DS Alert 5-25

[Freezer]

http://www.arcamax.com/thefunnies/mallardfillmore/s-1146762

Nothing factually wrong here (that I know of); it's just that is
the kind of lazy, entitled request that would get you dogpiled
(mostly with "Do your own damn research" and "Google it") on every
forum I know of.

--
My name is Freezer and my anti-drug is porn.
http://freezer818.livejournal.com/
http://mst3kfreezer.livejournal.com/

[Pat O'Neill]

A better q

A better question to ask: Does Tinsley really want to pay three times as much (or more) for his smart phone if it were made in the US or virtually anywhere except China?

[Freezer]

If I don't reply to this Pat O'Neill post, the terroists win.

> A better question to ask: Does Tinsley really want to pay three times as
> much (or more) for his smart phone if it were made in the US or
> virtually anywhere except China?

I think Nokia's phones are made in Norway, but Tinsley would probably have an
issue with those socialists over in Europe.

[Thomas Skogestad]

* Freezer

| I think Nokia's phones are made in Norway, but Tinsley would probably have
| an issue with those socialists over in Europe.

There might be a few cell phones designed in Norway, but I don't any are
produced here.

Of the ones that are designed here, none are particularly successful.

Such as the Simonsen Freeway F-510.

http://www.vg.no/teknologi/artikkel.php?artid=10080077
(I think the die is self-explanatory.)

The article states that the phone is made in China. ("dsad" is not a word.)

--
Thomas Skogestad

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 25, 9:31 am, "Pat O'Neill" <patdone...@verizon.net> wrote:

> A better question to ask: Does Tinsley really want to pay three times as much (or more) for his smart phone if it were made in the US or virtually anywhere except China?

Maybe. You think "progressives" own some monopoly on paying extra for
not being a hypocrite or feeling all warm and fuzzy inside because
they "made a difference" or put their money where their mouths are?

As much as I may think the whole "buy American" mantra is just
jingoistic hokum, especially in a day and age when automobiles or
computers may contain parts fabricated in 20+ countries, it's the
guys' right to do it and advocate the practice to others, just like
others advocate buying local, organic, "green," or whatever.

[Dann]

On Friday, May 25, 2012 10:54:25 AM UTC-4, Alexander Mitchell wrote:
> On May 25, 9:31 am, "Pat O'Neill"

I think it is always a great idea to give the local guy/gal a shot whenever commerce is to commence. We try to frequent local eateries instead of the chain outfits. I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or South America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.

And yes, there are many times when I would be glad to pay a lot more for an American made product if it was better than some of the cheaply designed/made crap that is coming out of China.

The primary problem, IMHO, is that it is hard to find American made blue jeans (for example) that are worth the extra money. There are lots of so-called "designer" junk that isn't materially better than the stuff coming out of China.

Aaannnnnd as a result of this thread, I found this spot:

http://www.stillmadeinusa.com

Although the pricing for the All American jeans was a little off. I'd gladly part with $35-40 for some US made jeans. $60 is more than I can justify.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Pat O'Neill]

On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:01:38 PM UTC-4, Dann wrote:
> I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or South >America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.

Or at least not Communist ones. It's not as if the vast majority of Latin American governments are thriving democracies.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <f9feb668-e442-4ee4...@googlegroups.com>,

They're not?

It doesn't look too bad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World_(report)
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>) writes:

> In article <f9feb668-e442-4ee4...@googlegroups.com>,
> Pat O'Neill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:01:38 PM UTC-4, Dann wrote:
>>> I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or
>>South >America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.
>>
>>Or at least not Communist ones. It's not as if the vast majority of
>>Latin American governments are thriving democracies.
>
> They're not?
>
> It doesn't look too bad:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World_(report)

Puerto Rico went from a "1" to a "2" on "civil liberties" this year,
while the rest of the US didn't. I wonder what that's based on. Ah,
from the report,

Puerto Rico suffered a civil liberties decline stemming from
reports of widespread police misconduct and brutality.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |"Are you okay?"
SF Bay Area (1982-) |
Chicago (1964-1982) |"I'm made of felt....Add by dose
|cubs off."
evan.kir...@gmail.com

http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Pat O'Neill]

On Friday, May 25, 2012 6:54:33 PM UTC-4, Ted Nolan &lt;tednolan&gt; wrote:
> In article <f9feb668-e442-4ee4...@googlegroups.com>,
> Pat O'Neill

> wrote:
> >On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:01:38 PM UTC-4, Dann wrote:
> >> I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or
> >South >America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.
> >
> >Or at least not Communist ones. It's not as if the vast majority of
> >Latin American governments are thriving democracies.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> They're not?
>
> It doesn't look too bad:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World_(report)
> --
> ------
> columbiaclosings.com
> What's not in Columbia anymore..

Personally, I think that chart is deceptive; in most of the countries it ranks as "free" the same political party has controlled the government for years; the others are simply irrelevant. Others are only a few years coming out of military control. And except for Cuba and Venezuela, all of them skew right wing.

[James Nicoll]

In article <cef36313-db19-47f6...@googlegroups.com>,

Pat O'Neill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>

>Personally, I think that chart is deceptive; in most of the countries it
>ranks as "free" the same political party has controlled the government
>for years; the others are simply irrelevant. Others are only a few years
>coming out of military control. And except for Cuba and Venezuela, all
>of them skew right wing.

Hmmm. What's your opinion on the freeness of Alberta, which was
run by the SoCreds from 1935 to 1971 and then by the Progressive
Conservatives from the fall of the SoCreds to the present, or
Ontario during the age of the Big Blue Machine, which lasted
for about four decades? Or British Columbia during their
SoCred era, from 1952 to 1991. Did Wacky Bennett rule over
an autocracy?


--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

[Pat O'Neill]

On Saturday, May 26, 2012 9:15:00 AM UTC-4, James Nicoll wrote:
> In article <cef36313-db19-47f6...@googlegroups.com>,
> Pat O'Neill

> wrote:
> >
> >Personally, I think that chart is deceptive; in most of the countries it
> >ranks as "free" the same political party has controlled the government
> >for years; the others are simply irrelevant. Others are only a few years
> >coming out of military control. And except for Cuba and Venezuela, all
> >of them skew right wing.
>
> Hmmm. What's your opinion on the freeness of Alberta, which was
> run by the SoCreds from 1935 to 1971 and then by the Progressive
> Conservatives from the fall of the SoCreds to the present, or
> Ontario during the age of the Big Blue Machine, which lasted
> for about four decades? Or British Columbia during their
> SoCred era, from 1952 to 1991. Did Wacky Bennett rule over
> an autocracy?
>

There's a big difference, IMO, between "one-party" rule in a province, state, or municipality in an otherwise democratically competitive nation, and "one-party" rule in a nation for decades on end. Especially when the two nations being compared are Canada (or the US) with long traditions of strong two- or three-party systems and, say, Argentina, with constant military coups alternating with revolutions leading to strong-man "democratic" governments.

[Ted Nolan <tednolan>]

In article <cef36313-db19-47f6...@googlegroups.com>,

Well, I would go somewhat the other way. For instance, with all its
problems, I would call Mexico "free". They have contested elections where
the result is not known (unlike the PRI days) and you can generally
say what you like about the President and not go to jail. Now, you can't
say what you like about the local drug boss, and that's a huge problem,
but not enough for me to tip it into "partly free". Same for Colombia.
As for how they "skew": so what?

[Blinky the Wonder Wombat]

[Blinky the Wonder Wombat]

On May 26, 9:36 am, "Pat O'Neill" <patdone...@verizon.net> wrote:

Argentina has had no coups since the 1983. I can accept the argument
that the Argentinian political scene has been chaotic, but there has
been free, contested elections for the past thirty years. That
qualifies as a stable democracy in my book.

[Pat O'Neill]

On Saturday, May 26, 2012 3:22:50 PM UTC-4, Blinky the Wonder Wombat wrote:

>
> Argentina has had no coups since the 1983. I can accept the argument
> that the Argentinian political scene has been chaotic, but there has
> been free, contested elections for the past thirty years. That
> qualifies as a stable democracy in my book.

As I read the recent political history of Argentina, I see a long period of Peronist control (after the 1989 election), followed by a good deal of chaos (presidential resignations, appointed presidents) and then some good old fashioned nepotism (the Kirchner regime). If that's a stable democracy, I'd hate to see an unstable one.

[Blinky the Wonder Wombat]

Like noted above, just because you don't like the results it doesn't
mean there weren't free, multi-party elections.

[Pat O'Neill]

On Sunday, May 27, 2012 12:29:41 PM UTC-4, Blinky the Wonder Wombat wrote:
> On May 26, 5:04 pm, "Pat O'Neill"

If a single party wins the election for decades, followed by a decade of electoral chaos, then followed by a decade of nepotism, I'd definitely question the idea that those were "free, multi-party elections," as the term is understood in most of the NATO countries, as an example.

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <55b17525-011c-47d1...@googlegroups.com>,

Pat O'Neill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
>

>If a single party wins the election for decades, followed by a decade of
>electoral chaos, then followed by a decade of nepotism, I'd definitely
>question the idea that those were "free, multi-party elections," as the
>term is understood in most of the NATO countries, as an example.

Does the US have "free, multi-party elections" as most of the NATO
countries would understand it? For starters, we don't have "multiple"
parties, only two.

--
Please reply to: | "We establish no religion in this country, we
pciszek at panix dot com | command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor
Autoreply is disabled | will we ever. Church and state are, and must
| remain, separate." --Ronald Reagan, 10/26/1984

[Invid Fan]

In article <jq082u$rvi$1...@reader1.panix.com>, Paul Ciszek

<nos...@nospam.com> wrote:

> In article <55b17525-011c-47d1...@googlegroups.com>,
> Pat O'Neill <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> >If a single party wins the election for decades, followed by a decade of
> >electoral chaos, then followed by a decade of nepotism, I'd definitely
> >question the idea that those were "free, multi-party elections," as the
> >term is understood in most of the NATO countries, as an example.
>
> Does the US have "free, multi-party elections" as most of the NATO
> countries would understand it? For starters, we don't have "multiple"
> parties, only two.

At the most basic level, all you need for democracy is two parties that
take turns in power. Doesn't matter how well it actually works, or how
corrupt things get, you just need the party in power willingly stepping
down when they lose (and the losing party not throwing a fit).

--
Chris Mack "If we show any weakness, the monsters will get cocky!"
'Invid Fan' - 'Yokai Monsters Along With Ghosts'

[Dann]

On Monday, May 28, 2012 12:11:10 PM UTC-4, Paul Ciszek wrote:
> In article <55b17525-011c-47d1...@googlegroups.com>,
> Pat O'Neill

> wrote:
> >
> >If a single party wins the election for decades, followed by a decade of
> >electoral chaos, then followed by a decade of nepotism, I'd definitely
> >question the idea that those were "free, multi-party elections," as the
> >term is understood in most of the NATO countries, as an example.
>
> Does the US have "free, multi-party elections" as most of the NATO
> countries would understand it? For starters, we don't have "multiple"
> parties, only two.

While as a libertarian that frequently votes Libertarian, I understand the frustration created by the electoral obstacles created by the Dems/GOP to make it harder for other parties to participate.

At the same time, we do have multiple parties that do participate at almost every level of the elections process. Many non-Dems and non-GOPs serve in elective offices ranging from local drain commissioner right up to US Senator.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Dann]

These days, most of the Latin American governments that are dictatorships are also communist/socialist. Being communist/socialist is axiomatically the same as a dictatorship, IMO. At least I know of no example of a communist/socialist government that did not also exhibit the more salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.

My thanks to the others that responded with far greater timeliness and relevance than I could muster.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Blinky the Wonder Wombat]

Check out San Marino. As far a I know, it is the only country which
elected a Communist government and had same Communist government turn
over the government after losing an election. Of course, San Marino is
a statelet and its politics are probably closer to that of a medium-
sized city in which delivering service trumps political philosophy.

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 29, 1:34 pm, Blinky the Wonder Wombat

<wkharrisjr_i...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 29, 11:03 am, Dann <detox...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

The huge difference here is that, at 24 square miles and 31,500
population, the entirety of the civic population would be easily able
to turn out in the morning, physically if not violently depose or
overthrow the government in question, install its choice of a new one,
and still stop off for tea and biscotti on the way home before
starting in on preparing dinner.

If all governments were of this fashion--the "St. Kilda Parliament"
model, if you want to research the real model of "voting someone off
the island"--we would have a whole lot less balderdash in politics and
government.

[Pat O'Neill]

Not if the population only has hand weapons )

Not if the population only has hand weapons (up to and including fully automatic weapons) and the government has tanks, planes, helicopters. etc.

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 29, 7:39 pm, "Pat O'Neill" <patdone...@verizon.net> wrote:

>
> Not if the population only has hand weapons (up to and including fully automatic weapons) and the government has tanks, planes, helicopters. etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_San_Marino

The military in question, if Wikipedia is to be believed, have
handguns, Subarus, a ceremonial cannon, maybe some ceremonial
crossbows, and a couple bayonets.

A bunch of D&D or sci-fi/anime cosplayers could probably take over
that joint.

[Pat O'Neill]

On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:33:15 PM UTC-4, Alexander Mitchell wrote:
> On May 29, 7:39 pm, "Pat O'Neill"

> wrote:
>
> >
> > Not if the population only has hand weapons (up to and including fully automatic weapons) and the government has tanks, planes, helicopters. etc.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_San_Marino
>
> The military in question, if Wikipedia is to be believed, have
> handguns, Subarus, a ceremonial cannon, maybe some ceremonial
> crossbows, and a couple bayonets.
>
> A bunch of D&D or sci-fi/anime cosplayers could probably take over
> that joint.

I was commenting more on the general idea that a population of that size would ALWAYS be able to overthrow a government.

[Invid Fan]

In article <905984bb-b2ca-438b...@googlegroups.com>, Pat

Given you only need to kill a couple people, overthrowing it isn't the
problem. It's staying alive to have any say in the next government
that's the hard part :)

[Alexander Mitchell]

There you go assuming and "putting words in my mouth". I never said
"always."

If a government has "tanks, planes, helicopters, etc." and is doing
things that warrant its overthrow, it is NOT only 24 square miles and
35K population. It seems to follow that a military is needed either
if you have designs of imperialism/expansion or you're so obnoxious
that everyone wants you gone (or covets your cows or whatever). Or a
history of both, if you get my drift.

Examine similarly-sized countries. Liechtenstein has no military.
Costa Rica forbids a military in its constitution. Monaco: two tiny
military units, one of which doubles as a fire department.

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Tue, 29 May 2012 08:03:05 -0700 (PDT), Dann <deto...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Friday, May 25, 2012 5:34:56 PM UTC-4, Pat O&#39;Neill wrote:
>> On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:01:38 PM UTC-4, Dann wrote:
>> > I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or South >America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.
>>
>> Or at least not Communist ones. It's not as if the vast majority of Latin American governments are thriving democracies.
>
>These days, most of the Latin American governments that are dictatorships are also communist/socialist.

France just elected a socialist President. Either they're a
dictatorship, or your views are painfully outdated.



--

- ReFlex76

- <http://twitter.com/ReFlex76>

[Blinky the Wonder Wombat]

On May 29, 11:35 pm, Alexander Mitchell <flysct4...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Examine similarly-sized countries.  Liechtenstein has no military.
> Costa Rica forbids a military in its constitution.  Monaco: two tiny
> military units, one of which doubles as a fire department.

That brings a different perspective to the aphorism "Fighting fire
with fire."

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 30, 1:22 am, Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:

>
>   France just elected a socialist President.  Either they're a
> dictatorship, or your views are painfully outdated.
>

I would suggest, based on their country's current economic prowess (or
lack thereof), that it is the French people's views that are
"painfully outdated."

I have a couple business associates that have been avoiding doing
business with French-owned companies for years. One told me which
motels he would not reimburse me for while I was on a road trip for
him, and told me not to pump Citgo gas in my car, as he didn't want to
support Venezuela. Hey, it was his money and his right, and it's no
different from someone else boycotting BP or Wal-Mart as some seem to
do. (I don't think the term "cheese-munching surrender monkeys"
actually came up, but....)

[Dann]

France being painfully outdated should be painfully obvious.

In any case, the Presidency does not a polity make. Also, one reasonably suspects that the label "socialist" was used as an inference rather than as an accurate identifier.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 05:23:33 -0700 (PDT), Alexander Mitchell
<flysc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On May 30, 1:22 am, Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>   France just elected a socialist President.  Either they're a
>> dictatorship, or your views are painfully outdated.
>>
>I would suggest, based on their country's current economic prowess (or
>lack thereof), that it is the French people's views that are
>"painfully outdated."
>

More like they finally realized how big a failure austerity has
been.

>I have a couple business associates that have been avoiding doing
>business with French-owned companies for years. One told me which
>motels he would not reimburse me for while I was on a road trip for
>him, and told me not to pump Citgo gas in my car, as he didn't want to
>support Venezuela. Hey, it was his money and his right, and it's no
>different from someone else boycotting BP or Wal-Mart as some seem to
>do. (I don't think the term "cheese-munching surrender monkeys"
>actually came up, but....)

Ummmm, that was totally unnecessary filler; not quite "late Naruto"
bad, but still . . .

Anyway, to bring back the original point, Francoise Holland is a
proud socialist, elected President of France, and France is still a
democracy. Deal with it.

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 30, 10:39 pm, Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>    Anyway, to bring back the original point, Francoise Holland is a
> proud socialist, elected President of France, and France is still a
> democracy.  Deal with it.
>

France is a democracy with its current elected president calling
himself a Socialist, and its two legislative bodies largely about
evenly divided between left-leaning (i.e. socialist, bigger-
government, etc.) and right-wing (i.e. pro-capitalist, smaller-
government, etc.) politicians. As a matter of fact, right now, just
as with the U.S., the right-wingers have a marginal lead in their
Assembly, but a razor-thin minority in the Senate.

The point of the other screed was that there are, indeed, some
businessmen (in the one case, controlling a rather large private
company) that choose not to do business with France because they find
their brand of socialism distasteful. You don't even want to know
what they say or how they act about China.

Which is, again, the original point of Tinsley's cartoon--putting your
beliefs into actions.

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 06:00:10 -0700 (PDT), Dann <deto...@gmail.com>

wrote:

>On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 1:22:23 AM UTC-4, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>> On Tue, 29 May 2012 08:03:05 -0700 (PDT), Dann <deto...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Friday, May 25, 2012 5:34:56 PM UTC-4, Pat O&#39;Neill wrote:
>> >> On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:01:38 PM UTC-4, Dann wrote:
>> >> > I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or South >America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.
>> >>
>> >> Or at least not Communist ones. It's not as if the vast majority of Latin American governments are thriving democracies.
>> >
>> >These days, most of the Latin American governments that are dictatorships are also communist/socialist.
>>
>> France just elected a socialist President. Either they're a
>> dictatorship, or your views are painfully outdated.
>
>France being painfully outdated should be painfully obvious.
>

Nice projection.

>In any case, the Presidency does not a polity make. Also, one reasonably suspects that the label "socialist" was used as an inference rather than as an accurate identifier.

Moving of goal posts duly noted.

Doesn't change the obvious: Francoise Holland is still a proud
socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is still

a democracy. Deal with it.

[Dann]

On Thursday, May 31, 2012 1:52:34 AM UTC-4, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
> On Wed, 30 May 2012 06:00:10 -0700 (PDT), Dann <deto...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 1:22:23 AM UTC-4, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
> >> On Tue, 29 May 2012 08:03:05 -0700 (PDT), Dann <deto...@gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On Friday, May 25, 2012 5:34:56 PM UTC-4, Pat O&#39;Neill wrote:
> >> >> On Friday, May 25, 2012 12:01:38 PM UTC-4, Dann wrote:
> >> >> > I'll willing pay a few bucks more for something made in Central or South >America instead of China as I prefer not to reward dictatorships.
> >> >>
> >> >> Or at least not Communist ones. It's not as if the vast majority of Latin American governments are thriving democracies.
> >> >
> >> >These days, most of the Latin American governments that are dictatorships are also communist/socialist.
> >>
> >> France just elected a socialist President. Either they're a
> >> dictatorship, or your views are painfully outdated.
> >
> >France being painfully outdated should be painfully obvious.
> >
>
> Nice projection.

??

>
> >In any case, the Presidency does not a polity make. Also, one reasonably suspects that the label "socialist" was used as an inference rather than as an accurate identifier.
>
>
> Moving of goal posts duly noted.

What moving goalposts? As Ivy correctly noted, France has a multi-party system of government with other parties having significant influence in one of the non-executive branches.

The inference of my comment is that one is not a socialist just be using the word "socialist" as a sobriquet. Another, more obvious, example would be the self proclaimed "anarchists" that shred city cores whenever/where ever the WTO, or NATO, or the G-7, or some other international group meets. Based on their rhetoric and their actions, those folks are anarchists. An anarchist wants there to be no government. Those bozos are communists...of the Stalist variety...that want a great deal more government.

I would also add that France, like many other European governments, practices a sort of "socialism-lite" or "democratic socialism". As the group has discussed before, none of those variants is all that far "left of center".

> Doesn't change the obvious: Francoise Holland is still a proud
> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is still
> a democracy. Deal with it.

Ye gads.....Google Groups really needs a plonk feature.

[Or...anticipating the response....I ought to spend money on a real Usenet feed. Truth be told, the lack of a plonk feature is the only negative I can find with Google Groups.]

--
Dann

[nickel...@yahoo.com]

Not that I think Antonio is plonkworthy, which is something
i save for actual trolls, but:

freenews.netfront.net

is.... free.

--

pax,
ruth

--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ne...@netfront.net ---

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 31, 2:07 pm, Dann <detox...@gmail.com> wrote:
.
>
> What moving goalposts? As Ivy correctly noted, France has a multi-party system of government with other parties having significant influence in one of the non-executive branches.
>
> The inference of my comment is that one is not a socialist just be using the word "socialist" as a sobriquet.  Another, more obvious, example would be the self proclaimed "anarchists" that shred city cores whenever/where ever the WTO, or NATO, or the G-7, or some other international group meets.  Based on their rhetoric and their actions, those folks are anarchists.  An anarchist wants there to be no government.  Those bozos are communists...of the Stalist variety...that want a great deal more government.
>
> I would also add that France, like many other European governments, practices a sort of "socialism-lite" or "democratic socialism".  As the group has discussed before, none of those variants is all that far "left of center".

Slight correction, insofar as my own area of expertise:
France (and Spain) have basically ignored the original premise of
European Union directive 91/440, which basically was supposed to "de-
nationalize" the former state railway networks and open access to the
operations of other countries' companies and private operators.
Whereas the networks of Britain, Germany, Japan, etc. were
fundamentally denationalised (a government agency oversees the track
and stations, but train-operating companies contract on a franchise
basis) in the 1990s, SNCF, or the French National Railways, remains
100% government owned, although broken up into divisions much like the
other countries discussed. SNCF's TGV remains the "wet dream" of
every North American high-speed rail advocate, of course, a fact not
lost on those who point out that only a nationalised project can
handle such a project scope.

The perceptions, from my research and experiences with the matters, is
that France (and, yes, Spain and Greece) have been slower to come
around to the "new world order" or European Union way of thinking
whereas capitalistic, rather than socialistic, theory ends up running
things. We're seeing the crapola hit the proverbial fan in France,
Greece, and Spain; I find it funny that the crises are being blamed on
"austerity" programs when the real fault is the totally unsustainable
(long-term) promises of socialism failing to answer to extended life
spans, dwindling reproduction rates, and unrealistic expectations of
its citizens. You know, just like California. Or the United States
and Social (In)Security/Medicare.

[Joy Beeson]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 22:52:34 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez
<AntE...@aol.com> wrote:

> Doesn't change the obvious: Francoise Holland is still a proud
> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is still
> a democracy.

And it's still unrelated to the assertion that tyrannies tend to be
socialist.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net

[Mark Jackson]

On 5/31/2012 6:41 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
> On Wed, 30 May 2012 22:52:34 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez
> <AntE...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Doesn't change the obvious: Francoise Holland is still a proud
>> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is
>> still a democracy.
>
> And it's still unrelated to the assertion that tyrannies tend to be
> socialist.

