The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

[Handyman]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Expand on this. The way I'm reading it, your post implies that the Great Depression was brought about by insufficient government spending/taxation in general and a lack of social programs like social security in particular. That's a bit far-fetched, to say the least.

Makes about as much sense as MinnFann's use of The Federalist Papers to try and prove a point. The Constitution is a living, breathing thing, it is supposed to be able to change over time. To use letters written by the Founders to try and prove a point in a modern society is ridiculous to say the least. If we are to believe the ideas or the thoughts behind all of the beliefs of the Founders then black people would still 3/5 of a person and women would have no rights whatsoever. (not to mention Children would still be working, slavery would still be around, our President just might be a king...need I go on)

Scooby is stretching to make a point, but it isnt hard to see what he is really saying.

Go back to States Rights? My lord the Articles of Confederation Failed and the Confederate Government was a failure throughout the Civil War but by all means lets go back to that style of failed government. JFC are you actually this ignorant MinnFan or is it an act?

 

[MinnFan]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

I think I'll stick to the Federalist Papers, Edmund Burke, and Russell Kirk.

There are intelligent conservative voices out there. They just aren't present in today's conservative media.

This guy is different, trust me.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Expand on this. The way I'm reading it, your post implies that the Great Depression was brought about by insufficient government spending/taxation in general and a lack of social programs like social security in particular. That's a bit far-fetched, to say the least.

I think you could make the argument that real government oversight could have prevented the recent collapse, Enron, etc. Same thinking could be applied to the Great Depression era. Fortunately we learned from that mistake or things would have been much much worse this time around.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

He ballooned the deficit, killed the middle class, did nothing to shrink government, ignored the AIDS epidemic, and betrayed pretty much everyone.

You're aware of this entity called Congress, right? It's not like he had sole authority to write and pass a budget with nobody else's approval.

And given the fact something called the CDC exists, I'd think any epidemic would fall under their jurisdiction - plus the people likely to be afflicted by AIDS aren't exactly big GOP supporters.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

This guy is different, trust me.

OK, OK, I won't pre-judge.

 

[Handyman]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

You're aware of this entity called Congress, right? It's not like he had sole authority to write and pass a budget with nobody else's approval.

And given the fact something called the CDC exists, I'd think any epidemic would fall under their jurisdiction - plus the people likely to be afflicted by AIDS aren't exactly big GOP supporters.

The CDC was often denied funding for AIDS research...And the Band Played on is a great movie (based on the book) which discusses it in length.

So Congress is to blame for Trickle Down Economics? That is your story? The Laffer Curve and its fraud...that was on the Dem Congress too?

Fine, lets ignore that...Reagan circumvented the Constitution, committed multiple crimes against the Nation and even was forced to make an address to the nation (after a previous address where he flat out denied all his crimes) to admit it...tell me again why the GOP circle jerk to his image. The Dems should have strung him up like the GOP did Clinton...what Regan did was actually detrimental and against the Constitution.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

No, I'm going with the numbers. Why the huge double-dip if FDRs policies worked so well?

Follow the prior posted link, please. I can't take you back in time to when it was really obvious that this meme was simply invented to cover the embarrassment of Wall Street blowing out the economy and losing the House for 50 years, but I'll try.

I am old enough to remember when the "FDR extended the depression" meme was still in its infancy, in the mid-70's in Objectivist circles. It had that wonderful allure of being sedition and contrary to all established theory and so it was very attractive for teenagers. It was also a lot like believing in flying saucers (the absence of evidence proves the conspiracy) -- that everybody else disagreed somehow meant you must be right. After all, Howard Roark... It was secret knowledge.

And then the Echo Chamber discovered this cute, quirky little nutbar meme and decided to do what they do with everything: just declare it as "fact" on their media. And for the people who got there news from there... suddenly, it became "fact." What did they know of economics? But Rush knew.

