One of the problems with voting against a stimulus package is that nobody wants to be seen as saying no to “free” money. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution describes the agony of Georgia Republicans who are struggling to articulate a reason to oppose a stimulus package.
In Georgia, more than $5.6 billion in stimulus money would go to K-12 education, transportation and infrastructure projects, Medicaid and public safety. Mark Zandi, an economist from Moodys.com who served as an adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, said last week the country will have 4 million more jobs by the end of 2010 if the plan is approved, 143,000 of them in Georgia.
“It’s a very broad-based package,” said Alan Essig, a former state budget analyst who runs the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, which bills itself as an independent think tank in Atlanta. “It should help lessen the need for state budget cuts, increase jobs and employment, help solidify the safety net when we really need one.”
Georgia is facing $2 billion in budget cuts, affecting teachers, police and firefighters. The state’s Medicaid program is short by $208 million.
The unemployment rate has risen above 8 percent. Zandi, the Moodys.com economist, estimates that the stimulus plan could lower it by 1.8 percent by the end of 2010.
“I don’t think anybody wants to hear you’re voting against it or that the money’s not going to be coming,” said Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Republican from Grantville. If the bill dealt only with roads, infrastructure and job creation, he said, he would vote for it — but not as it’s written now.
Rep. Jack Kingston, a south Georgia Republican who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, faulted the package for spending too much on “left-leaning” social programs. He took particular aim at money earmarked for arts and health programs, including a national wellness program he characterized as creating something akin to a “national fat farm.”
Of course it’s not really “free money”. But it’s hard to think about that when the pile is sitting right there in front of you. Go ahead, just stretch our your hand and take it.
“Everybody likes to get gifts,” said U.S. Rep. John Linder, a Republican from Duluth. “Somebody has to pay for them.” … Rep. Tom Price, a Roswell Republican, is pushing for more tax cuts and credits, too.
“We’re going to take money from Georgians, wash it through Washington, take off some of the money Georgians sent to Washington and then allow Georgians to have some of that money back,” Price said. “It absolutely makes no sense.”
It makes perfect sense when you remember that the more fingers money passes through the better it is for the fingers. But the pile still sits there, and what would you rather have? Eighty five cents on the dollar or nothing on the dollar? Oh wait … it’s your dollar you say? Don’t worry. You’ll pay for it in the future when you have more money. Because the more sophisticated version of letting other people spend your money is that they are doing it for your future good.
There’s only one hitch to that argument: it depends on how wisely the money they are IOU’ing in your name is spent. Whether a future income stream actually eventuates critically depends on where the money recirculating today is spent; it also depends on whether the institutions being built today are laying the basis for productivity tomorrow. The old time management theorist Peter Drucker observed in 1959 that the most important thing to remember about the future was that it depended on getting things right today. He said it was important to understand what you were getting into now, and to feel your way forward every step of the way as things progressed. Otherwise, enthusiasms would simply lead to walking off a cliff. Drucker wrote:
Strategic planning does not deal with future decisions. It deals with the futurity of present decisions. Decisions exist only in the present. The question that faces the strategic decision-maker is not what his organization should do tomorrow. It is, “What do we have to do today to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow?” The question is not what will happen in the future. It is, “What futurity do we have to build into our present thinking and doing, what time spans do we have to consider, and how do we use tihs information to make a rational decision now?” …
Strategic planning is not an attempt to eliminate risk. It is not even an attempt to minimize risk. Such an attempt can lead only to irrational and unlimited risks and to certain disaster.
Economic activity, by definition, commits present resources to the future, i.e., to highly uncertain expectations … While it is futile to try to eliminate risk, and questionable to try to minimize it, it is essential that the risks taken be the right risks … We must be able to choose rationally among risk-taking courses of action rather than plunge into uncertainty on the basis of hunch, hearsay, or experience, no matter how meticulously quantified. … As such, planning, whether long range or short range, is nothing new. It is the organized performance of an old task. But we have learned that the task will rately get done unless organized. Above all, it will rarely become achievement unless done purposefully.
I’m a little disappointed in President Obama’s exhortation that people ought to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh’s reservations about the stimulus package. There’s every reason to look a gift horse in the mouth. First of all to decide whether it’s a gift; and second to decide whether it’s a horse.
