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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15023 Registered: May-04 | . I found this interesting and thought it migh prove useful no matter which side you're own when you start arguing who is responsible for what ... "Before we provide the final totals (We did this by turning to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site), let's run down how each president did. Here are the average annual percentage increases in jobs for each postwar president: Harry S. Truman (Democrat): increase of 2.95 percent a year Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican): increase of 0.50 percent a year John F. Kennedy (Democrat): increase of 2.03 percent a year Lyndon B. Johnson (Democrat): increase of 3.88 percent a year Richard M. Nixon (Republican): increase of 2.16 percent a year Gerald R. Ford (Republican): increase of 0.86 percent a year Jimmy Carter (Democrat): increase of 3.45 percent a year Ronald Reagan (Republican): increase of 2.46 percent a year George H.W. Bush (Republican): increase of 0.40 percent a year Bill Clinton (Democrat): increase of 2.86 percent a year George W. Bush (Republican): increase of 0.01 percent a year Barack Obama (Democrat): decrease of 3.0 percent a year (Can we take time out here to say how surprised we are that Eisenhower, who presided over the "happy" 1950s, managed an anemic half-percent job growth per year, while Jimmy "Malaise" Carter finished second with 3.45 percent annual job growth?) Now for the totals. If you exclude Obama, Democrats averaged 3.03 percent annual job growth, compared to 1.07 percent for Republicans -- a nearly 3-to-1 advantage. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jan/25/carolyn-maloney/c ongresswoman-says-democratic-presidents-create-mo/ http://traxel.com/deficit/ http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_deficit_chart.html . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15024 Registered: May-04 | . Looking back, they said ... http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0901/11/se.01.html |
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Gold Member Username: Stu_pittIrvington, New York USA Post Number: 3916 Registered: May-05 | I'd like to see GWB's stats year to year. He probaly had a good percentage before 9/11, then had declines after which may have skewed the average a bit. The last 3 or 4 had to deal with far more of a global economy than the Regan/Carter era and everyone before, which changes a lot of things. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15025 Registered: May-04 | It's kinda difficult to "skew" 0.01%. W grew the government payrolls at unprecedented rates but did little for the private sector; http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/09charts.html Inflation adjusted middle class wages went down (did not progess at the normal rate) during W while upper class income rose. See Table 2; http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/realer_01162009.pdf The service sector - you paying me to do work you don't want to do - also grew during W's tenure and then was one of the first to crash at the beginning of the current financial situation. Of course, new housing construction boomed there for awhile. You can pick any single month here; http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives/empsit_nr.htm "He probaly had a good percentage before 9/11 ... " That would be during the "Clinton recession" he was handed? Those six months would be similar to saying Obama is responsible for every job lost since 01-21-09. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration #Economic_indicators http://money.cnn.com/2000/04/07/economy/jobs/ |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15026 Registered: May-04 | . " Incomes were basically stagnant during the decade while the costs of vital goods and services--education, health insurance, energy--spiked. The latest report from the Census Bureau on income, poverty, and health insurance is full of interesting data which shows that median household income in 2008, at $50,303, was below where it was in 1998. The same report shows (see Table B-1 on page 44) that both the number and the percentage of people living below the poverty line rose, from 11.9 percent in 1999 to 13.2 percent in 2009 ... Since 2000, a period of generally low unemployment, the portion of the population getting insurance directly from the government rose from 24.7 percent to 29 percent, while the portion receiving employment-based coverage fell from 64.2 percent to 58.5 percent. Between 1999 and 2008 (see Table C-1, page 59) of the census report, the population of the U.S. rose 9 percent, but the uninsured population of the U.S. rose 19.5 percent ... Instead of buying stocks, Americans were buying McMansions and condos. And as this census data on homeownership rates shows, the housing and mortgage bubble boosted the homeownership rate, which peaked at about 69 percent in 2006. But while stocks and bonds are bought mostly with cash, homes were purchased mostly with debt. And what leverage giveth--higher homeownership, lots of jobs tied to real estate--leverage taketh away. Once the housing market peaked in the summer of 2006 and foreclosures started to mount, the homeownership rate declined. Today, it stands at 67.6 percent--almost precisely where it was in the fall of 2000." . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15027 Registered: May-04 | . "I'd like to see GWB's stats year to year." How about this; http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15028 Registered: May-04 | ""You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter". Dick Cheney, 11/02 http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1950_2010 &view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=H0-fed&bar=0&stack=1&size=l&title=US Federal Debt As Percent Of GDP&state=US&color=c&local=s |
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Platinum Member Username: NuckPost Number: 15210 Registered: Dec-04 | "nuclular"...GWB "nuclular" |
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Silver Member Username: HawkbillyNova Scotia Canada Post Number: 990 Registered: Jul-07 | Being a Canadian I really don't fall on any side, however I will offer this. The office of President of the US of A, in my opinion, works one of two ways. If "the beast" has put you there, it works very hard to keep you there. If "the people" have put you there, "the beast" works very hard to get you the he!! out of there. Without question, "the beast" is working very hard to get Obama out of office, and will continue to do so (an example of "the beast" is the clever ad being dropped in this thread suggesting Obama's Health Care initiative is a bad idea). It will be interesting to see if "the people" will rally behind one of the few Presidents they actually are responsible for electing, or whether "the beast" will get its way. If you don't know who or what "the beast" is, watch the movie "Nixon". |
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Platinum Member Username: NuckPost Number: 15213 Registered: Dec-04 | Chews whale blubber here... |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15032 Registered: May-04 | . Consider the economic recession cycle of the US and then think about which party was in power (in the White House) - or had just been voted out of power - and how deeply the country was affected by the downturn or for what reason the recession occurred. Draw your own conclusions ... http://useconomy.about.com/od/grossdomesticproduct/a/recession_histo.htm http://useconomy.about.com/od/stockmarketcomponents/a/Dow_History.htm http://useconomy.about.com/od/economicindicators/a/GDP-statistics.htm . |
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Platinum Member Username: NuckPost Number: 15223 Registered: Dec-04 | Didn't it start with Clinton telling banks that they had to give loans to every minority 2 month White Castle employee for a house? |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15034 Registered: May-04 | . You must have missed the graphs beginning with the election of Reagan in 1980. Or maybe you missed the recession cycle page. "It" is rather complicated. What you are referring to, I suspect, is the outlawing of redline housing districts under the Clinton Justice System. This was a practice that went back into the latter part of the 19th century though it was supposedly done away with by the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960's. Once that was accomplished the Fed made way - with the generous help of Freddie and Fannie backed by taxpayer dollars - for more low income home owners and that began the conversion of housing into a fast-money making proposition. The increasing numbers of low income housing loans and increased home ownership became a policy even GWB touted as one of the great successes of his term in office though almost all of those gains have been wiped out in the last four years. The banks, mortgage and investment firms became willing partners once Glass Stegall was repealled (signed by Clinton near the end of his term and engineered by a Republican Congress led by my ol' reprobate Senator Phil Gramm [guess who gratefully benefitted from these banking transactions after he left Congress]). Zero down payment, interest only payback plans, adjustable rate mortgages and 120% of home value financing (and most especially re-financing) became on paper money makers as everyone involved tried to get ahead by doing not much to absolutely nothing more than holding onto a house for a month as the market increased. During this time the manufacturing base of the US economy was rapidly leaving the country to the point where the US no longer is the major manufacturing nation in the world. We are dependent on other countries for our energy and for most of the materials used in our defense. The middle class which had been the backbone of the country since the end of WWII began to loose ground to the top 5%. To make up for their lost spending power those same people took advantage of the fast and easy credit being offered which was in part financed by more bad loans at the banks. A house of cards was being built while no one in charge paid attention - not surprising really as GWB thought regulation of almost everything should be done on a "voluntary" basis and few volunteered. Derivatives and swaps of bad loans bundled together by unscrupulous investors to hide their toxicity are generally blamed for the initial and on going problems with the US ecomony. (No one has really addressed the trillions of dollars in consumer debt which also hangs over the economy waiting for the next crisis to take shape.) The Federal government willingly and callously spent more than it took in and put it all on credit cards taken out from countries who do not have our best interests at heart. The investors were literally taking out bets the funds they sold would fail. They admit (and hope the courts will believe them when they say) even they didn't know the extent and depth of the crap they were laying on to the unwitting investors in the banking institutions who at first saw their stocks grow on the false promise of huge payoffs. For awhile, if you didn't look to closely or pay any real attention, it once again was Morning in America for many people. The bottom line is too much greed spread over too many sectors did the most damage. We were told to spend but never told we had to pay for anything. The housing market was not much more than a wedge used to push the ecomony over the cliff. A very effective wedge when so many thought making money by doing nothing would never come to an end. We've spent three years plus discussing who is to blame for the situation we find ourself in and no one is willing to allow anyone on their side did anything wrong. I would have to think any reasonable person though would have a hard time not suspecting eight years of multi-trillion dollar deficit spending between 2001 and 2009 didn't set the US up for a harder fall than would otherwise have occurred. The debt ceiling was raised constantly with hardly a dissenting vote in Congress. Much of what the US committed itself to spending during those years will hang over us for decades to come. The Republicans announced they were trying to tie the Democrats hands by running up a debt so high the Democrats couldn't spend anything once they got back in power. They didn't lie. Cheney's "deficts don't matter" was, is and will remain absurd. Look at the debt/deficit to GDP charts as those are generally considered the most relevant to how fiscal policy evolves and the most significant difference between the two major parties over the last century. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/down...r=c&local=s http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/down...r=c&local=s http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/down...r=c&local=s http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/down...r=c&local=s http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/down...r=c&local=s http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/down...r=c&local=s . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15036 Registered: May-04 | . The one thing to remember about all of this is, even hard facts are malleable to what you're being told to believe. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1375 Registered: Oct-07 | Note: Obama's approval rating is about where Reagan or Clinton's was at about the same point in the administration. O's slip in the polls? The 'middle' voter who put him in office. Hardcore Libs wish he'd go further / faster while those from the right decry 5000+ pages of 'progressive' legislation further torturing the Constitution. As an aside and referring to government control of everything, highly controlled systems fail in unpredictable, random ways. There is very little fault tolerance in such systems. Each elaborate set of laws requires patching and later fixes, which makes it worse. People's perversity is always chipping away at 'the system'. The Big Culling is coming. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15037 Registered: May-04 | . The Constitution isn't being "tortured", leo, it is being sold to special interests. I'll see if I can find the figures but they are something akin to 16% of GDP was in the banks/financial institutions (of which health care has become a player over the last 20 years) at the beginning of the 1980's and now it is 64%. The K Street project and the super growth of lobbyists as its result announced without no uncertainty government "for the people" was for sale to the highest bidder. It was a cynical ploy performed by a reasonably small group of people in government who IMO should be rotting in jail - two more of whom were from the great state of Texas. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1376 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, I was trying NOT to be excessively controversial. This IS after all is said and done a HiFi site! However, Sold it is. To the highest bidder. The end, after all, justifies the means I also simply don't believe Gubamint numbers. They are akin to Specifications, all nice and objective, until you see the butchers finger on the scale. You seriously don't believe any of that BS, do you? DON'T DRINK ANYONES COOLAID. I simply can not believe that you would quote numbers of such awful provance. DON'T DRINK ANYONES COOLAID. The Big Culling is Coming. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15039 Registered: May-04 | . "Awful provenance"? The numbers are what the numbers are for the past decades. They are hard facts that are open to interpretation. If the interpretation of past results were clear, we wouldn't have any discussion of future policies, would we? Otherwise, you're welcome to show me facts that dispute those I've provided but I tend to trust those from the government (and those such as Politifact who look at the government for its flaws and deceptions) here. I do not trust anything from some partisan think tank like The Heritage Foundation. As I said, facts are malleable and people lie to suit their own ends. The op was culled from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which is a totally non-partisan group working under Presidents and Congress of both parties. I'm not afraid of government when it works efficiently for the people. I have never bought into the Reagan lie that government is your enemy. It and the growth of conservative talk radio - which is not elected and is beholding to no one and nothing other than their own higher ad revenue which is achieved by being more and more inflamatory - are IMO why we have reached the point where a Republican is not allowed to even speak to a Democrat lest they be branded a traitor to "the cause". The blind distrust of government is IMO corrosive and self defeating. We are a nation and not a collection of individual states. "We the People" acting as a Union is what I was taught to believe in, not "I the individual who doesn't give a d@mn about the other guy if he doesn't look, talk or think like me". "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The facts are what the facts are, leo. I didn't intend this to become a partsian squabble and I tried to stay with pertinent, non-partisan facts rather than personal opinions. You're open to interpretting them differently than I or Politifact have done but the numbers from the past decades are what the numbers are. You cannot go back and change what happened in 1985 or 1998. You can ony make an attempt to make people suspicous of anything their government does or says by what you say and imply, not by relying on hard facts. I would hope most people are of sufficient intelligence to see through the Glenn Becks and the Limbaughs of the system. I know many are not and many require someone to tell them what to think and what to say and how to vote. That's how the whole thing has worked since beginning of mass media. I have heard numerous partisans claiming tax cuts will increase revenues and I've heard just the opposite as if that's all there is to it. That's the KoolAid you're being handed, leo, if you can't think through that BS and see where it fails and where it succeeds, then you get what you deserve. The middle class is going away and anyone who votes against their own economic interests time after time just to satisfy someone telling you to think a certain way is IMO a fool. I don't distrust government and I see no reason to doubt their statistics in most cases involving non-partisan issues such as past employment or GDP figures. As I said, if you have something non-partisan that shows some other outcome, please, introduce your own set of facts and we can rationally discuss this. But injecting nothing other than differing opinions is a sure way for this to end poorly. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1378 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, you have no idea of my politics or where I stand., That most of the numbers we're fed are simply imaginary is pretty much agreed on, don't you think? There are as many ways to figure out job 'creation' as there are doing the figuring. So, true with all the numbers. Remember when Ketchup WASN'T a vegetable? Once these people began interpreting the Constitution, ALL bets were off. To let them keep the books at the same time is the height of insanity. Don't get me started on the Fed. You want Equality of opportunity OR equality of outcome? The 'income redistributionists' among us will eventually have there way, I think we agree on that, too. We also agree that in the meantime, on the way to an 'equal' society, the middle class will eventually be squeezed nearly out of existence. That you don't distrust the government is worrisome. Trust the people that brought you both tax increases AND a debt which won't be paid off by our grandchildren? I do note you said Statistics, but statistics don't rule. The politicians bend every stat to there own ends while trying to gain maximum leverage to the people they are beholdin' to. Every '5-year plan' to reduce debt has an escape clause which is used to fuel more debt. Quit giving my money away. OH! If you think past employment and GDP figures are non-political, guess again. Numbers get revised all the time and refigured by the 'new method' to whatever political end the guys doing the figuring have in mind. Sorry, let's drop it. I don't believe 'em. Would vote 'em ALL out of office if possible and stop revising the Constitution on-the-fly. You can have the last word:: |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15040 Registered: May-04 | . "As I said, if you have something non-partisan that shows some other outcome, please, introduce your own set of facts and we can rationally discuss this. But injecting nothing other than differing opinions is a sure way for this to end poorly." I'm waiting for you to prove what you say, leo, by presenting some facts I can believe. If you distrust the numbers I retrieved from Politifact, then I suppose you trust no one. I can't do that day after day and I certainly can't and won't trust the guy on the radio or the interent who tells me to trust no one but him. I'll ask you again to show me figures which disprove what I've posted. Otherwise, I'm not interested in political opinions on this forum - it is, after all and as you noted, an audio forum and that's why I labelled the thread "political" to avoid as much conflict as possible. I had hoped to avoid people going off with nothing but ill-informed and hyper-partisan opinion to add to the discussion. Show me some facts, leo, and make them as nuetral as possible. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1380 Registered: Oct-07 | Census, OK? Non-partisan? You'd think so, or rather hope so. But NO. We've got some unknown number of Illegals in this country. I'd guess about 4% of the population. and NOT evenly distributed. So, what to do? Count 'em? Well, that throws off the number of representatives given to each state, the number being capped. So, you either count 'em and throw off the rep balance or DON'T count 'em, have the rep balance be closer to correct. But, the fly is that federal money is allocated on the basis of this flawed count. So, if you got a lot of illegals in your district you may want them counted but if you have few illegals you don't want them counted, so your slice of pie is incrementally larger. Political decision? I'd say yes. The Dems feel that once the illegal problem has been 'solved' thru some path to legalization, be that pay a fine or whatever, they will turn into dem voters. Jan, is the census a reasonable enough example for you? I believe you wanted something essentially non-partisan which was tilted by politics. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15042 Registered: May-04 | . Leo, are you sure you want to do this? If so ... "Census" and "Jan", those are the only "facts" I see in that post. There is a "Census" and I am "Jan". Otherwise, you filled that post with more partisan BS and what you "guess" is the number of illegals in this country. Then you proceeded to make unfounded partisan claims about those immigrants and the "Dems" who want them as voters. And that's why we have high unemployment now? Or, that's why Carter didn't actually grow jobs in 1977 at the rate stated by the BLS? That was the topic we were discussing just a few posts back, you know? That was the topic of the op and of my request for you to disprove any of my statistics. You've been told that's the reason for ... what? ... "something", is that it? That's why immigration reform hasn't happened, is that why you brought up the topic of immigrants, leo? I have no idea how immigration got into this thread and I certainly have no idea how you strayed away from quoting actual - factual - numbers and not just more screed from the right wing hate merchants. Tell you what, leo, if you really want to do this, start here. Reagan issued blanket amnesty to all the immigrants in the US illegally back in the mid-1980's, right? No questions asked, just Poof! you're legal now. Reagan did that. Not a Democrat, Reagan did that. What proof do you have to show the actual number of those people granted amnesty who are now voting for either party? I'd like you to show that number as a hard fact, not as some made up BS told to you by some right wing talking head nutjob who is trying to scare the living beejesus out of you about someone with a skin color darker than your own. Do that for me, leo, show me the number and the work performed or the non-partisan source used to prove it is factual. Then, if you want to get into this discussion, we can talk about hard facts and not made up BS meant to keep you fearful of another person or another idea or what "might" happen. C'mon, leo, read my post above, "As I said, if you have something non-partisan that shows some other outcome, please, introduce your own set of facts and we can rationally discuss this. But injecting nothing other than differing opinions is a sure way for this to end poorly." I didn't ask you for your opinion about illegals, did I? I aked you to show me figures which showed another outcome to the Bureau of Labor Statistics's figures quoted in the op. Or I would have settled for some real numbers which indicated the defict to GDP numbers I posted were incorrect or some other number I've quoted which has entered into the general knowledge bank as settled fact and which can be cross checked between several sources. "That most of the numbers we're fed are simply imaginary is pretty much agreed on, don't you think? There are as many ways to figure out job 'creation' as there are doing the figuring. So, true with all the numbers. Remember when Ketchup WASN'T a vegetable?" A few things here, leo. First, your reference to "ketchup" is what is known as a strawman argument. You've set up the fallacious comparison of a Republican President's administration declaring ketchup to be a vegetable and from that I am supposed to assume all of government is as corrupt and inept as that example shows that particular Republican President to have been. The two ideas are not logically linked in anyway and one does not prove the other in any way. That a Republican is not capable of honesty and integrity does not prove all of government is also dishonest. It just doesn't. So, no, I don't buy your false argument that ketchup proves the the Bureau of Labor Statistics incapable of counting job growth and anyone with half a brain should be able to see through your strawman. Additionally, no, I do not agree all the numbers generated by the government are cooked, imaginary or made up to make a particular political party look good or bad over the past 60 years. I do agree there are several ways to calculate employment and unemployment along with gross GDP and net GDP, etc. But all of those divergent methods used to calculate those numbers are taken into account in the final figures posted by the US government. Remember the IRS, leo? How difficult would it be for the IRS (the place where they deal with numbers all the time) to count the number of returns which listed job income? How difficult then would it be to say "this many people" were working in any given time period over the past 60 years and that number is higher or lower than the number working in another time period? How difficult do you think that would be since you distrust all of government? Look, leo, without some sort of "factual" reference such as that there would be no way to run an economy. That's simple common sense, leo. The Federal budgets are built on these numbers, revenue and outlays are dependent upon these numbers. Banks and Wall Street use these very numbers to operate on and interest rates and the market go up and down in response to the numbers provided by the Federal Government. If they trust these numbers, why shouldn't the rest of us? Present day month to month figures change as calculations come in with different numbers, no one is denying that. But now, with what I've posted, we're talking a range of 60 years and no numbers are changing for Q2 of 1965. If you are that distrustful of your government that you cannot accept a percentage of job increases for Dwight Eishenhower, then I am quite worried about what is in your head, leo. Do this, if you think the BLS numbers are cooked, tell me who (which party) comes out ahead in your scenario and why? Then tell me how many net jobs, say, Clinton and GWB actually created in their eight years each in office. Then, prove what you say with real numbers not made up BS from some talking head or partisan think tank. Now, when you were being fed this bogus situation of illegals and the Census, did you bother to ask yourself a basic common sense question? Why would a family of illegals bother to respond to the US Census? What's going to happen to them if they do not? Address: 1253 Cooper St., El Paso, Tx 76544 Number of people living at this address: 10, all illegal, we admit it P.S. We will be waiting for you to come pick us up for deportation. Please call ahead so we can have all the children here and we can all go together despite the fact the kids are actually legal citizens of the US. Most illegals don't shine a light on their immigration status or their whereabouts. Common sense, right? And since there is no real number known to indicate the exact amount of immigrants who are not in compliance with immigration laws, how would anyone make a conscious decision to count or not count anyone who responded to the Census? I don't remember, was there a specific question that asked for immigration status on the Census form? I don't think there was. If not, how would the person doing the tabulations at the Census Bureau (who you don't trust anyway) know to count or not count that individual's information? These are the sort of questions you should be asking yourself, leo, when they are feeding you this Pavlovian KoolAid. "Well, that throws off the number of representatives given to each state ... " Wasn't it the Republicans - Michelle Bachman to be exact and her slime talking ilk - who were telling their constituents the Census was an Obama plot and they shouldn't fill out the Census form? Seems to me that had even 20% of the roughly 38-45% of the populace who identify as Republican, libertarian or right leaning independent taken that advice, the number of people who did not fill out the Cenus for fear Obama was coming to get them for "re-education camps" would have skewed the numbers far more than had every one of your "guessed at" 4% of illegals actually said "come and get me". Don't ya think? But I guess the Census workers would have known who to add back in to the count, eh? Especially since Obama already has all their names and addresses lined up for those "re-education camps", huh? Just asking, leo, just asking. You should be too. How about providing those (non-partisan) labor statistics which prove my op incorrect? Let's get back to real facts and stop this BS that is nothing more than opinions which are generally incorrect and off topic. OK? . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1382 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, I don't have the time, or inclination to start digging thru the history of bogus government numbers. Believe what you choose. If you don't think numbers are 'tilted' you are in dream land. I find it a little funny that someone who, with some justification, ignores specs on stereo gear finds the government numbers so compelling. I made that crack out Ketchup for a reason. Definitions change. Is the poverty line too high or too low? Where does the 'rate of inflation' number come from? If it is wrong, more people are either above or below the 'line'. Reagan? I'm not a big fan. He was asleep at the wheel much of the time and perhaps reaped the benefits of those before him in office, just as Obama lays blame at the feet of Bush II. At some point, though each president must stand on his record. Jan, this is going nowhere indeed. I believe that the numbers reported when bad are reported on Friday late....to avoid the news cycle. The American Press is abysmal in there reportage. I don't like most of 'em and I sure don't hang out in blog-land where every rumor is given 9 lives. I still see stuff bouncing back from 10 years ago. Good numbers are frequently 'cooked' to present best case. Where in heavens name did this country get 3.5million jobs? Nobody has mentioned how much they pay or where so many other jobs have gone. I can drive 100 miles to TJ and see the Maquiladora district which is humming. Your original stats are fun to look at but provide NO detail. A job isn't just a job. Creating 1000 burger flipper positions is not even close to even 100 engineering or even 200 manufacturing positions. In value added or salary or community benefit. I'll check this stuff out, but I know California alone is in way-deep trouble and has a totally disfunctional state government. Also, There has been some 'mission slip' in the 2 major parties in the last 60 or 70 years. I think there are fewer differences as they converge on trying to give as much away as possible while keeping some kind of 'core' which will vote for them no matter what. If JFK were alive and active today, would he be a Dem? That is NOT to say there are NO wedge issues. Immigration? yep. Jobs creation? maybe. But they sure agree that th 9th and 10th amendments are goners. Now, since you asked for evidence, I'll ask YOU. How many people failed to fill out the census form? What %age of what groups? I don't know where you live, but I can find hundreds of illegal / undocumented workers within a 5 mile radius. The corner down the street is a 'pickup' spot for those needing a day labor guy. Some of the home centers have places for these guys to gather so when you pick up your paint, you can get a guy to help you slap it up. The number of illegal workers in this country? Who knows? The number I hear frequently is near 12 million. You mentioned the Reagan Amnesty program. Well, should we do it again? Sure looks like that's where we're headed, after they get done hammering Arizona, which the Majority of Americans support (any number of polls) http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2010/05/11/sb-1070-poll-71-of-amer icans-believe-new-immigration-law-will-lead-to-hispanics-getting-hassled-by-the- man I don't doubt there are repub/dem differences in 'job creation' stats. You talk about cycles, well how much lead / lag is there in such job creation? Does a President do something which has no immediate effect? Is is possible for the NEXT guy to reap the benefits of a policy made today? Can a policy made today either depress or enhance job creation in a couple years? Will the TARP funds ever do any good? and more importantly, Should the government be in the jobs creation job? OR, as I'd favor, just get out of the way, pass business friendly policy and allow business to do what it does best. Create jobs which employ people and spread wealth around. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1383 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, There is a GIGANTIC amount of data in just the first 3 links. Let me have a look! A snap look will invariably lead to wrong conclusions. I know where this is headed, though. Bush II was a spendthrift. And even making conclusions from this much data can lead to disagreements. I doubt there is a smoking gun, here. Fact is, the government is involved in so many things which don't pass constitutional muster it isn't even funny. Income transfer? Let's make sure everyone is poor together. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1384 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, Just bookmarked your 3 original links: You may think I'm being obtuse, but you'd a blown a gasket last yearwhen I was trying to talk to some people at work. I had gone over income tax numbers. Incomes / payments by quint. Just the big picture numbers. I was trying to make an arguement that wealthy people seemed to already be paying most of the taxes. Well, they said they simply didn't believe the numbers. Not one bit. 'They're all hiding there money'....OR......'They get paid in other ways besides money'. !! reading: |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15043 Registered: May-04 | . When did I ask for a laundry list of conservative/libertarian talking points? If the 9th and 10th Amendments are gone, it is those like you who have done the damage I'm afraid. You decry my statistics covering the last 60 years but you want me to believe your poll? Really?! Did you call Frank Luntz for that tactic? You typically do not trust the media but you present a media derived poll that I am suposed to take seriously?! Double really! You know I'm trying to say Bush II was a spendthrift? Triple Really!!! I'm not trying to say that at all, leo, I'm showing statistics which indicate trends. But in your head I'm attacking your positions and you want to throw talking points at me to somehow show all government is bad. But you've provided no proof of that either, just your opinions and a poll I'm supposed to take as Gospel. A poll that to your way of thinking proves government can be good - when you agree with it that is. I had this same conversation with one of my Republican neighbors last year who's quite PO'd about Obama. National health care, global warming, tax cuts, TARP, Obama telling GM how to build cars and on and on he went never answering a single question I asked but only spitting out Pavolian talking points that were planted in his head to make him salivate and see dark skinned people taking advantage of us poor whites. Leo, your three posts are the same thing as what my neighbor spit out, all I see are talking points and misinformation that comes from the echo chamber of people talking to themself and taking in only what they are told that agrees with their own mindset. I can answer your questions but you've given me no opportunity. You talk right over me while ignoring what I've asked of you and you do so on numerous occasions. You've lobbed on more and more opinion even while I ask for facts and you just don't have the time - or the "inclination" - to research the facts. Audio measurements and government statistics are one more strawman you've pulled out of your hat. You claim I don't know what's in your head but you assume to know what's in mine. If McIntosh claims their amplifier produces 150 watts, I know that amp will produce at least 150 watts. It's what McIntosh does and has done for the last 60 years. If the IRS says they counted 220 million returns listing job income, then I have no reason to doubt that figure since numbers are their work. Since you can't tell me why those numbers would be skewed to favor one party then I have to assume you have not even had that thought cross your mind. You just assumed it was true because you've been convinced government is your enemy. The fact you cannot refute the idea that counting jobs is not that complicated and that you do not trust anything about the government does not change the fact that statistics are statistics and no one is revising the jobs count for the Ford administration. Those are settled facts even if you keep talking over what I'm saying while not answering any of my questions or showing any actual proof of what you say. "Now, since you asked for evidence, I'll ask YOU. How many people failed to fill out the census form? What %age of what groups? I don't know where you live, but I can find hundreds of illegal / undocumented workers within a 5 mile radius. The corner down the street is a 'pickup' spot for those needing a day labor guy. Some of the home centers have places for these guys to gather so when you pick up your paint, you can get a guy to help you slap it up." You see, leo, failing to fill out the Census form is my point when we are discussing immigrants. You ask me how many and you ask me what age. What age? Where do you get this stuff? My point is you are not going to fill out the Census form if you are here illegally. That makes your question of how many did not fill out the Census totally irrelevant to your previous point of how many illegals get counted in the Census. You can't have it both ways, leo. Oh, and seeing a group of day laborers has nothing to do with how many people did or did not fill out the Census. OK? But I see you have been granted that omnipotent power to detect an illegal when you see one from across the parking lot. How is that done, leo? I've never understood that power. Is it just that they're standing around looking for work in an economy with a real umemployment rate at 15% and a real unemployment rate for non-whites at two to three times that number? That's what makes them illegals? Or, is it just that their skin is not the same color as your own? That's what makes them illegals? And just as you don't seem bothered by the disparity between classes because the rich are forced to live on a few hundred thousand to a few million a year, you also don't have a bad word for those who employ the low wage labor force to their own advantage. You only have harsh words for all those "illegals" you can spot as you drive through the lot. Leo!!! When I chose to begin this thread, leo, I wanted to stay with as much real information as I could find. I didn't want to delve into how badly the top 2% have it in taxes compared to Joe Schmoe working for minimum wages. Now, you've come along and injected partisan opinion in here and you've not presented one actual fact to back up any of it. Quite honestly, if this is all you have, you're wasting my and everyone else's time. I've asked you to do a few simple tasks to disprove the figures I've presented and I've placed a few simple qualifiers on those responses. I don't need more talking points over talking points over talking points just to prove you can say them, leo. We all know everyone has an opinion. We just don't know many facts existing in those opinions. That's why I started this thread, leo. . . