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Originally posted by Hotel Paper
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Ok. Thanks for the heads up...Kansas is Flat. The Earth is Not!!
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You might be surprised to know that I don't support McCain nor am I voting for him. He's a Democrat in war-hawk clothing. The only thing I admired him for is his stance against earmarks, that is, until the biggest earmark of all was recently passed. I will not support nor vote for a presidential candidate that doesn't openly support a significantly smaller, Constitutional goverment.Originally posted by Overtime
Obama govern from center left? I don't believe it for a second.
America's success came from the freedom of it's people to work hard and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Heavily progressive federal and state tax policies will kill that spirit. When the feds started taxing income (which didn't include salaries when the amendment was first passed, as I understand it) we were in the middle of great industrial advancements which masked the growing burden of taxes and liberal social policies for nearly a century. I have my doubts that this country can continue to absorb the growing burden of social programs and progessive taxation. Yes, I believe this country is going to collapse under the weight of it's own debt and rediculously large and growing federal goverment.
If Obama becomes president and Congress is complicit in passing his policies it will accelerate the process and take us to a society that would make Marx proud. So I won't apologize for my avatar. It is there to make a point. A point that has nothing to do with John McCain.
I don't recall the British politician who said that a democracy can last only as long until the people realize they can vote themselves money from the treasury. Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress will be their cashier.Comment
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And how would you know???Originally posted by Hotel Paper
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well, if you search for it on google, there are article for itOriginally posted by BenWSUAnd how would you know???Originally posted by Hotel PaperComment
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Understand your points Royal, but this fantasy that people have that Americans came to this country or this state for that matter and magically found wealth and prosperity from the fruits of their labor is a bit off base. Only a precious few have achieved that dream solely on their own. Most of the people who settled this state were given the land for free or practically free, and during the Depression it was the government who had to teach those rugged individualist how to farm so the Breadbasket of the World would not become the Dust Bowl (again).Originally posted by RoyalShock
No doubt that government is large, but that has been at the benefit of the rich as well as the poor. I learned this as I was leaving WSU the year before Reagan was elected. My first on-campus interview was with Garvey Industries, and with none other than Willard Garvey himself. In that interview, he proudly proclaimed his Conservative beliefs in small government and low taxes, then promptly and just as proudly, ticked off the millions of dollars in corporate welfare his multiple enterprises received from the federal government. He said, and I quote: "hey, I don't make the rules, I just play by them." Don’t kid yourself that he didn’t have a hand in making those rules.
Thank you Willard for putting country first.
As far as progressive taxes killing our spirit? Warren Buffet has an outstanding challenge of $1 million dollars to any CEO in America that can prove he or she pays a higher effective tax rate than their secretary. So far not takers.
In a city and state that have benefited mightily from big government (military aircraft, agricultural subsidies), I find it ironic that folks on this board are so quick to bite the hand that feeds them. Indeed, WSU itself has been bailed twice in its history (once by Wichita, once by Kansas) because it couldn’t survive as a private institution. Are the thousands of graduates, most who worked their way through school, welfare recipients who spend all of their money on booze, drugs, and porn? Was that money wasted or a wise investment in our city, our state and our citizenry? Are Barak Obama’s policies really that Marxist? If so, what are the Republicans policies that provide corporate welfare? Why can’t businesses stand or fall on their own, instead of getting tax breaks and giveaways? What about the wealth that was distributed during the 8 or 9 years that the minimum wage did not go up?
And speaking of Marxism, Socialism, Communism, isn’t is a bit odd that Koch Industries founder Fred C. Koch established his fortune, not in America, but building oil refineries for the Soviet Union? Couldn’t compete against the big boys in the USA, so took government contracts from the hammer and cycle crowd. But hey! That money sure did come in handy when it was time to remodel the Charles Koch Arena. Maybe it should be called the Gulag instead of the Chuck.
I also find all of the chatter (not yours necessarily) about distribution of wealth incredible. Try working for a company like I have where the CEO screws up the company and walks out with a $50 million severance package, which is paid for by 10,000 (college educated) employees losing their jobs. Before that, I worked for a company that saw it's headcount drop from 136,000 in 1999 to 45,000 by the end of 2002 (through layoff and divestiture) and it's stock drop from $72 to $2. Again, failed CEOs walked out the door with more stockholder equity in their pockets than the stockholders themselves were left with. Why do CEOs do this? They do it because they can. Because we made our government just a wee bit smaller. You don’t think this type of capitalism(?) isn’t crippling America?