Update: The saga of Barney Frank continues. Frank is now accused of using TARP to funnel money to funnel money to “the troubled OneUnited Bank in Boston – a bank that had already been accused of ‘unsafe and unsound banking practices.’ Its CEO, Kevin Cohee had also been criticized by regulators for ‘excessive’ pay that included a Porsche.” (Be sure to read the public comments at the bottom of the article.) Glenn Reynolds remarks that one of the risks of stimulus packages in hard times is they run the risk of becoming ” a massive transfer of wealth from the politically unconnected to the politically connected” under other color. That’s not necessarily the case right now. But it’s something to worry about.
Wretchard…
The answer is Hope.
Hope that helps!!!
Do we think that Obama may be planning to defund the military that’s currently killing terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, so he can bring that money back home and set up his own youth brigade of unemployable brown shirts? Start throwing money at the 20-somethings who elected him and who are now bearing the brunt of layoffs as Circuit City, et al., go belly up.
This memorable quotation is from Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (1742-1813). Scottish jurist and historian, he was widely known in his time and was professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University in the late 18th century.
The quotation is from the 1801 collection of his lectures:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage.”
Disheartening to learn that the Urinal-Constipation is read in Australia.
“The unemployment rate has risen above 8 percent. Zandi, the Moodys.com economist, estimates that the stimulus plan could lower it by 1.8 percent by the end of 2010.
Hogwash.
I take whatever numbers economists give with a grain of salt. How many of these worthies predicted the popping of the housing bubble? The precipitous rise in oil to $150/barrel and the even more sudden plunge to less than $40/barrel? Answer: none.
Put simply: these people have no idea what they are talking about. They throw numbers around that are made up.
Georgia, or any place else for that matter, is not going to get any more jobs from the ‘stimulus’ package. The ‘stimulus’ package is all about stimulating the left. The only people who will benefit are the usual suspects: ACORN, the unions, etc.
Do we think that Obama may be planning to defund the military
Of course he is. The “War Dividend”. He will defund it by canceling need R&D and procurement programs. It will put us in grave danger and humiliate us. Down the road it will limit our potions and may even lose us a war.
That is what the Democrats want.
It all goes to show how stupid and dishonest the GOP really is.
Anyone one with a brain in their head knows that you do not tax producers to create jobs. Spent taxpayers money to create jobs. They would be better off to burn the money, and least it would hold down inflation. The stimulus will only create government jobs, and short term labor jobs. Oh, there will be “consulting” jobs for the NGO’s (and dems or their kids work in these). It is just a wealth transfer program. It is just idiotic. The GOP should know better. Now wonder we are in the shape we are when the government does not have the faintest notion of how econmies work, It is not as thought they do not have any examples of the failures of this sort of thing.
The country will have 4 million more jobs by the end of 2010 if the plan is approved, 143,000 of them in Georgia.
That is just unbelievable that this is coming out of a Republican (well, maybe not it seems).
Oh and I love the number for Georgia, How did the figure that 3K part? Are they sure that it is not 143,104 new jobs?
These GOP idiots should all move over to the Low Countries, they share the same death wish. They are committing suicide, and taking the nation down with them.
We are in big trouble folks. Of the GOP bends over for Obama and gives him cover, there is no way that any opposition can make meaningful gains. What a disaster. How do we recover form this?
To me, it is really looking like like this “crisis” waw engineered in whole or in part.
Does anyone see any possible way to get the GOP’d head on straight. I do not.
The darn thing is that there are real solutions.I think that last thread about Limbaugh has it right in that Rush quote.
Why can’t the GOP see it.
Vote against the thing, make the Democrat own it. It will just blow up in two years.
Where is their sense of honor? If they are going to be i office during the destruction of this country, they might as well be men enough to stand up to these villians.
Our civilization is being dismantled right before our eyes and being replaced by the absolute worst models of History.
Are we really this week that we can be undone like this? That is almost the worse part of it: The Civilization of Mozart, Newton and Lincoln done in by the likes of Obama and Pelosi. even a year ago, I would not have thought it possilbe.
need=needed
Ofthe GOp=if the GOP
We seemed to have entered into a frenzied neo-Keynesian revival in government policy. Just sit back and be happy with the largesse and remember that thinking about the “long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.”
