senators Edward Kennedy and Howard Cannon, and the economics Professor Alfred Kahn, from Cornell University and educated at Yale should thank you for that comment, ex-Lib.

They were the principle players in the Deregulation Act of 1978.

Thanks for playing.

so how was this guy doing his job for the past 12 years that he waits until now to call these guys out.

And what of the whole gaggle of loons still leading the cult of republicanism and dragging the country into their cesspool? ...the reich wing talk shows; the all-war-all-the-time neocons; the bushliar-criminal; the federalist society; the political religionists; and on and on. To single out house republican leaders from 1994 is ridiculous inasmuch as there is a whole segment of society (roughly 35%) that has been turned loose to lie and pursue their violent fantasies and unreality: the evilanglicals, the limbaughs the coulters, the entire fox news organization. these are radicalized people and organizations that have poisoned political discourse - personalizing it; they've shredded the constitution, shifted the entire economic balance to a feudal system and turned the US into a banana republic falling far behind the rest of the industrialized world in terms of quality of life for the majority of its citizens; undermined science moving towards a theocracy; and created an extremely striated society of a few ubber rich, a stagnated, economically insecure shrinking middle class, and a greatly expanding under class without medical benefits or opportunity to get ahead - a class of people with little recourse other than feed their young into a military meat grinder.

In essence, they have ruined the America of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, etc. that we knew and moved the country radically to a totalitarian, Orwellian state. These is NOT rhetoric, this is realty starting from the polarization and poisoned political environment of reagan to the out of control radical right wing of today's cult of republicanism.
.

I'm glad Havlicek brought up the Wal Mart news release. Think about what Wal Mart did. They put out a news release about a potential customer's shopping habits.

Do you want Wal Mart to publicize your shopping habits, or those of someone you know? Would you like them to put out a news release whenever you buy a bottle of Rid, or a box of condoms? What about when a woman goes to Wal Mart and tries to buy the morning-after pill? Do you think it's OK for them to send a news release to the local newspaper, telling everyone that Suzy Q tried to buy the morning-after pill, and that her boyfriend hadn't been in to buy condoms in a couple of months?

Wal Mart has set a precedent. Havlicek, I hope you enjoy the implications of that. Just be careful what you buy at Wal Mart, fella. They have a big mouth.

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw
Posted by: daCascadian

Got one for ya:

Cynic, n., A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not a they ought to be. - Ambrose Bierce

So a silly young staffer in Mr. Edwards' office demonstrates the frequently appallingly bad judgment of the young (such as body piercing, tattoos and the like) to use, without authorization of any kind, John Edwards' name to jump the queue for PS3 and gets caught - this is of any interest why exactly?

Means exactly zip.

Slightly off topic, but did anybody else notice that the Republican house members rewarded their recent defeat by reelecting their current leaders. Not one ounce of introspection. Except for Denny Hastert, nobody is held accountable. Heck of a job John Boehner and Roy Blunt. The party of chess club wannabes lives.

While many long term politicos, especially Democrats, are called "career politicians" (I even referred to Hoyer with that term, yesterday), so many of the Pubs are referred to as "public servants".

Newt and Armey made their living at the public trough - either teaching at public schools, supported by the tax payers or in "guvment" - Newt parlayed this with a lucrative book deal which was based on his political life, paid for once again by the tax payers - Yet both were anti-goverment and took healthy swings at underfunding both government and schools.

DeLay did have limited experience in setting traps for fellow rodents - After fending off law suits, he took his specially prepared Toxins for the Destruction of Democrats to DC. Again, he reaped mega bucks from access to the public trough.

It was the same with Cheney - After Lynne braced him for his drinking, made him go back to school and get a degree and even had him start working on a Master's (great way to get deferments), she used her government connections to land him a job in DC - After working on staff, he became a US Rep and finally the Sec of Defense - He was able to parlay his connections with the Pentagon into an extremely lucrative deal with Halliburton, which was looking to expand their government contracts. Yet, Dickypoo, said that he had made it on his own and that government had never advanced his career.

These Pubs should be awarded the dishonors of the Hypocrite's of the Decade Trophy.

To paul: Pocketa-pocketa-pocketa...

The costs of war for the many are profits for the few.

With Blair now admitting that Iraq is a disaster it's more obvious that certain repugnacan entities went to war to reap profits, not by waging peace, but by waging an endless infiltration into the desert.

I hate it when greed becomes more important than
the values that my country was founded on.

We are in Iraq, waging war, costing the many at the wims of the few (the ones who are getting the seemingly limitless billions that flow into the violent sandstorm).

KD--what kind of school yard rubbish is this post? "Chess club on steroids"? "High school kids who got hooked on Ayn Rand"?

Since there's nothing in the Meyer piece indicating either that the ex-exterminator Tom Delay played chess (not bloody likely) nor that these born-again Christians had any sympathy for an atheist like Ayn Rand (even less likely), what's the point of this nonsense? To taunt the Gingrichers or to smear chess players and fans of Ayn Rand?

As a former Ayn Rand-reading chess club member who can't stand folks like Tom Delay and who normally loves Washington Monthly and votes Democratic more often than not, I'm mystified by the crass stereotyping. Maybe you should get a job for Corker--he loves this crap.

This thread is a classic. The GOP House Leadership were not weirdly destructive sociopaths because of a Wal-Mart libelous press release about an Edwards' staffer and a Play Station 3.

These guys were always unstable, dangerous hypocrites. They are also classic megalomaniacs on brick shy of a single brick.

Why would anyone continue to listen to them? Gingrich wrote history in the future tense--that would be called fiction or insanity. Nice to see he switched to repopularizing "what if?" history so he could use the Trent Lott method of waxing nostalgic about he and his friends keeping slaves.

They would stop at nothing to angrandize themselves. And did. May they all rot away forgotten by Americans who must now clean up their mess. The next generation of GOP had better block these guys from their cell phones. They are the bat shit crazy uncles of representative democracy who are best left locked away--wwaaaay out of cackling distance:

"What's that eerie noise?"

"Ummm, we have squirrels in the attic. Now about that affordable medicine and new factory. . ."

PowerLineBlog has more on John Edwards' staff shopping at WalMart.

Opfer: I play chess too, hate Ayn Rand, and realize this thread was a bit of fun. Frankly, "weirdos" was just a polite way of saying psychotic. And they are.

Inch by inch: I think you shrank in the cold water. Better towel off.

Ron Byers,

Hastert is out, the others have held office less than three or four months. The Repubs felt this was a Bush election and it was unfair to blame the new leadership that has not had a real chance to screw up yet. I might agree with you if things don't get better by next year.

All of the afore mentioned people , especially the first three are the prime example of the definition for the word
ReTHUGLICAN. They used the same soap box as did
Hitler or anyother two-bit conartist. Too bad all of the RIP VANWINKLES writers slept tooo long and the others had no guts , because [ i don't want to offend them , Attitude ) .

GINGRICH, ARMEY, DELAY, RAND: CIVIL LIBERTARIANS.

WHETHER IT'S STALINIST PUBLIC SCHOOLS OR TAX-TO-TAKE RATHER THAN STUDY/WORK/SOBRIETY-TO-EARN/SAVE, DEMOCRATS TODAY ARE THE AUTHORITARIANS. AND, HMMM, SINCE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES IS THE FINANCIAL MASTER OF THIS NATION, IS NOT THE "CLINTON ECONOMY" TO BE CREDITED TO THOSE WEIRDOS? IT'S TIME THE DELUSIONAL REGRESSIVE HIPSTERS HERE "GREW OUT" OF 60s FAILED DIRGISTE POLITICS, NO?

MILTON FRIEDMAN:

It is important to emphasize that economic arrangements play a dual role in the promotion of a free society. On the one hand, "freedom" in economic arrangements itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so "economic freedom" is an end in itself to a believer in freedom. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. . . .
The reason it is important to emphasize this point is because intellectuals in particular have a strong bias against regarding this aspect of freedom as important. They tend to express contempt for what they regard as material aspects of life and to regard their own pursuit of allegedly higher values as on a different plane of significance and as deserving special attention. But for the ordinary citizen of the country, for the great masses of the people, the direct importance of economic freedom is in many cases of at least comparable importance to the indirect importance of economic freedom as a means of political freedom.

TOH

Interesting, good points, often well put, but: the current meme push is that *those* Republicans were relatively rather good guys, with "real Reagan-Republican conservative values", as expressed in the Contract with American, and it is the current crop of creepy Republicans who "betrayed the revolution/Reagan/real conservativsm" yada yada....
Well?

TOH: You are neither objective nor historian. Kind of like Gingrich. Taking the GOP aspirants like DeLay and Gingrich seriously was a mistake of incredible magnitude before they back-stabbed, groveled, and whored their way to power.

If someone is barely cogent, uses things like racism, religious extremism, and sexism as a net positive, and is an exemplary ass and hypocrite, that should disqualify him/her/it from politics. That is hasn't is a stain on this generation. "Out damned Spot!"

Re: "...a bunch of high school kids who got hooked on Ayn Rand and forgot to grow out of it." Lest we forget, Alan Greenspan was and remains a huge fan of Ayn Rand.

Speaking of Rand, Friedman, et al:

The Laissez-faire thing was always a fraud anyway for several reasons, aside from whether we should be compassionate per se. Just one basic point: the economy, *before* formal "interference* in the form of explicit regulations, isn't really free or natural anyway. Look at how the Fed manipulates interest rates and the money supply and thus job prospects, the wealth of investors, etc. (That "new money" cannot be made by market trading of a hard currency for goods/services - the governmet/private Fed has to "put it in by hand" in an ulitmately "political" way that must be allocated to "winners" of some stripe....) Then there is the favor of legal personhood and limited liability granted to corporations: that should not be granted with no string attached.

All of the above and more, are reasons why the government owes a social welfare system. (Just consider that those affected by its interest rate policies deserve compensation in some sense just as surely as anyone displaced by the flooding caused by a Federal dam....) But the conservative intellectuals almost always evade this issue and cover up the implications....

Tyrannogenius

It took this guy 12 years!? Every point of hypocrisy he points out in his piece, between the conservatives and their actions or résumés I've made over the years. Nevertheless, the press give them unquestioning credibility.

I'm an independent and not dgmatic or doctrinaire, so I hate inflexible, unified field theory positions, whether they come from the left or right. however, I find the level of right-wingers hypocrisy to be gauling and immoral. All that family values bullshit, but philandering is common. All that merit talk, but they trade on contacts (just like everyone else does to some degree) to get ahead. They advocate a strong (whatever that means)defense and muscular foriegn policy, but think outhes should provide the muscle and risk or lose their lives to secure "liberty" and freedom." I find their advocacy for the rich is inimical to the America's myth of itself. Even un-Christian. Doesn' the bible tell us that it would be harder for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than a camel? But this crop of conservatives doesn't even care about families in the $100-$250K range. For example, they are focused on eliminating the estate tax, which fewer than one percent of Americans pay, and according to the American Farm Bureau, no family farmer has payed, but haven't done shit about the Alternative Minimum Tax.

More inconsistency: Armey, Livingston, Gingrich, Burton and Hastert and attended public universities--in the case of Gingrich the draft-dodger, partially funded by his father's VA benefits. Which one has sent a check to the taxpayers of the states where their universities were located, for their subsidized educations? not one. We can add that doctrinaire idiot Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth. U of Illinois and George Mason are public institutions. I wonder, did Moore receive student loans? (A market neglected by "the Market" until the big , bad federal government got involved.) Plus, should the government even be involved in higher education? Why didn't Moore attend private shcools. Idiots like Gingrich, Moore, et al, proves that government is also ineffective in the education field. oh, wait. That sound like the simplistic, polemical bullshit conservatives spout. mea culpa.

As career members of the house,they all recieve federal DEFINED BENEFIT pensions. (Actually, it is a hybrid,with a 401(k) type element:Thrift Savings Plan.), You know, the kind that corporations are eagerly replacing with 401(k) defined contribution plans, so we can "own" our retirements. But why didn't they institute a 401(k) without an employer (read: taxpayer) match?

Conservatives, like Gingrich and Armey, also support corporate plans to convert 401(k)and traditional pensions to cash balance plans. Such plans generally screw older workers, and, like 401(k)s, require significant investor sophistication and more than a bit of luck. Well, why didn't they seek to convert congressional retirement plans to a cash balance form. Oh, maybe it's because their pensions would lose up to 50 percent of the value. A democractic House member--i can't recall his name--commissioned the Congressionl Research Service (CRS) to conduct a study the affect of a cash balance transition on congressional retiement plans. Tom DeLays. Trent Lott's and Denny Hastert's were specifically targeted. CRS found that the politico's pensions would have suffered a substantial drop in value. But cash balance is good enough for the American people, right?

How about healthcare? I've been a federal employee and received generous healthcare benefits, which senators and house members also enjoy. (Even now as a reservist, I enjoy an extremly generous dental insurance benefit, for which I pay little. Medical insurance is also provided, and can be used in whole or as a supplement to private health insurance. And because I was a mobilized reservist who served in Iraq (a combat zone), I only pay a 20 percent of the standard premium.) Back to my point. Conservatives are big on health savings accounts (HSAs). Well, why didn't the Republicans submit legislation for Congress to establish HSAs and only HSAs for themselves. Let them try it, before recommending it to the American people. Oh, no. As with everything else, these parasites want to take, but they don't want to give.

My particular gripe centers on the bellicosity of these guys. They all avoided military service dring the draft or didn't bother to serve, post-conscription. Yet one draft-dodger (think Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Richard Perle), combat avoider(think former National Guard/Reserve--when it was safe to be a member--George Bush, John Bolton and Steve Forbes)or plain old non-server--I'll call them the embusque (a French word, how appropriate)crowd-- after another pitchs his war-mongoring b.s. in print and on T.V.

If I were a journalist or member of congress, I would demand discussion of their cowardice before we engaged the merits of their policy prescriptions. I'd also want to know how draft-dodging,reading books and policy papers qualifies one to be an "expert" on national security, not to mention a hawk. Ah, yes. Tough talk is the qualification. (Read the excellent Michael Kinsley's piece in "TIME" regarding the lame reversal of two pro-war, and of course, because they are conservatives, draft-dodgers, Richard Perle and Ken Adelman. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1558299,00.html)

Well,Emerson said a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, and I confess to having one. Because, I expect consistency. Lead by example gaddammit.

AYN RAND, DEMOCRATS AS THE SOCIAL DARWINISTS:

Regarding the above post: I'm against economic depression and economic monopolies (robber barons) and Social Darwinism. That is why I'm for Reaganomics (25 years now of world-beating prosperity), for vouchers-choice and against the UFT (monopoly-robber-barons), and against Democratic Party authoritarianism (a form of Social Darwinism where the strongest-majority (derelict-poor-middle) rules the weaker-minority (responsible-rich)).

And it is this last point that Rand addressed so well. The Democrats are the ones embracing Social Darwinism today, i.e., regardless of necessity or justice, the majority should have no compunctions about taking from the minority - euphemistically called "redistributing" income. No longer content with providing for people's needs (which the USA does as well as those in need will permit by their behavior), the Democrats today have decided that they will take just because 1) they want to and 2) because they can: that is Social Darwinism.

The central message of Atlas Shrugged was that the virtuous elite must fight to prevent the debauched and derelict masses from enslaving them. This is exactly what Democrats want to do (then as now, the Democrats are the party of slavery). In the USA today, excepting instances of child abuse, anyone who is reasonably diligent and reasonably sober and reasonably procreatively-responsible can go from being poor to rich by the time they are 35 to 40 years of age. The opportunity for education, employment, investment, and reasonable recreation are abundant; what Democrats want is not opportunity, but authority. Democrats want to party their way to success by forcing the virtuous to work for them and pick up the cost of their debauched lifestyle.

TOH

Hey Sparko,

They tried to enforce your standard, i.e., he guilty of sexism should be out of politics; but then you got upset when they impeached Clinton.

TOH

Kevin and many posters here evidently agree with Dick Meyer that Tom Delay, Dick Armey and Next Gingrich shouldn't opine on lassez faire economics because they weren't successful businessmen.

Meyer is flat-out wrong about Delay. Tom Delay ran a successful pest-control company.

Gingrich and Armey were well-qualified because of their education. Dr. Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in Modern European History. His studies ought to have informed him of the successes and failures of various economic systems used in Europe in the twentieth century.

Dr. Richard Armey's Ph.D. is even more relevent; it's in Economics.

Then lets just ask ALL PhDs whether the GOP is full of shit.

Objective Hist

If you're against redistribution of wealth through government action, then I presume you are against taxing capital gains at a lower rate than regular income and that you are against abolishing the Estate Tax. You must also be against tax cuts that benefit the rich over the poor and middle class. Right?

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DNS:

Well, it's no longer the night and I'm not a whiskey guy (I'll stand you a round of Guinness, though), but here's my take on Ayn Rand and the intellectual currents she reacted against. Much of this is from my bud who's a Kant specialist and PhD candidate in philosophy.

Ayn Rand, first of all, wasn't a philosopher and "Objectivism" isn't a philosophy -- among academics, it's kind of a sad joke. You can't base an entire philosophy on the Identity Principle -- Aristotle's famouns A = A, which Rand boiled all correct philosophy down to.

Ayn Rand (aka Alice Rosenbloom) was a Russian Jew whose family fled Communism. She spent her early teen years reading pulp novels of the British Raj and strenuously identifying with bold colonial military men. That right there pretty much explains everything about Ayn Rand, who took her surname from a typewriter and her first name from an obscure Scandanavian historian. She was also a neurotic fraidy cat -- she never learned to drive, never flew, was dependent on the men in her life to do virtually everything for her, even as she tyrannized them by, e.g., making her husband write essays confessing his "flawed epistemology." In a weird kind of way that nonetheless makes perfect sense, she was like the archetypical Woody Allen neurotic whose entire philosophy of bold men doing bold deeds was a reaction formation.

The ideas she reacted against, though, also haunted the thinking of other European escapees from Communism and Nazism. While one strain who landed in America was part of the the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Marcuse, etc.) and remained committed to democratic socialist ideas, developing a sharp cultural marxist (neomarxist) critique of American consumer culture, there were others like Leo Strauss who reacted as Rand did against turn-of-the-century Continental sociology and, in Rand's case, even the startling new developments in physics. When quantum mechanics is telling you that you can't know the position of a particle and its velocity simultaneously, when sociology is drawing a distinction between facts and values, when both lead to a relativism that makes the observer at least as important as what is observed -- then you can understand why a thing like "Objectivism" (or epistemology sux, ontology rulz, ok?) might arise as a form of weak-minded intellectual comfort masquerading as its opposite.

And as a committed, dogmatic atheist, this makes Rand even more shrill -- because it is extremely difficult to found an immanent ontology without reference to a First Principle that equates to God. So in practical terms, at the end of the day, this makes Rand a nihilist.

Of course Nietsczhe would have thought Rand an idiot; Nietsczhe never thought the death of God was something to be celebrated. Besides which, Nietsczhe was a skilled interpreter of the poetics of the natural world, especially as seen by the ancient Greeks. To Rand, a blast furnace was infintely more exalted than a summer's day -- something which Nietsczhe would consider positively monstrous, a sure mark of the Last Men. But she's linked with him in the public mind for two reasons -- first, his scabrous attacks on the "slave morality" of Christianity bears a certain family resemblence to Rand's. And secondly, the vaccuum left by God was filled for Nietsczhe by the Will to Power.

To Nietsczhe, that's nihilism and the sign of imminent cultural collapse. To Rand, that's The Virtue of Selfishness.

Bob

ex-liberal:

Yes, Dick Armey was an econ professor at a PUBLIC university. So, someone who spent his entire professional life supported by taxpayers was also one of the biggest advocates for small gov't.

