do taxpayer's need a lobby too?

[JohnRoberts]

Huh.. looters? Rodney King?  Are you still on the pain meds?

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/200911180733975932.html

Aljazera is one of the more visible non-western news organizations in that region, and distrusted by both us and them, so they can't be all bad. They are just quoting IRIB which is the official Iranian State controlled news agency.

Iran calls these folks members of "terrorist and armed opposition groups"...  I suspect during our revolution, GB considered us in the same terms.  I do not favor the violent overthrow of any government, but from our own history, understand how thoughtful people can find that the only reasonable path.

Most of the European leaders have voiced their support for the opposition, most noticeably by neglecting to congratulate Achiminijad after the last (sham) election. In these latest protests, a few weeks ago, ironically simultaneous with a government scheduled anti-US protest to celebrate  the anniversary of their taking our embassy, the protesters called out to Obama, saying he is either with them or the oppressive Iranian mullahs.

The choice seems obvious to me.  I would like to think that most of the thoughtful free world is supporting these protesters, but the Iranian regime is dug in, and IMO trying to start a war, to solidify support behind them against an external enemy. His popular support is slipping away, and we need to keep up the pressure without giving him a convenient enemy to rally against.

Pres Regan got a lot accomplished with the power of words and ideas. We need to at least be talking the right talk, instead of hugging Chavez and the like. Iran is playing us for a fool with the negotiations, using them for delay, so they can replicate North Koreas nuclear weapons program.

Of course I could be wrong, but I don't think so...

JR

 

[sodderboy]

living sounds, you agree with all of the fundamentals, and you are stuck on false cliches.  Selling drugs to put food on the table?  No motivated person need do this anywhere in the US.  A gated community is nothing more that a way for people to be snobs.  They just have a different way to do that in Germany, skiing Gstaadt is one of them, I think?  You are all hung-up on superficial things.  There are plenty of gated places all over Europe!  It's just that the rich have learned not to congregate together within a fence because of the long history of "torches and hayforks".  In the US you are allowed to flaunt it, and it creates more positive energy than negative.
And there should be millionaires and billionaires in private business- for the reason if there are none in private business, then they are only in the government.  What's the problem with someone making a product and earning millions?  Even if it is doing "The Makarena" or something stupid.  If someone is smart enough to identify an empty or under served market and they make big bucks filling it, with whatever product or service, then I know that THEY are the better person to direct their "spoils" than some government bureaucrat.  Besides, the rich AND poor of the US give away to others TWICE what any other country does, so the cliche of the money and gun stuffed safe in a gated community is pure fiction.
Mike

 

[living sounds]

I totally agree we need incentives, and innovative and dedicated people should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour. But in the past 30 years there has been a noteable shift, resulting in the lower income classes participating less and less, while the piece of the pie of those on top has gotten bigger and bigger. The phrase capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich has a lot of meaning.
Also, risks tend to get shared by all, while benefits tend to get into the hand of a selected few. And they get them even if they screw up.
The problem with shareholder value is it's short-term orientation. And the lack of incentives for corporations to do other things beyond accumilating capital. If you were to put the actual cost in environmental pollution, damages to human health and a host of other negative long-term consequences into the price of the finished product a lot of things would cost a lot more.
There's nothing wrong with entrepreneurship in general. But it has to be guided in a way it does the least harm and the most good for everyone. A smart government is to do just that.

 

[JohnRoberts]

There's nothing wrong with entrepreneurship in general. But it has to be guided in a way it does the least harm and the most good for everyone. A smart government is to do just that.

You don't guide entrepreneurship, you can incent things like hiring but the driving force for entrepreneurship is profit and creating something that didn't exist before.  This whole green jobs vision bullshit is nonsense. The big winner for green pump priming will be companies like GE that run in the inner circle and know the secret handshake. 

A "smart government", is an oxymoron, or at least a moron. Right now we have a government that thinks they are very smart, but actually they are scaring the shit out of small business with the prospect of even higher future taxes, energy costs, regulation, and mandatory benefits (health care) then wonder why nobody is hiring.

it's like when they recently increased the minimum wage and wondered why teenage unemployment was so high.