Roger Ailes is a genius of relativism. He created his own relative truth, completely dispensed with the idea of peer review, and got away with it because for even the tenth of his audience who could spell "falsifiability," play-pretend just felt so much better than reality.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Please tell me how the Constitution created the Great Depression. I can point out how FDR tearing apart the constitution is what made the depression great, but I'm really curious to see how you made this leap.

Overtly strict adherence to the Constitution in all probability greatly exacerbated the Great Depression...specifically leaving our financial system out to dry at the beginnings of the Depression. As Wiki says:

"Banking panics began in October 1930, one year after the stock market crash, triggered by the collapse of correspondent networks; the bank runs became worse after financial conglomerates in New York and Los Angeles failed in prominently-covered scandals. Much of the Depression's economic damage was caused directly by bank runs, and institutions put into place after the Depression have prevented runs on U.S. commercial banks since the 1930s."

Not if that person becomes a criminal and drains the society via money spent on investigating the crime, prosecuting it, and incarcerating the guilty. A significant portion of unwanted children become criminals. This is not something that can be easily dismissed (and it was covered at length in "Freakonomics").

Your argument is undermined by the fact that many babies carried to term are raised by the poor and are thus subsidized by taxpayers via the child tax credit and various programs that cost massive amounts to fund. So the cost isn't capped at the $7000-$17000 figure. It's often much much higher than that (gotta add school lunch programs et al to this total). And again, aborted fetuses do not represent a random population distribution. Nearly half are carried by mothers under the poverty line. Another ~1/4 are carried by mothers between 1-2x the poverty level. So even they would require some subsidy I imagine.

Further analysis would likely show that the vast majority of these fetuses are carried by single mothers. So, unless some arrangement is made to pay for their birth/care *and* to transfer them to adoptive parents that can afford to raise them, I would say eliminating abortion would be a net drain on society, mostly due to the dramatically higher crime rates that we would have if it did not exist.

I don't disagree that there are costs. But that still ignores the massive value add a person of all income levels provides...which dwarfs the costs you suggest. If an average person's net value to society were zero, there would be nothing manmade...no society at all.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

I think you could make the argument that real government oversight could have prevented the recent collapse, Enron, etc. Same thinking could be applied to the Great Depression era. Fortunately we learned from that mistake or things would have been much much worse this time around.

We haven't paid the full price "this time around" - that gigantic monetary dump is going to wreak havoc not only on our debt situation but on the inflation side as well. The Fed can ignore food and energy prices in its calculation, but tell that to the people who need to heat their homes, drive their cars, and eat ****ing food every day. We can continue living in a dream world here, but other countries calculate their rates far more realistically - which has led to double digit interest rates in many of them. I can only imagine how much of this was fueled by all the US dollars spat out by the Fed to prop up the system over the last couple years.

And there's no such thing as real oversight. When many Congressmen leave office, they become lobbyists. By making sure their company's interests are taken care of, they in turn take care of current officeholders with big donations. Everybody wins, as long as "everybody" is connected to the powerful government elite to bend and shape any rule coming out of Washington to suit their needs. Goldman Sachs and their ilk will always make out like bandits with this arrangement. I can all but guarantee "financial reform" won't amount to much of anything, and whoever is policing whatever is going to be so underfunded it's just a hollow gesture to appease the p*ssed off masses - who probably believe something is being done to prevent the next collapse, when in fact little to nothing is.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

When many Congressmen leave office, they become lobbyists. By making sure their company's interests are taken care of, they in turn take care of current officeholders with big donations. Everybody wins, as long as "everybody" is connected to the powerful government elite to bend and shape any rule coming out of Washington to suit their needs. Goldman Sachs and their ilk will always make out like bandits with this arrangement. I can all but guarantee "financial reform" won't amount to much of anything, and whoever is policing whatever is going to be so underfunded it's just a hollow gesture to appease the p*ssed off masses - who probably believe something is being done to prevent the next collapse, when in fact little to nothing is.

