Not Again
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Democrats — Comments (51) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Just what we needed--another New Deal:
John Edwards says if he's elected president, he'll institute a New Deal-like suite of programs to fight poverty and stem growing wealth disparity. To do it, he said, he'll ask many Americans to make sacrifices, like paying higher taxes.
Edwards, a former Democratic senator from North Carolina, says the federal government should underwrite universal pre-kindergarten, create matching savings accounts for low-income people, mandate a minimum wage of $9.50 and provide a million new Section 8 housing vouchers for the poor. He also pledged to start a government-funded public higher education program called "College for Everyone."
"It is central to what I want to do as president to do something about economic inequality. I do not believe it is okay for the United States of America to have 37 million people living in poverty," he said in a meeting with Monitor reporters and editors this week. "And I think we need, desperately need, a president who will say that to America and call on Americans to show their character."
At every stop, Edwards said, he tells voters he'll ask them to sacrifice. Asked to describe what he means, he described his plan for increases in capital gains taxes, saying taxes on "wealth income" should be in line with those on work income.
"I think if we want to fund the things that I think are important to share in prosperity, then people who have done well in this country, including me, have more of a responsibility to give back," he said. Later, he added: "There are no free meals."
That's rich. Milton Friedman, of course, was the most famous person to say that "there is no such thing as a free lunch" and he said it to point out the flaws and deficiencies of the welfare state. Now, evidently, those comments are being made for the purpose of reviving the popularity of the welfare state. I doubt that John Edwards even recognizes the irony.
In any event, Edwards would have to raise taxes exorbitantly in order to fund his "chicken in every pot" scheme and in doing so, he would bring back the stagnation of the 1970s when high tax rates killed business activity in the cradle. His arguments concerning income inequality are misinformed and incomplete and his advocacy of the minimum wage is utterly misguided. And of course, the overarching general problem with Edwards's economic plan is that it relies on government to serve as the chief and principal agent of good in society. It is interesting that there are so many examples of government failure relative to the successes of the private sector--witness the response to Katrina, the ineffectiveness of the Post Office, the looming fiscal crisis concerning Social Security and Medicare, etc.--and yet, so many examples of politicians willing and eager to ignore that failure and give government even more tasks and assignments to bumble and botch.
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For those who missed it the first time, U.S. taxpayers spent five trillion dollars on government programs to eradicate poverty, and we have just as many poor people now as we did when Lyndon Johnson announced his "War on Poverty" in 1964.
Why is that? Because "poverty" is defined as a percentage. There will always be a "bottom 20%" just as half of the people will always make less than the median income.
According to Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation:
"Poor" Americans live in a larger houses or apartments, eat more meat, and are more likely to own cars and dishwashers than is the general population in Western Europe.
The average intake of protein, minerals, and vitamins is nearly the same for poor and middle-class children. Poor children today are in fact supernourished, growing up to be one inch taller and ten pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II.
As we learned the first time, government programs of this sort inevitably morph into animal husbandry performed on human beings by kind-hearted elitists who feel they must "give back" for their good fortune by telling other people what to do. For their own good, of course.
A pox on Edwards, and all his works and pomps.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
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Let's nominate the Nash Equilibrium for President.
race minutes after he loses IOWA he is this years Gephardt
Edwards is going to help me out?
I wonder if I can have my 40 acres and a mule, only thing is I get to pick out where then acres are (Beverly Hills) and that mule is much too environmentally unsound (methane gas from mule poop), so have to have a new Hybrid Yukon with 21 Inch rims.
Anyone know where I apply?
______________________________________
Proud member of the Barry Goldwater wing of the party !
...if elected.
Combine Bill C's absolute lack of belief in anything but his own aggrandizement, with a cadre of advisors that may be to the left of Kucinich, and you have the recipe for the most dangerous candidate out there.
(In comparison, Obama as Pres. is likely to be just merely politely ineffectual, and while that may get you Jimmy Carter II, it won't get you Hugo Chavez II, which is quite likely where an Edwards Administration would try to end up.)
I'm glad most of the Democrat nutters out there haven't figured out how on their wavelength John Edwards is, or this country might be in real trouble.
would essentially make college an extension of the public school system...and hasn't that produced a universally quality product.
