Give Us This Day Our Daily Debt
The president made it clear in a recent campaign speech that nobody can make it alone. They need government:
In his words: if you have any money at all, “you didn’t get there on your own.” You owe it somebody else. The roads you drive upon, the wealth that you enjoy. But is the same true of President Obama’s ideas? Did he think them on his own? Or were they were provided by a whole lot of other people?
Most of us get our ideas at secondhand. Perhaps the president has borrowed a few from others. The intellectual tradition from which the president derives his ideas might well have been pulled from a group called United for a Fair Economy. Read their talking points; the resemblance is uncanny. But that is only because United’s ideas are themselves derivative. They come from an earlier tradition.
The key ideas are familiar. Spread the wealth. Tax people so that they may “give something back.” Limit incomes at the top to maintain fairness. Provide amnesty for anyone unfortunate enough to be undocumented. Illegal is such an ugly word. These things are all planks of United for a Fair Economy:
- Fair Taxation — Working for fair and progressive taxes at State and Federal levels, which includes efforts to preserve and strengthen the Estate Tax.
- Racial Wealth Divide — Working to raise awareness about the historical and contemporary barriers to upward economic mobility among people of color, and to promote a policy agenda that addresses the root causes.
- Responsible Wealth — A network of over 700 business leaders and wealthy individuals in the top 5% of wealth and/or income in the U.S. who use their surprising voice to advocate for fair taxes and corporate accountability.
- Popular Economics Education — Using Popular Education workshops and techniques to transform dry economic issues into valuable knowledge. UFE’s workshops enable participants to relate to the material, empowers them to take political action, and encourages them to build the movement for social and economic justice in their communities.
- Shareholder Activism — Raising awareness about the need for corporations to take into account the needs of stakeholders beyond those in board room.
- CEO Pay — They believe that the lack of pay equity in the U.S. can be addressed by changing the rules.
- Humane Immigration Reform — Working to reveal the push and pull factors leading to migration into the U.S., and to elevate a plan for humane immigration reform as part of broader labor and international trade policy reforms.
These are also pillars of Obama’s thought. Here’s Brian Miller of United for a Fair Economy explaining to a television interviewer how “you didn’t make it alone.” Note from the interview that his ideas have been around for years. Like the president’s speech at the Roanoke fire station, they are echoes of an earlier, unnamed source:
But if more data were needed to establish similarity — because after all nobody will believe that President Obama was influenced by Brian Miller — let’s turn to Valerie Jarrett (video at the link). And this time there can be no mistake, because it is widely known that Jarrett is one of the president’s closest associates. Jarrett sounds exactly like Obama. Or maybe it’s the other way around: Obama sounds like Jarrett. At any rate, they sound alike. She said:
“People want fairness. They know that people didn’t get wealthy alone. They got wealthy because they live in a country that where a government is doing what it’s supposed to do. Educates our children, it provides infrastructure, roads and bridges. It provides the research dollars for science and technology. And so when you do well in America, as we want everyone to do, you also a responsibility to your country and make sure that it’s a country where everybody has a chance to move to the middle class, and do well and have that great invention that turns into a global company that started in a garage. Everybody should have that opportunity. That’s what the president is fighting for,” Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said on MSNBC tonight.
If no business can exist in a vacuum, neither can any politician’s talking points. It is perfectly understandable that Barack Obama’s economic and political philosophy are not entirely of his own making. Most of it is derivative, but derivative of what?
The uncharitable will say that the president’s ideas are nothing but warmed-over socialism. But that would be unfair. According to the president himself, he is a centrist to the core. In fact, if Ronald Reagan were alive today, the Gipper would be a flaming communist by comparison:
Obama also claimed that he holds positions that 20 or 15 years ago “would have been considered squarely centrist positions. What’s changed is the center of the Republican Party.” Oh, and Ronald Reagan “could not get through a Republican primary today.”
Yes, somewhere along the line the party of Ronald Reagan became the party of Adolf Hitler without anybody noticing. And the party of FDR became the party of Ronald Reagan when nobody was looking either. They were much milder then. Surely a video of Ronald Reagan making the same points as President Obama, Brian Miller, and Valerie Jarrett will come to light when the right terms are plugged into the government-created Internet search engine. For Google and Facebook too, we owe to government. As the president reminds us, all your search engines belong to us:
I believe in investing in basic research and science because I understand that all these extraordinary companies that are these enormous wealth generators — many of them would have never been there — Google, Facebook would not exist — had it not been for investments that we made as a country in basic science and research. I understand that makes us all better off.
Certainly some people are better off today. But not everyone, and never as much as those who consciously wanted to owe their wealth to somebody else.
Also read: Rep. Ryan Rips Obama
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Outcome egalitarianism by any other name….
This is the mask not slipping, but being blown away in its entirety. According to the modern Dem party, a person who works hard, sacrifices in terms of time and effort, and is brighter or more talented than others didn’t build up their business, the public sector did. And that person really isn’t smarter or more hard working or more discliplined than anyone else. So they shouldn’t end up significantly better off. Oh, and while we’re at it, this point of view is arbitrarily defined as “centrist”.
OK, comrade president.
This bit will play very well to the public employee unions and public school teachers who have convinced themselves that without their “jobs” the world would end, and that they should be compensated at a rate equal t or greater than the average private worker, in clear breach of the social contract between the public and private sectors as envisioned by the Founders.
As good as some of them were, no teacher or DPW employees built my business. I did. Screw you all.