Objective Hissy: Clinton? Blowjob? Is that really all you guys have left? I guess self respect is long gone for the dead enders. Wow. I mean you hear this about GOP trolls, but when you see it first hand. Gracious.

Dr. Richard Armey's Ph.D. is even more relevent; it's in Economics

His economics training gave him great insight into the effects of taxation, didn’t it? Look at the mid 90s recession he so correctly predicted as a result of Clinton’s tax policy.

No, Sparko, don't you see? They really, really care about sexism.
More than they even care about their country.

May I suggest that people who want to post here, keep their posts brief? If you post more than two paragraphs, no one is gonna read it anyway. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation ran to just over 250 words and it was a lot more important than anything you are likely to post.

dsdft - stop it with your idiotic Chinese pictograms, you gaping asshole. Sheesh, this blog is becoming unreadable!

Also, Fredreich Nietsczshe was a notorious misogynist, and Ayn Rand's work bubbles with contempt for femininty, with heroines like Dagney Taggart and Dominique Francon whose masculinized outer shells hide a desire to be quite literally raped. A book reviewer described an Ayn Rand sex scene as like "a description of an industrial process in Forbes magazine."

A psychological explanation of this, I think, would bear more (bitter) fruit than anything political or philosophical. Ayn Rand held a lifelong contempt for her own personal ditzitude, which she inverted through a fantasy life expressed in fiction and her later life as a mythologized cult heroine of the conservative movement.

Bob

Off-Topic

I just heard you guys got good news and bad news today. The good news: the Congressional Black Caucus is no longer doubling down on Alcee Hastings. The bad news: now they want OJ Simpson.

minion:

I take it you never did land that gig writing for David Letterman? :)

Bob

plain, keptsimple, and functional -- Meyer wasn't just arguing that these three Republican leaders were wrong. He was implying that they shouldn't have even been in leadership positions, supposed because they didn't make a fortune as entrepreneurs.

I'm not saying that they were automatically right about everything. I am observing that, contrary to Meyer's claim, they were well qualified to opine on economic matters -- much better qualified than most members of Congress.

IMHO the success of the American economy since Reagan is a strong indication that freer markets were good for the American economy. The wealth of Hong Kong, Sinapore and Taiwan as compared to Mainland China is also vivid proof that free econmics works better. The improvement in the UK due to Thatcherism is more evidence.

The Conservative Deflator:

I'll cop to never being able to write anything as important as the Gettysburg Address, let alone the Emancipation Proclamation.

Bob

Wasn't Tom Delay an independent businessman?

ex-liberal:

Meyer is saying that their personal biographies run completely contrary to the system they were advocating. This problem extended well beyond the House Leadership. Many of the most prominent "small government" and "personal responsibility" advocates either saw their largest successes while living off gov't paychecks (Armey, Gingrich) or were bailed out of financial ruin by family members (W). It's not hard to see the hypocrisy in this. Capitalism failed for them, but they're still content to throw everyone else to the wolves.

keptsimple,

Just because an individual's personal preferences, traits or flaws might not be rewarded by the free enterprise system doesn't necessarily require that person to reject that system as unfair [or maybe the least unfair available].

YEAH MINION . . . GOOD STUFF!

Er, uh, generally speaking the poor and middle income Americans pay no taxes (or so little) that it's virtually impossible to cut taxes enough to stimulate the economy without "tax cuts that favor the rich." The federal, state, and local budget comes to about $12,500-17,500 per person depending on where one lives. Let's say it's $15,000. So a family of four that pays less than $60,000 a year in taxes is actually free riding on their more hard working, productive, and frugal countrymen. How many families of four pay $60,000/year in taxes? How many pay any taxes, what with deductions for children and all? The cognative dissonance exhibited by ignorant, i.e., not actually venal and power-hungry, Democrats today is that the status quo is that the hard studying, hard working, temperate-in-lifestyle, and frugal rich are taking care of them like they were infants-infants who are too overwhelmed by their freedoms to manage their lives responsibly. So, when the economy naturally enters a downward cycle and the proven remedy of tax cuts is employed, naturally, the tax cuts must go to those actually paying the taxes. The poor and middle income are not actually benefitting less, but differently. Instead of getting more of the baby-care-esque handout they were getting, they are getting 4.1% unemployment, educational opportunities at every turn, and a safe, secure nation in which to strive for autonomy and contribution rather than dependence.

BOTTOM LINE: THE POOR AND MIDDLE INCOME ARE BEING TAKEN CARE OF LIKE INFANTS IN THE USA IN 2006; AND LIKE INFANTS THEY ARE RESPONDING ACCORDINGLY: WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! WE WANT MORE.

TOH

I'm for redistributing income based on need, but I think we do it poorly today. We must assure that our redistribution is not wasted on the same profligacy that caused the need in the first place: sex (procreation), drugs (alc included), and "rock-n-roll" (dereliction through not mere recreation but the prioritization of recreation over the essential and fundamental work required to no longer be in need).

Jesus wasn't nearly as concerned about wasting charity on the profligate poor as are many of his staunchest modern mouthpieces. Hope JC is listening carefully- maybe he'll learn something...

Minion -

That was an artful defense of hypocrisy.

It is tragically ironic, for the commonweal, that the men drawn to the strong will and high achievement of Ayn Rand/Dagny Taggart were only able to become Ellsworth Toohey, James Taggart and Peter Keating, wrecking the country in the very way Ms. Rand described.

Because Rand was able to predict and describe our political society so well, write about sexuality in such a passionate and physical way, and devise such fantastic yet contemporary well written stories, I think she deserves a high ranking as a great writer.

Objectivism and the worship of human kind's volition are attractive personal philosophies that do not translate into macro policies serving the best interests of society or the commons, ignoring the very reasons why people have chosen to live together and the huge benefits that accrue from communism (communal living). I like Rand a lot, but she had many limitations. She even admitted to not understanding Dali's art, while finding it wonderful. She is best known for her fiction, and I think of her as a writer not a philosopher.

"the hard studying, hard working, temperate-in-lifestyle, and frugal rich"

I'd really like to know where these sort of rich people are hiding. After all, the rich guys who run the GOP are the kind that spend their younger day drunk and losing other people's money on bad investments, only to count on rich relatives to bail them out.

Ok, tell me libs - why do you hate real businessmen who vote Republican? They are only voting for their interests - because libs want to tax/regulate them to death.

We must assure that our redistribution is not wasted on the same profligacy that caused the need in the first place: sex (procreation), drugs (alc included), and "rock-n-roll" (dereliction through not mere recreation but the prioritization of recreation over the essential and fundamental work required to no longer be in need).

LMAO. Yes, palleeeeez, Lord, have the wingnuts revive the 50s crusade against rock-n-roll music. That's all I want for Xmas.

I still want to understand something. Why do libs make it their business how much money someone makes. Truly vile, to poke around in other peoples' affairs.

Jack Ass Coward, Republicans vote for war, where real people actually die horrible deaths from weapons made and fired by Americans. Taxation of the businessmen only slightly limits the size of their investment portfolios, it in no way limits the amount of bananas they eat.

Jack Ass Coward, Republicans vote for war, where real people actually die horrible deaths from weapons made and fired by Americans. Taxation of the businessmen only slightly limits the size of their investment portfolios, it in no way limits the amount of bananas they eat.
Posted by: Hostile on November 18, 2006 at 2:30 PM

Wow, lots of insults and still no justification as to WHY you want to confiscate other people's money. Oh and the Dems were pushing Iraq in 2002 too.

the Dems were pushing Iraq in 2002 too

I dislike them vehemently, too.

Where did I insult anyone? Republican policies kill people horribly. Are you insulted? I am the one who is fucking insulted!

Hostile:

You admire Ayn Rand as a *writer*? Are you *serious*? Please peruse any college syllabus of 20th century American fiction and tell me if you find any Rand in there. Here's the answer: you won't. I read Rand's two big novels for American studies, which analyzes pop culture. I also read Stephen King, Mickey Spillane, Sydney Sheldon and a bunch of romance novelists for those classes, too.

Ayn Rand is an atrocious writer. She writes what should be political tracts, which she stretches to 1000-page, repetitive monstrosities. Every single bit of character dialogue -- including the seduction scenes -- is a speech. Even Republicans don't talk like that, Hostile.

You could compare Ayn Rand to Robert Heinlein or one of the other big figures from the skiffy Golden Age. They share many of the same amateurish flaws in depicting human relations. The kind of statist dystopia she envisioned in the late 40s and 50s has a certain resonance with critiques of the culture of conformity explored by later non-fiction writers of that era (The Power Elite, The Organization Man, The Lonely Crowd, Growing Up Absurd), and it's doubtless that intelligent non-conformist types find mass consumer society alienating on any number of levels, which is part of her enduring appeal. As is the adolescent desire to literally destroy one's own accomplishments unless they turn out *exactly the way you want them* -- as the architect protag (forget his name) did to his buildings in The Fountainhead. It's a very gratifying kind of wish.

But it's also childish. Which helps to explain why so many Rand fans picked up the books in highschool and wind up growing out of them in adulthood. The Randian universe is a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Bob

"wow. msm journo hates republicans. Who knew?"

Close but no cigar.

More accurate: "wow. msm hides 'true' opinions about republican'ts while they were in power. Who knew?"

You could put all the courage of the MSM into half a walnut shell and have room left over for the heart of a republican't.

Shout-out to Allen at 11:32 AM. You hit so many points so well.

"Dr. Newt Gingrich has a Ph.D. in Modern European History." Oooo. A PH.D.!!! Ooooo. I'm SO impressed!!! What was his dissertation on? How the hell can you say a Ph.D. in history implies expertise in economics at ALL without knowing (or stating) what the topic of his dissertation was? And also, where he got the Ph.D.

BTW, I'm not saying that ALL pest control operators are ignorant or crooked, but it certainly does seem to attract a lot of EITHER ignorant or crooked people. And working with all those pesticides over the years can give you brain damage. Maybe that's the Hammer's excuse. As to his charity work, isn't he one of those Republican'ts who used their favorite charity to funnel perks to lobbyists and other congress folk? You know, come to my charity golf tournament at Hilton Head, etc.? Not saying that some money didn't get spent on the good cause, but let's just say he wasn't shy about his "charity."

Dick Armey was the Chair of the Economics Department at North Texas State University before getting elected to Congress. That's not a very high status in a large school which does not offer a PhD. in Economics. Like most Libertarians who become academic Economists, he was obsessed with proving his Libertarian biases so he never had much in the way of research publications. At least none of significance to the Economic profession. He had peaked in his career, and was not a particularly well-liked person on campus either.

But he did build a political following in the Congressional District, so he retreated from his failed academic career into Congress.

Phil Gramm had almost exactly the same history, having been hired as an Economist at Texas A&M and getting tenure just before A&M decided to become a world class university. Needless to say, Phil Gramm also had no significant economic papers that were referenced by other Economists in their research.

Such Libertarian Economists blame their failure to rise in academic status on bias against their conservative views, but the fact is, they generally don't do cutting edge research. It is to be expected of people who attempt research by building hypotheses on their non-research-based ideology instead of the existing body of research discoveries.

North Texas State University was delighted to get rid of Dick Armey, and I am told the Economics Department at A&M was delighted to see Phil Gramm get elected to Congress.

Which brings up the horrible thought - what if Governor Rick Perry tries to put Phil Gramm in as President of Texas A&M? The only thing that previousl caused as bid a negative reaction was when Texas A&M first let women attend in 1963!

rmck1 --

Thanks for the thoughtful postings.
Much apprecaited.

One other thing: The Objective Historian is an absolute fool.

Incidentally, on the day after Milton Freidman's death, one can look back at the many improvements from the type of deregulation he espoused. E.g., airline flights today are cheap and affordable, benefitting the middle class who can afford to fly coast to coast. Under the old regulated system, flights were very expensive, unaffordable to the middle class.

By the way, if you flew into or out of Dallas-Fort Worth Airport American Airlines has had a monopoly on it and the low cost tickets have not been available to those of us in North Texas. My daughter flew in from Nashville. The round trip ticket from Nashville to DFW Airport was $250 higher than if she transeferred from the plane to a local commuter aircraft and flew 90 miles further south to Waco and ended there instead of in Fort Worth.

By the way, my comment above about the President of A&M was because Bob Gates has just left there to become SecDef, and the Libertarian crook Phil Gramm is being discussed as his replacement.

Any Objectivists out there should read Alasdair MacIntyre -- someone who really knows what Aristotle and Nietzsche were about. After Virtue would be a good place to start.

"The Objective Historian" - You are in fact a total moron. If you couldn't absorb at least something from my deflating of the whole independent economy myth, you have no excuse to plaster your drivel here. Just as a reminder to those who don't get it, here is my post from above with a bit more:

The Laissez-faire thing was always a fraud anyway for several reasons, aside from whether we should be compassionate per se. Just one basic point: the economy, *before* formal "interference* in the form of explicit regulations, isn't really free or natural anyway. Look at how the Fed manipulates interest rates and the money supply and thus job prospects, the wealth of investors, etc. (That "new money" cannot be made by market trading of a hard currency for goods/services - the governmet/private Fed has to "put it in by hand" in an ulitmately "political" way that must be allocated to "winners" of some stripe....) How ironic of course that the main interferer of this sort is Alan Greenspan, who feigns to be an Objectivist despite running interference in this phony economy as a matter of practice.

Then there is the favor of legal personhood and limited liability granted to corporations: that should not be granted with no string attached. The public has the perfect right to demand conditions, such as: acceptable partition of wages from earnings, conditions for doing business, etc.

All of the above and more, are reasons why the government owes a social welfare system. (Just consider that those affected by its interest rate policies deserve compensation in some sense just as surely as anyone displaced by the flooding caused by a Federal dam....) But the conservative/libertarian/objectivist intellectuals [like "The Objective[ist] Historian']almost always evade this issue and cover up the implications....

Tyrannogenius

rmck1

Thanks for your postings on Ayn Rand. They are good enough for me to save for future review. Ignore the idiot who wants short posts. I want informative ones.

DNS
You are completely correct about TheObjectiveHistorian.

He doesn't even say anything worth wasting my time reading, let alone replying to. Unfortunately you have to read two or three of his posts to realize that. I'd like to charge him for the time I wasted reading his stuff.

Since there's nothing in the Meyer piece indicating either that the ex-exterminator Tom Delay played chess (not bloody likely)
Posted by: JOhn Opfer

i don't know - delay *was* an opera buff. sounds kinda faggoty to me.

They would stop at nothing to angrandize themselves. And did.
Posted by: Sparko

if 'angrandize' is not a word, it should be. meaning 'gain prominence and wealth via a steady stream of manufactured anger.'

your pal,
blake

SILLY KIDS:

What is really troubling you is that I'm not the straw man you would have me be; again cognitive dissonance. You need me to be a laissez-faire advocate. I'm not. I'm a socialist. My driving concern is that we live in a just society. What is preventing the status quo from being a just society is the behavior of the poor and middle income strata, statistically and cummulatively; not the failure to tax and redistribute wealth. People's sustenance are provided for and then some; opportunities for education and work abound. That so being, people should have a right to keep what they earn and to do with it as they please as long as it does not directly harm others; I'm refering specifically to the right to give it to their children, to charity, or to spend it. Once society has a safety net (the USA does, spending copiously on the shelter, food, clothes, medical care, etc. of it's ungrateful poorest) and ample opportunity for education and upward economic mobility through work, JUSTICE requires people be permitted to keep what they earned: IT'S CALLED CIVIL LIBERTY, I.E., THE RIGHT NOT TO HAVE TAKEN FROM THEM MORE THAN WHAT IS NEEDED.

I'm not laissez-faire; tax and spend; intefere where there are market failures. But, redistributing wealth for it's own sake is a violation of civil liberties. If you want to improve the lives of the poor and middle income, intefere with their civil liberties: to have children withouth means, to drink and do drugs (virtual civil liberty), to slack and party through their first 25 years of life while their contemporaries are getting a life-long education. Let people enjoy the fruits of their own labor; they've done their share by providing for the poor and picking up the cost running the USA. Enough is enough. Freedom, essential to justice, requires it; if you want economic equality, get an education and a job and earn it --- free lance performance artist is not the kind of job to which I refer. As I said above and as no one has disputed, anyone reasonably diligent can go from poverty to being rich (a millionaire) by the time they are 35 in the USA. That's more than fair.

TOH

Neil':

As I said, I'm not lassez-faire, so your attack upon me as a hypocrite is not apt. I just think the rich do enough for the poor as it is. It's the poor who are taking advantage of the largesse of the rich to fritter away their opportunities.

But regarding corporations; those protections are their to facilitate the forming of capital so as to more easily enable the creation of jobs and to prevent lawsuits that would reach individual families. You are right, it's not laissez-faire (and neither am I); it is the a democratically sanctioned conduit for economic activity both creates jobs and creates wealth which then can be reasonably taxed to finance both the USA generally and the welfare state in particular. It's a good policy. Giving poor and middle income people even more than they have just for breathing and being citizens at the same time is counter-productive; it only encourages their dereliction. If they want more, they must do more---more of what society needs and wishes to pay for.

AGAIN: Anyone in the USA who is reasonably diligent as a student and employee can go from poverty to great riches by the time they are 35. This means pulling up their pants, putting away their KY jelly, leaving the Nintendo, skateboarding, and drunken (and more) binges until after the work-week and waiting to have children until one is financially secure; it seems the poor and middle income are unwilling to do these simple things and instead would abuse the democratic process to take other people's earnings. It's just so fortunate for them and us all that the Republican Party is there to defend the virtuous in the USA from the debauched throngs.

TOH

Rick B,

And I'm sure that ex-Lib is fully aware that Phil Gramm once posed as a Democrat and helped pass Reagan's budgets - Always amuses me whenever some Libertarian who never followed "guvment" before Perot, whips out their worn copies of recently purchased Constitutions and proclaim that Reagan couldn't have run up the deficits because all bills start in the House and the House had been controlled by the Dems - Well, Gramm voted with the Pubs and passed the Gipper's desires.

And President Jimmy Carter, Senators Kennedy and Howard Cannon, and economics Professor Alfred Kahn of Cornell were responsible for the deregulation of the airlines, not Friedman.

TOH:
I think you're a little weak on your understanding of the objective social and economic conditions of the poor. It's a hell of a lot harder to work your way our of poverty than you seem to think. Secondly, do you honestly believe we could all be millionaires, if we only tried? Third, you reveal a serious flaw in your reasoning in the following sentence:

[P]eople should have a right to keep what they earn and to do with it as they please as long as it does not directly harm others; I'm refering specifically to the right to give it to their children....

A rich man's right to give his wealth to his child creates an unfair advantage for his child over that child's peers. Those without rich parents are therefore disadvantaged from birth. So your seemingly virtuous emphasis on one's right to "keep what one earns" -- which to the lazy reader comes across as a commitment to radical meritocracy, in fact masks your deep commitment to inherited wealth -- the most anti-meritocratic mechanism of wealth redistribution ever devised, since it allows wealth generated by one generation to be passed to those in the next who are immediately sheltered from the need ever to work hard in their lives. So you're not committed to a socialist vision of justice; you're committed to an aristocratic vision, rationalized and marketed as shallow "you should be able to keep what you earn" liberalism.

That's what I said you're a fool. That and your lack of any apparent understanding of what life is like for the "ungrateful" poor you so lazily criticize.

One other response to TOH.
You seem to think that the term "earn" is easily defined, easily understood, and widely accepted as a nice clean word we can all agree on. But does a CEO truly earn his obscene compensation package if the company is performing poorly but the stock options are back-dated? Does the CEO who is fired for incompetence or malfeasance still earn the millions he's paid as a result of a sweetheart deal approved by the Compensation Committee whose members he selected?