...provided that it's done properly. California basically has a "college for everybody" policy that has three tiers depending on your academic potential. The top 12% get to go to UC, the next 25% can go to the state universities, and everybody else can go to community college. If you do well in community college, you can move up and transfer into one of the better schools. Financial aid is offered to those that need it, up to "full-ride" scholarships for people who are really genuinely poor.
The trick is that it's not a blank check. Unless you have a sterling high-school record, you're going to have to work your way up through the community college system and transfer. Poor grades threaten your financial aid. Hard work is rewarded with a guaranteed education, but you've got to prove yourself every step of the way, or the State isn't going to devote resources to you. It's a good system, and it benefits people (like me) that can't afford to go to Stanford.
What's baffling is that California's public higher education is amazing (Berkeley! UCSD!), but the K-12 is in shambles. Universal education isn't a bad idea, but how it's implemented really matters.
we don't need to give everyone a higher education. we need people going into the trades instead of importing cheap labor.
Everyday I run into people doing mundane and even menial jobs,(myself included) who have degrees, multiple degrees, and even advanced degrees.
And the cost of higher education skyrockets because of this mentality.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
We'll just end up with the most educated street sweepers in the world.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us - Voltaire
There's a big difference between "college for everybody" and "college for people that are willing and able". Not everybody is cut out for university, and those folk that aren't should definitely become shopkeepers, street sweepers, auto mechanics, etc. However, a college degree should be available for the people with the talent and the drive, regardless of their background. A good system naturally funnels people where they need to go. A bad system (like a lot of the European Socialist systems) tries to hammer round pegs into square holes.
I'm sorry you feel that your education was valueless. I've got to ask a question, though. If you weren't going to use your degree, why did you get it?
I just don't see how the government would be able to properly match the most qualified and deserving college applicants with the money they need to complete their studies.
In fact, the government so far has proven themselves completely witless in regards to this goal. To talented students of little means, a private education will usually be significantly more affordable than a public university, due to the fact that the private schools aren't being pressured by the government to promote any sort of "diversity agenda", but rather to give scholarships to the people they feel are the most likely to succeed later on so they can give more money back to the school. Good luck with that at a public school if you aren't a member of a protected minority class.
People hold up the California system as a model, but it is a bureaucratic nightmare through which upward mobility through the systems is by no means easy, even to those with the aptitude and the dedication. If anything, it shows that the free market does a far better job at opening doors for those hard-working, talented, deserving individuals than any government system possibly could. If anything, the government can help grease the wheels of the system, but, for the most part, their interference in the public education system has done little in terms of controlling costs or providing opportunities to lower- and lower-middle-class individuals.
"I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote." - P.J. O'Rourke
Alright, full disclosure time. I'm an able-bodied white male (the least protected class there is), that barely graduated high school. Four years ago, I decided that I wanted to become an engineer, and started clawing my way up through the California community college system. I buckled down, spent three years getting good grades, and recently transferred to a UC.
All of my expenses are being met through financial aid (ah, poverty...), and I'm getting a world-class engineering education. In my case, the system worked exactly like it was supposed to. The thing is, I'm hardly an exception. My wife went through exactly the same process (she just graduated pre-med at UCSD). I know a lot of people in the same boat. It takes a ton of blood, sweat, tears, and paperwork, but it works.
Without the community college transfer system, I would have been up a creek. My high school grades were terrible, and no private school would look at me until I established a worthy academic record. Stanford was not an option. The UC system was.
Look, I know that the overarching goal here is lower taxes and smaller government. Nobody here disagrees with that. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, though.
The New Deal wasn't about entitlements, or even about Social Welfare. It was about public works and employment. In that regard, it actually worked up to a point. Roosevelt, for his part, despised the dole and hoped to get people off of it while cornering their vote.
Edwards, like most modern liberals, completely misread history.
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it"-Winston Churchill
All we have to do is read Marx's The Communist Manifesto to read what Edwards has in store. I'm not joking either, do a side by side comparision and you will find that Marx agreed with proposals such as: income redistribution, labor unions, free college education, and progressive taxation.
Just look at one of Huey Long's old speeches, that's where he gets his material.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Karl Marx would be proud of John Edwards...his proposals are just about straight out of The Communist Manifesto. I'm not joking do a side by side comparison and you'll see the similarities.
To people who have as their goal to be in political control, the Democrats proposals for healthcare is perfect.