How about to this:

> On 5/29/2012 11:03 AM, Dann wrote:

>> Being communist/socialist is axiomatically the same as a
>> dictatorship, IMO. At least I know of no example of a
>> communist/socialist government that did not also exhibit the more
>> salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.

--
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
Your theory is interesting, but it hardly disproves
what I want to believe. - Gil (Norm Feuti)

[Alexander Mitchell]

On May 31, 10:01 pm, Mark Jackson <mjack...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
> On 5/31/2012 6:41 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 30 May 2012 22:52:34 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez

> > <AntEGM...@aol.com>  wrote:

>
> >> Doesn't change the obvious:  Francoise Holland is still a proud
> >> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is
> >> still a democracy.
>
> > And it's still unrelated to the assertion that tyrannies tend to be
> > socialist.
>
> How about to this:
>
> > On 5/29/2012 11:03 AM, Dann wrote:
> >> Being communist/socialist is axiomatically the same as a
> >> dictatorship, IMO.  At least I know of no example of a
> >> communist/socialist government that did not also exhibit the more
> >> salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.
>

And therein lies the rub.

An actual Communist/Socialist government--not some democracy with a
nationalized infrastructure or automakers or National Health Service
or compulsory military service, but an actual, old school, by-the-
textbook-definition "Socialist government"--typically doesn't allow
such things as dissenting political parties, truly free elections,
etc. Who actually runs against Papa Castro/Chavez/Kim, really?

The old joke still stands:
The Party member petitions to leave the country. The local Politburo
calls him in to talk.
"So why do you wish to leave our glorious country? Do you not like
the career we have assigned to you?"
"Meh. I can't complain."
"Do you or your family not like your apartment or town?"
"Eh. We can't complain."
"Do you not like the way we run our country for you and your
comrades?"
"Can't complain."
"So, we don't understand, why you wish to go to Europe?"
"NOW THERE, I CAN COMPLAIN!!!!!!"

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Wed, 30 May 2012 21:17:58 -0700 (PDT), Alexander Mitchell
<flysc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On May 30, 10:39 pm, Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:
>>
>>    Anyway, to bring back the original point, Francoise Holland is a
>> proud socialist, elected President of France, and France is still a
>> democracy.  Deal with it.
>>
>France is a democracy with its current elected president calling
>himself a Socialist, and its two legislative bodies largely about
>evenly divided between left-leaning (i.e. socialist, bigger-
>government, etc.) and right-wing (i.e. pro-capitalist, smaller-
>government, etc.) politicians. As a matter of fact, right now, just
>as with the U.S., the right-wingers have a marginal lead in their
>Assembly, but a razor-thin minority in the Senate.
>

Now I'm curious if this repeating of the obviously known is meant
to be filler, boring for the sake of boring, or something else . . .

>The point of the other screed was that there are, indeed, some
>businessmen (in the one case, controlling a rather large private
>company) that choose not to do business with France because they find
>their brand of socialism distasteful. You don't even want to know
>what they say or how they act about China.
>
>Which is, again, the original point of Tinsley's cartoon--putting your
>beliefs into actions.

Yes, Tinsley hates communism and/or China, so he doesn't buy
Chinese products; some people hate democracy and/or France, so they
don't buy French products.

Anyway, the Michelin tires on my car work incredibly well . . .

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Thu, 31 May 2012 21:29:23 -0700 (PDT), Alexander Mitchell
<flysc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On May 31, 10:01 pm, Mark Jackson <mjack...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>> On 5/31/2012 6:41 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, 30 May 2012 22:52:34 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez
>> > <AntEGM...@aol.com>  wrote:
>>
>> >> Doesn't change the obvious:  Francoise Holland is still a proud
>> >> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is
>> >> still a democracy.
>>
>> > And it's still unrelated to the assertion that tyrannies tend to be
>> > socialist.
>>
>> How about to this:
>>
>> > On 5/29/2012 11:03 AM, Dann wrote:
>> >> Being communist/socialist is axiomatically the same as a
>> >> dictatorship, IMO.  At least I know of no example of a
>> >> communist/socialist government that did not also exhibit the more
>> >> salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.
>>
>And therein lies the rub.
>
>An actual Communist/Socialist government--not some democracy with a
>nationalized infrastructure or automakers or National Health Service
>or compulsory military service, but an actual, old school, by-the-
>textbook-definition "Socialist government"--typically doesn't allow
>such things as dissenting political parties, truly free elections,
>etc. Who actually runs against Papa Castro/Chavez/Kim, really?
>

Yup, moving the goal posts. French President Francoise Hollande is
still socialist, France is still a Democracy.

>The old joke still stands:
>The Party member petitions to leave the country. The local Politburo
>calls him in to talk.
>"So why do you wish to leave our glorious country? Do you not like
>the career we have assigned to you?"
>"Meh. I can't complain."
>"Do you or your family not like your apartment or town?"
>"Eh. We can't complain."
>"Do you not like the way we run our country for you and your
>comrades?"
>"Can't complain."
>"So, we don't understand, why you wish to go to Europe?"
>"NOW THERE, I CAN COMPLAIN!!!!!!"

. . . aaand, more dragging on beyond necessary . . .

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

Proving poor reaserch and limited experience leads to poor
conclusions.

I find it funny that the crises are being blamed on
>"austerity" programs

Yes, austerity has failed miserably, and the respective governments
and populations are realizing it's time to spend and grow. Of course,
this bit of Economics 101 was obvious to anyone who'd read a history
book (it was called The New Deal).

when the real fault is the totally unsustainable
>(long-term) promises of socialism failing to answer to extended life
>spans,

Hence why the debt only really showed up when real estate prices
collapsed; oh, wait . . .

dwindling reproduction rates, and unrealistic expectations of
>its citizens. You know, just like California.

Actually, California's problems can be summed up with two words:
Proposition 13

Or the United States
>and Social (In)Security/Medicare.

Only if that payroll tax cap remains. Otherwise, they've worked
magnificently, and should last a long time.

[Dann]

> Not that I think Antonio is plonkworthy, which is something
> i save for actual trolls, but:
>
> freenews.netfront.net
>
> is.... free.

Thanks very much for the thought. But I really like Google Groups as an access medium. I like not having to install a Usenet reader. I like having a single, common interface regardless of where I am in the world and what computer I am using. I like being able to jump from GGroups over to other Google platforms seamlessly.

The only thing I miss is a plonk feature which was reserved to protect my sanity in a few rare instances.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Dann]

On Thursday, May 31, 2012 10:01:00 PM UTC-4, Mark Jackson wrote:
> On 5/31/2012 6:41 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
> > On Wed, 30 May 2012 22:52:34 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez
> > <AntE...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Doesn't change the obvious: Francoise Holland is still a proud
> >> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is
> >> still a democracy.
> >
> > And it's still unrelated to the assertion that tyrannies tend to be
> > socialist.
>
> How about to this:
>
> > On 5/29/2012 11:03 AM, Dann wrote:
>
> >> Being communist/socialist is axiomatically the same as a
> >> dictatorship, IMO. At least I know of no example of a
> >> communist/socialist government that did not also exhibit the more
> >> salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.
>

I still think there is a vast difference between a truly socialist government such as Chavez's Venezuela and one that simply has the socialist moniker slathered over it such as is the case in France.

I understand that others may feel differently and offer no negative commentary about their character because of that difference of opinion.

--
Regards,
Dann

[G]

Well, if the definition of "communist/socialist government" is "a more or less
oppressive dictatorship of the communist/socialist type" I have to agree that
there is no no example of a communist/socialist government that did not also

exhibit the more salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.

G

[Alexander Mitchell]

On Jun 1, 1:38 am, Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:

>
>    Yes, austerity has failed miserably, and the respective governments
> and populations are realizing it's time to spend and grow.  Of course,
> this bit of Economics 101 was obvious to anyone who'd read a history
> book (it was called The New Deal).
>

A critical part of the real recovery in the late 1930s and 1940s was
the build-up to, and eventual participation in, World War Two. Many
economists (all of which I expect you to unthinkingly reject strictly
on the basis of what they say) have said that the effects of the New
Deal, absent any war or "military-industrial complex," would have
prolonged the Great Depression rather than "solved" it.

So, where do you propose/suggest to hold World War Three? And will
participation be optional or mandatory? Because, you know, this whole
"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you get a
war involved. A big and expensive war, with hundreds or thousands
dying per day and lots of stuff built by assembly line workers getting
blown up.

[Dann]

Not exactly, but close.

IMO...with lots of provisos and caveats about such considerations existing on a sliding scale instead of being a black/white or 1/0 or on/off condition...freedom is a package deal. Freedom in the personal realm does not exist without there being freedom in the economic end of things. The reverse is also true.

You don't find countries that have nationalized their industrial and commercial base while also having maximum freedom of expression, association, movement, etc. You don't find countries that fully restrict personal freedoms (again expression, association, movement, etc.) while also affording a fully free, capitalist economic system. The two go hand in hand. (Although China is certainly taking a run at the latter arrangement.)

Socialism necessarily requires the restriction of personal freedoms in order to institute a socialist economic structure where the state controls the industry and commerce.

What France does have is a few nationalized interests (i.e. electricity, gas, RATP) but is largely a free market economically with high (I would respectfully suggest unsustainable) tax rates. Whatever you call it, it ain't socialism.

IMO.

After 80 years of socialists and communists destroying common definitions by using terms like "liberal" and "progressive" as rhetorical fig leaves (not to mention "anarchist"), I am unsurprised that we continue to have these kinds of exchanges.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Mark Jackson]

On 6/1/2012 11:33 AM, Alexander Mitchell wrote:
> On Jun 1, 1:38 am, Antonio E. Gonzalez<AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:

>> Yes, austerity has failed miserably, and the respective
>> governments and populations are realizing it's time to spend and
>> grow. Of course, this bit of Economics 101 was obvious to anyone
>> who'd read a history book (it was called The New Deal).
>>
> A critical part of the real recovery in the late 1930s and 1940s was
> the build-up to, and eventual participation in, World War Two. Many
> economists (all of which I expect you to unthinkingly reject
> strictly on the basis of what they say) have said that the effects of
> the New Deal, absent any war or "military-industrial complex," would
> have prolonged the Great Depression rather than "solved" it.

One would have to reject the position of many more economists -
essentially all of the mainstream - in order to hold that position than
to reject it. And then there's the contemporary economic data....

--
Mark Jackson - http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson

Sometimes you think you're standing on the shoulders of
giants, but it's really just an unstable stack of dwarves.
- Nick Gentile

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Fri, 01 Jun 2012 21:32:36 -0400, Mark Jackson
<mjac...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:

>On 6/1/2012 11:33 AM, Alexander Mitchell wrote:
>> On Jun 1, 1:38 am, Antonio E. Gonzalez<AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>> Yes, austerity has failed miserably, and the respective
>>> governments and populations are realizing it's time to spend and
>>> grow. Of course, this bit of Economics 101 was obvious to anyone
>>> who'd read a history book (it was called The New Deal).
>>>
>> A critical part of the real recovery in the late 1930s and 1940s was
>> the build-up to, and eventual participation in, World War Two. Many
>> economists (all of which I expect you to unthinkingly reject
>> strictly on the basis of what they say) have said that the effects of
>> the New Deal, absent any war or "military-industrial complex," would
>> have prolonged the Great Depression rather than "solved" it.
>
>One would have to reject the position of many more economists -
>essentially all of the mainstream - in order to hold that position than
>to reject it. And then there's the contemporary economic data....

Just to add: the fact that unemployment steadily dropped every
year from 1933 on into WWII. Of course, the exception was the year
Republicans demanded a balanced budget, resulting in an umemployment
spike. It's rather amazing how history repeats itself.

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2012 08:33:27 -0700 (PDT), Alexander Mitchell
<flysc...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jun 1, 1:38 am, Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntEGM...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>    Yes, austerity has failed miserably, and the respective governments
>> and populations are realizing it's time to spend and grow.  Of course,
>> this bit of Economics 101 was obvious to anyone who'd read a history
>> book (it was called The New Deal).
>>
>A critical part of the real recovery in the late 1930s and 1940s was
>the build-up to, and eventual participation in, World War Two. Many
>economists (all of which I expect you to unthinkingly reject strictly
>on the basis of what they say) have said that the effects of the New
>Deal, absent any war or "military-industrial complex," would have
>prolonged the Great Depression rather than "solved" it.
>
>So, where do you propose/suggest to hold World War Three? And will
>participation be optional or mandatory?

So, you want WWIII. I really want to say I'm surprised.

Because, you know, this whole
>"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you get a
>war involved.

Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.

A big and expensive war, with hundreds or thousands
>dying per day and lots of stuff built by assembly line workers getting
>blown up.
>

. . . or repairing our crumbling imfrastructure (put at about $2
trillion by the American Society of Engineers); or an interstate
ultra-high-voltage power systerm; or a trans-national high-speed rail
system. Better yet, all of the above!

[Alexander Mitchell]

*sigh*

I point out once again that this is my area of particular expertise.

High-speed rail ONLY works in areas of dense population concentration
and short distances.

France is smaller than Texas. Britain is about the size of Oregon.
Japan is smaller than Montana. The land mass of the Lower 48 is
greater than that of the European Union.

HSR can work in certain states/areas--California, Northeast Corridor,
some Chicago-area ("rust-belt") corridors, and possibly some places
like Dallas/Fort Worth-Houston. To attempt to institute it on a
"trans-national" level exemplifies a total disregard of any
transportation economics whatsoever. Right now I'm watching New
Mexico fail to come through with a commitment to preserve one puny
rural rail corridor that will be crucial to maintaining commuter
service to Albuquerque and Chicago-LA service on Amtrak. That's a
matter of millions of dollars. Where do you propose all these states
come up with BILLIONS of dollars?

I suggest you mean "have the Feds pay for it where it works." Look at
California's experiences so far--the cost estimates doubled between
the hand-out request to Washington and the first shovel being dug in,
and that wasn't because of fifteen years of delay or something--and
look at the recipe for continued, if not permanent, economic malaise.

[JC Dill]

On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
> Because, you know, this whole
>> >"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you get a
>> >war involved.
> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.

The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession with 2
unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to mushroom. Then
a recession comes along, and in order to spend your way out of it, it
requires adding on even more debt. If we hadn't had the 6 years of
BushCo's republican "reduce taxes and spend like crazy" that proceeded
the beginning of the recession during BushCo's last 2 years, we wouldn't
be in the quandry we have now, with a huge debt and republicans suddenly
screaming that we need to both reduce the debt and get more people back
to work, and we need to reduce taxes again (as if that has *ever* worked
to stimulate the economy). And FAUX is drinking it all up, they feed it
all to their followers, who are too stupid to understand that the
proposals to "lower taxes to stimulate the economy" haven't ever worked.

jc

[Mark Jackson]

On 6/2/2012 11:53 AM, JC Dill wrote:
> On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>> Because, you know, this whole
>>> >"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you get a
>>> >war involved.
>> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.
>
> The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession with 2
> unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to mushroom. Then
> a recession comes along, and in order to spend your way out of it, it
> requires adding on even more debt. If we hadn't had the 6 years of
> BushCo's republican "reduce taxes and spend like crazy" that proceeded
> the beginning of the recession during BushCo's last 2 years, we wouldn't
> be in the quandry we have now, with a huge debt and republicans suddenly
> screaming that we need to both reduce the debt and get more people back
> to work, and we need to reduce taxes again (as if that has *ever* worked
> to stimulate the economy).

Tax cuts *can* have a stimulative effect. They're less effective (per
dollar added to the deficit) than spending because some of the dollars
will be spent, and it's an increase in personal spending that is needed
to increase demand. Tax cuts for the rich are least effective - their
marginal propensity to save is maximal. (Yeah, more savings can lead to
more investment spending - but there's a worldwide excess of available
investment capital over attractive investment opportunities; piling more
on now isn't going to help.)

[Mark Jackson]

On 6/2/2012 12:28 PM, Mark Jackson wrote:

> Tax cuts *can* have a stimulative effect. They're less effective (per
> dollar added to the deficit) than spending because some of the
> dollars will be spent,

Should, of course, be "saved". . . .

> and it's an increase in personal spending that is needed to increase
> demand. Tax cuts for the rich are least effective - their marginal
> propensity to save is maximal.

[Mark Steese]

Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntE...@aol.com> wrote in
news:k7cjs75act7vpq6k1...@4ax.com:

Except that it doesn't. During his 1932 campaign, FDR repeatedly
promised that he would balance the budget if elected; he denounced the
deficit spending of Hoover's administration in scathing terms. Nor did
he abandon his pro-balancing stance after he was elected: in his
inaugural address, he stated that he called upon Congress to assist with
"putting our own national house in order and making income balance
outgo," and six days after the inauguration he he sent Congress an act
proposing to balance the budget by cutting $500 million in Federal
spending, including a 50% reduction in veterans' benefits (the act
passed on March 20th, though Congress had watered it down somewhat).

Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, was a firm believer in
balancing the budget, and in 1937, when the economy looked like it was
finally recovering, Morgenthau finally convinced FDR to make balancing
the budget a priority. If the attempt to balance the budget is what
caused the 'Roosevelt Recession' and the spike in unemployment rates, it
was the fault of FDR and his administration, not those ee-vul
Republicans.
--
It can be hard, sometimes, to come home to Van Nuys. -Sandra Tsing Loh

[JC Dill]

On 02/06/12 9:28 AM, Mark Jackson wrote:
> On 6/2/2012 11:53 AM, JC Dill wrote:
>> On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>>> Because, you know, this whole
>>>> >"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you get a
>>>> >war involved.
>>> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.
>>
>> The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession with 2
>> unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to mushroom. Then
>> a recession comes along, and in order to spend your way out of it, it
>> requires adding on even more debt. If we hadn't had the 6 years of
>> BushCo's republican "reduce taxes and spend like crazy" that proceeded
>> the beginning of the recession during BushCo's last 2 years, we wouldn't
>> be in the quandry we have now, with a huge debt and republicans suddenly
>> screaming that we need to both reduce the debt and get more people back
>> to work, and we need to reduce taxes again (as if that has *ever* worked
>> to stimulate the economy).
>
> Tax cuts *can* have a stimulative effect.

In *theory*. In practice, they haven't done anything for the middle
class, they have only put record profits into the pockets of the 1%.
Look at what actually happened after Reagan's "trickle down theory" tax
cuts. The economy didn't grow faster after the tax cuts than before,
the rich got richer, the poor and middle class got poorer, the gap
between the haves and have-nots became larger.

> They're less effective (per
> dollar added to the deficit) than spending because some of the dollars
> will be spent,

(should be "saved", as you corrected)

> and it's an increase in personal spending that is needed
> to increase demand.

Right.

> Tax cuts for the rich are least effective - their
> marginal propensity to save is maximal. (Yeah, more savings can lead to
> more investment spending - but there's a worldwide excess of available
> investment capital over attractive investment opportunities; piling more
> on now isn't going to help.)

All tax cuts are "tax cuts for the rich". The primary beneficiary of
all tax cuts (to date) are those who pay the most taxes. We haven't
ever (to the best of my knowledge) implemented any tax cuts that didn't
provide more benefit to the highest wage earners. IF we were to cut
taxes for everyone BUT the rich, then this would have the stimulative
effect of putting more discretionary money in the hands of the middle
class, who are the ones who stimulate the economy with their spending
practices.

jc

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> writes:

>> Tax cuts for the rich are least effective - their marginal
>> propensity to save is maximal. (Yeah, more savings can lead to more
>> investment spending - but there's a worldwide excess of available
>> investment capital over attractive investment opportunities; piling
>> more on now isn't going to help.)
>
> All tax cuts are "tax cuts for the rich". The primary beneficiary of
> all tax cuts (to date) are those who pay the most taxes. We haven't
> ever (to the best of my knowledge) implemented any tax cuts that
> didn't provide more benefit to the highest wage earners. IF we were
> to cut taxes for everyone BUT the rich, then this would have the
> stimulative effect of putting more discretionary money in the hands of
> the middle class, who are the ones who stimulate the economy with
> their spending practices.

I'd think the current payroll tax cut (signed in 2010), where social
security withoholding (and the comparable portion of the
self-employment tax) was reduced by 2 percentage points, would
qualify. Since the social security tax itself is regressive for high
earners, only applying to the first $110,100 of income, the benefit of
the cut for those making substantially above the maximum is
correspondingly lower, not even touching on the fact that if you get
your money through means not considered taxable "income", the cut
doesn't help you at all.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |"You can't prove it *isn't* so!" is
SF Bay Area (1982-) |as good as Q.E.D. in folk logic--as
Chicago (1964-1982) |though it were necessary to submit
|a piece of the moon to chemical
evan.kir...@gmail.com |analysis before you could be sure
|that it was not made of green
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/ |cheese.
| Bergen Evans

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:jqdctr$7jk$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

> On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>> Because, you know, this whole
>>> >"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you
>>> >get a war involved.
>> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.
>
> The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession with
> 2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to mushroom.

And here I thought the recession had something to do with the repeal of
Glass-Steagall in 1999, the unchecked proliferation of subprime lending,
the collapse of the housing market in 2007, and the consequent collapse of
financial institutions around the world.

The idea that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the principal cause of
the Bush Administration's fiscal extravagance is nonsense. Li'l W oversaw
increased spending in virtually every sector of the government - during his
first term, discretionary spending increased 48.5 percent. Remember "No
Child Left Behind"? Spending on education increased 18 percent annually
between 2001 and 2006. Spending on agriculture doubled after the 2002 farm
bill. The 2005 highway bill had a $295 billion price tag; the cost of the
2003 prescription drug benefit added to Medicare may be up to $700 billion
by next year.

And Li'l W deserves a lot of the credit for the massive increase in deficit
spending in response to the subprime mortgage crisis: TARP was Bush's baby,
not Obama's.
--
There can be no doubt that the public--both in and out of the
courtroom--was as titillated by the mention of voodoo as they were by
the presence of Sharon's socks and undershirt. -Lynn Hudson

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jqfil7$90i$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

> On 02/06/12 9:28 AM, Mark Jackson wrote:
>> On 6/2/2012 11:53 AM, JC Dill wrote:
>>> On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>>>> Because, you know, this whole
>>>>> >"spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you
>>>>> >get a war involved.
>>>> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.
>>>
>>> The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession
>>> with 2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to
>>> mushroom. Then a recession comes along, and in order to spend your
>>> way out of it, it requires adding on even more debt. If we hadn't
>>> had the 6 years of BushCo's republican "reduce taxes and spend like
>>> crazy" that proceeded the beginning of the recession during BushCo's
>>> last 2 years, we wouldn't be in the quandry we have now, with a huge
>>> debt and republicans suddenly screaming that we need to both reduce
>>> the debt and get more people back to work, and we need to reduce
>>> taxes again (as if that has *ever* worked to stimulate the economy).
>>
>> Tax cuts *can* have a stimulative effect.
>
> In *theory*. In practice, they haven't done anything for the middle
> class, they have only put record profits into the pockets of the 1%.

In practice, Bush's tax cuts put extra money into the pockets of all
taxpayers. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act created
a 10% tax bracket for the lowest-income group (the floor had previously
been 15%), and lowered all of the existing tax brackets. It also
increased the standard deduction for married couples filing a joint
return, increased the amount of tax credit available for having a kid
and for taking care of said kid, increased the Alternative Minimum Tax
exemption, and so on. Hell, you got a 'rebate' check for 2001 just for
filing your return on time. The myth that the tax cuts only benefited
the wealthy is absurd.