I have many adjectives for our public servants, but smart is not on the list.

JR

 

 

[living sounds]

Take a look at the rest of the world, the "nonsense" is working very well in many places. And the vast majority of business is conerned with creating things that already exist. For example, pharmaceutical companies for years have come up with pseudo-innovations, small changes in the chemical structure to create more or less the same substance with the same outcome to sell more of the stuff. Treting relatively rare diseases doesn't make enough money, so they don't go there. If you had one of those deseases you would think a whole lot different about government interference there.
Or look at the fast food industry. They are selling the same soft drinks and burgers for more or less a century now. The stuff hasn't become healthier, the costs to the environment of all the meat consumption is immense, they won't change for themselves - so we have to make them. Or create incentives for healthier and more sustainable food.

Treating concepts like the free market as a religion isn't helping anyone. Take a step back and look at it from a non-ideological perspective. There are many ways to a goal. The world is never just black or white. An oversimplifyed concept may work in physics, but in a system as complex as economics, with all the influences of and consequences for human life, it enevitably falls short.

 

[sodderboy]

A smart government is to do just that.

Das ist das ganze Problem!  Es gibt keine intellegente Regierungen.

Mike

 

[JohnRoberts]

This grand experiment has been going on and well inspected for thousands of years. While economics is not the hard science that some would like, because it typically involves human behavior which can be squishy, individual aspects of that behavior can be determined empirically over enough data points to be considered laws that work in the average.

Yes there are always multiple paths to take in governance, but they don't all end, higher up the hill. There is a robust historical record.

My read is that our past success is specifically because we have tried to keep government in the margin regarding business and markets, the new crew thinks bigger government is the solution for everything. Some (me) would argue this is just a power grab. Some people feel compelled to tell others how to live and act. Doing that on a mass scale must be attractive to some.

I am concerned about our rapid shift to the left and believe it is only a matter of time before the public makes their true will heard. If they embrace this shift to the left, I will be very surprised. Evidence so far is that they don't.

Of course opinions vary.

JR

PS: I can't begrudge the emerging markets taste for flesh. We have indulged in this simple pleasure for a long time. We should want even more of the would to be lifted out of poverty by free commerce. You are free to live on rice and fish heads it that floats your boat. This good for the planet is pure ideology with little basis in fact. I am concerned about the world diet getting less healthy, but it is a simple consequence of wealth. They recently looked at a mummy and found hardening of the arteries, so bad diet is not a modern thing, while perhaps a testament to humans inherent bad judgement. When they can afford to eat less healthy foods, they do. Wealth does not bring wisdom.

 

[living sounds]

Some people feel compelled to tell others how to live and act. Doing that on a mass scale must be attractive to some.

I am concerned about our rapid shift to the left and believe it is only a matter of time before the public makes their true will heard. If they embrace this shift to the left, I will be very surprised. Evidence so far is that they don't.

You got that mixed up. It's the conservatives trying to tell people how to live, even in their most private areas. And even wasting tax payer money on this. Things like abstinence only education. Or government funded anti-abortion measures. All the attempts of religious indoctrination. Pure ideology. Against all science and reason. What about what starting a massive war without any good reason.
All that is WAY more intrusive than a little tax increase for the wealthiest people for desperately needed health care and infrastructure.

That "rapid shift to the left" is a moderate realingment to the center. A return to common sense. Politics for the majority instead of small lobby groups. A mojority is in favour of the public option. And the insurance industriy spends money like mad to avoid it. I really have a hard time getting how you can warp your thinking in a way to see these things any other way.

Anyway, don't count on a resurgeance of the right-wing agenda anytime soon. Demographics are against that. The internet helps in getting the facts out. Bush didn't win in 2000 and only massive fearmongering got him to win in 2004. As soon as health care is passed Obamas numbers will go up. Even more so when the economy recovers. Progressive groups will challenge conservative democrats in the primaries. The 30 years of conservative politics may well be followed by a few decades of progressive politics. That's what happened after the great depression.