The thing that irks me is the thought of double taxation. I work hard and pay taxes. I buy things, like gas and pay taxes. The taxes are used for a variety of things, most of which I do not agree with. Like importing new illegal Democratic voters and giving everything I have ever earned to them in a way that I will be paying for the rest of my life. It is tax enslavement. Now I buy gas and the taxes collected on it are used to pay for roads. If I manage to accumulate wealth it is because there were roads built? I already paid for those. So did my parents. If anybody ought to be taxed twice for roads it is the illegal aliens who did not pay a dime to build America. Enough of the class warfare already.
Who is the 800 pound communist in the room? Hint: TBTF
No Mo is right. This is the mask coming off. Everyone was conned in 2008. Even the CPUSA put forward another candidate. Nobody voted for this stuff. That is why the feds are illegally stoking the pump to see if they can push over democracy right now. If they fail, they will be back. We need to re-write some laws or prepare for the inevitable battle for the republic.
The road to serfdom is filled with good intentions. I can agree with most of the stated points, but still disagree violently with things like Porkulus, and assert an urgent need to put financial guidelines like Glass-Steagall back in force, which somehow didn’t even make it onto this list.
These points aren’t really socialist, just soft-headed.
Can Romney really run for president without discussing this point by point and advancing some kind of constructive, proactive formula of his own? That’s the real crux of this matter, it presses Romney just where he doesn’t want to be pressed, on specifics. If Romney can really keep his mouth shut and still win this thing, it will be one for the books, … and not a very good one.
Everything is a matter of dosage. What did the Founding Fathers found except government? But in their conception it was for the common welfare and need. Government provided public goods. And free men agreed to taxes to fund those common goods.
Somewhere along the line the politicians realized they would prosper if they rewrote the dosage. Up until recently it was still an article of faith in public policy that there had to be a compelling interest in order to the move power over yet another dollar away from the person who earned it to the government.
The burden of proof was upon those who wanted to expand government. They had to make the case that such an expansion was necessary. What President Obama and the Fair Economy people have done is reversed the burden of proof.
The general principle now is that government is good. Now it is up to you to show why government shouldn’t take that incremental dollar from your pocket to pay for fairness, gender equality, environmental sustainability, self-esteem or whatever else. It is a case of prove you should keep your money. And by the way it isn’t yours. You owe it to somebody else.
That is the most insidious claim of all.
Few now remember that the claim to one’s labor underpins the claim to freedom. We are free because we own ourselves and the fruits there from. It is also the reason why no man can be a slave. For nobody, not even the King owns you and your labor from the git-go. So how could slavery exist? By declaring slaves to be non-men or subhumans. But no one could own another human being.
Well now they can, at least in principle. For what does it mean when the fruits of your labor are not yours? They are whose then? You are whose then? How ironical it is that now, in the name of compassion and other lofty feelings, the Fair Economy people make so bold as to say, “you don’t own the fruits of your labor since it’s really not yours.” It must be the King’s then, for if it is not mine then whose? This is the arrangement that people tried to escape in the first place.
President Obama’s ideas are truly derivative. Just how unoriginal they are is what is surprising.
I disagree completely, Josh. These ideas are so left over as to be decaying. The dishonesty is palpable. And, most importantly, they’re too complicated for anyone who doesn’t already know better to pay attention to.
The election will turn on whether Acorn can schlep enough uninformed and/or resentful blacks and Latinos to the polls to overcome a landslide. This man has become so boring, empty, cliche-ridden, and photographically unattractive that the worse thing for Romney to do would be to engage him on details. He should stay as far away from him rhetorically as possible.
And this just in: In an unwitting self-spoof, our dear leader quoted Truman as saying, “The buck stops with you.” Unbelievable idiocy.
Wow! That is such sophomoric thinking that it is hard to believe anyone in the Obama administration would voice it in public! It is so wrong that I don’t even know where to begin.
But an even bigger issue is Obama’s willingness to pander to the leftist morons while only months away from the election. How does this make sense? Conventional wisdom would say that Obama should suddenly become a staunch centrist – so much so that he makes Romney look like a flaming liberal. Obama would then return to his extremist roots after winning the election. Is the Obama team counting on the short attention span of the public? Are they confident that Romney won’t hammer them with attack ads loaded with this Obama-speak-nutty-material?
Either Axelrod is brilliant or a moron – I’m not seeing any middle ground. He’s got Obama doing stuff that has to be hurting the campaign.
I’m not a political strategist in real life nor do I play one on TV, but it is clear that Obama’s campaign strategy wasn’t written by Bill Clinton – somebody who is pretty darn good at it.
No sentient being would vote for Obama a 2nd time – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4nvhAZ0vr0
Josh, “Can Romney really run for president without discussing this point by point and advancing some kind of constructive, proactive formula of his own? That’s the real crux of this matter, it presses Romney just where he doesn’t want to be pressed, on specifics.”
Completely agree that Romney needs to tell us what he is going to do. It is very distressing that he won’t be clear about his intentions. But Obama has just thrown a big , fat, wimpy, fastball ball right down the middle of plate, and Mitt should just be swatting this commie gopher ball into the seats from now until November.
This is now no longer class warfare. Obama has unwittingly framed this debate as simply the producers versus the rent seeking takers. Ya know sometimes these commie fellow travelers are so deep into the leftist echo chamber that they don’t realize how truly bad this gruel from Buraq sounds.
While many are getting some sort of government assistance, I doubt very much that the majority of the electorate want to see themselves as wholly dependent victims who can’t survive without a handout. Buraq has basically implied here that any wealth, and I mean any wealth no matter who humble it is, is fair game to be taken by the government. If played right by Mitt that 60 plus percent of the electorate that is barfing at the thought of Obamacare will not be too happy at what is implied by Buraq.