Table 4 on the web page below shows how the Bush tax cuts actually
affected taxpayers:

http://taxfoundation.org/article/comparing-kennedy-reagan-and-bush-tax-cuts

For every income group below $68K, share of tax liability decreased: for
those making $68K or more, the share *increased* from 78.7% to 81%. But
that increase fell only on people making more than $136K, i.e., the top
5% of all taxpayers in the United States. For the "one-percenters," the
share of tax liability increased from 37.1% to 39.3%, and while they did
get the second-largest share of tax cuts, the largest share went to
people in the $68K - $136K group - the upper-middle class, in other
words. With their share of the tax burden falling from 22.8% to 22%, and
their 26.5% share of the tax cuts, upper-middle class taxpayers were
evidently the ones who benefited the most from Bush's tax cuts.
--
The proud flag went up, hoisted on a staff in the center of the old
Sonoma Plaza. The crowds of Mexicans greeted it with laughter and
derision, taking the rather corpulent bear for a pig. -Lambert Florin

[JC Dill]

On 03/06/12 9:13 AM, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

> I'd think the current payroll tax cut (signed in 2010), where social
> security withoholding (and the comparable portion of the
> self-employment tax) was reduced by 2 percentage points, would
> qualify. Since the social security tax itself is regressive for high
> earners, only applying to the first $110,100 of income, the benefit of
> the cut for those making substantially above the maximum is
> correspondingly lower, not even touching on the fact that if you get
> your money through means not considered taxable "income", the cut
> doesn't help you at all.

You are correct, I stand corrected. I was thinking of income tax cuts,
forgot about the payroll tax cuts.

jc

[JC Dill]

On 03/06/12 9:32 AM, Mark Steese wrote:
> JC Dill<jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:jqdctr$7jk$1...@speranza.aioe.org:
>
>> On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>>> Because, you know, this whole
>>>>> "spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you
>>>>> get a war involved.
>>> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.
>>
>> The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession with
>> 2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to mushroom.
>
> And here I thought the recession had something to do with the repeal of
> Glass-Steagall in 1999, the unchecked proliferation of subprime lending,
> the collapse of the housing market in 2007, and the consequent collapse of
> financial institutions around the world.

Suppose you have an overloaded truck, on icy roads, with bad brakes.
Then suddenly a dog runs out from behind a bush, and you try to avoid
hitting it. Sure, the "cause" of the accident was because you tried to
avoid hitting the dog, but the things that happened before made the
outcome much worse. Similarly, if we hadn't been on a "cut taxes and
spend" spree for the preceding years of Bush II's reign, we would have
been in a much better position to weather the financial crisis. If we
had a balanced budget for those prior years, we could have much more
easily afforded the option of spending to stimulate the economy to pull
us out of the recession. But instead we had been digging ourselves ever
deeper into debt with "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut", and the
debt was so big that spending our way out of the recession wasn't really
possible. This is part of why the recession lingers on.

IF, instead of "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut" we went into the
recession with a balanced budget, we could have then put ALL the money
that was spent on the war into stimulus projects here at home. Instead
of having to cut teacher salaries, we could have invested in education
during the economic downturn. Instead of spending $$$ to send soldiers
to Afghanistan and Iraq, we could have spent the money on infrastructure
projects here in the US. And we could have cut taxes on the
middle-class during the recession - when it is most needed to stimulate
the economy, instead of giving tax cuts to the rich which simply gave
them more money to store away in their offshore bank accounts.

jc

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jqnvuo$h2$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

> On 03/06/12 9:32 AM, Mark Steese wrote:
>> JC Dill<jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in
>> news:jqdctr$7jk$1...@speranza.aioe.org:
>>
>>> On 01/06/12 11:45 PM, Antonio E. Gonzalez wrote:
>>>> Because, you know, this whole
>>>>>> "spending your way out of a recession" only seems to work if you
>>>>>> get a war involved.
>>>> Ummm, no; it only works when the spending is big enough.
>>>
>>> The problem is magnified when you spend your way INTO a recession
>>> with 2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut, causing the debt to
>>> mushroom.
>>
>> And here I thought the recession had something to do with the repeal
>> of Glass-Steagall in 1999, the unchecked proliferation of subprime
>> lending, the collapse of the housing market in 2007, and the
>> consequent collapse of financial institutions around the world.
>
> Suppose you have an overloaded truck, on icy roads, with bad brakes.
> Then suddenly a dog runs out from behind a bush, and you try to avoid
> hitting it. Sure, the "cause" of the accident was because you tried
> to avoid hitting the dog, but the things that happened before made the
> outcome much worse. Similarly, if we hadn't been on a "cut taxes and
> spend" spree for the preceding years of Bush II's reign, we would have
> been in a much better position to weather the financial crisis.

Not true. See below.

> If we had a balanced budget for those prior years, we could have much
> more easily afforded the option of spending to stimulate the economy
> to pull us out of the recession.

No. In 2000, the United States already had over $5.7 trillion in
outstanding debt. The budget surplus that year amounted to
$230 billion, but of that amount, about $144 billion was Social Security
funding, leaving $86 billion - a whopping 1.52% of the amount we owed.
Maintaining a balanced budget into the new century would have required
either increasing taxes on everyone or cutting spending across the
board, and even then we couldn't have significantly reduced the outstanding
debt between 2001 and 2008, let alone put ourselves in a position to more
easily afford massive increases in spending.

> But instead we had been digging ourselves ever deeper into debt with
> "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut",

Nope. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal revenue
from individual income tax receipts was higher between 2006 and 2008
than it had been at any previous time in U.S. history: revenue from
corporate tax receipts hit an unprecedented $278.2 billion in 2005 and
peaked in 2007 at $370.2 billion. (Individual income tax receipts that
year totaled $1.16 trillion.)

The problem wasn't the tax cuts: the problem was the across-the-board
spending increases. Federal outlays during the Bush administration
increased by 70% over outlays during the Clinton administration. Even
without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, federal spending was absurdly out
of control.

For example: according to the Department of Education's own figures, it
received $38.4 billion in appropriations during the last year of
Clinton's administration. In the first year of Bush's administration,
it received $42 billion, and the appropriations only got bigger after that:
in 2006 the Department received $100 billion!

(See http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf)

> and the debt was so big that spending our way out of the recession
> wasn't really possible. This is part of why the recession lingers on.

The recession was a global event. Spending our way out of it was always
a pipe dream: we could have had a zero balance on the federal debt and the
recession would still be lingering.

> IF, instead of "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut" we went into
> the recession with a balanced budget, we could have then put ALL the
> money that was spent on the war into stimulus projects here at home.

And the recession would still be lingering, yes.

> Instead of having to cut teacher salaries, we could have invested in
> education during the economic downturn.

Right, the Feds could have appropriated *more* than $100 billion for the
Department of Education. After all, the No Child Left Behind boondoggle
wasn't going to pay for itself.

> Instead of spending $$$ to send soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, we
> could have spent the money on infrastructure projects here in the US.

And if unemployment were mainly affecting road crews, that might
conceivably have made a difference.

> And we could have cut taxes on the middle-class during the recession -
> when it is most needed to stimulate the economy, instead of giving tax
> cuts to the rich which simply gave them more money to store away in
> their offshore bank accounts.

You literally don't know what you're talking about. We *did* cut taxes
on the middle class during the recession - *in addition to the cuts we
made to the middle class's taxes in 2001 and 2003*. Look it up.
--
The main house contained a carefully tuned piano at which Harris,
without any previous musical training, could play and thereby invoke his
Lily Queen into "electro-vital form." -Robert Hine

[JC Dill]

I disagree with your premise that follows. We were in a booming
economy, and the budget was BALANCED.

> either increasing taxes on everyone or cutting spending across the
> board, and even then we couldn't have significantly reduced the outstanding
> debt between 2001 and 2008, let alone put ourselves in a position to more
> easily afford massive increases in spending.

The major factors that impacted the budget in Bush IIs reign:

1) 2 unfunded wars
2) Tax cuts
3) Spiraling increases in medical costs, which affected government
payments for those on government funded medical plans (government
employees, medicare, etc.)
4) Economy decline following 9/11 as a result of business worry about
the state of the country.

Bush had complete control over 1 and 2, and he did nothing about 3.
What he "did" about 4 was backwards, tax cuts for the rich do NOT
"stimulate the economy". The economy is stimulated when middle-class
people have money to spend. Without middle class buyers, businesses
will not create new jobs.

>> But instead we had been digging ourselves ever deeper into debt with
>> "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut",
>
> Nope. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal revenue
> from individual income tax receipts was higher between 2006 and 2008
> than it had been at any previous time in U.S. history: revenue from
> corporate tax receipts hit an unprecedented $278.2 billion in 2005 and
> peaked in 2007 at $370.2 billion. (Individual income tax receipts that
> year totaled $1.16 trillion.)

How does it track on a per capita basis? And is that adjusted for
inflation? Can you cite your sources so I can review the data?

> The problem wasn't the tax cuts: the problem was the across-the-board
> spending increases. Federal outlays during the Bush administration
> increased by 70% over outlays during the Clinton administration. Even
> without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, federal spending was absurdly out
> of control.

But but but... it was a Republican President, Republican Congress. They
are the party that says we must reduce spending! Yet there they were,
with the purse strings, cutting taxes and spending like CRAZY. Explain
to me again why they should ever be given the purse strings again?

> For example: according to the Department of Education's own figures, it
> received $38.4 billion in appropriations during the last year of
> Clinton's administration. In the first year of Bush's administration,
> it received $42 billion, and the appropriations only got bigger after that:
> in 2006 the Department received $100 billion!
>
> (See http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf)

You might want to review:

http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/

to get a better sense of where the money is being spent. The money
spent on non-military, non-social-security, non-medicare is a small
fraction of the total federal budget. Yes, these other items have
budgets which grew and grew, but slashing their budgets won't fix the
deficit/debt problem, and as you slash budgets you put people OUT OF
WORK. Remember, we are supposed to be creating jobs? There are no jobs
created when you slash federal spending. We can reduce federal spending
in small incremental ways (e.g. freezing budgets for departments like
Education) and then not replacing people as folks retire and move. But
that still doesn't create any new jobs to put people back to work.

>> and the debt was so big that spending our way out of the recession
>> wasn't really possible. This is part of why the recession lingers on.
>
> The recession was a global event.

At the beginning of the recession, the US was the biggest economy in the
world. (We may have been overtaken by the Chinese, I don't know if this
has happened yet or is just projected to happen Real Soon Now.) As
such, what happens here does have a strong global effect. If we get our
economy moving, we buy more things including things from other
countries, it boosts their economies, etc.

> Spending our way out of it was always
> a pipe dream: we could have had a zero balance on the federal debt and the
> recession would still be lingering.

That's an opinion that is not shared by most economists. Most
economists believe that stimulus spending helps invigorate a stagnant
economy and pays for itself (in increased tax revenues in following
years) versus no stimulus.

>> IF, instead of "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut" we went into
>> the recession with a balanced budget, we could have then put ALL the
>> money that was spent on the war into stimulus projects here at home.
>
> And the recession would still be lingering, yes.

No. Instead of lining the pockets of Haliburton, who keeps their money
in off-shore accounts and pays very little taxes on their earnings, the
money would have gone into middle-class workers, who would have spent it
in their local communities, stimulating their local business cycles.

>> Instead of having to cut teacher salaries, we could have invested in
>> education during the economic downturn.
>
> Right, the Feds could have appropriated *more* than $100 billion for the
> Department of Education. After all, the No Child Left Behind boondoggle
> wasn't going to pay for itself.

I'm not talking about the DoE, I'm talking about all the teachers who
have been laid off by budget cuts. I'm talking about all the college
students who couldn't take classes because of all the enrollment cuts,
because of funding cuts. (My nephew couldn't start college the year he
graduated from high school, because UCSC slashed admissions. He was
also uninsured for that year because he wasn't in school and thus
couldn't stay on his parent's health care policy - a problem that is no
longer thanks to Obamacare.)

>> Instead of spending $$$ to send soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, we
>> could have spent the money on infrastructure projects here in the US.
>
> And if unemployment were mainly affecting road crews, that might
> conceivably have made a difference.

There are a lot of out-of-work factory workers who can easily be trained
to work on road-crews. Many of the same skills are used in both jobs,
both are often physically taxing, both require good motor skills, etc.
If we had more road-crew jobs, there would be plenty of out-of-work
people applying for them.

>> And we could have cut taxes on the middle-class during the recession -
>> when it is most needed to stimulate the economy, instead of giving tax
>> cuts to the rich which simply gave them more money to store away in
>> their offshore bank accounts.
>
> You literally don't know what you're talking about. We *did* cut taxes
> on the middle class during the recession - *in addition to the cuts we
> made to the middle class's taxes in 2001 and 2003*. Look it up.

We could have made dramatic cuts to taxes for the middle class during
the recession, because we wouldn't have been swimming in debt. But
because the debt had spiraled up (due in part to the tax cuts for the
rich, given when we were also at war and didn't need to "give" to the
rich), we were only able to make minor cuts.

The Republican party tries to claim that the Democrats are the "tax and
spend" party. But the Republican party is the "cut taxes and spend"
party. Look at the results of the debt from administration to
administration, going back to Kennedy. The debt has skyrocketed for
each Republican president. Remember the president sends the budget to
congress. It starts with the President.

Obama has had no choice because of the economic collapse he inherited.
Repubs are now trying to blame Obama for things that are outside his
control, while conveniently ignoring their last 40 years of "cut taxes
and spend" policies that brought us to this financial mess.

jc

[Dann]

On Thursday, June 7, 2012 2:16:20 PM UTC-4, JC Dill wrote:

> But but but... it was a Republican President, Republican Congress. They
> are the party that says we must reduce spending! Yet there they were,
> with the purse strings, cutting taxes and spending like CRAZY. Explain
> to me again why they should ever be given the purse strings again?

I'm staying out of the rest of this, but with respect to the above...the best argument for giving the GOP back the purse strings is not that they have a stellar spending record. It is because the Democrats have a demonstrably worse one.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Mark Jackson]

http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png

Calculation of any correlation is left to the reader.

[Dann]

On Thursday, June 7, 2012 4:30:00 PM UTC-4, Mark Jackson wrote:
> On 6/7/2012 3:44 PM, Dann wrote:
> > On Thursday, June 7, 2012 2:16:20 PM UTC-4, JC Dill wrote:
> >
> >> But but but... it was a Republican President, Republican Congress.
> >> They are the party that says we must reduce spending! Yet there
> >> they were, with the purse strings, cutting taxes and spending like
> >> CRAZY. Explain to me again why they should ever be given the purse
> >> strings again?
> >
> > I'm staying out of the rest of this, but with respect to the
> > above...the best argument for giving the GOP back the purse strings
> > is not that they have a stellar spending record. It is because the
> > Democrats have a demonstrably worse one.
>
> http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png
>
> Calculation of any correlation is left to the reader.
>

President's don't pass spending bills. Congress does. The worst spending increases came with Democrats in charge of Congress. The best spending decreases (relative) came with the GOP in charge.

--
Regards,
Dann

[Evan Kirshenbaum]

On that graph:

1929 Republican House / Republican Senate
1931 Democratic House / Republican Senate
1933 Democratic House / Democratic Senate
1947 Republican House / Republican Senate
1949 Democratic House / Democratic Senate
1953 Republican House / Republican Senate
1955 Democratic House / Democratic Senate
1981 Republican House / Democratic Senate
1987 Democratic House / Democratic Senate
1995 Republican House / Republican Senate
2001 Republican House / Split Senate
2003 Republican House / Republican Senate
2007 Democratic House / Democratic Senate
2011 Republican House / Democratic Senate

I don't see anything there that would justify your statement.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
Still with HP Labs |The Elizabethans had so many words
SF Bay Area (1982-) |for the female genitals that it is
Chicago (1964-1982) |quite hard to speak a sentence of
|modern English without inadvertently
evan.kir...@gmail.com |mentioning at least three of them.
| Terry Pratchett
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jqqr5h$93i$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

> On 07/06/12 10:33 AM, Mark Steese wrote:
>> JC Dill<jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in
>> news:jqnvuo$h2$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

[snip]

>>> Suppose you have an overloaded truck, on icy roads, with bad brakes.
>>> Then suddenly a dog runs out from behind a bush, and you try to
>>> avoid hitting it. Sure, the "cause" of the accident was because you
>>> tried to avoid hitting the dog, but the things that happened before
>>> made the outcome much worse. Similarly, if we hadn't been on a "cut
>>> taxes and spend" spree for the preceding years of Bush II's reign,
>>> we would have been in a much better position to weather the
>>> financial crisis.
>>
>> Not true. See below.
>>
>>> If we had a balanced budget for those prior years, we could have
>>> much more easily afforded the option of spending to stimulate the
>>> economy to pull us out of the recession.
>>
>> No. In 2000, the United States already had over $5.7 trillion in
>> outstanding debt. The budget surplus that year amounted to
>> $230 billion, but of that amount, about $144 billion was Social
>> Security funding, leaving $86 billion - a whopping 1.52% of the
>> amount we owed. Maintaining a balanced budget into the new century
>> would have required
>
> I disagree with your premise that follows. We were in a booming
> economy, and the budget was BALANCED.

It was balanced because Clinton and the Democrats in Congress raised
taxes in 1993.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Budget_Reconciliation_Act_of_1993

Clinton managed to get that bill passed in spite of the opposition of
*every Republican in Congress*, and it was probably the best thing he
did during his entire presidency.

As for the economy, it continued to "boom" right up until the collapse
of the housing bubble. See the chart here:

http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/03/08/long-term-real-growth-in-us-gdp-per-capita-1871-2009/

>> either increasing taxes on everyone or cutting spending across the
>> board, and even then we couldn't have significantly reduced the
>> outstanding debt between 2001 and 2008, let alone put ourselves in a
>> position to more easily afford massive increases in spending.
>
> The major factors that impacted the budget in Bush IIs reign:

...were the Republicans' refusal to rein in spending, the Republicans'
refusal to rein in spending, and the Republicans' refusal to rein in
spending.

> 1) 2 unfunded wars
> 2) Tax cuts
> 3) Spiraling increases in medical costs, which affected government
> payments for those on government funded medical plans (government
> employees, medicare, etc.)
> 4) Economy decline following 9/11 as a result of business worry about
> the state of the country.

See the chart above. There was no significant decline in GDP following
the 9/11 attacks.

> Bush had complete control over 1 and 2,

Of course he did. Congress never passed a joint resolution on 14
September 2001 authorizing Li'l W "to use all necessary and appropriate
force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines
planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or
persons," and Congress certainly never passed a joint resolution on 11
October 2002 which authorized Li'l W "to use the Armed Forces of the
United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order
to--(1) defend the national security of the United States against the
continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United
Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." Nope! That never
happened.

Nor did both houses of Congress pass the Economic Growth and Tax Relief
Reconciliation Act of 2001 or the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief
Reconciliation Act of 2003. Nope! Li'l W had complete control. He just
waved his magic wand and said "Demitto taxationus!"

> and he did nothing about 3.

The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act
may have been a disaster, but I wouldn't call it "doing nothing."

> What he "did" about 4 was backwards, tax cuts for the rich do NOT
> "stimulate the economy".

Tax cuts don't stimulate the economy, full stop. Despite the popular
myth that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts only benefitted the wealthy, the
fact is that everyone who had to pay taxes got a break: even people
who *didn't* pay taxes were able to claim a larger Earned Income Credit.
The tax cuts were a colossally stupid thing to do, but not because they
lined the pockets of the ee-vul robber barons at the expense of everyone
else: they were colossally stupid because neither W. nor Congress even
*tried* to rein in spending.

> The economy is stimulated when middle-class people have money to
> spend. Without middle class buyers, businesses will not create new
> jobs.

Because U.S. businesses only sell goods to middle-class U.S. residents?
I guess that explains why the GDP increased in real dollars during every
year of Bush's administration right up until the housing bubble burst.
Oh, wait, it doesn't explain any such thing.

http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=354

>>> But instead we had been digging ourselves ever deeper into debt with
>>> "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut",
>>
>> Nope. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal
>> revenue from individual income tax receipts was higher between 2006
>> and 2008 than it had been at any previous time in U.S. history:
>> revenue from corporate tax receipts hit an unprecedented $278.2
>> billion in 2005 and peaked in 2007 at $370.2 billion. (Individual
>> income tax receipts that year totaled $1.16 trillion.)
>
> How does it track on a per capita basis? And is that adjusted for
> inflation? Can you cite your sources so I can review the data?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

>> The problem wasn't the tax cuts: the problem was the across-the-board
>> spending increases. Federal outlays during the Bush administration
>> increased by 70% over outlays during the Clinton administration. Even
>> without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, federal spending was
>> absurdly out of control.
>
> But but but... it was a Republican President, Republican Congress.

Yes! You're starting to catch on!

>> For example: according to the Department of Education's own figures,
>> it received $38.4 billion in appropriations during the last year of
>> Clinton's administration. In the first year of Bush's administration,
>> it received $42 billion, and the appropriations only got bigger after
>> that: in 2006 the Department received $100 billion!
>>
>> (See http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf)
>
> You might want to review:
>
> http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/
>
> to get a better sense of where the money is being spent. The money
> spent on non-military, non-social-security, non-medicare is a small
> fraction of the total federal budget.

Wow! Really? No kidding.

> Yes, these other items have budgets which grew and grew, but slashing
> their budgets won't fix the deficit/debt problem, and as you slash
> budgets you put people OUT OF WORK.

Caps Lock makes it true!

> Remember, we are supposed to be creating jobs?

Creating more *federal government* jobs is not going to help the
economy, you silly person. You do realize that even though federal
employees pay income tax, the fact that their income comes from the
federal government results in a net decrease in governmental revenues,
right?

> There are no jobs created when you slash federal spending.

So Li'l W did us all a favor by massively increasing federal spending?
Good to know.

> We can reduce federal spending in small incremental ways (e.g.
> freezing budgets for departments like Education) and then not
> replacing people as folks retire and move. But that still doesn't
> create any new jobs to put people back to work.

The only jobs that create a net benefit for the government are
private-sector jobs. Government makework jobs are a temporary measure at
best: increasing and extending unemployment benefits would be more
beneficial, IMO.

>>> and the debt was so big that spending our way out of the recession
>>> wasn't really possible. This is part of why the recession lingers
>>> on.
>>
>> The recession was a global event.
>
> At the beginning of the recession, the US was the biggest economy in
> the world. (We may have been overtaken by the Chinese, I don't know
> if this has happened yet or is just projected to happen Real Soon
> Now.) As such, what happens here does have a strong global effect.

And what happens out there has a strong global effect, too. We're not
the only nation that's living beyond its means, you know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_sovereign-debt_crisis

> If we get our economy moving, we buy more things including things from
> other countries, it boosts their economies, etc.
>
>> Spending our way out of it was always
>> a pipe dream: we could have had a zero balance on the federal debt
>> and the recession would still be lingering.
>
> That's an opinion that is not shared by most economists.

Cite?

>>> IF, instead of "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut" we went into
>>> the recession with a balanced budget, we could have then put ALL the
>>> money that was spent on the war into stimulus projects here at home.
>>
>> And the recession would still be lingering, yes.
>
> No.

Yes.

> Instead of lining the pockets of Haliburton, who keeps their
> money in off-shore accounts and pays very little taxes on their
> earnings, the money would have gone into middle-class workers, who
> would have spent it in their local communities, stimulating their
> local business cycles.

But the money did go to middle-class workers. The nominal tax rate on
median-income families is 15%: the effective tax rate is *5.6%*. That's
right: the average middle-class family gets to keep 94% of every dollar
it earns. Halliburton and all the other corporate tax avoiders and
evaders are decidely not the reason that the recession is lingering.

>>> Instead of having to cut teacher salaries, we could have invested in
>>> education during the economic downturn.
>>
>> Right, the Feds could have appropriated *more* than $100 billion for
>> the Department of Education. After all, the No Child Left Behind
>> boondoggle wasn't going to pay for itself.
>
> I'm not talking about the DoE, I'm talking about all the teachers who
> have been laid off by budget cuts.

Well, heck, why not put them to work on road crews?

> I'm talking about all the college students who couldn't take classes
> because of all the enrollment cuts, because of funding cuts. (My
> nephew couldn't start college the year he graduated from high school,
> because UCSC slashed admissions. He was also uninsured for that year
> because he wasn't in school and thus couldn't stay on his parent's
> health care policy - a problem that is no longer thanks to Obamacare.)

You do know that 'Obamacare' hasn't actually started yet, right?

>>> Instead of spending $$$ to send soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, we
>>> could have spent the money on infrastructure projects here in the
>>> US.
>>
>> And if unemployment were mainly affecting road crews, that might
>> conceivably have made a difference.
>
> There are a lot of out-of-work factory workers who can easily be
> trained to work on road-crews.