The job market and financial markets are so thoroughly rigged to favor those who already have social advantages (boys-club connections, Daddy's bequest to Yale, Daddy's tust fund...) that to speak of being allowed to keep what one "earns" shows a profound lack of awareness of how wealth is created and distributed in this society. And you call yourself a socialist? Please...

A guy from CBS comes out and admits he thinks Republican leaders for years now have been "weirdos". Say it isn't so. Imagine, and all this time we thought that they were completely neutral in their feelings.

Funny though, nobody from big journalism comes out to say that Democrats like LBJ, Clinton, Carter, Pelosi, Jim Wright, and so on were/are weirdos. Somehow, as a class, they are exempt.

The truth is that in their hearts almost all of the people in big journalism support the Democrats, even if they are trying to be impartial in their daily jobs.

keptsimple: Meyer is saying that their personal biographies run completely contrary to the system they were advocating.

True, but he's also saying that their biography was so contrary as to invalidate their support for free enterprise. As I've pointed out, Delay was indeed a successful capitalist, and the other two were exceptionally well educated in this area.

Anyhow, the entire principle is bogus. Should only those who have made fortunes as capitalists be permitted to opine on the harm done by government programs?

Liberals often look for excuses to invalidate conservative speakers, rather than meet their argument. E.g., remember when Clarence Thomas disapproved of affirmative action? If libs followed Meyer's reasoning, they would have said that Thomas's view was particularly persuasive, because he had directly experienced AA. But, they actually claimed that Thomas shouldn't oppose AA because he had benefited from it.

I knew it was only a matter of time before someone defended William BJ Clinton. What a tool.

Oh and Clinton was/is an asshole. So are all Dems.

Great contributions, Donkey_Courage. Show us how it's done.

I can't let the trembling burro have the last word.

"Liberals often look for excuses to invalidate conservative speakers, rather than meet their argument."

Yah, but, ex-liberal, they make it so easy. Foley chases young men. Haggard chases somewhat older men. Politicos who like to imagine themselves as Titans Of The Marketplace turn out to have histories as not-particularly successful elbow-patch types. In fact, one might say, with some accuracy, that it's not so much that "we invalidate them" as that "they invalidate themselves".

Besides...when we *do* invalidate them, we do it without "looking for excuses", thank you very much.

And finally: I've got two parting words and a bit of Scripture for you, before I get bored with my keys and go bye-bye. And the two parting words and the bit of Scripture are:

"With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you" (Matthew 7:2)

"swift boating"

Have a nice night.

The *cough* Objective Historian:

"Socialist?" Just *when* exactly do you think we all fell of the turnip truck?

You're a SOCIAL DARWINIST. You have a SCREAMING CONTEMPT for the poor. You believe that personal behaviorial dysfunctions are all that separate the rich from the poor -- which is absolutely ridiculous, considering the rate of white-collar crime in this country.

Ho social grouping has a monopoly on virtue. But you want virtue to be defined tautologically -- by wealth. A rich person is more virtuous than a poor person because, well, he has more money. QE fucking D.

Economic behavior that has a broad effect on individuals deserves to be taxed and regulated. It is entirely non-comparable to personal behavior which affects oneself and those in one's immediate surroundings.

You're a fucking Libertarian ideologue is what you are.

Bob

DNS, rmck1:

"Earn" should be defined in the context of civil liberty, i.e., negotiated between the employer and employee. A CEO earns what he negotiates for himself in the market. If you want the government to decide what people earn, you are a Stalinist, i.e., an incomptent in terms of economic history and a dictator: the authoritarian.

Inheritance is unfair but so is freedom. I choose freedom as long as people have their needs provided for and have opportunties. Just because inheritance is unfair, it does not mean people have the right to intrude upon the private transfer of wealth between two people.

Live a life of good citizenship, i.e., remain sober, obey the laws, have children responsibly, work hard, recreate moderately, and you will have a life of health, comfort, productivity, and wealth. It is easy. You seem to think it's hard when it's not. The reason the USA middle is struggling is that Main Street has become Meth Street.

I have no contempt for the poor; nor do I consider poverty a vice. As I said in previous posts, the poor should be provided for according to their needs. But what prevents people from escaping poverty is their vices. Of course there are vicious rich; but they are vicious with their own funds, not with funds taken by government coercion that was earned with the blood, sweat, and tears of the USA taxpayer.

You people have this delusion that what the rich have is unfair and so have a right to take it. No; it's theirs and not yours and not the USAs. You may have the power to take it via majority rule, but that does not make it right.

I'm not a social darwinist; I'm a civil libertarian and a socialist believing that there is a balance required for social justice that provides for the poor, but also respects private property: tax as NEEDED, but respect people's privacy, labor, and property otherwise. Government redistributing wealth for it's own sake is not social justice; it's tyranny of the majority.

TOH

--->You people have this delusion that what the rich have is unfair and so have a right to take it. No; it's theirs and not yours and not the USAs. You may have the power to take it via majority rule, but that does not make it right.

Nobody has that fear but you, ya fucking idiot!

The problem have never been that the poor are going to eat the rich in this country; the poor in this country actually fucking respect the country and the laws a hell of a lot more than any rich motherfucker who is currently ripping this country off.

Raise the minimum wage and we'll see the standard of living go up for a lot of people. And if it comes out of the pocket of some cocksucker who has to make 11.4 million next year instead of 13.8 million, so fucking what?

You are flotsam and jetsam being flushed down my toilet right now, flush! there you go, turd.

Next troll, please?

mm242

JUST FYI:

Even in today's "low tax" environment, between federal, state, and local regular income taxes, capital gains tax, sales taxes, real estate taxes, luxury taxes, transfer taxes, inheritance taxes, etc., by the end of a high income earner's life they will have paid 55-70% of their income in taxes. This while most USA citizens pay little, nominal or very little in taxes during their lives. This while so many of the recipients of that taxpayer largess fritter away the sustenance and opportunties that those taxes provide. This while so many of them actively commit crimes while on the public dole. ENOUGH! Social justice at this point requires the poor and middle to look inward to the solution to their problems.

Further, we've seen the redistributive welfare state at work in the USA: 1964-1980. I'm old enough to be a witness; it was a counter-productive disaster: crime rampant, 12% unemployment, 20% interest rates, 13% inflation, USA defenseless. It was a time of misery; check out Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech (he never used the word, but in any case).

The break even point per capita in the USA is $15,000/year. If your paying less than that, you are being taken care by our CURRENTLY socialist system. Instead of greedily and enviously wanting more, have the respect for privacy and civil liberties you are always screaming about and leave people alone. Bill Gates is not hurting anyone; in fact he's a USA hero. What's his is his; not ours. He and the rich in the USA are doing their share; get your act together, obey the law, get a job; be grateful; act grateful.

TOH

--->The break even point per capita in the USA is $15,000/year. If your paying less than that, you are being taken care by our CURRENTLY socialist system. Instead of greedily and enviously wanting more, have the respect for privacy and civil liberties you are always screaming about and leave people alone. Bill Gates is not hurting anyone; in fact he's a USA hero. What's his is his; not ours. He and the rich in the USA are doing their share; get your act together, obey the law, get a job; be grateful; act grateful.

Shut your fucking mouth! You don't make any fucking sense!

FUCK OFF AND DIE!!!

Where do these Melvins come from? Is this like the shittiest site ever? Where is the goddamned outrage, fellow liberal travellers? You let this shit get spewed often enough and you get Karl Rove running the goddamned country is what you get.

mm242

--->This while so many of them actively commit crimes while on the public dole. ENOUGH! Social justice at this point requires the poor and middle to look inward to the solution to their problems.

The PUBLIC DOLE???

What is this, Birmingham, England? Skip around the corner for a cup of tea and collect your wages from the office, wot? Get a spot in the queue and take your comeuppance from the bird handing out the packets with the money off the dole, you know what I mean?

There is NO welfare anymore. People on welfare are lucky to have enough to eat, you clueless shitsack!

Where does this shit come from? Oh, I get it--nobody fights the trolls around here because they're afraid of a flame war.

FUCK THAT! I will flame your ass in a heartbeat, TOH!!!

mm242

The Objective Historian:

Please. The intellectual dishonesty is grating. You are not in any way, shape or form a "socialist." What you seem to be from my view is a standard-issue economic Libertarian attempting to use a civil libertarian justification for it. It doesn't remotely fly.

The reason why there's a distinction between a capital-L Libertarian (aside from being a party member) and a civil libertarian is because there's a distinction between the public and the private spheres.

You can't blame the problems of the poor on the poor and call yourself a socialist -- that's just nuts. Your views of the poor are in fact very old, and were extremely common during the Gilded Age, before there was anything like a federal social safety net, when Horatio Alger wrote his morally instructive novels about how plucky street urchins could get ahead in life, if they met a properly sympathetic captain of industry to give him the right instruction. Your analysis of social problems isn't remotely communitarian -- it's radically individualist conservative dogma.

It's also completely distorted; we have a meth problem to be sure in certain regions of the country but to say Main Street has become Meth Street is just beyond absurd.

Because the wealthy use more public resources than the less wealthy, it's just to tax them at a higher rate. This is common practice in the European countries that you'd doubtless call "socialist" (although they aren't, properly speaking, socialist either) -- but which have much more extensive social safety nets than does America.

But ooh ooh, their tax rates are too high!

Yeah, but to the extent that they are is the extent that they approach socialism.

At the very least, you can be honest with both yourself and with us and stop calling yourself a goddamned "socialist," okay?

It insults our intelligence.

Bob

MM 242, THANK YOU:

Here is what you wrote:

Nobody has that fear but you, ya fucking idiot!

The problem have never been that the poor are going to eat the rich in this country; the poor in this country actually fucking respect the country and the laws a hell of a lot more than any rich motherfucker who is currently ripping this country off.

Raise the minimum wage and we'll see the standard of living go up for a lot of people. And if it comes out of the pocket of some cocksucker who has to make 11.4 million next year instead of 13.8 million, so fucking what?

You are flotsam and jetsam being flushed down my toilet right now, flush! there you go, turd.

Next troll, please?

mm242

---

This is a perfect example of why people struggle in the USA; rather than have respect for others, they are vicious, boorish, scatological, and ill-mannered. As I said, Main Street has become Meth Street; hence the bifurcation of the USA between the virtuous rich and such sad pitiable cretins like MM242. And you are wrong: the poor are overwhelmingly disproportionately criminal; look at the statistics and the jails. Please, not the rich get away with it silliness; they do, but marginally. The poor disproportionately drink underage, do drugs, partake in prostitution, steal, rape, and kill. For every Koslowski, there are 10,000 poor criminals. And they are not stealing for food or diapers; for them the bling is the thing.

Just to comment; I'm fine with raising the minimum wage to $7 but we should require it to expire and be renewed whilst we see the result. And, let the press be as vigilant and scrutinizing on the effects as they are on the "malefactors of wealth" and the events in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it results in people losing their jobs or unemployment at the first rung of the employment ladder, then we should go back to $5.15. That's not a lot, but there is no substitute for having the opportunity to learn job-holding habits, the opportunity to impress and employer, the opportunity to earn money, and the lack of opportunity to be deliquent, fornicate wantonly, or commit crimes.

TOH

--->If it results in people losing their jobs or unemployment at the first rung of the employment ladder, then we should go back to $5.15.

You're NUTS!!! You can't give people a raise and then take it away if it looks like Mr. Moneybags is going to lose a portion of his already inflated income!!!

You Melvins! You don't fight this shit, and that's exactly what these Republicans are gonna do--they're gonna lie and demonize the poor and what do you have? You have it out there that it's possible to ROLL BACK the increase in the minimum wage that ISN'T EVEN HIGH ENOUGH RIGHT NOW!!!

FUCK OFF AND DIE, TOH!!! You are a brainless monkey with no common sense!!!

Pardon me, limosine liberals, while I gut this troll. Go back to your brie and your Babs Streisand DVD while I sort this out.

Melvins!

mm242

The Objective Historian:

You're for a mininum wage increase? That's good.

How about letting the government negotiate -- as do large insurance companies -- for bulk prices on prescription drugs for Medicare Part D?

How about removing some of the tax windfalls on the oil industry (which made record profits this year while gas was at $3+/gal) and use those funds to help jump start alternative energy?

How about making college tuition tax deductible again?

Just a couple things in the Democrats' first 100 days' agenda ...

Bob

--->The poor disproportionately drink underage, do drugs, partake in prostitution, steal, rape, and kill.

BULL FUCKING SHIT!!! BULL FUCKING SHIT!!!

Ever been around rich kids? I have! I was considered a rich kid, you fucking idiot!!! RICH KIDS DO ALL THE UNDERAGE DRINKING

RICH KIDS KILL AND GET AWAY WITH IT! RICH KIDS SELL THEMSELVES FOR SEX WHEN DADDY CUTS OFF THE MONEY!!!

Goddammit, these are vicious lies and you can't get away with this shit! Doesn't anyone around here moderate this fucking blog and stand up to any of these fucking trolls?

PUH-THET-IC!!!

mm242

mm242:

Something about your style sez to me I've seen this movie before :)

Bob

--->Something about your style sez to me I've seen this movie before :)

What the fuck are you talking about? You think this is a GAME when people like this start demonizing the poor?

Oh, did you miss your limo, rmck1???

What, the SHITHEADED Historian making sense to you or something>??>?

mm242

mm242:

I'll just be satisifed if he stops calling himself a socialist.

You've gotta take whatever small victories you can around here.

Bob

mm242:

If you think TOH "makes sense" to me, you haven't read any of my posts to him.

Bob

--->This is a perfect example of why people struggle in the USA; rather than have respect for others, they are vicious, boorish, scatological, and ill-mannered.

Why, oh, my, oh, I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon, but while you are spreading vicious lies and BULL FUCKING SHIT, oh, I beg your pardon, I just would pretty please like to speak up and in most respectlfful and somber tones quite politely ask that you SHOVE IT UP YOUR FUCKING ASS SIDEWAYS ON FIRE you moron.

Oh, my stars, was that not polite enough for the washington monthly/political animal limosine liberal crowd, oh, I do so beg your pardon.

mm242

So you have The Objective Historian and rmck1 on opposite sides. TOH is shit, plain and simple. rmck1, too polite and not forceful enough when countering this shit.

Sorry, that's my take. You gotta gut the trolls and hang the carcass in the public square. When the Italians did in Il Duce, they hung his carcass in the square for all to see? Why? Consequences, man, consequences. Advocate evil shit, you get sliced up, plain and simple.

But, oh pardon me, pardon me, yes, my deepeset sincere apologies for offending the sensibilities of so many well heeled limosine liberals, my apologies, oh so sorry.

mm242

RMCK1: YOU ARE JUST SO PERFECTLY IGNORANT I HAVE TO MAKE USE OF YOUR COMMENTS TO PROVE MY POINT:

rmck1: "You can't blame the problems of the poor on the poor and call yourself a socialist -- that's just nuts."

I am a socialist by which I mean I fight for social justice, including economic justice; it also means I do not believe in Social Darwinism, unfettered economic freedom, or government minimalism. I do believe government should involve itself in society to promote social justice. I just believe you and your ilk of Socialists do it poorly, do it for selfish reasons, do it delusionally, and do it hypocritically. I'm a realistic and effective socialist; you are a deluded and incompetent socialist. Your statement above is my proof.

Your quote above is excellent proof of your cognitive dissonance. You are flat out WRONG.

One ought not to inaccurately blame the poor for poverty along the lines of your mini-lecture above. I agree. But,
a socialist (one who would actually help the poor rather than presume on the best about them despite reality) MUST assign to the behavior of the poor the cause of their poverty when that is the case: procreation irresponsibility, drug abuse, dereliction of personal responsibilities. Failing to do so as a worldview is exactly why Socialism fails where and when it does. It equates the poor with virtue and poverty with injustice. Successful socialism must understand poverty as it is, not as they fantasize it to be.

There is a distinction between the public and the private spheres - yes. And people's incomes, homes, bank accounts, financial information, and personal information (# of kids, etc.) are squarely in the PRIVATE SPHERE. That makes your wanton eagerness to intrude upon it to tax them for reasons beyond necessity (i.e., to redistribute the money they earned) utterly contemptible. Your as authoritarian as any bedroom-intruding social conservative.

TOH

mm242:

There are other ways of countering shit than hurling turds.

I mean, if that's your specialty, by all means hurl away :)

There's nothing wrong with a little division of labor.

Bob

Trolls running wild on your blog? Hey MAYBE IF YOU FUCKING FIGHT THE TROLLS you might, you know, convince them to leave but IF YOU KISS THEIR GODDAMNED ASS, Guess What???

They set up shop and start kicking the goalposts closer and closer together and the next thing you know you're fucked.

Nice move. What a shitty, shitty, shitty way to do bidness, man.

mm242

--->MUST assign to the behavior of the poor the cause of their poverty when that is the case: procreation irresponsibility, drug abuse, dereliction of personal responsibilities. Failing to do so as a worldview is exactly why Socialism fails where and when it does. It equates the poor with virtue and poverty with injustice. Successful socialism must understand poverty as it is, not as they fantasize it to be.

HA HAH Hha ha ha ha, fucker!!

You must have missed what I said earlier about rich kids! Care to explain how rich kids are the source of so much crime and vandalism and drug abuse???

No, that would shatter your worldview and cause you to crawl back under the covers and hate people for grins and giggles, right? RIGHT?

FUCK OFF AND DIE!!!

mm242

mm242:

TOH isn't a toxic troll. There are other trolls here who are quite toxic, but that's more a matter of obsessive posting and other forms of obnoxious behavior than content.

I'd just prefer to have rational debates, is all. If you'd rather get medieval on his ass, that's your choice and I respect it.

But getting medieval on someone's ass is not in everybody's toolkit. Nor should it be.

Right?

Bob

--->There are other ways of countering shit than hurling turds.

Shit gets thrown at you, you act like a gunshy pussy???

No, you FIGHT the POWER and you FIGHT the FILTH and you hand their ass back to them because if they think you are WEAK they will press the advantage.

Ever do martial arts? I have my own dojo.

I use a purely offensive form of martial arts, it stresses pressure points and vulnerability zones on the opponent. The neck, the knees and the kidneys are points of attack, you use everything at your disposal, you disable your opponent and you NEVER BACK DOWN and you NEVER TAKE SHIT!!!

Melvins, just Melvins. Won't fight the evil shit, got to ride in limos and act polite.

Oh, I'm SSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOOO sorry.

mm242

--->But getting medieval on someone's ass is not in everybody's toolkit. Nor should it be.

Disagree completely, because that's a good way to get rolled like a bum.

Toxic or non-toxic==what the fuck does that have to do with anything??? Look at the demonization of the poor and the outright lies, brother. You think it's okay to let this shit fly??? I don't think so.

Main tenet of my dojo: Finish the Fight Before it Starts.

mm242

Is there a FAQ for the blog? Someone wanna E-mail it to me?

Unlike the fucking trolls I fucking use a real E=-mail address.

But, oh, pardon me if I'm rude and impertinent to ask for someone to explain shit to me. Oh, I am so grateful, oh yes.

mm242

Blake: great catch, pal. I hadn't even spotted my typo. I meant to say "ayngrandize" which is another coinage, perhaps not so apt as yours! My typing is nuanced Gingrichlike Chimpaguery.

mm242:

No, you're missing my point.

There are other ways to fight the evil shit. Learning how to effectively counter bad arguments through debate is important as well.

Besides, it's very rare that you drive a troll out of your corner of cyberspace by flaming them -- if that's indeed your goal.

Bob

They're failed Straussians, not over-aged Randians.

--->Besides, it's very rare that you drive a troll out of your corner of cyberspace by flaming them -- if that's indeed your goal.

