watched the whole thing.
grover was a smug douche and if i had to take a drink everytime he vomited a repub talking point i would be wasted.
he stuck to his propaganda..*cough i mean "public relations" creed:
deflect,defuse and obfuscate.

he did settle down some after being repeatedly called on his tactics.though those folks did it waaaay more nicely than i would have.

Damn, that lady was aiming for the guts.

Norquist looked like a baby deer tap dancin' on ice.

"Well see, you're asking about outcomes. [..and that's unfair cause I can't give an honest answer without looking like the insensitive douchebag i really am.]"

I watched to whole thing also--mind numbing.

We are so used to hearing Norquist propaganda filtered through the media and then again through the people who consume that media. It's interesting to hear it straight from the horses mouth. I think so highly of the patriotic millionaires for standing up to this powerful fascist. Norquist's rhetoric is brilliantly constructed and he successfully drew them into some clever traps. I wish I could have been there. This should be required viewing for anyone interested in debating plutocrats.

Feels weird to invoke *quality on this interaction, but it should be seen.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by dystopianfuturetoday.

Question: Who's feeding the horse?>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

We are so used to hearing Norquist propaganda filtered through the media and then again through the people who consume that media. It's interesting to hear it straight from the horses mouth. I think so highly of the patriotic millionaires for standing up to this powerful fascist. Norquist's rhetoric is brilliantly constructed and he successfully drew them into some clever traps. I wish I could have been there. This should be required viewing for anyone interested in debating plutocrats.

He takes a phone call in the middle of that?? What a douchebag!

Grover G?? WTF??

It's just mind blowing how Grover rewrites history in his mind. So many of the things we enjoy as a society now are because of government funding and the mentality that some things are more important than profit margins.

There is utterly no sense of rationality or that this guy operates in good faith. He's selling ideaology, he's selling an agenda. If this ideaology fit reality AT ALL he wouldn't have to attempt to "convince" so many people. It would be self evident. He wouldn't have to "sell" anything. The evidence would be there, but he doesn't present evidence, he presents rhetoric and wraps himself in the flag of freedom when it has absolutely ZERO to do with freedom.

This notion that wealthy people are having their freedoms infringed upon is a fantasy at best, outright deceitful at worst.

After avoiding all of their direct questions with rhetoric he gets thanked at the end?

I get the feeling Grover is a boss, not a lackey. >> ^notarobot:

Question: Who's feeding the horse?>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
We are so used to hearing Norquist propaganda filtered through the media and then again through the people who consume that media. It's interesting to hear it straight from the horses mouth. I think so highly of the patriotic millionaires for standing up to this powerful fascist. Norquist's rhetoric is brilliantly constructed and he successfully drew them into some clever traps. I wish I could have been there. This should be required viewing for anyone interested in debating plutocrats.

He's a twisted guy, that one. Making comparisons between some old bigot (George Wallace) keeping black kids out of schools, and the Ted Kennedy's of the world forcing kids to stay in dysfunctional schools? What the hell kind of weird bullshit was that? He really has a hate on for teachers unions. Is it government employee unions they hate specifically?

Liberty means the rich not being forced to pay for things they don't like, like anything that helps the poor. That's just redistribution of wealth, AKA socialism. Let them eat McDonald's.

Oh, and I also can't believe I watched the whooooole thing.
(takes pepto-bismol)

*promote

Very interesting discussion.

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 9:22pm PST - promote requested by RedSky.

>> ^Phreezdryd:

What the hell kind of weird bullshit was that? He really has a hate on for teachers unions. Is it government employee unions they hate specifically?


Grover and his ilk hate unions of all kind.

The only union he cares about is the unspoken but evident union of wealth supporting wealth.

Organization is one of the only ways of defeating the control that wealth naturally maintains.

The question I'm annoyed they didn't pursue in sufficient depth was the one alluded to on a baseline of social services. I think it's all well and good to argue that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Certainly, especially if you're talking about easily traversable state lines in a country like the US, that there is migration to lower tax levels may say nothing more than that states overall benefit from the government spending (say R&D) around them and thereby there is an incentive to mooch off the collective spending and yet employ a lower tax rate in your own state to enable more jobs to be created.