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15044 Registered: May-04 | . Leo, when you gather your information day to day, who or what is your most liberal source for that information? Oberman? Huffington Post? Or is Limbaugh as "liberal" as you get? Please do answer this one, leo. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15046 Registered: May-04 | . "Good numbers are frequently 'cooked' to present best case. Where in heavens name did this country get 3.5million jobs?" "In a report released on Jan. 13, 2010, the president's Council of Economic Advisers estimated that between 1.77 million jobs and 2.07 million jobs were created or saved by the stimulus through the fourth quarter of 2009. Separately, the council's report cited four independent analyses of the same question. These estimates were by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as well by three private-sector economic-analysis firms. Here's what those groups found: • CBO: Between 800,000 jobs (low estimate) and 2.4 million jobs (high estimate) saved or created. • IHS/Global Insight: 1.25 million jobs saved or created. • Macroeconomic Advisers: 1.06 million jobs saved or created. • Moody's economy.com: 1.59 million jobs saved or created. A couple of caveats: These estimates are based on economic models that vary somewhat from study to study, and not everyone buys the idea that it's possible to measure how the economy would have fared in the absence of a stimulus. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/18/scott-brown/scott -brown-says-stimulus-didnt-create-one-new-job/ Hope that helps. I don't know where you got your number, leo, but I've not heard anyone claim the stimulus saved 3.5 million jobs. Got a link for that? . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1385 Registered: Oct-07 | Calculating the number of saved jobs? good luck I want to see a NET number. newly unemployed VS new jobs created. When that number to net increase employed, that's the good news. All these 'models' are subject to so much fudging as to be only a direction, not a hard number. Reasons? Interactions. Stuff like Construction jobs helping all the support stuff. Some interactions may be negative. Hiring of lower end people may suppress hiring of higher end people. At work we tried replacing some technical people with trained operators. Worked only so-so and we had to keep the technicians. All models are input sensitive and subject to chaotic inputs and non-linear results. Also, are these private sector or are government jobs included? Califonia 'shrunk' its job force by closing some open jobs and transferring people around to fill vacant positions. Not a penny of payroll lost, but the workforce shrunk. on paper. Here's a nice chart for 'ya. Shows massive increase in jobs for April. good. But, unemployment is still up? have a looksee. http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2010/05/benens_job_grow.html This is another reason I don't like sheer numbers. You are only told what the originator wants you to hear. One 'axiom' of data is there is alway more information buried in the data. In my job, we called it 'hidden data' and spent time looking for it. Sometimes coorelations on paper have no real relationship. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15048 Registered: May-04 | . "Here's a nice chart for 'ya. Shows massive increase in jobs for April. good. But, unemployment is still up? have a looksee. http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2010/05/benens_job_grow.html " You are either an unredeemable pessimist or just a chronic malcontent. I fail to see how you could not understand increased employment - stop the bleeding of 700K jobs per month and continued job losses in the hundreds of thousands per month for the first 23 months of the graph - but the unemployment rate is still up. What were you expecting, leo, Obama to give all 8 million who have lost their job since the Bush Recession began a job at his Chicago home? Look at the trend in the data. No one said one graph tells all, that's why I've posted about a dozen to consider. What other "facts" do you have, leo? . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1386 Registered: Oct-07 | Well....one thing at a time! Yes, I'm a pessimist. But not quite a chronic malcontent. I'd feel redeemed if gov were honest, trustworthy and frugal. Of course, nobody can solve the 'problem' in one wack. I am on record among my friends as having been 'guardedly optimistic' when Obama took office. I was NEVER a fan of BushII, feeling he was not only NOT up to the job, but a BAD judge of character, as well. But, the government is getting in the way. TARP? Failed banks giving huge bonuses? Countrywide? Boy, they did us a favor. My problem is with the government 'fine tuning' the 'system' after every malfunction. Government does not make things better. Is greed good? No, not on the pig in a trough scale we've seen with gov bailouts and preferential treatment of the wealthy. People 'game' the system for self benefit. Did anyone in the gov even pretend to take some of the blame for the mortgage meltdown? Rules designed to get people into houses. A great and noble end. Too bad peoples greed led them to 110% HELOC loans while the greedy SOB's packaged what they knew to be poor risk loans and sold 'em off. Housing going up in perpetuity is a Ponzi scheme only exceeded in scale by Social Security. I know you've never even 'fudged' on your taxes and paid every single penny. Sorry, Jan. I am just reflecting the UGLY mood in this country. Rs and Ds have dismal approval ratings. EVERY poll says that, no matter who does it. 'I'm from the government, I'm here to help' is code for FU. Let me ask a few leading questions. Use any scale for answers: How would you rate Congressional performance? Do you feel comfortable with the gov's new, expanded role in health care? Does the Federal Gov follow the Constitution? (opin, brief is good) Do you feel 'entitled'? :: do you have a 'right' to a house? or a job? or medical care? Are there rights without responsibilities? Has the CellPhone, Ipod and hand calculator been good or bad for education. We are reaching meltdown stage. Many states (except W.Va) are either treading water or blowing bubbles....money/budget wise. My home state of California is simply incapable of saying NO to any spending that is even remotely 'in a good cause'. The actor we elected was no better than the hack he replaced. Go to the MSNBC home page right now and look at the tenor of the headlines. Go to PEW RESEARCH and look at polling results. Are they on an acceptable list? |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15049 Registered: May-04 | . "'I'm from the government, I'm here to help' is code for FU." And that was spoken by the guy in charge of the entire government enchillada. You never thought that odd? Then he set about proving the government he ran couldn't do much right. You never saw the stupidity in that? Look at the trends in the information I provided and stop being a sheep. " I am just reflecting the UGLY mood in this country." And yet the people still telling you government is the problem and government doesn't work still want back in charge of the government they say isn't worth having. You don't find that odd either I suppose. "A Nation divided against itself cannot stand." I see no future in your attitude, leo. You still haven't provided any facts I can use so, what do you have? An angry mood and that's about it. Hooray! you've done what is needed and you can be replaced now. Give me facts, leo, not more ugly opinions. I'm tired of ugly opinions when I said provide facts. How about it? Just sticking to facts, leo? I didn't start this thread just so you could vent. I am honestly getting tired of your government is horrible, government is dishonest, gevernment is the enemy schtick. I don't agree with your "opinions" so I see no need to answer your questions that only say everything is horrible. Yeah, you are a chronic malcontent if that's the best you can come up with. Facts, leo, just give facts and stop with the rants. Enough with your complaints. If you can't use facts, do it somewhere else. C'mon, leo, if you can't participate in an honest fashion, just say so. I'm not here to be your soapbox. Find facts that disprove what you say is incorrect in my op. NO MORE RANTS! Give me facts or what you post is worthless. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1390 Registered: Oct-07 | What would you accept as facts? What in your mind constitutes a disfunctional gov? I don't want to misquote you but you referred to government for sale. Here is a simple piechart of the US budget. over 1/2 is mandatory / or entitlement. You will probably say So What? Well, I doubt the founders had this in mind. Income redistribution is being used as a form of class warfare. Wait 'till social security is means tested. That'll be a kick. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7a/U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2 007.png/800px-U.S._Federal_Spending_-_FY_2007.png Mandatory spending and interest were over 60% of the budget in 2008 Just not wanting to answer a few simple questions is not good enough. My questions are honest and some come from polls. Approval ratings of Congress are at near-historic lows. Even the Rs have had it with there own party to a greater extent then the Ds. I'm glad you're happy. There is more coming down the pipe. Wait for the midterm elections. If the historic pattern is followed, the 'ins' will suffer some losses. Than we'll see if Obama can build a consensus government and head toward the middle. I won't be happy with more gridlock, but I have no take on how opinion will go if it happens. Some would be happy to see those guys spin there wheels for another couple years. A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority. Eric Hoffer Sorry, I don't understand your first sentence after you quote me. I am mocking the person who said it first, I don't know who, but I'd guess they were serious. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15050 Registered: May-04 | . Those are Reagan's famous "most dangerous words". You know, the guy in charge of the government when he spoke those words. The words this "ugly mood" is based on but the people repeating those words still "want their country back". "Class warfare" = talking point, no proof. "Entitlement" = talking point, no proof. "Social Security"/"means tested" = talking points, no proof. That's what I'm getting from you, leo, Pavlovian, Luntz generated, poll tested talking points taken from someone else's mouth or keyboard. More boiler plate and no proof whatsoever, just more accusations and an "ugly mood". You are a jabbering bobble head spouting talking points who can't back up a single thing you say because it didn't originate in your head. If you have to ask what is acceptable as a fact, then you've left facts far behind long ago and haven't looked back. What I would settle for is something more thought provoking than someone simply regurgitating the BS that comes from talk radio and the blogs. Repeating that crap is saying I have nothing to say on my own, it's saying I don't think for myself, I only put in what I get from the mob mentality of other crazies who I already agree with. You may claim you don't pay attention to them but you have nothing more to add than they do. And I'm not finding you particularly inquisitive about putting forth any effort toward finding any facts about any of this, that infamous lack of "inclination to start digging thru the history" is still there. HOw long ahve we been doing this and a Wkipedia pie chart is the best you've bothered to find. It's easier to just repeat what you've been told, become part of the mob than it is to go find out something real. Where do you get this stuff? A pie chart? That's your idea of "hard facts"? From Wikipedia no less. You don't trust 60 years of government based statistics but you trust one shot at Wikipedia, a source which can be editted by anyone on the planet. You repeat talking points endlessly and inject threats against "the majority" while indicting anyone with a skin color that doesn't match your own. With that I have to ask, what's your idea of a fact? And how do you use it? Just to find more to complain about? I look at what you post, leo, and I don't care. There's nothing that might interest me, nothing that I would care to spend more than a nano-second passing by as just more factless garbage - the same garbage I can hear 24/7 on a dozen radio stations down here or find on hundreds of websites that don't bother with facts, just more venting from the guy who can spot illegals from across the parking lot. More BS from somemone who thinks it's thought provoking to ask whether JFK would be a Democrat today. How much time do you expect me to take with that? Then you want me to answer your questions after you have ignored the entire first half of what I have posted and all of what I have asked from you. What were the last five questions of mine that you actually answered, leo? You're not here to think, you're here to vent. Every post you're off somewhere else. Do you see a conversation getting started here. No, you get to vent and that's why you keep returning. You don't have time though to go gather some real facts to use. You and those just as lazy as you about facts are why there is an ugly mood in this country. Post something that makes me think and not just more of your "somebody p!ssed in my cornflakes" ramblings. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15051 Registered: May-04 | . "We wanted to look at those numbers ourselves, so we turned to the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS. Getting guidance on the data from BLS and using Excel spreadsheets, we discovered not only that Brown and the Democrats have been wrong, but also why. It was a matter of timing. BLS had only preliminary data on Bush's final performance at the close of his second term, when the Wall Street Journal was doing its story. BLS subsequently updated the data. It turned out that things were way worse than the preliminary numbers showed. We shared this assessment with the Journal reporter, who agreed. It's not a matter of whose numbers were better. It's a matter of what was known and when. You, too, can do the math. The jobs numbers are based on a monthly survey of employers for the 12th of each month, but the initial reports are revised as more employers complete their survey over the following couple of months. A fuller census of employment and wages is conducted quarterly and is considered more accurate, so BLS eventually adjusts the monthly numbers to reflect that accuracy. Here are the latest numbers: Number of jobs as of January, 1993, a week before Clinton took office: 109.725 million. Number of jobs as of Jan. 2001, a week before Clinton left office: 132.469 million Net Gain under Clinton: 22.7 million jobs. Now for Bush, who succeeded Clinton in the White House. As already noted, the nation had 132.469 million jobs as he was taking office. Number of jobs on Jan. 12, 2009, a week before Bush left office: 133.549 million. Net gain under Bush: 1.08 million jobs. OK, but what about Brown's claim that incomes went up under Clinton? The numbers bear this out, too. BLS data, adjusted for inflation, show that average weekly wages grew by 21 percent from the start of Clinton's first term to the end of his second term. They grew by only 2 percent under Bush's two terms." http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2010/jul/25/sherrod-brown/sherrod-brow n-touts-job-grown-during-clinton-presi/ That's what you call "facts", leo. Try more of them and none of what you've been doing. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15052 Registered: May-04 | . Can anyone tell me why we have become a culture that has no use for facts? That doesn't know how to interpret facts and data? Why is it so utterly difficult for most people to actually prove what they say rather than merely hoping the other person will accept what is said because they don't know how to research facts either. Without simply slamming our education system, why have we developed into a system that cannot find facts and the "most reliable source" we have 9 out of ten times is Wikipedia? I realize I'm asking for opinions but I'd really like to see some facts and proofs presented in your responses. Does that mean no one will respond because they can't? The haven't the time or the inclination to find facts to support their statements? That would be disappointing. . |
