>> ^blankfist:

My kindergarten teacher sucked and she enjoyed doling out the spankings too much. We spent the year playing with plastic bears and drawing with crayons and getting spankings and fucking around on the playground. It was fine as something to do to stay busy as a kid, but the bastion of educational advancement it was not. Just sayin'.
I bet if I went to a better school, my opinion would've been different. I didn't have that option.


Charter Schools are obviously the answer then, because your experience is the same as everyones ever. Perhaps you didn't realize you were learning...because it was FUCKING Kindergarten and you don't remember shit about it.

My kindergarten teacher sucked and she enjoyed doling out the spankings too much. We spent the year playing with plastic bears and drawing with crayons and getting spankings and fucking around on the playground. It was fine as something to do to stay busy as a kid, but the bastion of educational advancement it was not. Just sayin'.

I bet if I went to a better school, my opinion would've been different. I didn't have that option.

Profit means you are utilizing resources effectively. The opposite is net destruction. If everyone consumed more than they produced, we would eventually have nothing. Henry Ford accumulated a lot of personal wealth for his innovations, but everyone he traded with got a car and his employees were better paid than unions. You can pay a guy with a bulldozer a lot more than a guy with a shovel and savings and investment is what makes that upgrade possible. No business can force you to trade your production for theirs, only the government with taxes can do that. If the government didn't have the power to dole out special favors to business, would business bother bribing them? Lobbying is the symptom, the problem is in excess government power.

The thing that socialists don't understand is that the wealth creation is what's important, not concentration. In capitalism, 1 guy could have 7 yachts and a moon base, but if the average person has two cars, two kids, a home, and countless amenities, who cares? Without the profit motive, who would go through the trouble of inventing and selling anything en masse if your greatest reward is no better than someone on the assembly line who took no risk? If everyone equally has very little as the soviets did, how is that better?

But you know, socialists act like all megarich people do is spend their money on frivolous things. In reality, they have too much to do that. It gets invested in upstart companies who need the capital to express their ideas and by the end, most is usually given to charity. In other words, it gets recycled back into wealth creation whereas the government would just waste it on bombs and embassies.

Oh, and to the guy who said the FDA is there to help you from business, look up stevia and aspartame. Your naive belief that giving others the power to choose for you is a complete backfire that accomplishes the opposite. The FDA is bribed shitless into using their "protective ban" powers to ban, harass, or steal from perfectly safe competitors on behalf of their corporate cronies. Also look up all the instances where a company was sued for supplying dangerous or defective products. That's not the FDA, that's libertarian-approved courts and recourse dissuading fraud and abuse in the marketplace. It's not more profitable to take shortcuts, it's less profitable because you'll be sued into oblivion. Do some businesses die because their owners are too stupid to see that? Yes. But business mortality is good, we don't want destructive businesses surviving like a horrid government program can.

@chilaxe the point I'm making is that you're viewing things through a different lens. Your starting point on viewing society is pretty much one of elite condescension (a topic I am intimately familiar with! ).

You seem to believe the society we have today is already mostly meritocratic, and that in large part people who're struggling have essentially brought it all on themselves by being stupid, lazy, careless, taking drugs, etc. The only thing you want to do with society is make it even more meritocratic, so that fewer and fewer resources wind up getting wasted on these inherently inferior human beings.

Me, I don't want a society whose main goal is meritocracy. I want a society whose main goal is to help people reach their fullest potential. I wouldn't wish poverty on my worst enemies, much less people who are essentially unable to fend for themselves.

To me, markets are just some highly theoretical concept that seems to be mostly beneficial to bringing about prosperity, but in a lot of ways runs counter to our moral obligations to help the least of us. Things people truly need, I think they should just be given, and the burden for providing it should lay on the backs of those of us who're thriving on our own. Obviously though, I'd prefer to transform unproductive people into productive people rather than simply keep people on the dole. Perhaps we could educate them somehow...

I have no desire to foist an unnecessary education on anyone. My desire is for everyone who could get something worthwhile out of higher education gets it, without regard to whether or not they've got $40,000 or whatever number of pieces of paper they're charging for it these days.