The crux of the argument when you start talking about replacing social security solely with a mandatory super scheme (which by itself as an addition is good policy, we have it here in Australia at 9%, soon to go up to 12%) is not which one generates more income in the long run, it's whether you are fine with entirely replacing it and facing the prospect that someone down on their luck, perhaps mentally or physically handicapped in some way, stuck in a place of low social mobility is allowed by society as a whole to die because there is no scheme in place to assist them. At that point I think you expose the morally callous argument that he's making.

I work in IT for state gov't and I think the argument that private sector being more efficient than private sector is a bit deceptive.

I think the reason that phenomenon exists is that private sector is allowed to offer better pay to attract the better talent. Gov't often has a very rigid pay structure for the workers. A few years ago we wanted to hire a database admin and we were forced to take our 3rd choice for the job because the 1st and 2nd demanded higher pay and we simply aren't allowed to meet that demand. Not that we couldn't meet that demand. So gov't is being forced to have one hand tied behind their back to start with so IMO you can't judge public vs private with the same metric. The contest is rigged. Then on top of it, this rigid pay structure only appears to apply to the lower and middle levels of gov't. Very often are the pay grades for the upper level directors and commisioners that get appointed are listed as "discretionary" In other words, the bureaucrats made a back room deal.

It gets even worse typically when a Republican gets in office. The same guy that would give himself and his workers bonuses in the private sector is telling public employees that they're going to lay them off or give them furloughs or de-fund various agencies. It's a double standard. So we have this situation where we elect into government, someone who hates gov't and sabotages it and then whines about how gov't is inefficient. They're the ones that MADE it inefficient. They talk about free markets, but then they rig the game in their favor.

It's even more interesting when we occasionally hire someone who used to work in the private sector. They always complain that we don't have some luxury perk or why we don't have legions of interns to do the grunt work for them. Speaking for myself personally, there was this one time I was helping a coworker set up a presentation with their laptop and a simple projector and this guy who used to work for the private sector started complaining about how we didn't have the sophisticated AV system and the sound proofed auditorium that his private sector job had. He was just that spoiled that he simply didn't understand why we didn't have those things that we didn't even need for a basic presentation.

So if you actually want to talk about efficiency? a Lower or middle level gov't employee typically receives far less pay than their private sector counterpart, but yet is usually expected to produce the same level of work. So in that regard, gov't is far more efficient. It gets muddled when you factor the higher level positions and factor in other agencies. News flash: not all gov't agencies are the same, speaking from experience, some have higher standards than others. You simply can't lump them all and judge them the same way.

With the amount of tax money already pissed away on waste, fraud and abuse, this American government has no moral ground on which to increase taxes on anyone.

If you increase taxes, you will damage the already ailing economy while helping nothing. There will be tiny, token spending cuts here and there while overall spending will accelerate even more rapidly, no matter which side runs the show.

An "effective" tax increase will not be limited to these more-money-than-brains "patriotic millionaires" and likely won't even touch them. An increase will go right into the belly of the middle class, which, unlike these millionaires, don't have teams of lawyers to find loopholes.

As usual, reality disagrees with QM. As usual, he contributes nothing but regurgitated talking points he knows aren't true.

Waste, fraud, and abuse are not unique to the public sector. It happens just as much, if not more it's just covered up better in the private, so you can stop pretending there isn't a double standard.

People like you, QM have no moral ground to be talking about who has moral grounds or not.

The wealthy use and depend on gov't services more, so they should be charged more. It's really as simple as that. I've heard both left and right agree that corporate loopholes should be closed. But as usual, QM misses the point. It has nothing to do with left and right. Our corporate masters have their hooks in both the left and the right so while both the left and the right will pay lip service to closing loopholes, it will never happen unless there is enough public backlash to happen.

Businesses thrived in the past with higher tax rates. They will continue to do so.

Ideaology is worthless. History and countless evidence has shown that higher taxes are not job killers and that the 1 percent are just fear-mongering and attempting to hold the country hostage so they can be even more rich than they already are. You want to fight terrorism? There it is.

Rationality and reason, not ideaology and myth will always win in the end.

What about the deficit? It only makes sense that any increase in taxes, even it dips down to the "thousandaires" or 250k+ income earners, will be used in part to repay the debt. Cutting social security and public education is an assault on the most vulnerable in society, regardless of efforts to spin these as wasteful and unnecessary.

VoodooV has it right when he said our corporate masters have their hooks in both the left and the right so while both the left and the right..