Did we hit a timeslip and end up back in the 1980s? Last time I checked,
industry made up only 22% of the private sector. Services, on
the other hand, made up 76.7%, and unsurprisingly, the service sector
was the hardest hit by the recession.

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/11/10/12-industries-still-losing-jobs

Housing construction, insurance, telecoms, accounting and bookkeeping,
real estate, printing and publishing, drugstores, data
processing...yeah, I don't think those guys are going to be joining road
crews any time soon.

> Many of the same skills are used in both jobs, both are often
> physically taxing, both require good motor skills, etc. If we had more
> road-crew jobs, there would be plenty of out-of-work people applying
> for them.

In 1982? Maybe.

>>> And we could have cut taxes on the middle-class during the recession
>>> - when it is most needed to stimulate the economy, instead of giving
>>> tax cuts to the rich which simply gave them more money to store away
>>> in their offshore bank accounts.
>>
>> You literally don't know what you're talking about. We *did* cut
>> taxes on the middle class during the recession - *in addition to the
>> cuts we made to the middle class's taxes in 2001 and 2003*. Look it
>> up.
>
> We could have made dramatic cuts to taxes for the middle class during
> the recession, because we wouldn't have been swimming in debt.

Really? If we'd maintained a balanced budget, we would have paid off the
whole $5.67 trillion in debt we owed in 2000 in just seven years? Wow.

> But because the debt had spiraled up (due in part to the tax cuts for
> the rich, given when we were also at war and didn't need to "give" to
> the rich), we were only able to make minor cuts.

To repeat: on 30 September 2000, the Federal government had $5.67
trillion in outstanding debt. Should we have continued to keep taxes
high and balance the budget? Of course. Would we still have been
swimming in debt when the housing bubble burst? Damn right we would
have been. Federal surpluses in the low billions don't make much of an
impact on a multitrillion-dollar debt.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm

And as I noted above, the middle class's crushing tax burden going into
the recession amounted to a staggering 5.6% effective rate:

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151

Yep, the median-income family of four sacrificed a whopping 5.6% of its
total income to the federal government this year. If we middle class
citizens really can't cope with giving up six cents on the dollar to
help run the country, then it's no wonder the economy's in the crapper:
we're idiots.
--
One amateur theologian even swore that Death Valley was literally the
roof of the Biblical Hell and that he could hear the "wails of the
damned" crying out from the "Devil's Domain" below.
-Richard E. Lingenfelter

[JC Dill]

On 07/06/12 2:26 PM, Dann wrote:

>> http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png
>>
>>
>>
Calculation of any correlation is left to the reader.
>>
>
> President's don't pass spending bills. Congress does. The worst
> spending increases came with Democrats in charge of Congress. The
> best spending decreases (relative) came with the GOP in charge.

Presidents send a budget to congress. Reagan ran on a promise to
balance the budget (twice, both in his original campaign and in his
re-election campaign) and he never ONCE sent congress a balanced budget.
You can't push this back on congress.

jc

[Ted Goldblatt]

While I don't think the Tax Foundation makes up their numbers, they are
clearly a right-wing, pro-business (and upper-income) leaning group, and
they spin their interpretations to match that leaning.

>
> For every income group below $68K, share of tax liability decreased: for
> those making $68K or more, the share *increased* from 78.7% to 81%. But
> that increase fell only on people making more than $136K, i.e., the top
> 5% of all taxpayers in the United States. For the "one-percenters," the
> share of tax liability increased from 37.1% to 39.3%, and while they did
> get the second-largest share of tax cuts, the largest share went to
> people in the $68K - $136K group - the upper-middle class, in other
> words. With their share of the tax burden falling from 22.8% to 22%, and
> their 26.5% share of the tax cuts, upper-middle class taxpayers were
> evidently the ones who benefited the most from Bush's tax cuts.

These numbers may well be accurate. However, unlike the previous chart
("by state"), which broke out the number of people (filers) in each
group and the per filer net changes, the chart you refer to ("by income
group") does not, and I assume intentionally so, because it would then
show that (because the size of the group shrinks (substantially) as you
go up the income ladder) even though the aggregate cut was (slightly)
larger for another group, and even though their aggregate share of tax
liability was largest and went up somewhat, the _per filer_ income in
the top 1% group went up hugely more in that group than any other and
the _per filer_ savings were hugely larger in that group than any other.

No one can dispute that the rich pay the most tax (at least on aggregate
- there are individuals that do a _very_ good job of sheltering).
However, it is also clear that they are most able to bear tax burdens
(they have benefited the most, they have the most discretionary income,
etc.) Further, especially for the topmost (.1%, .01%), their marginal
rates (because of special treatment for passive income) are often lower
than those lower on the income scale. This is even true (perhaps
especially true) for (very top income) people like fund managers (hedge,
equity, etc.) who get this special treatment even though they are
generally not investing (and risking) their own money, but still get
their income treated as if they were.

ted

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in news:jqtca1$g2t$2
@speranza.aioe.org:

Nor can you exonerate Congress. Checks and balances, remember? If the
president promises a balanced budget and doesn't deliver one, it's
Congress's job to hold his feet to the fire. Unfortunately, Reagan had a
Republican Senate for six of his eight years in office, but that does
nothing to excuse the way the House, which was under Democratic control the
entire time, kept rolling over for the old scumbag.
--
Usually annihilating a culture and romanticizing it are done separately,
but Bunnell neatly compresses two stages of historical change into one
conversation. -Rebecca Solnit

[Mark Steese]

Ted Goldblatt <ted.go...@att.net> wrote in
news:jqtglq$opo$1...@dont-email.me:

> On 6/3/2012 3:46 PM, Mark Steese wrote:
>> In practice, Bush's tax cuts put extra money into the pockets of all
>> taxpayers. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act
>> created a 10% tax bracket for the lowest-income group (the floor had
>> previously been 15%), and lowered all of the existing tax brackets.
>> It also increased the standard deduction for married couples filing a
>> joint return, increased the amount of tax credit available for having
>> a kid and for taking care of said kid, increased the Alternative
>> Minimum Tax exemption, and so on. Hell, you got a 'rebate' check for
>> 2001 just for filing your return on time. The myth that the tax cuts
>> only benefited the wealthy is absurd.
>>
>> Table 4 on the web page below shows how the Bush tax cuts actually
>> affected taxpayers:
>>
>> http://taxfoundation.org/article/comparing-kennedy-reagan-and-bush-tax
>> -cuts
>
> While I don't think the Tax Foundation makes up their numbers, they
> are clearly a right-wing, pro-business (and upper-income) leaning
> group, and they spin their interpretations to match that leaning.

So you can't refute their facts, but you can dismiss them because of
their political stance. There's a shocker.

Here's a chart from the Tax Policy Center run by the Urban Institute and
the Brookings Institution, using data from the Congressional Budget
Office:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456

As you can see, the effective tax rates for the Lowest, Second, and
Middle Quintiles were 6.4, 13.0, and 16.6, respectively, during the last
year of the Clinton administration. By 2005, the effective rates for
those quintiles had dropped to 4.3, 10.1, and 14.2, respectively. That
reflects all taxes, not just income taxes: the effective income tax rate
for individuals in the middle quintile was 5.0% in 2000, and 3.0% in
2005. For individuals in the second quintile, the effective income tax
rate went from 1.5 in 2000 to -0.9 in 2005. The lowest quintile, who
already had a negative effective tax rate in 2000 (-4.6%) got even more
money back under Bush: the 2005 effective rate was -6.6%! The simple
fact is that everybody got a break from the Bush tax cuts: if cutting
taxes on the middle class were a legitimate way to stimulate the
economy, the nation would be in the middle of a boom right now.

>> For every income group below $68K, share of tax liability decreased:
>> for those making $68K or more, the share *increased* from 78.7% to
>> 81%. But that increase fell only on people making more than $136K,
>> i.e., the top 5% of all taxpayers in the United States. For the
>> "one-percenters," the share of tax liability increased from 37.1% to
>> 39.3%, and while they did get the second-largest share of tax cuts,
>> the largest share went to people in the $68K - $136K group - the
>> upper-middle class, in other words. With their share of the tax
>> burden falling from 22.8% to 22%, and their 26.5% share of the tax
>> cuts, upper-middle class taxpayers were evidently the ones who
>> benefited the most from Bush's tax cuts.
>
> These numbers may well be accurate. However, unlike the previous
> chart ("by state"), which broke out the number of people (filers) in
> each group and the per filer net changes, the chart you refer to ("by
> income group") does not, and I assume intentionally so, because it
> would then show that (because the size of the group shrinks
> (substantially) as you go up the income ladder) even though the
> aggregate cut was (slightly) larger for another group, and even though
> their aggregate share of tax liability was largest and went up
> somewhat, the _per filer_ income in the top 1% group went up hugely
> more in that group than any other and the _per filer_ savings were
> hugely larger in that group than any other.

So I should prefer your left-wing political spin to the right's? Why?
Are your distortions better, somehow?

> No one can dispute that the rich pay the most tax (at least on
> aggregate - there are individuals that do a _very_ good job of
> sheltering).

Whereas the poor, beleaguered middle classes don't know from tax
shelters, right? Middle-class people are all like "Itemized deductions
are too hard! IRA? What's that?"

> However, it is also clear that they are most able to bear
> tax burdens (they have benefited the most, they have the most
> discretionary income, etc.) Further, especially for the topmost (.1%,
> .01%), their marginal rates (because of special treatment for passive
> income) are often lower than those lower on the income scale. This is
> even true (perhaps especially true) for (very top income) people like
> fund managers (hedge, equity, etc.) who get this special treatment
> even though they are generally not investing (and risking) their own
> money, but still get their income treated as if they were.

I'm sorry, dude, but I just don't hate the rich. Could they afford to
pay more taxes? Of course. Could middle-class families that are
currently paying a mean average 5.6 cents in income tax on every dollar
they earn *also* afford to pay more taxes? Yes. Is either the
upper-class or the middle-class being overtaxed? Hell no.

Now, it is true that a lot of high-profile rich people like to go out
and make staggeringly clueless pronouncements about how unfair it is to
ask them to pay taxes, but the fact of the matter is that the middle
class habitually whines about *exactly the same thing*. A Tea Party
anti-tax protest is just as stupid as John Boehner whinging about how
"The top one percent of wage earners in the United States pays forty
percent of the income taxes." Everybody wants the government to keep
dishing up the benefits and let the bill land in somebody else's
mailbox.
--
At the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, a very curious figure stood
in the California State Building: a medieval knight in armor, mounted on
a horse, composed entirely of prunes. -Douglas Sackman

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

Interesting, I'll just point out the lack of mention of the very
successful Acela line, since I figure what's good for the busiest rail
corridor in the US would be about as good for the second busiest (LA
to San Diego), but otherwise good points.

Anyway, thanks for acknowledging by omission that comprehensive
infrastructure repair would be a good way to restart the economy.

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

Good thing he renegged on all this and did something that actually
worked later on.

>Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, was a firm believer in
>balancing the budget,

Yes, not like his main financial advisor wasn't John Meynard Keynes,
sometimes called Father of the New Deal, oh wait . . .

and in 1937, when the economy looked like it was
>finally recovering, Morgenthau finally convinced FDR to make balancing
>the budget a priority. If the attempt to balance the budget is what
>caused the 'Roosevelt Recession' and the spike in unemployment rates, it
>was the fault of FDR and his administration, not those ee-vul
>Republicans.

Right, Morgenthau whining got to him then . . .

BTW, what's your deal?

Seriously, I looked back, and haven't seen a single original post by
you about comic strips. You wanna be another Saint Septimus, just
arguing against everything for argument's sake, fine, just don't
expect all of us to keep playing along . . .

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Fri, 1 Jun 2012 10:34:41 -0700 (PDT), Dann <deto...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Friday, June 1, 2012 10:24:37 AM UTC-4, G wrote:
>> Dann <deto...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On Thursday, May 31, 2012 10:01:00 PM UTC-4, Mark Jackson wrote:
>> >> On 5/31/2012 6:41 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
>> >> > On Wed, 30 May 2012 22:52:34 -0700, Antonio E. Gonzalez
>> >> > <AntE...@aol.com> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Doesn't change the obvious: Francoise Holland is still a proud
>> >> >> socialist, still the elected President of France, and France is
>> >> >> still a democracy.
>> >> >
>> >> > And it's still unrelated to the assertion that tyrannies tend to be
>> >> > socialist.
>> >>
>> >> How about to this:
>> >>
>> >> > On 5/29/2012 11:03 AM, Dann wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >> Being communist/socialist is axiomatically the same as a
>> >> >> dictatorship, IMO. At least I know of no example of a
>> >> >> communist/socialist government that did not also exhibit the more
>> >> >> salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.
>> >>
>> >
>> > I still think there is a vast difference between a truly socialist
>> > government such as Chavez's Venezuela and one that simply has the socialist
>> > moniker slathered over it such as is the case in France.
>> >
>> > I understand that others may feel differently and offer no negative
>> > commentary about their character because of that difference of opinion.
>> >
>> > -- Regards, Dann
>> >
>>
>>
>> Well, if the definition of "communist/socialist government" is "a more or less
>> oppressive dictatorship of the communist/socialist type" I have to agree that
>> there is no no example of a communist/socialist government that did not also
>> exhibit the more salient, oppressive features of a dictatorship.
>>
>
>Not exactly, but close.
>
>IMO...with lots of provisos and caveats about such considerations existing on a sliding scale instead of being a black/white or 1/0 or on/off condition...freedom is a package deal. Freedom in the personal realm does not exist without there being freedom in the economic end of things. The reverse is also true.
>
>You don't find countries that have nationalized their industrial and commercial base while also having maximum freedom of expression, association, movement, etc. You don't find countries that fully restrict personal freedoms (again expression, association, movement, etc.) while also affording a fully free, capitalist economic system. The two go hand in hand. (Although China is certainly taking a run at the latter arrangement.)
>

Ummmm, China is more than doing that, they've probably the best
example. Corproations within China have freedom to do pretty much as
they please, and any popular complaints are quickly stomped down. The
ban on unions is icing on the cake.


>Socialism necessarily requires the restriction of personal freedoms in order to institute a socialist economic structure where the state controls the industry and commerce.
>
>What France does have is a few nationalized interests (i.e. electricity, gas, RATP) but is largely a free market economically with high (I would respectfully suggest unsustainable) tax rates. Whatever you call it, it ain't socialism.
>

It's limited, but it very much is socialism.


>IMO.
>

CYA.



>After 80 years of socialists and communists destroying common definitions by using terms like "liberal" and "progressive"

Ummm,. no, the definitions stand.




>as rhetorical fig leaves (not to mention "anarchist"),


Anacthists support a complete elimination of government; that is,
libertarianism taken to its liogical end.


> I am unsurprised that we continue to have these kinds of exchanges.

That's ok, we'll keep trying to help you out.

[Antonio E. Gonzalez]

On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 10:21:08 -0700, JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com>
wrote:

The term you're looking for here is "moving goal posts."

[Pat O'Neill]

I think it worth noting here that budgets--whether initiated by the president or the Congress--have no standing in law. That's why they are officially called "budget resolutions". The only thing with actual force of law are appropriations bills, that actually determine where, how and by whom the money can be spent. Budgets are, at best, an outline of how the president or Congress wants to appropriate the money. Rarely do the actual appropriations have anything to do with the budget resolutions that preceded them.

This is why the argument that "Congress has not passed a budget in umpty-ump months" is ridiculous. If budgets had the power to actually initiate or end spending, then the truth of that statement would be in the fact that the government has stopped spending money in all that time; since it clearly hasn't--because appropriations bills continue to be passed as necessary--then the existence or non-existence of a budget is irrelevant.

Think of it this way--do YOU have a budget for your personal economy? That is, an actual written document that says where you will spend money, on what, nd when? If you don't, does that mean you aren't spending money anyway?

[JC Dill]

On 07/06/12 6:18 PM, Mark Steese wrote:

> As for the economy, it continued to "boom" right up until the collapse
> of the housing bubble. See the chart here:
>
> http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/03/08/long-term-real-growth-in-us-gdp-per-capita-1871-2009/

Look at the shelf right after 2000, that's when it stagnated for 2 years
following 9/11.

>
>>> either increasing taxes on everyone or cutting spending across the
>>> board, and even then we couldn't have significantly reduced the
>>> outstanding debt between 2001 and 2008, let alone put ourselves in a
>>> position to more easily afford massive increases in spending.
>>
>> The major factors that impacted the budget in Bush IIs reign:
>
> ...were the Republicans' refusal to rein in spending, the Republicans'
> refusal to rein in spending, and the Republicans' refusal to rein in
> spending.

It wasn't that they didn't "rein in" existing spending, it was that they
BOTH spent more (year after year), and cut taxes. They did do both of
those you know. You can't pretend that the tax cuts didn't happen.

>> 1) 2 unfunded wars
>> 2) Tax cuts
>> 3) Spiraling increases in medical costs, which affected government
>> payments for those on government funded medical plans (government
>> employees, medicare, etc.)
>> 4) Economy decline following 9/11 as a result of business worry about
>> the state of the country.
>
> See the chart above. There was no significant decline in GDP following
> the 9/11 attacks.

You must be blind. There's a clear "shelf" where the economy did not
grow for 2 years.

>> Bush had complete control over 1 and 2,
>
> Of course he did. Congress

Which was a Republican Congress, which rubber-stamped anything Bush II
wanted. All 3 parts were in Republican control, they can't blame anyone
else for what they did.

> never passed a joint resolution on 14
> September 2001 authorizing Li'l W "to use all necessary and appropriate
> force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines
> planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
> occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or
> persons," and Congress certainly never passed a joint resolution on 11
> October 2002 which authorized Li'l W "to use the Armed Forces of the
> United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order
> to--(1) defend the national security of the United States against the
> continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United
> Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." Nope! That never
> happened.

It all happened after Bush manipulated his people LIE TO CONGRESS about
WMDs, using "data" that was clearly known at the time (and later proven
to be false) to be completely unsubstantiated.

http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_20812259/colin-powells-revision-wmd-history?source=most_emailed

Bush should have been impeached for this, but the Dems didn't want to
see Cheney as President, so they didn't push for impeachment. But they
had a pretty strong case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeach_Bush

Certainly this was a much stronger case than the case against Clinton.

> Nor did both houses of Congress pass the Economic Growth and Tax Relief
> Reconciliation Act of 2001 or the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief
> Reconciliation Act of 2003. Nope! Li'l W had complete control. He just
> waved his magic wand and said "Demitto taxationus!"

All Republicans, rubber stamping their president's agenda.

>> and he did nothing about 3.
>
> The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act
> may have been a disaster, but I wouldn't call it "doing nothing."

It didn't solve the problem.

We are the only "first world" country that doesn't have universal health
care for all. There are countries that are a lot "poorer" than the US
who make sure that everyone in their country gets good health care, and
they manage to do it for far less cost per capita than we spend. Our
current health care practices are not sustainable. The industry is
setup to keep charging us more for medications, more for tests, than
they charge anyone else in any other country. We NEED a universal
health care system to rein in these costs. If we don't do this,
eventually only the really wealthy (who can afford spiraling health care
costs) will get health care. The retired will be given "vouchers" to
buy medical insurance, but the vouchers won't cover the cost. Need long
term nursing home care? None but the very rich will be able to afford
it. The poor will get medicare but it will end up rationed in such a
way that most expensive services will be delayed until you are too
sick/dying to qualify for the treatment.

>> The economy is stimulated when middle-class people have money to
>> spend. Without middle class buyers, businesses will not create new
>> jobs.
>
> Because U.S. businesses only sell goods to middle-class U.S. residents?
> I guess that explains why the GDP increased in real dollars during every
> year of Bush's administration right up until the housing bubble burst.
> Oh, wait, it doesn't explain any such thing.

Because the middle class does the majority of the discretionary buying.
If they don't buy, there's no demand, the economy stagnates.

The rich are such a small group (in numbers) that their buying patterns
don't move the economy.

The poor don't have much discretionary spending. They spend what they
earn, month in and month out. They don't have much opportunity to save
or borrow.

Only the middle class can (substantially) change the economy by spending
from savings or borrowing to spend more than they earn, or spending more
on discretionary things when they make more (in a booming economy, when
businesses give out raises and bonuses, when businesses can pay for
expense trips, etc.).

>
> http://www.data360.org/dataset.aspx?Data_Set_Id=354
>
>>>> But instead we had been digging ourselves ever deeper into debt with
>>>> "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut",
>>>
>>> Nope. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal
>>> revenue from individual income tax receipts was higher between 2006
>>> and 2008 than it had been at any previous time in U.S. history:
>>> revenue from corporate tax receipts hit an unprecedented $278.2
>>> billion in 2005 and peaked in 2007 at $370.2 billion. (Individual
>>> income tax receipts that year totaled $1.16 trillion.)
>>
>> How does it track on a per capita basis? And is that adjusted for
>> inflation? Can you cite your sources so I can review the data?
>
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

So you haven't adjusted for inflation, and you haven't corrected to
account for per capita, you aren't comparing the budget to the country's
productivity (DGP). You are just using raw numbers which will ALWAYS
show the budget going up and up (because of inflation, because of
increases in population).

There are 3 kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics. This is
the 3rd kind of lie - mis-applied statistics. For the historical budget
numbers to have any value in a discussion you must either correct for
inflation or show the budget amount as a percent of GDP or per capita.
The modern approach is to show the budget as a percent of GDP. As GDP
goes up, tax revenues go up, population requesting services goes up, it
makes sense federal spending goes up. It would be insane to expect the
budget to remain at a fixed level when GDP goes up and up and up.

Let me know when you have useful figures to discuss.

>>> The problem wasn't the tax cuts: the problem was the across-the-board
>>> spending increases. Federal outlays during the Bush administration
>>> increased by 70% over outlays during the Clinton administration. Even
>>> without the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, federal spending was
>>> absurdly out of control.
>>
>> But but but... it was a Republican President, Republican Congress.
>
> Yes! You're starting to catch on!
>
>>> For example: according to the Department of Education's own figures,
>>> it received $38.4 billion in appropriations during the last year of
>>> Clinton's administration. In the first year of Bush's administration,
>>> it received $42 billion, and the appropriations only got bigger after
>>> that: in 2006 the Department received $100 billion!
>>>
>>> (See http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.pdf)
>>
>> You might want to review:
>>
>> http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/
>>
>> to get a better sense of where the money is being spent. The money
>> spent on non-military, non-social-security, non-medicare is a small
>> fraction of the total federal budget.
>
> Wow! Really? No kidding.
>
>> Yes, these other items have budgets which grew and grew, but slashing
>> their budgets won't fix the deficit/debt problem, and as you slash
>> budgets you put people OUT OF WORK.
>
> Caps Lock makes it true!

Are you seriously trying to say that if the federal government slashes
their budgets that somehow this *won't* put people out of work?

>> Remember, we are supposed to be creating jobs?
>
> Creating more *federal government* jobs is not going to help the
> economy, you silly person. You do realize that even though federal
> employees pay income tax, the fact that their income comes from the
> federal government results in a net decrease in governmental revenues,
> right?

You don't understand economics very well. The problem in a recession is
that money stops moving. People hoard their money, and as they hoard
money the number of transactions (each of which generates taxes) per
capita drops, and revenues drop. If you can get money moving thru
society again, you can tax it. This is the point of stimulus spending.
You spend a dollar, the person who gets that dollar spends it, the
person they give it to also spends it, etc., etc., etc., etc. As the
dollars move thru different hands, it generates taxable events - sales
tax, payroll tax, income tax, various small taxes that accrue on
different types of products that get purchased, etc.

If you just look at the money spent on person A, and the taxes they pay,
it looks like it costs more than you take back in. But person A goes on
to spend that money with B, C, D, E and each of them pay taxes on it.
Then they go on to spend money with F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M etc...

>> There are no jobs created when you slash federal spending.
>
> So Li'l W did us all a favor by massively increasing federal spending?
> Good to know.

We didn't need to "stimulate the economy" when Bush II increased federal
spending. What he did was needlessly build up massive debt, while
lining the pockets of his friends at Haliburton, and letting the 1%
pocket record profits. It left us with little "cushion" to weather a
rainy day. When the heavens opened up during the last year of Bush II's
reign, we were left without a rainy day fund (a balanced budget).

