big money/big business + government doesn't only lead to corruption. it leads to a fascist state

>> ^ghark:

There is no creator, it doesn't take compassion to deliver a child if that is your job, and the doctor's that wouldn't care for her didn't do so because either they were assholes, or had their hands tied by your pathetic healthcare system.


"Endowed by our creator" is the way our Constitution and Declaration of Independence is phrased, so you have to take that into consideration in the description. That kind of language is part of the language of natural rights as well, which dates back further than just our constitution. We can't pretend to know why they were refused service, but back in the 70s, our healthcare system wasn't quite so infiltrated by big business.

not sure how i would react to it verbally. the answer wasn't exactly knee jerk but i figured it out pretty quick.





i do agree with the idea that big business is a psychopath's playground.

-I don't believe Ron Paul to be directly pro- or anti-education, he is indifferent to it. What he is against is paying taxes. But, without taxes there are no schools. He talks about vouchers and school choice, but doesn't go into any depth as to how those would be achieved. At the end of the day, I don't see much difference between anti-education and anti-education-funding. The outcomes are the same.

-I don't disagree with the fact that local, state and federal governments have different strengths and weaknesses. Local school districts should decide how to run their own schools, and they largely do from my experiences in education. The only federal mandates I'm aware of are the NCLB testing (which is admittedly terrible - and the schools districts have the option of opting out at the cost of federal funding) and the basic restrictions and protections that apply to government programs (religious restrictions for teachers, religious freedoms for students, civil rights protections, low income aids, etc.)

-My arguments were more aimed at anarcho-capitalism, since my window into libertarianism was opened by a fairly extreme ancapper. You sound like a more reasonable states rights conservative. Again, I agree with you that states should be given greater power, but I do like the idea of having a greater constitutional authority that prevents prejudice and corruption. Of course it's all so confused and corrupt at the moment, big or small...

-But big business does already intervene at the local and state level. They even pick off city council seats when they need to. It would be much easier and cheaper for corporations to destroy state houses one by one or to buy them outright, rather than to lobby them. Be careful what you wish for.

My main gripe with Paul is that he talks a good game against corporatism, but at the same time supports the kinds of deregulation and tax cuts that empowered corporatism in the first place. Fighting fire with gasoline.

I'm gonna try to keep this short. I'm not trying to change your minds, just set the record straight. When someone makes a comment like "He wants to shut down the Department of Education? Fuck that!" I think that is purposely trying to paint the man as "anti-education".

It is not "social-Darwinism" to believe that state and local governments can do things better and more efficiently then the Federal gov. by being more accessible to the actual people their policies effect. BTW, also more in line with how the founding fathers setup the rules via the Constitution.

Yes, there are a lot of things that RP does not want the "Federal" government involved with. That is not the same as saying "RP doesn't want govt to do any of these things"....just that they should be done at the state and local levels of government if that is what the people want.

About Big Business running rampant...just how much easier (and cheaper) it is for Big Business to lobby a single "Federal DOE" as opposed to having to lobby 50 separate "State DOE"?

^JesusFreak

Reagan made drastic budget cuts to education. I'd call that austerity. Do you have some specific bit of policy you believe to be the culprit instead?

Sounds like your teacher friend is confusing his role as a teacher with his role as an employee. If he feels he is being mistreated by his district, he is allowed to stand up for himself. If teachers allow themselves to be bullied into pay cuts or poor working conditions, the profession becomes less competitive and thus less effective. This might explain why Texas is dead last in high school graduates? His students are less likely to graduate, but at least they don't have to worry about him going on strike. Well done! To hell with union states and all their uppity diploma earners!

Further reading:
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/public-education/why-does-texas-rank-last-in-high-school-diplomas/

The problem with education is funding. More funding = better education. Period. The government has been plenty 'creative' by allowing private charter schools into the educational system. In a study done at Stanford, they found that 37% of charter schools underperformed their public counterparts, 46% were comparable and 17% were better. Among the charter schools that did outperform public schools were schools like the Harlem Children's Zone, which get much higher funding. The take away here is that you get what you pay for. If we want better schools, we need to fund them.

Further reading on this topic:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?pagination=false

As far as I know, RP doesn't have any kind of realistic jobs plan, other than to further deregulate big business, cut their taxes and then pray for some hot trickle down watersports action. And, as you say, I guess he also has no problem with vast economic disparity. These two points are a great illustration of how out of touch he is with the world around him. He seems like a nice guy, and I like his liberal views on foreign policy, but if he is going to willingly kowtow to wall street, then he is the wrong guy for the job.