I saw somewhere on a blog (perhaps this one) that Detroit was the Dem vision for humanity.
A giant, undereducated, unemployable, criminally oriented underclass, surviving on government handouts . . . a large, arrogant, officious public sector which believes that it rules instead of serves . . . and an overregulated and demonized and enslaved (by the public sector) private sector.
President Obama has now publicly admitted that this is so.
I had a lot of clever things to say but then realized they have already been said by those better then me;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMUcBrmkL0&feature=related
Sleep with one eye open.
I wasn’t aware that some teacher or fireman had agreed to co-sign my line of credit loan with the bank. How gracious of them. Will they offer their homes as collateral, as mine is?
Since they have agreed to put their capital at risk, of course they should share in the profits generated by my company. It is only fair.
BytheNbrs
It is a case of prove you should keep your money.
You, who? Half the population doesn’t pay any income taxes, Obambus swears on a stack of doobies that he isn’t raising taxes on anyone making less than $250k, and what the heck Bernanke can print the rest, if a bunch of yammering Hollywood starz and Warren Buffett’s cheeseburger band don’t happily volunteer to pay it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Half the “middle class” is now broke due to all the financial shennanigans, so out of irritation they might vote for higher taxes on “the rich”, only fair, in this time of troubles (lines right out of Atlas Shrugged, “until the country gets back on its feet”).
And the Democratic line, “How will we pay for these ‘tax cuts’ on millionaires and billionares’”, Obambus is simply going to repeat forever.
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mm @ 5: I disagree completely, Josh.
Everbody agrees with #7, it’s just been caught in the vice of partisan politics for twenty-plus years.n I agree violently with #6, the change on that issue since the 1970s is part of the problem, the social contract that made American – is broken. Ditto #5, the very capitalist system is broken if shareholder interests are raped. #4 is just asking for an informed and involved electorate, is that radical? #3 is a bit of a sleeze, the Warren Buffett factor, I do NOT believe in trying to fix the problems with taxes … though I’m starting to fade a little on that resistance. #2 is a bit more PC sleeze, I’ll pass on that, unless we just fold it into #4. And #1, fair and progressive taxes – wassamata, you don’t like apple pie? You ask me, fair and progressive taxes would RAISE taxes back on the 50% currently uninvolved. And I have nothing against the estate tax at some reasonable level, somewhere between $10m and $100m.
And none of these matter unless the banksters are reined in.
Yeah I know, it sounds vaguely socialist and egalitarian, but it also sounds populist, libertarian, and – democratic, small ‘d’. And we are in danger of losing that these days. Eternal vigilance and all. Equating money with virtue is a swell way to blow it.
We have seen this before.
From “The Communist Manifesto.”
The government used to be of people and for the people. Now it owes its existence to special interests, foreign and domestic. It is formed to protect the earth from from the American consumer. To manage scarcity. To cause scarcity. To protect illegal aliens from from US law. To protect gays from the consequences of their own obnoxiousness. It is a government that exists to punish the traditional working class.
Your government hates you and wants you to die.
The one campaign promise I want to hear from Mitt Romney is that he will return power to State Governments. The Federal Government has become a giant all-consuming blob that is consuming the private sector and the hopes, dreams, and futures of the American public.
George Bush and Barack Obama both had it wrong: big government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.
At 2:30 the interviewer describes John Rockefeller’s agent “giving shiny dimes away” for PR… then he stops short of questioning Miller as a possible agent of today’s establishment. Yet it’s obvious that most of these jerks serve their own John Rockerfellers in a different way- they are out to defame and denigrate the opposition (whether that’s socialism or anything else).
We already know that a radical “Bill Ayres” is dangerous. We don’t need puppets to illustrate this. Making caricatures out of enemies is evil, one of the worst devices to emerge from last century.
In contrast, it’s a fine thing to know history and avoid repeating it. It’s only good that insurance companies make videos to demonstrate safety, even knowing that the acting is bunk. But that’s not what these people are doing. I think they just want to slander bold new ideas like progress and perfect utopias.
no mo uro A giant, undereducated, unemployable, criminally oriented underclass, surviving on government handouts . . . a large, arrogant, officious public sector which believes that it rules instead of serves . . . and an overregulated and demonized and enslaved (by the public sector) private sector.
….which has already run out of city taxpayer money and now exists only on Michigan state money. When that runs out, no doubt the Federals will keep this Democratic Utopia Demonstration Project afloat, and it won’t even take a Presidential Decree. The GOP House hasn’t defunded ObamaCare in two years, why would they defund Detroit?
–
“My father joined our party because the Democrats in 1952 would not register him to vote. The [Republicans] did.” —Condoleezza Rice
Since Wretchard #4 stole my thunder about private property (and in a much more elegant fashion, I will admit) I’ll just leave with one little side thought.
Could this also be a shot across the bow of all of those wealthy people who donated to the Obama campaign in ’08 and are now supporting Romeny?
KRB
I will gladly give the President a share in my enterprise, in lieu of taxes.
Then he can honestly claim that I share ownership with the government, that I did not get there on my own.
I refer interested folks to the brilliant essay on the subject titled “Your Dog Owns Your House” by Anthony de Jasay, available at
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/Jasaydog.html
We already live in a country where everyone can succeed, patent that next great idea, etc. That is not enough for progressives, they want a money-back guarantee. Look at public unions, they want guaranteed pay whether they produce anything or not. Not surprising Obama feels this way since he has never produced anything except hot air. The biggest difference is even though he has been given the opportunity, he is unable to produce any positive results. He doesn’t know how. If he had to work his way up through merit he might have learned something useful.