Any program with little or no cost to the user - particularly one that eliminates a potential control group for the new program to perform against, is always going to produce control for those who provide the program. The ultimate result will always result in a kind of "slavery".
How many times have we heard about one government program or another that "it doesn't work" and "we have no choice"? Diversity is to be considered a golden principal, but only up to a point. Diversity in the population is wonderful. Diversity in education, or healthcare is to never even be considered because it can not be used as a tool to increase control over the populace.
No proof exists that the proponents of the Democrats healthcare suggestion care one iota about their constituency's quality of life. Nor is there evidence that they understand our societies intricacies or, in fact, what makes any society function.
May I suggest that we must recognize the seriousness of the political problems we are facing, including the magnitude and implications that we must address. If we think we need to have changes, we sure better start figuring out how to bring about the changes we consider important. It is clear that most of us believe that action is necessary, because if we didn't favor doing something we would not be on this Blog.
It will require that, for starters, we gain control of "the common wisdom" and utilize what I like to call "the Fruits Test".
"The Fruits Test" takes us away from relying on what is being said or done, to the evaluation of the results that we experience. We must require that everyone prove their results before we move to expanding or adding any program.
This would mean Socialized Medicine might be just fine, but it can not be expanded until the problems with our current Socialized Model are fixed. Any "fix" must be demonstrated in reality (no computer models or surveys) before we move to expand any similar program.
We can no longer accept as "fact" anything based on anyone
saying it is a fact. Experts in a particular field are not to be used to draw conclusions. Experts all have an ax to grind. It may be their seeking of grant money, a particular job, exposure and/or recognition. Whatever their motivation - when it is anything other than for the good of the citizens of this great land it is to be considered useless and potentially even dangerous to our society.
It would be helpful for us to discuss how we can fix our problems. Identifying the problems and laughing at them is fun, but unless we move to figuring out how to get things back on track, our situation will only get worse.
How stupid can you be? As it is now we have people with advanced degrees working at walmart. The high cost of college is fueled by this mentality.
Not that it should be done by the federal government, but at the state level it would make more sense to fund trade schools for the poor.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
...anything to get elected. That party's desperation to regain control of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave is so great, that Hillary or Edwards may not stop at the $5,000 gift offer for every baby born on American soil, after having to build 5,000 miles of new 6 lane concrete expressway north from the Mexican Border to accomodate the influx, one of them may even go so far as to offer a dildo in every pot to entice the more prurient voters. This is liable to be the most base, pandered, election ever as a result of their desperation.
Why, if the bleeding hearts are so-o-o concerned about the "poor", they don't give up their millions to help them out?(Edwards, Kennedys, et.al.) They are big-hearted with other people's money.
Disgusting.
... whether directly or indirectly here because you "support Ron Paul™", save yourself the trouble and just find your way to the door.
Neither you (nor your vote in November 2008) are wanted here.
Thank you.
Go away.
Mr. Knight:
I am new here & trying to understand how RedState works. I read the posting right before yours (the one by nighthawk about bleeding hearts) & am at a loss to understand why you think this has anything to do with Ron Paul. Most conservatives have something against bleeding hearts. Are you referring to a different posting & if so, which one?
Also, I have seen this "I've been usurped" comment on many a posting. Would someone please explain what that is about?
Thanks,
K.N.
You see, we're excising - cheerfully, might I add - Ron Paul posts and comments from the site as they come in. When a moderator doesn't notice an offending post in time before somebody comments on it, the results can look a little odd. In this particular case, the user was trying the passive-aggressive game of talking about his idol without mentioning his name, which ain't gonna fly here.
As for the usurped thing: it's part of my .sig file, which pops up everywhere because I'm a) a moderator and b) not so much without a life as having my life superseded by the need to watch the baby. This is one of the few leisure activities I have that I can do in fifteen minute bursts.
Hope that clears stuff up for you. :)
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!
Are you going to accuse me of being a Ron Paulian too?
Evil prevails only when good men do nothing.
He was referring to the post by the late kreuzian concerning the abolition of the Federal Reserve. Notice first that the Federal Reserve has nothing to do with the topic of this thread; its insertion is a diversion, a potential threadjack. These are unwelcome.