I read the wiki article you posted, it says the opposite of what you suggest. That pre-1980, they had no ability to generate policy...they just gathered information. Do you have a link to something that talks about the freemarkety nature in the 80s?, because that link doesn't have it. Unless you are just talking about Regan doing free market stuff on the whole affecting education somehow indirectly, but the link clearly says he made it a federal government responsibility to create educational policy in the 80s. In that, I don't know that your argument fully answers @Grimm's claim that educational stardards have gone down since federal policy making has been done. We aren't talking about free markets here, even at the state level. We are talking about who makes better policies affecting children's education; federal or state. It has also been of my opinion that for important things, eggs in one basket methodologies are dangerous. Best to have a billion little educational experiments boiling around the country, cooking up information that the rest of them can turn around and use. Waiting for a federal mandate to adopt a policy can be rather tedious.

I have some friends that are educators, I will have to ask them how they feel about this. It is easy for us to have an opinion based on raw idealism of our core beliefs, but I would be interested to see what certain teachers have to say. I met a real interesting person at my friends bachelor party. He came from a union state, and moved down here to Texas, we have teachers unions and things, but they aren't as powerful as the north. He experienced a complete change in himself. He found that his own involvement in his union happened in such a way where he basically held the kids education hostage over wages. He said that is was basically the accepted role of teachers to risk children's education over pay. I am not talking about just normal pay, but he was making 50k as a grade school teacher in the early 90s. Not suggesting this is normal, but it is something we don't copy here in Texas. As for his own mind, he knows he would never teach in that area of the country again, and would never suggest anyone move their that values their children's education.

What would be interesting to me is if the absence of the DOE would break down some of the red tape and allow schools to "get creative" with programs a federal political body might not want to take a risk on. Education is to important to fail on, and applying "to big to fail" kind of logic to a failing system of education is to much politics to play for me. Empower teachers and schools, and try to avoid paying as many non-educators as possible would be one way to improve things I would wager. What aspect of the DOE do you think is successful that we need to keep exactly? I mean, I can tell you I don't like that the DOD is so huge and powerful, but I know nuclear subs and aircraft carriers can't operate themselves. What necessarily component of the DOE do you see as necessarily, beyond just talking point of either party line stance of it? I mean, the Department of Energy's main goal was to get us off foreign oil, like a long time ago, that is pretty failed as much as the DOE. Different approach needed, or a massive rethinking of the current one. You don't usually get massive rethinking nationally of any coherent nature, which is why I think a local strategy might be a good way to go here. Perhaps then, you could have that initial part of the DOE before it became the DOE of providing information to schools about what works from other schools kick in again.

This kind of talk of "Ron Paul addresses none of this" about something that isn't related exactly isn't really fair. It is like trying to talk about income tax issues and saying changing them doesn't address the issue of the military war machine...well of course not, it is a different issue. Did you see that recent Greewald video where he talks about the founders did think that massive inequality was not only permissible, but the idea...just as long as the rules were the same for everyone? What I mean to say is that there does need to be a measure of fairness, but that fairness needs to be the same for everyone, rich and poor. I still say the real problem lay in the government creating the monster first and the monster is now eating us. If legislators simply refused to accept the legitimacy of corporate entities and instead say that only individuals can deal on the behalf of themselves with the govenrment(the elimination of the corporate charter as it refers to its relationship to the government) things could get better in a day. But since the good ol USA thinks that non-people entities are people, well, I don't see much hope for restoration. Money is the new government, rule of law is dead. I liked the recent Greenwald input on this. Rant over Sorry, this is just kind of stream of consciousness here, didn't plan out an actual goal or endpoint of my ideas....just a huge, burdensome wall of text

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education
1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.
We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealthy to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)
Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).


Well said sir, in my view no department is inherently bad or good, the value of the department depends on who is running it, how it is used and how policies governing the department are made. If the Department of Education is causing harm to the education of students then this could be fixed by resolving the underlying issue which is one of corrupt policy making. Look at Bill Gates for example, he's playing his part to destroy and privatize the education system so he can have Windows on every school computer and influence the public education budget. He's allowed to do this because of policy changes and enormous amounts of lobbying money (which go hand in hand).

Here's an interesting read about some of the sweeping changes he's been able to introduce via lobbying:
http://techrights.org/2011/09/09/new-york-times-and-washpo-on-edu/

Plus of course all the other issues dystopianfuturetoday mentions - these won't go away just by removing a couple of departments - the core issues of corruption and lobbying have to be fixed first.

Is Ron Paul going to fix these? Hell no. Even if he was strongly in favor of these sorts of real changes, he wouldn't get support for them under the current system, the GOP would block everything, the Dems would keep talking about how bad the GOP is for blocking everything, and everything would continue to get fucked just as badly, or worse, than it currently is.

The first incarnation of the department of education was actually created in 1876. Was our educational system unfucked before 1876? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

1980 was a pivotal year, but it had nothing to do with the department of education. 1980 was the year that Reagan ushered in a large number of 'free market' reforms: Privatization, deregulation, tax cuts for those at the top, austerity for those at the bottom... basically the Milton Friedman Shock Doctrine as described in Naomi Klein's excellent book.