He is an ASS CLOWN.
“[Romney]…he doesn’t want to be pressed, on specifics.”
Barak wants to lure Romney in on his terms. Romney is right to be cautious. (picture of Republicans pushing grandma off of a cliff)
The Liar in Chief promised everything to everyone. Romney should build his case on a slow steady pace and make modest promises, it’ll drive the Obamaites mad.
Limited government does not come with a lot of sizzle.
Dear 6. Josh has fallen deep into the mental sinkhole of “rationalization”. All seven points he mentions are carefully constructed to seem fair and even-handed to those who think about such things 10 seconds or less a day, so any reasonable fellow will agree with them. Yes? Well, No.
If a prudent person carefully reads each and understands their highly limited references all sorts of major far-left dogma problems arise. To some, not having liberty or freedom is no big deal. To the rest of us it is. Seven “No’s” from me.
And the rationale that Romney “must respond” is so East Coast it bothers me seeing it in these comments. We normally don’t have that many trolls here on BC. What gives?
Looks like everyone got the “smoke signals”-including “Sacagawea-Warren.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/elizabeth-warren-on-class-warfare-there-is-nobody-in-this-country-who-got-rich-on-his-own/
All Mitt needs to do is run this speech 24/7. This imbecile has no idea where the government got its money to build these roads, schools, etc. He truly is a sick and ignorant puppy.
Just as a religious, racial, or social determinist is intellectually incapable of accepting blame for their personal shortcomings, they are incapable of crediting accomplishments to individual efforts. Mr. Obama is a socialist determinist: every mistake he makes is someone else’s fault, and every personal accomplishment is the result of a collective effort.
21. 49erDweet:And the rationale that Romney “must respond” is so East Coast it bothers me seeing it in these comments. We normally don’t have that many trolls here on BC. What gives?
Agree. I think too many conservatives are much too eager to close with the enemy. It is now July and the election is in November. The most relevant issue of this election, from just about every pundit I read, is The Economy. If Americans cannot see that Obama is BAD in this regard after 3.5 years, there is no hope for them. News cycles are now measured in seconds, not days or even months as before. I firmly believe Romney is waiting until after the convention; that gives him 3 months of intense exposure and limits the response time of Jon Stewart, SNL and the rest of the MSM. I think of it as the calm before the storm.
Besides, when your opponent is shooting himself in the foot, just stand out of the line of fire.
The Estate Tax is evil incarnate.
http://www.fates.org/moc/?p=2345
“That’s all I got to say about that”
Thanks, Speakeasy.
Here’s the UFE Plan spelled out in simple words:
1. Discourage the development of family businesses.
2. Pour billions more dollars into education. Even if the others haven’t worked.
3. Drive more and more corporations away from our shores, along with their jobs.
4. To be really, really fair, the Government needs to make more and more – in fact all – business decisions.
5. Bond and shareholders must be prevented from being paid back their investments.
6. No more pay for performance. Equal wages for all. Includes NFL and Hollywood.
7. America is so evil and rotten it owes it to all other nations to accept their emigrants sight unseen.
Remember, Obama 2012. “Pretending to Matter”.
Well, yes, the Government did things that facilitated (not enabled) you to prosper.
And you did things that enabled the government to exist in the first place. Like paying taxes. And even more importantly, simply giving a rat’s rump about what the government wanted you to do.
Take WWII for an example (it’s not that we like WWII here at the Belmont Club, it’s that just there was so much of it to use, like the joke about buffalo chips). Leftists like Michael Moore say that WWII proved the government can do anything, like health care. But in reality the Government did not fight WWII on behalf of the American people, rather, the American people fought WWII on behalf of the Government. Losing WWII would have meant that the Government that fought it no longer existed, either due to an enraged populace throwing the Federal bums out or due to the Nazis executing the Federal bums.
And that is why the Declaration of Independence says that the government depends on the Consent of the Governed. If we the people chose to ignore the existence of the government then it would cease to exist, and not just because it would run out of money.
The Government exists at our sufference, not we at its. This is so basic to the very idea of the USA that a politician that indicates otherwise can not be considered to be a American citizen.
Romney Comes Clean, Admits He Made $32 Trillion In 2006
BOSTON — In an effort to make a full disclosure of his professional and financial records following discrepancies over his stewardship of Bain Capital, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney admitted Monday that in 2006 he personally made $32 t…
I have found it instructive when considering the relative drift of the parties to simply observe the political migration of the Rockefellers, once Republicans, now Democrats.
An old political saw went: “keep Republicans out of the bedroom and Democrats out of the boardroom”. Probably some truth in that, on both sides. Problem is, now you have to worry about Democrats in every other room in the house, telling you what to eat, what to drink, what to drive, where to set the thermostat, what kind of lightbulb to use, how much water to flush, how much toilet paper to use, what to read, and what to think. (The last four are the bathroom by the way.) If I have imagined a solution to any problem in the last 20 years, and I considered the polar opposite of what I imagined, I can arrive at the Democrat position virtually every time. Its why I always vote for the Republican in any election: I know that however bad he or she is, I know that at least one day in their life, they thought a coherent thought. And I used to be a registered Democrat.
27. RWE:If we the people chose to ignore the existence of the government then it would cease to exist, and not just because it would run out of money.
I believe more every day that the only way to save our Union is for states to withdraw until order is restored. We need some basic government but states can supply most of what we need. In this way, as you noted, the Federal Government would run out of money. The states would still have goods to sell and would go on. I am fully prepared to move to the state which will do just that. What I want most from my federal government is to be left alone. That has not been working out very well lately.