Speaking as a sys admin who watched the assholes from freeperdom work over the last few years, I think you're in denial, brother.

FREEPERS use denial of service attacks, use coordinated efforts to destabilize discussion groups and they even post illegal material to draw unnecessary attention to shit.

I realize none of you have prolly done IT work on beahalf of Democratic campaigns and field offices, but I don't mean to offend. You GOTTA fight this shit and you GOTTA toughen up.

Thick skin helps, kicking them and gutting them helps, but kissing their ass? They do a little dance, call in more freepers, and they go to town.

THAT IS WHAT YOU HAVE ON THIS BLOG RIGHT NOW!!! I'll bet it's 5 to 10 Freepers, low level shitheads, ripping up discussion threads and jacking with peoples e-mail. Bet you a grand it's what you got here.

KICK THE TROLLS TO THE CURB AND FIGHT!

Or don't, pussies. It's your choice. Gawd, I get flamed by more of my own kind than anyone else on this blog? What the fucking fuck???

mm242

MM242, RMCK1:

For the record, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were all "socialists"; Robespierre, too. MM242, you remind me of all four; my adversaries, in terms of political philosophy. That's why I've got you adn your kind in my sights, as it were. Keep ranting as you like; but should you encounter me, keep your hands were I can see 'em; I don't want to have to hurt you.

I'm a socialist, RMCK1, who fears the tyranny that socialism by definition is; it is the government, albeit majority-driven in a democracy, but authoritarian none the less, dictating to people how they must behave. Hence, I'm for surgical socialism: minimal, effective, and cautious government involvement in society.

Government negotiating for drugs seems like price controls, but indirect. Is that fair? Why should drug companies be prevented from forming a monopoly to control prices but then sell to a monopoly that seeks to control prices? They worked to make the drugs, why can't they and their shareholders profit in the normal course of business for their sale? Will not price controls inhibit future R&D? That is rhetorical; yes.

Tax breaks for oil companies? Is there a point to them, i.e., to encourage innovation in exploration, etc. It's too esoteric for me to have an opinion. But, I'm quite sure it's more complicated than you either think or are professing.

College tuition tax deductible? Great . . . for the rich. But, OK. But how about only for those who maintain a 2.5 GPA? After all, "fat, drunk, and stupid" are no way to spend taxpayer's money (which is what a tax credit practically is).

RMCK1: How about vouchers? Redistribution of wealth in this country is best accomplished by redistributing skills; it's time to end the Boss Tweed Public School/Democratic Party Slush Fund system in the USA. The Democrats talk about opportunity, but when it comes to children they deny it. Disgusting.

Or even better, how about ending the UFT and the NEA (and their local equivalents) right to combine to form a monopoly in restraint of trade? Or are you an advocate for the United Federation of Zombies, er, Teachers.

TOH

And in case you pussies didn't notice, TOH fucked off and can't handle what I have been throwing at him, huh?

Oh did the silence confuse you limolibs into thinking your silence and your meditative humming got him to fuck off>???

mm242

The Objective Historian:

Well, that's just the ol' jujitsu-the-meme routine, trying to co-opt the rhetoric of socialism the way the right tried to co-opt the rhetoric of racial equality. I'm glad that you are at least admitting that "socialism" is an inaccurate label for your views. But here's why you're wrong more broadly as well:

America doesn't have a hugely onerous tax burden relative to the G8. There have also been studies done a number of years ago which demonstrate that America gets more bang from its buck tax-wise than any of the other industrial economies in the G8. So it's not like our initiative is being stifled by six-week vacations and government-subsidized daycare or anything.

mercury man is also quite correct: There's very little welfare for the able-bodied to speak of anymore. And merc is also correct that you can see bad character aplenty in the children of wealthy parents. In fact, since it's a lot harder to continue to scrape by after a major life fuckup when you're poor than when you have a family to bail you out -- there may very well be an inverse correlation. Do you honestly think that more poor women have multiple abortions than rich women?

Of course not. It's much easier for wealthy women to get the reproductive medical care and proceedures that they need.

So you've got to dispense with this peg of your argument as well. The poor are no less virtuous as a class than the wealthy. They're just more insulated from the consequences of their actions.

Bob

FUCK YOU TOH!!!

YOU LIE like a whore on a featherbed!!!

--->For the record, Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini were all "socialists"; Robespierre, too.

NO! Fascist, Communist, Fascist, you moron!!!

--->That's why I've got you adn your kind in my sights, as it were. Keep ranting as you like; but should you encounter me, keep your hands were I can see 'em; I don't want to have to hurt you.

Uh huh, riiiiiiight! Three seconds after meeting me I will have cracked yout elbow back behind your ear, spun you, and planted my fist into your right kidney, shutting it down and making piss fly out of you like a balloon being thrown down a flight of stairs onto concrete.

Everything you say is a LIE!!! FUCK OFF AND DIE!!!

mm242

Gawd, you limolibs can sing Easy Like Sunday Morning all you want, me, I'll fight trolls and bust their skulls open and smear their brains on me like a trophy just cuz they DESERVE it for LYING about the poor and the innocent in this country.

THEY ARE SHITTING ON THE AMERICAN DREAM while you WONDER IF YOU'RE BEING POLITE ENOUGH!@!!

Fucking Melvins, I'm gone.

mm242

mm242: valium.

RMCK1:

We have more in common than you might think. I have compassion for the poor, but I've lived through the 60s and the 70s. The Great Society Program was a failure and Reaganomics was generally a success in addressing those failures; it was, imperfectly so. Wealth, actual, imputed, and by way of opportunities for education and employment did trickle down. Compare the life a poor child faces today with the one the same child faced in 1978, including such non-economic factors as crime, etc. It is much better today.

As socialists, as social scientists, it's for us to determine what went wrong, what went right, and try to make progress. Re-doing the policies of the 1960s is not progress, it's regress.

And socialism must be effective to be viable. Where it has failed, e.g., in public education, we must fix it. That is why vouchers is a solution. It is still socialism, i.e., government-funded, but it permits competition to be effective socialism. There will be drawbacks; but we can address those along the way. The insane model for education now is a failure.

Good socialism recognizes when the market works better than the government; it also recognizes when the behavior of the poor IS ACTUALLY the problem instead of maniacally denying it; it also respects liberty and an essential criterion of social justice, including economic liberty. I'm for fostering equality where it is best fostered: by changing the behavior of the poor. Giving people money to sit on the street corner, procreate more irresponsibility, and drink and do drugs, and commit crime (the 1970s in a nutshell; still a mainstay of urban-USA-Democratic policy) is not good socialism. Any other solution, including taking what belongs to others however rich they are, is tyrannical and ineffective in the long-term.

TOH

mm242:

Would you like me to be honest for a minute?

Truthfully, you really don't sound like a sysadmin. In over a decade on message fora, I've never encountered a sysadmin who encouraged flamewars. Flamewars tend to exacerbate whatever problems with trolls already exist.

Now ... since the election, the trolls here have kind of been demoralized. There aren't as many of them, and the ones who remain aren't putting up much of a fight, generally speaking. The just sort of snark once or twice and split. There's one really obnoxious troll here (who shall always and forever remain nameless from me), but this person isn't on the blog. I guarantee you, merc, if he were in this thread right now, you couldn't possibly remove him by flaming him -- you would, rather, provoke him and make the thread destruction worse.

Now most people who come here don't come to watch flamewars; they come to debate issues. And sure -- we all love a good snark at the expense of a nasty troll.

But we needn't make it some kind of self-glorifying obsession, either.

Bob

RMCK1:

I'm reading your post; whoa. Er, uh, socialism is exactly an apt approximation of my views. Just as someone who is pro-economic liberty is not extremely so, i.e., commonly financed military, etc., I am not doctrinaire in my socialism. I'm for effective government involvement in all aspects of society to advance social justice. Where to you think I admitted I'm not a socialist?

TOH

RMCK1:

You still seem not to get it; the rich may be as debauched as the poor (they are not). But they pay for their own mistakes. The poor are living off of the coerced takings of people's private earnings and/or wealth. The poor have their food, shelter, medical care, and clothes (and that of their children they could not afford) paid for by the government's authoritarian intrusion upon the PRIVATE LIVES of citizen-taxpayers. When you are paying your own way or debauched on the VOLUNTARY funds of your parents or family, that is politically different. The vices of the rich, mere vices as opposed to criminal acts, only are a burden on themselves. The vices of the poor are a burden on people's freedom.

And the G8; speaking of welfare . . . they are all our functional dependents on this earth, depending on us to underwrite them militarily, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. We, the USA taxpayer, are paying in our way for their welfare state, too.

Summarizing: good socialism respects liberty. If you want 6 weeks off, don't force it from people at the point of a gun - that's tyranny. Earn it, negotiate for it, whatever; but, don't be a tyrant. Respect freedom.

TOH

TOH:

You're a methodological individualist. You have a radically individualistic analysis of social problems. You refuse to see the behavior of the poor in a social context, and you insist that they "rise above" the temptations that every human faces in a way that's colossally unjust because you don't need to ask the same of wealthy people.

You're essentially blaming the poor for their problems. Wealthy people can hire lawyers, go to rehab clinics, get abortions, get birth control, carry guns in many areas and not worry about becoming homeless with three kids if they happen to lose their jobs.

Life is much more burdensome on poor people than it is on rich people -- and insisting that they rise above the temptations of life as an answer to their problem is straight out of the 19th century.

It is truly Social Darwinist rhetoric -- because you really only do it half-seriously. You're not their pastor, TOH. What you're really saying is that if they *can't* get out of their own ways -- then they're fucked and nobody's responsible for their problems but themselves.

But you see -- their problems remain *social* problems, anyway. And that's what I'm talking about.

You refuse to acknowledge the social context of social problems.

Bob

MM 242:

I'll re-read your posts; I did not notice a substantive point. Was there one? Can you express it briefly and without profanity? I'll bitch-slap you if you want me to so badly. You seem to; I guess we know your deal.

TOH

TOH:

Liberty and equality are an inevitable tradoff.

You're way too far over on the liberty scale to remotely qualify as a "socialist" by any objective standard. You're a garden-variety Libertarian. Not a radical anti-statist, but the sort of Libertarian who might vote for a Libertarian Party candidate. You believe in a minimal state. Period. Full stop.

And to call Europe in debt to America *culturally* is probably the most absurdly jingoistic statement I've ever heard in my life.

Tell it to the countries that produced Shakespeare, Beethoven and Michaelangelo.

Bob

MM 242:

Now I think I get your point: the rich are as vicious and deliquent and criminal as the poor. Who can say?

But my point is that after their debaucheries, the rich are still rich and hence not a burden on the USA taxpayer. When the poor are delinquent, they are an ever increasing burden on the USA taxpayer. Taxes being an intrusion on civil liberties, the burden of the deliquent poor is a problem we socialists have to address urgently; being autonomous and self-financing, the deliquent rich are a marginal issue.

TOH

TOH:

The delinquent rich are a marginal issue?

What happened to that $9 billion in Iraq for reconstruction that just sort of, umm, disappeared?

What about what Enron did -- not merely to their employees who were bilked out of their retirements, but to energy prices in California?

What about violent men who can continually post bail and continue to terrorize and abuse their girlfriends and wives because they happen to be gainfully employed?

Just for a few, you know, obvious examples.

Bob

Airports are almost always public facilities. Aviation has an entire branch of the government, and airports are under the ICE. How exactly is it "laissez faire"?

RMCK1 AND MM242:

Sillies; you speak naively and humorously about "going medieval" when you really should remember what the Middle Ages were like. The deluded masses have this fantasy that they have the power to take what they want. If there is a real class warfare in the USA, the poor are going to be floating into the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico: why? It's called the NRA. Yeah.

MM 242: Wait - tell me how great you are with nunchucks. What a goof you are. Classic comedy. Wait - right now, go to the mirror and say: "Are you looking at me, punk?"

MM242: I don't demonize poor. I recognize poverty for what it is.

RMCK1: The rich, born and self-made, are more virtuous than the poor; statistically speaking they are more sober, obey the law, and fulfill their responsibilities as students and employees and citizens. Goldman Sachs, IBM, and Cravath, Swaine, and Moore, doe not care what your parents have in the bank. It requires a history of proven virtue to het those jobs. Your doing the poor a disservice to deny it. Now, I agree the causes of the poor's relative depravity are not their fault necessarily. They need our help; principally via the school system. Again, this confirms my point; the greatest cause of poverty in the USA today, by way of an institution, is the Democratic Party. They've destroyed our public schools with their Boss Tweed/United Federation of Zombies/Democratic Party Slush Fund policies. So while I assign the causes of poverty to poor people's behavior, I don't blame them necessarily. That depends on the individual case. I do however blame the real culprits: first and foremost: the Democratic Party, the UFT, and the NEA - and their apologists and political enablers, i.e., anyone who votes Democrat.

RMCK1: WRONG! I'm not an individualist, I'm a socialist. The difference being that I do realize that the poor lack insulation from their vices and also lack the social context that is conducive to forming good life habits. The difference between you and me is what to do about that. You want to tax rich people and give their money to poor people. What that does to solve the problem, I don't see. I see them having more resources to engage in the same habits that are not the cause of their poverty, per se, but the cause of their inability to rise from it. I see them doing more drugs, avoiding more school-work and work-work, and having more children they cannot afford.

I'm not an individualist, a social darwinist, or a villifier of the poor. I'm a socialist who demands of himself and others that compassion for the poor mean an awareness of the part their behavior plays in their on-going, trans-generational poverty and demands that we socialists create policies that actually change that behavior rather than incentivize it. If you want to fix poverty, the solution is not to control the incomes of the rich - that reduces efficient capital formation, reduces jobs, and lessons the public resources available for welfare; the solution is to control the poor. That is socialism, too.

TOH

RMCK1:

OK, more anecdotes; how irrelevant. So you think it's realistic that people in country clubs and prep schools are as deliquent and criminal as people in ghettos? Well, that explains why the Democrats failed so miserably in the 1960s and the 1970s and why those same policies will fail again. RMCK1, tell me, why is it that wherever your policies are adopted, federally and locally, disaster and civil disintegration ensue, visiting poverty and misery first and foremost on the poorest? For example, USA and New York City, 1964-1980 (note, domestically Nixon was a centrist and had to work with a radically left-wing Congress). Why did you make things worse? I'll tell you; you mistakenly believe the poor are equally virtuous as the rich. You are wrong and your failed policies proved it. Your points to the debauched rich are only anecdotes. Statistically and cummulatively, the rich are virtuous and the poor are derelict; that is more so now than ever. The solution to poverty requires that we compel poor people to behave virtuously.

TOH

RMCK1:

The waste of public funds in urban USA (eg South Bronx) and the public school system (UFT/NEA) makes whatever waste in Iraq and in Enron look like a flea on a dog: like I said, marginal. Get real, man.

But thanks for those examples of government failure; so, the less government management of programs the better, right? Let's apply that to schools, housing, etc. Vouchers!

TOH

I'll check back tomorrow.

RMCK1: Your the worst kind of socialist: deluded and incompetent, and thus the poor's worst nightmare. No offense. Still, what about the schools; tell me how we don't spend enough and how the problem is the USA taxpayer rather than the UFT and the NEA and poor and middle income children and parents themselves. I could use a laugh.

TOH

anyone who's ever watched either Girls Gone Wild or the Bush twins, or taken a serious loom at GWB's early life, his financing of an abortion, his cocaine and alcohol addictions, his cowardly pussying out of vietnam and TANG duties, and his wife's killing of a boyfriend ... would not be so quick to idoloze the supposed virtues of the rich.

my god ... the very man who's cock they've been so desperately sucking these last 6 yrs is worse white trash than any of them can ever hope to be. ... GWB and his entire family is like the city of dallas writ large, lacking some strippers ... which will change when jenna gets a little older, I'm sure.

donkey: WHY you want to confiscate other people's money.

shedding blood in defense of freedom is good..

but don't raise my taxes...

"But, calling those with different beliefs "weirdos" is not an argument."

The moderate Republicans made the mistake of not painting the weirdos as weirdos, and look what happened to them.

They're weirdos. I expect them all to show up on Dateline's Catch a Predator segment sooner or later. Give it time.

--->Truthfully, you really don't sound like a sysadmin. In over a decade on message fora, I've never encountered a sysadmin who encouraged flamewars. Flamewars tend to exacerbate whatever problems with trolls already exist.

What good is my certification from Cisco, then? What good is my Novell certification then?

How can people who know nothing cast aspersions?

How can people accept what TOH is spewing? Filthy shit like that needs to be slapped down and challenged.

Surrender monkeys! Feather merchants!

Flame wars with Republican shill trolls are all that stands between us and the demonization of the poor (for example) creeping into the consciousness of the American public.

Melvins...

mm242

It's just that no one has been willing to say it until now:

Hardly. Lots of people said it. Too few heard.

My compliments to the posters especially TOH and RMCK1 - great stuff.

I will admit that I am a believer in the RMCK1 philosophy, but I understand the TOH point of view. You can "make it to the top" in this country if your education, intelligence are matched with desire. I took the ride, but I stepped off, when it seemed that ride could only be accomplished by being a ruthless prick and a sellout on my principles. I will take some of the topics and try to put my own mid western slant on it, but I will start out with the following premise.

The east coast (DC and New York) make absolutely nothing of value. New York has been manipulating the flow of capital since its inception and is nothing more than a large parasite taking the skim. The Erie Canal was designed to take the natural resources of the heartland and let robber barons live like Kings in the City. The Erie Canal has evolved into the New York Stock Exchange where the manipulation of money is the paramount goal. The things DC makes are even less apparent, but one can draw the conclusion that the influence of Wall Street manipulates DC into ensuring the grease of capitalism (oil) continues to flow, while handing out earmarks to rubes in the home states that fund the political beast.

TOH let me start out by saying that your arguments seem to be predicated on might makes right and the sins of the past are the birth pangs of bright future. The land rights that you found your un fettered wealth passage beliefs on were lifted from the Indians and the people that hold title to these lands today are descendents of thieves at worst and damned good rationalizers (like you) at best.

With the premises out of the way, let’s take on the Great Society. The Great Society was an abject failure for a very simple reason, racism. The concept was great, but you cannot force whites and blacks to live together anymore than you can stop alcoholics from drinking - They have to want to do it. The implementation of the Great Society caused the white community to use its influence in the legislature to build the white escape routes out of the communities, by funding roads, new suburbs and private schools. It did not work because the liberals and conservatives were of a like mind – Not on the back of my child! And yes, TOH the loss of role models from all walks of life fleeing the other contributed to the failure of the program just as much as the ineptitude of the black leadership when it finally had the power to run the show. What society did not discuss was power in government is nothing without economic power and the Great Society program only exacerbated the divide. The Great Society was the wrong approach for a problem that had 250 year old roots. Remember there was no wealth (inherited or inheritable) to pass on in the African American communities. Due to the fracturing of families by slavery the talents and processions that a father passes to his son were non existent.

TOH the molly coddling of the little rich boys with connections does not a Great Society make. We shall see how well the marshmallow hands of the rich do, when times get tough.

Let me throw in a side fact about poverty: The majority of minimum wage earners are not poor. In fact, more than half are above double the federal poverty line.

Your homework for today is to explain this apparent inconsistency. If you give up, the answer is at http://www.epionline.org/study_detail.cfm?sid=74

First thing man; an intelligent person tries to understand the root cause of an issue. So if the African American male is as you say, there must be a cause. I would tend to say that my reasoning on the issue presents this case, while you say you cannot explain. No you can explain, as the data you present indicates your proclivities but lack the fortitude. The data you present indicates that the American environment is perfect medium for success, so the conclusion you do not state is it is genetics that causes the behavior. Yes our white forefathers were genetically superior to the Indians, because the Indians were too stupid to take all the American resources and build ships to attack Europe. Therefore the spoils go to the victors. You are part of the Pyramid scheme that maintains this process. A lot of slaves built the pyramids that rot in dust for a debauched king. The same fate will be fall those that build the Pyramid on Wall Street. We might have a hell of building, but everything else will be dust.