>> We can reduce federal spending in small incremental ways (e.g.
>> freezing budgets for departments like Education) and then not
>> replacing people as folks retire and move. But that still doesn't
>> create any new jobs to put people back to work.
>
> The only jobs that create a net benefit for the government are
> private-sector jobs.

That's an opinion, a Republican talking point. Just because you hear it
repeated ad nauseum on FAUX doesn't make it true. Again, you don't
understand stimulus spending.

> Government makework jobs are a temporary measure at
> best: increasing and extending unemployment benefits would be more
> beneficial, IMO.

While I agree that helping the unemployed is important, IMHO it's MUCH
more beneficial to put the money into the hands of people who are
working. People who are working will spend money in ways different from
people who are not working. There is an important emotional factor
here. It's important that people WORK.

It's also important that people SEE the money "at work". When you drive
down the road and see road crews at work, you see people WORKING, and
you see the fruits of their labors (new freeway interchanges, widened
roadways, etc.). This is how so many Depression era public works
projects built our highways, long term investments. As people see a new
highway being built or a new building being built they SEE their money
being spent on a public good. If all the money just went to unemployed
people, nobody was put to work, nothing was being built, the mood would
be worse. It's the mood, more than anything else, that needs to be
turned around. When people feel good about the present and future, they
spend more, and that in turn stimulates the economy and pulls us out of
the dumps (emotionally and financially).

>>>> and the debt was so big that spending our way out of the recession
>>>> wasn't really possible. This is part of why the recession lingers
>>>> on.
>>>
>>> The recession was a global event.
>>
>> At the beginning of the recession, the US was the biggest economy in
>> the world. (We may have been overtaken by the Chinese, I don't know
>> if this has happened yet or is just projected to happen Real Soon
>> Now.) As such, what happens here does have a strong global effect.
>
> And what happens out there has a strong global effect, too. We're not
> the only nation that's living beyond its means, you know.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_sovereign-debt_crisis

I know. Part of Europe's crisis comes from the slow-down in American
buying of European products and services.

>> If we get our economy moving, we buy more things including things from
>> other countries, it boosts their economies, etc.

As I said, right there.

>>> Spending our way out of it was always
>>> a pipe dream: we could have had a zero balance on the federal debt
>>> and the recession would still be lingering.
>>
>> That's an opinion that is not shared by most economists.
>
> Cite?

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/did-the-stimulus-work-a-review-of-the-nine-best-studies-on-the-subject/2011/08/16/gIQAThbibJ_blog.html>

>
>>>> IF, instead of "2 unfunded wars and a massive tax cut" we went into
>>>> the recession with a balanced budget, we could have then put ALL the
>>>> money that was spent on the war into stimulus projects here at home.
>>>
>>> And the recession would still be lingering, yes.
>>
>> No.
>
> Yes.

No. If we had the money to spend at home instead of lining the pockets
of Haliburton, we could have REALLY stimulated the economy, got the
wheels of finance moving again, and we would be out of the recession by now.

There was a story on NPR the other day about the generals coming to
Obama to get his OK for the Surge. Obama asked for a report on what the
Surge would cost. The report came back and said that for the same
amount of money the generals were requesting to pay for the Surge, it
would equal the cost to pay for health care for every US citizen who
doesn't presently have health insurance. So, does he OK military
spending to pay for a Surge in Afghanistan, or does he use that money
for something at home that benefits ordinary Americans?

That's the problem with unfunded wars. Republicans are OK if we borrow
to pay for war spending (which greatly benefits Haliburton and other
companies who build and subcontract for much of what we spend in
wartime), but then scream when we want to borrow and spend the money at
home. If we insisted on raising taxes to pay for the wars, especially
raising taxes on the rich (since they aren't contributing to the war
effort by having family members deployed), all those Republican hawks
would suddenly become doves and insist that we find a non-war solution.

>> Instead of lining the pockets of Haliburton, who keeps their
>> money in off-shore accounts and pays very little taxes on their
>> earnings, the money would have gone into middle-class workers, who
>> would have spent it in their local communities, stimulating their
>> local business cycles.
>
> But the money did go to middle-class workers. The nominal tax rate on
> median-income families is 15%: the effective tax rate is *5.6%*.

Cite?

> That's
> right: the average middle-class family

Now you are mixing your terms. The average middle class family is not
the same as a median income family. This is because we have a much
largeer "lower class" and smaller "upper class" so the middle of the
"middle class" is above the medium in income. No matter how you slice
it, the "upper class" group (the rich) is small, and the "lower class"
group (the poor) is large. The middle class is the group in between.

> gets to keep 94% of every dollar
> it earns. Halliburton and all the other corporate tax avoiders and
> evaders are decidely not the reason that the recession is lingering.

Just because you hear it on FAUX doesn't make it true.

If we weren't spending trillions on the war (most of the money going
into the pockets of Halliburton) we could be spending it at home, it
could be going into the pockets of millions of out-of-work Americans,
building infrastructure projects here (instead of overseas) for our use
for generations, and stimulating the local economy. It could be paying
for teachers to educate our children so we can have an educated
workforce in the future. Etc.

>>>> Instead of having to cut teacher salaries, we could have invested in
>>>> education during the economic downturn.
>>>
>>> Right, the Feds could have appropriated *more* than $100 billion for
>>> the Department of Education. After all, the No Child Left Behind
>>> boondoggle wasn't going to pay for itself.
>>
>> I'm not talking about the DoE, I'm talking about all the teachers who
>> have been laid off by budget cuts.
>
> Well, heck, why not put them to work on road crews?

Are you seriously suggesting that it's a good idea to put teachers to
work on road crews? Are you seriously suggesting that this would be
good policy, good use of our money? Are you that stupid? Maybe you
need to go back to school.

(end of part 1)

jc

[JC Dill]

>> I'm talking about all the college students who couldn't take classes
>> because of all the enrollment cuts, because of funding cuts. (My
>> nephew couldn't start college the year he graduated from high school,
>> because UCSC slashed admissions. He was also uninsured for that year
>> because he wasn't in school and thus couldn't stay on his parent's
>> health care policy - a problem that is no longer thanks to Obamacare.)
>
> You do know that 'Obamacare' hasn't actually started yet, right?

Boy, you are really, really misinformed. Obamacare consists of many
different provisions, many are already enacted.

Quoting from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obamacare#Provisions

Provisions

The Act is divided into 10 titles[42] and contains provisions that
became effective immediately, 90 days after enactment, and six months
after enactment, as well as provisions that will become effective in
2014.[43][44]

Below are some of the key provisions of the Act. For simplicity, the
amendments in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010
are integrated into this timeline.[45][46]
Effective at enactment

The Food and Drug Administration is now authorized to approve
generic versions of biologic drugs and grant biologics manufacturers 12
years of exclusive use before generics can be developed.[47]
The Medicaid drug rebate for brand name drugs is increased to 23.1%
(except the rebate for clotting factors and drugs approved exclusively
for pediatric use increases to 17.1%), and the rebate is extended to
Medicaid managed care plans; the Medicaid rebate for non-innovator,
multiple source drugs is increased to 13% of average manufacturer price.[47]
A non-profit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is
established, independent from government, to undertake comparative
effectiveness research.[47] This is charged with examining the "relative
health outcomes, clinical effectiveness, and appropriateness" of
different medical treatments by evaluating existing studies and
conducting its own. Its 19-member board is to include patients, doctors,
hospitals, drug makers, device manufacturers, insurers, payers,
government officials and health experts. It will not have the power to
mandate or even endorse coverage rules or reimbursement for any
particular treatment. Medicare may take the Institute's research into
account when deciding what procedures it will cover, so long as the new
research is not the sole justification and the agency allows for public
input.[48] The bill forbids the Institute to develop or employ "a
dollars per quality adjusted life year" (or similar measure that
discounts the value of a life because of an individual's disability) as
a threshold to establish what type of health care is cost effective or
recommended. This makes it different from the UK's National Institute
for Health and Clinical Excellence.
Creation of task forces on Preventive Services and Community
Preventive Services to develop, update, and disseminate evidenced-based
recommendations on the use of clinical and community prevention
services.[47]
The Indian Health Care Improvement Act is reauthorized and amended.[47]
Chain restaurants and food vendors with 20 or more locations are
required to display the caloric content of their foods on menus,
drive-through menus, and vending machines. Additional information, such
as saturated fat, carbohydrate, and sodium content, must also be made
available upon request.[49] But first, the Food and Drug Administration
has to come up with regulations, and as a result, calories disclosures
may not appear until 2013 or 2014.[49]

Effective June 21, 2010

Adults with existing conditions became eligible to join a temporary
high-risk pool, which will be superseded by the health care exchange in
2014.[44][50] To qualify for coverage, applicants must have a
pre-existing health condition and have been uninsured for at least the
past six months.[51] There is no age requirement.[51] The new program
sets premiums as if for a standard population and not for a population
with a higher health risk. Allows premiums to vary by age (4:1),
geographic area, and family composition. Limit out-of-pocket spending to
$5,950 for individuals and $11,900 for families, excluding
premiums.[51][52][53]

Effective July 1, 2010

The President established, within the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS), a council to be known as the National Prevention,
Health Promotion and Public Health Council to help begin to develop a
National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy. The Surgeon General
shall serve as the Chairperson of the new Council.[54][55]
A 10% tax on indoor tanning took effect.[56]

Effective September 23, 2010

Insurers are prohibited from imposing lifetime dollar limits on
essential benefits, like hospital stays, in new policies issued.[57]
Dependents (children) will be permitted to remain on their parents'
insurance plan until their 26th birthday,[58] and regulations
implemented under the Act include dependents that no longer live with
their parents, are not a dependent on a parent's tax return, are no
longer a student, or are married.[59][60]
Insurers are prohibited from excluding pre-existing medical
conditions (except in grandfathered individual health insurance plans)
for children under the age of 19.[61][62]
Insurers are prohibited from charging co-payments, co-insurance, or
deductibles for Level A or Level B preventive care and medical
screenings on all new insurance plans.[63]
Individuals affected by the Medicare Part D coverage gap will
receive a $250 rebate, and 50% of the gap will be eliminated in
2011.[64] The gap will be eliminated by 2020.
Insurers' abilities to enforce annual spending caps will be
restricted, and completely prohibited by 2014.[44]
Insurers are prohibited from dropping policyholders when they get
sick.[44]
Insurers are required to reveal details about administrative and
executive expenditures.[44]
Insurers are required to implement an appeals process for coverage
determination and claims on all new plans.[44]
Enhanced methods of fraud detection are implemented.[44]
Medicare is expanded to small, rural hospitals and facilities.[44]
Medicare patients with chronic illnesses must be
monitored/evaluated on a 3 month basis for coverage of the medications
for treatment of such illnesses.
Companies which provide early retiree benefits for individuals aged
55–64 are eligible to participate in a temporary program which reduces
premium costs.[44]
A new website installed by the Secretary of Health and Human
Services will provide consumer insurance information for individuals and
small businesses in all states.[44]
A temporary credit program is established to encourage private
investment in new therapies for disease treatment and prevention.[44]

Effective January 1, 2011

Insurers must spend a certain percent of premium dollars on
eligible expenses, subject to various waivers and exemptions; if an
insurer fails to meet this requirement, there is no penalty, but a
rebate must be issued to the policy holder.[65][66][67]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is responsible for
developing the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and
overseeing the testing of innovative payment and delivery models.[68]
Flexible spending accounts, Health reimbursement accounts and
health savings accounts cannot be used to pay for over-the-counter
drugs, purchased without a prescription, except insulin.[69]

Effective January 1, 2012

Employers must disclose the value of the benefits they provided
beginning in 2012 for each employee's health insurance coverage on the
employees' annual Form W-2's.[70] This requirement was originally to be
effective January 1, 2011, but was postponed by IRS Notice 2010-69 on
October 23, 2010.[71]

New tax reporting changes were to come in effect to prevent tax
evasion by corporations. However, in April 2011, Congress passed and
President Obama signed the Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and
Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayments Act of 2011 repealing this
provision, because it was burdensome to small businesses.[72][73] Before
PPACA businesses were required to notify the IRS on form 1099 of certain
payments to individuals for certain services or property over a
reporting threshold of $600.[74][75] Under the repealed law, reporting
of payments to corporations would also be required.[76][77] Originally
it was expected to raise $17 billion over 10 years.[78] The amendments
made by Section 9006 of the Act were designed to apply to payments made
by businesses after December 31, 2011, but will no longer apply because
of the repeal of the section.[73][75]

>>>> Instead of spending $$$ to send soldiers to Afghanistan and Iraq, we
>>>> could have spent the money on infrastructure projects here in the
>>>> US.
>>>
>>> And if unemployment were mainly affecting road crews, that might
>>> conceivably have made a difference.
>>
>> There are a lot of out-of-work factory workers who can easily be
>> trained to work on road-crews.
>
> Did we hit a timeslip and end up back in the 1980s? Last time I checked,
> industry made up only 22% of the private sector. Services, on
> the other hand, made up 76.7%, and unsurprisingly, the service sector
> was the hardest hit by the recession.
>
>
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/11/10/12-industries-still-losing-jobs
>
> Housing construction, insurance, telecoms, accounting and bookkeeping,
> real estate, printing and publishing, drugstores, data
> processing...yeah, I don't think those guys are going to be joining road
> crews any time soon.

You clearly don't understand stimulus. When you inject money into a
community thru stimulus, it is spent and moves throughout the community.
It doesn't just to go the worker who puts it under their mattress.

What do road crews spend their income on? They buy goods and services.
They go shopping at the grocery store, the drugstore, etc. They buy
lunch from the local deli. They buy insurance. They pay cell phone
bills.

>> Many of the same skills are used in both jobs, both are often
>> physically taxing, both require good motor skills, etc. If we had more
>> road-crew jobs, there would be plenty of out-of-work people applying
>> for them.
>
> In 1982? Maybe.

I'm pretty sure that out-of-work factory workers who were building cars
before the financial collapse of 2008 would jump at the opportunity to
work on a road crew.

>>>> And we could have cut taxes on the middle-class during the recession
>>>> - when it is most needed to stimulate the economy, instead of giving
>>>> tax cuts to the rich which simply gave them more money to store away
>>>> in their offshore bank accounts.
>>>
>>> You literally don't know what you're talking about. We *did* cut
>>> taxes on the middle class during the recession - *in addition to the
>>> cuts we made to the middle class's taxes in 2001 and 2003*. Look it
>>> up.
>>
>> We could have made dramatic cuts to taxes for the middle class during
>> the recession, because we wouldn't have been swimming in debt.
>
> Really? If we'd maintained a balanced budget, we would have paid off the
> whole $5.67 trillion in debt we owed in 2000 in just seven years? Wow.

As posted elsewhere in this thread:

http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png

>> But because the debt had spiraled up (due in part to the tax cuts for
>> the rich, given when we were also at war and didn't need to "give" to
>> the rich), we were only able to make minor cuts.
>
> To repeat: on 30 September 2000, the Federal government had $5.67
> trillion in outstanding debt. Should we have continued to keep taxes
> high and balance the budget? Of course. Would we still have been
> swimming in debt when the housing bubble burst? Damn right we would
> have been. Federal surpluses in the low billions don't make much of an
> impact on a multitrillion-dollar debt.
>
>
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
>
> And as I noted above, the middle class's crushing tax burden going into
> the recession amounted to a staggering 5.6% effective rate:

Which was a bogus statistic.

> http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151

This is misleading, because it doesn't take into account payroll taxes,
which have gone up over much of the period shown in that chart. (Social
Security and Medicare taxes.) What we need to see is the total paid for
ALL Federal Taxes, not just Income Taxes.

> Yep, the median-income family of four sacrificed a whopping 5.6% of its
> total income to the federal government this year.

Again, you are repeating a bogus statistic. You are confusing "income
tax" with "total income paid to the federal government" which are two
entirely different figures.

> If we middle class
> citizens really can't cope with giving up six cents on the dollar to
> help run the country, then it's no wonder the economy's in the crapper:
> we're idiots.

If middle class citizens can't manage to keep straight that "income tax"
and "total income paid to the federal government" are two entirely
different figures, then they can't begin to understand the financial
problems of this country and what should be done to fix the mess.

Which brings me full circle back to the problem that we are spending
money on wars instead of education.

[Mark Steese]

Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntE...@aol.com> wrote in

news:rks5t7pr38pj3t845...@4ax.com:

> On Sun, 3 Jun 2012 06:02:17 +0000 (UTC), Mark Steese
> <mark_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Antonio E. Gonzalez <AntE...@aol.com> wrote in
>>news:k7cjs75act7vpq6k1...@4ax.com:

[snip]

>>> Just to add: the fact that unemployment steadily dropped every
>>> year from 1933 on into WWII. Of course, the exception was the year
>>> Republicans demanded a balanced budget, resulting in an umemployment
>>> spike. It's rather amazing how history repeats itself.
>>
>>Except that it doesn't. During his 1932 campaign, FDR repeatedly
>>promised that he would balance the budget if elected; he denounced the
>>deficit spending of Hoover's administration in scathing terms. Nor did
>>he abandon his pro-balancing stance after he was elected: in his
>>inaugural address, he stated that he called upon Congress to assist
>>with "putting our own national house in order and making income
>>balance outgo," and six days after the inauguration he he sent
>>Congress an act proposing to balance the budget by cutting $500
>>million in Federal spending, including a 50% reduction in veterans'
>>benefits (the act passed on March 20th, though Congress had watered it
>>down somewhat).
>
> Good thing he renegged on all this and did something that actually
> worked later on.

So he was responsible for starting World War II? That seems a bit harsh.

>>Roosevelt's Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, was a firm believer
>>in balancing the budget,
>
> Yes, not like his main financial advisor wasn't John Meynard Keynes,
> sometimes called Father of the New Deal, oh wait . . .

In fact, John Maynard Keynes was never FDR's "main financial advisor."
They met for the first time in 1934, and Frances Perkins described the
aftermath thus:

Roosevelt told me afterward, "I saw your friend Keynes. He left a
whole rigmarole of figures. He must be a mathematician rather than a
political economist."

Not that Keynes was any too impressed with FDR, either. Perkins also
gives his response to the meeting:

Coming to my office after his interview with Roosevelt, Keynes
repeated his admiration for the actions Roosevelt had taken, but
said cautiously that he had "supposed the President was more
literate, economically speaking."

> and in 1937, when the economy looked like it was
>>finally recovering, Morgenthau finally convinced FDR to make balancing
>>the budget a priority. If the attempt to balance the budget is what
>>caused the 'Roosevelt Recession' and the spike in unemployment rates,
>>it was the fault of FDR and his administration, not those ee-vul
>>Republicans.
>
> Right, Morgenthau whining got to him then . . .

So you're conceding that you were wrong when you said it was "the year
Republicans demanded a balanced budget"? Thanks!

> BTW, what's your deal?

Five-card stud, aces high, no wild cards. You in?

> Seriously, I looked back, and haven't seen a single original post by
> you about comic strips.

You must not have looked back very far, then. I've been posting here
sporadically for the past ten years: like you, I was here back when
ronniecat, Chris Clarke, and Mike Peterson were regulars. Hey, remember
GI Trekker and his hilarious anti-Trudeau obsession?

And I enjoy discussing comic strips as much as anybody. It's true that
my recent posts in discussions of Luann, Mark Trail, Dick Tracy,
Spider-Man, etc., didn't attain the heights of your recent *bons mots*,
e.g., "On the other...shit just got real!" and "Hey, Walt's watching the
Asphalt episode of Mdoern [sic] Marvels!" What can I say? Wit has never
been my strong suit.

Mind you, I don't object to people raising off-topic subjects in
rec.arts.comics.strips: nor do I consider your absence from the
discussions mentioned above to indicate your lack of interest in comic

strips.

> You wanna be another Saint Septimus, just arguing against everything
> for argument's sake, fine,

When you make demonstrably untrue claims about history and I point out
that they're untrue, that's not what I'd call arguing for argument's
sake. I like history, and it annoys me when people distort it; if I see
it happening, I point it out. You don't like it? Stop distorting
history, then.

But hey, I can see why it annoys you when other people call you out on
your bullshit. And I suppose it would be rude of me to point out that
you started posting to this thread so you could disagree with Dann about
socialism and stuck around to argue politics with Alexander Mitchell.
It's not my job to note that neither you nor I has said a single word
about the comic strip that started this thread - the one where Mallard
Fillmore was asking if anyone knew of a smartphone "that's *not* made in
the nation that tortures and kills dissidents and holds $1.3 trillion in
U.S. treasury bonds." And really, someone who argues with Alexander
Mitchell as much as you do, and to so little effect, has forgone his
right to snark about other people's argumentativeness.

> just don't expect all of us to keep playing along . . .

I've never expected anyone to play along, dear. Nor have I presumed to
speak for anyone else here at racs, as you do. I'm an arrogant pissant,
to be sure, but you excel me in that. Kudos!

[Alexander Mitchell]

*SIGH* Clueless idiots.......

The Acela runs on an infrastructure that was built, and mostly paid
for, by private industry over a century ago, then taken over by Amtrak
as part of the formation of Conrail from the bankrupt Penn Central in
1976. The Acela would not exist if the Feds and the states were not
underwriting their shares of the infrastructure costs with commuter
service and conventional Amtrak service, and yes, even freight trains
paying trackage fees like a toll highway, intermingling with Acela
services.

Advocates of "true high speed rail" tend to insist that "true HSR"
demands exclusive rights-of-way. That isn't what Acela is, not by a
long shot. If you want to call it HSR, feel free, but I could accuse
someone of moving the goalposts.

There is one major bridge on the Acela route, between Baltimore and
Wilmington, overdue for replacement--stuff is literally falling off of
it, and the Amtrak engineers (structural, not train-driving) I speak
with are literally scared of that bridge's condition by now. The
replacement cost has been estimated at around 1.2-1.8 billion dollars--
approximately what is budgeted for the entire annual Amtrak
appropriation nationwide. (In an additional bout of cluelessness,
people are seeing the media-announced estimates *just* for
*engineering* and designing the replacement and the affiliated
environmental studies as the total cost of the project.....) Those
who know their engineering predict that by the time the first dirt
flies, the costs will balloon by 75%, exactly as the estimates did for
California's HSR. I'm not even going to bring up the proposed
replacement tunnels in Baltimore (expected to consume many billions)
or the East River Tunnels fiasco in New Jersey.

"Good way to restart the economy"? Depends on where you expect to get
the money. I'll let the economists argue whether getting another
credit card with a bigger limit to pay off the already-maxxed-out
existing cards is sound policy or not. And again, I'll point out:
unlike the Interstate highway system, which truly benefited everyone
nationwide, HSR only works in, and benefits, the type of demographic
area deemed reliably Democratic. This is a political obstacle that's
going to make HSR a hard sell to "flyover country." (The typical
strategy pursued in states that end up pumping lots of money into a
new transit or transportation system in an urban area is to "buy off"
the folks in other areas with their own bright and shiny transit
system, which usually ends up being a heavily subsidized white
elephant. Imagine this strategy pursued nationwide, with HSR in
Wyoming and Oklahoma.)

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jr0724$5gn$2...@speranza.aioe.org:

> On 07/06/12 6:18 PM, Mark Steese wrote:
>
>> As for the economy, it continued to "boom" right up until the
>> collapse of the housing bubble. See the chart here:
>>
>> http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/03/08/long-term-real-growth-in-us
>> -gdp-per-capita-1871-2009/
>
> Look at the shelf right after 2000, that's when it stagnated for 2
> years following 9/11.

That little hiccup, which starts *in* 2000, represents the bursting
of the Internet Stock Bubble, which is why the person who made the chart
put the legend "Internet Stock Bubble" right next to it.

>>>> either increasing taxes on everyone or cutting spending across the
>>>> board, and even then we couldn't have significantly reduced the
>>>> outstanding debt between 2001 and 2008, let alone put ourselves in
>>>> a position to more easily afford massive increases in spending.
>>>
>>> The major factors that impacted the budget in Bush IIs reign:
>>
>> ...were the Republicans' refusal to rein in spending, the
>> Republicans' refusal to rein in spending, and the Republicans'
>> refusal to rein in spending.
>
> It wasn't that they didn't "rein in" existing spending, it was that
> they BOTH spent more (year after year), and cut taxes. They did do
> both of those you know. You can't pretend that the tax cuts didn't
> happen.