There is only one candidate in the race who advocates such a policy, and he may not be named. At least not by newbies who come here to spam threads in his name. That is why kreuzian is now The Late kreuzian, and why he will be banned again if he sticks his head up. Everyone was sick and tired of advocates for you-know-who popping up as newbies and spamming threads with off-topic advocacy for their fearless leader. There appears to be an endless supply of these people; we suspect that many of them are antiwar liberals who put on a mask that says I've Been a Republican All My Life in a lame attempt to have us tolerate their stupid and off-topic spam.
You, of course, would not do such a thing so you're safe.
Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.
What is really outrageous about Edward's prescription for education in this country is that it fails to recognize the obvious: the spiraling cost of higher education in this country has been due at least in significant part to the influence of liberals in academia who have turned the University into a sprawling octopus of Centers, Institutes and Programs.
I used to work for a law school and I watched this process happen under the watch of my former boss. The short version of it is that every senior, tenured professor wants to have a Deanship or an Assistant Deanship, or failing that, wishes to have a Center or an Institute dedicated to their particular area of study. In order to do that, those Centers and Institutes need budgets, offices, and dedicated faculty. In many cases these Centers and Institutes are led by precisely one individual who drafts a proposal and gets the ear of their favorite activist Dean, who makes rain for them in the form of establishing the Center, getting them an office, providing them with research assistants and extra funds to run the place, etc. But their salaries, and all those extra funds that are necessary to keep the adventures afloat ultimately come from the University itself, and are finally reflected in tuition costs. The illusion is that because you give someone a business card that says: "Director of the Center for Higher Studies in Intransigent Mammalian Hermeneutics at the University of Southeastern Oshkosh"> that anyone is really better educated. What you have is a form of virtually unstoppable academic sprawl, and of course the yearly tuition and fee increases to support it.
So liberals have pushed the cost of higher education into the stratosphere and placed it out of reach for many individuals, and their solution is to soak the rich and make actual wealth-generators pay for their mistakes. Classic!
There are some places in the country -- even in relatively expensive areas to live -- that have tried to do the expansion right and keep their tuitions modest. One that I can think of is Kean University near where I grew up in New Jersey. And note my emphasis on tried: the full-time in-state undergraduate tuition+fees there are still more than $4,200 per semester. That's a tremendous amount of money for 12-19 credits at what was once primarily a local college. They've recently had to raise their tuition by 10% because of the increase in union salaries.
An improved economy is the main reason state college tuitions have stabilized in recent years, said Darryl G. Greer, executive director of the New Jersey State College Governing Boards Association, an advisory board to the colleges. Another major factor, he said, is that the state is now paying for costly salary increases negotiated with the unions for faculty and staff members. Tuition increases that sometimes rose above 10 percent in 1990 and 1991 were partly due to those increases.
I note in passing that the article mentions that the single greatest stabilizing factor in state college tuitions has been an *improvement in the economy.* In other words, those evil capitalist investors, running businesses that employ people helped (at least a little) to put the brakes on the increases.
But they can never do enough. There is no amount of economic growth that can ever satisfy the demands of a union for higher salaries and fees.
that you can be a complete idiot and buffoon and rise to the top in America. Of course, so is John Kerry.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
by paying higher taxes, and non-voluntary, which is an interesting way to establish character. In ye olde days there were other ways to practice moral fiber and they were individual and volitional. Now, Presto, you pay more taxes and you're a better person. Centralized government is now the both the goal and locus of virtue, could it get any sicker ?
No wonder a twisted set of people laughably self identified as liberals are what they are, the remnants of their morals are totally intertwined with the State, their virtue dependent on the tax rate, their hopes and moral status relying on government growth.
Edwards didn't start this, this is a product of more than a hundred years of ethical and social devolution, or degeneracy.
Our friends the Clintons could never understand the adverse reaction they encountered, after all and despite their absolute corruption, didn't they want more government for the little people ?
This is where social and political collectivism takes you, if not worse, to a condition of both moral sickness and citizen pitted against citizen, the very reverse of community and commonwealth.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
as I noticed Amy Poehler on SNL doing a rundown on the candidates. She described JE as an "ambulance-chasing hedge-fund nutcase b*stard" and THE AUDIENCE BROKE INTO APPLAUSE, so even the SNL nutters think this whack-job exceeds ridiculousness!
His $18 million investment in the Fortress Hedge Fund, dedicated to throwing out sub-prime mortgage holders at the earliest convenience, demonstrates how insincere this hair-and-makeup fraud really is about redistribution of wealth. And his wife's nasty comments about a poor neighbor who had the effrontery to put a Giuliani sign in his yard reveals what reposterous snobs s/he are.