PS: I can't begrudge the emerging markets taste for flesh. We have indulged in this simple pleasure for a long time. We should want even more of the would to be lifted out of poverty by free commerce. You are free to live on rice and fish heads it that floats your boat. This good for the planet is pure ideology with little basis in fact. I am concerned about the world diet getting less healthy, but it is a simple consequence of wealth. They recently looked at a mummy and found hardening of the arteries, so bad diet is not a modern thing, while perhaps a testament to humans inherent bad judgement. When they can afford to eat less healthy foods, they do. Wealth does not bring wisdom.

This is not in line with the science.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Opinions vary...

extreme right and left are both fearful and try to control each other.

The whole nature of "progressive" politics is to promote an agenda to control other's lives.

I don't label myself, but find the libertarian philosophy least objectionable, the least interested in controlling others.

======

Science is a cold blunt instrument, that can selectively prove many points. The science can be accurate but based of poor assumptions.

Yes, meat consumes resources, but so does watching TV and blogging on the internet.

It would be healthier for us to eat further down the food chain, perform hard aerobic and anaerobic work for hours every day, and go to sleep when the sun sets. But humans will be humans. When we can replace labor with machines we do, when we can eat cows instead of grass we do. Even if others think it wrong.

We have evolved into omnivores so eating meat is not a recent behavior and we are well adapted for it. We can live without eating meat but it requires more effort to get full nutrition. It is not in our best interest to destroy the planet for future generations, but there have been frantic rants about sustainable population for decades and the agricultural sciences have responded with more productive flora.

Most hunger today is political in nature as petty dictators in Africa have hobbled and even destroyed effective agriculture. The thought of people going hungry in America as we are growing obese by the day is alarming. But surely a manageable issue. I see many people using food stamps (now some sort of debit card) where I shop, and they don't appear under nourished.

Like I said, wealth does not make us smart, nor does holding political power.

JR

 

[living sounds]

Humans will be humans? A few generations ago a good portion of the male population naturally died in wars. Humans naturally engange in murder, rape and theft. We've got laws against it. We can make laws against greed, unhealthy food and the destruction of our natural environment. Humans can change. Must change.
A smart government understands that more people die of lack of health care than of terrorist attacks. And thus makes health care affordable, instead of attacking countries that pose a compareably small thread.

Also, cause and effect chains are a little more complex than "what I see in my local shop". That's meaningless. This is why we need the instrument of science.

People in Africa are hungry because they never developed a lasting economy. Imperialists left and in came the food supply from Europe and the US. Which is a convenient way to get rid of all the subsidized wheat. But it prevents farmers in Africa from growing their own crops. Also, subsidized food from Europe and the US that gets sold in Africa, and has the same effect. An African farmer cannot compete with our cheap food. And then there are trade barrierers for them to sell here... But try to change the situation, no chance. Bill Clinton vetoed subsidies and got overruled by the house and senate. It's not much different in Europe. Democracy isn't working when the people affected are on the outside.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Humans will be humans? A few generations ago a good portion of the male population naturally died in wars. Humans naturally engange in murder, rape and theft. We've got laws against it. We can make laws against greed, unhealthy food and the destruction of our natural environment. Humans can change. Must change.

Law is useful to promote a civil society, where people can pursue, life, liberty, and happiness, as long as they don't deny others that same pursuit.

Murder clearly denies pursuit of life... greed, unhealthy food, and consumption of our natural resources as long as they don't infringe on other's rights should not rise to level of lawmakers attention.

Of course that doesn't stop them...  greed is good if it creates more jobs and more wealth. Much of industry is not a zero sum game, but makes a bigger pie. Simply redistributing wealth makes a smaller pie, as government often lets a bunch stick to their fingers, as they cut it up and move it around.

I don't eat unhealthy food, but I'll be damned if I want government to decide for me. It's bad enough with all the farm subsidies that distort the proper pricing of food, and don't get me started on ethanol.

A smart government understands that more people die of lack of health care than of terrorist attacks. And thus makes health care affordable, instead of attacking countries that pose a compareably small thread.