I agreed that it is hard work and you seem to carry that philosophy as did I, but instead of rationalizing my wealth, I recognized what my work was doing. It is disingenuous to think that the capitalist culture creates enough of diversity in jobs to support the people of a given area. I suspect you grew up a poor, intelligent white boy, got a good education and strove to the top. You never honor your hometown or your early childhood, because you were embarrassed to be from that place. You are at a place that you always deserved.

You responded to part of my post, and reacted quit vociferously implying that racism had nothing to do with anything. Sorry, but you must not be a very good data analyst; whoever wins, writes history and you must have read it all. But try to walk around in someone else's shoes; if you can.

Please turn your light on the fact that DC and New York make nothing of value, they use the whip hand (economics or military) to rob the uneducated (lacking power) of their natural resources to live like Kings. Geez it sounds a lot like Iraq.

Rationalize away TOH as you are very articulate and very good at it, from your point of view.

TOH:

Good god, I can't believe you actually said this:
African-Americans, particularly males, are statistically and cummulatively the most derelict, debauched, and criminal members of USA society - overwhelmingly - OVERWHELMINGLY! Why they are so depraved, that's a good question that I can not answer...

Could hundreds of years of slavery, brutality, and racial discrimination have perhaps had something to do with this?

My own experience has taught me about the multi-generational effects of emotional and psychological abuse, so I HAVE to see a relationship between racism directed at African Americans and the kinds of social ills you point to.

Reading through yesterday's posts, I came to agree with a great deal of what you were saying -- or, rather, to acknoweldge that, in spite of certain glaring gaps in your reasoning, there are some things we agree on. But your assertion that the strong correlation between being African-American and being poor has nothing to do with racism is just stupefyingly, repulsively, outrageously wrong.

Greg Hunter & DNS:

Good posts.

Aside from the denial of racism (and that's all it is -- denial), where I find TOH's morality most deficient is this:

I got him to admit that "debauchery" is a human problem, affecting all of us regarding of income. In fact, it would be difficult to have an individualist analysis of social problems without accepting that premise. And I think the reason he's now ranting at black males is to back his way out of the implication of his point last night. Of course, it backs his way out of nothing and goes straight into a sickening genetic determinism that I pegged as Social Darwinism.

When pressed on this point, this rationalizing blob will back off this argument and admit that yes, the wealthy are debauched, too. But since the wealthy can afford to clean up their own messes (lawyers, licensed firearms, abortions, birth control, savings, a family to run to, etc.), the debauchery of the poor puts an expense on all of society, through the tax-funded ways to address it. Therefore, in effect, the poor should be held to a *greater* level of personal responsibility than the rich, because of the tax burden involved in coping with the fallout from the poor's personal dysfunctions.

So to TOH, being wealthy means you have less of a need to be personally accountable. Because your messes are dealt with privately.

Am I the only one who finds this morally monstrous?

Bob

--->Am I the only one who finds this morally monstrous?

Hear, hear!

Answer to the riddle: Why is it that the majority of minimum wage earners are not poor? How can more than half be above double the federal poverty line?

The answer is that most minimum wage earners are second or third earners in a family that's well above the poverty line.

PEOPLE OF EARTH:

I never denied racism in the USA; re-read my posts. It exists, too often, and I despise it with all my heart.

I just deny it as more than a minute and marginal cause of poverty in the African-American community. The cause of that poverty is cultural.

As a hypothetical - the Jones family. The Jones family is depraved, derelict, deliquent, and criminal. For generation after generation, the Jones fathers and mothers, by thought, word, and deed, have instilled in their children a proclivity to be depraved, derelict, deliquent, and criminal and being so, to seek to live among others so disposed. They've formed micro-communities of Jones-type families who inter breed. These communities are historically poor and crime-ridden. The Jones family would change, but they rather enjoy alcohol, drugs, sex, under-employment, welfare, and taking illegally what they want when they can't afford it. They prefer it to sobriety, hard work, sexual restraint, and lawfulness. Hence the Jones family and their fellow residents of their micro-community are not rising socio-economically and are not changing generation to generation, but instead are getting worse along most relevant statistical categories. Where was discrimination a factor in the Jones family's problems?

"Reading through yesterday's posts, I came to agree with a great deal of what you were saying -- or, rather, to acknoweldge that, in spite of certain glaring gaps in your reasoning, there are some things we agree on. But your assertion that the strong correlation between being African-American and being poor has nothing to do with racism is just stupefyingly, repulsively, outrageously wrong."

No, you are wrong; to presume that that the strong correlation between poverty, depravity, and being an African-American male is due to racism qua racism, i.e., Caucasians discriminating against African-Americans, has been the crux of the misfeasance in social and economic welfare policy for the past 40 years. The facts point to a different story completely as books by African-American academics Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell prove. In the 1950s, the African-American people were relatively healthy: employed, sober, only marginally less likely to form solid nuclear families, and more successful in elementary and secondary school. They were gradually on their way to catching up statistically to the USA averages in categories that measure statistical personal achievement. Then the Democratic Party of the 1960s arrived and convinced them that their lack of achievement was racism-based (note - there was racism, but that does not mean it is significant toward poverty) and that welfare was their "due" for years of discrimination. Then the African-American community fell off the cliff. None of it having to do with Caucasians discriminating against them.

African-Americans are statistically deliquent, depraved, and criminal and thus are statitically poor. If all Caucasian-Americans disappeared tomorrow and African-Americans behaved as they do, their lot would be worse not better; the tax base to pay for their depravity would disappear. I don't credit genetics with the problem, but behavior and culture which are largely independent of racism. The sooner we stop misleading African-Americans, DNS, to believe their plight is due substantively to racism (again, which does exist and is something we should address concurrently but is not a cause of poverty) we TELL THE TRUTH TO POWER (THE POWER OF EGO) that African-Americans are statistically poor because they are statistically ethical cretins, the sooner, hopefully, they will behave more ethically, cummulatively and statistically, and the sooner they will get back on the track they were on in 1960. There is only one way to end poverty: study, work, procreate responsibly, and recreate responsibly AND LEGALLY. There is only one way to end racism: cummulative and statistical to do these same things.

The Democratic Party's solution to African-American poverty, to blame racism and give African-Americans (and all pooor) cash and in-kind benefits to subsidize the very depravity and procreative irresponsibility that is keeping them individually and communally poor is counter productive: proof? USA, NYC 1964-1980. The African-American community is still recovering from that socio-economic WMD that the DEMOCRATIC PARTY dropped on them. With my help, and by ignoring RMCK1, DNS, GREG HUNTER, AND MM 242, they might recover more quickly. THE DOCTOR IS IN!

On a side note, the primary cause of racism today is the statistical and cummulative behavior of African-Americans. When they change, they will be regarded as were all the other ethnic groups. Also, the USA is the most ausicious place in the world for people of Sub-Saharan ethnicity to be, so it's time to stop complaining - continue to fight racism through the 24/7/365 of hard work and through advocacy - but stop complaining. Slavery was a BENEFIT to these African-Americans; if not for slavery they'd be back in the Congo with a 99% chance (if they are not the Strong Man) of having an AK-47 rammed into the small of their back, er, uh, if not slaves per se, the equivalent. The irony: USA slavery and brutality past saved THESE African-Americans from African quasi-slavery.

As I said, deluded and incompetent socialists like RMCK1 and the rest of you are the African-American community's especially, and the poor community generally's, worse cause of continued misery. Hopefully I can rescue them from you in time.

TOH

PS I'll respond to the other posts in 4-5 hours (7p Eastern now). I am learning a lot from you folks and I mean that in range of ways from cordial to friendly, depending; I think you can suppose which label fits whom.

RMCK1:

Debauchery is a human problem; we are all debauched. But some of us are debauched at the end of our work/study day and only occasionally. Others are debauched 24/7/365.25, always on the look out to maximize their depravities through living on the dole, through loafing, through promiscuity (which is only a problem where it's pursuit is life-draining in terms of time and poverty creating in terms of unafforded children), through alcohol and drugs. The rich are debauched responsibly, i.e., after living in such a way that assures they are not a burden on the USA taxpayer. The poor, statistically and cummulatively, are debauched at the expense of other people's (STRANGERS TO THEM AND HARD WORKING USA CITIZENS) blood, sweat, and tears. THAT IS MORALLY REPRHENSIBLE! And that is largely thanks to the Democratic Party, by thought, word, deed, and legislation telling those parasitic and debauched poor: "It's cool man; when your stash runs out, or you run out of bullets, or girlfriend #5 has provided more proof of your manhood, we'll just tax people more."

TOH

Hey TOH, if you are still around: You pretty much neglected my deconstruction of the whole intellectual basis for the Laissez-faire system, except for a brief concession about the favor of incorporation. You forgot all about the Fed's manipulation of interest rates and the money supply, but worst of all: your pretense that CEOs get paid according to their "value" in a free-market sense. No, they don't, and any mildly-informed person knows why. In a real free market, buyers must pick and choose using a limited zero-sum reserve of *their own funds.* They know that spending X$ on choice A is literally X$ less they can spend on other things for themselves. However, the Boards that pick CEO pay aren't doing that: they are selecting how much of the company's money is used for that. Unlike a real employer, they don't lose any more for themselves by paying the CEO 50M/y instead of 30M - in fact, they'll get more, since being "each other's poodles" as even plutotwit George Will admitted - the CEO can make their own pay cushier. But like most libertoonians, you don't appreciate such ironies - it's all one big dumb Econ 101 in Kindergarten class.

Tyrannogenius

RMCK1:

You seem to feel the great injustice in the USA is that the poor, as abundantly provided for substantively by the blood, sweat, and tears of the USA taxpayer - shelter, food, clothes, medical - and as abundantly provided for in terms of opportunity by the blood, sweat, and tears of the USA taxpayer - education, jobs, public safety, infrastructure, public recreation - with all this, the great crisis, the great injustice, is that the poor can not successfully be AS DEBAUCHED AS the rich. Wow; so taking care of poor people is not enough - the USA taxpayer has to pay for their heroin, too. Well, that is what the 70s were about . . . NEVER AGAIN, Democrats.

Again, in actually RMCK1's complaint in essence, "framing" and rhetoric and delusions aside, is that the poor cannot successfully be FAR MORE DEBAUCHED than the wealthy. The wealthy, ~ $1M+, in the USA are only marginally born-wealthy, most are self-made vis-a-vis their relatively virtuous and/or disciplined lifestyles. The poor in the USA, meaning the ones who remain poor and do not succeed quickly, are ethical cretins, the most selfish and greedy and instant-gratification demanding strata of our society; they are a disgrace to the hardworking USA taxpayer who takes care of them, cradle to grave, paying for their sustenance, their depravities, their crimes AND, AND, AND, picking up their $15,000/person tab that it costs to keep the USA running.

Take just a small portion of that cynicism and scrutiny that you focus on the GOP and the wealthy and direct it on the private lives of the poor (and the middle income, too) and you'll find the real cause of the bifurcation of wealth in the USA. There are as Edwards says 2 Americas evolving: providers and parasites.

TOH

In the 1950s, the African-American people were relatively healthy: employed, sober, only marginally less likely to form solid nuclear families, and more successful in elementary and secondary school. They were gradually on their way to catching up statistically to the USA averages in categories that measure statistical personal achievement. Then the Democratic Party of the 1960s arrived and convinced them that their lack of achievement was racism-based (note - there was racism, but that does not mean it is significant toward poverty) and that welfare was their "due" for years of discrimination. Then the African-American community fell off the cliff. None of it having to do with Caucasians discriminating against them.

Yes we can agree on this, as African Americans had assumed their place in society, the downtowns were bustling and as long as he performed service work there he was fine. He could not get a job in the factories at a time when whites were being shipped in from Appalachia to work. He stayed were he was and shopped where his own kind owned the stores. Yes the African American was better off, collectively and unknown to him his society in the 1950s should have been a test case for the Wal-Martization of America. The short sighted American public agreed to the Great Society, because it was not right that African Americans could not land the union jobs. The Great Society worked and the African Americans were able get jobs, run government and shop at any store. As a consequence the small business African American business owners could not compete against the buying power of the white owned stores which resulted in a loss of money circulating in the African American community. Simultaneously the car age was in full swing, whites still controlled most of the real purchasing power. Solution, build all white enclaves, sprawl out and leave the African American communities to there own devices. The 20 year Great Society did nothing to alleviate the issues, hundreds of years in the making, I have addressed. If your conscience says that the white society has done all it should and could, your arguments are legitimate.

I will admit that I hate affirmative action as it has been abused and has not benefited the people it was intended. The programs, especially the 8a, have predominately enhanced the lives of recent immigrants who where well trained and did not experience racism in their own countries. The rise of the Indian and Chinese companies in America are direct result of these set asides. The whites look at these successes and say see they can do it. Sorry, the Chinese, Mexicans and Indians that come to this country have a social support network in the home country. Can African American immigrants trace their lineage or identify the area of their origination? The affirmative action has resulted in thousands of dollars in government contracts that should have dollars circulating in American, instead get sent to China, India and Mexico.

I enjoy being at the heart of Rome with Nero in charge and people like the TOH writing history. A great story but the facts do not add up, but hey I am not a stockbroker, I am a Geologist and we take a little longer view.

Standard hate speech boilerplate, TOH.

Too bad you can't spew something useful outta that mouth.

FUCK OFF AND DIE!!!

mm242

I'll review any posts and write again around midnight Eastern.

Thanks.

TOH

Wow, TOH just dragged out and renamed the Jukeses and the Kallikaks (crap studies full of a priori "reasoning" intended to "prove" that the rich "deserved" to be rich and the poor "deserved" to be poor).

All he's doing is blaming the victims for having been beaten down for so many generations that it's extremely hard for any of them to so much as lift their heads above the gutter they've been beaten into.

Frankly - and even many successful people WILL admit this if they have a shred of honesty in their souls - the single largest component of success in this or any other country is and always has been LUCK. And that's a random factor that is out of anyone's control.

Consider Nikola Tesla. Brilliant, hardworking immigrant genius who invented wireless communication (radio) before Marconi, who showed Edison where he went wrong with electrical currents and how to do it right - surely he should have been even more wealthy and famous than they? Not. Oh, he made a fair amount of money...but he lost it all to reverses of fortune. That's the luck factor in operation.

I would also bet that anyone who prates about how "the poor" make their own fate and deserve it has never had to try to make it on his own without any kind of assistance from anyone. It takes fantastic amnounts of luck just to *survive* that way. And far too many don't.

Neil' or Tyrannogenius:

I did not ignore it; I posted on it above.

You're delusional, finding straw men to tackle and standing in triumph over them in your fantasy world.

I never anywhere claimed to be a laissez-faire advocate. Nor does anyone claim to be the extreme laissez-faire advocate you envision. You're making a fool of yourself fantasizing that claim to be one. Gingrich, Reagan, Bush, whomever all agree that the government should interfere in the market: environment, tax incentives, military, police, libraries, etc. I feel genuine sorrow that you spend your days INGENIOUSLY DEDUCING, I guess, that the economy is not laissez-faire and neither is the Republican Party. DUH. Everyone knows that. The debate is when to intervene, how, and to what degree. So, people who are "laissez-faire" are only relatively so as they will readily acknowledge.

Protections for corporations are good policy to enable the formation of capital so as to create products, services, jobs, and wealth. Where we can help capital formation with laws that protect shareholders reasonably, we should. I'm glad people cannot have their homes taken from them in a lawsuit because they own $100 in stock in Enron. You should be, too. By this means, companies can raise funds easily and inexpensively through public share offerings to try new enterprises, succeeding or failing, they employ people in the process; when they succeed, we are all better off thanks to the jobs, products, and taxes they provide: those best off, as ever thanks to economic freedom and reasonable corporate laws, are the poor. Yes, the consumer, shareholders, and employees lose occasionally, as with Enron, but the risks, including the risk we all share in being victims of crime, are publicly known. Statistically and cummulatively, we all benefit. Corporate USA is the mighty stallion upon which 300,000,000 USA citizens charge through time.

AGAIN, THOSE MOST BENEFITING FROM CORPORATE PROTECTIONS ARE THE POOR - THEY ARE THE ONES GETTING WELFARE FOR DOING NOTHING, OFTEN FOR DOING HARM, AND GETTING THEIR $15,000/PERSON SHARE OF THE COST OF BEING A USA CITIZEN PAID FOR.

TOH

Neil':

If your other grand deduction is that there are inefficiencies in CEO compensation; again, duh. Likewise, there are inefficiencies in hiring minimum wage workers. Sometimes your are not getting what you are paying for, even at $5.15/hour. The empty register and stolen merchandise testify to that. CEO's, Robert Iger, for example, generally (the ones not actually entreprenuers) spend 60h/week studying in high school, college, and buisness school, then work 60h/week in office buildings from the time they are about 10 years old until the time they are 50 years old. On rare occasions, a board of directors thinks a CEO is valuable enough to pay to work for them rather than not and rather than for a competitor such that the CEO is worth $20M/year. The CEO has earned that $20M/year by the laws of our society, laws we all know of. If you think there is a better system, eg Stalinism, you are ignorant. Note also, all that study and work and that CEO is going to pay from 60-70% of that income in various taxes including inheritance taxes. So of that $20M/year, eventually about $13M is going right back to the USA; so, there it is. Robert Iger makes quantum leaps more than I do; he also has a gorgeous TV broadcaster wife and healthy children. I am not envious of him, but proud of him and grateful to him for being a hard working USA citizen. He worked hard, consistently, had some good breaks, and EARNED his place. If you want to put yourself in a position to compete with other executives in cut-throat corporate USA for 20-30 years; do it. If not, get off Robert Iger's case. He's a good man; your a crybaby.

TOH

The Other Maven:

Yeah; white people beating African-Americans down, i.e., are making African-Americans and poor people have children while on welfare, do drugs, and not do their homework. You discovered that the wealthy secretly have ESP they refuse to share with the masses.

It's that delusional thinking that keeps people stupid, misguidedly self-righteous, and, more importantly, poor and miserable.

TOH

"Frankly - and even many successful people WILL admit this if they have a shred of honesty in their souls - the single largest component of success in this or any other country is and always has been LUCK. And that's a random factor that is out of anyone's control."

No way; even if anecdotally, where some people literally win the lottery, that is an isolated anomaly. The single largest factor in success is virtue: hard work, frugality, sobriety, lawfulness. Fortune may have an effect at the margins and fortune makes the headlines when it strikes. But the difference between Bill Gates and Meth Mathews, 2 girlfriends, 3 kids, drug problem is not luck merely because Bill Gates had some luck.

More stupidity that caused the 1970s WMD of Democratic public policy.

TOH

Yeah. It takes a lot of luck to do your homework, get a job, stay sober, and only have children you can afford, financially and socially (i.e., vis-a-vis a long term commitment - marriage). INSANE. Success in the USA is easy. But that is not sufficient for the debauched Democratic masses. They want sex, drugs, and a free ride.

TOH

There are also two realities: BushWorld and the real world. Guess we now know in which one TOH resides. :p

As for the whole Objectivism thing, I can sum it up - from personal experience - in a variation of the old saw about young people and Communism:

"Anyone who is not an Objectivist at twenty has no head. Anyone who is still one at thirty has no heart."

--->But that is not sufficient for the debauched Democratic masses. They want sex, drugs, and a free ride.

No, my apologies, let me see how I can say this politely--

The only sex, drugs and free ride I've seen anyone get involved Rush Limbaugh, mark Foley and a whole lot of Republican scumbags.