We've since seen the rise of the corporate state and a deterioration of the public sector. These market principles have seen our jobs exported to 3rd world slaves (and then asked us to compete with those slaves), have given the green light to mass pollution and global warming, have allowed big business to use our military as middle east mercenaries and have redistributed vast amounts of wealth to a tiny fraction of the population (not to mention numerous scandals (Enron, Exxon, BofA, Countrywide, Halliburton, Blackwater, Savings and Loans, Mortgages, etc..)

Ron Paul addresses none of this. He has no solutions for jobs or inequality outside of his faith in invisible hands and invisible deities. He doesn't even seem aware that there is a problem. I don't think he's lying when he pretentiously states that his partisan political views are the very definition of liberty. I just think he is another out of touch conservative millionaire with a mind easily manipulated by self serving dogma (be it religious political or economic).

>> ^Sagemind:

I'm thinking you're missing the whole Bat-Point!
The fact that "Occupy", a collection of public citizens are chastised and arrested for shutting down the bridge, yet Bloomburg happily allowed it to happen just previously, only to the extent that it shut everything down as a result, and not just for half a day, but for several days.
The difference between the two groups? One was a group of people exercising their right to protest and the other was Big Business who were willing to pay off the city.
Forms and procedures be damned, the result is the same. Things got shut down and only one of the groups suffered!


Are you saying that Batman is the 1%?

I'm thinking you're missing the whole Bat-Point!
The fact that "Occupy", a collection of public citizens are chastised and arrested for shutting down the bridge, yet Bloomburg happily allowed it to happen just previously, only to the extent that it shut everything down as a result, and not just for half a day, but for several days.

The difference between the two groups? One was a group of people exercising their right to protest and the other was Big Business who were willing to pay off the city.

Forms and procedures be damned, the result is the same. Things got shut down and only one of the groups suffered!

>> ^snoozedoctor:

Sorry about your plight. Long term disability is a rare thing after recovery from influenza. You obviously ran into some bad luck and I hope that turns around for you. Actually, I don't think advocating personal responsibility is an interesting or unique position for a physician in the least. Promoting health and prevention of disease is part of our oath. With 1 out of 5 Americans still smoking and 1 out of 3 obese, we are clearly losing the battle. Sorry, but it's not my responsibility to hide the Twinkies, or the Camels and drag people to the gym. If citizens want better health outcomes from their health-care system, they should do their part. The quality of what comes out is only as good as what comes in.

>> ^kceaton1:
Yep I got hit with the same thing, the one-two punch. My side, it was sickness (swine flu, no joke), ending with long-term disability (plus surgery). That cost me my 40-50k job, but luckily I have parents that are helping me try to see through this. Otherwise, I would be a bankrupt statistic and most likely dead.
BTW, @snoozedoctor I understand your beef with "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE'S OWN HEALTH", but that is a very interesting position to hold especially concerning what your oath has to say about that. I assume you're a professional in your field; perhaps you should take up that stance with doctors concerning those fields and see what you could flesh out other than: "throw'em under the bus".



Would you argue that regular check ups should be apart of your healthy life style? Perhaps a cholesterol check, yearly blood test for organ function and such?

My last blood work before insurance was over 300 dollars. Flu shot was 60 bucks at the doctor's office. Yes, people who don't insurance don't pay what they bill insurance at. Hell most of the time, the people providing these services don't know what they cost.

Now if a simple flu shot costs 60 bucks at the doctor's office, while Im there getting a check up no less. But costs 10 dollars at the drug store.......where's the disconnect?

As for exercising, Im frankly frightened that I might get hurt and it cost me more than a make in a year to get it fixed. Not to mention how long that recovery time would be and losing my job during that. At least doing stuff on the job and getting hurt means you have worker's compensation and you might be able to convince them to hold your job until you recover. But if you break your leg or pull loose a tendon while exercising you have only what you can afford to pay for. Which you don't know what it will cost until after they are done, insurance or not.

I suspect in other countries where healthcare is universal, people don't have to worry about this and they can push themselves a little. And it's in the countries best interest to make sure people exercise properly, stretch, don't over do it etc. So they probably take more care to make sure people are properly instructed on how to go about it and what they can do as they age to change up the routine and still get the needed results. You know, without having to be a professional athlete or hire a personal trainer. It's all too easy for family docs to recommend you to specialists for every last concern you have, plus they get a nice little referral kick back. It's a nice system the US has.......or not.