That philosophy makes strategic planning a lot simpler. Hakuna matata etc. etc.
At least that rep. from south Ga Mr. Kingston has directed his staff to put together a decent graphic “Stimu what” by way of the Powerline boys:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/01/022635.php
sorry this wonderfully affordable shiraz from Arabella in South Africa is impeding my ability the recall the html linky code.
neo=keynesian? Try neo-Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist.
Sit back and enjoy it? there will be nothing left.
We are in a completely different situation than we were in the last big “neo-keynsian” rivial. If fact we are still dealing with the results of that last burst. One could argue that we never really got out of it.
Enjoy the “largesse”? Ha Ha, that is a good one. Play a fiddle, eh?
Please do not criticize the “smartest man in Congress” as 60 Minutes informed me that he is indeed a victim due pity. His honest open gayness has unjustly disqualified him from becoming Speaker of the House. Absolutely no mention of his astute oversight of Banking maters. Just an oversight by the media no doubt….
This sort of behavior is no surprise. The surprise will be if the “stimulus” package ends up being only $850B.
The reason is that this is a classic “Tragedy of the Commons.”
Say Wretchard, Cedarford, NahnCee, Programmer, Dave, and Mongoose go to dinner together. (They were going to include Whiskey as well, but he had a date.) They agree to split the bill evenly, so each of them pay 1/6th of the total.
Wretchard orders first. He would normally order sinigang na baboy, which would cost about $5, but since he’s only paying 1/6 of the bill, he decides to get a filet mignon instead (cooked well done). Sure, the filet costs $24, but he’s only paying $4 of the cost (1/6th). What a great deal!
Cedarford goes next. Skipping his normal order of knish and chopped liver ($14), he too decides to go for a filet (rare).
NahnCee normally orders a caesar salad with blackened chicken, no croutons ($12). But she’s no fool; after all, if all the guys order steak, she’ll end up paying almost $24 for a lousy salad. So she goes for the steak, too, although she orders a New York strip sirloin ($30, medium).
Programmer says: 32oz. porterhouse ($36), medium rare, with a side of bok choi. He eats half the steak now, and takes the rest home for a little late night post-blogging snack. The bok choi is used as a garnish. What he was planning to eat was Tostitos and bean dip ($6).
Dave orders a steak. But then he was always going to get steak. A cowboy steak ($32) – ribeye, with the bone in. Rare, ’cause that’s the only respectable way to eat a damn steak. He takes the bone home to feed it to his pitbull. Everyone is happy.
Finally, Mongoose gets to order. He’s pretty honked off at this point, since he already ate out at a local Thai place (toam ka gai and pad thai, extra spicy) and was just coming along for dessert and a double espresso. But he figures, what the heck, I’ll order a chateaubriand for two, to go ($50).
Total bill: $196, or $32.67 per person. If everyone had ordered what they really wanted, the bill would have been closer to $100, or about half of what ends up getting spent.
The result is that everyone spends more, everyone eats more, and the dinner ends with 6 impoverished dyspeptics.
The only difference with the “stimulus” is that the number of impoverished dyspeptics increase by a factor of 50 million, and the waiters get a bigger tip.
L3
Praise Him!
Praise The One!
Praise Obama!
Allahu Akbar!
When republican’s seek to explain why they are not voting for the ‘stimulus’ package they need to keep it reasonably short, simple and understandable.
Respond by specifically NAMING the pork.
“There are 154 Pork Barrel Projects in the bill. According to CNN things like:
A $50M Las Vegas’ proposed ‘mob museum’
$4.8M polar bear exhibit at the Providence, RI zoo.
$1.5M for a water ride in Miami, FL.
$20M for a minor league baseball museum in Durham, NC
$6.1M for corporate jet hangars at an ARK airport
$20M for renovations at the Philadelphia Zoo;
$1.5M for a program to reduce prostitution in Ohio.”
“Stimulus package? When they offer one worthy of an affirmative vote, I shall vote for it. But I find it offensive to place an unnecessary and unconscionable burden upon our children’s children.”
