@marbles

-Yes, Ron Paul is naive when it comes to economics, by putting his faith in neo-liberal doctrinal scripture that has no evidence to support it, nor any basis in the reality of a modern economy. The fact that he believes capitalism to be the embodiment of liberty is the root of this naivety.

Privatization, deregulation, international 'free' trade agreements and austerity -all principles of neo-liberal thought- have caused the lion share of our current economic woes: massive income disparity, high unemployment, wage slavery, inflation, labor abuse, war profiteering, eroding of civil rights, the death of many a small business, massive corruption, environmental harm, etc. Think of all the major economic scandals of the last few decades - The Saving and Loan Scandal, The Foreclosure scandal, Enron, the oil spills, Katrina (the aftermath, not the weather event), etc. All of them are the result of deregulation. I know that government interference is a big boogey man to the capitalist libertarian set, but every single one of these scandals could have been prevented with proper regulation and/or proper oversight.

-Yes, I'm sorry to say it, but Ron Paul does play the game, and he is a part of the two party system.
Check out the damage control here: http://videosift.com/search?q=ron+paul+earmarks

-If you remember 4 years ago, people were saying the same things about Obama that you are saying about Ron Paul today - that he is the answer to all our problems - but then he moved into the White House and was forced to abandon or compromise nearly all of his promises. I warn you against political hero worship. No matter how much you like the guy, no matter how much grandfatherly charm he exudes, he is still a politician who must play by the rules of the broken system.

I could be wrong, and these comments will be here next year to rub in my face in the off chance that America is transformed into Galt Island.

As Sammy Hagar once said in his infinite wisdom, "Only time will tell if we can stand the test of time."

@messenger

1.
It was never possible for the Calfornia government to avoid becoming the least-skilled state in the country (#50 out of 50). Enron simply cost money, but our schools have always been well funded nonetheless --better funded than states that have better test scores than we do.

The reason for all this is that importing low-skill workers gives you a low-skill populace for the long-term. We might call it the "Call a Place Paradise and Kiss It Goodbye Effect," and someone thought California's decline was a good enough idea that it should be repeated on the national level, so you'll get a closer view of it yourself this century. However, you'll have to look for it yourself, because newspapers and academics aren't generally going to discuss it, probably for good reason (1, 2).

2. Yeah, your summary is a fair statement. I view the deposition in Spanish as the culture embracing anti-success habits.

@chilaxe
I wish I knew more about the situation in California so I could agree or disagree. The only things about California's problems that I've heard is that someone made horrible financial decisions based on a fortune teller's guidance, and that Enron bilked California out of billions of dollars, which contributed massively.

Anyway, from your comments and links here, I'm gathering that you don't see one guy making a deposition in Spanish as a problem as much as you see it as a symbol of everything you think is wrong about liberalism and the problems you perceive it to cause. Is that a fair statement?

(edited)

I've been told ^that^ comment makes no sense. Let me try again.

By calling himself a libertarian or liberty activist, blankfist creates an irrational mental environment of infallibility. He doesn't see his ideology as subjective reasoning, but rather the embodiment of liberty itself. Argue with blankfist, and in his mind you are arguing with liberty.

It doesn't matter that his subjective concept of liberty is geared towards a very small amount of wealthy business owners at the expense of the working class. It doesn't matter that when put into practice, his ideology produces results that are violent, oppresive and corrupt. Like the Christian soldier who fights as an agent of God, blankfist is a free market soldier that fights as an agent of a higher power called liberty. Right and wrong no longer mean anything when you are fighting for the divine.

With this mindset, Milton Friedman's 'shock therapy' in Chile that replaced a socialist democracy with a capitalist dictatorship and left tens of thousands dead becomes an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice to the gods of liberty. Whenever a newly deregulated market spawns oppression and theft, (S&L's,Enron,Mortgage Fraud) there are always plenty of scapegoats to pawn responsibility off onto, because the true God of market liberty self-regulates. With this mindset, there is no need for introspection, because liberty is perfect. Liberty is Love. Remember Ron Paul's Love-olution billboards? You aren't voting for a man, you are voting for the physical embodiment of love! How could anyone be anti-love?