Good try, though, and as you depart, remember this--today's conservative is yesterday's liberal and your ideology is...history.

completely delusional belief that Atlas Shrugged was a blueprint for society

Any more dead laissez-faire capitalist philosphers you want to step on before you go to sleep?
Posted by: Al on November 18

How about Milton Freidman, while we are at it?

----> step-step, take that, for the sake of Allende, you...

And Elvis Costello will need to wait a while longer before tramping the dirt down on Thatcher's grave, too.

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Bob, I think Rand's fictional writing reaches the heights of Hugo. It meets all of the requirements of literature. I know it is not lit dept PC to like Rand, but I do and I can make the case for it with literary values. That does not mean I am an acolyte to her philosophy or even accept any of her themes. It does mean I think she was an accomplished writer of important stories that still describe our world. That alone puts her in a pantheon of important writers.

In response to TOH, does anyone have the stats, off the top of their heads, as to rates of drug use and abuse by racial group? [And of course it gets really interesting when we break it down by specific drug -- alcohol v. crack v. marijuana v. heroin, etc.] TOH has been making some pretty sweeping generalizations about the poor being black and the poor being drug-users and blacks being drug-users and blacks being debauched, etc., and all of it being the result of bad culture. Can we tease apart these correlations with some statistics? I believe I read somewhere that the tendency both to use and to abuse drugs is pretty constant across racial groups, even across socioeconomic classes. But the criminal-justice system so disproportionately arrests and sentences African-Americans (and the media consistently over-report African-American crime) that people like TOH might [ahem] get the wrong idea about drug-use and criminality in this country. Can someone weigh in?

Thanks.

The other obvious point here is that even a strong correlation doesn't allow for a simple cause-and-effect inference. Where TOH sees drug abuse and other evidence of 'bad culture' causing poverty, many many many intelligent and rigorous social scientists have either (i) found no clear evidence to suggest that one is usually the cause of the other, or (ii) found that, if anything, it is chronic unrelenting poverty that is most likely the cause of these social ills.

So the question becomes, "If these debilitating social/cultural deficits (criminality, teen pregnancy, drug use, etc.) can be seen as the results of poverty, what other than these deficits (if anything) is causing the poverty to persist?"

Basically, I'm arguing that the causal connections between (i) poverty, (ii) race, and (iii) social deviance/degeneracy have been very seriously studied in this country, that there are no clear/simple answers, and that, among informed social scientists, TOH would be a prime candidate for a prize for simplistic thinking.

CHILDREN:

In your desperation, you keep missing the point; ethically there is a difference between being debauched with one's own resources and being debauched when you are living in public housing, enjoying Medicaid, have children whom taxpayers are paying for, etc. Whatever the drug use across economic classes or ethnicities is, and it's wishful thinking on your part in both cases, THE RICH OF WHATEVER ETHNIC GROUP ARE TAKING CARE OF THEIR STUDIES, THEIR BUSINESS, AND THEIR FAMILIES AND TAKING CARE OF THEMSELVES. The debauched poor are burdens as is, behaving in a way that makes them greater burdens; burdens to the USA taxpayer caring for them. The poor in the USA, statistically and cummulatively, spit in the face of the generosity of the USA taxpayer, invent fantasies of oppression, blame the discrimination (that exists because of the statistical behavior of those discriminaed against) where it is not the cause, and complain because apparently the free shelter, clothes, food, school, and medical care is not enough for them to be diligent, honest, sexually responsible, sober, lawful citizens. It's disgusting. The USA taxpayers, particularly the hard working wealthy, have done enough and has only met ingratitude along the way. It's time for the poor and middle income in the USA to start living right. When I think of all the hard earned funds - earned by doctors, lawyers, bankers, and consultants working 60-100 weeks - being wasted by the denizens of the South Bronx I want to vomit. Racism, corporate USA, the Republican party; yeah, they are all responsible for children and adults not doing homework, doing drugs, taking advantage of women (generally), having children they cannot afford, breaking the law. Right - sure; and Democrats wonder why the Great Society actually made things worse.

Simplistic thinking? That is you: poverty is due to oppression, corporate scheming, discrimination. And, BELIEIVE OR NOT, some people do actually deserve to be poor; I'm all for helping them, but defining poverty as injustice is the simplistic thinking; so is defining poverty as opression and poverty as discrimination, etc.

African-Americans are overwhelmingly disproportionately poor, procreatively irresponsible (i.e., having children they cannot afford either financially or matrimonially (or it's equivalent), and criminal. The welfare rolls, the maturnity wards, and the jails are proof positive of that.

Again, how hard is it to do your homework, get a job, stay sober, and only have children you can afford? And when that become too much to ask when one's shelter, clothes, food, education, and medical care are free? I'll tell you when. When you clowns started fantasizing about causes of on-going poverty other than behavior.

Let's also remember we are talking about percentages within ethnic groups. Af-Ams are only 12% of the population. Look, I'm dead on and the only one dealing in reality here. I'm too tired to look up statistics I've seen many times. If you find any that contradict what I've said - what I've said - not what you want me to have said. Bring it. Otherwise I'm dead on.

More than that, I grew up from birth and live to this day in a major USA city. I know the streets. The streets are me. I am the watcher. I rule the night. I am the light. My eyes see all. Your thoughts are my journal. I am . . .

THE OBJECTIVE HISTORIAN.

TOH

TOH --

First, quit it with the patronizing bullshit:
PEOPLE OF THE EARTH
CHILDREN
etc.

AFRICAN-AMERICANS AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM:

Another fantasy; African-Americans are arrested and tried unfairly. Hah. Like O.J., right? Now more than ever, African-Americans face a police force, a judiciary, and a jury system that is as African-American as the USA and in cities even more so. And their rate arrest and incarceration is going up, not down. Believe it or not, their fellow African-Americans are the ones desperate to get these predators behind bars; not Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrain. You [ahem] are the racists; convicting Caucasian USA based on your racist fantasies of "rounding up some darkies" every time a burglar alarm sounds. The truth is far different; but, as with all your cognitive dissonance, you embrace any contrivance, any fantasy, any delusion that will permit you to be so confidently wrong. Oh, but wait, at cocktail parties when you say this drivel everyone nods; well, there it is then. The only proof you need to continue the thoughts, words, deeds, and votes for Democrats that condemn generation after generation of the poor, particularly the African-American poor, to United Federation of Zombie/Boss Tweed/Democrat PAC public schools, inane public policies that incentivize poverty-creating behavior, and more and more children tragically abanoned in a world of urban, suburban, and rural social devastation.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS THE POOR AMERICAN'S WORST ENEMY. AT LEAST THE REPUBLICANS ARE CREATING JOBS AND THE FUNDS TO MAINTAIN THE BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE USA; DEMOCRATS ARE ACTUALLY CREATING SOCIAL SNAKE-PITS AND BAITING THEM TO ATTRACT THE POOR: THE SCHOOLS, THE PROJECTS, THE UN-CONDITIONED CASH AND IN-KIND BENEFITS . . . ALL THANKS TO THE DEMOCRATS. DEMOCRATS ARE THEIR DESTRUCTION.

See the Democrats think the Great Society was successful because it resulted in a Democratic President, Democratic House, Democratic Senate, and Democratic Supreme Court (1976-1980). That it destroyed the social fabric of the poor; oh, well, they can just trick the ignorant poor into thinking it was capitalism, or discrimination, or the rich scheming to keep them from getting jobs and promotions. And the Democrats can get you fools to do studies carefully contrived to support that fantasy.

TOH

DNS:

OK, did not mean to offend. I was kidding. I'm a city-ite. Where I'm from such kidding is affection, not patronizing. Also, I'm punch sleepy. But, I'll keep it impersonal if you prefer.

I'll check back in a noon-ish tomorrow.

Good-night people who I really do believe, like me, wants what is best for the poor first and foremost, and the USA, too. I have not read one thing tonight that makes me question people's heartfelt concern for the least among us. Even MM 242. It does not bother me that you question mine; I sound cold, but I think about poverty all the time because I am a socialist, I want government to tax and spend to intervene and help the poor, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN WHO ARE REALLY HELPLESS; I just feel the myths of the past that made USA socialism such a bust have to be broken down so that we who would help can take what was good from the Great Society (civil rights, etc.) and get rid of what was bad: presumptions of the noble poor and discrimination-based poverty.

Good night.

TOH

TOH wrote I'm dead on and the only one dealing in reality here.

Oh, OK then, let me get down there in the gutter with you.

First, you accuse me and others in this thread of not responding to what you wrote. Leaving aside mercury_man_242, we have been responding to what you write. We have presented facts, arguments, and intelligent opinions, and have asked you to provide more facts where we think they might shed some light. That was the whole point of my last couple of posts. And let me be clear, I have never, ever denied the validity of your argument that culture is a key factor. Check my posts and you'll have to admit this. I have simply been pointing to other factors that are also worth considering. And yet you absolutely, completely refuse to acknowledge that other factors might be at play. So please don't lecture me about arguing against what I think you're saying instead of what you are actually saying. This whole exchange has in fact been extremely simple in its basic dynamic: you argue it's all about culture/laziness/debauchery, etc.; I suggest there might be other factors at work without ever denying the importance of culture; and you become abusive, you use use even more CAPITAL LETTERS, and generally make even more of an ass of yourself.

As for dealing in reality, I can't pass up the chance to tear a hole the size of Rhode Island in your pathetic patchwork of pointless invective and shrill exaggeration.

[But first - on everything you say about social programs being funded by taxpayers and not actually working - and perhaps even making matters worse: fine. No argument there. As to the importance of culture, the prevalance of certain damaging behaviors in the Af-Am population, etc.: fine. No argument there. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I WROTE AND WHAT DID NOT WRITE.]

OK... claiming to be dealing in reality, you wrote:
discrimination (that exists because of the statistical behavior of those discriminaed against)
So discrimination is NEVER the result of prejudice? Never? Do you really expect us to take you seriously, or should we make allowances for the fact that, just maybe, you were out drinking with some friends and that's affected your ability to connect your feet to the ground or operate machinery? It certainly affected your ability to make credible statements about American society.]

the hard working wealthy
You have argued throughout that the wealthy are hard-working, that they became wealthy through hard work -- and yet in the first post I chose to respond to, you said that the wealthy should be able to pass on their wealth to their children -- thus allowing wealth to be held and increased by individuals who never had to work and will never have to. I asked you to square that with your "keep what you earn" ethic, but you never responded. Did I call you a CHILD because of it? No. Yet it stands as a fundamental critique of your whole argument.

And yet you rely, throughout, on this bald assertion that wealth comes only from virtue and hard work. Let's just say I'm not persuaded, and move on, OK?

being wasted by the denizens of the South Bronx
Have you heard how many white people have moved into the South Bronx lately? You might want to update your List of Stupid Stereotypes.

I asked others if they had any insight into demographic patterns connecting race and drug abuse, and I referred to the FACT that law enforcement disproportionately targets minorities. You haven't responded to that at all, yet you seem to want to rely on a simplistic argument along the lines of "a disproportionate number of blacks are in prison, etc." But then, you think racism is caused by the targets of racism, so you're probably past hope when it comes to police brutality, cops who lie on the stand, etc.

Have you once acknowledged the validity -- or even the possible interest -- of any argument presented to you? I don't think so. So please spare me the holier-than-thou bullshit.

Finally:
but defining poverty as injustice is the simplistic thinking
Um, no. You seem to think I argued that poverty is caused only by injustice, that the poor are only to be pitied, that there are no other causes of poverty. Again, read what I wrote. I never made any such claim. And I don't think anyone else in this thread did, either. We've been trying to get you to admit only one thing: that the causal connections are way too complex to admit of the kind of poor because degenerate thinking you're engaging in. So it's you who are simplistic, my macho Rule-the-Night friend. You. Not me. Not us.

You know, I think you're scared. Deep down, you're scared. Scared of monsters under the bed. Scared of men in green costumes coming to steal Christmas. Scared of black men coming to rape your women. Scared of the great unwashed coming to tear down the white columns on your plantation mansion and steal your William and Mary silverware. You have race issues, my friend. Race issues. You've learned some lingo along the way, but your concerns are those of the whip-cracking slave-owner: "I got mine, and no damn n___r is gonna take it away from me! And no damn guvmint is gonna help 'em take it away from me!"

One last thought: You might want to find the answers to the following questions.
1. Under which party has the American economy performed better over the last 100 years? Democrat or Republican?
2. Did 20 years of almost uninterrupted prosperity come before or after the establishment of a strong labor movement and the rise of a strongly interventionist tax-funded federal government?
3. Which administration presided over the creation of more jobs, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II?
4. Which administration presided over the greatest improvement in federal finances (i.e. annual operating budget deficit/surplus)? Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, or Bush II?
5. Which administration actually shrank the size of the federal government, in terms of salaried federal employees?

Just a couple of homework assignments for our homework-loving paragon of individual virtue.

TOH:
Your recent posts haven't made a gnat's fart of difference. You're making the same CAPITAL-filled arguments as before, against someone other than me, 'cause I haven't said anything in defense of thoughtless spending on Great-Society social programs. I haven't, honest. Check my HOMEWORK.

What's really pathetic, though, is this:

AT LEAST THE REPUBLICANS ARE CREATING JOBS AND THE FUNDS TO MAINTAIN THE BASIC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE USA

Um, no. Categorically no. Job creation under Clinton far surpassed anything we've seen under Bush II. Check your facts. Income and capital gains tax cuts for the rich are guaranteed to produce fewer jobs that any other kind of tax cut for any other group because of their low marginall propensity to consume. It's practically an iron law of economics.

As for maintaining the basic infrustructure... I have one word for you: Katrina. Compare Bush's budget priorities to Bush II. Oh - unless you count the Bridge to Nowhere as valuable infrastructure.

But I have 4 questions for you. Do you or do you now admit the following?

1. Racism can be born and bred within a single family without any member of that family ever having met, talked to, emailed, thought about, or seen any statistics relating to the target of racism.

2. If a son inherits his father's wealth, he has not truly earned it.

3. Under Democratic administrations, the US economy (i.e. GDP, job creation, federal surplus/deficit) has performed better than it has under Republican administrations as far back as the 1920s?

3. An individual who starts out motivated can be disheartened, beaten down, and damaged all over again (i.e. like his/her parents) by persistent racism, discrimination, insults, false accusations, and false imprisonment? [Read carefully... I didn't say "Any individual"; I said "An individual". And I said "Can be". And I won't take your Yes as support for an extreme "poverty-is-only-ever-caused-by-injustice" argument. Don't be scared. Just answer the question like it were on a Grade 8 English class; focus on the wording. You'll be safe. Daddy will come and get you after school just like always.

Hostile;

> Bob, I think Rand's fictional writing reaches the heights of
> Hugo. It meets all of the requirements of literature. I know
> it is not lit dept PC to like Rand, but I do and I can make the
> case for it with literary values. That does not mean I am an
> acolyte to her philosophy or even accept any of her themes. It
> does mean I think she was an accomplished writer of important
> stories that still escribe our world. That alone puts her in
> a pantheon of important writers.

*applying smelling salts* ... Hostile, man ... c'mon ... snap out
of it ... *snap!* *snap!* This is like listening to a 50-year-old
Sex Pistols fan. Ayn Rand does not "meet all the requirements of
literature" any more than your average random truckload of pulp
fiction bound for Barnes & Noble. Her novels don't "describe our
world." Her vision of a statist dystopia did not come to pass.

Not describing our world is not why she's bad writing, though.
Neither 1984 nor Brave New World were deeply prescient, yet both
novels remain classics. Nor is it that some arbitrary, politically
biased attribute of academic "PC" keeps her from the pantheon. It's
that her dialogue and character interactions simply strain credulity.

There is no reason in the world that Atlas Shrugged has to be 1000
pages. When an editor suggested trimming it, Rand famously responded
"Would you edit The Bible?" Okay, we let a certain amount of
self-centered grandiosity slide from great artists. But sometimes
an egomaniac is just an egomaniac. The length of Atlas Shrugged is
a serious structural impediment that undermines it as a work of art.

Brave New World eerily captures some of the pleasure-driven nihilism
of the postwar, post-Sexual Revolution West and 1984 remains the best
evocation of a Western Stalinism/Fascism. Rand's books miss the mark
because the drab society of the "looters" given voice by Ellsworth
Toohey is supposed to be a cancer eating at the core of America
-- when in truth, repression in that era came not from the social
levellers of the left, but the fanatic anti-Communists of the right.

What Rand's books prefigure instead is the alienated conservative
movement of the 60s and 70s. What's tremendously ironic in this
vision is that Rand's conformist equalitarian society is supposed
to oppress self-expressive genius, when in fact the opposite was
true in that era, and it was the riot of countercultural self-
expression that so intimidated and indeed disgusted the Randroids.
Rand claims to speak on behalf of modern art, but she never got it.
She claims to speak on behalf of the cutting edge of modernity, when
in fact her cultural vision is deeply reactionary and anti-modern.

And if that weren't bad enough, she just flat-out sucks as a writer.

Bob

For TOH, it all boils down to this:

ARE YOU WILLING TO LEARN?
ARE YOU OPEN TO NEW IDEAS?
DO YOU ADMIT THAT YOU DON'T HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS?

This thread and in fact this site -- if I may presume to speak for it, just this once -- are for people engaged in learning, listening, asking, debating, and exploring, in a spirit of friendship and mutual respect. Yes, it's true that, on the whole, we tend to share a common perspective on The Way Things Are Now (i.e. this White House needs to be sent packing) and also on The Kinds of Things We Might Want To Try Next (insert your own policy recommendations here...). But what we cannot stand is people who stop by and lecture us on How to Think About the World We Live In without possessing the most rudimentary traits of an intelligent, Enlightenment-era thinker - namely, (1) an openness to new points of view and normative positions, coupled with and restrained by (ii) an insistence that evidence and logic are the only true arbiters of Good Argument, softened by (iii) the ability to admit, candidly and openly, when one's interlocutor has made a good point, and, finally, (iv) what might be called a basic goodness of spirit. Thus, in this rarefied world, I might agree with someone on the substance of her argument but disagree with her use of abuse and insults. Still friends, but no invitation to the Christmas party... [Although I have to conceded that a complete idiot wins the right to be showered with fat sloppy turds of abuse if he has failed every test of decent argumentation yet still persists in posting shite.]

So - TOH: My question to you is, DO YOU MEET THESE CRITERIA? And I would suggest, Sir, that you do not. I would suggest, Sir, that you in fact have demonstrated a most adamantine obduracy concerning said qualities and that, furthermore, your are a Cad, a Bounder, a Scoundrel, an Unmitigated Embarrassment to your most unfortunate mother, and a Pitiable Fool.

Now, do your worst.

Finally, this..... Am I the only person still awake at this time of night? The only person still reading this post? I must be a sad wanker...

rmck1 --

Absolutely right. Rand's characters are like Morality Play cardboard caricatures of the Human Tendencies they represent. No realism, no nuance, no ambiguity, no human complexity. Does anyone really think that a Dominique Francon could surivie outside of a psych ward?

DNS:

I haven't your recent batches of posts yet, but I did want to give a shout-out as long as you're on for your two big rebuttals to The Objective One.

Kudos -- you really nailed it. You got all the substantive points -- defining the issues precisely and nailing TOH on his rhetorical slithers -- and your snark was very well-targeted.

It's hard to know where to begin with TOH, since he's such a creature of ideology and seems, like so many conservative ideologues, to live 30 years in the past, as if liberal Democrats are all Black Panther and Weather Underground fans who support welfare for the able bodied and think drug abuse is no big deal.

To me, it starts with calling himself a "socialist," which as you can see he hasn't dropped. Though many Republicans affect a concern for the poor, that's just beyond absurd. I'd consider it a small but significant victory if I can just get him to own up to having an individualist, context-free analysis of social problems.