This clown has LIVED in Iowa for the last year and just finished visiting ALL 99 counties for the SECOND TIME, so if he loses in the Iowa caucus set-up, he's Gephardt all over again. And check his third-place status in S. Carolina, his natal state. Perhaps his down-home neighbors have sniffed out just what a loo-zer this fever-swamp phony really is.
Edwards is down by 9 to Hillary
Hillary 29%
Obama 27%
Edwards 20%
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071029/ap_po/poll2008_iowa_1
---
The truth is, the more you tax profits, the more you undermine the American work ethic and the incentive structure that goes along with it. In fact, you demoralize the very system that has made this country great.
Now, please bear in mind that I live in Massachusetts and thus it is often the case that organs of the government are actually more energetic, customer-centered and even entrepreneurial than actual, for-profit private sector businesses. Keep that in mind when I say I got a chuckle from this:
the ineffectiveness of the Post Office
Ironically here in Massaschusetts one of the things that I confront on a daily basis is the laxadaisacal incompetence of many private businesses alongside the relative competence of government functions. That is because this state is *inverted*.
It's a very difficult thing to reverse, but we're trying. We've spent a lot of time on the phone yelling at one of our equipment suppliers in the past week, who seem to have nothing but a crew of office people who want to leave at 4:00 on a Friday and not return your phone calls until noon on Monday, despite the fact they're supposed to be a "for profit" company here in the Commonwealth.
The company is Riso Kagaku, and despite the fact that their machinery is excellent, well-engineered stuff that was carefully thought-through, I'm truly sorry to report that their corporate culture -- in Massachusetts at least, and my father's home town, no less! -- is sadly broken. It goes farther than them, however: very few businesses in this state have any real *spirit*. They don't seem to want to work.
Of course, they don't really have to, they can always become wards of the state and get paid almost as well. It's a death spiral, one that I'm trying to reverse in just one tiny area by my own example and hard work.
Warning to people who would try to establish a competitive business in Massachusetts:
Don't even begin to think that you can rely on the other businesses in this state to be as conscientious or as hungry as you are. Do not rely on their customer service or their entrepreneurial spirit. All of that has been sapped out of them, and if you rely on it, you'll not make it very far.
It's a very sad thing indeed to say that the only really competent service technicians for one of our Riso machines had to be flown out to the East Coast from Southern California. If you entertain any notions of California being a "laid back" place in which to do business, you obviously haven't *lived* in Massachusetts. People here apparently don't show up to work except when they feel like it.
In my experience so far in Massachusetts, the United States Postal Service is more reliable, more available, and more competitive than a lot of the private businesses here. Massachusetts alone out of all the places I've lived in my lifetime carries that singular distinction.
That's how bad it is when you have Democrat One-Party Rule. Don't let it happen to you or your loved ones.
it's mistakes are magnified, it's competence ignored. If the rest of that giant sloth known as the Federal government performed as well, who knows, we might be all "centrists" instead of Redstaters.
The P O is designed to be a profit making institution, their craft employees can be and usually are driven hard. Meanwhile much of the rest of the Federal employee base seems dedicated to raising the bar of incompetence and seeing what department can do the least while working the slowest, mangling things as they go along.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
Even though it's not a company, the most reliable organization for me here in Massachusetts thusfar in 19 months has been the United States Postal Service. They even have people there on Saturday mornings at the Bulk Mail Reception Center in Springfield. Nice people, too.
In other areas of the country (and I know them well enough) the record is not so good. But here at least they're doing their jobs.
That fact should completely freak anyone out. It freaks me out.
It's the difference between being a "government friendly" and a "private sector friendly" state. Massachusetts is most certainly the former. I said a while ago with only a little exaggeration that a lot of people in Massachusetts would now like to see *everyone* work for the government, be it state, federal or municipal. I know the people in the state legislature and in Congress want to keep moving the Commonwealth in that direction.
I've never lived in a place:
1) Where the USPS was more competent than most private businesses
2) Where the state government actively recruited people who *thought they earned too much money* to get on the government dole
3) Where the regulatory requirements for even having a small business were so unbelievably strict
4) Where the entire state seems to be designed to do nothing but take the money of its businesses and redistribute them to everyone in the state, regardless of how little the recipients either worked for or deserved it
5) Sought at every turn to have the Federal government supply the funds that they couldn't drain from their own citizens.