The republican party should filibuster just long enough to explain why they oppose the bill and then offer an alternative. They should then drop the filibuster but refuse to vote for the bill.
Will they take heat for doing so. Yes, of course. But in the long run; 2,4, 6 or even 8 yrs… they will be rewarded.
Leo,
Very clever and apt analogy.
And when they all digest this meal, will they all say, “Let’s do it again!” But of course, will they be shrewder next time?
So it’s not just this +$800 billion dollar stimulus this year, its the one next year, and the year after….
After all, is it really “our money”, when we run such a big deficit? It’s all borrowed money, financed by T-bill sales.
So let’s keep dancing
We’ll break out the booze
And have a ball
If that’s all there is….
Dang, I feel stupid, Two days ago in a magnanimous mood, I told Benj I’m praying for Obama to succeed. I mean succeed in the sense of not sinking the ship with me and mine on it. I hoped for moderation on his part. Phat chance that! He hasn’t even been President a week and the situation seems dire squared. Forget any hopes of centrism. We’re screwed.
Talk about fingers touching money…check this out:
1. Colin Powell, acting Sec. of State under GWB walks out of the same UN Conference on Racism in Durban S.A. in which reparations are being foisted on the American public by the UN’s usual anti-American ghouls.
2. This same Colin Powell then quietly leaves the Bush administration and joins a hedge fund that specializes in creative funding mechanisms for “Green” technology.
3. In 2009, President Obama signs a multi-billion dollar funding bill which awards generous amounts of taxpayer money to Colin Powell’s hedge fund under the rubric of subsidizing “Green” technology.
4. In the same bill, the same President awards hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to construction contractors under the condition that they hire African Americans – call it reparations in drag,
It is as if Colin Powell’s aquiescence to a scheme that he would not be seen supporting publicly while a head of state has been bought and paid for indirectly with the taxpayers’ cold hard cash!
Meanwhile, my IRA is shriveling, and Powell was always a lackluster general…
Plausible deniability: there is a huge story about racketeering, graft and foreign influence in domestic elections here, if only the NYT or CNN dared to delve into it.
Is there no way Republicans can shut this down?
[Note: I cross-posted this comment at Roger Kimbals PJM site, too.]
Britian: How right you are.
L#: Well from my POV, it is more like they made us pay up front and then ran out the back door. Laughing.
Of course there is. Take it to the American people. But that means that they have to have those meanies in the MSM bad mouth them. I mean, what is worth that? Think of the discomfort.
If they do not, no one will ever take them seriously again.
If we took the scenario you outlines and just hit the public hard with it for 4 weeks, that would do it. I doubt if they have even that much manhood.
Mongoose,
You and I both know the media’d close ranks to protect the racket, just like they have coddled the Clinton/Dodd/Raines/Franks project to buy free homes for this same inconsolable 12% of the US population. You can imagine the swarm of accusatory epithets they’ll use to tar anyone who insists on bringing it up: words like racist, CO2 spewer, oil-lover, capitalist.
If can just find an openly gay, Prius-driving, Sierra-Club donor with Kenyan roots to sue them in court…we may have a chance of getting some air-time
Funny thing is just how much this racket resembles the UN’s lucrative “Oil for Food” program. Even curiouser…the personalities and the financiers all share a Middle Eastern locus.
Coincidence? Like the disgraced Scott Ridder, Powell was once on the good side: he helped to eject Iraq from Kuwait. But now, with reams of taxpayer money being waved in his face, what?
@ 20. steveaz
He was Colin Powell a while ago. Since then he became Colon Bowel. Metamorphosis is complete.
It boils down to a failure of our education system. It seems like free money because we haven’t educated people at to where it comes from, and the consequences of spending it.
Think about the last stimulus checks. We got them because we borrowed money mainly from China so that we could spend a couple hundred bucks at Walmart on products from China.
#21,
Heh! If you’re right, America needs a carrot juice enema followed up with a colon-oscomy.
G’nite!
People forget that gift horses still have teeth– another good reason for looking inside that mouth.
Steve:They can bypass the national MSM. internet, go a around to local media outlets, etc. Get all the good people out there: Palin, Rudy, etc.
Get some retired Generals out there. Find trusted poeple at the state level.