Anyway, lemme go read your new posts.

Bob

rmck1 -
Thanks. Heading to bed, finally...
Tomorrow....

Thanks it has been great fun and I would say that an examination of TOH proves several things.

1 Single minded focus of an ideologue will win as it does not even consider any other point of view. He seems to work with part of your beliefs, but really will never consider changing his mind. The die is cast and he will "Stay the Course"

2 This kind of belief and expectation is also characteristic of a drive for success and wealth. A take no prisoners, my way or the highway. It will make you rich and you will have rich friends that are insolated from truly seeing the impact of their ruthlessness to become wealthy. Most wealth is luck and exploitation. Bill Gates did not design the best operating system; he knew a good design when he saw it. He had luck; he was driven and had one hell of a safety net. IMHO Windows is still a chevy with a cadillac price. Another sign of great wealth; shilling pennies for nickels.

3 Narcissism - I cannot get over the amount of narcissists that the American Public will have as a boss, preacher and politician. Perfect Hair is a bad sign, Mark Foley, John Kerry, Tom Delay, John Boehner... Too many perfectly coiffed people.

Greg Hunter:

All of that's true. Another point TOH completely blows off when he excuses the debauchery of the wealthy because the taxpayers don't clean up after it is just how emotionally toxic is the singleminded drive for wealth and success. How many families and marriages have been wrecked by the careerist climber who worked 80 hr weeks, rewarded with promotion after promotion while his emotional life disintegrated? This has provided so much fodder for plot lines it hardly needs elaboration.

Capitalism depends on marginally dynsfunctional personality types, with goodly dollops of narcissism, anal retention and obsessive compulsion.

Bob

--->Bill Gates did not design the best operating system; he knew a good design when he saw it. He had luck; he was driven and had one hell of a safety net. IMHO Windows is still a chevy with a cadillac price. Another sign of great wealth; shilling pennies for nickels.

No, Gates is proof that the bad guys sometimes win. You cannot fucking explain it to people, but had we gone with Macs and never used Windows or DOS, we would be five to ten years ahead of ourselves right now in terms of networking ability and capabilities.

FUCK Bill Gates. He's the worst thing that ever happened to America, bar none.

mm242

mm242:

Agree with you there, brother. He just happened to luck into landing the IBM account to code a proprietary OS for clone machines. He was an amateur coder who spun his hobby into a small business, like dozens of Silicon Valley garage dudes who cut their teeth fucking around with CP/M and other 8-bit OSses for the Sinclairs and Commodores out there, which were hobbyist machines. This is in '81, just before IBM was about to market the PC and turn computers into a major must-have consumer item.

He had a ported version of CP/M that could run on the 16-bit 808x internal word. So IBM let him pitch this on board a famous airplane ride. He got off the plane with the contract. Woo-hoo.

The classic case of being in the right place at the right time.

Bob

PEOPLE WITH ADMIRABLE STAMINA AT THIS THREAD:

Delayed with regret; I will read posts of last 24 hours and re-visit tonight with responses. Please check back in; this is productive on both sides of this debate in my humble opinion.

TOH

DNS:

First: Hard working wealthy: will your friends at the New York Times due as a source? 80% of millionaires are self-made, not inheriting a penny from anyone. Your fantasy about wealth requiring inheritance is just that: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html.

Second: Relative to people without inheritance, it is not fair that a rich person's son gets money for doing nothing. But the choice to permit that unfairness belongs to the PERSON WHO WORKED TO EARN THAT MONEY. THAT IS CALLED FREEDOM. REMEMBER THAT ONE. That father derives satisfaction from providing for his son.

And, there is equality in that anyone who earns wealth can pass it on to their children. If you want to, you can, too. It is also not fair that some people work all their lives and some people spend their lives on welfare, having children they cannot afford, benefit from our military lives lost, etc.

Third: Actually, the burden to prove race discrimination in criminal prosecution is on you, the accuser, not on me. You're the one stereotyping the police.

Fourth: This is not third grade and you clownish framing is absurd, e.g., "which administration presided over . . . " Ronald Reagan cut taxes across the board 25% in the early 80s. They remained just about at that level through the Clinton years (when Gingrich's House and Greenspan's Fed actually ran the economy) through today. Your sad. The past 25 years policy-wise is Reaganomics, Clinton's only contribution being Welfare Reform that Gingrich forced on him and NAFTA, which he merely augmented after Bush I's initial policy triumph.

Fifth: Katrina? Seriously? It would have been just another hurricane if the Democratic mayor and governor did their job. The shock that FEMA encountered was their incompetence. And the occupants of the Superdome: a fine product of 40 years of Democratic urban policy making. And, then they voted Nagin back in; I guess the locals were quite content with the government's handling of Katrina after all.

Sixth: I've destroyed every point you've made and you claim to be open to new ideas. WRONG. What you seek is the same crowd you live among; the crowd who hears your inanities and nod like zombies. Well, I'm here to tell the truth to power and defend the great man who currently occupies the White House: perhaps the second greatest president in US History; in terms of effectiveness he outshines both Lincoln and FDR. Both of these two men were the worst Commander-in-Chiefs in US history. FDR in particular let Hitler re-arm in defiance of Germany's treaty obligations with the US (Treaty of Berlin), something Bush II was intelligent enough not to permit Hussein to do, and let Japan sneak attack us despite being well warned. Lincoln just was a horrible military commander.

RMCK1: I'm a socialist. If you claim to be one, you must be a Stalinist, i.e., only happy when government has driven the poor to even greater depths of misery like the horrible job the socialists did in US 1960s and 1970s. I'm a socialist who cares about results. If this means government using market forces to create a just society, rather than being an ideologue and denying their effectiveness, like you would, I'm for embracing them.

The USA has a choice: 1978 or 2006. Those that would follow the ideas of DNS, RMCK1, GH, and MM 242 will drag us down to 1978. Those who follow my ideas will see continued care for the sick and poor, and continued prosperity for all who work hard, and continued USA vigilance as the sole practical defender of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on this earth.

DNS: Your Rhode Island of shallow weak arguments just got supernova-ed. Yeah.

TOH

DNS:

This is the saddest, most arrogant, most deluded paragraph I've read on this site:

"This thread and in fact this site -- if I may presume to speak for it, just this once -- are for people engaged in learning, listening, asking, debating, and exploring, in a spirit of friendship and mutual respect. Yes, it's true that, on the whole, we tend to share a common perspective on The Way Things Are Now (i.e. this White House needs to be sent packing) and also on The Kinds of Things We Might Want To Try Next (insert your own policy recommendations here...). But what we cannot stand is people who stop by and lecture us on How to Think About the World We Live In without possessing the most rudimentary traits of an intelligent, Enlightenment-era thinker - namely, (1) an openness to new points of view and normative positions, coupled with and restrained by (ii) an insistence that evidence and logic are the only true arbiters of Good Argument, softened by (iii) the ability to admit, candidly and openly, when one's interlocutor has made a good point, and, finally, (iv) what might be called a basic goodness of spirit. Thus, in this rarefied world, I might agree with someone on the substance of her argument but disagree with her use of abuse and insults. Still friends, but no invitation to the Christmas party... [Although I have to conceded that a complete idiot wins the right to be showered with fat sloppy turds of abuse if he has failed every test of decent argumentation yet still persists in posting shite.]"

You should read a book by Thomas Sowell called The Vision of the Anointed; it points out unequivocally that you so called "Enlightened Thinkers" are just the opposite. You're deluded and blind to any facts that contradict your views: 1) economic freedom is oppressive, 2) discrimination causes poverty, 3) war is bad. And reality conflicts with you at all points. You are not enlightened by blinded by the light of your delusions. It is the reality-based humbly aware who must reveal to you self-possessed buffoons the folly of your delusions. Because everytime you try to act on them (think 60s/70s urban policy and 1930s-Hitler-appeasement) you cause death, destruction, poverty, and misery and then tip-toe away like Carl the Gardener at the end of Caddy Shack only to repeat the same blind drivel again 10-20 years later.

You are the one hostile to non-Democrat boilerplate views, not me. You have not made good points; sorry. So I can not admit you did. Your logic is limited by, oh, the facts. This is not a screenplay, but reality. Your views have to fit the facts or your faux-logic is as relevant as 2+2=5. It's not five. I won't pretend it's five and I won't pretend poverty is caused by discrimination or that succeeding in the USA is not easy for the reasonably hard working and sober, thanks, thanks, thanks, to the USA taxpayer who instead of thanking, you insult by your demands for even more. I also won't permit you to foist the blame for income inequality on the hard working wealthy when the blame for the job-skill disaster in the USA belongs squarely on the Democratic Party with it's public school Boss Tweed/Democratic PAC slush fund policies. What you Democrats are doing to our poor helpless children is criminal. And then for you to blame George Bush and economic freedom? It's another of your Big Lies. Enlightened? Obfuscating describes you better. And all the incentives you've put in place to ensure generation after generation of poverty and misery. Enlightened? Destructive describes you better.

If you want to come up with new ideas to improve upon the status quo, first know the status quo. Don't pretend it is what it is not because it makes you feel like some heroic defender of the downtrodden. You only make it worse.

I have a good spirit; I don't recognize you as evil; just ignorant.

DNS - you are the USA's, particularly the poor in the USA's, worst nightmare; and that you think you are an "Enlightened Thinker" (oh, man are you a jackass to write something like that) that only makes it worse.

TOH

TOH:
Again, you put words in my mouth:
Your fantasy about wealth requiring inheritance
Not me. I never said any such thing.

I was going to respond point-by-point, but then I saw this:
the great man who currently occupies the White House: perhaps the second greatest president in US History; in terms of effectiveness he outshines both Lincoln and FDR
Oh dear, oh dear....
Effective how? The only success I can see -- and I define success generously here -- i.e. in terms of his own stated objectives -- is that he cut taxes, primarily for the wealthy. But in what other realm has he been effective?
Reducing federal spending? No
Combating terrorism? No
Improving America's standing in the world? No
Strenghening alliances? No
No Child Left Behind. A disaster
Economic growth? Anemic and actually the result of a housing bubble made possible by the massive selling of T-bills and other assets to foreign borrowers
Job creation? Pathetic

Can you name one area he has been effective?

And even if cutting taxes constitutes being effective, all I need to say is that this is hardly a challenge. Every politician alive is more than happy to cut taxes. It's NOT cutting taxes that requires fortitude, leadership, resolve,... And what about the consequences of those cuts? They have necessitated cuts to virtually every form of spending out there -- incl. body armor for the troops in Afg and Iraq,...

I just don't know how you maintain yourcognitive dissonance.

DNS:

I think you need to study liberal arts, especially economics; your views are just so remedial and I don't have time to give you a college education - I mean a real college education.

If you are buffoonish enough to embrace the caricature produced by the Democratic Party for the public high school (and not even) educated masses of "tax cuts for the wealthy," I cannot explain the intricacies of efficient capital formation to you that would disabuse you of your Democratic Party instilled delusions. Get an education, son.

If you are too historically benighted to know the history of 1930s and 1940s world affairs and see how the USA's self defense and long-term standing in the world depended on the removal of Hussein and a good-faith effort to attempt a Marshall Plan development strategy in Iraq. [I suggest you read William Shirer's "The Decline of the Third Republic" where fools such as yourself were saying the same things in France in the 1930s, i.e., don't stand up to Hitler, you'll lose standing with the British.] The overall point: get an education, son.

George W. Bush's main public relations problem is his sublimity. He is far to excellent a president for his policy prowess to be perceived by the ignorant multitudes who do not have the time or the educational background to familiarize themselves with economic or foreign policy matters. And, that being the case, the Democratic Party once again can manipulate them as it always does into chasing short-term fixes and utopian fantasies, all in the Democratic Party's venal and desperate pursuit of fame, power, and wealth.

Like Truman before him; Reagan, too; Lincoln as well; his greatness is for the truly informed, not you "enlightened" pretenders.

Again, get an education, son.

TOH

DNS, EFFECTIVE IS RIGHT! COULD YOU BE MORE SILLY?

ECONOMY: Making the economy better for everone, poor, middle, rich. Wage statistics have nothing to do with the experience of individual workers. Workers in this economy are getting jobs, promotions, wage raises, capital appreciation in their assets like gang-busters.

Reducing federal spending? No. Why? We're at war and real interest rates are low. Like FDR, Bush II knows this is a good time to borrow.

Combating terrorism? No. Yes. We're killing terrorists at a 20-1 clip and making them look bad for their wanton killing of their fellow Muslim innocents, particularly children. Only a dunce considers that losing.

Improving America's standing in the world? No. Standing with whom? The back-stabbing (oil-for-food, lending to North Korea, Iran, and Libya) apeasers in Europe, the same ones who goose-stepped to Hitler? America's standing is improved with those whom we should wish to stand.

Strenghening alliances? No. "Alliances?" You don't really mean Germany and France, do you? They were selling us out the whole time. Just because they smile at us in the UN cafeteria, that does not make them our realpolitik allies. Actually Bush II resuced us from ever trusting those back-stabber again by invading Iraq and discovering the oil-for-food treachery.

No Child Left Behind. A disaster. OHHHH. Maybe so, but with the UFT and the NEA forcing their public school system on our poor children, what is one to do? GET THIS IN YOUR THICK SKULL IF YOU TAKE ANYTHING AWAY FROM OUR CORRESPONDENCE: THE PUBLIC SCHOOL DISASTER IS 100% THE FAULT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. LOOK WHERE THE UFT/NEA MONEY IS GOING! TALK ABOUT CORRUPTION.

Economic growth? On average BETTER THAN THE CLINTON YEARS. HAH!

Job creation? Pathetic. No, marginally amazing. It's a lot harder to create jobs when unemployment is already at 6% than when it's higher. Bush gets an A+ here, too.

Get an education, son.

TOH

TOH:

Wow. What an ideologue you are. You know, you can repeat "the sky is green" until you yourself are blue in the face -- it won't make it true to an objective observer. You are no "socialist," dude, because you have a characterological analysis of social problems. That means that, at the end of the day, people are responsible for themselves alone.

This is a horribly vicious vision of society, and as I say, it was a mainstay of popular thinking about the poor during the Gilded Age, when Social Darwinist ideas were common coin and there were debtors' prisons instead of homeless shelters. Usually, people who have this view and claim not to be Social Darwinists mitigate it with a thick slathering of religion. That's, after all, what "compassionate conservatism" is supposed to be about. You know, if your family, your community, your school system fail you and you wind up out on the street as a product of the vicious cycles of the culture of poverty and abuse -- that you could at least find release by finding God.

But that's conspicuously absent from your "socialistic" *cough* rhetoric about the poor. As far as you're concerned, they have no need for any kind of backstop; they either make the right choices in life or they don't. This makes you a Randian, and it's truly hard to see how you have anything but a snarling contempt for life's victims who just -- well, sucks to be them, doesn't it -- made the bad choices.

Two things which you studiously avoid: First, that the personality attributes required to be successful aren't necessarily emotionally healthy. Locke and Smith recognized that mere selfishness could become enlightened self-interest in an interwoven social fabric where people had divergent skills and interests which could be woven into a common good. Neither of them spoke of raw acquisitiveness as a virtue. Nor did the Massachusetts Puritans who set the cultural pattern of this country, and whose Calvinist progenitors developed the first capitalist cultures in Europe. Wealth creation was an outward-and-visible sign of God's Grace, but not something to be sought for itself. While you claim that virtually anyone can put their noses to the grindstone and become wealthy by middle age, many of the people who do pay steep prices for it in emotional health. Once again, think of the dedicated corporate type who strives so hard for promotions and company recognition that he virtually abandons his family.

Success is available -- but it often comes at steep price. Divorce courts and rehab clinics are riddled with this story.

Secondly, you refuse to recognize the perverse relationship of capitalism with the very inner-city patterns of dysfunction which serve to perpetuate poverty. Think of the hip-hop industry. In a perverse rewriting of Horatio Alger, a plucky inner city kid can, with the right rhymes and the right beats, make a name for hiself and become fabulously wealthy by glorifying the very worst aspects of street culture -- which, perversely enough, sells most extensively to white suburban youth. They perpetuate a fantasy version of gangsta culture -- which, sadly enough, they feel they have to live by to keep their street cred and often wind up in court or in the hospital with gunshot wounds. This is capitalism preying on and perpetuating the dysfunctions of poverty, and relentlessly cannibalizing the ones who become successful (i.e. the most effectively monstrous and dehumanized) in its terms.

Finally, your view of Democrats in this thread is beyond absurd. None of us wish to return to the 60s and 70s. None of us advocate welfare for the able-bodied or support drug use as if it were a mere victimless crime. We aren't socialists -- let alone Stalinists -- we merely believe that society has a collective responsibility for all its members, which can be justified on both moral and practical grounds. But we recognize the corrosive effects of perpetuating the culture of poverty, and that's why we (reluctantly) agreed with Clinton when he ended welfare for the able-bodied. We don't believe the answer is throwing money at the poor anymore than you do.

We merely recognize that preaching "personal responsibility" has its own deeply toxic downside.

Bob

Only 6 great presidents in this order:

George Washington
George W. Bush
Ronald Reagan
Theodore Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Thomas Jefferson (a cretin, but an effective President)

[Abraham Lincoln and George Washington were the best man among them. But Lincoln was a horrible President. The Civil War never should have taken place; and when it did, it should have ended with far fewer US Armed Forces casualties.]

TOH

RMCK1:

I'll straiten you out by tomorrow evening at the latest. You're deluded, too, deciding historical facts that contradict your worldview are too cumbersome and thus best disregarded. I will seek to disabuse you and thus hopefully prevent you and your fellow fog-dwellers from abusing the poor any further.

TOH

SOCIALISM: general term for the political and economic theory that advocates a system of collective or government ownership and management of the means of production and distribution of goods. Because of the collective nature of socialism, it is to be contrasted to the doctrine of the sanctity of private property that characterizes capitalism. Where capitalism stresses competition and profit, socialism calls for cooperation and social service. 1
In a broader sense, the term socialism is often used loosely to describe economic theories ranging from those that hold that only certain public utilities and natural resources should be owned by the state to those holding that the state should assume responsibility for all economic planning and direction. In the past 150 years there have been innumerable differing socialist programs. For this reason socialism as a doctrine is ill defined, although its main purpose, the establishment of cooperation in place of competition remains fixed.

I am a socialist. We should control the economy in a way that best suits social justice. In some cases we should license private property rights, in some instances we should control both benefits and perquisties enjoyed by people, particularly the non-contributing member of our society. But in the end, we must cooperate to make our nation and our world a better place.

TOH

MORE OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS, BUT RMCK1 - I'M WITH YOU ON INNER-CITY DYSFUNCTION (SUBURBAN AND RURAL, TOO). I TOLD YOU, I'M A SOCIALIST. I EMBRACE FREEDOM, POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM, WHERE IT ADVANCES SOCIAL JUSTICE WITH RELATIVE EFFICIENTLY. WHERE IT DOES NOT; LET'S PUT THE HAMMER DOWN.

It's time we took control of the lives of poor people who misbehave; it should be live on our dime, live by our rules. I don't mean just the law. It's time, as socialists, we compel them to cooperate in making the nation a better place. The enemies of the poor and the middle-income is not the rich, but those among the poor, the middle-income, and the rich who need a lesson in cooperative living . . . yeah.

I'll be back by same time tomorrow; I'm curious to see what RMCK1 thinks about the New Socialism - my socialism.

TOH

RMCK1:

"You are no "socialist," dude, because you have a characterological analysis of social problems. That means that, at the end of the day, people are responsible for themselves alone.""

You saw the definition of socialism above. This defining criterion has nothing to do with socialism.