The tax cuts wouldn't have been a problem if Bush and his Republican
buddies in Congress hadn't spent government revenues like drunken
sailors in a Yokohama whorehouse. As I've already shown, tax revenues
showed a net *increase* following the 2001 and 2003 tax legislation.

>>> 1) 2 unfunded wars
>>> 2) Tax cuts
>>> 3) Spiraling increases in medical costs, which affected government
>>> payments for those on government funded medical plans (government
>>> employees, medicare, etc.)
>>> 4) Economy decline following 9/11 as a result of business worry
>>> about the state of the country.
>>
>> See the chart above. There was no significant decline in GDP
>> following the 9/11 attacks.
>
> You must be blind. There's a clear "shelf" where the economy did not
> grow for 2 years.

There's a clear shelf where the GDP went down following the bursting of
the Internet Stock Bubble. As Chart 2 on page 10 of the PDF below shows,
Real GDP declined between the second and third quarters of 2000, began
to grow again between the first and second quarters of 2001, declined
again, hit the bottom of the trough right around September 11th, 2001,
and began to grow again. It may not have been growing as fast as it did
before the dot-com fiasco, but it certainly wasn't stagnating.

>>> Bush had complete control over 1 and 2,
>>
>> Of course he did. Congress
>
> Which was a Republican Congress, which rubber-stamped anything Bush II
> wanted.

Of course, the Senate was under the control of the Democrats between
June 6, 2001, and January 3, 2003.

> All 3 parts were in Republican control, they can't blame
> anyone else for what they did.

It is true that the the Senate was still under Republican control when
EGTRRA was passed on 23 May 2001 by a 62-38 vote. But there were
only 50 Republicans in the Senate at that time: they only controlled it
because Cheney held the tiebreaker vote.

Not that Cheney had to break a tie where EGTRRA was concerned, since the
following senators were among those who voted in favor of it:

Max Baucus (D-Montana) Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin)
John Breaux (D-Louisiana) Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana)
Jean Carnahan (D-Missouri) Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas)
Max Cleland (D-Georgia) Zell Miller (D-Georgia)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California) Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska)
Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota) Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey)

>> Nor did both houses of Congress pass the Economic Growth and Tax
>> Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 or the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief
>> Reconciliation Act of 2003. Nope! Li'l W had complete control. He
>> just waved his magic wand and said "Demitto taxationus!"
>
> All Republicans, rubber stamping their president's agenda.

This is also wrong. Although the Republicans in the Senate could have
passed EGTRRA by themselves (with Cheney as the tiebreaker), Senators
Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island), John McCain (R-Arizona), and Olympia
Snowe (R-Maine) broke ranks and voted *against* the 2003 tax cut bill.
It wouldn't have passed if Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), Zell Miller
(D-Georgia), and Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) hadn't voted in favor of it.
Without those three DINOs, it would have been defeated, 52-48.

>>> and he did nothing about 3.
>>
>> The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization
>> Act may have been a disaster, but I wouldn't call it "doing nothing."
>
> It didn't solve the problem.

"Didn't solve the problem" <> "did nothing about."

>>>> Nope. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal
>>>> revenue from individual income tax receipts was higher between 2006
>>>> and 2008 than it had been at any previous time in U.S. history:
>>>> revenue from corporate tax receipts hit an unprecedented $278.2
>>>> billion in 2005 and peaked in 2007 at $370.2 billion. (Individual
>>>> income tax receipts that year totaled $1.16 trillion.)
>>>
>>> How does it track on a per capita basis? And is that adjusted for
>>> inflation? Can you cite your sources so I can review the data?
>>
>> http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
>
> So you haven't adjusted for inflation, and you haven't corrected to
> account for per capita, you aren't comparing the budget to the
> country's productivity (DGP). You are just using raw numbers which
> will ALWAYS show the budget going up and up (because of inflation,
> because of increases in population).

Table 3 shows tax receipts in constant dollars. In 2000, tax receipts
amounted to 2,309.2 billion dollars. Although the constant-dollar amount
declined between 2001 and 2005, 2006 tax receipts came to $2.324.6
billion in constant dollars, and 2007 receipts came to $2,413.1 billion
in constant dollars.

2,309.2 < 2,324.6 < 2.413.1. Q.E.D.

> We didn't need to "stimulate the economy" when Bush II increased
> federal spending.

But what about the two-year period following the September 11th attacks
when the economy was supposedly stagnant?

>> The only jobs that create a net benefit for the government are
>> private-sector jobs.
>
> That's an opinion, a Republican talking point. Just because you hear
> it repeated ad nauseum on FAUX doesn't make it true. Again, you don't
> understand stimulus spending.

Perhaps; but on the other hand, I never watch Fox News, either.

>> Government makework jobs are a temporary measure at
>> best: increasing and extending unemployment benefits would be more
>> beneficial, IMO.
>
> While I agree that helping the unemployed is important, IMHO it's MUCH
> more beneficial to put the money into the hands of people who are
> working.

Opinions < Facts.

>>>> Spending our way out of it was always a pipe dream: we could have
>>>> had a zero balance on the federal debt and the recession would
>>>> still be lingering.
>>>
>>> That's an opinion that is not shared by most economists.
>>
>> Cite?
>
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/did-the-stimulus-w
> ork-a-review-of-the-nine-best-studies-on-the-subject/2011/08/16/gIQAThb
> ibJ_blog.html>

"If you ask the Obama administration, economists are virtually united in
thinking the 2009 stimulus package worked." Well, I can't argue with
that.

The rest of the piece is a review of nine studies, seven of which
concluded that the stimulus program worked to some degree, and two of
which concluded that it didn't. Assuming arguendo that Klein represents
the nine reports fairly, and that the report issued by the Council of
Economic Advisers represents a consensus among all three members, then
(by my count) 16 of 19 economists concluded that the stimulus worked to
some extent and three concluded that it didn't. Do the sixteen
economists represent "most economists"? Having worked with a few
economists in my day, I'm inclined to doubt it.

>> Well, heck, why not put them to work on road crews?
>
> Are you seriously suggesting that it's a good idea to put teachers to
> work on road crews? Are you seriously suggesting that this would be
> good policy, good use of our money? Are you that stupid? Maybe you
> need to go back to school.

There may be a school somewhere that could teach me how to tell a joke
better, but no school can help those poor souls who lack a sense of
humor.
--
It can be hard, sometimes, to come home to Van Nuys. -Sandra Tsing Loh

[Pat O'Neill]

On Saturday, June 9, 2012 4:02:51 PM UTC-4, Alexander Mitchell wrote:
And again, I'll point out:
> unlike the Interstate highway system, which truly benefited everyone
> nationwide, HSR only works in, and benefits, the type of demographic
> area deemed reliably Democratic. This is a political obstacle that's
> going to make HSR a hard sell to "flyover country."

Perhaps if we used something like HSR to reliably link some of the major cities and smaller towns in these areas, so that travelers could visit them more easily, they would cease to be "flyover country". Imagine, for example, if one could fly to, say, Omaha, and then take high-speed rail to Lincoln, Abilene, Oklahoma City, etc.--instead of flying to one of these cities and then driving for hours to get to the others, or instead hop on a "puddle-jumper" commuter plane (after waiting for wasted hours in the airport for the connection). Suddenly, these "flyover countries" would be business destinations, tourist destinations, and the like.

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jr072a$5gn$3...@speranza.aioe.org:

> >>> And if unemployment were mainly affecting road crews, that might
> >>> conceivably have made a difference.
> >>
> >> There are a lot of out-of-work factory workers who can easily be
> >> trained to work on road-crews.
> >
> > Did we hit a timeslip and end up back in the 1980s? Last time I
> > checked, industry made up only 22% of the private sector. Services,
> > on the other hand, made up 76.7%, and unsurprisingly, the service
> > sector was the hardest hit by the recession.
> >
> >
> http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/flowchart/2010/11/10/12-industries-
> still-losing-jobs
> >
> > Housing construction, insurance, telecoms, accounting and
> > bookkeeping, real estate, printing and publishing, drugstores, data
> > processing...yeah, I don't think those guys are going to be joining
> > road crews any time soon.
>
> You clearly don't understand stimulus. When you inject money into a
> community thru stimulus, it is spent and moves throughout the
> community.

As it happens, I live in a state (Oregon) and a county (Klamath) that
received lots of stimulus monies ($6.7 billion and $77 million,
respectively) and saw their unemployment rates continue to climb while
their economies continued to falter. Unemployment in Oregon, which was
standing at 5.9% (seasonally adjusted to 5.1%) in the beginning of 2007,
peaked at 12.1% in March 2009 (the seasonally adjusted rate peaked at 11.6
percent two months later), and remained above ten percent until September
2010 (the seasonally adjusted rate didn't drop below ten percent until
January 2011).

The adjusted unemployment rate for Klamath County was worse than that for
the state as a whole: it's been above 11% from January 2009 right up to
today.

Obviously neither Klamath County nor Oregon is representative of the nation
as a whole; nevertheless, they demonstrate the inadequacy of broad-brush
generalities about the effect of stimulus spending on the economy.

> >> Many of the same skills are used in both jobs, both are often
> >> physically taxing, both require good motor skills, etc. If we had
> >> more road-crew jobs, there would be plenty of out-of-work people
> >> applying for them.
> >
> > In 1982? Maybe.
>
> I'm pretty sure that out-of-work factory workers who were building
> cars before the financial collapse of 2008 would jump at the
> opportunity to work on a road crew.

Well, yeah, but how would they get to the United States?

> >> We could have made dramatic cuts to taxes for the middle class
> >> during the recession, because we wouldn't have been swimming in
> >> debt.
> >
> > Really? If we'd maintained a balanced budget, we would have paid off
> > the whole $5.67 trillion in debt we owed in 2000 in just seven
> > years? Wow.
>
> As posted elsewhere in this thread:
>
> http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png

That chart evidently assumes facts not in evidence, e.g., that the GDP
would have remained exactly the same between 1980 and the present even if
Reagan and Bush had balanced the budget, which I see no reason to believe.
I also see no indication that the figures on the chart were adjusted for
inflation, which I've been led to understand reduces their value. Nor do I
see any indication that Steven Stoft is any less of a propagandist than Fox
News's pet economists are.

> > http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151
>
> This is misleading, because it doesn't take into account payroll
> taxes, which have gone up over much of the period shown in that chart.
> (Social Security and Medicare taxes.) What we need to see is the
> total paid for ALL Federal Taxes, not just Income Taxes.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456

The first table displays the total effective Federal tax rate for all
households, broken down into five quintiles. Here are the relevant figures
from 2000 to 2007.

Year 1st Quint 2nd Quint Middle 4th Quint. Highest
2000 6.4 13.0 16.6 20.5 28.0
2001 5.1 11.5 15.3 18.9 26.7
2002 4.7 10.8 14.8 18.3 26.0
2003 4.6 9.8 13.8 17.4 25.0
2004 4.3 9.9 14.1 17.3 25.2
2005 4.3 10.1 14.2 17.5 25.8
2006 4.5 10.2 14.2 17.5 25.8
2007 4.0 10.6 14.3 17.4 25.1

Thus we see that the total tax burden decreased between 2000 and 2007 by at
least 2% for taxpayers in every quintile. Regardless of how one chooses to
define "middle class," the fact remains that lower class and middle class
households saw both their income tax and their total federal tax burden
decrease between the end of the Clinton administration and the beginning of
the recession.

These figures come from the Tax Policy Center, which is run by the Urban
Institute and the Brookings Institution. I make no claims for the
impartiality of either organization.
--
The boughs rustled, and the air was stirred by the muffled beat of their
wings: I could see them, like unearthly, boding shapes, as they swooped
between me and the stars. -Bayard Taylor

[JC Dill]

Klamath's primary industry is in lumber, secondary industry is in
tourism. Both are hard hit in tough economic times when people cut back
on buying furniture, home building stops, fewer people travel, etc.
Putting money into infrastructure projects isn't going to help much with
a sluggish tourism economy.

Stimulus monies spent *elsewhere* can cause an uptick in the lumber
business for a lumber community, as building projects *elsewhere* that
require lumber have to place orders for wood. But the biggest thing
your community needs is a solution to the foreclosure crisis so that
housing recovers, which will result in a housing boom as people fix up
abandoned (forclosed) homes, builders resume building, etc.

>>>> Many of the same skills are used in both jobs, both are often
>>>> physically taxing, both require good motor skills, etc. If we had
>>>> more road-crew jobs, there would be plenty of out-of-work people
>>>> applying for them.
>>>
>>> In 1982? Maybe.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure that out-of-work factory workers who were building
>> cars before the financial collapse of 2008 would jump at the
>> opportunity to work on a road crew.
>
> Well, yeah, but how would they get to the United States?

I'm talking about the mid-west. All the closed auto factories, etc.

Factory work overseas is booming.

>>>> We could have made dramatic cuts to taxes for the middle class
>>>> during the recession, because we wouldn't have been swimming in
>>>> debt.
>>>
>>> Really? If we'd maintained a balanced budget, we would have paid off
>>> the whole $5.67 trillion in debt we owed in 2000 in just seven
>>> years? Wow.
>>
>> As posted elsewhere in this thread:
>>
>> http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png
>
> That chart evidently assumes facts not in evidence, e.g., that the GDP
> would have remained exactly the same between 1980 and the present even if
> Reagan and Bush had balanced the budget, which I see no reason to believe.
> I also see no indication that the figures on the chart were adjusted for
> inflation, which I've been led to understand reduces their value. Nor do I
> see any indication that Steven Stoft is any less of a propagandist than Fox
> News's pet economists are.

Oh, so NOW you are all critical of charts that don't take all these
factors into account? I didn't see you applying that type of critical
evaluation to the sources you cited previously, such as....

>>> http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151
>>
>> This is misleading, because it doesn't take into account payroll
>> taxes, which have gone up over much of the period shown in that chart.
>> (Social Security and Medicare taxes.) What we need to see is the
>> total paid for ALL Federal Taxes, not just Income Taxes.
>
> http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456
>
> The first table displays the total effective Federal tax rate for all

What "total effective Federal tax rate" is this? Does it include ALL
payroll taxes? (Please provide a cite or quote to answer this question.)

> households, broken down into five quintiles. Here are the relevant figures
> from 2000 to 2007.
>
> Year 1st Quint 2nd Quint Middle 4th Quint. Highest
> 2000 6.4 13.0 16.6 20.5 28.0
> 2001 5.1 11.5 15.3 18.9 26.7
> 2002 4.7 10.8 14.8 18.3 26.0
> 2003 4.6 9.8 13.8 17.4 25.0
> 2004 4.3 9.9 14.1 17.3 25.2
> 2005 4.3 10.1 14.2 17.5 25.8
> 2006 4.5 10.2 14.2 17.5 25.8
> 2007 4.0 10.6 14.3 17.4 25.1
>
> Thus we see that the total tax burden decreased between 2000 and 2007 by at
> least 2% for taxpayers in every quintile. Regardless of how one chooses to
> define "middle class," the fact remains that lower class and middle class
> households saw both their income tax and their total federal tax burden
> decrease between the end of the Clinton administration and the beginning of
> the recession.
>
> These figures come from the Tax Policy Center, which is run by the Urban
> Institute and the Brookings Institution. I make no claims for the
> impartiality of either organization.

I will repeat my claim that what we needed to do during the Bush II
administration was NOT "cut taxes and spend and go into 2 unfunded
wars". Doing so left us with no way to handle a "rainy day". In good
times you SAVE, rather than BORROW. This is so you have the ability to
borrow in bad times. If you are already borrowing like crazy during
good times because you cut your income (gave un-necessary tax
reductions) then you have no way to handle the inevitable downturn.

I'm a firm believer that we should never again go into an unfunded war.
If the hawks believe we really NEED to go to war, then they need to
RAISE TAXES to pay for it. Let them sell this to the American public.
If the public is willing to pay higher taxes for the war, then it's
clear we support the war.

The very rich gladly paid 90% of their income in taxes during WWII. It
was considered very unpatriotic to complain about the high taxes. The
poor were enlisting, the rich were paying. Today the rich are pocketing
massive profits and paying historic low tax rates, while the debt
mushrooms and we are still paying Trillions for our unfunded wars.

jc

[Alexander Mitchell]

I see way, way too much use of the words "perhaps," imagine,' and
"maybe" used by HSR proponents. These dreamers are blissfully--and at
times, willfully and even maliciously--ignorant of one fundamental
reality: For HSR to work at all, there must exist a pre-existing
critical mass of travel demand to tap for ridership. Riders WILL NOT
pay inflated fares that will make regular Amtrak fares look cheap (and
that's what it'll cost--go price Acela tickets right now, please)
just because there's a fast train. They must have a reason to go
between, just to use your examples, Omaha and Lincoln. Right now,
there's not even a Greyhound bus linking those two cities. (There is
between Omaha and Oklahoma City, which is 636 miles and 12 hours by
Greyhound, 527 miles and eight hours by car, and would presumably be
about four hours by French TGV technology or three hours by maglev or
the like--or about 4-6 hours by jet, because there's not enough direct
traffic for any airline that I can find to offer a direct flight!)

You cannot will ridership into existence just by building a rail
service as long as there's an alternative of privately-owned, self-
determined travel, as way too many trolley and interurban companies
discovered after Henry Ford exploited the workers and other Americans
by forcing them to buy Model T and Model A cars.

It's seemingly the dream of every transit lobbyist that privately
owned personal transportation will be made illegal or impossible, and
that communal, state-operated transportation will be the only option.
When I see folks with this apparent mindset, I'm forced to question
just how much time they've actually spent in rural areas--the areas
that grow their corn, wheat, steaks, chickens, and the like.

The demographics that make HSR work where it does include high
population density and distances of two to four hundred miles--Japan,
France, Germany, Italyand the like. That combination, in the United
States, is focused largely in the Northeast Corridor, the Chicago
area, the "rust belt" in between, and the West Coast, with Florida a
"maybe." Now, go pull out the "Red State, Blue State" national map.
Notice something?

And for this, they're suggesting an expenditure of around three
million dollars a track-mile double-track, PLUS land costs, times
thousands of miles, PLUS continuing annual operating subsidies
(remember, the only reason Acela "turns a profit" is because its share
of the infrastructure costs are borne by conventional Amtrak
trains)...............

The ironic part is that if these lines were constructed with the "if
you build it, they will come" fantasy AND people were suddenly to
concentrate themselves along these lines, suddenly the
environmentalist lobby would decry the "suburban sprawl," the demands
for energy and water, the displacement of natural resources, etc., AND
"urbanists" would be decrying the demolition of urban culture with
everyone headed to these new places where they want to work and live
because of this HSR.....

[JC Dill]

On 09/06/12 2:02 PM, Mark Steese wrote:
>>> As for the economy, it continued to "boom" right up until the
>>> >> collapse of the housing bubble. See the chart here:
>>> >>
>>> >> http://visualizingeconomics.com/2011/03/08/long-term-real-growth-in-us
>>> >> -gdp-per-capita-1871-2009/
>> >
>> > Look at the shelf right after 2000, that's when it stagnated for 2
>> > years following 9/11.

> That little hiccup, which starts*in* 2000, represents the bursting

> of the Internet Stock Bubble, which is why the person who made the chart
> put the legend "Internet Stock Bubble" right next to it.

I was working in a core internet industry (working for UltraDNS, DNS
being the service that translates domain names to IP addresses so
computers can talk to each other) on 9/11. I was driving from Arlington
VA (where the Pentagon is located) to a computer data center in Asburn
VA to upgrade servers when the radio reported that a plane had flown
into one of the twin towers. When I got to the data center, the staff
was watching TV which showed the first building in flames. While the
world watched in horror, I was deep in the bowels of the data center,
moving servers in and out of racks and bringing up the new servers. I
was supposed to fly on to London 4 days later, which was the first day
the FAA let any planes back into the air (and no international planes).
I was stuck in DC for 4 more days - air travel had finally smoothed
out and I was able to fly home on the home leg of my ticket. (My friend
in Arlington arrived at his office to see everyone at the windows,
looking at the Pentagon which had just exploded in flames during his
trip up in the elevator.)

I witnessed - first hand - how this event really shook the internet
industry. The "Internet Stock Bubble" didn't affect business that much
in Silicon Valley (where I had been working in the industry for 5 years)
- sure a few businesses went under, but others were starting up, hiring
was happening all over the place, if you got laid off you could find
another job in no time. But after 9/11, it all changed. Businesses
stopped hiring. Layoffs happened everywhere. Now nobody was hiring and
people were out of work for FAR longer after being laid off. Venture
capital dried up. This wasn't due *just* to the "Internet Stock Bubble"
(the implosion of pets.com and webvan etc.). It was definitely due
primarily to the change in the mood of the country post 9/11.

And it definitely was 2 years of relatively stagnant economy, as I said
before.

jc

[Pat O'Neill]

On Saturday, June 9, 2012 6:34:50 PM UTC-4, Alexander Mitchell wrote:

> You cannot will ridership into existence just by building a rail
> service as long as there's an alternative of privately-owned, self-
> determined travel, as way too many trolley and interurban companies
> discovered after Henry Ford exploited the workers and other Americans
> by forcing them to buy Model T and Model A cars.

The problem is that we keep making it EASIER to use the "privately-owned, self-determined travel," despite the fact that it is costlier in time, resources, and land than the mass-transit alternative. Stop building highways and start building rail--and as the time and resource costs keep going up and up, people will turn back to rail.

> The ironic part is that if these lines were constructed with the "if
> you build it, they will come" fantasy AND people were suddenly to

> concentrate themselves along these lines....

At this point I note that when the government--in the mid-19th century--subsidized the development of interstate rail, that is exactly what did happen: People migrated to where the rails were, despite the existence of "privately-owned, self-determined travel" in the form of the horse (a far more efficient form of travel--in terms of land and resources--than the automobile). In fact, when the government subsidized roads (the Interstate Highway system), it happened again. Government subsidy transforms demographics every time.

[JC Dill]

On 09/06/12 2:02 PM, Mark Steese wrote:

> The tax cuts wouldn't have been a problem if Bush and his Republican
> buddies in Congress hadn't spent government revenues like drunken
> sailors in a Yokohama whorehouse. As I've already shown, tax revenues
> showed a net *increase* following the 2001 and 2003 tax legislation.

Was it an increase per captia? Was it an increase as a percent of GDP?

> It is true that the the Senate was still under Republican control when
> EGTRRA was passed on 23 May 2001 by a 62-38 vote. But there were
> only 50 Republicans in the Senate at that time: they only controlled it
> because Cheney held the tiebreaker vote.

And because the Democrats didn't use the cloture rule the way the
Republicans are now. If the Democrats had done that back in the day, we
would have had gridlock in congress many years ago.

If the Republicans should manage to get 50 seats in the Senate, they
will get a chance to see how it looks to have the other party play the
cloture game and say NO to anything the Republicans want to vote on.

>>> Nor did both houses of Congress pass the Economic Growth and Tax
>>> Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 or the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief
>>> Reconciliation Act of 2003. Nope! Li'l W had complete control. He
>>> just waved his magic wand and said "Demitto taxationus!"
>>
>> All Republicans, rubber stamping their president's agenda.
>
> This is also wrong. Although the Republicans in the Senate could have
> passed EGTRRA by themselves (with Cheney as the tiebreaker), Senators
> Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island), John McCain (R-Arizona), and Olympia
> Snowe (R-Maine) broke ranks and voted *against* the 2003 tax cut bill.
> It wouldn't have passed if Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), Zell Miller
> (D-Georgia), and Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) hadn't voted in favor of it.
> Without those three DINOs, it would have been defeated, 52-48.

If the 3 DINOs hadn't been in support I bet he would have bullied the 3
Republicans to support it.

>>>> and he did nothing about 3.
>>>
>>> The 2003 Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization
>>> Act may have been a disaster, but I wouldn't call it "doing nothing."
>>
>> It didn't solve the problem.
>
> "Didn't solve the problem"<> "did nothing about."