I've already shared my opinion about how smart governments actually are.

The rising cost of health care is a world wide problem... Most socialized systems around the world are struggling with these cost increases. france, germany, etc have been running a deficit for some time now.

Our government, modeling a system after these others that are now struggling is moving in the wrong direction at the wrong time.

Every person, even those with half a brain, agree that we need to reduce health care costs... I have listed many useful proposals that would actually reduce cost.

The current legislation that slimed its way through the house and is now fermenting in the Senate does precious little if anything to reduce actual costs. With typical government logic, they plan to just pay the doctors less, for more treatment... The math is as flawed as trying to reduce poverty by increasing the minimum wage. They got away with this for years with medicare, as the private health providers shifted these unpaid costs to others. Expanding this program widely will eliminate those outside the system that were carrying the true cost. 

We need to look at tort reform, level worldwide drug prices, and more patient control of their own healthcare decisions, so the free market can actually work. The current legislation is not even a good lie.. it will hurt us all. 

Also, cause and effect chains are a little more complex than "what I see in my local shop". That's meaningless. This is why we need the instrument of science.

??

People in Africa are hungry because they never developed a lasting economy. Imperialists left and in came the food supply from Europe and the US. Which is a convenient way to get rid of all the subsidized wheat. But it prevents farmers in Africa from growing their own crops. Also, subsidized food from Europe and the US that gets sold in Africa, and has the same effect. An African farmer cannot compete with our cheap food. And then there are trade barrierers for them to sell here... But try to change the situation, no chance. Bill Clinton vetoed subsidies and got overruled by the house and senate. It's not much different in Europe. Democracy isn't working when the people affected are on the outside.

Several dictators in africa have chased effective farmers off their land and given the large farms to cronies, or broken them up to give to supporters, with no farming skills. The result is to destroy what farm infrastructure existed.

We do agree that a second, equal problem is the difficulty for local farmers to find a fair market for their goods. Farm subsidies in western countries have hurt those distant markets.  I was encouraged by a Bush promotion to convert a percentage of farm aid to africa into food that was purchased on local food markets to help build up a local food infrastructure. Just dumping free food into their market hurts local farmers. 

Even charity can have bad consequences, but the domestic farmers want to profit from food aid to others... Western farmers or their political influence is partially responsible for world hunger.  The emerging nation agriculture need to get up to a critical mass before they can take advantage of modern advanced farming techniques. A few leaders are working in the right direction, but most are saddled by their local farm lobbies self interest.

The world is a complex equation, with many moving parts.

JR

 

[sodderboy]

Humans will be humans? A few generations ago a good portion of the male population naturally died in wars. Humans naturally engange in murder, rape and theft. We've got laws against it. We can make laws against greed, unhealthy food and the destruction of our natural environment. Humans can change. Must change.
A smart government

Laws do not stop murder, rape, and theft!  They punish it.  Personal morals prevent us from plunging a screwdriver into someone.  Only a totalitarian government can enforce the change you wish, at the point of a gun after they see someone eating illegal fatty wurst through the FreeVee.  Only a moral people will abolish murder, rape, and theft.  And then, even good people will run amuck.  You want a totalitarian state to dictate what people eat?  This is the height of egotism from one who hurls the charge thereof.

Mike
Aside:  The truth of US "healthcare reform" is on the first page of the House's bill.  It says, A Bill , and boy will it be an expensive one. . .  You cannot say that Congress does not have a sick sense of humor.

 

[Svart]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/20/california.tuition.protests/index.html

 

[JohnRoberts]

California and to a lesser extent NY are the canary in the coal mine for what happens when you spend money you don't got...

Just because the fed can print and still borrow money (for now), does not mean we can't find the whole country in the same boat.

If we get the public addicted to entitlements we will get californicated.

JR

 

[Svart]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/20/transparency/index.html

Thank you Ron Paul.

It's about time that some of the pawns in the "system" I keep speaking of start to turn away from the good ole boy system.