This is also my instinct and it's depressing as hell. The Dems were obviously the only hope of real oversight (the Republicans? Please.), and they were either cowed by the financial sector's megaphone or, more likely, just co-opted into the same game. The Moment of Crisis, when we were all terrified, passed (of course not until after we bailed them out). If the Tea Party weren't just a manufactured ego vehicle for Fox hosts and if they didn't have the social philosophy of the Taliban maybe there would be hope -- those folks have no interest in sweating for their Wall Street "betters."

But it is, and they do, so there's no hope coming from them. And there's nobody else, unless you believe in Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, and fairies.

Well, the Egyptians did it. Maybe someday we will too.

 

[Bakunin]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

I don't disagree that there are costs. But that still ignores the massive value add a person of all income levels provides...which dwarfs the costs you suggest. If an average person's net value to society were zero, there would be nothing manmade...no society at all.

By the time a person reaches 18 years of age, he/she has likely cost around $250,000 to reach that point (schooling, food, housing, etc). Please don't make me hunt a source down on this number - I've seen it quoted in a number of places and in more than a few financial articles regarding the cost of child-rearing. So if a typical person earns/produces a million dollars over a lifetime, that's a net positive of $750,000. My point to you is that the aborted are not average - they are by and large in the poorest segments of society and would be entering single-parent households. This means it's likely that even those who do not become criminals are not likely to be as productive as an average person over their lifetimes. It can also be said that the likelihood of criminal behavior is far higher in this group than the population at large. Any criminal locked up for 20 years is going to be a net negative for society. So, at best, I would argue that the aborted demographic is far closer to a push than you might want to admit.

Now if we were to guarantee that they were given up for adoption and raised properly, it'd be a strong net positive for society - but obviously, that doesn't happen in reality.

So Congress is to blame for Trickle Down Economics? That is your story? The Laffer Curve and its fraud...that was on the Dem Congress too?

Congress wrote the bills that set the budget and the tax rates. Reagan obviously knew what he wanted, but he had to deal with Congress - and that was not controlled by the GOP (although he did have the Senate for awhile). In the grand tradition of all compromises, we got the worst of everything - lower tax rates and higher spending. This pretty much repeated itself in W's tenure.

Kepler - the key take-home message is both sides run on rhetoric that they think will appeal to their mindless base and hopefully convince enough of the wishy-washy fence-riders to put them in office. Then they feed at the public trough and hang onto office for dear life, principles be dam*ed. The Dems sure love to talk about how bad big business is, but when you get right down to it, the only "green economy" that matters is the money that flows into their campaign warchests that assures them of not having to actually work a real job for a number of years. There's a reason why I don't vote, and this pretty well sums it up: one side pretends to give a **** about fiscal responsibility, and the other pretends to give a **** about policing various misdeeds in the corporate world. In the end, nothing substantive happens to deal with either problem, and the screws get driven just a little bit deeper into our collective a**.

 

[joecct]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

What a complete red herring. Please tell me how the Constitution created the Great Depression. I can point out how FDR tearing apart the constitution is what made the depression great, but I'm really curious to see how you made this leap.

FDR's Constitution tearing is but a mere blip compared to Lincoln's.

Impeachments, like beheadings, are "political necessities". When the mob is up, if you're not going to go quietly, they'll help you along. Nothing that Reagan or Clinton ever did came close to "High Crimes and Misdemeanors".

 

[WeWantMore]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Hopefully we can get someone else as solid as Kyl in there to represent Arizona and national interests, but it won't be easy.

Meh. Not particularly sad to see him go. Jeff Flake would be a swell replacement.