I definitely think that someone who has a desire to go to college, and not be a whore, shouldn't be given strong incentives by society to become a whore in order to get the education they want. At a minimum, if that's going to be how society works, we shouldn't be calling it anything even remotely like "free".

>> ^quantumushroom:

Remember, it's only election fraud when conservatives win!

Anyone making a lifestyle out of welfare (over two years on it) should be barred from voting until they're off the dole; any illegals caught voting should be executed as enemy spies and saboteurs.

The voting age needs to be raised to 25 except for members of the military. One hasn't been paycheck-raped by taxes enough at 18 to know what's going on, plus at that age one naturally knows nothing and cannot make informed decisions.


I don't think raising the voting age will turn everyone conservative. I'm not 100% conservative or liberal but what these super leftist liberals do in this video just really irritates me. A violation of your privacy to have someone look at your bank activity to issue you a voter id? Puh-lease.

I don't agree with you on your views on several other subjects and with all the extra sentiments in you put in the comments (Obamacare etc.) but I agree with you on this.

You'd think a tea-party poster child like @quantumushroom would recall the phrase "No taxation without representation".>> ^quantumushroom:

Remember, it's only election fraud when conservatives win!

Anyone making a lifestyle out of welfare (over two years on it) should be barred from voting until they're off the dole; any illegals caught voting should be executed as enemy spies and saboteurs.

The voting age needs to be raised to 25 except for members of the military. One hasn't been paycheck-raped by taxes enough at 18 to know what's going on, plus at that age one naturally knows nothing and cannot make informed decisions.

Remember, it's only election fraud when conservatives win!


Anyone making a lifestyle out of welfare (over two years on it) should be barred from voting until they're off the dole; any illegals caught voting should be executed as enemy spies and saboteurs.


The voting age needs to be raised to 25 except for members of the military. One hasn't been paycheck-raped by taxes enough at 18 to know what's going on, plus at that age one naturally knows nothing and cannot make informed decisions.

A rather simplistic, populist bit of tripe.

To start with, if this guy thinks that things were so great back in the 1960s then maybe he should think again. The 'middle class' he talks about in the 60s was a far smaller entity than it is in 2011. In the 60s the country had a higher proportion of people in the 'lower' class. Since that time, the average american family has gotten proportionally wealthier - not poorer - and enjoys a higher standard of living, more property, and greater economic freedom than ever before. The entire premise of this video is nothing but an anachronistic fantasy.

The pap about families easily affording homes, cars, education, and retirement in the 60s on a single income is also a load of bull feathers. Middle class stiffs had to make tough choices back then too, and didn't have the dosh to just toss around money like that. His cutsey chalkboard claptrap cartoons of a smiling 'middle class' family easily affording any expense they wanted is stupidly wrong.

And this moron acts like people on a single income TODAY can't afford a home, car, college, and retirement. I am the lone wage-earner in my family. Not ONCE have I gotten government assistance or a handout on the dole. And I own a home, 2 cars, have $13,000 in savings for the kids, and I'm on track to be a millionaire when I retire. How did I do it? Because I'm not stupid. The middle class doesn't have to go into debt for these things - and this JERK'S premise that MC families have to rack up huge debt to live life is absolute specious.

And unions - yeesh. I noticed carefully that this obviously neolib goombah didn't bother mentioning that the over 26 TRILLION dollars in debt this nation has only exists because of private and public sector union unfunded liabilities. Corporations send world overseas because unions ARE making the cost of business in the U.S. (not to mention the fact that we're #1 in the world in corporate taxation) unfeasible for many industries. And he also doesn't mention the decrease in union size is only in the private sector, but that PUBLIC sector unions have swollen in size to gargantuan, slovenly, grotesque levels - and are (of course) literally breaking America's bank with thier costs. Of course companies outsource labor when paying a US employee costs them 100X as much money for only a fraction of the output. Only in the neolib Planet Fantasy does everyone get 100,000 a year for pushing brooms, assembling widgets, and other unskilled jobs that any reasonably trained lemming can perform.