I keep talking about the reps that are not "players" in the government game, Ron Paul is one, and has been called all kinds of strange names in an effort to discredit his earnest efforts.  In the article he is quoted as being called a "wingnut".. Which might be a censored version of what they really call him when he stirs things up.

Glenn Greenwald
Friday, Nov 20, 2009 04:21 PST
The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat
By Glenn Greenwald

Something quite amazing happened yesterday in Congress:  the House Finance Committee -- in a truly bipartisan and even trans-ideological vote -- defied the banking industry, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic leadership, and mainstream Beltway opinion in order to pass an amendment, sponsored by GOP Rep. Ron Paul and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, mandating a genuine and probing audit of the Fed.  The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim has the best account of what took place, noting: 

    In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

Grim details how key Committee Democrats such as Frank -- who spent the year claiming to support an audit of the Fed in the face of rising anger over its secret and bank-subservient policies -- suddenly introduced their own amendment (sponsored by Democratic Rep. Melvin Watt) that would have essentially gutted the Paul/Grayson provisions.  Banking industry and Fed officials, as well as the Democratic leadership, then got behind that alternative provision as a means of pretending to support transparency while protecting the Fed from any genuine examination.  Notwithstanding the pressure exerted on Committee Democrats to support that watered-down "audit" bill, Grayson convinced 15 of his colleagues to join with Republicans to provide overwhelming support for the Paul/Grayson amendment.  As Grim notes:

    [Frank] urged a no vote, yet 15 Democrats bucked him, voting with Paul.  Key to winning Democratic support was a letter posted early Thursday from labor leaders and progressive economists. The letter, organized by the liberal blog FireDogLake.com, called for a rejection of the Watt substitute and support for Paul.

    Grayson was able to show Democratic colleagues that the liberal base was behind them.

    "Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy," a victorious Grayson said afterwards.

The bill still faces substantial hurdles in becoming law, of course, but yesterday's vote has made that outcome quite possible, and it's worth noting several important points highlighted by what happened here:

(1) Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates only by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting "right v. left" storylines.  While some debates fit comfortably into that framework, many do not.  Anger over the Wall Street bailouts, the control by the banking industry of Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts itself resonates across the political spectrum, as the truly bipartisan and trans-ideological vote yesterday reflects.  Populist anger over elite-favoring economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they're both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies.

For that reason, many of the most consequential political conflicts are shaped far more by an "insider v. outsider" dichotomy than by a "GOP v. Democrat" or "Left v. Right" split.  The pillaging of America's economic security by financial elites, with the eager assistance of the government officials who they own and who serve them, is the prime example of such a conflict.  The political system as a whole -- both parties' leadership -- is owned and controlled by a handful of key industry interests, and anger over the fact is found across the political spectrum.  Yesterday's vote is a very rare example where the true nature of political power was expressed and the petty distractions and artificial fault lines overcome.

(2) As Grim expertly describes, the effort to defeat the Paul/Grayson amendment came from all of the typical Washington power centers using all of the establishment's typical manipulative tools:

    The playbook in Washington often goes like this: When a measure that threatens the establishment builds enough momentum that it must be dealt with, it is labeled as "unserious." The Washington Post editorial board, true to the script, called Paul's measure "an unserious answer to a serious question."

    And it particularly rankles the center that a pair of "wingnuts " [Paul and Grayson] are behind a successful effort to challenge the prevailing order.

    Step Two is for a "serious" compromise to be offered. In this case, it was Watt's amendment. But by the time the vote was called Thursday afternoon, committee members had seen through his measure, recognizing that it was not a compromise effort to bring real transparency to the Fed but an attempt to further shut the doors.

One can count on one hand the number of times that establishment attacks like this fail, but this time -- at least for now -- it did.  And it reveals a winning formula:  where there is a strong and principled leader in Congress willing to defy the Party's leadership and the Washington establishment (Grayson), combined with leading experts lending their name to the effort (economists Dean Baker and James Galbraith), organizations standing behind it (labor groups), and a shrewd and driven organizer putting it all together (FDL's Jane Hamsher), even the most powerful forces and opinion-enforcers can be defeated, as they were here.  Those progressive advocates' refusal to be distracted by trite partisan considerations, and their reliance on substantial GOP support to pass the bill (as hypocritical as the GOP's position might have been), was particularly crucial -- and smart.