Between, those two companies, I spent 3 and-a-half years as a self-employed entrepreneur, but I gave it up and went back into the corporate world. Not because I couldn't make enough money, and certainly not because of high taxes. I went back (with a pay cut) because of health insurance ($46,000 over 3 1/2 years). Half of that through a state sponsored risk pool because someone in my family had pre-existing conditions and I couldn’t buy insurance for them AT ANY PRICE in the open market. Needless to say listening to people whine about taxes doesn't cut it with me.
If Joe the Plumber is worried about buying his business, he should talk to an accountant, not Obama or McCain. They will tell him where his real pain will be.
It would be great if the people who lead our country would actually follow your principles instead of just talk about them, but unfortunately that doesn't happen, and hasn't been happening for the last many years. But it wasn’t because of our robust economy. Government regulation can also be called Adult Supervision, and unfortunately has to be applied in the same way that parents deal out to unruly children. It's human nature, and is not the exclusive franchise of just one party or ideology.
Nobody really knows what Obama will do anymore than people did when they took a chance on an actor from Hollywood 28 years ago. A lot of people thought Reagan would blow up the world with nukes.
:goshocks:Kansas is Flat. The Earth is Not!!
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[quote="jocoshock"]Understand your points Royal, but this fantasy that people have that Americans came to this country or this state for that matter and magically found wealth and prosperity from the fruits of their labor is a bit off base. Only a precious few have achieved that dream solely on their own. Most of the people who settled this state were given the land for free or practically free, and during the Depression it was the government who had to teach those rugged individualist how to farm so the Breadbasket of the World would not become the Dust Bowl (again).Originally posted by RoyalShock
No doubt that government is large, but that has been at the benefit of the rich as well as the poor. I learned this as I was leaving WSU the year before Reagan was elected. My first on-campus interview was with Garvey Industries, and with none other than Willard Garvey himself. In that interview, he proudly proclaimed his Conservative beliefs in small government and low taxes, then promptly and just as proudly, ticked off the millions of dollars in corporate welfare his multiple enterprises received from the federal government. He said, and I quote: "hey, I don't make the rules, I just play by them." Don’t kid yourself that he didn’t have a hand in making those rules.
Thank you Willard for putting country first.
As far as progressive taxes killing our spirit? Warren Buffet has an outstanding challenge of $1 million dollars to any CEO in America that can prove he or she pays a higher effective tax rate than their secretary. So far not takers.
In a city and state that have benefited mightily from big government (military aircraft, agricultural subsidies), I find it ironic that folks on this board are so quick to bite the hand that feeds them. Indeed, WSU itself has been bailed twice in its history (once by Wichita, once by Kansas) because it couldn’t survive as a private institution. Are the thousands of graduates, most who worked their way through school, welfare recipients who spend all of their money on booze, drugs, and porn? Was that money wasted or a wise investment in our city, our state and our citizenry? Are Barak Obama’s policies really that Marxist? If so, what are the Republicans policies that provide corporate welfare? Why can’t businesses stand or fall on their own, instead of getting tax breaks and giveaways? What about the wealth that was distributed during the 8 or 9 years that the minimum wage did not go up?
And speaking of Marxism, Socialism, Communism, isn’t is a bit odd that Koch Industries founder Fred C. Koch established his fortune, not in America, but building oil refineries for the Soviet Union? Couldn’t compete against the big boys in the USA, so took government contracts from the hammer and cycle crowd. But hey! That money sure did come in handy when it was time to remodel the Charles Koch Arena. Maybe it should be called the Gulag instead of the Chuck.
I also find all of the chatter (not yours necessarily) about distribution of wealth incredible. Try working for a company like I have where the CEO screws up the company and walks out with a $50 million severance package, which is paid for by 10,000 (college educated) employees losing their jobs. Before that, I worked for a company that saw it's headcount drop from 136,000 in 1999 to 45,000 by the end of 2002 (through layoff and divestiture) and it's stock drop from $72 to $2. Again, failed CEOs walked out the door with more stockholder equity in their pockets than the stockholders themselves were left with. Why do CEOs do this? They do it because they can. Because we made our government just a wee bit smaller. You don’t think this type of capitalism(?) isn’t crippling America?