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

By the time a person reaches 18 years of age, he/she has likely cost around $250,000 to reach that point (schooling, food, housing, etc). Please don't make me hunt a source down on this number - I've seen it quoted in a number of places and in more than a few financial articles regarding the cost of child-rearing. So if a typical person earns/produces a million dollars over a lifetime, that's a net positive of $750,000. My point to you is that the aborted are not average - they are by and large in the poorest segments of society and would be entering single-parent households. This means it's likely that even those who do not become criminals are not likely to be as productive as an average person over their lifetimes. It can also be said that the likelihood of criminal behavior is far higher in this group than the population at large. Any criminal locked up for 20 years is going to be a net negative for society. So, at best, I would argue that the aborted demographic is far closer to a push than you might want to admit.

Now if we were to guarantee that they were given up for adoption and raised properly, it'd be a strong net positive for society - but obviously, that doesn't happen in reality.

Even your $250k number is possibly fair...although that will be maybe half for lower income families.

So assuming a worker adds value equal to his/her salary and assuming average person works from 20-60, a worker earning a lowly average of $25k a year will earn a million in their lifetime. And after direct taxes, sales taxes and taxes from firms due to the circulation of money...its very likely that someone of that salary will both pay for any costs and add significant other value to society. There just aren't that many criminals. The math says the plan would be a net loser.

And sometimes one can hit the jackpot. Under the Bakunin plan, the world's largest company doesn't even exist.

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Well, the Egyptians did it. Maybe someday we will too.

Could happen. The mindless idiots are going to have to wake up and realize that the baby boomers gamed the system in such a way that it only benefitted them. They didn't care about their kids when they had them, and they don't really care about their grandkids either. They came into the world with the most money and they're going to leave the world with as much of it as they can.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Meh. Not particularly sad to see him go. Jeff Flake would be a swell replacement.

Agreed on Flake. He's a serious fiscal conservative (despite the naysayers around here who know nothing about him, yet deride him).

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

There's a reason why I don't vote, and this pretty well sums it up: one side pretends to give a **** about fiscal responsibility, and the other pretends to give a **** about policing various misdeeds in the corporate world. In the end, nothing substantive happens to deal with either problem, and the screws get driven just a little bit deeper into our collective a**.

Well, that gets you out of voting, but IMHO it doesn't get you out of political activity. Then again, all I really do politically besides the occasional donation is try to hold the line on the more egregious right wing untruths and misconceptions on a college hockey forum, and I doubt that constitutes effecting real change.

The problem is that in our marketplace of consent a falsehood plus a million dollars outweighs a truth. A democracy answers to whoever votes, and in a mass media democracy, dollars vote.

 

[Craig P.]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Yikes! What happens when somebody uninsured hits me?

Presumably, the same thing that happens in the compulsory insurance states: your own uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage pays. (If you're a pedestrian, then your health insurance pays, and I'm sure you can sue the uninsured but good luck getting any blood from that turnip.)

 

[Craig P.]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

Please read the Federalist papers. Taxing and spending only applies to those things that were specficially laid out in the constitution until it was completely torn apart by FDR.

Read the text that grants the taxing and spending powers again. It grants Congress plenary spending authority to, among other things, promote the "general welfare" of the United States. Regardless of what the Federalist Papers may say about it, they are nothing more than advisory suggestions about what they thought Congress <em>would</em> or <em>should</em> do, the normative text is perfectly clear to me on the point of what Congress <em>can</em> do.

If the gov't can do pretty much anything under "general welfare" then why specifically enumerate what the gov't is allowed to do right after that?

It's my position (though 5mn has disagreed) that Congress cannot <em>do</em> anything they want under the "general welfare" clause, they may merely <em>spend</em> anything they want.

 

[Kepler]

Re: The 112th Congress - A Congress divided shall not cry!

It's my position (though 5mn has disagreed) that Congress cannot <em>do</em> anything they want under the "general welfare" clause, they may merely <em>spend</em> anything they want.

Hmm. Will have to think about that, but spending in large part equals doing (just as the lack of the power to spend nullifies the power to do -- one problem with the Articles that the Constitution was created to rectify).