Medicare is only a small part of the problem. Which is why "Obamacare"
matters so much, it helps rein in skyrocketing medical costs for
everyone, by forcing the insurance companies to insure everyone, no more
"pre-existing condition" exclusions, so then doctors and hosptials and
insurance companies can't then play games about how they need to charge
more (to everyone, including the government for medicare services) to
cover the cost of providing services to the uninsured.

>>>>> Nope. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal
>>>>> revenue from individual income tax receipts was higher between 2006
>>>>> and 2008 than it had been at any previous time in U.S. history:
>>>>> revenue from corporate tax receipts hit an unprecedented $278.2
>>>>> billion in 2005 and peaked in 2007 at $370.2 billion. (Individual
>>>>> income tax receipts that year totaled $1.16 trillion.)
>>>>
>>>> How does it track on a per capita basis? And is that adjusted for
>>>> inflation? Can you cite your sources so I can review the data?
>>>
>>> http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
>>
>> So you haven't adjusted for inflation, and you haven't corrected to
>> account for per capita, you aren't comparing the budget to the
>> country's productivity (DGP). You are just using raw numbers which
>> will ALWAYS show the budget going up and up (because of inflation,
>> because of increases in population).
>
> Table 3 shows tax receipts in constant dollars.

But not per capita.

> In 2000, tax receipts
> amounted to 2,309.2 billion dollars. Although the constant-dollar amount
> declined between 2001 and 2005,

Yep, we weren't bringing in enough money to pay our bills, never mind
the unfunded wars.

> 2006 tax receipts came to $2.324.6
> billion in constant dollars, and 2007 receipts came to $2,413.1 billion
> in constant dollars.
>
> 2,309.2< 2,324.6< 2.413.1. Q.E.D.

Run those numbers again on a per captia basis. We were bringing in less
money per capita but had more people who we needed to provided services to.

>> We didn't need to "stimulate the economy" when Bush II increased
>> federal spending.
>
> But what about the two-year period following the September 11th attacks
> when the economy was supposedly stagnant?

It wasn't in recession. It didn't need "stimulus". It was a regular
economic cycle.

> (by my count) 16 of 19 economists concluded that the stimulus worked to
> some extent and three concluded that it didn't. Do the sixteen
> economists represent "most economists"? Having worked with a few
> economists in my day, I'm inclined to doubt it.

16 of 19 of any group represents "most" of that group. There are many
more cites where "most economists" agree that stimulus works. Go do
your own research.

>>> Well, heck, why not put them to work on road crews?
>>
>> Are you seriously suggesting that it's a good idea to put teachers to
>> work on road crews? Are you seriously suggesting that this would be
>> good policy, good use of our money? Are you that stupid? Maybe you
>> need to go back to school.
>
> There may be a school somewhere that could teach me how to tell a joke
> better, but no school can help those poor souls who lack a sense of
> humor.

I'm trying to have a serious discussion with someone who thinks that a
humorous "joke" about putting teachers to work on road crews is a
solution to the sluggish economy. I really don't think any of this is
funny.

jc

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jr0ih8$2ep$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

> On 09/06/12 3:07 PM, Mark Steese wrote:
>> JC Dill<jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in
>> news:jr072a$5gn$3...@speranza.aioe.org:
>>

>>> You clearly don't understand stimulus. When you inject money into a
>>> community thru stimulus, it is spent and moves throughout the
>>> community.
>>
>> As it happens, I live in a state (Oregon) and a county (Klamath) that
>> received lots of stimulus monies ($6.7 billion and $77 million,
>> respectively) and saw their unemployment rates continue to climb
>> while their economies continued to falter. Unemployment in Oregon,
>> which was standing at 5.9% (seasonally adjusted to 5.1%) in the
>> beginning of 2007, peaked at 12.1% in March 2009 (the seasonally
>> adjusted rate peaked at 11.6 percent two months later), and remained
>> above ten percent until September 2010 (the seasonally adjusted rate
>> didn't drop below ten percent until January 2011).
>>
>> The adjusted unemployment rate for Klamath County was worse than that
>> for the state as a whole: it's been above 11% from January 2009 right
>> up to today.
>>
>> Obviously neither Klamath County nor Oregon is representative of the
>> nation as a whole; nevertheless, they demonstrate the inadequacy of
>> broad-brush generalities about the effect of stimulus spending on the
>> economy.
>
> Klamath's primary industry is in lumber, secondary industry is in
> tourism.

Lumber hasn't been Klamath's primary industry for many years now. As
everyone who actually lives here is painfully aware, the lumber industry
hit the skids in the 1980s: there were nine lumber mills around Klamath
Falls in 1980, and all but two of them were gone by the time 2000 rolled
around. Same's true for the whole state: in 1987, there were 130,000
people working for the timber industry, and nowadays there's about
50,000.

In reality, the two most common industries in Klamath County are
commercial construction and agriculture, and the largest single employer
is the Sky Lakes Medical Center (formerly Merle West; rumor has it that
they changed the name because they got tired of people calling it
"Murder West.") The second-largest employer is the county school
district, and the third-largest is Jeld-Wen, which makes doors and
windows.

> Both are hard hit in tough economic times when people cut
> back on buying furniture, home building stops, fewer people travel,
> etc. Putting money into infrastructure projects isn't going to help
> much with a sluggish tourism economy.

Tourists love to drive on busted-up roads and unsafe bridges!

> Stimulus monies spent *elsewhere* can cause an uptick in the lumber
> business for a lumber community,

When I find a lumber community, I'll let them know.

> as building projects *elsewhere* that require lumber have to place
> orders for wood. But the biggest thing your community needs is a
> solution to the foreclosure crisis so that housing recovers, which
> will result in a housing boom as people fix up abandoned (forclosed)
> homes, builders resume building, etc.

Because the *last* housing boom worked out so well for the
country?

>>>>> Many of the same skills are used in both jobs, both are often
>>>>> physically taxing, both require good motor skills, etc. If we had
>>>>> more road-crew jobs, there would be plenty of out-of-work people
>>>>> applying for them.
>>>>
>>>> In 1982? Maybe.
>>>
>>> I'm pretty sure that out-of-work factory workers who were building
>>> cars before the financial collapse of 2008 would jump at the
>>> opportunity to work on a road crew.
>>
>> Well, yeah, but how would they get to the United States?
>
> I'm talking about the mid-west. All the closed auto factories, etc.

No! Really?

> Factory work overseas is booming.

While here in the United States, the ability to recognize a joke is
still declining.

>>>>> We could have made dramatic cuts to taxes for the middle class
>>>>> during the recession, because we wouldn't have been swimming in
>>>>> debt.
>>>>
>>>> Really? If we'd maintained a balanced budget, we would have paid
>>>> off the whole $5.67 trillion in debt we owed in 2000 in just seven
>>>> years? Wow.
>>>
>>> As posted elsewhere in this thread:
>>>
>>> http://zfacts.com/sites/all/files/image/debt/US-national-debt-GDP.png
>>
>> That chart evidently assumes facts not in evidence, e.g., that the
>> GDP would have remained exactly the same between 1980 and the present
>> even if Reagan and Bush had balanced the budget, which I see no
>> reason to believe. I also see no indication that the figures on the
>> chart were adjusted for inflation, which I've been led to understand
>> reduces their value. Nor do I see any indication that Steven Stoft is
>> any less of a propagandist than Fox News's pet economists are.
>
> Oh, so NOW you are all critical of charts that don't take all these
> factors into account?

No, I just wanted to see how you'd dodge the issue when it applies to
charts that you approve of. You didn't disappoint!
--
"Create"? A slip of the word processor? No. The word signals
Watsonville's belated entry into modern madness where technicians make
promises traditionally reserved for the gods. -Frank Bardacke

[Mark Steese]

JC Dill <jcdill...@gmail.com> wrote in

news:jr0mmc$b99$1...@speranza.aioe.org:

> I'm trying to have a serious discussion with someone who thinks that a
> humorous "joke" about putting teachers to work on road crews is a
> solution to the sluggish economy.

No, I think the solution to the sluggish economy is for the government
to provide support to the people who are out of work and/or out of cash
so they can weather the hard times while the economy is in a trough.
Capitalist economies go through cycles of boom and bust regardless of
what governments do or don't do. This fact allows governments that throw
money at a recession to point to the inevitable upturn and say "Look,
throwing money worked!"

> I really don't think any of this is funny.

You'll have to pardon me for failing to realize that you were trying to
have a serious discussion. Back where I come from, people who use the
following phrases are not trying to have a serious discussion:

You must be blind

Let me know when you have useful figures to discuss

You don't understand

Again, you don't understand

Just because you hear it on FAUX doesn't make it true

Maybe you need to go back to school

Boy, you are really, really misinformed

You clearly don't understand

Where I come from, people who use such phrases are having a pissing
contest. Now, I'll be honest, I get a kick out of taking part in a
pissing contest, even though I'm not very good at it.

If you didn't intend to get into a pissing contest, then you should have
stopped before you started getting personal. Not everyone who disagrees
with you is a right-wing Fox-watching teabagger. HTH.
--
Opposing phalanxes of automobiles stream and stop, stream and stop,their
motors agitated by complex refinements of the same subtance that
preserved, in the La Brea Pits, those petrified relics of vanished forms
of life.
-David Lavender

[Mark Steese]

"Pat O'Neill" <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote in
news:d9b25a60-0d6b-445f...@googlegroups.com:

> On Saturday, June 9, 2012 6:34:50 PM UTC-4, Alexander Mitchell wrote:
>
>> You cannot will ridership into existence just by building a rail
>> service as long as there's an alternative of privately-owned, self-
>> determined travel, as way too many trolley and interurban companies
>> discovered after Henry Ford exploited the workers and other Americans
>> by forcing them to buy Model T and Model A cars.
>
> The problem is that we keep making it EASIER to use the
> "privately-owned, self-determined travel," despite the fact that it is
> costlier in time, resources, and land than the mass-transit
> alternative.

It seems to me that the real problem is that people like to drive more
than they like to ride the rails. That's what mass-transit proponents
just don't get: driving is fun. Riding a horse? Not fun. Taking the
train? Not fun. Driving? Fun. Look up the etymology of "joy-ride": the
OED's first cite is from the New York Evening Post of 15 July 1909 -
"[The] Acting Mayor vetoed the ordinance passed last week to prevent
city officers from taking 'joy rides.'" The first police car (actually
an electric wagon: it had a top speed of 16 mph) was introduced in 1899;
only a decade later, city officials in Manhattan were raising a ruckus
by careering through the streets in unmarked automobiles. And why?
Because it was *fun*.

> Stop building highways and start building rail--and as the time and
> resource costs keep going up and up, people will turn back to rail.

You'd have an easier time getting people to take up bicycling - and
bicycles are far less costly in time, resources, and land than railroads
are. They're also more fun, come to think of it. And good exercise! To
hell with high-speed rail subsidies - the Feds should start distributing
bicycles. Now that's a use of tax dollars I could get behind. (Note to
Obama: If you use this idea and get reelected in a landslide, all I ask
in return is a Trek 7300. Well, that and some Pokémon cards to put in
the spokes.)

>> The ironic part is that if these lines were constructed with the "if
>> you build it, they will come" fantasy AND people were suddenly to
>> concentrate themselves along these lines....
>
> At this point I note that when the government--in the mid-19th
> century--subsidized the development of interstate rail, that is
> exactly what did happen: People migrated to where the rails were,
> despite the existence of "privately-owned, self-determined travel" in
> the form of the horse (a far more efficient form of travel--in terms
> of land and resources--than the automobile).

You're kidding, right? Horses were a horribly inefficient form of
travel in terms of land and resources. A horse has to be fed and watered
every day regardless of whether you're riding him: imagine gassing up
your car and changing the water every day even though you only take it
out of the garage on Sundays. Now picture your car leaving a pile of
shit and piss-soaked straw in the garage for you to clean up day in and
day out. (Those oil spots on the concrete don't seem so bad now, do
they?)

And that's far from the only way horses used up resources. The horn on a
horse's hoof grows the same way fingernails and toenails do: horses
typically need to be reshod every other month. Imagine having to take
the tires off your car, trim the hubs, and put the tires back on six
times a year.

Look at the Pony Express: it involved 184 stations, and riders had to
stop and change horses every ten miles or so: if you ride a horse too
hard, he tends to die. The organizers of the business acquired more than
400 horses (at an average price of $200 apiece) before they sent out a
single rider. You wanna talk inefficient? Talk about a 'vehicle' that
has to be swapped for a new one every ten miles to avoid the risk that
the poor thing will drop dead on you.

And in addition to everything else, horses weren't very fast. The first
rider left St. Joseph on 3 April 1860 and arrived in San Francisco on 14
April. The route was about 1,900 miles long. 190 miles a day was an
amazingly good rate for a rider on horseback.

A rider could only make that kind of time if he was traveling light,
though. A stagecoach could carry more, but it required a whole team of
horses (who also had to be changed out regularly), and on a good day it
might go as far as 120 miles. And stagecoaches were no good for hauling
heavy freight: for that, you needed a wagon. Some of the fabled
Conestoga wagons could carry up to eight tons of cargo (though most had
a six-ton limit), and if you were making excellent time, you might cover
a whole 15 miles before you had to stop for the night. And you couldn't
use just any horse to haul a load like that: you had to have specially-
bred work horses, and they tended to be expensive, which is why so many
pioneers chose ox-teams instead.

At its most efficient, the Oregon Trail might be able to get you from
Missouri to the Oregon Territory in about half a year. As soon as it
became feasible to make that trip in eight days, people started
abandoning the Oregon Trail in droves, and no wonder.

> In fact, when the government subsidized roads (the Interstate Highway
> system), it happened again. Government subsidy transforms demographics
> every time.

Of course, the government had been subsidizing highways long before the
construction of the Interstates. And why? Because people like cars
better than they like trains.

There may well come a day when people have to give up on cars, but what
a terrible day that will be. Mass transit has a lot of advantages, to be
sure. When I lived right outside Washington D.C. and worked downtown, I
took a bus to the Metro station, rode into and out of D.C. on the train,
and took a bus back home (or at least as close to home as the bus line
ran); it worked fine. It wasn't so great for grocery shopping, but the
problems weren't insurmountable. Out here in Oregon, though, where the
cities have fewer people and lie much farther apart, and tend to be
separated by mountain ranges, there are just too many places where the
trains and buses can't reasonably be expected to go, and couldn't get
you there very fast if they did. It's one thing to build a high-speed
rail line down the lowlands of the East Coast, and quite another to
build one across the Cascades.

Here in Klamath Falls there's a mural downtown depicting the arrival of
the first train, an event that occurred on 20 May 1909 - even with
government subsidies up the wazoo, nobody bothered to get a train line
to Klamath for *forty years* after the completion of the
transcontinental railroad: it just wasn't worth it, I guess. If we go
back to railroads, ten'll get you twenty it still won't be worth it.
Take away the automobiles and you can stick a fork in Klamath Falls,
'cause it'll be done.
--
The Alps are grand in their beauty, Mount Shasta is sublime in its
desolation. -William H. Brewer

[Pat O'Neill]

On Saturday, June 9, 2012 10:06:21 PM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:

> It seems to me that the real problem is that people like to drive more
> than they like to ride the rails. That's what mass-transit proponents
> just don't get: driving is fun. Riding a horse? Not fun. Taking the
> train? Not fun. Driving? Fun.

Driving is "fun" because we've been inundated with close to 100 years of advertising telling us it is. Driving (if safe) requires concentration, perception, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, etc. It means that the hours spent driving cannot safely be spend doing anything else (except, perhaps, listening to music--and there are experts who will argue that, too, is an unsafe distraction). But riding mass transit requires none of that and leaves the mind and hands free for reading, writing, conversation, etc. If this is a multi-tasking world we're living in, driving is the worst possible way to move around.

> You're kidding, right? Horses were a horribly inefficient form of
> travel in terms of land and resources. A horse has to be fed and watered
> every day regardless of whether you're riding him: imagine gassing up
> your car and changing the water every day even though you only take it
> out of the garage on Sundays. Now picture your car leaving a pile of
> shit and piss-soaked straw in the garage for you to clean up day in and
> day out. (Those oil spots on the concrete don't seem so bad now, do
> they?)

Everything a horse uses is a renewable resource--water and grass. Everything a horse emits is bio-degradable. Can't say the same for a car. Horses themselves are, of course, self-renewable, being living animals. Yes, they need re-shoeing, but blacksmithing is a far more ecologically safe industry than, say, rubber manufacture.

As for land use, I was thinking of roads. You don't a six-lane highway to safely move horse-drawn vehicles (or individual horses) at top speed in large quantities. (Hell, individually-ridden horses don't need roads at all, really.)

> Look at the Pony Express: it involved 184 stations, and riders had to
> stop and change horses every ten miles or so: if you ride a horse too
> hard, he tends to die. The organizers of the business acquired more than
> 400 horses (at an average price of $200 apiece) before they sent out a
> single rider. You wanna talk inefficient? Talk about a 'vehicle' that
> has to be swapped for a new one every ten miles to avoid the risk that
> the poor thing will drop dead on you.

All of which is why the Pony Express was put out of business by railroads and the telegraph. Yes, horses are a terrible way to move large amounts of freight (or data) long distances. But so are automobiles.

> Here in Klamath Falls there's a mural downtown depicting the arrival of
> the first train, an event that occurred on 20 May 1909 - even with
> government subsidies up the wazoo, nobody bothered to get a train line
> to Klamath for *forty years* after the completion of the
> transcontinental railroad: it just wasn't worth it, I guess. If we go
> back to railroads, ten'll get you twenty it still won't be worth it.
> Take away the automobiles and you can stick a fork in Klamath Falls,
> 'cause it'll be done.

Not saying anything specifically against Klamath Falls, but maybe the real answer is that--in the modern world--there are just some places that are too inefficient to survive. Let me ask you this--if you need to go anywhere that is, frankly, too far to drive reasonably, how far do you have to drive from Klamath Falls to get to a major airport or train station? How far does the local supermarket have to truck in stock from the nearest warehouse?

[Mark Steese]

"Pat O'Neill" <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote in

news:f74b6a15-d1d9-4428...@googlegroups.com:

> On Saturday, June 9, 2012 10:06:21 PM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:
>
>> It seems to me that the real problem is that people like to drive
>> more than they like to ride the rails. That's what mass-transit
>> proponents just don't get: driving is fun. Riding a horse? Not fun.
>> Taking the train? Not fun. Driving? Fun.
>
> Driving is "fun" because we've been inundated with close to 100 years
> of advertising telling us it is.

Right, Pat. I'm so brainwashed by those ee-vul adverts that I need a
goddamn TV commercial to tell me whether I'm having fun. Give me a *little*
credit, will you? I mean, I disagree with your opinions about passenger
rail, but I do you the credit of presuming that you came by those opinions
honestly.

> Driving (if safe) requires concentration, perception, hand-eye
> coordination, reflexes, etc.

What does that have to do with anything? Sports require all of those things
too. Sports are widely regarded as fun - is that just another misperception
created by advertising? Say, you know what other physical activity requires
concentration, perception, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, etc., and is a
hell of a lot of fun? I'll give you a hint: it involves two people, and
clothing is optional.

> It means that the hours spent driving cannot safely be spend doing
> anything else

Which is also true of all the time we spend engaging in sports or that
other activity I mentioned. Hey, and how about swimming? You definitely
can't read a book or have a conversation on your cell phone while you're
swimming. Better close down the swimming pools!

> (except, perhaps, listening to music--and there are experts who will
> argue that, too, is an unsafe distraction).

Really? Which experts will argue that? Names, please.

> But riding mass transit requires none of that and leaves the mind and
> hands free for reading, writing, conversation, etc.

You've never ridden on a train or a bus during a peak transit period,
have you? I have. I can assure you that you aren't going to be reading,
writing, conversing, etc., when you're mashed in with with forty other
commuters and trying to maintain your balance by hanging on a strap.

Not that mass transit is always crowded. During off-peak times you'll
usually be able to sit and try not to make eye contact with the guy
across the aisle who's talking to himself about chemtrails or the woman
who keeps repeating "Hallelujah" while looking up at the ceiling.

> If this is a multi-tasking world we're living in, driving is the worst
> possible way to move around.

Well, thank God this isn't a multitasking world we're living in, then.

>> You're kidding, right? Horses were a horribly inefficient form of
>> travel in terms of land and resources. A horse has to be fed and
>> watered every day regardless of whether you're riding him: imagine
>> gassing up your car and changing the water every day even though you
>> only take it out of the garage on Sundays. Now picture your car
>> leaving a pile of shit and piss-soaked straw in the garage for you to
>> clean up day in and day out. (Those oil spots on the concrete don't
>> seem so bad now, do they?)
>
> Everything a horse uses is a renewable resource--water and grass.

Land used for horse pasturage or feed production is land that could be,
but isn't, used to grow food for people. Similarly, potable water being
sucked up by horses is water that isn't keeping people alive. A
thousand-pound horse who's being kept in shape for riding needs anywhere
from fifteen to twenty pounds of food a day: 146 50-pound bales of hay
ought to tide Dobbin over till next year; now you just need to make sure
he gets ten to twelve gallons of water every day.

Oh, and you can't just turn your horse out to pasture: if you don't
acclimate him to the new diet first, there's a good chance he'll eat too
much and succumb to founder (a condition where the horse's foot bones
break through the bottoms of his hooves) or colic, which can actually
kill him, since horses can't vomit.

> Everything a horse emits is bio-degradable.

I'm sure that's a great comfort to the poor sod who has to muck out the
stalls.

> Can't say the same for a car.

You can catch diseases (e.g., vesicular stomatitis, encephalitis,
anthrax, and even rabies) from a horse. Can't say the same for a car.

> Horses themselves are, of course, self-renewable, being living
> animals.

If your car gets a flat, you usually get a new tire. If your
"self-renewable" horse breaks one of his legs, you usually get an
introduction to the wonderful world of veterinary euthanasia. Horses,
like all living beings, are painfully inefficient compared to nonliving
machines. Your brand-new car can be driven immediately: your brand-new
"self-renewable" horse has to be kept around for a couple of years,
using up food and water, before you can ride him. During that time you
have to try to get him used to the idea that someday you're going to be
riding around on his back, and he may not take too kindly to that, in
which case maybe you'll have to have him (efficiently) castrated in
order to mellow him out a bit.

And of course your "self-renewable" horse will need to receive annual
vaccinations, have his teeth checked every year, be wormed four to six
times a year, and have his hooves trimmed every six to eight weeks. And
of course your "self-renewable" horse can and will eat himself to death,
given the opportunity.

> Yes, they need re-shoeing, but blacksmithing is a far more
> ecologically safe industry than, say, rubber manufacture.

Because open-pit iron mines are better than rubber tree plantations?

> As for land use, I was thinking of roads. You don't a six-lane highway
> to safely move horse-drawn vehicles (or individual horses) at top
> speed in large quantities. (Hell, individually-ridden horses don't
> need roads at all, really.)

What horses don't use in terms of roadways, they compensate for in terms
of living space. A healthy horse needs a lot of room to run around in:
recommendations vary, but an acre per horse is considered the bare
minimum. Try to picture a single-car garage that covers an entire acre
of land. Does that seem efficient to you? (Storing those fifty-pound
bales of hay uses up a lot of space, too.)

And is it true that individually-ridden horses don't need roads? Not
really. True, they don't do so well on pavement, but they're not exactly
all-terrain animals: any surface that a horse can slip on or sink into
is a bad surface for a horse to walk on. Cars get stuck in mud; so do
horses. (Cars, however, can't contract skin diseases from exposure to
mud: horses can.) Horses, like people and cars, need a bridge to cross
any ravine that's too wide to step across, and they need a bridge or a
ferry to get across any watercourse that's more than a few feet deep or
wide.

Oh, and don't forget the fact that you have to put up fencing to make
sure your horse doesn't make a break for it. Don't see too many cars
doing that, do you?