But that's Massachusetts, Baby. It's even more extreme than New Jersey. And I thought I had seen the worst. I was wrong.
Ironically that is one of the few things we have going for us. The business climate here is so laid-back and laxadaiscal that it is really becoming a fertile ground for truly hard-working entrepreneurs who can run a business effectively.
If you're willing to work twice as hard as the people who are already asleep at the switch, and make sure you dot the Is and cross the Ts, you can make it.
But I'm sad to observe it in a historical sense. Massachusetts used to be known as a place where the smart, the quick and the wise congregated. Now it's a place where the dependent, the hidebound and the laxadaisical congregate. I'd like to change that a little: I just wish more people in this state were willing to give it a try.
Edwards new program will be called The Raw Deal.
Ask not what I can do for my country, ask what my country can do for me. Washington Elected Elite
presented a quasi socialist message. I wondered why anyone would believe such a policy would work. The fact is it does. It doesn't work as a system of economics mind you, but rather as a way to get the masses to vote for you. If you are poor, and someone promises you everything, you are quite likely to believe this. Tons of government programs that promise people who can't take care of themselves that they will be taken care of get those people to vote for the person promising them. That is why they are proposed. This is a tried and true strategy and it works, and that is why people like Edwards propose it. Furthermore, the Dems puppet master is George Soros and he has a quasi socialist view of the world as well.
Always tell the truth, George; it's the easiest thing to remember.
It works primarily because people in the Democratic Party believe that people are stupid. Failing believing they are stupid, they believe they are charity cases. Failing believing they are charity cases, they believe they'll let their governors off the hook when they have to raise taxes by letting them take federal money instead.
No, they really do believe that: in fact, they believe they're even stupider than stupid. They now believe they're retarded.
Witness the [H/T: Drudge] intermal memo from some Donk about the Democrat "message" on SCHIP:
“Our message sounds like an audit report on defense logistics,” wrote Dave Helfert, a former Appropriations spokesman who now works for Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii). “Why are we defending [the State Children’s Health Insurance Program] instead of advocating a ‘Healthy Kids’ plan?”
Note that the complaint here wasn't that the Democrat message was smart enough: it was rather that it wasn't stupid enough.
That memo, which is how the Democrats actually think of the American people, reminded me of nothing but this.
"I sponsored the Everybody Eats Food Bill of 2001, [which makes it illegal for] Americans to go hungry!" Rigby said. "That way, poor people don't have to starve anymore! Lots of mac 'n' cheese... I like that! And I was the first senator [to propose] free weekly field trips to Little Tyrol for the American people. It would be free, 'cause the government would pay for the bus rides!"
Now the Democrat party imitates life once again through The Onion, courtesy of The Hill.
tool for so long? Because the masses are stupid. Communist said that capitalism worked for the few at the expense of the masses, while communism would provide for the masses at the expense of the few. We can snicker all we want at the obvious cynical statement the Democrats make however make no mistake that this is an effective political tactic that must not be underestimated.
You make excellent points and I agree with all of them, but you must also keep in mind that there are a lot more people that don't have much political savvy than that do, and we all only get one vote.
Again, if you read this piece, I make the point that Hillary Clinton is using Socialism as a means of buying votes. I believe she is. Snicker all you want, but please do not underestimate the effectiveness of their tactics.
Always tell the truth, George; it's the easiest thing to remember.
You'll never have any argument from me that the Democrats, Hillary most especially, use the stupidity of people as a means to getting their votes.
Maybe I shouldn't say "stupidity" any more. It's more like the cupidity of "selflessness".
I'm not underestimating their tactics, Mike. There are a few people who really know my views on RedState who realize just how seriously I take them. I'm extremely concerened that they will win in the long run. It keeps me awake at night, literally, and makes me feel terrible that I ever supported them.
I know that their real aim is a denationalized United States of America, led primarily by the United Nations, with an economy that is a virtual mirror of French Socialism. A defenestrated 2nd Amendment where no private citizen can own a firearm, and a society in which it is commonly expected that everyone surrender the majority of the money they earn to the State.
If you read Milton Friedman, you know that this was the dominant view for the early part of this century. The Conservative movement has only existed briefly in that context: and the modern Liberals want to make sure it never arises again and is over with as soon as possible. All of their policies flow from those categorical imperatives.
