billvon 3,102
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billvon>Of course. But they're hearts are in the wrong place. Their intentions not good.
Oh, both parties have good intentions. But you know where they lead.
Yes. To partisan bickering.
My wife is hotter than your wife.
rushmc 23
billvon>yes, bacon and/or pineapple does make most foods even better
So YOU are the reason that pizza has been going downhill for the past ten years!
Not is CO
Pizza sales are up 200% according to a pizza franchize owning pro-football quarterback
I wonder what is so special in CO
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln
DanG 1
QuoteOf course. But they're hearts are in the wrong place. Their intentions not good. And, as you know, conservatives are judged harshly for what they do and the reasons they do it.
Which is the OP's point, isn't it?
The irony is incalculable.
The OP does nothing but post harsh judgments of liberals because their intentions are not good, and their hearts are in the wrong place.
- Dan G
Andy9o8 2
QuoteThe OP does nothing but post harsh judgments of liberals because their intentions are not good, and their hearts are in the wrong place.
On the bright side, that's how liberals survive so many gunshot wounds.
So you assume that since I write too harshly about social programs I automatically default for the "millions for defense, not one dime for tribute," perspective. Crass assumption on your part don't ya think?
Let's talk about the longest war in the history of this country...The War on Poverty. We've put trillions into this; more money than all of the wars we've fought expending both human blood and the treasure of taxpayers...we're still losing this war. what do they say about insanity, that which you do over and over again expecting a different outcome?
There just could be a better way to fight poverty, 'cause the current program sure as hell ain't working and to say otherwise is disingenuous.
Accordingly...Sun-Tzu warns about long protracted war and the wasted blood and treasure that results.
Gee...perhaps if we we're honest, we'd at least agree that we're failing at both endeavors; which I think we are. What say you?
Let's talk about the longest war in the history of this country...The War on Poverty. We've put trillions into this; more money than all of the wars we've fought expending both human blood and the treasure of taxpayers...we're still losing this war. what do they say about insanity, that which you do over and over again expecting a different outcome?
There just could be a better way to fight poverty, 'cause the current program sure as hell ain't working and to say otherwise is disingenuous.
Accordingly...Sun-Tzu warns about long protracted war and the wasted blood and treasure that results.
Gee...perhaps if we we're honest, we'd at least agree that we're failing at both endeavors; which I think we are. What say you?
Andy9o8 2
Quoteyou assume...
No I don't.
I guess that means you assume I assume.
QuoteLet's talk about the longest war in the history of this country...The War on Poverty.
Admittedly, not the greatest track record, but not the worst, either. Bottom line, though, is that I think on the whole America is a generally more humane society in 2014 than it was in 1964. It's multi-factored, of course, but I don't think the "social welfare" programs of the last 50 years have been a net negative contributor to that overall, I think they've been a net positive contributor.
Franklin Roosevelt expressed an optimistic, can-do attitude when he was advocating his New Deal measures (to which conservatives of the time were apoplectically opposed): "There are very few things that we can know before hand. We will try, and if we decide that we are wrong, we will have to change." The point being, of course, the willingness to try, and if one thing didn't work, to try something else, and then try something else - but for god's sake, not just to stagnate. That was the spirit behind FDR's New Deal, and that was the spirit behind LBJ's Great Society, which took much of its inspiration from the New Deal.
Say what? Great Society inspired from the New Deal...I almost tossed my supper when I read that. One of LBJ's famous quotes; "I don't trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket!" LBJ was a machine politician of the worst order who bought votes pandered like a pimp and micromanaged i.e. picked the targets for the air strikes over North Viet-Nam. A lot of good pilots died or made a POW from droppin' nape and snake on a rice paddy. There is a ring of truth in the movie "Flight of the Intruder " in this regard.
Fortunately, this is a Government program. Any CEO who ran a company like the USG has run the War on Poverty would be looking down the double barrel of an SEC/DOJ indictment....for fraud and abrogation of fiduciary responsibility.
You can do better than that.....LBJ....BWAWAWAHAWWAHA!
Fortunately, this is a Government program. Any CEO who ran a company like the USG has run the War on Poverty would be looking down the double barrel of an SEC/DOJ indictment....for fraud and abrogation of fiduciary responsibility.
You can do better than that.....LBJ....BWAWAWAHAWWAHA!
Andy9o8 2
Your last post makes no substantive points other than noise to try to shout me down. So, we're done; thanks for the fish, etc.
But ya got sharkskin...I thought that was a tough hide! At least that's what they told me! C'mon, bring it!
turtlespeed 226
BoomerdogGood, then I'm sure you're OK for picking up the bill.
I see his sarcasm, and even understand his point.
What I do not agree with is one set of people forcing another set of people to do what they think should be voluntary.
If they are so passionate, raise money from their own, right? Noooo - they want someone else to do the paying for them.
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun
billvon 3,102
>If they are so passionate, raise money from their own, right? Noooo - they want
>someone else to do the paying for them.