He also doesn't mention that the top 50% of American taxpayers are paying 95% of the taxes, and that the "middle class" that he disingenously claims to speak for is actually paying almost NO INCOME TAXES at all. The bottom 50% of wage-earners (that's the middle class for you neolib idiots out there) only pay 5% of the taxes. How much more can the you burden the top 50% with before they pull up stakes and leave? That's the problem New York City, Chicago, LA, and many other neolib Meccas are facing. They have raised taxes so high on "the rich" (which Obama defines as anyone earning over 200K) that they are leaving these leftist enclaves, which in turn are literally dying on the vine under the weight of their own stupid policies and union debt.

But I do agree with some of the comments about lobbyists and the tax code. I do believe that is a problem, but it is a GOVERNMENT problem not a lobbyist problem. The government is the new "Robber Baron", when 100 years ago the government was protecting people from Robber barons. But of course this guy doesn't focus on the fact that it is GOVERNMENT making these stupid laws, and not companies. In fact, many companies hated the repeal of Glass-Steagall but government wanted it so Barney Frank could have is precious UFFODUBBLE HOWZING! Banks never wanted to be forced to give loans to people who they never would have touched in the 1960s - but Government played the Race Card with accusations of redlining and forced it through.

The problems with income disparity people whine about are largely a phantom. More people in the US are wealthier than they've ever been in the nation's history. Carping about how much MORE the uber-rich have than the middle class is pure sophistry.

here she is now
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/GraceSlick2008.jpg

she carries a pen

bob dole likes pens

>> ^quantumushroom:

You know even those numbers are lies, NR. For chrissakes, the liars switched from "jobs created" to "lives touched" late last year.

Hey, you're the one that put that article forward, not me.

I think it's impossible to actually track specific jobs created by the stimulus. You can make estimates based on theory, but that's not really evidence, either for or against.

What's a bit easier to measure is the overall employment trend. You'll love that these are Nancy Pelosi's charts, but they're based on BLS statistics (what the whole economic world uses as the source for data on employment, BTW).

Here's the chart of the recession through to May's jobs report (June's report will probably come out this week). The stimulus bill was passed in February of 2009. The trend changed immediately, with the job losses slowing, and then turning into gains.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Government jobs are not real jobs as they do not reflect market needs.

That's my point, the stimulus wasn't about creating "government" jobs, it was an attempt to reverse the unemployment trend in the private sector. Right now the biggest drag on the jobs reports coming out is job losses in the public sector.

Here's a chart showing the last year in the ongoing march of Obama's supposed socialist revival. Private sector jobs up, public sector jobs down.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Here's a RADICAL idea: let people keep more of their own money, across the board.

I know it was another thread, but that idea's been tried. Hell, it's still being done to a greater degree than it's been done since well before I was born. That idea has clearly and unambiguously been tried, and has utterly failed to produce anything like what Republicans from Reagan forward have claimed it would.

>> ^quantumushroom:
And lay off Herb Hoover, moonbats, he was an unwilling or ignorant ally of yours.
wiki:
<long quote about things FDR said on the campaign trail>

A couple paragraphs above that, you find a description of Hoover's actual policies:

Calls for greater government assistance increased as the U.S. economy continued to decline. Hoover rejected direct federal relief payments to individuals, as he believed that a dole would be addictive, and reduce the incentive to work. He was also a firm believer in balanced budgets, and was unwilling to run a budget deficit to fund welfare programs.[45] However, Hoover did pursue many policies in an attempt to pull the country out of depression. In 1929, Hoover authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to combat rampant unemployment, reduce the burden on municipal aid services, and remove people seen as usurpers of American jobs. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico, and continued until 1937. In June 1930, over the objection of many economists, Congress approved and Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The legislation raised tariffs on thousands of imported items. The intent of the Act was to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods, while raising revenue for the federal government and protecting farmers. However, economic depression now spread through much of the world, and other nations increased tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing international trade, and worsening the Depression.[46]

In 1931, Hoover issued the Hoover Moratorium, calling for a one-year halt in reparation payments by Germany to France and in the payment of Allied war debts to the United States. The plan was met with much opposition, especially from France, who saw significant losses to Germany during World War I. The Moratorium did little to ease economic declines. As the moratorium neared its expiration the following year, an attempt to find a permanent solution was made at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. A working compromise was never established, and by the start of World War II, reparations payments had stopped completely.[47][48] Hoover in 1931 urged the major banks in the country to form a consortium known as the National Credit Corporation (NCC).[49] The NCC was an example of Hoover's belief in volunteerism as a mechanism in aiding the economy. Hoover encouraged NCC member banks to provide loans to smaller banks to prevent them from collapsing. The banks within the NCC were often reluctant to provide loans, usually requiring banks to provide their largest assets as collateral. It quickly became apparent that the NCC would be incapable of fixing the problems it was designed to solve, and it was replaced by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