Same goes for 'objectivism', especially when the concept is tied to 'individualism'. Individuals are incapable of objectivity. Ayn Rand titling her movement 'objectivism' is evidence that she is in no way objective. A 'collective' of people, with different life experiences and areas of expertise would ironically be more much more objective than an 'Objectivist' individual. It's like rain on your wedding day, or titling your subjective ideology 'objectivism'. Sorry Alanis, that lyric doesn't rhyme and is going to need some work.

I believe we reinforce this divinity complex when we use words such as libertarian or objectivist. We should either call them what they are, anarcho-capitalists, or develop our own divine self-definition.

Truthitarianism? Correctist? IMASMARTYURADUMY.com?

Why is it extreme fiction to think that powerful, ambitious men would take advantage of a power vacuum? Free market intervention via the IMF has horror stories far, far worse than this. Real stories, not fiction. Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Bolivia. Powerful people take advantage of the power vacuum in our country too. Deregulation of derivatives caused the current financial crisis. Deregulating the banks caused the mortgage fraud crisis. Deregulating energy caused the Enron crisis. Business has co-opted our relatively powerful government and led us into war and debt. Take away government and the hard fought laws of the last few centuries and the power of wealthy ambitious men would be unbound. Take away government and the hard fought laws of the last few centuries and what you consider to be oppression would be dwarfed.

When states fail, gangs and warlords always immediately rise up to take advantage of the system.

When I say anarchists and conservative libertarians are naive, I'm not trying to be mean. I think they are blind to the historical constant that powerful, ambitious men will always try and game political systems, and that anarchism, by design, would be completely impotent at stopping them. It is no small coincidence that these powerful, ambitious men support many of the institutions and think tanks that inform your politics. The same people that fund Cato and the Reason Institute also fund PNAC and Freedomworks. Does it not disturb you that Neo-Cons fund your institutions? Does it not disturb you that conservative libertarian heroes like Milton Friedman have backed violence and violent dictators in South America to further their cause? To further your cause?

Anyway, this is why I find conservative libertarianism and anarchism so objectionable. I don't think anarchism could ever happen, because of the paradox that in order to achieve and maintain an anti-state, you would need the power of a state. The reason I oppose a movement that could never get off the ground is that its principles (low taxes, deregulation) are being used as justification for the very tyranny it seeks to abolish.

(PS: check out the documentary: GASLAND. My fiction was based on real events.)

Anyone who thought, at the time, that Enron was the only corrupt organization in a field of legitimate companies wasn't paying attention.

(Anyone who thinks that the most recent financial crisis has "cleaned out" the bad seeds is similarly deluded. Without meaningful prosecution of wrongful behavior, there will be no change or reform going forward. Without public education of what went wrong, who's responsible, and how to prevent it from happening again, the problems will persist for a long long time to come.)

$200,000 a year?! Holy shit. Is it run by Enron? That's expensive "shock therapy".

Also, @5:37: wikki-wikki-wak like a DJ.

Yeah, you could call Obama a corporatist and I'm sure the republicans would love that. Though, Republicans are mainly the ones who have created this shit monster we have here. They were the OG corporatists - corrupting everything including your grandma's potato salad. I'm sure they love hearing this new vocab word "corporatist" as another word to toss at the "opposing side" and get all high and mighty about Jesus Christ, protesting scientific FACTS, humanist goals, healthcare and letting the top 1% take everything from their pea brained families and everyone elses.