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Silver Member Username: HawkbillyNova Scotia Canada Post Number: 993 Registered: Jul-07 | "Can anyone tell me why we have become a culture that has no use for facts? " There is a presumption in that question that at one time we were a culture that had more of a use for facts. I'm not sure I'd agree with the presumption JV. And I'm not sure how you'd measure a transition over time of how people utilize experience, societal messaging, etc versus hard data in decision making......or at least opinion formation. I think I understand what you're getting at. The Swine Flu "outbreak" case and point. Statistically no different in North America than a garden variety flu strain from any other flu season, but billions of dollars spent to fight it. But nobody could overlook the early deaths in Mexico. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you entirely. But I think the "human condition" will always create responses that are not fact based, but rooted in fear, prejudice, and self preservation. You see less of it in good times, more of it in bad. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15053 Registered: May-04 | . "'Frame the Issue, Claim the Issue' "Bailout" joins a growing list of words and phrases that are misused by politicians, media consultants and others looking to frame the debate in a way that is favorable to their cause. As our own Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson write in "un-Spun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation," the strategy is this: "Frame the issue, claim the issue." For example, the term "death tax" isn't a tax on death, but a tax on inherited wealth But people think a "death tax" is unfair, as GOP consultant Frank Luntz wrote in "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear." It's worked. The estate tax was cut during George W. Bush's presidency. Democrats also had success for a time with applying the term "assault weapons ban" to legislation that didn't really ban military assault rifles -- fully automatic weapons like those have been illegal to own without a hard-to-obtain federal license since the days of Machine Gun Kelly ... ... All these terms have been used to short-circuit reasoned, thoughtful debate by triggering an emotional response. Our advice: Don't let somebody else's choice of words do your thinking for you." http://www.factcheck.org/2010/07/bailout-baloney/ . |
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Silver Member Username: HawkbillyNova Scotia Canada Post Number: 994 Registered: Jul-07 | "Such worrying thoughts are usually dismissed by reference to one or other of the following two fallacies. The first one is that human behavior is not subject to scientific laws, and that consequently all attempts to apply the method of science to politics and social behavior generally are doomed to failure; the second one is that science has already been applied to these problems, and has failed to provide answers superior to those of common sense and party doctrine." The Psychology of Politics by Hans J. Eysenck True then, true now. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1391 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, you like 'facts' how about public debt? Oh, you don't mind public debt? Silly me, since you might be one of the wealthy ones who are in an inflation resistant position. Don't you agree that inflation effects people on fixed incomes are horrendous? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt debt rising at a pretty good clip to nearly 70% of GDP. I don't know if this is current, but Nixon was the last President to submit a balanced budget. The amount of our debt held 'internationally' is around 27% Now, public debt as a %age of GDP peaked at over 100% around 1950, it was followed buy inflation which has the effect of paying off debt with cheaper dollars. Inflation in 1951 ran nearly 8%. I believe you could call it 'fact' that there is a clear coorelation between debt as a percentage of GDP and downstream inflation. We are heading for another period of inflation, probably, and won't have much to show for it. |
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Platinum Member Username: NuckPost Number: 15233 Registered: Dec-04 | "Sheeple" is, not surprisingly, not a term that is overused by Gov't...in public. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1393 Registered: Oct-07 | Nuck, please say what you mean! People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them. Eric Hoffer Jan, I won't play your 'frame the debate' game. I see this as a technique you learned long ago to deflect some arguement. Answer any of my questions posed above. Do you think this countries leadership is 'on track' for good or self interest? I brought up national debt since inflation is used to pay off debt with more / cheaper dollars. Our money supply (M1) has increased by something like 2 trillion dollars in recent years. At the same time as perceived value has decreased (housing bubble popped). Jan, you sum up things rather nicely in #15034, but don't follow thru to some conclusions. Jan said: We've spent three years plus discussing who is to blame for the situation we find ourself in and no one is willing to allow anyone on their side did anything wrong. Well, whose minding the store? I'd think they are all responsible. Everyone with any oversight or monitoring responsibility. These guys made the rules. The all had a hand in it. From Barney Frank to GWB. I point a finger at all of 'em. Not Rs or Ds exclusively. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1394 Registered: Oct-07 | Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true. Eric Hoffer |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15054 Registered: May-04 | . "There is a presumption in that question that at one time we were a culture that had more of a use for facts." Not at all, in fact, there is a presumption on your part in that response. I have no way to prove or disprove how many facts were used to make decisions in decades past since there were no studies I am aware of that tracked such behavior until the rise of opinion based talk radio in the 1980's. What I do know, and I assume needs no statistic to prove, is we have at our disposal immense amounts of information that my parents could never have even dreamt of acquiring. Yet the more information we have on tap and the easier the access we have to that information the less we seem to rely on facts, know how to research facts or oftentimes even want to accept facts when they are shown to us. Leo refuses to believe the BLS statistics which I've presented when they do not coincicide with what he prefers to believe. Yet he finds Wikipedia a useful source for his "facts". Anecdotally, from my time in sales I know people don't care to be faced with facts when they run contrary to the desired outcome. The election of Obama has given rise to a multitude of web sites on both sides of the political spectrum with a heavy emphasis falling on the fringe of anti-government stridency. The John Birch Society has made a comeback. We would appear not only to have no use for facts, we have no use for common sense questions which would easily disprove most of the specious "opinions" floated in the talk radio/blog worlds on either side. Listen to Limbaugh and you'll hear him deride liberals for what he claims to be their shoot from the hip intellectualism which responds strictly to emotion while praising his listeners for being the smart ones who know he is telling them the truth. As he disparages the traditional "liberal/leftist" media he assures his listeners he is providing them the facts they need. The propoganda drips from the speaker as he plays on the emotions of his audience with a relentless machine-gunning of Pavlovian words and phrases which elicit, one after the other, simple emotional responses which disengage logical reflection or clear-headed inspection. Here's an experiment to try and, if you'd like, report back your findings. Ask a few people you meet who Rush Limbaugh is and what he does. Then aks those same people who Daniel Schorr was and what he is (probably) most well known for accomplishing. This should be an interesting and enlightening comparison since Schorr just passed away this weekend and his name and resume were widely reported in the traditional press. "But I think the "human condition" will always create responses that are not fact based, but rooted in fear, prejudice, and self preservation." Of course these are the tools of the trade for those provocateurs stretching back to before Father Coughlin and forward to Glenn Beck. Possibly I'm showing my biases, but I hear all three at work constantly in many of the most popular talk shows of today. Long ago I heard the distinction between "maternal" Democrats who want to nurture the world and "paternal" Republicans who prefer to be the strict authoritarian figures who rule by fear of what "might" happen (therefore, the need for guns to protect you in case "the worst" comes breaking in your window). . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15055 Registered: May-04 | . "Jan, you like 'facts' how about public debt? Oh, you don't mind public debt? Silly me, since you might be one of the wealthy ones who are in an inflation resistant position." As I said, if you have something non-partisan that shows some other outcome, please, introduce your own set of facts and we can rationally discuss this. But injecting nothing other than differing opinions is a sure way for this to end poorly. Leo, you do not use facts, you abuse facts. And in the process you have become increasingly strident to the point where you are now outright insulting. I knew I was taking this risk when I started this thread but I've asked you several times to drop the rants and stick to facts. Now you've decided to escalate this to personal attacks - which I do not appreciate. I'm going to tell you one more time to stop the rudeness, stop the rants and, if you state anything, show proof of what you claim. Or, better yet, just show us a fact or a statistic backed by some non-partisan research facility you can link us to. Try to be thought provoking rather than conversation killing. Your rude behavior now extends to poorly sourced Wikipedia entries of data points I have already provided through more trustworthy sources. Obviously, when you said you would look more closely at the data I had provided early on in this thread what you meant was you hadn't looked at the data at all (merely dismissed it as not worthy of your time) and that you had no "inclination" to do so. Facts are such bothersome things at times, eh? If you had looked at what I have provided (with proper links), you could have found the percentages of spending for the US and even gone back over decades of spending to compare how monies have been allocated throughout the past century. You could have broken the data down into the "big four" and then into other component parts and then compared quarter by quarter and state by state if you were so "inclined". That is, had you had the inclination to look at the data I have supplied in the first posts of this thread as you had said you were going to do. But you didn't. And so you think I should be impressed that you could source Wikipedia. You also could have found that whether or not Nixon was the last President to submit a balanced budget for passage (which he was not*), submitting a balanced budget, passing a balanced budget and working within the revenue income a balanced budget imposes (which during Nixon's tenure was tied to an approximately 70% tax rate [down from 91% until Kennedy reduced taxes] for top wage earners compared to a very hopeful 35% today**) and paying down the National Debt are all vastly different things. But I didn't start this thread to preach - or argue - about debt or budgets. I started this thread to do nothing more than put forth a few facts which can be verified by independent, reliable, non-partisan sources and which can then be left open to personal consideration. I didn't come here to change any minds but rather to open a few. You should try it some time, leo. "Now, public debt as a %age of GDP peaked at over 100% around 1950 ... " Go back and check the statistics I've provided, leo, and use some common sense. Or, if you insist on this line of irrational flailing about, show proof of your claims. "Public debt" - as I believe you might be using the words - did not reach over 100% of national GDP at any time. If it had, we would have been financially bankrupt and we would have ceased to exist as a nation. "National debt" never reached as high as 30% of GDP during WWII, our National Debt apex. Go check the data sheeets I've linked to. However, possibly you mean something utterly unfathomable by the simplistic use of a nonsense coupling such as "public debt". If so, please, show what you mean and back up your assertion with facts. No more rants. You've reached the point where you have insulted me on numerous levels. I'm not impressed with your barrage of nonsensical, disconnected ramblings which lack any proof what so ever. It would be difficult enough, should I choose to do so, to disprove strawman after strawman after strawman and BS after BS. To do so when the logical connection between the beginning and end of a sentence has been so butchered as to lack anything to actually refute other than "your word" on the matter is simply impossible. That is also not why I began this thread. Read the tile of this thread, leo. No more rants. Post facts and prove them. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15056 Registered: May-04 | . Sorry to separate them like this, I had a formatting problem with that last post and I had trouble tracking down. Here are the links to my "*" and "**" in the above post. * http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv8-hptb5&p=last%20us%20president%20 to%20submit%20a%20balanced%20budget&type= ** http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/07/25/weekinreview/25marsh.html?ref=week inreview http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/weekinreview/25bumiller.html?_r=1 . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15057 Registered: May-04 | . Still, IMO, biased reporting but worth the reading time to provide more insight into the process. There are some very significant bookkeeping maneuver's performed in the US budget which are not reflected in this particular article. Possibly the author thought his audience was sophisticated enough to realize how the numbers are pushed around and for the most part covered up since the Reagan Adminsitration changed accounting methods forever. But the writer would have done better to make these facts known up front. http://www.geldpress.com/2008/07/us-budget-reporting-deception/ . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1396 Registered: Oct-07 | Don't know how to help you. Chart I linked clearly shows a line going above 100% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USDebt.png |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1399 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, even one of the links you provided, 'USgovernmentspending.com' shows 'Gross public Debt' over 100%, just as I said. That's a 'fact'. Chart is same as in the Wiki. Interest payments have declined since the peak from =~85->95, which is Dwarfed by the 'Gross public Debt' figure. When plotting Healtcare, Education and Defense, you clearly see the WWII peak but Education and Healthcare is reported as a 'total',number, not a federal number. There are a dozen or more choices for datasets. Now what? I'll continue to play with this chart. It is indeed, very flexible and can even display multiple data sets. Question remains, what to do with all this data? We could get to the point of what we called 'paralysis thru analysis', a funny way of saying you are drowning in data. Jan, I can guarantee I've crunched more numbers than you. Engineering data, to be sure, but it is all just numbers. Sometime stuff that looks like a coorelation simply isn't. I started with a program I can't even name, which was run in DOS with commands like 'make graph' and 'make table'........killer stuff for 1980. What's the goal here? What do you want people to see? You must realize that most people's eyes cross when given graphs and charts to look at. I'm not trying to be funny with that statement. I consider it a 'fact'. Imagine you are trying to explain something on the technical side. KISS is the rule, right? You could explain circuit noise by going all the way to quantum effects, but what's the use? You'd lose all but the geekiest. (real word?) I will continue to ignore all your insults and sideways stuff. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15058 Registered: May-04 | . My apologies, leo. Late last night I was looking at the "deficit" graph; http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_history rather than the "debt" graph . At the time I had pulled up the deficit graph as an individual page which shows the %'s I stated. I see what you are referring to now and I see the explanation of "public debt" which is a % of "National Debt". So, once again, my apologies. From the main page in the link and discussing "Government Debt"; "Government debt, including federal and state and local debt rose to 45% of GDP. But it was World War II that really entered new territory. After the end of the war in 1946 government debt stood at 121.2% of GDP." Therefore the "fact" I see is the National Debt peaked in 1946 at the end of WWII and not in the 1950's. By the time of Eisenhower the debt was being paid down - which few would argue (other than Dick Cheney) is a good thing. But now you pull out your "argument from authority" ("Jan, I can guarantee I've crunched more numbers than you") and claim I insulted you?! C'mon, leo, all I did was make several attempts at ending your rants. I made it clear I wasn't interested in rants or arguments in this thread but you were determined. So, now you've got some "facts" to work with and a reliable source (not Wikipedia) for those facts. That, IMO, is better than not having any facts which is the point I was trying to get to when I began this thread. Who am I trying to appeal to? Anyone who wants to look. I've said repeatedly I'm not trying to change anyone's mind. I found the very first piece of information I posted to be quite interesting and contrary to what I find as "generally accepted knowledge" when people aren't relying on facts. The Republican Mantra for decades has been to declare any Democratic policy "a jobs killer" when, in fact, quite the opposite appears to be the case when you examine facts rather than relying on what someone else tells you. Most especially when that person is telling you something to protect their own vested interests knowing you'll never go check the facts. If most all who found just that bit of information in the op left with a fact in their head that wasn't there when they got up that morning, that's a success. Unfortunately, there is no KISS rule in economics when you begin to get beyond "we took in this and we spent that" and even that looses most people who are more concerned with L. Lohan being without her cell phone for a few weeks. "We are heading for another period of inflation, probably, and won't have much to show for it." Probably not ... "Evidence supporting deflation has driven yields on U.S. treasury securities including the 30 year, 10 year and two notes to record lows. 1 Scott Martin, managing director at Astor Asset Management said regarding record low treasury yields: 'That's an indicator to me that the smart money, which I consider to be the bond market money, is preparing for the worst. It's not necessarily predicting a double - dip recession but some kind of deflationary spiral. There is no inflation in sight, in fact, deflation is here.'" http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5556650/united_states_economy_heading_t owards.html?cat=3 When the consumer stops spending, prices drop to stimulate demand. With interest rates at historically low levels for many borrowers, there is no inflation around the corner unless energy prices suddenly spike due to wars or spills or the looming climate/water issues send food prices on a roller coaster. Possibly the watered down finance bill will restrain some form of deflation/inflation but at least now someone reading this has a few more tools to use when they try to decide how much they got for their dollar in Washington. Of course, I'm sure you can find another writer who will predict inflation rather than deflation. Interest rates tie to deficits and debt which are both tied to from whom do we borrow massive amounts which fluctuates USD value to other currencies which results in corrections to GDP ... etc., etc., etc. It doesn't take long for your eyes to cross, that's for certain. "The numbers are what the numbers are for the past decades. They are hard facts (which are) open to interpretation. \b{If the interpretation of past results were clear, we wouldn't have any discussion of future policies, would we? Otherwise, you're welcome to show me facts that dispute those I've provided but I tend to trust those from the government ... here."