That all sounds very familiar to me as modern-day Republican policy proposals -- eschew direct assistance to the unemployed, try to boost employment by deporting Mexicans, attempt to defer interest payments on foreign debts, and ask banks to put in place their own policies to fix their own shortcomings rather than resort to regulation, and stick to preserving the gold standard at all costs. The only thing out of place is tariffs, but I've seen those mentioned from the conservative rank and file in discussions about what our response to China's ascendance should be.

In the election year of 1932, with unemployment at 25% and with people throwing things at his motorcade everywhere he went, he did start engaging in a little attempt at mortgage loan stabilization and fiscal stimulus, and they did seem to make a positive impact, but were too little too late, but they weren't policies that were the centerpiece of his administration, they were things he tried to do out of desperation.

It's also quite true that FDR in 1932 ran on a platform that included promises to balance the budget, but that's because it'd been the Democratic that had always been scolds on that topic up to that point. Besides, FDR was no student of Keynes; General Theory wasn't even published until 1936. I don't really know where the ideas for FDR's New Deal came from. I'm guessing just simple populism, and maybe some Keynesian influence amongst his economic advisers.

You know even those numbers are lies, NR. For chrissakes, the liars switched from "jobs created" to "lives touched" late last year.

Sorry Dudes, I know you mean well, but you are defending the indefensible. Obama has failed, just like those of us who know socialism (or semi-socialism) fails knew he would. Couldn't care less that the moonbats hate him for not being Marx enough, His Earness has failed.

Government jobs are not real jobs as they do not reflect market needs. With government, when 30 desk jockeys can replace 300, the other 270 stay on board for the ride (and pensions). No wonder we're headed for Greece.

Here's a RADICAL idea: let people keep more of their own money, across the board. Recognize it's not the government's money, even if it prints the sh1t.

Another wonderful side effect of letting people keep the lion's share of what they earn: you get a properly-restrained government too small to rape and plunder in the name of "social justice" or any other bullsh1t of the day.

And lay off Herb Hoover, moonbats, he was an unwilling or ignorant ally of yours.

wiki:

Franklin D. Roosevelt blasted (Hoover) for spending and taxing too much, increasing national debt, raising tariffs and blocking trade, as well as placing millions on the dole of the government. Roosevelt attacked Hoover for "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible."[54] Roosevelt's running mate, John Nance Garner, accused the Republican of "leading the country down the path of socialism".[55]

Ironically, these policies pale beside the more drastic steps taken under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration later as part of the New Deal. Hoover's opponents charge that his policies came too little, and too late, and did not work. Even as he asked Congress for legislation, he reiterated his view that while people must not suffer from hunger and cold, caring for them must be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility.

Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell[56] later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."




>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^quantumushroom:
And yet here we are with our current SCAMULUS not helping at all.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-eco
nomists-stimulus-has-cost-278000-job_576014.html
I'm calling FOUL, Keynes! You hear me? KEEEEYYYYNNNEEEEEESSSS!

That article says it created 2.4 million jobs. Its main point was that if you take the number of jobs it's estimated to have created, and divide it by the total sum of the bill, it was expensive per job. But it wasn't buying jobs, it was buying goods and services.
Of course you can get more jobs per dollar if the government just directly hires people, and puts them to work doing what needs to be done (like build cars, sweep floors, grow corn, etc.). But that's socialism, so instead we just buy stuff from the market, and let the market decide how many (and which) jobs get created.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, see, for me it's not about dag's competence as a king or leader. He's the site owner, so I think by default he needs to take an avid and responsible role in the way punishment is doled out.

...and yet if I read your comments correctly, I don't think you were exactly pleased with the process he went through before banning you.

As a libertarian, sure, you are deeply committed to the idea that dag is and must be considered our king because he's got the divine right of property, and the rest of us are merely his subjects who only are allowed here at his consent.