Between, those two companies, I spent 3 and-a-half years as a self-employed entrepreneur, but I gave it up and went back into the corporate world. Not because I couldn't make enough money, and certainly not because of high taxes. I went back (with a pay cut) because of health insurance ($46,000 over 3 1/2 years). Half of that through a state sponsored risk pool because someone in my family had pre-existing conditions and I couldn’t buy insurance for them AT ANY PRICE in the open market. Needless to say listening to people whine about taxes doesn't cut it with me.
If Joe the Plumber is worried about buying his business, he should talk to an accountant, not Obama or McCain. They will tell him where his real pain will be.
It would be great if the people who lead our country would actually follow your principles instead of just talk about them, but unfortunately that doesn't happen, and hasn't been happening for the last many years. But it wasn’t because of our robust economy. Government regulation can also be called Adult Supervision, and unfortunately has to be applied in the same way that parents deal out to unruly children. It's human nature, and is not the exclusive franchise of just one party or ideology.
Nobody really knows what Obama will do anymore than people did when they took a chance on an actor from Hollywood 28 years ago. A lot of people thought Reagan would blow up the world with nukes.
:goshocks :[ /quote] thank you! Wow amazing Get ready for the on slaught! 8) :good: :good: :good: 8)I have come here to chew bubblegum and kickass ... and I'm all out of bubblegum.Comment
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jocoshock:
Your post is well written and of course simplistic in view as it would have to be covering such a wide range of complex subjects in a brief space. Without trying to address each point, I’ll make a few very simplistic comments of my own in a general response.
1) The drought of the 1930’s was caused by climatic changes and ended when Mother Nature decided to end it. Nothing the farmers or Government did could have prevented it, changed it nor ended it. Farming didn’t return because the Government taught farmers how to farm, it returned when the drought ended and the rains returned. The programs Roosevelt implemented certainly provided jobs for many during the coincident depression, but did zilch for ending the drought, preventing future droughts, nor probably for even ending the depression (WWII did that). Indeed, many of the farm subsidy programs that many complain about today, i.e. paying farmers not to grow crops, are programs implemented during that time and had less to do with the drought and more to do with the economic times.
2) As far as capitalism, socialism, and communism as political/economic systems, none of the systems exist in a pure form anywhere in the world and it really doesn’t matter whether you believe one or the other to be “better/worse” than the others to believe Obama is a capitalist/socialist/communist. To argue that Obama’s policies are not socialistic is silly; they clearly are as is his past. That is not to say they are “wrong” or even “un-American”, it is merely to say they are socialistic. It is up to the individual to decide if those policies are for them. And by the way, how could socialism not be Marxist?
3) Sorry about your job experiences apparently they are not that uncommon these days, unfortunately. I suspect the failures you describe have less to do with the size of government and more to do with the neglect/incompetence of those in government. I seriously doubt that a larger or smaller bureaucracy would have changed a single vote in either house of Congress nor provided competent oversight on any committee. We need to vote those people out of congress, not enlarge and enrich their playground.
4) Regan was a well known political commodity long before running for president. He was a two term Governor of California and politically active and visible prior to that. Obama is definitely the least known and least qualified candidate for president maybe ever, certainly in my lifetime. To say that we knew no more of what to expect from Regan than we do from Obama is not only an absolutely incredulous statement, it is totally false. You really don’t believe Regan went straight from the screen to the Presidency, do you?
I’ll tell you a funny true story about Regan that has nothing to do with this thread. I was in southern California when he was running for Governor. The Democrats in an effort to belittle him as nothing but an old time grade B actor had a popular TV station run all of his old grade B western movies every night. They forgot of course, that Regan was always the hero in his movies and when the movie ended you were left with a warm cozy feeling for him. It backfired, his popularity soared and he won with a million plus majority vote. Well, I thought it was funny - and all just my humble opinion as usual.Comment
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I was joking.Originally posted by kcshocker11Comment
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Re:Originally posted by rayc
1) Dust bowl was both climactic and a result of improper farming techniques. Climate changes lasted for almost 10 years, but the government did implement new farming techniques to keep farmers from exacerbating future situations with the way they farmed. Government intervention was also implemented to lessen volatility in free market forces. Not saying government is the answer to all problems, but it is needed to keep the market swings mild instead of wild.
2) Socialism does exist but not just for the poor. The use of those terms in political races is not to describe what is happening or will, but to paint the picture that one side is anit-American and to be feared. I don't disagree with your points on whether it exists or not either. But the all or nothing black/white (no gray) positions presented in many threads and in the press is misleading and unrealistic.
