Govt. is the solution. OR: Govt. is the prob.

[sear]

Herein lies a political irony.

- Liberals want to limit the number of innocents massacred by limiting the maximum permissible capacity of firearms magazines.

- Conservatives want to limit the harm inflicted by governments, by limiting government authority and power.

These two factions of our society remain at loggerheads.

Who's right?

Liberals, or conservatives?

Democrats, or Republicans?

[Kowalski]

As Hank Hill said, "I miss voting for that man..."

[Ashotep]

Yes we need more Reaganomics and just say no.

[spartan max2]

Limited goverment has proven to work. Why do we always try and get rid of it?

[sear]

Kowalski,

I'm on narrow-band dial-up.

All I get from your post is a grey rectangle.

Which president?

"we need more Reaganomics" H

Reagan inherited a mess from Carter.

But the mess Reagan inherited from Carter was nowhere near the mess Obama inherited from Bush.

Economist consensus is that Bush's recession is the worst since the Great Depression.

We can blame Obama for his despicable economic rescue.

But it was the Bush administration that started it, AGAINST Reagan budget director David Stockman's wishes.

The Bushies had a $700 $Billion $TARP program. They hadn't intended to rescue the economy with that alone. They only wanted to keep the economy from collapsing, until Obama was inaugurated; toss the political hot potato to him.

They did.

And Obama did much the same thing.

Republicans rail against Obama for it. Stockman's the only one I've heard criticize Bush for $TARP.

So what?

Obama may actually have cut government spending more than Reagan did.

Matter of fact, regarding Reganomics, Governor Reagan campaigned against President Carter on Carter's deficit spending.

Governor Reagan promised to balance the budget, and pay down the debt.

But once in office, not only did Reagan spend more than Carter did.

Reagan spent more than all the other U.S. presidents before him, combined!

Reagan was a hypocrite, and a liar.

We do NOT need more Reaganomics.

[Kowalski]

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. --- Ronald Reagan

The ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi,I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

• Remarks to Future Farmers of America (28 July 1988) -- Ronald Reagan
  

[sear]

Government is the enemy until you need a friend. Former Senator Bill Cohen

"... we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior ..." RR

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. Lord Acton*

* He's the British historian that's paraphrased as having said: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[Ashotep]

Kowalski,

I'm on narrow-band dial-up.

All I get from your post is a grey rectangle.

Which president?

Reagan inherited a mess from Carter.

But the mess Reagan inherited from Carter was nowhere near the mess Obama inherited from Bush.

Economist consensus is that Bush's recession is the worst since the Great Depression.

We can blame Obama for his despicable economic rescue.

But it was the Bush administration that started it, AGAINST Reagan budget director David Stockman's wishes.

The Bushies had a $700 $Billion $TARP program. They hadn't intended to rescue the economy with that alone. They only wanted to keep the economy from collapsing, until Obama was inaugurated; toss the political hot potato to him.

They did.

And Obama did much the same thing.

Republicans rail against Obama for it. Stockman's the only one I've heard criticize Bush for $TARP.

So what?

Obama may actually have cut government spending more than Reagan did.

Matter of fact, regarding Reganomics, Governor Reagan campaigned against President Carter on Carter's deficit spending.

Governor Reagan promised to balance the budget, and pay down the debt.

But once in office, not only did Reagan spend more than Carter did.

Reagan spent more than all the other U.S. presidents before him, combined!

Reagan was a hypocrite, and a liar.

We do NOT need more Reaganomics.

I was being sarcastic.

[spartan max2]

Kowalski,

I'm on narrow-band dial-up.

All I get from your post is a grey rectangle.

Which president?

Reagan inherited a mess from Carter.

But the mess Reagan inherited from Carter was nowhere near the mess Obama inherited from Bush.

Economist consensus is that Bush's recession is the worst since the Great Depression.

We can blame Obama for his despicable economic rescue.

But it was the Bush administration that started it, AGAINST Reagan budget director David Stockman's wishes.

The Bushies had a $700 $Billion $TARP program. They hadn't intended to rescue the economy with that alone. They only wanted to keep the economy from collapsing, until Obama was inaugurated; toss the political hot potato to him.

They did.

And Obama did much the same thing.

Republicans rail against Obama for it. Stockman's the only one I've heard criticize Bush for $TARP.

So what?

Obama may actually have cut government spending more than Reagan did.

Matter of fact, regarding Reganomics, Governor Reagan campaigned against President Carter on Carter's deficit spending.

Governor Reagan promised to balance the budget, and pay down the debt.

But once in office, not only did Reagan spend more than Carter did.