“Completely agree that Romney needs to tell us what he is going to do.”
http://www.mittromney.com/blogs/mitts-view/2011/09/believe-america-mitt-romneys-plan-jobs-and-economic-growth
It’s been out there for months. Almost a year. In Espanol too. Click on the download button and get your very own copy.
You have been suckered by another media lie.
“…and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.”
15. Baobo
But that’s not what these people are doing. I think they just want to slander bold new ideas like progress and perfect utopias.
…………..
There are no perfect utopias. This is a communist idea used to justify all manner of bad government. In the early 20th century russian writers envisioned utopias based on technology and capital they didn’t understand. The result was a nightmare.
All technological solutions are transient. They work for awhile. That’s it. The technological solutions for the 20th century will not work for the 21st century. The technological solutions for the 21st century won’t work for the 22′nd century. If the all the technological solutions discussed here work out–then we buy time for three or four generations to figure out the next solutions. And so on.
Nor do technological solutions do anything about the underlying nature of man. Nor likely would we want them to. After all God gave Adam and Eve the choice to sin or not to sin.
Education: A state and local responsibility. Federal involvement ha made things worse.
Roads and Bridges: Same thing. Paid for with the gasoline tax, not the income tax.
R&D. Some dollars are well spent, but much of it is trivial or useless. Think about “Climate Science” and try not to laugh. The internet did originate with DARPA sponsored research. DARPA was trying to figure out how the country could survive a surprise nuclear attack by Soviet Union and maintain its communications system. Obama would not have approved, as his camp wanted pre-emptive surrender.
Fairness in taxation? Who is he kidding? Is it fair that 2/3rds of the taxes are paid by 1/5th of the people, while the other 80% contributes less than 1/3rd? Why is that fair? Their share of the national income? It is less than half. The numbers I am using were published by the CBO last week. Why doesn’t Obama ever use real numbers? Is it because they don’t support his claims?
Intellectual Junk Food.
He already made a trillion dollars in cuts. What cuts? Could make another trillion two (too? to?). What a load of crap. He’s like a legend in his own mind who is also a spending hawk in his own mind. Hey Barack, phone Earth.
Obviously, the speech was a Grand Scam Home Run.
If I did not get where I am on my own and I owe what success I have to somebody else then I ask the president to pray tell who that person is. I know for a fact it is not the person to whom he proposes to give my money because the illegal alien was not here when I was making it and the Welfare Queen, well she has nothing to give even if she were inclined. Perhaps it is the government bureaucrat, but no I don’t think so because he has always lived off my sweat. Maybe it was my teachers, but of course I went to catholic schools and my folks were busy paying for my education as well as the mis-education of all those unfortunates in the care of the NEA.
So who do I owe Mr President besides my parents who did a much better job of teaching me the value of hard work and respect for other folks property than the two totally irresponsible sad sacks who spawned your sorry ass? To hell with you Mr President. A pox on you and all like you. A pox on anyone who thinks he is owed the sweat of another mans brow.
33. Charles
Nor do technological solutions do anything about the underlying nature of man. Nor likely would we want them to. After all God gave Adam and Eve the choice to sin or not to sin.
…………
That said here are some of the predictions of Ray Kurzweil for science 20 years from now.
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Scientist-Says-Immortality-Only-20-Years-Away-3710466.php
What is going on here is that the President must make this election about anything other than his utterly failed policies so he will trot out this unspeakably inflammatory rhetoric because he would rather tear the social fabric of the country apart than lose the election. There is a word for somebody like that. In clinical terms he is a sociopath but the term that really fits is evil. Plain and simple the man is evil and lacks a conscience. There is no way you can base a campaign on vilifying half the population of the country and in effect promising to expropriate their wealth in order to gain the votes of the other half unless you have the morals of a mugger.
Yeah the mask is off this guy and I am pretty sure before this election is over I will have friends and relatives I will never speak to again, and I am sure I will not be alone. Is that the America this guy wants? Is that the America any of us want? I mean any of us besides the Acorn crowd and the political hacks around the president? I hope not.
Stoi, “You have been suckered by another media lie.”
Well Stoi, I’ve read Romney’s plan and I hope that’s not all there is.
It does have some nice things:
End Obamacare and Frank/Dodd, End the Death Tax, Cut Corporate Taxes to 25%, Cut new regulatory costs to zero, reform legal liability, reduce Federal Employment, approve new drilling, reform the Clean Air act, and cut Government Spending to 20% of GDP, etc.
Many of these positions are pro-forma Republican platform stuff. The cutting spending to 20%, which is really the most ambitious part of the plan, is a part of the Republican Caucus Cut, Cap and Balance initiative. All glossy political PR goals, but as Josh says, little in the way of specifics.
All these things will help, but fundamentally his program does not address how we got into the fix we’re in. There is zero on dealing with our Banking mess. And except for some stuff on the Clean Air Act, there is little pre-Obama regulatory reform.
We are not in a cyclical recession. If we were, these proposals would be fine.
Unfortunately, we are in a severe depression caused in large part because of thousands upon thousands of stifling and impossibly overzealous government regulations at the Federal, State and Local levels, and an out of control, unbelievably corrupt, financial sector egged on by over the top government crony socialism. These horrendous problems are simply not addressed by Romney. His programs, particularly given their lack of specificity and the lack of fire in his belly and those of the Insitutional Republicans, are just really unlikely to bring back America.
s @ 31: http://www.mittromney.com/blogs/mitts-view/2011/09/believe-america-mitt-romneys-plan-jobs-and-economic-growth
Yeah sure, so after reading this I understand that what Romney is going to do is hire a bunch of interns to write 57 point plans. I only hope Romney has read this one. Or maybe not, I’m pissed at the call for importing more immigrants, that suggests Romney is still effectively outsourcing jobs. Maybe he’d best disown this thing, but like Pelosi says, no point in anyone reading it, just have to pass it first.