(3) Beyond the specifics, a genuine audit of the Fed would be a major blow to the way Washington typically works.  The Fed is one of those permanent power centers in this country that exert great power with very little accountability and almost no transparency (like much of the intelligence and defense community).  The power they exert has exploded within the last year as a result of the financial crisis, yet they continue to operate in a completely opaque manner and with virtually no limits.  Its officials have been trained to view their unfettered power as an innate entitlement, and they express contempt for any efforts to limit or even monitor what they do. 

In other words, the Fed is a typical Washington institution that operates un-democratically and in virtually total secrecy, and a Congressionally-mandated audit that they (and much of the DC establishment) desperately oppose would be a serious step towards changing the dynamic of how things function.  At the very least, it would provide an important template for defeating the interests which, in Washington, almost never lose.  At least yesterday, those interests did lose -- resoundingly -- and the importance of that should not be overlooked.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Ron Paul is a libertarian (a good thing) and not the only one in congress.

That said I have been critical of his inability to be effective. IMO he seems all to comfortable standing off to the side and yelling that the world is going to end, instead of trying to move policy his direction in small incremental changes. Governance is about negotiation and compromise. You don't get a touchdown every play.. but if you keep moving the ball toward the goal you can eventually get there.

I hope this signals a shift, as the public is surely getting more concerned about the expansion of government. Libertarian policy is about a 180' from where we have been heading even before the chosen one got elected. 

I might even vote for him if he worked a little smarter and had a real chance at getting elected. .

JR

PS I know a few Libertarian supporters and they are wingnuts, despite my agreement with their agenda. In politics, difficult as it may be, we should separate personalities from policy.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Ron Paul was on the tube this morning talking about his FED audit amendment... He reinforced my suspicion that he is more jester than agent of change as he admitted he won't even vote for the bill his amendment is on.. (Barney Frank's new bank regulations).

When asked about the health care bill, he joked about how ludicrous it is. Expanding coverage to so many people, while claiming to reduce the deficit? No wonder Washington has zero credibility. I don't find it that funny as it slimes toward passage.

JR

PS: Paul admitted that he wants to break up the FED and return to a gold standard, so he did not come across as very moderate. It's a shame because I agree with a lot of his policy.

 

[Svart]

Well yes, he has an aggressive view on how to fix the government's parts.

I see it like an old car.  Once it starts to wear out, you can change each piece as it breaks but it's only going to delay the inevitable final breakdown.  Sometimes it's just better to completely rebuild the engine before something breaks.

Or just buy a new car.

;D

 

[JohnRoberts]

Well yes, he has an aggressive view on how to fix the government's parts.

I see it like an old car.  Once it starts to wear out, you can change each piece as it breaks but it's only going to delay the inevitable final breakdown.  Sometimes it's just better to completely rebuild the engine before something breaks.

Or just buy a new car.

;D

To run with your analogy,  our constitution isn't broken... far from it...  we are in one of the typical populist cycles as government swings to far from center in one direction or the other. I find it remarkable how much money they can spend, and commit us to spend, while they have the pendulum on their side.

Regarding economic policy, it is an undesirable side effect of too much economic stimulus, that it gives cover to economic frauds and bad behavior (crooks will be crooks despite any law). There's an old saying, "you can't see who is not wearing a bathing suit until the tide goes out". If the tide doesn't go out for a while, more bare assed swimmers in the water.

After the last bubble burst, congress acted, to look like they were doing something useful, and saddled us with Sarbanes-Oxley, which didn't prevent the next round of crooks from being crooks. Now we will get some more onerous banking industry regulations to be crafted and overseen by the same idiots that got us here with too much economic manipulation.

But we will survive this too... While I must admit it is getting harder to remain optimistic as government expands beyond any acceptable size and scope.

Glad I'm an old fart..  I feel sorry for the kids, but they voted these jokers into power..so caveat emptor.

JR