Reagan spent more than all the other U.S. presidents before him, combined!

Reagan was a hypocrite, and a liar.

We do NOT need more Reaganomics.

First off when people think limited goverment no one thinks about Bush. He and Obma are the same.

Bush did a stimulus plan just like Obma. Obma just did a bigger one.

These cuts you speak of are not really anything. They are all for show

We send 250 million to Egypt for aid yet we end tours of the white house because we do not have the money?

The goverment cuts all the important areas first like cops firefighters etc. That way everyone gets scared and gives the goverment back our money.

Reagan started with a horrible economy and by the end of his term everything was prosperous again. Im fine with that.

He spent more because he had more to spend because of tax cuts and cuts on wastefull spending. Giving the people more disposable income, so people buy more and then the goverment gains more money from the taxes off what people buy. Revenue.

Edited May 13, 2013 by spartan max2

[sear]

"I was being sarcastic." H

Oh.

"Bush did a stimulus plan just like Obma. Obma just did a bigger one." s2

The recession only affected the Bush administration for a year, or two.

It affects the Obama administration for 6 or 8.

Is Obama's economic stimulus four times as much as Bush's?

"Reagan started with a horrible economy and by the end of his term everything was prosperous again. Im fine with that." s2

Reagan lied.

He even worked his lie into his inauguration speech.

"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?" Ronald Reagan 1981

Liar!

[SHaYap]

the pillars of consumer spending numbers ....

[sear]

Well te,

some have said capitalism* is the worst system, except for all the others.

It may be better than any worker's paradise Marx & Engels ever imagined. I don't think our standard of living is unreasonably low.

And though Denmark may score better on the happiness quotient than the U.S., I'm not packin' my bags.

* It may originally have been said about democracies and republics.

[SHaYap]

Well te,

some have said capitalism* is the worst system, except for all the others.

It may be better than any worker's paradise Marx & Engels ever imagined. I don't think our standard of living is unreasonably low.

And though Denmark may score better on the happiness quotient than the U.S., I'm not packin' my bags.

* It may originally have been said about democracies and republics.

its not the 'system' but the avenues open to abuse in the system .... and those avenues are getting wider by the minute as the numbers in red gets bigger ...

[sear]

te,

I don't know what red numbers you're referring to.

I'll never deny there's room for fraud, abuse, and waste here.

But have you read what a cesspool Afghanistan is? In the best provinces, they have government (Karzai) rule by day, and Taliban rule by night.

There are two groups of bandits they have to bribe. And if they offend, if they do something as shocking as send their little gir to school, she may be killed on the spot, or kidnapped and sold into prostitution or slavery.

North Korea is a totalitarian Hell hole.

Much of Africa, beautiful land though it may be, is badly mismanaged, corrupt, or in outright war.

We've got our problems. But they're utterly trivial in comparison to the compounding human misery elsewhere on the globe.

Count your blessings, not because religion says you have to.

Count your blessings because if you don't, not only will you live out your life as an ingrate. Is an unappreciated, unappreciative life worth living?

We've got it made! Celebrate that! And if you've got some to spare, Haiti is still taking charitable donations; and has enormous need.

[sear]

PS

These red numbers?

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 13 May 2013 at 06:51:51 PM GMT is:

The estimated population of the United States is 314,952,023

so each citizen's share of this debt is $53,244.16.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

[Drayno]

Government is always the problems. Throughout thousands of years - since Hammurabi's Code, government has always been a problem. Even looking back at the Magna Carta, we can see that people in the past devoted a tremendous amount of energy understanding past governments and how they always go tyrannical. Even the genius, polymath founding fathers of the United States - when crafting the documents that would ultimately define the nation as a whole, took extreme caution in enumerating the powers of government. And it wasn't like they put down the powers of government arbitrarily. I have a biography that I received from my late grandmother called Jefferson The Virginian, in which I learned of Jefferon's rigorous studies and knowledge of history - especially governments, in his student days. Whether it be governmental incarnations of Greece, the empires of Rome, Alexander of Macedonia, Gengis Khan, etc, he understood the wear and tear any empire, principality, or form of government go through over time.

He was not alone, almost all the founding fathers covered a ridiculous amount of subject matter...

Limited government is good government. Because limited government means the government is chained.

And that is what makes the Constitution so great - it chains the government from turning on us.

The Constitution was created in response to thousands of years of tyrants and governmental abuses.

Unfortunately, it's almost always Liberals who will deny this painfully obvious fact..

Edited May 13, 2013 by Kafkaesque

[sear]

"Government is always the problems." K

The United States is a rare example.