Expeiment, keep trying.
The GOP is lazy. They b!tch about bias, but they do nothing about it.
They have to explain to the American people what the media is up to
they also should find some way to sue the media back. Cheney got them to shut up when they went after his family.
A great many of the the people detest the media. When they see the hard time there will be an openning. The GOP has to understand WTF is up and fight for it. Newt did.
Enough if this. They need to get off their fat behinds and fight for the country.
I am sure that there are skeletons in some GOP closets, but there are plenty of Dem skeletons too. So someone has to fall on their swords.
People will weary of the hypocrisy.
fall on HIS SWORD.
@L3 #12: How dare you insinuate that!
Its my BORDER COLLIE damnit! And I HAVE to take it home to him. He refuses to be seen in public with Cedarford.
Gift from a Horses Ass:
Vatican criticizes Obama on abortion issue…
Arrogance
It is “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right, in signing a decree which will open the door to abortion and thus to the destruction of human life,” Archbishop Rino Fisichella was quoted as saying by the Corriere della Sera daily.
—
“Above my pay grade” being mere false humility – campaign posturing.
aka Lying.
Well, it is easy to impugn everyone elected in the GOP, but we’ve just had two-plus months of a media love fest with the President elect (now President in being). Just how do you penetrate that snowstorm?
), and being “maverick” again. And has good and ticked off a sizable chunck of the elected Republican Party over the years.
The Republicans don’t even really know who is the “head” of the party right now. Once they resolve the internal identity crisis and decide on a message (which better be PDQ), maybe we can start to get a little organized push-back.
McCain could be a leader of the party, but he is too interested in the siren song of the media (see IowaHawk epic poem
Sarah Palin is away off from the center of things, running Alaska from Ice Station Wasilla.
Mitch McConnel? About as exciting as cold oatmeal.
John Boehner is at least getting some face time in the media questioning the whole thrust of this “stimulus”; but not much face time.
Frankly, Mike Huckabee from his perch at Fox is doing more than most at public “pushback”. And that ain’t saying much.
For years we have heard that deficits will burden some generation down the road. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be there when the bill came due? Well, here we are.
FDR could play with Keyensian economics because we were largely debt free. Since then, we’ve gotten away with a large national debt because our growing economy allowed us to make the payments. That’s over now.
As Margaret Thatcher said, “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
Hugh Hewitt on his show the other day mentioned that after the 2006 elections disaster, they took a poll of the Congressional Republicans on whether to fight the democrats.
Only 26 out of 202 really wanted to.
Most elected Republicans have sold out. That is the real problem. There are too few in
Congress to fight the takeover.
“FDR could play with Keyensian economics because we were largely debt free. Since then, we’ve gotten away with a large national debt because our growing economy allowed us to make the payments.
That’s over now.”
—
Additionally, the industrial behemoth that grew out of WWII overwhelmed the debt with productive capacity.
“That is the real problem.”
—
Correctamondo
Obama was merely parroting traitorous turncoat Colin Powell, who blamed Rush Limbaugh for the GOP’s woes, while voting for BHO.
McCain, another worthless “leader” of the same stripe.
What to do about “free money”:
“Don’t you listen to him Dan!
He’s The Devil, Not a Man!
And he spreads the burning sands,
With water, cool, clear water.”
Say it in song. Then maybe somebody will
understand that it is a devilish mirage.
MSM is not, ever, going to say anything bad about bail-outs (or bribes from overseas) because they are depending on those same governmental bailouts to save their worthless and rapidly-going-bankrupt asses.
As a country, we would be much better off if there were no more newspapers or 6:00 news programs. But I just don’t see that happening when Obama will need trained poodles to spread his word for him. He’ll figure out a way to keep them in business.
Leo, if I put it on my expense account, how does that affect those tragic commons?
Diversion:
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is Australia’s third largest island.
The 93-mile long and 33 mile wide island is a refuge for Australia’s unique wildlife.
Numerous birds, koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and more run free.
Penguins, seals, dolphins and whales frolic in its pristine waters —more than one third of the island is National and Conservation Parks.
Click here or on the seal to hear Travelscope’s Kangaroo Island Adventure and view our 11-minute video.