Can he condense this to something of a political statement? Can he HIRE someone to condense it to something of a political statement, and then recite it correctly in the debates? I suppose that’s roughly what he did at Bain, and I only hope he did even that much.
I’m stuck voting for him, up to a point, not that it matters since I’m in Californistan.
Well then, it wouldn’t be the first time. Ronald Reagan had trouble “getting through” GOP primaries in 1976 too. Seems the party thought he was too much of an individualist. 4 years of Jimmeh Carter fixed that. For a while anyway.
The joke I coined for this and used to tell is “People vote based on fear. The vote for Republicans when they’re afraid the Democrats are going to raise tax rates to 113% and surrender to the French. And they vote for Democrats when they’re afraid Republicans are going to outlaw sex and good music.”
But the joke doesn’t work any more. Nowadays the Democrats are way more likely to outlaw sex and good music, not to mention good food, comfortable homes and functional toilets.
Josh seems like a smart dude, so it’s a bit disappointing to see him fall for, and somewhat endorsing, that list of thinly-veiled Hegelian tripe. (For example, I’m the son of a legal immigrant, whose adoptive parents had to petition Congress in order to legally bring in my father. So no, I don’t agree with #7, and I resent the hell out of any illegal invader and their defenders who believe they have the right to take by fiat what so many had to work so hard and spend so much money to legally and morally accomplish).
I thought we all pretty much knew how the pretty little
liescodewords from every NGO via Chairman Lakoff are euphemisms for the socialism/fascism that they dare not openly speak. I do concur that the facade is crumbling and for some reason, at least Obama’s camp feels comfortable with letting it all hang out. Thinking through the possible reasons for this is a chilling exercise, and none of the possibilities are good, such as Subotai has detailed in parallel topics earlier.As for me and mine, I’m really warming up to ol’ John Galt, who has the antidote to Buraq’s Poison:
“They know that people didn’t get wealthy alone. They got wealthy because they live in a country that where a government is doing what it’s supposed to do.”
So……. I suppose that the following must also then be true……
People don’t get poor alone. They get poor because they live in a country where the government is NOT doing what it’s supposed to do.
Thus, government redistribution of wealth!
I am astounded that nobody mentioned Elizabeth Warren in any of the comments (I just did a search). Remember: She was the first public figure to garner wide attention for making the very same points Obama did a few months ago. She used the very same phrasing and “logic.”
The most glaring omission by stupidity in this line of reasoning is this: where does the money for the government’s role in all this come from? Who generates actual wealth from which government revenues can be extracted? So who’s the real egg and who is the chicken? This is typical Orwellian inversion of logic. Private wealth comes first. The government owes the private sector and the citizens, not the other way around. Note that the underlying purpose of this twisted fantasy logic is to convince people that we serve the government.
“Or maybe not, I’m pissed at the call for importing more immigrants, that suggests Romney is still effectively outsourcing jobs”
LEGAL immigrants are needed. Ever society needs fresh meat every so often.
Mitt’s 57 point plan (one for each state?) is window dressing, of course.
Josh, he is a corporate Raider, maybe the most ruthless one ever. His real plan is probably something like selling Calipornia to the Chinese.
While I see that as a killer plan and the 2nd best thing that could happen to America (right behind new York getting nuked) I still won’t vote for him.
“I saw somewhere on a blog (perhaps this one) that Detroit was the Dem vision for humanity.”
If we’re lucky.
More likely is Somalia.
Um I just want to say, my parenst paid the taxes that paid the teacher for my eduation k-12, I actually paid for my college education, I did not have anybody motivating me to get up out of bed to get to work. No one gave me money to buy my house, no not even the bank did, i paid it all myself. No one comes and repairs my car for free. All the roads, teachers, firefighters, law enforcement, public servants, all paid for by the citizens of this country. I pay a portion of the presidents paycheck and he wants to tell me I did not get here on my own? He is right; I got here because God allowed it and nobody else. Not the government nor anyone else allowed me to have what blessings I have except for my Lord Jesus Christ.
db @ 42: thinly-veiled Hegelian tripe
Immigration reform as Hegelian tripe? We’re just talking about giving most of the current illegals “bracero” cards, not citizenship. Once the border is secured (which issue has hung up the rest), then there might be some amnesty of cases already decades unenforced. Is tripe really Hegelian?
Well, well…
To say that (whatever their source may be) the things enounced by Obama are “ideas” is giving him a medal he does not deserve.
Government exists only because it receives the money from the taxes paid by business.
So actually every businessman is paying for whatever the government does.
End.
W: “If you have any money at all, ‘you didn’t get there on your own.’ You owe it [to] somebody else… Did he [Obama] think them on his own? Or were they were provided by a whole lot of other people?”