} So, there you go, leo. If I managed to get no one other than you to actually rely on only one fact rather than just make another rant, then this thread did what I set out for it. As this all started, if I got you to rely on the US government's figures to support your argument, that was a grand success, wasn't it? If anyone uses any of the facts they can now find to determine, in even the smallest way, how they vote rather than relying on who they'd like to have a beer with, then the thread has worked as hoped. The rest is up to you and whoever else might have stayed with this thread to this point. They have some tools to use now and information to rely on rather than Pavolian responses to half truths, prevarications, obsfucations and out and out BS. I didn't start this to get anyone to agree with me, just to get them to think beyond what they are hearing shot at them from the talking heads/blogs 24/7. I didn't begin this to change anyone's mind, just to get them to take a moment, to know how to support what they believe or disprove what they are being told and not just to accept what they want to hear. And, actually, my error late last night shows how easy it is to miss something when you are looking in the wrong column. So, that worked out to the better IMO. We were both right but we were both using two different facts. Once again, my apologies. No hard feelings, leo, even if we disagree about inflation/deflation, this is still an audio forum. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1400 Registered: Oct-07 | Speaking of audio... Did those fascist s=o=b sss take away Lindsays CELL PHONE??? Jan, you know so little about my politics and where I glean my info it is if not funny, than certainly a head shake> Ever hear of Stratfor? http://www.stratfor.com/ Or how about LexisNexis? I'm saving for this one. My whole point is that data is just numbers. Nothing more or less. There were engineers who sat and stared at numbers for hours and were still clueless. Some others would delve deep into the same data and find some interesting tidbits. Our data base at work includes EVERY lot history. When there is a yield problem in a certain device......but not in all lots, you start looking for 'commonalities' and such. If all 'bad' lots went thru machine 'X' then you need to look at that tool. A little TOO technical for this discussion, but you should get the idea. So, in conclusion it is not the data or number of charts / graphs one has ones disposal (grammar problem?) but the use one makes of such data. One day, I'll sit down and write a paragraph on 'hidden data'. The KISS rule simply applies to trying to explain complex phenom to non-specialists. Speaker loading is a fine example. Most people incorrectly boil it down to impedance, but you know there are a few other non-trivial effects at work. The bad part of KISS is that it sometimes doesn't work or the data/concepts are irreducible. And, while it is indeed an arguement from authority, I HAVE crunched major amounts of data. Excel is for pikers. I still don't know what Skewness is. How many people know the difference between mean, median and mode and when to use moving average smoothing?.....just from the 'M's............ No, it is not the simple accumulation of data which counts. There is an article here... 'When bad people do bad things with good data'........nice, long title. Good data can and is being used for less than good purposes. By people I wouldn't trust to walk my dog. I simply don't have the expertise in all the fields required to sift thru it all. Since you are a reader......Please find a copy of 'How to Lie With Statistics'. This book has been around for ages and was used in my first statistics class.....back in the early '70s. The stats class was thru the Political Science department, which gives quite a different view than either the Psychology, Math or Engineering departments, as you could well imagine. http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728 |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15059 Registered: May-04 | You do realize I'm only apologizing for not catching my own link to "public debt" which I had supplied early on, right? Your "Stratfor" site is ... um ... interesting (and yet another attempt at an argument from authority, "look what I know that you don't") but I'm not asking anyone to become a conspiracy researcher or to tackle global conflict. No need for daily web based "intelligence reports" in what I'm suggesting. As a matter of fact, I tend to find daily rundowns to be less informative and more distracting to the real facts on the ground. But that's just me. If international intrigue floats your boat, leo, fine but I wanted people to have facts about the basics of how their government operates. Yes, the United States has an effect outside the US proper and, if anyone wants global intrigue, I'm sure they will thank you for the lead. IMO how we conduct our economic policy is the leading factor in how we fit into a global scheme. I doubt anyone, even the most casual observer, is overly confused about how the two major parties each approach foreign policy when it comes to conflict and alliances. However, maybe your "public debt" is a good example of how the two parties have most recently gone about paying for those policies with money we, the public, will have to ante up to pay back. In 1946 we did, according to the information we have at hand, accrue public debt at a rate that reached 120% of National GDP while GDP crashed to the floor as the war wound down and troops returned home. You can see the effects of that sudden halt on the production of wartime goods in the history of US recessions which I've supplied. However, that large 1940's debt had been assumed in the US through the sale of Treasuries and Bonds to the American public which then became monies we owed to ourself (much like the manner in which many of our ongoing social and infrastructure systems still operate today). We paid that debt by tax rates as high as 91% (until the 1960's when Kennedy cut the top rate to 77%). Looking back at the graphics and the facts we have access to shows how we were at that time dedicated to paying down all debt, particularly that debt which fed foreign intervention. To many, it also shows how temporarilly high tax rates helped fuel the US out of that recession by once again growing GDP. Compare that to how we have paid for our most recent foreign policies, most especially those which involve conflict, and where the trend lines have been taking us since the debt/deficit to GDP has once again begun to climb. IMO, if you understand one - how money is budgetted and spent, you will eventually understand the other - how wars exist. If you observe the trend lines and do not allow yourself to get caught up in any one piece of data, then you can see a larger picture - a larger group of "facts". Today I heard Limbaugh "explaining" to his audience - among his other dumbed down convolutions of near truths - how the financial crisis all boils down to subprime loans (which, of course, according to Limbaugh are the exclusive fault of liberals). Such reductions of logic are akin to saying woman exists because Adam had one too many ribs. Now, what I've tried to do here in this thread was to provide tools anyone can use to dig deeper. Do I expect everyone to understand exactly how the financial crisis evolved? That would be too much apparently for most of us, myself included (though I found a top notch article in the current Newsweek on the relation between the evolution of the crisis and last week's "Wall Street Fix"). As I said above, having the facts found in the government's own data will help you to see what shape we would have found ourself in had we not financed our foreign adventures with borrowed money and hoped rising GDP would take care of it all. Nor do I think it takes a genius to do so - or, on the other hand, to realize how statistics can be manipulated to mislead. A half fact is often far worse than no fact at all. Statistics are just numbers, they are open to interpretation by humans. However, I do believe in the ol' axiom, "You can have your own Truth; You cannot have your own facts." All you need is the inclination to find those facts and then you can sort out your own fact based truth. IMO, if you don't have the inclination to find the basic facts about how the US budget is created and how it is spent, then you will be creating your own truth without facts about nearly everything else. What I've suggested is just the tip of the iceberg in understanding how the US under a two party system operates, but it is a start and that's what matters. Truth can be bent, facts are more difficult. I think pg 10 of your suggested book ("How to Lie ...") says it well; http://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728#reader_0393310728 That's why I started this thread. If you still want to go on about other things and what you know that I don't, that's your business, leo. I'll stick to Coast to Coast AM and Art Bell for that stuff. I hope anyone who is still with me at this point will continue to have "the inclination" to gather those facts that open your mind to what you are being told and what you are not. If you keep your mind open, facts will be your best tool. If you end up believing everyone is out to get you and you trust no one, so be it. At least I tried and, hey, leo gave you a new website to look at. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15060 Registered: May-04 | . Leo, if you want high intrigue, try this site; http://www.opensecrets.org/ Sart here would be my suggestion; http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/top.php?display=Z . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1407 Registered: Oct-07 | If the Stratfor site is 'arguing from authority' than I will give up now and continue reading. If the help / communication goes only 1 way, then forget it. I was told about the Stratfor site a long time ago........and hadn't gone back in at least 8 or 10 years. I don't know if they do or don't have an axe to grind or if they do or don't take any particular stand. I honestly thought you'd be interested....but apparently not. (arguing from authority?.....head shake) I will repeat that you really have to keep your eyes on the data. Facts on the ground? I have no idea what that means. Every news source tilts it a little differently. Some stories are ignored, others beaten to death. While analysis may be thought of as 'letting someone else do your thinking', finding a reasonable analyst can help make more sense of 'facts'. Playing off several of these talking heads can help illuminate issues. Even multiple sources of the 'facts' can help clarify. I just marked 'OpenSecrets' and will be going back there again. Lead article on Rs dissing financing disclosure looks interesting. I've seen the 'revolving' door list before....It was in a book my brother tossed me.......And it revolted me than as it does now. Jan, honestly, now.....Doesn't crap like the revolving door list make you want to vote 'em all out? I didn't bother to look for party affiliation, but I'd bet it was close enough to 50:50 not to matter. I've been thinking for years that 'the experiment is about over'. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15062 Registered: May-04 | . I'm not saying the website is biased or prejudiced in anyway. In fact, I can't tell since they don't seem to allow access to their files until you've registered your email address with them. (Which is, of course, soooooo bogus, they know who we are and where to find us. ) I'm saying you have now told me at least three times that I do not know what you know, that I do not know your "politics" or from where you gather your set of "facts". Then citing as proof that I do not know what you know, you show a website of which which you assume I have no knowledge. It is your appeal to what you assume is an "authoritative source" that makes your statement, "Jan, you know so little about my politics and where I glean my info it is if not funny ... " an argument from authority. For the most part this is a simple tactic employed in an attempt to subjugate the other party as being inferior to the person in possession of hitertofore unknown - or known only to the priviledged few - bits of information. In this case you are assuming the superior position of knowing something I do not know and implying I am therefore inferior to you since I lack that knowledge which you possess and are now willing to hold over my head as proof of my inferiority. It's an almost constant ploy used especially in on line arguments but which can be found in virtually any debate/discussion/argument, in any courtroom and certainly any talk show where the host assumes the position of holding some knowledge which the listener does not have access to until the host releases the information. This is how most of the Limbaughs, Becks and gadzooks! how many others operate. If you didn't realize you have done this three times in this thread, then you are certainly doing this all the time in any "discussion" in which you engage. If you did realize what you have been doing in this thread, then this too is certainly a sign you use this fallacy whenever you engage anyone in an "argumentative" discussion. It sounds as if you can't win in this situation but, of course, just not using the fallacious argument is the cure all. The common "argument from authority" on an audio forum is to claim either the poster has some knowldege, experience or position unattained and often unattainable by the other party. The poster could also rely on evidence from someone or some group who is portrayed as an "authority" on a specific topic, say, Julian Hirsch when the debate is about measurements vs subjective sound quality. The tactic is meant to stop the other person by showing they simply do not have all the facts on their side which is gleaned from their suggested lack of knowledge generally. An argument from authority is meant to be just as much a conversation stopper as would be the insistence on DBT's to prove a subjective opinion regarding sound quality. Obviously, no one knows all that the other person knows and no one has tested each and every component in existence for the last 70 years. But the fallacy in the attempt at gaining superiority is it relies on the receiver of the argument not pointing out they too possess knowledge the originator of the argument lacks. If everyone falls back on fallacious arguments from authority, then the whole thing falls to ruin. Naturally, this isn't the only way things fall to ruin in a forum discussion as there are many other fallacious arguments which can be called upon in an attempt to gain the higher foothold or to wet the tree the farthest upward. Strawmen are another common ploy to place the other party on the defensive not against the person or party using the device but against some imaginary "thing" or possible outcome which cannot be genuinely attacked or disproven since it doesn't really exist. http://www.opifexphoenix.com/reasoning/inductive/authority.htm "Facts on the ground" refers to the tactic of running the listener or reader around in circles by way of distraction. Here again we have talk radio/blogs as the best example of how the 24/7 news cycle has been employed to keep people off balance and unaware of the larger facts on the ground. By means of constant distraction to matters largely irrelevant to the real issues the propogandist employs a classic technique of controlling the debate. You might call it "framing the issue" because the person or group employing the distraction is keeping attention from being focussed on what is being done behind the listener's back. It's a constant game of Three Card Monte with the duped party having no chance to break out of the cycle of loosing due to a lack of adequate attention to what is not there. Posting news stories which reflect poorly on the "authority" at the end of the week and late in the afternoon (the 5PM Friday release of bad economic news for example) is a good example of how facts on the ground can be obscured from an inattentive listener. (One peice of advice that pays dividends is to actually read the Saturday newspaper.) Last week the news cycle was obssessed with issues of race which totally distracted the public from the signing of the financial reform bill. Of course, being the hacks that they are, several commentators used the events to suggest the White House staged the racial brouhaha in order to take attention away from what they were doing. So the game gets played constantly and "the facts on the ground" - the larger issues - are constantly obscured by minutia. IMO what's most damaging about all of these tactics to suppress transparency is the amount of half truths and near facts which are employed in their service. The "If he did this, then she must be ... " implications that are made by telling only a portion of the fact is probably the most dangerous of all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1s4fj-5zlk&feature=related Do I want to toss the whole lot out? No. I see no point. They would only be replaced by those with less experience in negotiating with those who hold the reins of real power. I see politics as the art of compromise not as planting your flag and forcing the other side into submission. There are, IMO, quite a few politicians who are there to do some good and continue to do good for the Nation even after they have made their concessions to the other side. This Tea Party idea that someone like Crist in Florida needs to be driven from a party simply because he agreed with the "other side" on one issue is what will drive this country to ruin IMO. That brings us back to those who spit on Washington but want control of Washington and the entire Crist affair is just one more distraction employed by the powerful who pull the strings of the Tea Party and are manipulating its members away from the larger issues of how to govern for the people and not for the top 2%. This isn't an indictment of the Tea Party, merely an example of how they can and are being driven to irrational decisions by those who want the real power. It is a vicious circle and, if you cannot keep your attention focussed on the facts on the ground - in other words, keep your nose down and smelling for rats - looking at the larger trend lines and past histories, then you loose. "I've been thinking for years that 'the experiment is about over'." Like I said earlier, leo, I can't think like that and have no need to think like that. At my most pessimistic about things there has to be a better way waiting around the corner. Possibly that's because I've dealt with my potential demise on several occasions or just that I don't care to think this is the end. Whatever power has been granted can also be retrieved if we remain a free and democratically represented Union. Your way IMO leads only to either giving up and finding another location or, eventually, armed insurrection. The first is just trading one for the other IMO and considering the latter is really only the result of being distracted by minutia coming from those who truly wish to have power. Neither is acceptable to me. We placed people in power - sometimes unwisely based on their Christian values or their single issue stance or just the fact they are not what preceeded them. Most people vote against someone or something. I say do your best to make their actions and their intentions as transparent as possible and then make your decisions based on facts on the ground vs a gut check in the polling booth or the half truths and near truths you've been told by the provocateurs who front for the powerful. (BTW, I also have problems with any system which has developed to the point the death of someone on "the other side" is celebrated as a political win.) . |