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A couple of things about the bailout and Obama.
FIRST –
Fox News and other media outlets are talking “corruption” in specifically naming Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and Dems and the Bailout money. Fox News heavily, other outlets gingerly, but it’s gaining traction. Blago is going on the View, he’s not going quietly nor falling on his sword. I expect him to say that he and Obama were like “this” to the ladies on the View. He’s no shrinking violet.
And Blago and Princess Caroline’s bid for a hereditary seat and Biden’s son and Teddy and Barney Frank and Dodd and all the rest make corruption a good angle that people buy.
NEXT, the money won’t go to anyone but non-Whites and connected corrupt cronies. The video and blog of Robert Reich (and Charlie Rangel, another corrupt Obama crony) saying NO WHITES NEED APPLY for bailout money gives the GOP a great angle.
“Your Black President” and his corrupt cronies will take tax dollars, and bailout welfare recipients, non-Whites, long term unemployed, ex cons, the like, but NOT Whites, particularly White male construction workers and Skilled Professionals. And quote Reich and Rangel all day. Even better than Rangel is both corrupt, has cases pending, and is a long time crony of Obama.
Even Grant found corrupt cronies were a drag … and it’s happening FASTER now.
Finally, take a look at the Slashdot story on KDE 4. It’s not about Obama. And the male readership/poster people of Slashdot is about hard left as you can get. Heck Linux users lean heavily to the Left. THEY are calling KDE 4 as overhyped as Obama. Making the over-hype of “the One” a strategic mistake of the highest level. When the SLASHDOT CREW, spontaneously, apropos of nothing, start taking shots at Obama as all hype, AND THE STORIES GET MODDED UP, that’s HUGE.
It’s just Leonardo Di Caprio. The more women loved him, the more men hated him. Hype and all that work wonders with women (Obama by the supermarket tabloids seems to be still running for Planet’s biggest celebrity) … but the more guys appear on People Magazine the more men hate him. He’s already getting hated.
Let’s review: corruption around the bailout is all over Fox News and being picked up on WaPo, NYT, WSJ, and other outlets gingerly. Reich/Rangel make the theme that “bailouts for Blacks/Hispanics only, NO WHITES NEED APPLY” is part of the “Your Black President’s” bailout. [Only a matter of time before Reps take this to the floor.] SLASHDOT, the uber-left of the left male geek hangout, has turned on Obama and are calling him over-hyped just a week into the Administration.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obama’s picked a fight with gun owners (new gun-ban initiatives), anti-abortion activists, traditional marriage advocates (his White House Website reads like the GLBT Rainbow Coalition agenda — wanting to overturn Clinton’s DOMA), and of course Whites with the gift of Reich.
Bailout money? Free money? Most voters are not Black or Hispanic. Money ONLY to them (Dems can’t help themselves, it is habit of forty years) means taking money from Joe Average in a time of great stress, and telling him to get to the back of the bus, no money for him, instead it goes to NON-WHITES. From the first Black President. While Obama throws the doors of Gitmo open.
I think Obama either realizes he’s a one-termer and is going full on race-baiter/Marxist, or figures he’s won every toss of the dice and cannot possibly lose. My sense is the latter. He is not very smart, and is a celebrity with the usual sycophantic hangers on, many of them celebrities themselves. When Oprah worships you as a living god, you tend to get … hubris.
My guess, he’s down to 20% popularity in a year, the economy in ruins, race relations all time low, a nuked city or two and Dems possibly even lower. Serious impeachment talk, and the House switching back to Reps in 2010.
I mean, why pick fights on all fronts in the FIRST WEEK?
Because he’s a pompous, narcissistic, arrogant, ignorant, Marxist horse’s ass.
Next Question?
“Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obama’s picked a fight with gun owners (new gun-ban initiatives),”
—
Forewarned is Forearmed -
Son’s latest purchases:
A Semi-Auto 12 Gauge (AK Based)
An AR w/a 50 Caliber Barrel!
…both presently legal in gun-unfriendly HI.
Hakuna matata, indeed!
Cannoneer No.4 #3
Here is a link to a discussion of the “quotation” by “Tytler”–from the libertarian website LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north484.html
The idea attributed to “Tytler” sounds plausible. Do you have any further documentation regarding the source, whether “Tytler” or someone else?