And in fact, it's just this unwillingness to have a "characterological analysis of social problems" that has led socialists in the past to fail again and again. I have an open-minded analysis of social problems. This means that where it is obvious that character issues are THE DEFINING CAUSE of poverty, which will not always be the case but clearly is in 21st century USA, then it's for socialism to address those issues. Where you would ignore them or over-state non-character factors, you are just plain, I don't know, dumb, silly, purposefully ignorant, ideologue. What you are doing by refusing to acknowledge the truth of the overhwelming degree of character issues in poverty today, TODAY, not in 1250 A.D. France or even in 1930 A.D. USA or even 1950 A.D. USA, is starting all of your views from the presumption that 2+2=5. That's just where your fellow travelers in 1960 started.

YOU ARE WRONG: SOCIALISM DOES NOT REQUIRE ONE TO BLAME POVERTY ON ECONOMIC FREEDOM; IN FACT IT REQUIRES THE OPPOSITE WHERE AND WHEN SUCH IS THE CASE.

TOH

RMCK1:

No, no, no, no. We, the people, are responsible for the least among us. Now, I see your confusion. I'm not for leaving the poor to their fate at all. I'm for preventing you deluded fanticists from doing them more harm and for POLICIES THAT WILL ACTUALLY HELP THEM rather than merely having utopian-sounding popular appeal.

I'm for interefering in the market and with quotidian civil liberties if it's in keeping with promoting a just society. I am a socialist.

TOH

RMCK1:

I'm for the poor having a backstop, but that is not what the political debate is about these days. Democrats are not about what people need to survive anymore; they are about redistributing income above and beyond what people need. No. Tax progressively to help the poor, the sick, the old, and the young with their needs and to provide an economy of opportunity - YES, ALWAYS!

WE HAVE THAT AND ONLY A TORTURED VIEW OF OUR NATION WOULD CONTRADICT THAT.

But Democrats would tax and give to fix the bifurcation of wealth in the USA. I would compel through economic policies the poor and middle-income to live lives by which they can earn their way into a closer income level with the USA's ethical elite, and excuse me, anecdotes aside, the rich in the USA are statistically and cummulative the USA's ethical elite.

You can look at the same article I gave DNS: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html. If people want to have more, be more . . . more like the people in this article. Otherwise be grateful. Be grateful for whatever shelter, food, medical care, etc. you receive gratis. Be grateful for the free ride you and your family are getting if you are paying less than $15,000/person in taxes (which I surmise 80% of individuals and families are so doing and thus free riding). Stop trying to legislate equality and behave equally with those people in the article. Where social conditions compel people to act differently; let's roll, RMCK1, and let's come heavy. Let's prevent these disturbed and debauched cultures from corrupting our youth by force of arms if need be. Let's show these gangster-thug-meth-making-stoners that there are men ready to fight for the welfare of our children, not merely throw money at a problem to make it worse.

LET'S ROLL! LET'S ROLL! LET'S ROLL!

Kennedy said it well (his only redeeming quality):

Let friend and foe alike, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC, know, we will rise to their challenge.

LET'S ROLL!

TOH

TOH:

Your recent posts show that you are willing to discuss substance - actually deal with the issues I touched on. That's a nice change. But the ad hominem attacks are, as always, a sign of desperation. Re: getting an education, here's what I have: BA in social sciences, MA in international relations, incl. course-work in economics; second MA in political theory; and a JD, with a clerkship at the Supreme Court of Canada. What have you got?

A few specific points I can easily rebut:

Workers in this economy are getting jobs, promotions, wage raises, capital appreciation in their assets like gang-busters.
On getting jobs... Job creation is virtually stagnant. Monthly new-job creation has been consistently lower than the level needed just to absorb for new entries into the job market. And the UE rate, which looks good, doesn't account for people who have given up looking. Household surveys are more reliable on true UE, and the picture there is bleak. Furthermore, real wages for the average worker have dropped over the last 6 years. In other words, raises (if any) have not kept pace with inflation.

Economic growth? On average BETTER THAN THE CLINTON YEARS. HAH!
Wrong. Bureau of Economic Analysis statistics show that the average quarterly growth rate of real GDP from 1Q/1993 through 4Q/2000 (Clinton) was 3.62%. The same statistic for 1Q/2001 through 3Q/2006 (Bush II) is 2.58%.

Lecturing me about getting an education may make you feel good, but you're getting your facts wrong.

But the real issue, for me, has become your refusal to let go of your impression of me as some caricature of an old-world Boss Tweed Democrat. That, and your tendency to swerve over to issues on which you can take shots at weak-on-defense liberals (e.g. appeasement in the 30s) when (a) we weren't discussing those other issues, and (b) you have no idea what I might think about them. Some examples:

If you are buffoonish enough to embrace the caricature produced by the Democratic Party ... of "tax cuts for the wealthy," I cannot explain the intricacies of efficient capital formation to you that would disabuse you of your Democratic Party instilled delusions. Get an education, son.
The overwhelming majority of the reductions in taxes (expressed on terms of dollar value) went to the wealthy. And the job-creation potential of such tax cuts is poor, at best. Maybe you're right that these tax cuts have boosted capital formation, but that's not the same as job-creation. [Our earlier discussion was about job creation, not capital formation.] Capital investments can of course lead to job creation, but not necessarily; it's an empirical question, and the evidence suggests that Bush's high-end tax cuts have done almost nothing for job creation. If I'm wrong, tell me how.

If you are too historically benighted to know the history of 1930s and 1940s world affairs and see how the USA's self defense and long-term standing in the world depended on the removal of Hussein and a good-faith effort to attempt a Marshall Plan development strategy in Iraq...
Where did I say anything about world affairs in the 30s and 40s? Clearly, you see a parallel between how the world didn't properly deal with Hitler in the 30s and how Bush decided to deal with Hussein. If you want to discuss the wisdom of such a parallel, by all means... But to say "Bush did to Hussein what we should have done to Hitler" doesn't mean it was the right thing to do with Hussein. Different problems call for different solutions. Your assumption that the problems/situations are the same is precisely what needs to be debated. I believe Bush's intervention in Iraq was a strategic blunder that has made the US less safe, and a lot of senior military people agree with me on this.

But most puzzling of all is this. You say that my paragraph about how people on this site prefer to engage in civil discussion is "the saddest, most arrogant, most deluded paragraph I've read on this site". But it's nothing more than a statement of fact. It describes how most people on the site like to debate each other. But then, as if to prove your point, you go off on a weird tangent -- knocking down substantive policy positions I never even put forward. Talk about a non-sequitur. Some examples:

[Y]ou so called "Enlightened Thinkers" are just the opposite. You're deluded and blind to any facts that contradict your views: 1) economic freedom is oppressive,
I never came close to making this argument. You're hallucinating.

2) discrimination causes poverty,
I simply asked you to acknowledge that discrimination has something to do with the damaging behaviors which you see as the causes of poverty. I never came close to making this categorical claim. Again, you're hallucinating.

3) war is bad.
Well, isn't it? But this is completely off-topic.

...think 60s/70s urban policy and 1930s-Hitler-appeasement...
If anything, I've agreed with you on urban policy, but where the hell does this appeasement issue come from? You have no idea what I might think of this. If you want to know, ask.

You are the one hostile to non-Democrat boilerplate views, not me.
Where do you get this idea? Where have I expressed such hostility? Show me.

I won't pretend poverty is caused by discrimination
I never made such a simplistic claim.

...the USA taxpayer who instead of thanking, you insult by your demands for even more.
Where have made demands for "more"? Where?

I also won't permit you to foist the blame for income inequality on the hard working wealthy
Again, you're hallucinating. I never made such an argument.

----------------------------------------------

rmck1 -- Nice to see you still here. Interesting debate.

TOH: You've made some good points along the way, and forced me to stop and rethink some of what I wrote, and we agree on more than you might realize. But I'm fed up with your pathological habit of ascribing opinions and positions to those who choose to debate you. For that reason, I'm bowing out. You may see this is proof that you've won the argument, but that's not the case. You've simply driven off a good-natured interlocutor with your pointless bullying.

One last observation -- more of a suggestion to rmck1 than a response to TOH:

Is TOH's claim to be a socialist undercut by his characterological approach to understanding social deviance?

He quoted a definition of socialism which focuses on the role of government in (a) owning the means of production and/or (b) financing the provision of social services. All well and good; that's a perfectly respectable way of defining socialism. But it's incomplete. A more specifically Marxist brand of socialist thinking insists on the central importance of the economic conditions in which individuals find themselves (as factors determining their ability to 'get ahead') and would place much less emphasis on individual traits. In this respect you are absolutely right that TOH is not a socialist. To the extent that he focuses on individual virtue/vice as an explanatory factor, he is more of a neoplatonist a la Leo Strauss than a socialist, and in fact stands completely outside of the Marxist/neo-Marxist tradition of socialism.

One last rebuttal of a TOH talking point:

from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:
Aggregated totals unemployed (seasonally adjusted), measured as: "Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers"

1996 - 2000 (Clinton):
average of monthly rates: 5.5%

2001 - Oct. 2006 (Bush II)
average of monthly rates: 6.2%

So where's that job creation you write so breathlessly about?

I can't resist. Here is Retired Army General Odom on the situation in Iraq:

It is beyond U.S. power to prevent sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq.

from 'Cut and Run' Must be First Step in Iraq
by William E. Odom
available at http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1119-24.htm

Unfair USA, yeah, right:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2667532&page=1

I guess it's George W. Bush's fault; or the cruel economic freedoms enjoyed by hard working Americans; or the tax cuts.

TOH

TOH wrote: Unfair USA, yeah, right

Uh... what? Are you responding to me or your hallucination?

DNS, could you be more ignorant (or stupid)? I don't mean to insult, but rather mean it clinically.

I'll review all of your inanities later but,

1) "plus discouraged workers" (translation: the corner men slinging packets on 125th); it is discouraging having to show up from 9-5.

2) ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt; George W. Bush created 2M+ jobs during his presidency, this after fixing with brilliant economic policies a recession that began in Clinton's last year Q3.

DNS, I'll look over your other stupidities later, but if this is it; don't bother me - it's too disturbing to see a first hand example of the failure of our educational system and a success story in terms of Democratic delusion creation: YOU!

TOH

DNS, if you cannot relate 1930s appeasement to the situation we faced in 2003 with Hussein, you need to go finish cleaning those toilets before the boss catches you playing with his computer.

TOH

TOH:
Tell me where I'm wrong.

TOH:
Did Hussein have both the intent and the capability in 2003 to invade neighboring countries -- as did Hitler in the 1930s?
Did Hitler's Germany have an international monitoring agency like the AIEA on the ground in the 1930s inspecting its weapons sites?

TOH:
Was economic growth under Clinton stronger than under Bush II? If not, provide evidence.
Was the unemployment rate under Clinton lower than it has been under Bush II? If not, provide evidence.

TOH:
You're impressed by the total number of jobs created since 2000, but each year the population and the labor pool grow, so what matters is year-over-year growth minus the background growth in the population.

Year-over-year job growth was higher under Clinton than it has been under Bush II - from the statistics you yourself cite:

1993 1.9%
1994 3.1%
1995 2.6%
1996 2.1%
1997 2.6%
1998 2.6%
1999 2.4%
2000 2.2%
2001 0.0%
2002 -1.1%
2003 -0.3%
2004 1.1%
2005 1.5%

The best job-growth number under Bush II (1.5%) doesn't even match the worst job-creation number under Clinton (1.9%).

Sorry, TOH. You can't win on the facts.

FANTACISTS:

I have not read the posts of the last 15 hours, but I will. I intend to explain economics and Democratic Party illusion creation more tonight. In the meantime I leave you with this quote that explains why my simple and rational points are failing to wake you from your fantasy world:

"Against logic there is no armor like ignorance." Lawrence J. Peter, author of The Peter Principle.

You should read Sowell's, The Vision of the Anointed (Sowell happens to be African-American), in which he dissects the delusional worldview of the Democrats such as yourselves which relies on a contrived ignorance and a non-recogintion of contrary facts to fuel your fantasies of injustice and persecution and corresponding faux-righteousness.

I'll sum up your mistake here: the villians, ethically and behaviorally, in USA society today are overwhelmingly statistically and cummulatively the poor and middle-income, not the relatively wealthy, who are the statistically and cummulatively the heros who carry this nation on their backs. We must help the poor and middle-income, but within the context of this apt paradigm; not within the faux-worldview that the Caucasian and the wealthy are exploiting or oppressing ethnic minorities and the poor. That is the falsehood that has breed catastrophic policy initiatives in the past.

TOH

Briefly DNS:

And, in your lunacy, what is it you think Bill Clinton did to create jobs? Was ejaculating on Monica Lewinsky's face and chest some sort of economic fertility ritual?

Bill Clinton only had some economic control for 2 years, 1993, 1994. Even then, the real master of the economy was a Republican: Greenspan. And in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, Gingrich and Greenspan ran Washington, D.C.

In Clinton's 2 years, he raised taxes ever so slightly on the top income earners 3.6%, which resulted in an overall GDP neutral tax increase of 1%. This contrasts with the real policy triumph of Ronald Reagan who cut taxes a GDP neutral 25%. To summarize, Clinton did not do anything. But, if you want to celebrate the beneficial effects of Welfare Reform and NAFTA, both Republican driven initiatives, please do.

I did win on the facts. You prated about Bush's failure to create jobs and I SLAPPED YOU DOWN HARD showing Bush create 2M+ jobs during his presidency, this after the Clinton recession of 2000. That you feel the need to desperately contrive some other false reality - that's your on-going problem. But, you made a statement with arrogant confidence and I shot it down.

Get an education, son.

TOH

DNS: Even this is silly:

1993 1.9%
1994 3.1%
1995 2.6%
1996 2.1%
1997 2.6%
1998 2.6%
1999 2.4%
2000 2.2%
2001 0.0%
2002 -1.1%
2003 -0.3%
2004 1.1%
2005 1.5%

It only proves the benefit of Republican policies. The boom of the 90s began because of Bush I's policies and began during his presidency (Q3 of his last year). The recession of the 00s began during Clinton's last year (Q3); recession the brilliant George W. Bush fixed immediately but putting funds in the greatest and most virtuous job creation machine on earth: the shrewed and proven financially savvy wealthy USA investor. Instead of being bitter, find a rich USA citizen and thank him profusely. He's carrying you like a sack of wet-towels.

TOH

DNS:

You're ignorant; being informed, I've seen all these half-truths so many times. The Democrats thrive on desperate fools such as yourself. FDR had some good policies in the context of his times. And the bipartisan civil rights movement (remember it was the Democrats in the South who fought that) was a positive for the USA. But these Democrats are horrible for the USA; they find prosperity and leave destruction everywhere they go.

TOH

DNS:

I'm too hard on you; I regret it.

There is a paradox in all your write.

First, in terms of actual policy, the 90s (and the 80s and the 00s) is proof that Reagan's earth shaking economic policies were exactly what this nation and this world needed to wake if from the hypnotic trance of the Democratic Party and it's world allies. Reagan governed, Clinton ejaculated. And, his triumph is that never again will people speak of 70% marginal tax rates which really did oppress the USA in 1980.

Second, your questions about Hussein and Hitler are perfect. Thank you. The answer is this: we did not know in 1930 about Hitler and we did not know in 2003 about Hussein (inspectors in Iraq is meaningless if they can inspect, but not where Hussein does not want them to inspect). The point holds: defeated tyrant-nation breaks treaty, enforce treaty. FDR did not, 60M dead worldwide in WW II. George W. Bush did, remarkable efficiently despite the Iraq problems, and is thus the second most effective president in US history.

TOH

Please do not hesitate to choose. This

getting the last word on a blog comment thread usually means no one is reading and they've all moved on as of a few hours ago. Just so you know for the future.

TOH -
To you, strong economic performance under a Democrat is proof that the previous Republican's policies worked, while poor performance under a Republican means that the previous Democratic administration ruined the economy. But it was you who made claims about job creation and economic growth during particular administrations. I guess I was a fool to think that you'd stick to the same argument once presented with facts to contradict your claims. Silly me.

TOH:

we did not know in 1930 about Hitler
Again, you're shifting the goalposts. I said "in the 1930s", which lasted from 1930 through 1939. But if we "didn't know" about Hitler, how can you criticize "appeasers"? Please be consistent.

I will return to defend the second most effective President in USA history after George Washington, George W. Bush, by tomorrow midnight.

DNS, I skimmed you more recent posts; if I've made some factual errors, I will admit them. But, small factual errors are irrelevant to the big picture. Ronald Reagan's vision for the USA has proven more effective for all economic groups. In fact, since 1981, the only debate among candidates is which variety of Reaganomics (and Gringrichomics) to embrace. No newly elected Democrat campaigned on 1) raising taxes, 2) reversing welfare reform, 3) trade protectionism, 4) increased spending, 5) abandoning Iraq to Al-Qaeda or the Baathists (redeployment means temporary withdrawal with redeployment in Iraq if circumstances warrant), 6) appeasement of North Korea or Iran. And, the great Democratic policy victories over the past 25 years were Clinton's: 1) welfare reform, 2) NAFTA extension. Hmmm . . . Were those not conservative initiatives?

The era of the Democrat-Destroyers is over. There is one last holdout: the virtually criminal UFT/NEA/Democratic PAC Slush Fund predators who are sucking the life-blood out of our nation's youth. But I'm dedicating my life to crushing those Zombie Child-Eaters at the UFT, the NEA, and the DNC, and with my Child Defending Allies nationally, especially the GOP, we will succeed.

I'll be back.

TOH

DNS, talk about avoidance.

Instead of who was in the White House when, how about pointing to some policy of Clinton's you think so dramatically helped the economy. ??? There is none. In 1993, he raised taxes a GDP neutral 1% total. That's almost nothing and he did it just to appease the Democratic base. Clinton did not do anything in 8 years except sign off on Gingrich's initiative: welfare reform and NAFTA extension, and ejaculate on Monica Lewinsky's face and dress. If you want to credit Clinton with governing, what governing did he do? It was Reagan who actually governed and his policies are still in effect today. From 1983 to today, the boom is his glory.

TOH

TOH --

You were the one to make claims about Republican policies working better than Democratic policies. I simply pointed to some pretty clear evidence that you're wrong. "Avoidance"? I don't think so.

As for "what governing did he do?", he got a Republican congress to enact HIS budget priorities -- not theirs. He raised the marginal tax rates on wealthy Americans with the result that the federal budget came into surplus. And this had no apparent negative effect on job creation -- in fact, job creation was strong throughout his 8 years. The benefits of the Clinton budgets include lower marginal tax rates and a stronger dollar than would otherwise have existed. Those are pretty good accomplishments, I'd say. Then along came George: lower taxes without any obvious boost in job creation, yet deficits as far as the eye can see. It may take a while for the damage to become apparent (we're still being financed by willing Asian central bankers), but when it does, you'll probably blame the next available Democrat.

TOH --

A strong case could also be made that the Reagan miracle you point to was (or still is) nothing more than a Keynesian bubble: his large tax cuts without corresponding spending cuts created an economic boom. Sure. The is whether we could have sustained the huge Reagan deficits through the 90s, or whether Clinton's budget-blancing was a necessary corrective. I would suggest that Clinton's budgets saved the country (at least temporarily) from the inevitable results of massive deficit spending: higher interest rates, a lower dollar, a loss of foreign investor confidence, job losses, massive defaults on mortgages, a collapse in the stock market, etc.... Bush II has put us back on the Reagan diet, with a vengeance. But he's given us only anemic job creation and economic growth while creating the same huge deficits. Deficit spending financed from abroad (and by increases in consumer debt) will always lead to growth, at least in the short term. No great surprise there. But the question is again on the table: how long can it last?