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Silver Member Username: Unbridled_idChicagoUsa Post Number: 546 Registered: Mar-04 | "Wasn't it the Republicans - Michelle Bachman to be exact and her slime talking ilk" What are you going to say on November 3rd ? |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15065 Registered: May-04 | . Probably the same as I've said here, look at the facts. |
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Silver Member Username: Unbridled_idChicagoUsa Post Number: 547 Registered: Mar-04 | We should just elect democrats from here on out huh.... You should be happy with the two "women" that will end up on the supreme court.. one more and you and your ilk will get everything your rather offbeat hearts desire... Luckily more of us won't let "facts" get in the way of reason and will vote your ilk out of office. I cannot wait until November third.... |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15068 Registered: May-04 | . I'm not seeing any facts in that rant. Try these; http://www.politifact.com/personalities/michele-bachmann/statements/ . |
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Gold Member Username: HawkbillyNova Scotia Canada Post Number: 1002 Registered: Jul-07 | ".....one more and you and your ilk will get everything your rather offbeat hearts desire" Careful, your roots are showing. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15069 Registered: May-04 | . As to her "slime talking ilk"; http://www.politifact.com/personalities/glenn-beck/statements/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/virginia-foxx/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/rush-limbaugh/statements/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/bill-oreilly/statements/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/rulings/pants-fire/ If you have facts which refute these findings, then you're welcome to post them. If all you have is another rant, then keep it to yourself. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15070 Registered: May-04 | . "Careful, your roots are showing." More like an inability to count to three (or four depending on how you take your count) and a not-so-latent misogyny. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15071 Registered: May-04 | . "Luckily more of us won't let "facts" get in the way of reason and will vote your ilk out of office." Rather remarkably, but quite sadly, you're not the first person to tell me that. "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." Twain, Mark |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1410 Registered: Oct-07 | Find Anita Dunn quote: 70 million and counting |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15075 Registered: May-04 | . Wasn't that how many glasses of orange juice you were supposed to drink per day to keep the g@ys from recruiting you? Oooops! Sorry, that was an Anita Bryant quote. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1411 Registered: Oct-07 | Anita Bryant? Is she even still alive? Dunn, of course gave a talk in which she praised Mao, responsible for as many as 70 million dead. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15076 Registered: May-04 | . And ... ... give me facts, leo, not some nutjob conspiracy theory. |
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Silver Member Username: Unbridled_idChicagoUsa Post Number: 548 Registered: Mar-04 | The facts are the public is not behind the democratic party and Obama. Yes, part of the losses in November will be attributed to an off year election, lack of interest by the democratic base, and a good turnout by the Republicans. Obama is counting on the economy turning around by 2012, it should (in spite of what he does and will do) and he may get back in. However the public as a whole is losing faith in the democratic party and it should. You Jan can keep attacking all you want, it just makes your side look desperate and makes our side stronger. Keep it up, I like it when you channel your inner Norma Bates. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1412 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, it is a FACT that Dunn praised Mao in a speech. I saw the TAPE. There were no sidelong glances at the guy just offstage holding a gun on her and no signs of strings from the ceiling. Just because someone you do not like made an issue of it doesn't mean it didn't happen or was not true. Maybe her family was being held hostage by republican operatives in black overcoats. So, am I to assume it was faked? The lunatic fringe did it to discredit her and by extension Obama? Get real. Jan, the theory is all yours. I'm just showing you, per your request, a fact. Kind of dicey these facts, aren't they? At some point you have to decide what they mean. And therein lies the tale. Id, I'd personally avoid party politics. They are ALL culpable to one degree or another. The Congress has done the moral equivalent of 'The Enabling Act' of '30s Germany in which the German Reichstag ceded certain legislative powers to the chief executive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_act 40 years later, the Congress passed the War Powers Act which reinterpreted the Presidents role as Commander in Chief. A reasonable argument could be made the the President is Commander in Chief ONLY after a declaration of war and that the War Powers Act is in contradiction to the Constitution. The War Powers Act also specifies a 'reporting' function which sure makes me feel better. 'Oh, by the way, I've declared an emergency and sent in troops'......'They should be home for Christmas'....... SEC. 2. © (of the War Powers Act) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to 1 a declaration of war, 2 specific statutory authorization, or 3 a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces. (from Article II of the Constitution, dealing with the Executive Branch) Section 2 - Civilian Power over Military, Cabinet, Pardon Power, Appointments The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; |
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Gold Member Username: HawkbillyNova Scotia Canada Post Number: 1003 Registered: Jul-07 | "....it just makes your side look desperate and makes our side stronger." That's rich. Side taking. How 6th grade of you. Most impressive UB. Keep those gems comin'. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15077 Registered: May-04 | . "You Jan can keep attacking all you want ... " It's an "attack" to ask for facts? Since when? And try some facts this time. I did not begin this thread to get rants from the peanut gallery. Give facts or just say nothing or start your own thread asking for rants and no facts. I don't care which you choose but on this thread try to stick to facts you can back up. You've already decided I have a dog in this fight and I am on the attack. That's not the case. I am presenting facts and would appreciate everyone sticking to facts and not going off on each other. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15078 Registered: May-04 | . Chris, I can't control what anyone posts but, please, the same admonitions appply to you as anyone else. Stick to facts you can back up and do not start a cat fight with empty words. If that's what you want, start a different thread. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15079 Registered: May-04 | . Leo, I will respond but not now. I have other things which are actually more important than this. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1413 Registered: Oct-07 | I understand priorities. I spent all free time in the last 4 days installing a new kitchen faucet, a new disposer and some drain plumbing. might not sound like much, but the UNINSTALL was epic. The folks that built this house made some poor choices and looks like they rushed some steps...... I feel like I've been kicked down a flight of stairs. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15080 Registered: May-04 | . I really have no idea how to begin addressing your series of posts, leo, as they came from nowhere other than ... what? a connection to id's "women"? So, I am to assume you too are a self-proclaimed misogynist? That is the only line to be drawn to your entry of Anita Dunn - who, above all else, is a woman. If that's the case, you don't want to know what I think about misogynists. I suppose you were headed towards another good rant and thought you might take this exit ramp for a p!ss ... "Jan, it is a FACT that Dunn praised Mao in a speech." Leo, I think we might have a semantical argument here over what Anita Dunn's words were meant to imply. As I hear her she is not praising Mao for what he did, she says he is one of her two favorite political philosophers - the other being Mother Theresa. The White House claims she was joking and her comments did get a laugh at the connection of the two disparate "philosophers". So, what was she really saying and, more importantly, what are you implying? If you haven't already; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1s4fj-5zlk&feature=related Mother Theresa plays heavily in this video. We also have the ability to check the video of Ms. Dunn as supplied by Michelle Malkin and courtesy of Glenn Beck on Fox News ; (before you begin, note that Malkin refers to Tom Daschle as "one of the Beltway's most entrenched and crooked creatures" and to Dunn's spouse as "Obama thug lawyer Robert Bauer" so we know we're deep into the weeds here already with facts not even making a glancing blow on Malkin who is a very, very poor Ann Coulter wannabe) http://michellemalkin.com/2009/10/15/anita-dunn-a-corruptocrat-flack-and-a-mao-c heerleader/ So, you're telling me that is praise for Mao? Praise for his philosophy as a young man fighting oppression or praise for his actions as a dictator? As portrayed by who? Glenn Beck? Could I ask you to go back up to the Politifact link I posted earlier to check on the veracity of Glenn Beck and his "devotion to the truth"? Out of 16 statements on file at Politifact Beck has two "Pants on Fire", five utterly "False" statements, four "Barely True" and three "Half True" statements. Fourteen out of sixteen statements are considered not to be faithful to the truth. Malkin herself rates a "Half True". Furthermore, the "proof" you speak of is on tape and is being shown on Fox News. Let me mention the heavily edited and misleading tapes shown on Fox involving ACORN and Shirley Sherrod not to mention the videos shown by Hannity which were later proven to not be the tape of the event he was reporting on but of a totally different event which was not mentioned by Hannity. You can draw your own conclusions about the "devotion to the truth" displayed by Fox News whenever video tape is introduced as evidence. IMO the organization is not above propoganda, deception and misinformation to serve their agenda. Possibly you object to Ms. Dunn reading Mao. That would mean you are in favor of banning books you do not agree with. How First Amendment/Free Speech of you. Possibly, you mean to infer Ms. Dunn is a Maoist because she admits to reading his political philosophy. How McCarthy-ite of you or, at the very least, how John Birch Society of you. Possibly you object to Ms. Dunn having anything to to do with a dictator. Of course, I shouldn't need to remind you of the photos of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein, or Bush kissing the cheeks of a Saudi dictator who happens to be an old family friend, or our alliance with the Shah of Iran or even that we called Stalin an ally and supported the Chinese struggle during WWII. Is it the connection between Ms. Dunn's words and those of someone who killed thousands? But you must remember the US supported and armed Bin Laden when he was fighting the Soviets. Possibly you object to Ms. Dunn finding the philosophy of a community organizer (which is what Mao was at the time he is being quoted here) troublesome. But the US had no problem with Poland's Lech Walesa when he was defeating the Soviets as a community organizer and we had no problem with Pope John Paul being a community organizer against the Germans during WWII. Perhaps you are having a problem with Ms. Dunn's association with a Socialist, but you have to remember the US right-wing had long insisted Saul Lewinsky was said to have taught the Clintons how to be good Socialists; http://www.americanpatrol.com/REFERENCE/Alinsky-SaulRef.html and now his tactics of organization and political civil disobedience are suggested reading for the Tea Party - by Glenn Beck! Finally, with all the talk of Socialists and Liberals and commnuity organizers and civil disobedience, do I need to mention Jesus as the pre-eminent example of those types? Truth is fungible, leo, facts are more difficult. Leo, what exactly is it you're trying to say with "Dunn praised Mao in a speech"? Which of the above do I have right? It must be at least three of them because I can see no other way Anita Dunn has anything to do with any fact on the ground or with anything whatsoever that we have been discussing here. She in no way affects GDP, jobs or deficicts, she doesn't tell half truths (and Pants on Fire lies) on the order of Limbaugh or Beck and no one here was speaking of or about her until you brought her name into the discussion. She has been the Communications Director at the White House. That means what to you? Or, was she just something cute you thought you'd inject once id began his rants? Leo, I have no idea how your mind works with this stuff. Your posts are reminiscent of a psychotic gerbil at a disfunctional keyboard. You bring up topics that have no entrance ramp and make no exit - they just disappear over the horizon - and you move between disassociated topics as if they really are clicking in your head. That whole schtick with the War Powers Act ... WTF?! I asked you before and you didn't answer, where do you get this stuff? And why are you bringing it into this thread? I've asked you and id both not to rant and rave. Why do it? Are you both that insecure about your politics that you feel you must insult someone with them? . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1415 Registered: Oct-07 | Now I'm a misogynist? For bringing up Anita Dunn? Ridiculous. How do you connect THOSE dots? Do you know that the word implies HATE of women? That is an awful accusation and I demand a retraction. Nothing is further from the truth. As a matter of fact, I have never even tried to take advantage of a drunk woman and am a model of good deportment and respect. And to further state ' That would mean you are in favor of banning books' is yet another insult. That would be another interesting connection, especially considering the extent of my personal library. Read any darn thing you want. I'll even send you my copy of 'The Atomic Cafe' if you want, or the first book I ever bought.....'Flying Saucers Have Landed'......a classic of its genre. Let's see....I'm a msogynist.....than a National Socialist..... GEE, all my brown shirts are at the laundry. What base did I miss? Oh yeah, Rev Wright? Now I'm anti religion, too. The man is well educated, literate, has a good military record and was well regarded. Then those Pesky Jews kept him from Pres Obama. Why does it matter where the tape is shown? That is exists, is a true representation of what was said should be enough. To refer to Mao in any positive light is an insult to the Chinese People. They, at least the ones I know, are not that forthcoming, but honestly recognize the problems he caused. Since they were all engineers, they also had the advantage of all the education China could muster, and being the best were able to go to foreign universities to complete there education and than on to the wonderful world of work. Would they tell me the truth? I suspect not, but they know. Everyone in China has a story. And furthermore, I care not for Mao's published 'philosophy'. Fact is, he starved his people for trade goods (entire harvests) to militarize and modernize China as rapidly as possible. 'The Great Leap Forward' is acknowledged to have been responsible for the deaths of millions more. No matter what he SAID, it is what he DID that counts. As a man of the people he lived as well as the Emperors did. As you can tell from comparing photos of the average Chinese and pictures of Mao, he sure ate better then them, and was pretty hefty, even with all that swimming he apparently did. No, Jan, a smoke screen accusation of misogyny followed by me being a National Socialist is too much. Have fun in your further chats. Should I at last accuse you of hubris? No, I'll save that for later. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15083 Registered: May-04 | . There's more of this BS?! If you are not a misogymist (and you are insulting when you ask if I know what the word means), where else did the Ainta Dunn topic originate from? You haven't explained that, leo. Why bring this up in this thread when it has nothing to do with this thread? That is the issue you don't care to answer. She has no relation to the GDP, makes no fiscal, international or domestic policy, she has no known agenda other than she is working for Obama, she alone cannot be responsible for any more than one job - her own. And the attempt here is to take that away from her by creating a tempest in a teaspoon over a dozen words she spoke. So explain why you brought the topic of Anita Dunn into this thread, leo. Show your real intent and not another strawman you want to create. "Why does it matter where the tape is shown?" Are you not reading what I'm posting? It matters for the very reasons I listed. Fox is not a tusted source when it comes to presenting any (propoganda) "information" accompanied by editted film footage. Period. Learn a lesson finally, will you? Malkin and Beck have no allegiance whatsoever to the truth, only to building up their own coffers and a base that believes them with blind, unblinking acceptance. Any propogandist - and you claim great knowledge of such things - knows to be successful at getting people to follow blindly you must create that strawman enemy and you must create division. And you don't need facts to do so, after awhile anything they say or do or even what they don't do will be turned into fodder for the BS machine that keeps the liars in power. As John Stewart commented, there are a group of people who wouldn't f'ing be happy with anything Obama or any of his associates did or said. If you do not think that is true, then refute what Politifact has said about 14 of 16 statements by Beck not adhering to facts. That's all I'm trying to get out of you, leo, facts. But you take what Beck and Fox News and those "pundits" proven to be less than truthful shove down your throat and you distort words to suit your own meaning, ignoring the fact those supplying you with what to believe, and to spit out in any discussion possible, have been proven time and time again to be dishonest players in this game. You list all the things you are not but come right back to being a willing, braying pawn in the game Fox News plays. "That is exists, is a true representation of what was said should be enough." What you see in the Dunn video is no more "proof" of her thinking than what you saw in the tapes of Sherrod proved she is a racist. That you think otherwise makes you either just as dishonest as Fox and the rightwing blogs have been in such matters or it just makes you out to be an idiot. I don't know which, but you cannot judge someone by a dozen words spoken when you have no pattern of this being repeated. Or, do you? Can you show a pattern of hatred for the Chinese people in Dunn's past? Can you show where she pledges allegiance to Mao and his tactics? Can you provide facts to back up what you accuse her of being and doing? If not, do not indict someone as a Maoist for a dozen words quoting Mao's philosophy. This is right up there with the ability to spot hundreds of illegals - and even then from across the parking lot without speaking to them or asking them to prove their citizenship. You just "know" they are illegal and you "know" Dunn is a dedicated Maoist who has insulted the entirity of the billions of Chinese People. I'm sure you called all of your Chinese immigrant co-workers to ask what they thought of Dunn's dozen words. "To refer to Mao in any positive light is an insult to the Chinese People." Then why does Glenn Beck and his slime talking ilk need to make the complaint for them? Can you show me where the Chinese People are outraged at Dunn's comments? Show me the fact, leo, not what you want to believe because the rightwing told you it's as "true" as anything else they push out 24/7. Leo, so far the only "facts" I've seen you produce in this thread are those I have already posted. Everything else is just a paranoid rant and not a very good one at that. "Truth" is what you make it to be after being told what to accept as truth by Fox News and the slime talking dividers who only seek personal wealth and power and real facts are irrelevant to that game. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15084 Registered: May-04 | . http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/thu-july-29-2010-liev-schreiber Need some help? Go to 5:00 in. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-january-22-2009/fox-news-fear-imbalance http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-9-2008/fox-news-panics Really, check out any of the Stewart episodes with "Fox News" as the subject. As you say, leo, "Why does it matter where the tape is shown? That is exists (and) is a true representation of what was said (that) should be enough." Fox News is anti-American and unpatriotic by their own admission and as evidenced by a few minutes of video taken from their entire programming library. Admittedly, these are "editted" videos used to make a point but you see the pattern in Fox New's reporting, right? Far more there than a minute of Dunn's speech and a dozen words or a thirty second editted clip taken from a twenty year plus career of a black minister. Baaaaaaaaa . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1418 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, All this handwringing and yelling is getting us nowhere. Want to try an experiment? No loss of 'face' on your part and it won't cost you a thing. All ya' gotta to is ask, and we'll see if we can make some actual progress. I have an idea which just may work....and get others to join in and actually be constructive. All this non-constructive arguing has no traction. I am making a good-faith offer which you should, in my opinion, accept. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15085 Registered: May-04 | . How loaded is that last sentence, leo? I don't know of anyone who agrees to a pact without first knowing who and what is involved. And, for what it's worth, I wasn't looking for others to join in en masse. Things political tend to get expotentially out of hand as the number of posters increases. I doubt facts can survive a mob hit. Finally, I've not been handwringing or yelling, leo. I've been asking everyone to stick to facts and not make unproven and unprove-able handwringing, shouting rants against anything they feel like ranting against; you know, illegal immigrants, White House staff, etc. That alone has proven impossible to accomplish as facts mean so little to so many while strawmen apparently mean so much. "Luckily more of us won't let "facts" get in the way ... " . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15086 Registered: May-04 | . Four Deformations of the Apocalypse By DAVID STOCKMAN Published: July 31, 2010 But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance " ... the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one. The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations ... The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts ... The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious ... The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million ... It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans -- paid mainly from the Wall Street casino -- received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent -- mainly dependent on Main Street's shrinking economy -- got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market's fault. It's the decaying fruit of bad economic policy ... Under these circumstances, it's a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform ... " http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?ref=todayspaper (David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, is working on a book about the financial crisis.) . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15087 Registered: May-04 | . Editorial What They're Not Telling You Published: July 31, 2010 "There is a lot of heated talk in Washington these days about the deficit, unfortunately little of it serious. Playing on Americans' deep anxiety about the economy, Republican politicians have seized the deficit issue as their own -- eagerly blaming the stimulus and even an extension of unemployment insurance for the problem -- while denying their own culpability for helping dig this deep hole with years of irresponsible tax cuts ... The deficit's size is alarming. In the 2010 fiscal year, the government is projected to collect $2.2 trillion in taxes and spend $3.6 trillion, leaving a gap of $1.4 trillion. If current tax and spending policies continue, deficits are estimated to remain near $1 trillion a year for the next decade. After that they will explode -- to twice the size of today's deficit as a share of the economy by 2050 -- as health costs rise and the population ages, and outlays for Medicare, Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, Social Security continue to grow faster than revenues ... Spending on the biggest items in the budget (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security make up about 40 percent) cannot be quickly cut back without unraveling the programs and inflicting deep and needless hardship on their beneficiaries ... Americans are right to worry about the deficit. They must also demand that their elected representatives do more than rail about the problem and begin a serious debate about the policy choices ahead. Here are some of the key issues that must be considered: HOW DID WE GET HERE? When President Bill Clinton left office in 2001, the government had run surpluses for three straight years. By the time President George W. Bush left the White House, the government had run deficits for seven straight years, and the Congressional Budget Office projected a 2009 deficit of over $1 trillion. Much of the deterioration resulted from huge Bush-era tax cuts, which left the nation chronically short of revenue, especially when it had to pay for two wars. And because the budget was already in bad shape when the financial crisis hit in late 2008, the necessary spending to rescue the system only deepened an already deep deficit. Unchastened, Republicans -- joined by a few Democrats -- are now determined to dig the hole even deeper by calling for all of the Bush tax cuts to be extended beyond their scheduled expiration at the end of this year. WHAT ABOUT THE STIMULUS? The deficit has risen further under President Obama, to about $1.4 trillion this year, as the White House has tried to contain the recession it inherited. The $862 billion economic stimulus, enacted by the Obama administration and Congress in 2009 along with subsequent aid, like extended jobless benefits, prevented a bad situation from becoming much worse ... So far, stimulus accounts for an estimated 15 percent of the deficit in 2009, 28 percent in 2010 and 14 percent in 2011. DOES THE BUDGET HAVE TO BE BALANCED? An economically powerful country can prudently run some deficits. A reasonable budget goal would be to reduce annual deficits to the point where the debt -- the sum total of annual deficits, now $9 trillion -- is no longer growing faster than the economy. Once the debt is stable, the nation would most likely avoid the worst effects of persistent deficits, including sharply higher interest rates and slower growth. Under current projections, that would require cutting the deficit to about 3 percent of gross domestic product from 10 percent today. When he established a bipartisan deficit commission, Mr. Obama called for reaching such a goal by 2015 ... WHERE ARE THE SAVINGS? The government needs to tighten its belt. Finding deep, near-term savings will not be easy for one basic fact: the largest chunk of the budget -- the 40 percent going to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- is the most difficult to cut, politically and for sound policy reasons ... Another 6 percent of the budget is the interest on the national debt, which must be paid ... So what can be cut now? Less than 20 percent of the budget is so-called nondefense, discretionary spending. That includes spending on important and popular programs, including education, environmental protection, veterans' health care, food and drug safety, scientific research, diplomacy and basic infrastructure ... Defense spending -- $690 billion in 2010, or 4.7 percent of G.D.P. -- accounts for another 20 percent of the budget ... Another 14 percent of 2010 spending is for safety net programs, like unemployment benefits, food stamps and help for the working poor ... WHERE IS THE REVENUE? There is no way to deal with the deficit without also raising taxes. As the economy improves, tax revenues could rise to $3.6 trillion in 2015 and $4.6 trillion in 2020, according to the Congressional Budget Office, compared with $2.2 trillion this year. That, however, assumes that all of the Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of this year, and that is not going to happen. The Obama administration and Democratic Congressional leaders want to let the tax cuts on the richest Americans expire, while extending the so-called middle class tax cuts -- generally, those for taxpayers making less than $250,000. That would cost an estimated $2.9 trillion over 10 years ... Republicans, predictably, want to extend all of the Bush tax cuts, including for the richest taxpayers, permanently. If all of the tax cuts are extended, the revenue loss over the next 10 years will be some $3.7 trillion ... " http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01sun1.html?ref=opinion . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1421 Registered: Oct-07 | It takes 2 to Tango. None of this would have happened.....by either Major party had the other put its foot down and said No More. Had they taken the 'case to the people' somebody might had snapped out of it long enough to put the brakes on. Providing, of course, the people were incorruptible and couldn't be bought thru 'Free' stuff and false promises. A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. Thomas Jefferson All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. Thomas Jefferson Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. Thomas Jefferson I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson I hold them both equally complicit in the situation we now face. And NO I will not defend BushII. He was both a spendthrift and a poor judge of character. Rove? Chaney? sure. I wouldn't trust either of 'em to walk YOUR dog. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1422 Registered: Oct-07 | Jan, even though you have either called me or implied that I am a national Socialist....Brown Shirt, a misogynist, an unredeemable pessimist, prone to 'argue from authority' which you certainly are immune to, and a couple other things; I'm not going thru all the posts, I still think this could be an important dialogue. For people of good will to exchange ideas, in a free forum is an important, lacking part of the current republic. You need to learn to agree with those things you agree with and not get all huffy about those you don't. We need to find out those things we can AGREE on and those things we do not. Just for example, I agree with most of the above post about deficits. Every American knows by now you can only spend so much over income before you are living at Aunt Ruth's and have your broken car parked in the street. Hold 'em ALL accountable. You made the 'expertise' argument when I said to Fire 'em ALL. Unelect them. Well, to get rid of some of the expertise, why not (GASP) eliminate those portions of the government NOT constitutional? Wait till you see what the bureaucratic enabling acts have in store for the future as various bureaus can effectively legislate from within there mandate. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15089 Registered: May-04 | . No facts there, leo. In fact, a lack of facts is quite obvious. One fact that cannot be denied is the Republicans held solid majorities in both the House and Senate through most of Bush's two terms (since 1996 actually, much to Clinton's regret) and had Cheney, as President of the Senate, available to break any tie votes. Thus, by way of holding the Majority in both Houses the Republicans totally controlled what came to the floor for a vote and what did not, which amendments to any bill were voted on and which commissions had sway in passing votes or nominations to the floor. As the Majority Party in the House of Representatives, Republicans also had sole power of subpoena giving them the ability to call (or not to call) witnesses or to vote down any investigation mentioned by the Democrats. This meant the Democrats were all but helpless for six of the eight years during Bush's two terms. By the time the Democrats regained Majorities in both Houses in 2007, the economy was well on its way to a recession which soon became the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression in the 1930's under yet another Republican President. It was Hank Paulson, Bush's Treasury Secretary who came to Congress in 2008 with a three page document demanding nearly $1 trillion (borrowed) dollars be redistributed to the financial institutions that very AM or the Nation and possibly the World would go over the cliff that afternoon. In case you've forgotten the Ethics Committees in both Houses were all but shut down during the reign of Hastert and Delay while the Republicans held their Majorities in both Houses giving free run of the chicken coup to Jack Abramoff and the K Street Project. At the time the Democrats were not asking anyone applying for a Government job whether they agreed with Roe v. Wade but the Republicans were. Nor were the Democrats dishing out multi-million dollar no bid contracts to Cheney's old company and his and Bush's incomptent cronies ("You're doing a great job, Brownie"). It was also on Bush's watch that $8 billion (in $100 bills placed on pallettes and) shipped to Iraq disappeared and no one in the Republican controlled House or Senate bothered to go looking for it. It was also on Bush's watch that more than 4,000 American service members died in conflicts begun by Bush, not financed by Bush and without the proper equipment supplied to them by Bush in order to defend themself. In such situations and with the Republicans willing to use reconcilliation and "the nuclear option" to pass many initiatives (including an unfunded Medicare Part "D" which has now been estimated to have a potential cost of several trillion dollars over the next decade rather than the $700 billion the Republicans had quoted) and tax cuts (two of which were not paid for and have had lasting effects in the run up of the total US debt during Bush's two terms), stack the courts (even those lifetime federal appointments) and remove judges and prosecutors they felt were not toeing the party line by using a simple majority vote it does not take two to do anything - let alone tango. http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm http://clerk.house.gov/art_history/house_history/partyDiv.