Best wishes,
Jim
Mongoose=Cobra Killer,
One of the actions that signaled to me that the GOP was not beneath colluding in the Democrat’s grand schemes was the party’s collaberation in the Federally-mediated scheme to get an HDTV in everyone’s homes.
Leaving aside the fact that people who watch less TV are generally better-read and happier than those who absorb its glam and gloom day-in and day-out, the fact that Republicans were willing to engage in this sort of social-engineering gambit – which entrains free Americans like circus poodles, and just to buy another electronic gismo made in China – revealed a degree of contempt for free markets and free people that used to be the reserve of manipulative statists.
As we try to steer the party back to first principles and away from being Democrat-lite, I think it’s crucial to mark warning signs like this one in bright yellow and black.
It’s almost amusing to ponder that, if most folks had just waited a couple of years, they could have bought an HDTV at Sam’s Club for 1/8 of what they were selling for in 2004, despite the Gub’ment’s silly $300 rebate!
What a joke!
L3, “(They were going to include Whiskey as well, but he had a date.)” Hahahahahaha. That is hilarious. Still giggling…
Obama knows he has to do things quickly. If he pauses he loses momentum and that is all he has. Strike while the iron is hot or risk losing your brand and thus your cattle.
This is the beginning of the end for the “nation state”. As socialism guts the worlds treasuries and begins to starve the populations of the world we will see unrest like as never before. This normally leads to the Big Man dictatorship.
The principal difference this go round is “information technology”. Specifically the ability for one individual to enact commerce with another individual outside of his locality. Also the control of facts is beyond the control of the nation state at this time.
This will lead to smaller local gov’t on a state level. Hopefully with a very weak central gov’t as invisioned in the original constitution.
Probably just wishful thinking on my part.
Jim
It’s amusing: One of the hallmarks of recognizing a con is that someone seems to be offering you something for almost nothing–a deal that “seems too good to be true.” And most adults with IQ over 100 know that the deal being offered is a scam, to be avoided like the plague.
Now consider the “stimulus package:” It does seem to be free money, and yet the MSM and virtually all our “leaders” are on-board with it, with virtually no one screaming that the damn thing is a scam.
What can you say about a society in which a majority of the people are so poorly educated (or perhaps just dumb) that they fail to recognize that there’s no such thing as a free lunch?
Equally interesting, what are the prospects for the survival of a society both populated and governed by such idiots?
Leo, That is the best story I have ever read or heard to explain the Tragedy of the Commons. Since I teach an undergraduate course called Politics and the Economy I am going to cut and past it into a doc file and put in my Courses folder on my webpage for the kiddies with you name on it UNLESS you do not want your name on the story.
The corrupting in DC and Wall Street and Chicago by the political class and their business “partners” is incredible. They are so arrogant.
Same holds for the admins in my university by for small change and pseudo power.
The topics and discussion here are fantastic, but I find myself rather depressed after reading the last few.
So a question to Wretchard and the crew:
given the anticipated econonomic, social, and political changes anticipated here, what PRACTICAL real-world steps might a person take to protect themselves and their families from the likely consequences ?
Whiskey,
Got a link,Whiskey? I’ll check it out if you’ll provide it.
-TLTG (Too Lazy To Google)
Taking responsibility for yourself and not trusting in the advice of “experts” is always a good first step.
Nichols: But Civilizations decline and fail. “Yet it moves”.
The objections in that article seems to two fold;t he first is logical — that the Tytler phases are neither necessary or sufficient, and thus not logically compelling — and the standard Anti-Hegalian ontological critique — that inviduals cannot not be reduced to willless and hapless atoms buffed around by larger “historical forces” somehow larger than themselves. These are standard libertarian critiques against Hegelian economics, and for obvious reason. And, as far as the go they do have merit. It is a solid analytic counter to Marxism and “scientific socialism”, and a good background philosophical to the larger moral, political and spiritual critiques.
However, civilizations do decline and fall, and the historical eye can spot consistent patterns in them individually and comparatively, and these can well be articulate. That article you post seems to me to rather confound the historical with the philosophical, or rather, could be misused if taken out of contect.