United States government was born of Revolution.

It's government the American colonists brought upon themselves.

They did so to solve problems. And if you want to read a list of those problems, there's a big long list of them (whining) in TJ's DOI.

U.S. governments were ~democratically founded to solve those problems.

BUT:

As B.F. Skinner observed:

Each new "solution" we turn to turns out to be the cause of a whole new set of problems. Self-government is no panacea.

"Government is always the problems." K

But somehow, it always seems to be a little less a problem than what came before.

"And that is what makes the Constitution so great - it chains the government from turning on us." K

If only that were so!

The U.S. federal government has been waging ruthless, self-destructive War on the People it's obliged to protect; and has done so for decades!

Due in large part to the U.S. Drug War, the nation we memorialize in song as "the land of the free, and the home of the brave" has the highest per capita incarceration rate of any other Western nation.

It's a disgrace!

We've waged TWO drug wars against ourselves; and had the wisdom to end the first one after ~14 years.

For reasons beyond rational comprehension, it continues with the second.

"In 1960 in this country [u.S.] there were only 4,000,000 people in the entire nation who had ever used an illicit drug at any time in their life. By 1990 we had 80,000,000 people in this country who had used illicit drugs at any time in their life, and the numbers who became hard core, frequent users were proportional and commensurate." DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine

In short, the escalation in Drug War made the destruction worse by more than an order of magnitude. And therefore we must do more of it?

[SHaYap]

deny this but it is still by the people, of the people, for the people ....

but when the people forgets and don't care ... who will care ?

[sear]

"deny this but it is still by the people, of the people, for the people ...." te

Piffle.

What benefit accrues to the People by having our tax dollars used to render us the nation with the highest per capita incarceration rate of any nation in the Western world?

That's not for the benefit of the People!

That's for the benefit of the paramilitary industrial Drug War complex: the cops that feel safer busting peaceful pot-heads than malicious rapists and lethal armed robbers.

It benefits the law court judges that are paid handsomely to hear their cases, and convict them for their offense.

It benefits the prison industrial complex, that turns tax paying citizens into ~$30K / yr. wards of the State.

It benefits the parole boards, and the parole officers, paid to monitor those that should never have been inducted into the system in the first place.

The sanity check of proof these assertions are true?

More than one U.S. Founder tilled the Earth, harvested hemp. Would our nation be better off it Thomas Jefferson was behind bars, for being a drug dealer?

Drug War usurps the right of Liberty.

Drug War punishes the exercise the unalienable right of Liberty as a crime.

How can the exercise of an unalienable right possibly be a crime? It's a conspicuous contradiction!

[spartan max2]

Piffle.

What benefit accrues to the People by having our tax dollars used to render us the nation with the highest per capita incarceration rate of any nation in the Western world?

That's not for the benefit of the People!

That's for the benefit of the paramilitary industrial Drug War complex: the cops that feel safer busting peaceful pot-heads than malicious rapists and lethal armed robbers.

It benefits the law court judges that are paid handsomely to hear their cases, and convict them for their offense.

It benefits the prison industrial complex, that turns tax paying citizens into ~$30K / yr. wards of the State.

It benefits the parole boards, and the parole officers, paid to monitor those that should never have been inducted into the system in the first place.

The sanity check of proof these assertions are true?

More than one U.S. Founder tilled the Earth, harvested hemp. Would our nation be better off it Thomas Jefferson was behind bars, for being a drug dealer?

Drug War usurps the right of Liberty.

Drug War punishes the exercise the unalienable right of Liberty as a crime.

How can the exercise of an unalienable right possibly be a crime? It's a conspicuous contradiction!

Be carefull your starting to sound like a Libertarian lol

and that is not a bad thing

[SHaYap]

Piffle.

~snip

How can the exercise of an unalienable right possibly be a crime? It's a conspicuous contradiction!

this is where by the people, of the people,for the people... should take precedence

[Drayno]

The United States is a rare example.

United States government was born of Revolution.

It's government the American colonists brought upon themselves.

They did so to solve problems. And if you want to read a list of those problems, there's a big long list of them (whining) in TJ's DOI.

U.S. governments were ~democratically founded to solve those problems.

BUT:

As B.F. Skinner observed:

Each new "solution" we turn to turns out to be the cause of a whole new set of problems. Self-government is no panacea.

But somehow, it always seems to be a little less a problem than what came before.

If only that were so!

The U.S. federal government has been waging ruthless, self-destructive War on the People it's obliged to protect; and has done so for decades!