3) What happened to me and others (at an alarmingly increasing rate) is not about what giovernment has done. It's about an environment created over many years that government is not needed to instill discipline an fairness in the market place. The market is capable of self-regulating. Well guess what, it's not. No doubt that this scenario can swing too far one way or the other (regulation vs. no regulation), but it has swung too far away from reasonable regulation. It's time for a correction. And if government goes too far, then the mid-terms elections are there to correct the situation.
4) Reagan was well know to Conservative Republicans which were not exactly a large group in the 1960s. He had zero foreign policy experience, was the governor of California. His views were not shared by a wide segment of the population, evidenced by his two failed attempts at getting the Republican nomination in 68 and 76. It wasn't until the meltdown of the Carter administration that America took a chance. Very similar situation to today.
Good post Ray CKansas is Flat. The Earth is Not!!
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Jocoshock,
First, I enjoyed reading your post even though I disagree with much of what you assert. You bring up a lot of points for discussion, especially through personal anecdotes – which is fine, of course, so long as you don’t take it personally if someone disagrees with your conclusions. Rather than address every issue you bring up (rayc has already tried to climb that mountain :) ), I am going to, briefly in the limited time I have right now, take up your statement in your last paragraph:
I have, though the course of this campaign discovered what I believe Sen. Obama will do if elected President – and it is not unique, it is not new and it is certainly not change.Nobody really knows what Obama will do anymore than people did when they took a chance on an actor from Hollywood 28 years ago. A lot of people thought Reagan would blow up the world with nukes.
Obama would like to place restrictions on international trade so that he may save American jobs – he may or may not succeed on this account. However, this was tried during the 1930s and unemployment rose substantially after such restrictions were put in place.
Obama wants to tell business, or put more precisely, he wants government to tell business how to conduct their operations. This was tried on a grand scale all over the world – so much so those countries started to, and continue to this day, to free up their own markets. Put another way – they want to operate like the U.S. economy operates. For example, a country like China began to experience high rates of growth once they began to abolish the very types of polices Obama is advocating now.
The concept of redistribution of wealth has been utilized by countries as well – all it did was stifle the creation of new wealth due to the lack of incentives.
On personal note – I will not defend those CEO’s who screw up a corporation and receive, by contract, multi-million dollar buy outs. But their excesses have nothing to do with the size of government – government, in fact, has become larger during the last ten years.
Economics aside, no one is really even talking about what impact Obama would have with regard to foreign policy. We are fighting two wars and face serious problems in Asia and the Middle East.
I will hold my nose and vote for John McCain. Why? Well basically, because I prefer disaster to complete catastrophe.Comment
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jocoshock:
Yes, it’s always enjoyable to engage in a conversation with someone expressing his thoughts as opposed to a person merely posting links to someone else’s opinion, an opinion incidentally, they often have rarely read beyond the headline. A few remarks on your response and perhaps a reply from you will probably about do it for this thread, so many get turned off by simple discussion that this thread will quickly die.
First, the dust bowl issue. It is really a minor thing, but to me it illustrated how a justification for a policy decision can be passed on as a truth, long after it has been shown to be false. It also illustrates how you use one crisis (drought) to promote and pass policies directly geared to a totally separate issue (economics).
The point being that the idea of new farming techniques developed, taught and implemented by the Government helped in some way to reduce the effects of or perhaps eliminate future droughts (dust bowls, if you prefer) is simply laughable. Yet it is a common myth that persists. Studies have continually shown that the only way to have minimized the dust storms would have been to have not farmed at all. Farming technique be hanged, it was plowed ground exposed to high sustained winds that created the storms and major (one time in many centuries type of major) climatic changes that created the prolonged drought.
Incidentally, I actually experienced a dust storm exactly like those shown in pictures of the thirties. Long after any new farming techniques were implemented. That was around 1958/59/60, right there in Wichita, Kansas. We lived outside the city (at that time) around what is now the 45th Street north and Oliver/Woodlawn area. It was mostly farm lands then and I hope I never see another such storm, it was like a sand blaster.
The Government’s only conceivable justification would be through the elimination of the reliance, in large areas, on dry farming. This was only feasible with sufficient power and water to provide extensive, efficient irrigation, and its impact on large scale, long term (years) drought conditions as experienced in the thirties is highly debatable and probably insignificant.
And I promise, not another word on the dust bowl and this is enough for one post, I’ll get to your other points as time allows tonight. CIAO!Comment
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