But that's different from whether you like what the king's doing at any given time.
>> ^blankfist:
We don't have a pressing epidemic of "name callers" on here that we must deputize the community to help dag sift through the Sift Raft™. Banning probies and spammers is one thing, but banning actual contributing members shouldn't be a democratic process. It'll just lead to favoritism.

I think it's all about the kind of atmosphere we want in the community. I think there's been a slide towards greater and greater hostility and incivility. That seems to be the gist of dag's original post, all the way at the top of the page, no?

I don't really want to see some reign of terror where we purge the roles of the sift, but I would like to see people getting time outs for lashing out at people.

As for democratic process, I'm just asking for a code of laws. It seems to me that you can't have "due process" until you write down what the laws are. Without that, it's always going to boil down to the king settling disputes directly.
>> ^blankfist:
I propose we use hobbling when someone seems to be on the attack. As soon as an admin gets on they can look into the situation and listen to BOTH sides. I'm sure by that point the community will know all about the offense and already be weighing in and doing amateur sleuthing to get the facts. After that temp bans and perm bans would follow.

Sounds good, but what constitutes an attack?

If I say I've fucking had it with you calling me a Nazi all the time, and hobble you for it, how exactly do we settle whether I've got a legitimate case or not? Make dag threaten to cut the baby in half?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

For someone who is otherwise such a proponent of democratic principles and liberty I'm surprised that you would rather concentrate disciplinary powers in one person's hands.

And, yes, yes - I am the site owner so I could always come down and blow it all away, so we're just playing. I know. But, there would be a lot more social pressure on me not to interfere, if decisions were meted out fairly without favorotism by the Sift public in some kind of system.

I think I've shown my willingness to let self-rule flourish. And honestly, I'm fascinated by the idea of balancing technology and people to make a more equitable, self-managing community. (even if it's just in our little online niche)

>> ^blankfist:



@NetRunner, see, for me it's not about dag's competence as a king or leader. He's the site owner, so I think by default he needs to take an avid and responsible role in the way punishment is doled out.
We don't have a pressing epidemic of "name callers" on here that we must deputize the community to help dag sift through the Sift Raft™. Banning probies and spammers is one thing, but banning actual contributing members shouldn't be a democratic process. It'll just lead to favoritism.
I propose we use hobbling when someone seems to be on the attack. As soon as an admin gets on they can look into the situation and listen to BOTH sides. I'm sure by that point the community will know all about the offense and already be weighing in and doing amateur sleuthing to get the facts. After that temp bans and perm bans would follow.
We've been on a banning spree in the last two weeks or so, and it's not that some of the offenses weren't valid, it's just a bit reactionary to ban people outright. Especially when we're not asking for testimony before walking people off the plank. Hobble them first. Listen to them. Then decide on punishment.

Also, as an aside, I used to have a list of bad words that a certain large studio targeted at kids used for their sites back in the day. I either had it as a CSV or XML file, but it was used to check usernames and comments before allowing them to submit them. It would even censor out things like "ball" and "hairy".

Something like that would probably work well for people who've been hobbled.

That would be a decent compromise. I just think allowing the community to dole out bans or put people in muteboxes is a bad idea. There's strength in numbers. If one person hobbles another, there's one person responsible not a group. It makes it less likely to be abused.

@NetRunner, see, for me it's not about dag's competence as a king or leader. He's the site owner, so I think by default he needs to take an avid and responsible role in the way punishment is doled out.

We don't have a pressing epidemic of "name callers" on here that we must deputize the community to help dag sift through the Sift Raft™. Banning probies and spammers is one thing, but banning actual contributing members shouldn't be a democratic process. It'll just lead to favoritism.

I propose we use hobbling when someone seems to be on the attack. As soon as an admin gets on they can look into the situation and listen to BOTH sides. I'm sure by that point the community will know all about the offense and already be weighing in and doing amateur sleuthing to get the facts. After that temp bans and perm bans would follow.

We've been on a banning spree in the last two weeks or so, and it's not that some of the offenses weren't valid, it's just a bit reactionary to ban people outright. Especially when we're not asking for testimony before walking people off the plank. Hobble them first. Listen to them. Then decide on punishment.