US workers work more hours than most countries, spend more time on the road commuting and generally have less time to live a health life as well. It's a useful thing to big businesses requiring those long hours that they provide your healthcare, because it'd be a shame if you lost your job due to not working the outrageous hours and lost that healthcare. If you untied health care from employment, people'd see how truly expensive it is and they'd be more inclined to have it reigned in and made universal. The premiums on health insurance alone would cover all of your general yearly checkups and tests and probably most of another person's for single people.

subsidizing big business friends that don't need the subsidy or tax break may be the place to look for that

Places like Illinois, California, Wisconsin, and New Jersey are not facing fiscal black-holes because they are paying too much in subsidies to ‘big business friends’. The main problem is that they have promised government workers a gold-plated lifestyle when they only had a copper-plated budget. You could end every ‘big business’ tax break, subsidy, and kickback tomorrow and it would not even make a dent in the budget shortfalls of states like Illinois. The problem is government over-spending. Here it is in black and white. This isn’t ‘left or right’. This isn’t ‘liberal or conservative’. This is just the brutal, harsh, cold reality…

http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Illinois_state_budget#Public_Employees

You will notice that Illinois’ budget is NOT dominated by a big line item of ‘subsidies to big business’. The budget is dominated by government spending on unions, union benefits, and entitlements. The only way to ‘fix’ such a budget is to cut the spending. Really. Because for every 12 people living in Illinois, there is one full-time salaried government worker pulling a higher wage, more benefits, and a better retirement than the people paying for him. Such a system is economically impossible to support. And there is plenty of evidence that such systems will ALWAYS collapse because of ineffiency. Greece, Italy, Portugal – entire nations are collapsing because of exactly the same problem. And that problem is the poison of Keynesian economics propping up an impossibly lavish public sector.

That's basically my point, this country has plenty of money, it just does it's that people are greedy as **** so they're going to say that only THIS slice of the pie is available for you guys

You are talking as if the public sector is NOT getting its ‘piece of the pie’…

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/09/14/study-finds-public-employee-compensation-better-than-private-sector.html

http://www.aei.org/docLib/AEI-Working-Paper-on-Federal-Pay-May-2011.pdf

It's just not true, public service unions have nothing to do with the crisis, when you look at the fact that we're in two Wars and spend double what the entire world spends on the armed forces

To say public unions have 'nothing' to do with the economic shortfalls is just factually incorrect. The links above prove it. Illinois has entire sections of its budget dominated by union issues, and union contracts repeatedly block any attempts at reform.

But regardless... Sure. Cut federal defense spending. And while we are at it, we should also cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and every other program. Cut them all. Slash them by 33% across the board. No exceptions. No mercy. But anyone that thinks that the only place we need to cut is ‘defense’ and that’ll fix it all it living in a dream world.

For example – how is cutting defense spending going to help Illinois? Or California? Or New Jersey? Or let’s take it national. Greece’s defense spending was a measley 3.4%. Explain how they would solve their massive budget shortfall by cutting defense. Or the US… Even if you cut US defense spending to zero, our current deficit is over 1.4 trillion. Defense to zero? 700 billion. Only HALF of just the deficit. It doesn’t even touch the 14 trillion in debt the nation already has. Or the further SEVENTY trillion in debt we have to cover all the 'unfunded liabilites' of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

At some point all the prog-libs out there are going to have to accept the facts. You can’t close the massive budget shortfalls that cities, states, and nations have with defense cuts. The problem is not defense. It is not ‘big business’. The problem is that governments are overspending on unsustainable public employee packages and entitlements that have no reasonable expecation of ever being paid for.

I am in agreement with that, however it won't solve the entire problem. Collective bargaining, when applied to the the sector of public service, will always end badly. At the risk of repeating myself, there simply isn't enough money. FDR saw this in his letter to the National Federation of Federal Employees in which, among other things, he stated, "The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service . . "

We can leave things as they are and just not pay people the pensions we've promised to them, or we can correct the error now. There is an alternative to the government fixing it now. The people certainly will at the polls. You may find this article regarding what is happening in California enlightening. Brown has his tit in a wringer because the people of CA will correct these issues if he doesn't. My guess is that the people of Wisconsin will come to the same conclusion eventually when the "where's my pension you promised me?," lawsuits begin.



>> ^packo:

>> ^silvercord:
Being an old hippie, I understand this. But I also understand that the state has made promises it cannot keep. Same thing is happening in California under Jerry Brown. He has proposed to cut state union pensions in order to rectify the matter. There is no magic wand to pay those pensions. The money is simply not there.

subsidizing big business friends that don't need the subsidy or tax break may be the place to look for that

>> ^silvercord:

Being an old hippie, I understand this. But I also understand that the state has made promises it cannot keep. Same thing is happening in California under Jerry Brown. He has proposed to cut state union pensions in order to rectify the matter. There is no magic wand to pay those pensions. The money is simply not there.


subsidizing big business friends that don't need the subsidy or tax break may be the place to look for that