I was going to base my response on your all-too pedantic recourse to ad-hominem attack by pointing out to other contributors here that this sort of attack is the standard, leftist response to any strong conservatives. Especially when that conservative is a black man – you & your fellow lemmings – leastways the ones that haven’t merrily gone over the cliff yet following their holy trinity of theChosenOne, Pelosi & Reid – just love to slam dem “oreos”, dontcha? The Collective cannot abide an ungrateful negro who’s gone off the reservation… just ask Clarence Thomas about that.

But rather than play your game, bringing up reasoned points to your b/s attacks on T. Sowell, what better response than to attack you myself, using your own tactics?

Actually, all toying with your thoughtless remarks aside, my first para above ridicules your inferior reasoning that underpins your attack – my second para much more clearly qualifies as a worthy cousin to your own remarks.

So… you “believe” everything you wrote in #23. Of course! And Clinton fixed welfare, he also balanced the budget, dhimmicrats love and respect the military, government can grow an economy (just ask the USSR & the ChiComs…), locking republicans out of any discussion/input on the stimulus then demanding their support is really true bi-partisanship, and the chosen one really is a natural born citizen because he’s conclusively proved it.

Sheesh… what a fascist you are.

Re”Guards” — your friendly neighborhood Jacksonian CoastGuard Man

PS: A big “Semper Par” to my Recon USMC BaA (that’s “Brother at Arms” for any members of the America’s-what’s-wrong-with-the-world crowd reading this

By a three to one margin worldwide, those surveyed are in favor of government regulation of industry or nationalization of companies to restore public trust. In the U.S., only 49 percent say government should not intervene and the free market should be allowed to function independently.

So what is so frightening? That more than half of those surveyed are not in favor of the free market.

Whether you are speaking of the EDD or OSHA or the IRS or the Franchised Tax Board of one of 50 other alphabet combinations, bureaucrats who have never had to make payroll, have never had to resolve a customer problem and who have never had to try to coax a business through troubled economic times are telling those who have years of experience doing just that, how to make their businesses viable.

Added to the mix is the oft times adversarial view that government employees have of private industry and you have a situation where the number one creator of jobs in the country is being hamstrung.

Nice for fixing the economy, right?

Shell Oil is perhaps the farthest along in testing a new technology involving extreme heat in situ for several years, with a “freeze wall” around the site so the fluid doesn’t leak into the groundwater. Shell says it will be several years before they know if this technology actually works. But, it will require enormous amounts of energy. One estimate is that production of 100,000 barrels per day will require a new power plant the size of the biggest in Colorado, near Craig west of Steamboat Springs. 500,000 barrels = five new power plants. Each site would be only a few acres in size.

Then there is the water issue; enormous amounts will be needed to sustain freeze walls for a couple years. Where will the water come from? Certainly not from a nearly over-appropriated Colorado River system. Anybody REALLY want to reopen the Colorado River Compact of 1922 to remove water from California & Arizona; from Colorado’s Front Range? Bottom line is simple: oil shale has never been a viable source of oil and likely won’t be.

Also, I’d recommend reading “The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates.” What does this have to do with the economy? Read “Centinel” and “Brutus” on taxation — it will hit you like a lightning bolt.

Nice job of obfuscation:

Sowell’s point about the horse and buggy is that life will go on if the U.S. auto industry was allowed to go bankrupt. You have heard, I am sure, that the U.S. auto market is too big to be serviced by foreign makers alone. GM (as an example) can emerge from bankruptcy a stronger, profitable company without the use of taxpayer money.

You have your dates wrong regarding the rebound of the economy during the Great Depression. There is a reason why after bottoming out in 1933 the rest of the 30′s are called a Great Depression. Yes, there was growth in GDP and improvement in employment. But an unemployment rate of over 14% is still very high. Economic bubbles have always occurred and the economy will snap back on its own. Did the New Deal contribute to stubborn unemployment?

Re: Bush I, Clinton. The “worst economy in 50 years” (Clinton’s words during the presidential campaign) turned out to be one of the shortest recessions in 50 years. No one has figured out how to avoid the business cycle.

I think the point about housing prices around the country is that:
1) Most Americans can afford housing just fine.
2) Government policies such as rent control make housing more pricey in certain parts of the country. Those places happen to be the localities complaining the most about unaffordable housing.

Sowell’s comparison of the current dilemma of the auto industry of the obsolete horse and buggy industry of 100 years ago was laughable. Automobiles are not obsolete, and there’s no replacement industry out there waiting in the wings. Retarded.

His slighting reference to the Keynesians of 70 years ago was a self-defeating argument in that those folks were correct about government spending at that point in time spurring aggregate demand. The American economy started to rebound around 1936-37, years before WWII began, and the legacy of the New Deal continued into the 1950s. And 70% the federal debt that has to be repaid was largely incurred in a mere 20 years of GOP free-marketeer presidential administrations over the past three decades. He conveniently failed to point this out.

He’s also incorrect about the so-called “Reagan Miracle” in that after the 1981-82 recession, the American economy moved forward until about a year after The Crapper left office before it soured. If you remember correctly, Bush I lost the election to Clinton largely because of American’s concerns about the slack economy of his tenure. There was no 20-year period of sustained economic benefit. In fact, it was the policies of the Clinton administration that started to turn around the damage caused by decisions made in the Reagan and Bush I years. This Sowell should get his facts straight.

Finally, his explanation about housing prices wasn’t an explanation at all. It was mumbo jumbo about relative RE in values in different parts of the country, conveniently avoid the core issue of the question, namely the lack of affordable housing for millions of Americans.

And this clown is supposed to be one of the great thinkers of the political right? No wonder those people are in the doghouse. They don’t have to worry about going over the cliff with the Democrats. They’re already broken up and dead at the bottom of the ravine.

Let me try my hand at this. Government produces nothing. It only consumes resources. It never produces a profit. It only consumes profits. Therefore, it should only do those specific things that we cannot do by ourselves, like national defense, for one example. Anything else is just consuming resources unnecessarily. How hard is that? Too hard, I guess. (sigh)