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/03/AR2006010300474.html http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/feb/25/harry-reid/reid-says- repblicans-have-used-reconciliation-more/ http://mediamatters.org/research/200504260001 Please, try to stick to facts you can prove, leo. If you have facts which refute what I've just posted, I'd love to see them. If you just have another rant in there, don't bother. . |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15090 Registered: May-04 | . "Jan, even though you have either called me or implied that I am a national Socialist....Brown Shirt, a misogynist, an unredeemable pessimist, prone to 'argue from authority' which you certainly are immune to ... " No, leo, I did not call you a BrownShirt, a National Socialist (I made no reference to N@zis, leo, so don't go there) or a misogynist. I asked you why you brought Ms. Dunn into the thread. You still have not answered that one question though it's been posed to you twice now. Since there was no apparent logical reason for you to introduce Ms. Dunn into this thread, I asked if possibly you were against books you disagreed with. I asked if you were possibly a misogynist. I asked if ... ... and you have still refused at this late date to answer any of my questions during this entire thread. What you have done is create multiple strawmen (say, just now, when you claimed I called you a N@zi when I had not), you have falsely argued from authority on several occasions ("Jan, I can guarantee I've crunched more numbers than you" and the StratFor site as proof of your superior knowledge of such things which I clearly do not understand and cannot comprehend and, most recently, "Do you know that the word implies HATE of women?" as if I am such a dolt as to not know what that word means) and you have dramatically failed at basic inductive reasoning over the entire course of this thread. You also cannot comply with multiple simple requests to not go off on tangential rants lacking any sort of factual evidence. You have supplied no facts to this thread, leo. That's what this thread is all about and for the past eight days you have failed miserably to fulfill the basic requirement of this thread. Give me facts, leo, no more rants. Facts aren't difficult to find, I do it all the time. Deal in facts and then we can move on from there. I don't know what to make of your behavior here, leo. Either this is how to go about trying to win any argument you enter into with your co-workers and "buddies" - without a clear thought process and without a consistent argument, all of which is completely dependent upon sheer vitriol to offset a total absence of reason backed by an absolute lack of fact based evidence - and you have been quite clumsy about it here or you are simply quite clumsy about it everywhere. Either way, your constant rants are responsible for not advancing this thread in a positive manner. "You need to learn to agree with those things you agree with ... " I've sat here and sat here thinking about that, leo, and this is the best I can come up with; with a dose of thrown in for good measure. " ... and not get all huffy about those you don't." I haven't been "huffy" about anything, leo. I've been presenting facts which I can back up. You have not been presenting any facts and you have not made any attempt to back up any of your numerous rants with anything other than your say so and now you want me to agree to a rant based, illogical suggestion of total an@rchy. Quoting Thomas Jefferson does not a Revolutionary make you. "We need to find out those things we can AGREE on and those things we do not. Just for example, I agree with most of the above post about deficits." As you should. That's why I posted those facts. Now you need to go back and begin to agree with the other facts I've posted throughout this thread so you can stop making those ridiculous rants of your's. Start at the top with the jobs creation facts. "Hold 'em ALL accountable." Why? As I've shown and proven, the Republicans were largely (exclusively?) at fault during their tenure in power. Mr. Stockman argues they should be held responsible for the destruction of the US ecomnomy going as far back as Nixon! They were not, as Limbaugh suggests, so "stunned" by their acquisition of power that they just couldn't help themself as they drove this Nation into the ditch, mulitple ditches in fact - a ditch from which the Democrats are now trying to extricate the Country. Like it or not, leo, this is a two Party system and the Democrats are the Party that happen not to be the Republicans. The Republicans have a proven track record - which is how this thread began - as do the Democrats. Your "solution" is absurd and it is the same thing everyone wants when they have no facts to back up their conclusions. Since you see no facts and can find no facts, you end up finding no real solutions. Look at the facts for a change and any reasonable person would see the Republicans are not to be trusted with most matters. If the Repubicans are not in power, then, under our present system, the Democrats must be. Our present system does not have the resources to support a third party and, whatever else you might think, the Tea Party is being absorbed into the Republican Party since the vast majority of the TP members were simply disgruntled Republican voters anyway. Untrustworthy Republicans such as Dick Armey (Freedom Works) pull the strings of power in the TP and he is one individual I seriouly do not want anywhere near my tax dollars. Besides, I've already given you my opinion of what happens when you vote an incumbent out of office just for the sake of change. I want someone in there who knows where the knife in their back is coming from and who might have a few knifes of their own to skillfuly place. Your "not Constitutional" BS is just that and, once again, you've offered no facts to back up anything you claim. You have to convince me before I follow anyone, leo, and so far you've done a p!ss poor job of convincing. We do not agree on anything, leo. Possibly, if you tried relying on a fact every now and again, we might come closer together on a minimal number of issues. As is, I find your rants not to be "persuasive". . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1423 Registered: Oct-07 | I just want to react to one thing..... Tea Party will go away. No doubt about it. Even if they get a member or so into Congress, who will they swap lies with?(caucus). They won't last long enough to get to any of the plum committee assignments, let alone a chairmanship. The traditional fate of 3rd parties is to have there agenda absorbed by one or both of the 'majors' as they dwindle to impotence. Than, back to business as usual. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1424 Registered: Oct-07 | What is the buzz on Investors.com.....? apparently the online presence of 'Investors Business Daily' ? Sure sounds authoritative and 'stable'. Just looking at stuff I've never looked at before. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1425 Registered: Oct-07 | http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/graphics/CES9000000001_189206_1280732524753.gif http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/graphics/CES0500000001_189206_1280732524507.gif In engineering when you have a problem, sometimes you just go back to the start. I hope these graphs link....they show ALL government employment vs total private sector. As you can see, when the economy faultered, private sector lost a lot of jobs. While the government is only about what.....20% of private totals, it is clear that government growth didn't even hiccup. (ONLY 20%? is that what the founders had in mind?) Indeed, there is even a little spike at the end....maybe not statistically significant but indicative. Jan, this is what I mean. I don't care to whom (who? what?) you assign blame, fact is there in the basic data that government continues to grow. And they all ain't just playing Monopoly...or maybe they are. Blow it off, as I suspect you will. The 'feeling' I get is that someone is going to expect to be paid. government jobs are decent paying at the bottom......I'll check that out, but really good at the top. Not corporate CEO good, but certainly doable. We just had some California Hacks deposed. They were in some small town and had voted themselves some pretty healthy pensions and wages. The town found out about it and went nuts.........understandably. I'll look for the associated wages to go with those tables and graphs. Way wacky data. Thousands of lines of tables and references. I doubt my accountant could make sense of it in less than a week. http://www.opm.gov/oca/08tables/ This is a first pass at trying to figure out... I did find law enforcement wages in my area. cops start at about 25000.....and go up to the point where the top grades are in 6 digits. You can find your area in the tables. ALSO: the spike in government employment? Might be the census. They were 'seasonal' civilian and most are gone now...... |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15093 Registered: May-04 | . While it is heartening to see you relying not only on some facts but more importantly Government facts, your "links" do not work. Do you not understand how to make a workable link on this forum? If not, then ask. If so, it's rude to not include it in your posts and then expect me or others to repeat the same work you have in front of you. Do post (as best as possible) workable links into your posts, leo. I fear you are chasing yet another imaginary rabbit down an unproductive hole. First, the "founders" didn't have any intention of any size of work force based on civilian/government employment figures and they never mentioned such (other than slavery) in any publication of their own and certainly not in the US Constitution. Therefore, "ONLY 20%? is that what the founders had in mind?", is well off the topic and falls under the same "it doesn't matter" umbrella as does Ms. Dunn, whose presence on this thread you have yet to explain. Secondly, how many police and first responders, teachers and assorted civil servants taking pay cuts and/or having their jobs totally eliminated and/or their promised-in-good-faith pensions retracted do you suppose it will take to make a good pay down on a $12 trillion and growing National Debt? You are getting bogged down in the minutia I spoke of earlier simply by your insistent hatred of anything "government". You are not keeping your nose to facts on the ground to research just how and when those government jobs grew and under which administrations. In the larger picture you might care to find out why the US taxpayer has been placed on the hook for civilian pensions amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars for the next several decades as they pick up the pension tab for failed non-government workers while the company which shed those pensions has either recovered and is now making a profit or, when the company actually failed, its executives walked away with multi-million dollar bonuses for coming up with a plan to shift the pension burden to the taxpayer. Take another area, for example, we know certain areas of the government grew quickly and without watchdog control from the already uncontrollable, uncommunicative, power grabbing system which existed before 9/11. BushII in general increased the size of the Federal work force faster and at a higher overall total than any of his predecessors had in the last fifty years. We now have overly redundant redundancies in just the intelligence operations of the US with 5,000 reports, analyses, emails and so forth being generated each and every day on average by just these government intelligence bureauracies. What is the cost to the taxpayer for such multiple levels of who is and isn't watching and talking to whom? Why do we still have 65,000 military personell stationed in Okinawa 65 years after the second World War ended? This should be a more productive research into the larger picture than finding out what the garbage pick up civil servants in your immediate locale are pulling down. While a portion of the issues at most times, even when pensions are considered, they are small potatoes in the entire scheme of things. Besides, the public servants can and, in your case, have been dealt with and they will not walk away unscathed. Not so for the private sector jobs where the differnce between the wages and pay outs to a common laborer and the highest levels of management have soared from what was during the Eisenhower administration a roughly 35:1 ratio to the present day where the "average" CEO's earnings are at a more common 400:1 ratio. The bottom 90% of the work force saw their wages stagnate and their buying power decline over the last decade while the top 2% saw their personal wealth increase by triple digit percentages. There's a large part of the facts on the ground story you need to see, leo. Who endorsed that policy, who oversaw it (if it was overseen at all) and for what political, financial and power based reasons was it allowed to get so out of whack? Remember when BushII called the "have mores" his "base"? Do you remember his personal nickname for Ken Lay of Enron fame? Do you remember - or can you find facts relating to - the $140 billion subsidies given to the medical, insurance and pharmaceutical industries as pure and simple give aways (redistribution of tax payer wealth) provided when Medicare Part "D" was "rammed through" a Republican control Congress? Do you remember the $40 billion+ give way to the energy industry for lost profits due to an energy policy which never materialized and in the end failed to change any facts on the ground in favor of the consumer? . |
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Platinum Member Username: ArtkAlbany, Oregon USA Post Number: 12995 Registered: Feb-05 | "government jobs are decent paying at the bottom" I have coworkers who are eligible for food stamps, perhaps the pay isn't all that you think it is. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1428 Registered: Oct-07 | http://www.opm.gov/oca/08tables/html/gs.asp There is link to GS salary table. From 2008. Feds getting about a 2% pay increase, which except for self serving corporate board guys, is better than most of the private sector. From the new schedule:: 2010 w/raises. Are your friends on this scale? I doubt anyone could live on some of this money. True. But, the low pay stuff is NOT meant for careers but to be promoted and advanced out of. A GS1 / step 1 starts out under 18000$. Not a lot and certainly not raise a family money. But, by the time you reach GS5 / step 6 you are over 32000$ Who today, by %age, can raise a family on a single salary? If both husband and wife work, you can easily 2x that. You aren't going to be rich, and the Mercedes will have to wait, but you will have some slippage in your budget. Unless you've gotten yourself wacky in debt. |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1429 Registered: Oct-07 | The reason the links didn't work is that the chart was 'custom created' for me....on request, than disappears once I click away. I thought it would be 'stored' in a buffer....somewhere. I'll re-get the data, download the excel part of it and than post the graphic.....I'll see how THAT goes! |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1430 Registered: Oct-07 | 29.33% of the GS scale......that is 44 of 150 possible pays across all 10 steps and 15 GS Grades are over 100,000% not chump change, any way you slice it..... |
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Platinum Member Username: ArtkAlbany, Oregon USA Post Number: 12996 Registered: Feb-05 | I'm not with the Federal Government. I work for the State of Oregon. |
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Platinum Member Username: ArtkAlbany, Oregon USA Post Number: 12997 Registered: Feb-05 | "But, the low pay stuff is NOT meant for careers but to be promoted and advanced out of." That's a statement of your values not a fact. The lower the pay in government jobs the more people who actually populate those positions. Where I work many of our support staff will always be support staff and those are the lowest paying positions. Some will promote out (to the second lowest paying positions) but most will not and all of us are doing unpaid furlough days. Our work has increased 30% per year over the last 2 years while we get less days to do the work and lower pay. In what other business does your business see huge increases and you get a pay cut along with unpaid days off while the work waits at the office to be done. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15096 Registered: May-04 | . Actually, if you would check the facts, Art, in most businesses what you are experiencing is the norm today. Long story short, Art, you're not alone as American workers are working either longer hours with fewer workers to do the work while getting paid the same (or less when benefits are compared to rising consumer costs) as when times were (supposedly) good. Or, people are working fewer hours with more time off and work to do sitting undone while the workers accept fewer benefits and lower total, inflation adjusted wages while doing the same amount of work. It's an employer's market by anyone's estimation with the fact you have a job being a prime motivator to the worker. A far cry from the last years of Clinton when I was selling to college graudates with their $40-60k sign on bonuses due to a shortage of skilled workers and corporations willing to pay top dollar to those who qualified basically just by breathing. For all but the top 2-5%, things are rough while, with record low interest rates on credit, that top 2% have few if any worries beyond where to take that second vacation or how to add another parking space to their four car garage or to just buy another house with a bigger garage. . |
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Gold Member Username: MagfanUSA Post Number: 1431 Registered: Oct-07 | Many people where I work haven't had a raise in a couple years. Of course, we are in a 'lean manufacturing' mode and simply must be doing more with less. Also, of course, the board just hired another member at some ridiculous wage.....I need to find the SEC filing. But, the boards cost just went up by at least 10%.....one additional member of 8 original. Maybe they didn't get the 'lean' memo? Board wage contains automatic 30 or 40% annual 'bonus', car allowance, great medical, and severance benefits of near-golden parachute grade. |
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Platinum Member Username: ArtkAlbany, Oregon USA Post Number: 12998 Registered: Feb-05 | "Long story short, Art, you're not alone as American workers are working either longer hours with fewer workers to do the work while getting paid the same (or less when benefits are compared to rising consumer costs) as when times were (supposedly) good." Totally understand, Jan. You're right and I knew some of those facts. The piece that's most astounding to me is that we are experiencing this while the number of folks coming through our doors has increased by 30% + per year. No doubt we are all doing more with less. Also, I don't complain for a second about having a job and that it is a very important during these times. So how do you ask did we meet the workload increase with so few resources...RPI. I'm not at home so this computer won't allow me to toggle to pull up links. RPI is Rapid Process Improvement. A term used for "let's treat folks like a commodity and see if we can get them in and out of the office as fast as we can". The McKenzie Group was hired to find problems in our processes (statewide) that could be ironed out. It won't take much looking to find the link between McKenzie and the Obama administration, for better or worse. I certainly see the waste in Government as an insider and could easily figure out ways to clean some of it up however having worked in private industry I see the waste there was far greater. Anyway, I'm going to duck out. Sorry I interrupted your conversation, Jan and Leo. It's the Union activist in me that tends to get a bit riled when folks discuss Government wages. Almost everybody I work with lives pretty humbly and are thankful to have jobs. Most of us chose to work with the population we serve as a vocation and wouldn't trade our work for double the pay. Again, I apologize for the sidetrack. |
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Platinum Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 15099 Registered: May-04 | . " It's the Union activist in me that tends to get a bit riled when folks discuss Government wages." Opinion time. Yesterday I heard Limbaugh make a statement, the same one I've also heard from him on numerous occasions. To sum it up as closely as I can remember it goes, "Show me any place where there are financial troubles and I (Limbaugh) will show you a Union at the heart of it all." I've been looking but I can't seem to find an proof of any Union being in existence at AIG, Lehman, Bank of America, etc. Does anyone know which Union the derivatives traders would have belonged to? . |