“Plato’s metaphysics holds that the universe consists of two opposed dimensions: true reality – a perfect, immutable, supernatural realm, nonmaterial… non-perceivable – and the material world in which we live. The material world, Plato holds, is only an imperfect appearance of true reality… Momentous conclusions about man are implicit in this metaphysics: since individual men are merely particular instances of the universal “man,” they are not ultimately real. What is real about men is only the Form which they share in common… Each man therefore must strive, as far as he can, to wipe out his individuality (his personal desires, ambitions, etc.) and merge himself into the community, becoming one with it and living only to serve its welfare. On this view, the collective is not an aggregate, but an entity. Society (the state) is regarded as a living organism (this the so-called “organic theory of the state”), and the individual becomes merely a cell of this organism’s body… The advocacy of the omnipotent state follows from the above as a matter of course. The function and authority of the state, according to Plato, should be unlimited… The program of government domination of the individual is thoroughly worked out. In Plato’s “Republic and Laws” one can read the details, which are the first blueprint of the totalitarian ideal… The blueprint includes the view that the state should be ruled by a special elite: the philosophers. Their title to absolute power, Plato explains, is their special wisdom, a wisdom which derives from their insight into true reality… the so-called “Form of the Good”… The Form of the Good cannot be known by the use of reason… It can only be grasped, after years of ascetic preparation, only by an ineffable mystic experience… which is reserved to the philosophical elite… The mass of men, by contrast, are entangled in the personal concerns of this life. They are enslaved to the lower world revealed to them by their senses… They are fit only to obey orders… Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective – society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. – is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it – or its representative, the State – deems it desirable.” Leonard Peikoff
http://www.peikoff.com/lr/home.htm
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
“The individual is only a cell… power is collective. The individual only has power in so far that he ceases to be an individual… If he can make complete utter submission; if he can escape from his identity; if he can merge himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is all powerful… Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death; the Party is immortal… You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do, and will turn against us; but we create human nature.” George Orwell – 1984
Obama is both right and wrong here.
But where he is right, he is right in only the most sophomoric, simplistic way.
Yes, government provided the roads, and farmers provided the food we ate, so we didn’t do it alone.
But…
We ALL have the roads and the food and the other ingredients, but we ALL don’t start successful businesses selling a product that people will voluntarily pay for, do we?
No. THAT is creating a business, and that is the preserve of a few special people with ideas and motivation above and beyond the call of mediocrity.
W: “Now it is up to you to show why government shouldn’t take that incremental dollar from your pocket… It is a case of prove you should keep your money. And by the way it isn’t yours.”
So it has come to this, the very thing our Founding Fathers rebelled against, the idea that the individual does not own the fruit of his own labor, that in effect the individual does not own himself. The King owned the fruit of the serf’s labor – the King owned the serf. Now, in modern times, the Marxists own the fruit of your laobr – the Marxists own the proles. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
“God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And tho’ all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of nature; and no body has originally a private dominion, exclusive of the rest of mankind, in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state: yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other, before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial to any particular man.…Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.” John Locke
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111locke1.html
“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.” Samuel Adams
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/adamss.html
W: “What does it mean when the fruits of your labor are not yours? They are whose then? You are whose then? How ironical it is that now, in the name of compassion and other lofty feelings, the Fair Economy people make so bold as to say, ‘you don’t own the fruits of your labor since it’s really not yours.’”
“With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name – liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names – liberty and tyranny.” Abraham Lincoln
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1067
“That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles – right and wrong – throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time, and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, ‘You work and toil [middle class] and earn bread, and I’ll eat it [Marxist and proletariat classes].’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race [or class] of men as an apology for enslaving another race [or class], it is the same tyrannical principle.” Abraham Lincoln
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/liberty.htm
It is so easy to be a philanthropist with other people’s money, even better when all of the fluffy help the poor and save the planet bumperstickers really just get used to line the pockets of politicians and their cronies. Sweetheart deals, get your sweetheart deals (er umm I mean save the poor, heal the planet), got to make sure to maintain the guilds and monopolies that prevent the serfs from entry and rising up, wouldn’t want any competition from those lowly little people, better to keep em in their place and crucify them if they get unruly, or gasp… start to prosper. Even more fun is to crucify the littles guys who are struggling through hard times in a tough economy. It is so cool when the big kids bully the little ones. Someone’s got to put them in their place.
If anybody had any doubts that Obama was a true socialist, this should put those doubts to rest. Obama IS a socialist and these hateful words only prove it. He should be running for president of France, but NOT for president of the United States.
Obama will not rest until he and his minions turn this country into a European-style social-welfare state, just like Greece, and we all know how well those countries turned out. They are all broke, loaded with debt they can’t hope to pay off, have chronic unemployment, and enormous taxes. THAT is the future Obama wants for this country. It is up to every one of us to vote this man out of office in November. I can’t wait to do that, but it gives me enough time to convince as many people as possible that this guy is a menace to capitalism and our way of life. He MUST be defeated in November. Our country depends on it.
Hey Josh,
Bill Clintons Campaign Strategy wasnt Brilliant, ROSS PEROTS was.
Mr. Bill lost 6 of every 10 votes, TWICE.
Another clueless loser,just like like Barry, floated to the top in spite of himself.
This is the problem with disconnecting the teleprompter.
He tells us what he beleives in his heart.
Talk about pandering to the entitlement generation, this guy is rewriting the book. If any businessman, be it small or large votes for this guy, they and their business should be relocated to Cuba where their utopia is already in action.
THIS IS THE MITT ROMNEY I WANT TO SEE MORE OF
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/07/ka-boom-romney-slams-big-fail-obama-in-irwin-pa-video/
The FULL speech (MSNBC cut it short):
http://www.therightscoop.com/soon-watch-romney-live-in-irwin-pennsylvania/
Brian Miller? — Great Mind? My Foot — Brian Miller = Bertram Scudder’s Tool. LOL
He’s a communist. Through and through.
He’ld be building the gulag right now if he thought he could get away with it and we would all be on the list.