Yep. And "they" includes both the left wing and the right wing of our government, unfortunately.
>someone else to do the paying for them.
Yep. And "they" includes both the left wing and the right wing of our government, unfortunately.
turtlespeed 226
billvon>If they are so passionate, raise money from their own, right? Noooo - they want
>someone else to do the paying for them.
Yep. And "they" includes both the left wing and the right wing of our government, unfortunately.
See - We can agree.
I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun
tkhayes 348
QuoteBecause they are a family unit they support thier kids and do not need the government for help
pretty much everybody in this country has or will receive some form of 'govt help' at some point in their lives.
Yes, it must be evil.....everyone does it.
rushmc 23
tkhayesQuoteBecause they are a family unit they support thier kids and do not need the government for help
pretty much everybody in this country has or will receive some form of 'govt help' at some point in their lives.
Yes, it must be evil.....everyone does it.
and yet again an extreme is used to make an argument because you got nothing
At no point have I ever said get rid of all programs
but what we have is not working (at least not when the dollars spent vs the results is looked at)
In fact, it makes it worse
But, these programs absolve liberals from doing anything directly
Your comments fit perfectly in this thread
YOU, wish to be judged on your intnetions
NOT your actions or results
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln
[Reply]"There are very few things that we can know before hand. We will try, and if we decide that we are wrong, we will have to change." The point being, of course, the willingness to try, and if one thing didn't work, to try something else, and then try something else
Very nice point. What else have we tried? Nothing except more of the same thing. Look at our inner cities. Look at rural America. Look at the number of people on food stamps. The educational achievement of the US. The demise of American manufacturing. The number of people in prisons.
Compare to 1960. The Great Society experiment failed. Flat out. But they haven't changed and won't change at all. It is an old and stagnant idea, but there is HELL to pay for anyone that tries to do something to change it. Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security have stagnated into a stinky morass that nobody will go near.
Time for a different idea because we've shown that poverty is not fixed by throwing money at it. Political power is, however, maintained by being the person throwing the money.
My wife is hotter than your wife.
SkyDekker 1,465
lawrocket[Reply]"There are very few things that we can know before hand. We will try, and if we decide that we are wrong, we will have to change." The point being, of course, the willingness to try, and if one thing didn't work, to try something else, and then try something else
Very nice point. What else have we tried? Nothing except more of the same thing. Look at our inner cities. Look at rural America. Look at the number of people on food stamps. The educational achievement of the US. The demise of American manufacturing. The number of people in prisons.
Compare to 1960. The Great Society experiment failed. Flat out. But they haven't changed and won't change at all. It is an old and stagnant idea, but there is HELL to pay for anyone that tries to do something to change it. Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security have stagnated into a stinky morass that nobody will go near.
Time for a different idea because we've shown that poverty is not fixed by throwing money at it. Political power is, however, maintained by being the person throwing the money.
So there is a lot to be gained by keeping a large part of the population very poor and a much smaller part of the population very rich. The bigger the gap, the better.
[Reply]So there is a lot to be gained by keeping a large part of the population very poor and a much smaller part of the population very rich. The bigger the gap, the better.
Yes there is. Look at how great the stock market is doing. Watch the middle class shrink. All while government expaands (I'm talking US) to "help" people.
My wife is hotter than your wife.
SkyDekker 1,465
But taxing the highest wealth earners a little more to try and manage that gap is a bad thing right?
Warren Buffet has been very outspoken on this issue. Yet he usually gets ridiculed for it. Ususally by people with your political leaning.
(And no I am not saying Liberals have the right ideas)
Warren Buffet has been very outspoken on this issue. Yet he usually gets ridiculed for it. Ususally by people with your political leaning.
(And no I am not saying Liberals have the right ideas)
DanG 1
Just curios: do you feel the same way about the War on Drugs as you do about the War on Poverty?
- Dan G
- Dan G
billvon 3,102
>Very nice point. What else have we tried? Nothing except more of the same thing.
I think the welfare reforms of 1996 were a pretty big change. Ended welfare as an entitlement program, limited benefits to 2 years at a time and 5 total, lifetime.
>Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security have stagnated into a stinky
>morass that nobody will go near.
Agreed. But it is a morass that, despite its cost and complexity, is doing a lot of real good.
>Time for a different idea because we've shown that poverty is not fixed by
>throwing money at it.
Poverty will never be fixed by _anything._ We will always have the poor; no government program can change that. Fortunately, they no longer starve in the street, which at least is progress.
I think the welfare reforms of 1996 were a pretty big change. Ended welfare as an entitlement program, limited benefits to 2 years at a time and 5 total, lifetime.
>Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid, Social Security have stagnated into a stinky
>morass that nobody will go near.
Agreed. But it is a morass that, despite its cost and complexity, is doing a lot of real good.
>Time for a different idea because we've shown that poverty is not fixed by
>throwing money at it.
Poverty will never be fixed by _anything._ We will always have the poor; no government program can change that. Fortunately, they no longer starve in the street, which at least is progress.