I think that this historical sense is the one that people intend when they bring up the Tytler scheme (and it does matter if Tytler ever existed or not), and I believe that is how C4 employs it. So there is in fact truth to the Tytler scheme, though it is not be forerdained that a civilization need fail at any given point nor that they go through all of the satges outlined should they fail.
I do not think it wise that we should cast aside C4′s alarm.
Certainly we are in a decadent period, and core beliefs — and even core ways of knowing — are in decline. It is up to our exercise free wil to alter this, but Renaissance will require more than the free will of the individual, it will require assent to the pursuit and form of that revival and renewal by a large portion of the citizenry.. I do not know of many successful examples of this happening, at least not on the scale of the crisis before us.
Thanks for the excellent read, Mongoose. I followed C4′s link, too, and found it insightful, if only because it rebuts the fatalism inherent in the hoaxed treatise’s theory.
A tip for future ruminations: China’s dynastic cycles offer lessons on how to recover national coherence following a national decline.
It has been too long since I exited the University of Washington’s Int’l. Studies halls of learning to write knowledgeably about the topic now. Maybe someone with a more current expertise can offer some cogent words on the matter.
Cheers!
Oops! #52 should read, “I followed Jim Nicholas’ link[...]
Sorry Jim. My momma always told me, “ya gotta give credit where credit is due!”
-Steve
Jay,
Cut and paste at will. Cheers,
L3
With all the discussion about how many folks are being taken in by the promise of bail-out money, I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned how state and local governments are increasingly looking to state sanctioned gambling to increase revenue.
As the California budget crisis deepens, gambling revenues are being promoted as one source of income that does not involve a tax increase. But do such policies really raise money without raising taxes?
Casino revenue comes from wagers made by gamblers, and from this comes the money paid out as winnings. Some folks take home more than they pay to play, but only at the expense of those who take home less. Of course, the casino retains some of that money before winnings are distributed so inevitably more money is lost than is won. It is only the lure a possible big payout that makes gambling seem attractive.
Now, enter the state to take a share of the money wagered, and the ratio of winnings to losses declines even further. Advertisements for any form of gambling make it sound like an enormous budget shortfall can be made up without raising taxes. This is patently false. Each time a bettor spends money to gamble, part of that money will be paid to the state as a tax. It is deceptive to portray gambling as something that brings more money to the state without raising taxes. Wagers are like a sales tax except, on average, bettors do not receive full value for the money spent. But who doesn’t like the promise of a free lunch? And what legislature would ever consider it cynical to exploit such promises to seek re-election?
“…civilizations do decline and fall…”
Mongoose, Spengler says we’re morphing and evolving, not declining. I find that much perkier and putting my Pollyanna blinders on, will believe in that.
Man O man I’m glad I invested in those ARs and a sh-tload of ammo when Slick Willie’s Assault Weapons Ban expired.
Seen the price of 5.56 lately, it’s 5+ times what I paid for it not that many years ago, if you can find it.
It has certainly outpaced all my other investments handsomely.
I don’t know about Obama being a 1 termer.
Between amnesty for all those illegals, and the zillions more that will slide in when it is announced, and expanded welfare and disability (now that’s the real crock), reparations for all those “slaves”, as well as National Health Care, and the tax “rebates” (read more welfare) for even more americans, as well as increased cash payments for those single moms with ADHD children ($300 month each now I’m told, no wonder all SIX kids have it, family after family after family!) he might parlay a few votes out of it.
And of course he’s a “constitutional” lawyer, or something like that, and will lead the charge for a “Constitutional Convention” where he can take away all our gun rights (and term limits) which is the only way he can achieve all his objectives.
Not to mention the fact that there is billions of foreign dollars available to keep him in power and help him pay off the troublesome GOP.
Either way, down here in Georgia it’s going to be a bloodbath, that’s the only thing I guarantee.
Right, that is why he called his book The Evolution of the West.
I wonder if he might rethink it all if he could see how we have “evolved”.
A stroll or two though one of our Universities or “Art” Museums would shock even him, and I’d bet we would get more agitation than perkiness out of the old esthete.
But then, Spengler was no great lover of (other people’s) liberty.