For that, we have wait until after his “last election”. Then his hands won’t be tied any longer.
The man is an imbecile.
When he says “…paid for by the Government,” he clearly forgets that the money is from US, the citizens, the taxpayers.
Idiot.
Those other lamebrains in Unions don’t seem to realize that in every Communist country, under every Marxist government, UNIONS are OUTLAWED. Union organizing under a Communists system is a crime. It is counter-revolutionary, and those who attempt to organize a factory, shop, farm or any other enterprise will be arrested and speedily IMPRISONED for subversion. They are labeled “politically unreliable” and either sent for re-education, or simply liquidated.
What MORONS.
Obama is half right. We do live in a country that could give rise to an IBM, a Ford, a Boeing, a Honeywell or an Apple.
We live in a free country defended by an able military and populated by hard working people. No chance whatsoever a Microsoft would have been born in Communist China or probably even West Germany.
So I do agree we all of us owe something to our country. From whom much is given….
But, how do we pay that debt? How do we return the gift our fathers made us, and forward it to our children?
This forum has gone over “the government makes…such and such.” We have heard this argument and it doesn’t wash.
Most economists would agree the government “makes” little or nothing. It’s a huge contractor and nothing else. The tax payer pays the bill.
The government doesn’t make: airplanes, ships, or roads. Companies with investors and individuals do.
The Wright Brothers made the first viable powered airplane. The Boeing Company and other airplane companies followed in those footsteps to make more airplanes.
Bath Iron works and Newport News build ships (or their successor companies). Bethlehem Steel or its successor company makes the steel for the ships (other companies not named do the same).
Caterpillar makes machines to lay highway cement. Cement companies make the cement for highways delivered by trucks made by specialized truck makers.
The government did not “make” the internet. University men and women did. The government did not make the routers that provide critical infrastructure for internet. Companies like Cisco did. The government did not invent UNIX servers or Personal Computers. Companies Bell Labs, IBM and other companies did. The list goes on and on.
The Government does make requests for bids on large projects. But, only as a middleman. if you drill down deep enough the very computers, copiers and printing equipment for those requests for bids is made by private enterprise.
To say the Government makes tangle products is mostly smoke and mirrors. Even huge specialized weapons projects like SDI and the Atomic bomb has its roots in thousand of companies who supplied all of the actual equipment, raw materials, buildings and so forth. Again the government basically acts as a contractor-middleman.
Some skeptical economists would say that government acts as an inefficient middleman grafting as much “over-head” off of each “spending project” as politically possible with the tax payer eating the grafted funds. I’ll not go into this problem.
Is the government needed in certain large projects? Yes. Is the government needed in all business? No.
Risk taking is key. Does the government take risk? No. But, certain key people may risk getting kicked out of office or the loss of their government jobs. This is not the same as an investor’s risk.
Here is a good rebuttal to 0bama idiotic remarks from IBD. Read it all!
“[0bama's remarks]…This was stunning news and a colossal slap in the face to the millions of small-business owners who get up every day and by the sweat of their brow and the drive of their ambition still pursue the American dream in spite of the obstacles and hurdles this administration has put in front of them.”
http://news.investors.com/article/618356/201207161909/business-told-you-did-not-build-that.htm
“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” Karl Marx
Karl Marx, Barak Obama and all the other Marxists have it wrong. Society is not the sum of interrelations, the relations within which individuals stand; society consists of individuals themselves, where the liberty of each individual is rightly limited by the equal rights of others.
Middle class individuals are in fact suppressed in all Marxist societies because the relationship between individuals consists of an irrational enforcement of equal property outcome rather than a rational enforcement of equal property rights; the former requiring great force administered by a special class of not-to-be-equalized Big Brother Marxist equalizers who themselves possess superior rights; while the latter requires only minimal force administered by an equal class of equally-equalized regular American brothers with equal rights. We will have true social justice, as our Founding Fathers intended, when all individuals, including the individuals comprising government, stand next to their neighbor with equal rights to the fruit of their own labor, only then will the relations within which these individuals stand represent a just society.
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others… The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government… The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights.” Thomas Jefferson
Rob@46
If we’re lucky.
More likely is Somalia.
And the difference is?
The President says entrepreneurs don’t deserve credit for the success of their business because they benefited from government funded services and infrastructure.
For example, a successful florist will have relied on a telecommunications infrastructure that is heavily regulated and the beneficiary of government funded research and development. The florist will have relied upon government constructed and maintained roads for raw material shipments and product delivery.
What I find astonishing is the apparent lack of credit afforded to, and the disdain the President exhibits toward, entrepreneurship. To quote the President: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Why don’t we apply the President’s logic to all forms of success, even infamous ‘successes’? Timothy McVeigh, for example: He was educated in the public school system. He received training from the US Military. He relied upon public utilities, the telecommunications infrastructure, and he delivered his bomb via pubic roads and bridges. He wouldn’t have had a target if the government had not built the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. To paraphrase the President: McVeigh didn’t blow that up. Somebody else made that happen.
The facetious example of McVeigh illustrates the absurdity of the President’s reasoning. Of course a successful entrepreneur owes some credit to the environment in which that success was achieved. I doubt there are few, if any, truly successful entrepreneurs that would argue otherwise. However, there can be no entrepreneurial success without an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs, the individuals who organize and operate businesses, possess certain behavioral and character traits like: ambition, imagination, inquisitiveness, a positive attitude, and a willingness to take risks. Successful entrepreneurship requires both a favorable environment and an individual, or individuals, with these traits that is willing to do much hard work.