In the sense that he defouled the Presidency, Bill Clinton got what he deserved: but in another sense he got a bad rap. Clinton was, at the very least, a Capitalistic Democrat. At the very least I think he grasped Friedman's central message about economic freedom. Even he couldn't ignore the abject failure of centrally-planned economies. He sought instead to make Government a mirror of Capitalism by tailoring it to every need and wish, to keep it growing in that sense. But he didn't want to smash Capitalism: to him it was a competitor, a challenge.
The people who are trying to succeed him among the Democrats -- Barack Obama and John Edwards, to mention two -- are not so enamored. Hillary will be somewhere in between.
It's true that many a Democrat would have been more hostile to capitalism. However, I think it was the 1994 election & the Contract w. America that caused Bubba to sit up & take notice. I don't think things were that rosy between his inauguration & November 1994.
The truth is that if I could vote for any of the Democrats for President right now, I would vote for Bill Clinton, over Hillary, over Barack, certainly over John Edwards.
I could live through another Bill Clinton administration: he wasn't an enemy of capitalism, he wasn't a completely unpredictable person that we know nothing about, and he wasn't an evident idiot. That's about the best thing I'll ever say about him here at RedState.
I absolutely don't want his wife as President, however.
As far as the Contract with America is concerned, the problem the Republicans seem to be having right now is a Contract with Anything. We need Newt now more than ever. The last few years of profligate spending have debased this Party.
Americans are going to have to make some very tough choices in the next decade in terms of spending and the economy. The Republican Party can be the most important elucidator of those choices if it so chooses. But it can't give conflicting messages and it has to be honest. That strategy will pay off, increasingly so as the bills come due.
not this century, the last. I tend to smear out the differences, and I still live in the 20th Century in many ways. The 21st Century is still too much of an open book for me to make any judgments about. I actually think the world is moving backward in the 21st Century after having made some really important strides in the 20th.
If you really want to stop the Democrats, then we all must do everything we can to bring this man into the public consciousness: George Soros. He is the political Keyser Soze. Every single piece of political ideology that you see the Dems scribing to he believes in. He pulls their strings with his unending fortune, sophisticated political network, and business acumen. Some may say I am paranoid, but I don't believe I am. His position intersects with theirs on issues from foreign policy, to economic policy, to social policy.
In fact it is uncanny how much the Dems drive his agenda. More than half of them want the don't ask don't tell policy eliminated. More than half of them were fine with teaching second graders a story about gay princes. This is extreme and radical and yet they are proponents, and these radical positions are the same as George Soros' radical positions.
The Dems were successful in turning Karl Rove into a sort of boogeyman, and George Soros' is a boogeyman and the Reps, and the blogosphere, must go on a full court press to bring his agenda, ideology and plans for America into the public consciousness. The reason his stays so far below the radar is because he knows that if people know too much about him, they will reject him. That is why it is our job to pound his name over and over again, until it reaches the mainstream.
Always tell the truth, George; it's the easiest thing to remember.
…If Americans have a right to “free” health care, why shouldn’t they also have a right to “free” legal care?
In order to make sure you get everything the government thinks you need, from routine legal services to hit-the-jackpot lawsuits, the government will simply start treating lawyers the way they treat doctors.
Come on, Mr. "Two Americas". Put your money where your mouth is. Let’s start regulating your industry the way you want the government to regulate medicine. For instance…
There shall be tens of thousands of pages of government rules and fine print regarding how to practice law. These will require hundreds of hours a year to master, will change constantly, often without notice, and may result in lawyers having to hire and pay employees who do nothing but puzzle over rules of compliancy.
Do you believe that legal malpractice is acceptable? Shouldn't your colleagues suffer the same consequences as doctors do?
Any lawyer losing three or more cases will be deemed guilty of malpractice and have his/her license revoked. Since losing is a preventable error there will be no payments to losing lawyers.
Time to pony up, Silky. I want my free legal care and you’re just the guy to deliver it for me. Right?
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"We want great men who, when fortune frowns, will not be discouraged." - Colonel Henry Knox
It's war -- so when can we start shooting back at the enemy Democrats?
...what an effing tool. A fabulously wealthy ambulance chasing trial attorney who got rich by suing doctors and insurance companies now wants to redistribute our wealth.
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”