>> Look at the Pony Express: it involved 184 stations, and riders had to
>> stop and change horses every ten miles or so: if you ride a horse too
>> hard, he tends to die. The organizers of the business acquired more
>> than 400 horses (at an average price of $200 apiece) before they sent
>> out a single rider. You wanna talk inefficient? Talk about a
>> 'vehicle' that has to be swapped for a new one every ten miles to
>> avoid the risk that the poor thing will drop dead on you.
>
> All of which is why the Pony Express was put out of business by
> railroads and the telegraph.

Just the telegraph, actually. The Pony Express went out of business in
October 1861, long before it was possible to get from Missouri to
California by rail.

> Yes, horses are a terrible way to move large amounts of freight (or
> data) long distances. But so are automobiles.

The issue, o evasive one, is your unfounded claim that a horse is "a far
more efficient form of travel-in terms of land and resources-than the
automobile."

>> Here in Klamath Falls there's a mural downtown depicting the arrival
>> of the first train, an event that occurred on 20 May 1909 - even with
>> government subsidies up the wazoo, nobody bothered to get a train
>> line to Klamath for *forty years* after the completion of the
>> transcontinental railroad: it just wasn't worth it, I guess. If we go
>> back to railroads, ten'll get you twenty it still won't be worth it.
>> Take away the automobiles and you can stick a fork in Klamath Falls,
>> 'cause it'll be done.
>
> Not saying anything specifically against Klamath Falls, but maybe the
> real answer is that--in the modern world--there are just some places
> that are too inefficient to survive.

That's pretty funny coming from the guy who's so gung-ho for passenger
rail, a mode of transportation that, in spite of every advantage
conferred upon it by the federal government, in spite of having an
infrastructure that was effectively complete before the first U.S.
highway route was even planned, went into such a steep decline that the
Feds had to take it over entirely in 1971. And what's your brilliant
solution to the problem of people just not wanting to use passenger
rail? Why, stop building highways, of course! That way you can force people
to use passenger rail, whether they want to or not. How wonderfully
efficient.

> Let me ask you this--if you need to go anywhere that is, frankly, too
> far to drive reasonably, how far do you have to drive from Klamath
> Falls to get to a major airport or train station?

What's "too far to drive reasonably"? I've driven from Klamath Falls to
Phoenix, Arizona - that's a thousand and fifty-five miles or so. Is that
"too far"? My wife's son lives 712 miles away; I've driven there, too.
"Too far"?

> How far does the local supermarket have to truck in stock from the
> nearest warehouse?

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?

[Pat O'Neill]

On Sunday, June 10, 2012 6:31:15 AM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:
> "Pat O'Neill"

> wrote in
> news:f74b6a15-d1d9-4428...@googlegroups.com:
>
> > On Saturday, June 9, 2012 10:06:21 PM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:
> >
> >> It seems to me that the real problem is that people like to drive
> >> more than they like to ride the rails. That's what mass-transit
> >> proponents just don't get: driving is fun. Riding a horse? Not fun.
> >> Taking the train? Not fun. Driving? Fun.
> >
> > Driving is "fun" because we've been inundated with close to 100 years
> > of advertising telling us it is.
>
> Right, Pat. I'm so brainwashed by those ee-vul adverts that I need a
> goddamn TV commercial to tell me whether I'm having fun. Give me a *little*
> credit, will you? I mean, I disagree with your opinions about passenger
> rail, but I do you the credit of presuming that you came by those opinions
> honestly.

That's not directed at you, personally, of course, but at society in general. Activities that require the level of attention that driving does--when done as a matter of necessity, like commuting, as opposed to recreation, like sports--are generally thought of as "work," not fun. But we've been taught for near on a century that driving--even when a matter of necessity--is exhilirating, arousing, etc....even though what it mostly is is mind-numbing.

> > Driving (if safe) requires concentration, perception, hand-eye
> > coordination, reflexes, etc.
>
> What does that have to do with anything? Sports require all of those things
> too. Sports are widely regarded as fun - is that just another misperception
> created by advertising? Say, you know what other physical activity requires
> concentration, perception, hand-eye coordination, reflexes, etc., and is a
> hell of a lot of fun? I'll give you a hint: it involves two people, and
> clothing is optional.

Rarely are people killed when they don't do a sport well or when they are distracted when doing it. Same with sex.

> > It means that the hours spent driving cannot safely be spend doing
> > anything else
>
> Which is also true of all the time we spend engaging in sports or that
> other activity I mentioned. Hey, and how about swimming? You definitely
> can't read a book or have a conversation on your cell phone while you're
> swimming. Better close down the swimming pools!
>

But we CHOOSE to do those other things rather than read, etc. In too many communities, commuting via automobile is not a choice--it's the only way to get to work or grocery shopping or school; and that means many hours a week wasted behind the wheel that could be spent in far more productive activities (or even far more enjoyable activities).

> > But riding mass transit requires none of that and leaves the mind and
> > hands free for reading, writing, conversation, etc.
>
> You've never ridden on a train or a bus during a peak transit period,
> have you? I have. I can assure you that you aren't going to be reading,
> writing, conversing, etc., when you're mashed in with with forty other
> commuters and trying to maintain your balance by hanging on a strap.
>
> Not that mass transit is always crowded. During off-peak times you'll
> usually be able to sit and try not to make eye contact with the guy
> across the aisle who's talking to himself about chemtrails or the woman
> who keeps repeating "Hallelujah" while looking up at the ceiling.

I grew up in NYC, and never owned a car until about ten years ago, when a move to the Philly suburbs forced it on me. I used public transportation to go everywhere until I was 50 years old; I spent three hours each way (bus, ferry, subway) to go to college for four years; I spent about 90 minutes to go to work when I was in NYC on buses or subways. I courted my wife across a 200-mile distance (NY to DC) by visiting her by bus or train on a bi-weekly basis. And, yes, I frequently did my homework while commuting to college, read while going to work, or on trips to see my then-fiancee. I probably know more about the joys and sorrows of public transit than most.

> > If this is a multi-tasking world we're living in, driving is the worst
> > possible way to move around.
>
> Well, thank God this isn't a multitasking world we're living in, then.
>
> >> You're kidding, right? Horses were a horribly inefficient form of
> >> travel in terms of land and resources. A horse has to be fed and
> >> watered every day regardless of whether you're riding him: imagine
> >> gassing up your car and changing the water every day even though you
> >> only take it out of the garage on Sundays. Now picture your car
> >> leaving a pile of shit and piss-soaked straw in the garage for you to
> >> clean up day in and day out. (Those oil spots on the concrete don't
> >> seem so bad now, do they?)
> >
> > Everything a horse uses is a renewable resource--water and grass.
>
> Land used for horse pasturage or feed production is land that could be,
> but isn't, used to grow food for people. Similarly, potable water being
> sucked up by horses is water that isn't keeping people alive. A
> thousand-pound horse who's being kept in shape for riding needs anywhere
> from fifteen to twenty pounds of food a day: 146 50-pound bales of hay
> ought to tide Dobbin over till next year; now you just need to make sure
> he gets ten to twelve gallons of water every day.

It's not like the water the horse uses is never returned to the environment...just like the water people use, it gets back into the atmosphere through natural processes. Same with the hay...in fact, the waste product from the horse eating the hay can be used to fertilize the ground to grow more food (for both horse and human).

> Oh, and you can't just turn your horse out to pasture: if you don't
> acclimate him to the new diet first, there's a good chance he'll eat too
> much and succumb to founder (a condition where the horse's foot bones
> break through the bottoms of his hooves) or colic, which can actually
> kill him, since horses can't vomit.
>
> > Everything a horse emits is bio-degradable.
>
> I'm sure that's a great comfort to the poor sod who has to muck out the
> stalls.
>
> > Can't say the same for a car.
>
> You can catch diseases (e.g., vesicular stomatitis, encephalitis,
> anthrax, and even rabies) from a horse. Can't say the same for a car.

Diseases that can be directly related to vehicular pollution: emphysema, lung cancer, COPD, etc.

> > Horses themselves are, of course, self-renewable, being living
> > animals.
>
> If your car gets a flat, you usually get a new tire. If your
> "self-renewable" horse breaks one of his legs, you usually get an
> introduction to the wonderful world of veterinary euthanasia. Horses,
> like all living beings, are painfully inefficient compared to nonliving
> machines. Your brand-new car can be driven immediately: your brand-new
> "self-renewable" horse has to be kept around for a couple of years,
> using up food and water, before you can ride him. During that time you
> have to try to get him used to the idea that someday you're going to be
> riding around on his back, and he may not take too kindly to that, in
> which case maybe you'll have to have him (efficiently) castrated in
> order to mellow him out a bit.
>
> And of course your "self-renewable" horse will need to receive annual
> vaccinations, have his teeth checked every year, be wormed four to six
> times a year, and have his hooves trimmed every six to eight weeks. And
> of course your "self-renewable" horse can and will eat himself to death,
> given the opportunity.
>

My car needs an annual state inspection, regular oil changes, tire pressure checks, fluids checked and refilled, brakes checked and replaced--shall I continue?

> Oh, and don't forget the fact that you have to put up fencing to make
> sure your horse doesn't make a break for it. Don't see too many cars
> doing that, do you?

No, instead I hear reports of cars being broken into or stolen. They need as much "security" (possibly more) as a horse. Never hear of a "horse alarm", do you?

> >> Here in Klamath Falls there's a mural downtown depicting the arrival
> >> of the first train, an event that occurred on 20 May 1909 - even with
> >> government subsidies up the wazoo, nobody bothered to get a train
> >> line to Klamath for *forty years* after the completion of the
> >> transcontinental railroad: it just wasn't worth it, I guess. If we go
> >> back to railroads, ten'll get you twenty it still won't be worth it.
> >> Take away the automobiles and you can stick a fork in Klamath Falls,
> >> 'cause it'll be done.
> >
> > Not saying anything specifically against Klamath Falls, but maybe the
> > real answer is that--in the modern world--there are just some places
> > that are too inefficient to survive.
>
> That's pretty funny coming from the guy who's so gung-ho for passenger
> rail, a mode of transportation that, in spite of every advantage
> conferred upon it by the federal government, in spite of having an
> infrastructure that was effectively complete before the first U.S.
> highway route was even planned, went into such a steep decline that the
> Feds had to take it over entirely in 1971. And what's your brilliant
> solution to the problem of people just not wanting to use passenger
> rail? Why, stop building highways, of course! That way you can force people
> to use passenger rail, whether they want to or not. How wonderfully
> efficient.

The problem was that the government STOPPED supporting passenger rail in favor of highways and air travel...because the lobbies for the airline and automotive industries had more money and more clout than the railroads did. If the feds had given as much money to the railroads for track upkeep and improvement as they gave to highway construction over the past 60 years, passenger rail would be at the kind of levels it is in most of Europe. If the feds gave as much money for maintaining passenger rail stations as they do to airport construction, the same. The federal government supports air travel by providing an air traffic control system, that is mostly paid for with tax-payer dollars. The rail equivalent is run and paid for by the railroads themselves.

> > Let me ask you this--if you need to go anywhere that is, frankly, too
> > far to drive reasonably, how far do you have to drive from Klamath
> > Falls to get to a major airport or train station?
>
> What's "too far to drive reasonably"? I've driven from Klamath Falls to
> Phoenix, Arizona - that's a thousand and fifty-five miles or so. Is that
> "too far"? My wife's son lives 712 miles away; I've driven there, too.
> "Too far"?

How long did that take you? How many times did you have to stop for food, gas, and sleep? Wouldn't it have been more efficient, a better use of your time and effort, if you could have taken a train...that would have continued moving while you ate and slept? Wouldn't you have had more time to actually spend in Phoenix if you didn't have to figure on a minimum of two days just to get there and a minimum of two days to get back?

[Mark Steese]

"Pat O'Neill" <patdo...@verizon.net> wrote in

news:83ddd7a3-5014-479f...@googlegroups.com:

> On Sunday, June 10, 2012 6:31:15 AM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:
>> "Pat O'Neill"
>> wrote in
>> news:f74b6a15-d1d9-4428...@googlegroups.com:
>>
>> > On Saturday, June 9, 2012 10:06:21 PM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:
>> >
>> >> It seems to me that the real problem is that people like to drive
>> >> more than they like to ride the rails. That's what mass-transit
>> >> proponents just don't get: driving is fun. Riding a horse? Not
>> >> fun. Taking the train? Not fun. Driving? Fun.
>> >
>> > Driving is "fun" because we've been inundated with close to 100
>> > years of advertising telling us it is.
>>
>> Right, Pat. I'm so brainwashed by those ee-vul adverts that I need a
>> goddamn TV commercial to tell me whether I'm having fun. Give me a
>> *little* credit, will you? I mean, I disagree with your opinions
>> about passenger rail, but I do you the credit of presuming that you
>> came by those opinions honestly.
>
> That's not directed at you, personally, of course, but at society in
> general.

Society in general doesn't post here in racs, Pat.

> Activities that require the level of attention that driving
> does--when done as a matter of necessity, like commuting, as opposed
> to recreation, like sports--are generally thought of as "work," not
> fun.

Methinks you exaggerate the difficulty an experienced driver has paying
attention to his or her driving. It ain't really that tough.

> But we've been taught for near on a century that driving--even
> when a matter of necessity--is exhilirating, arousing, etc....even
> though what it mostly is is mind-numbing.

You may personally find it to be so; that doesn't mean most people do.
And nobody ever taught me that driving was exhilirating. My dad didn't
even own a car until my older sister went to college; I didn't learn how
to drive till I was in my 20s. I discovered for myself that driving is
fun.

Among the many pleasures of driving is the illusion of autonomy it gives
me. I know perfectly well that most of the circumstances affecting my
life are outside my control, but at least I can make a car go where I
want it to go all by myself.

>> > Driving (if safe) requires concentration, perception, hand-eye
>> > coordination, reflexes, etc.
>>
>> What does that have to do with anything? Sports require all of those
>> things too. Sports are widely regarded as fun - is that just another
>> misperception created by advertising? Say, you know what other
>> physical activity requires concentration, perception, hand-eye
>> coordination, reflexes, etc., and is a hell of a lot of fun? I'll
>> give you a hint: it involves two people, and clothing is optional.
>
> Rarely are people killed when they don't do a sport well or when they
> are distracted when doing it. Same with sex.

Well, it's certainly true that sports and sex don't kill nearly as many
people as passenger rail crashes do. Did you know that 101 people were
killed and 171 more were injured when two passenger trains collided in
Nashville on 9 July 1918? It was the single deadliest rail disaster in
U.S. history!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Train_Wreck_of_1918

Thankfully, passenger rail travel has become less lethal, but that's
primarily due to the fact that fewer people use it. Still, it is
impressive the way a single careless train driver can kill so many more
people than a single careless driver - remember the Chatsworth wreck
back in September 2008? 25 people were killed and 135 were injured
because a Metrolink commuter train ran a red light.

Ever hear of the Hammond Circus Train Wreck? An engineer driving an
empty troop train fell asleep at the throttle and crashed his train into
the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train, killing 86 people and injuring 127
more. Or hey, since you're a Pennsylvanian, maybe you know about the
Fort Washington Disaster of 1856, a/k/a The Picnic Train Tragedy, a/k/a
The Camp Hill Disaster: a freight train collided with an excursion train
carrying somewhere between 1,100 and 1,500 people, most of them Sunday
School students. At least 59 people were killed, possibly as many as 67
(some bodies were unrecoverable), and over 100 people were injured. The
conductor of the freight train blamed himself for the accident and
committed suicide; an investigation later concluded that the engineer of
the passenger train had been at fault. (The engineer died in the wreck.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Train_Wreck_of_1856

>> > But riding mass transit requires none of that and leaves the mind
>> > and hands free for reading, writing, conversation, etc.
>>
>> You've never ridden on a train or a bus during a peak transit period,
>> have you? I have. I can assure you that you aren't going to be
>> reading, writing, conversing, etc., when you're mashed in with with
>> forty other commuters and trying to maintain your balance by hanging
>> on a strap.
>>
>> Not that mass transit is always crowded. During off-peak times you'll
>> usually be able to sit and try not to make eye contact with the guy
>> across the aisle who's talking to himself about chemtrails or the
>> woman who keeps repeating "Hallelujah" while looking up at the
>> ceiling.
>
> I grew up in NYC, and never owned a car until about ten years ago,
> when a move to the Philly suburbs forced it on me. I used public
> transportation to go everywhere until I was 50 years old; I spent
> three hours each way (bus, ferry, subway) to go to college for four
> years; I spent about 90 minutes to go to work when I was in NYC on
> buses or subways. I courted my wife across a 200-mile distance (NY to
> DC) by visiting her by bus or train on a bi-weekly basis. And, yes, I
> frequently did my homework while commuting to college, read while
> going to work, or on trips to see my then-fiancee. I probably know
> more about the joys and sorrows of public transit than most.

Then you really ought to know better.

>> > Not saying anything specifically against Klamath Falls, but maybe
>> > the real answer is that--in the modern world--there are just some
>> > places that are too inefficient to survive.
>>
>> That's pretty funny coming from the guy who's so gung-ho for
>> passenger rail, a mode of transportation that, in spite of every
>> advantage conferred upon it by the federal government, in spite of
>> having an infrastructure that was effectively complete before the
>> first U.S. highway route was even planned, went into such a steep
>> decline that the Feds had to take it over entirely in 1971. And
>> what's your brilliant solution to the problem of people just not
>> wanting to use passenger rail? Why, stop building highways, of
>> course! That way you can force people to use passenger rail, whether
>> they want to or not. How wonderfully efficient.
>
> The problem was that the government STOPPED supporting passenger rail
> in favor of highways and air travel...because the lobbies for the
> airline and automotive industries had more money and more clout than
> the railroads did.

It would take very little research for you to discover that the
government has never stopped supporting passenger rail. But it would
seem that to you, government support doesn't count unless it's
exclusive. And you still haven't addressed the issue of efficiency vs.
massive government subsidization, o evasive one.

> If the feds had given as much money to the railroads for track upkeep
> and improvement as they gave to highway construction over the past 60
> years, passenger rail would be at the kind of levels it is in most of
> Europe.

Sure. And it would still be inefficient, which is the point. You're
trying to argue that passenger rail is more efficient than air or auto
travel at the same time that you're attributing the decline of passenger
rail to the federal government's unwillingness to spend billions of
additional dollars keeping it afloat. Do you really not see how
ridiculous that is?

And where do you think the money the Feds spend on highway upkeep comes
from? It comes from automobile drivers, that's where. Every time I gas
up my car I pay 18.4 cents per gallon to the Feds in excise tax, and
18.3 cents of that goes into the Highway Trust Fund. I have no problem
with that; nor do I have a problem with paying an additional 30 cents a
gallon to the Oregon state goverment. I'm glad to know that I'm
indirectly helping with the upkeep of the roads I drive on. It seems
almost...efficient.

>> > Let me ask you this--if you need to go anywhere that is, frankly,
>> > too far to drive reasonably, how far do you have to drive from
>> > Klamath Falls to get to a major airport or train station?
>>
>> What's "too far to drive reasonably"? I've driven from Klamath Falls
>> to Phoenix, Arizona - that's a thousand and fifty-five miles or so.
>> Is that "too far"? My wife's son lives 712 miles away; I've driven
>> there, too. "Too far"?
>
> How long did that take you? How many times did you have to stop for
> food, gas, and sleep? Wouldn't it have been more efficient, a better
> use of your time and effort, if you could have taken a train...that
> would have continued moving while you ate and slept?

Nope! As it happens, I was going to Phoenix with my wife so she could
teach a workshop at Art Unraveled. She teaches printing techniques that
involve inkjet printers; we had maybe eight of them in the back of the
Grand Caravan, along with all of her other art supplies. Sure, we
*could* have packed up all her supplies and paid to have them shipped
separately while we paid $448 to leave Klamath Falls at 10 p.m., ride
for 23 hours on Amtrak, wait an hour in Los Angeles, and then ride
another 7 1/2 hours before arriving in Maricopa (thirty miles away from
Phoenix) at 5:30 in the morning -- -- but that would have been pretty
inefficient, don't you think? And that $448 bucks is a *one-way* fare
for two coach seats on a train that leaves at 10 p.m.; it doesn't
include sleeping accommodations.

As you might have noticed during your many years of using mass transit,
trains make a *lot* of stops. If you want to go from Klamath Falls to
Union Station in Los Angeles, you're required to stop at Dunsmuir,
Redding, Chico, Sacramento, Davis, Martinez, Richmond, Emeryville,
Oakland, San Jose, Salinas, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara,
Oxnard, Simi Valley, Van Nuys, and Burbank first. More efficient than
driving? I don't think so.

> Wouldn't you have had more time to actually spend in Phoenix if you
> didn't have to figure on a minimum of two days just to get there and a
> minimum of two days to get back?

We made two trips to Phoenix. On our first trip, we were able to stop in
Quartzsite, Arizona, and visit the monument to Hi Jolly, the legendary
camel driver who assisted the U.S. Army with its Camel Corps experiment;
on the way back, we were able to stop and visit with Mickie's son and
his wife. On our second trip, we were able to visit the Grand Canyon. If
you take Amtrak from Klamath Falls to (the outskirts of) Phoenix, don't
plan on stopping at either Quartzsite or the Grand Canyon.

And even if I had had more time to actually spend in Phoenix, *how would
I have gotten around*? Art Unraveled is held in August, Pat. I can
assure you that you do *not* want to be walking around or standing
outside waiting for a bus in Phoenix in August. An air-conditioned Dodge
Grand Caravan, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to drive up
to Apache Junction and see the Superstition Mountains up close, or drive
down to Casa Grande National Monument, both of which I've done, and
neither of which would have been possible using mass transit. I've even
seen the memorial to Tom Mix at the site in Florence where his car went
off the road and killed him in 1940. How many trains do you think stop
there, Pat? Wouldn't be efficient. After all, who cares about history
when you've got multitasking to worry about?
--
Year after year you wrote up these stories, and they'd wind up archived
in a pile of cardboard boxes in the warehouse, flattening and drying
like pressed flowers under the weight of all the stories above them -
the unknown stratigraphy of your career. -Jordan Fisher Smith

[Pat O'Neill]

On Sunday, June 10, 2012 5:16:22 PM UTC-4, Mark Steese wrote:

> It would take very little research for you to discover that the
> government has never stopped supporting passenger rail. But it would
> seem that to you, government support doesn't count unless it's
> exclusive. And you still haven't addressed the issue of efficiency vs.
> massive government subsidization, o evasive one.

The "support" that government gives to passenger rail travel pales beside the support it gives to road and air travel. And, yes, I know that gas taxes are the primary source of highway funds...so why isn't there a similar tax supporting rail transportation? Why does the government provide air traffic control and security for airlines (and for that matter, highways too, come to think of it) and not for railroads? Why do rails have to pay their own way for that stuff?

> As you might have noticed during your many years of using mass transit,
> trains make a *lot* of stops. If you want to go from Klamath Falls to
> Union Station in Los Angeles, you're required to stop at Dunsmuir,
> Redding, Chico, Sacramento, Davis, Martinez, Richmond, Emeryville,
> Oakland, San Jose, Salinas, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara,
> Oxnard, Simi Valley, Van Nuys, and Burbank first. More efficient than
> driving? I don't think so.

Trains make a lot of stops under modern conditions. But back in the hey-day of rail transportation, there were runs that only made stops in major cities and you caught the "milk-run" if you were going anywhere else on the line. And if we had high-speed rail (which is where this discussion began, remember?), it would not make all those additional stops.

> > Wouldn't you have had more time to actually spend in Phoenix if you
> > didn't have to figure on a minimum of two days just to get there and a
> > minimum of two days to get back?
>

> And even if I had had more time to actually spend in Phoenix, *how would
> I have gotten around*? Art Unraveled is held in August, Pat. I can
> assure you that you do *not* want to be walking around or standing
> outside waiting for a bus in Phoenix in August. An air-conditioned Dodge
> Grand Caravan, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to drive up
> to Apache Junction and see the Superstition Mountains up close, or drive
> down to Casa Grande National Monument, both of which I've done, and
> neither of which would have been possible using mass transit. I've even
> seen the memorial to Tom Mix at the site in Florence where his car went
> off the road and killed him in 1940. How many trains do you think stop
> there, Pat? Wouldn't be efficient. After all, who cares about history
> when you've got multitasking to worry about?

They do have rental cars in Phoenix, right?