Due in large part to the U.S. Drug War, the nation we memorialize in song as "the land of the free, and the home of the brave" has the highest per capita incarceration rate of any other Western nation.

It's a disgrace!

We've waged TWO drug wars against ourselves; and had the wisdom to end the first one after ~14 years.

For reasons beyond rational comprehension, it continues with the second.

In short, the escalation in Drug War made the destruction worse by more than an order of magnitude. And therefore we must do more of it?

I can agree highly that the War on Drugs and War on Terror have done nothing more than waste money...

We do have the highest per capita and we are sending kids to jail when we should be sending killers or pedophiles.

And their crimes? Simple drug crimes. I don't adovocate doing drugs personally in any way because they're unhealthy, but to each his own.

If I want to do something to my body I should have the right to do so. It's my body. It does not belong to the state.

Self-government is tricky. If the people become complacent they will lose their freedoms.

Huxley and Kafka both agreed that whatever is a distraction is evil, for distractions allow evil to befall upon those who are not aware of its presence.

Essentially meaning, if you're a zombie you will have no rights. Obedience is your shackle; it's a systematic raping of basic American freedom because the Americans are asleep and seeing the American Dream, not reality. The industrialization and modernization of everything have robbed the general populace of free will. They trade their minds for instant gratification... They trade their freedom for security. They trade knowledge for ignorance. They lose themselves to hedonism.

[Frank Merton]

I am one of those lucky individuals who has has living experience in both the States and Vietnam. Both countries have a propaganda apparatus constantly telling their population how lucky that they are not to be living under "them." The Vietnamese apparatus is more blunt and less subtle, but Americans get the same thing from their media.

There are ways Vietnam is much freer than America. I can buy almost any drug I want by just getting approval of a licensed pharmacist (the exception being of course addictive drugs). This has the massive economic benefit of keeping their prices at a tenth of what they cost in the states, so no wonder the drug companies and the medical profession are full of scare stories about how "bad" that is.

Then there are the copyright laws. Vietnam has a few, but they are short-time and limit the profits, so I can have music and films that I buy right downtown for a tiny fraction of the cost in the states (older movies are available for a dollar or less each). In the states they are available only if they are released (often release is held up for years to maximize theatre profit) and then they are expensive. The same applies in spades to books. If you speak English there is no censorship; there is some state control over Vietnamese publications and broadcasts, but this has opened up. All the cable networks that you have to pay for in the States are free here with the basic cable fee.

Then there is the legal profession. America seems largely composed of lawyers. People don't sue here; if you have a complaint you go to the local constable and he settles it. There is an appeal but rarely used. If you cause an accident, a cash payment is taken. End of story. If you commit a crime, you have no "right to an attorney" and all that stuff that as far as I can see just gets guilty people off and does little to protect the innocent but employs droves of legal professionals. Instead, there is a tribunal that investigates and decides what to do with you within a matter of a month or so.

Then there is travel; I can go anywhere in the world I want to go. Any Vietnamese can, except that the States generally keeps people out (since I have a long record of travel to the States and own land I have no problem going in and getting a visa, but few Vietnamese are treated that way, and most are just arbitrarily rejected.

I could go on in this vein for quite awhile. The one thing Vietnamese don't have is an open political system. You are kinda selected to be able to participate in politics. This has prevented the rise of a professional self-selected political class that you see in most countries, and nowadays most college graduates become party members within a few years of getting their degree, provided they are willing to do all the committee work (which is the basis unit of getting things decided) this entails, so what we have ended up with is a political meritocracy. I think what goes on in the States is just a circus, not real governance, and with a gridlock getting worse and worse.

[sear]

"Huxley and Kafka both agreed that whatever is a distraction is evil" K

television

Of all the arts, the cinema is the most important. Vladimir Ilich "Nikolai" Lenin 1870-1924

"There never will be talking pictures." D.W. Griffith

'Television in America does not exist to deliver programs to viewers.

It exists to deliver audiences to advertisers.' a top CBS-TV executive CBS

[flbrnt]

Government is good for somethings, not so good for other things. Republicans are no more for small government than democrats-you can't be for small government and a big military, which is the largest part of government. Life is about wanting mutually exclusive things. We want object X but do not want to pay price Y. We want to live a long life but do not want to diet and exercise. Everything is about working out a compromise. The reason Washington is dysfunctional is because the voters have forgotten that they cannot have everything their way. You win some and you loose some, you give and take. Capitalism works but is exploitative and immoral, socialism is great in theory but doesn't work because of lack of incentive. The solution? Work out a compromise which, hopefully, has the best parts of both systems. Extremism never works.