GeorgiaDon 379
Perhaps you meant, what else have we tried recently? In the past we tried debtor's prisons. Was that a good solution? Indentured servitude?QuoteVery nice point. What else have we tried? Nothing except more of the same thing.
Many of the "safety valves" that existed in the past are no longer available. People can no longer migrate out west and homestead land (after driving off the current inhabitants of course).
Or maybe we can conscript the poor, then conjure up a nice war to cull them down to a manageable number.
The fact is, many changes have aligned to exacerbate problems in our society, and the government is not responsible for all of them. The US population has more than doubled since 1950, so that's an additional 150 million people who have to fit into society in a productive, self-supporting way. At the same time life expectancy has increased dramatically, though at the cost of having more elderly people with associated medical issues. Speaking of medical issues, our medical technology now has the power to treat many conditions that used to be a sentence to disability or death, but this treatment comes at significant and rapidly escalating cost.
At the same time as these changes have happened, we have also built an economy that is increasingly dependent on a work force that is maintained on the lowest possible compensation.
At one time, "middle class" and blue collar jobs paid enough to buy a little house in the suburbs and support a family in at least a reasonable degree of comfort, but those days are ancient history. A sizable chunk of those jobs no longer even exist, ever since shareholders and CEOs came to believe that their patriotic duty was to maximize personal wealth by shipping all the manufacturing and textile jobs offshore to places where living wages, workplace safety, pollution controls etc don't impede their profit taking.
Do I argue that government programs have been all moonbeams and rainbows? No, of course not. But I would say that some favorites of the conservative crowd, such as the so-called "war on drugs" and get-tough-on-crime boondoggles such as the plethora of three strikes laws and mandatory sentencing rules have been even more destructive to society than any social assistance program. Who could have thought it would be a good idea to create a large sub-culture of America where most of the kids grow up in fatherless households because the fathers are locked up for often trivial drug "offenses"?
What useful suggestions do we hear from the conservative and libertarian wings? Both bleat like stuck pigs over the suggestion that an honest day's work deserves an honest day's pay. Raise minimum wage? But then my hamburger will cost more! One difference between the two is, conservatives would rather pay for prisons than schools, and libertarians don't want to pay for either, even though everybody knows that a lack of education is the single best predictor of a life of poverty and crime.
No doubt, just handing someone a welfare check no strings attached is not the best way to encourage someone to become self-supporting. Not that the welfare system works that way, as Bill alluded to, but that's the straw man people enjoy attacking.
So all you conservatives and libertarians out there, what solutions would you advocate for the mother with three small kids at home, Dad locked away for some victimless "crime" (maybe he smoked a joint, oh the horror!), no job in town that comes anywhere close to paying enough to cover rent, food, and child care while Mom is at work. What brilliant ideas do you have? Or are you content with the notion of "I got mine" and "it's not my problem"?
I'm all ears.
Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)
SkyDekkerBut taxing the highest wealth earners a little more to try and manage that gap is a bad thing right?
Warren Buffet has been very outspoken on this issue. Yet he usually gets ridiculed for it. Ususally by people with your political leaning.
(And no I am not saying Liberals have the right ideas)
What happens with the taxing of the highest wealth earners? It means taxing the almost highest earners, too. A person making $5 million a year who is taxed at 50% is going to survive. A person making $200k a year who is taxed that way is going to ask questions, like why she is taking home less than the person making $175k.
The wealthiest can (like Warren Buffett) move assets to other places like Canada, where the taxation is less. Sure, Warren Buffett insists that tax benefits had nothing to do with it. (Buffett is ridiculed because he is a classic example of a person whose public statements and private conduct are different things. Like a GOP Congressman who pronounces family values while hooking up with gay prostitutes on the internet. No, he's not gay. He had other legitimate reasons for doing it, right?)
And what about the middle class? Oh, yeah. They get taxed more, cost of living goes up, and as the taxes on the employers go up the wages stagnate.
Seriously - why is there a shrinking of the middle class? Because policy demands it. Wealth is not created by resdistributing it. Taxing estates is the single most pro-corporate policy I can imagine (corporations don't die so they never pay it. The family farm gets sold to a corporation to pay the estate taxes. Repeat..).
Tax policy under Clinton and Reagan showed that lower tax rates can and will increase revenue by increasing hiring. So did the "Bush Tax Reduction." All sent the economy rolling. (Sure, many argue a little too much.)
Eventually they run out of people to tax. We're seeing it with Medicare and Social Security - too many people to pay without enough people to tax. (Recognize it - if Bill Gates is worth $80 billion and all his wealth was seized it would pay for the US government for a week. One week. Yes, one week. Bill Gates could be liquidated forever and be good for one week of federal government spending. You could liquidate the Fortune 500 and pay for a year of government spending. Then what? Next year you're really screwed.
Because where did that wealth go? It vanished.
Wealth is destroyed by taking it from one and giving it to many.
My wife is hotter than your wife.
Oh, both parties have good intentions. But you know where they lead.
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