But, one cannot proclaim anyone else is a corporatist unless that person tossing around the term acknowledges that this is NOT a democracy that we live in. It's completely misleading to toss around new "gotcha moments" and not put that out into the open. So, since this is NOT a democracy what difference does it make? If Obama is a corporatist what does that make the Republican party? Megalithic Elephant Testicle Sack Corporate Dingbats & complacent globalist murderers? Seriously, don't even listen to Ron Paul he is a Pro-life, Christian nutcase...

and I cannot even stop with that thought, here is the rest of my rant: everyone in that party needs to shut their huge gaping lie spreading mouths and open up their assholes to receive their nightly $10000000 fistful of cash up into there from good ol' Captain America (Enron, Bechtel, Lockheed, industry lobbyists, the couple of corporate media conglomerates showering the country with bullshit ideas, the insurance companies, big oil, etc etc etc) Open up, piggies! Eat your shit inorganic food, here's some shitty tuna and some shitty fries don't forget to chug it down with some high fructose corn syrup so you can get diabetes, let's watch your brains decay but only after you hand over your wallet to the top 1% who already own everything.

Okay, before we get a little too sidetracked by imstellar's schizophrenic simultaneous condemnation and endorsement of violence, let's see if we can at least agree that Joe Stack's complaints didn't start or end with taxes.

Flipping through, I would summarize his grievances with government as:

1. Failing to stop GM corporate bosses from mistreating their workers
   
2. Bailing out GM without forcing a change in management
   
3. Not passing comprehensive health care reform
   
4. Tax laws are overly complex
   
5. Tax laws disproportionately benefit Catholic churches
   
6. Tax laws disproportionately benefit big business
   
7. There are two interpretations of every law, one for the rich, and one for everyone else
   
8. His neighbor had his pension stolen by a mismanaged corporation, and unions and government stood aside and let it happen
   
9. Lobbyists from Arthur Anderson (of future ENRON fame) helped open a loophole for companies to deny benefits to employees on a long term basis (by keeping them on as "independent contractors")
   
10. The US government closed military bases in California without concern for the negative effect on the local economy
    
11. After 9/11 the government overreacted with draconian flight security requirements
    
12. The government fined him $10,000 for failing to file a tax return, then later he got screwed by his tax accountant
    
13. During the current economic crisis, no CEO's are leaping to their death from their executive offices, instead they're making all their middle- and working-class employees take the plunge for them
    

He then closes by quoting Karl Marx, and juxtaposing the communist creed with what he sees as the capitalist creed. Specifically, he says:

The communist creed: From each according to ability, to each according to his need
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed

I'll go out on a limb and say that the whole thing reads to me like a left-wing screed, not a right-wing one.

His chief complaint didn't seem to be that government does too much, but that government does things for the wrong people.

This doesn't change my assessment of him being a crazy person who killed a bunch of innocent people who should be condemned, but I find it kinda funny that people on the left and right are assuming he was an anti-government, anti-tax teabagger of some sort.

Must be the plane into IRS building thing. Fits into the general teabagger narrative too nicely.

>> ^Nithern:
I find that Winstonfield is simply a conservative Republican lap dog. Saying and doing anything his masters wish, with total obedience and unwavering fanatic behavior. If they told him, the sky will be yellow zig zaps, purple poka-dots, and red curvy lines, three weeks from now. He would be on here, saying so, without an ounce of evidence or proof. In fact, he would show websites devoted to this concept, which in turn, are hardly non-bias. Remember that, when you read his stuff.


Despite his untasteful arrogance, it's obvious he knows alot more about the subject than you. Forget "climate change" because that is not the real issue. The issue is money, and Winston is completely right in the fact that COP15 is going to make a number of people somewhat richer. Imagine Enron, on a global scale. In fact the same names show up (Ken Lay) if you take a look at carbon credits. As for the scientists, of course they are not all a part of some conspiracy. But important people like the president of the IPCC stand to gain loads of cash, thankfully people are finally taking a look at their work

P.S. if you saw Winstons youtube link, you would also see he is alot funnier than you. YOU LOSE!

No, no it's not. That is actually quite an important and significant connection that is quite intelligent to mention, ignoring it is moronic. If you do any sort of research on these companies and their executive board, you will see a very clear picture that is all too overlooked. Also you mentioned Hitler and thus you lose, sorry, that's the law of debating.

If you had watched the rest, you might of seen the intelligent argument you were looking for. The parts where she exposes the massive gaping problems with Cap & Trade that show a clear intention of making money, not saving the world. You're probably going to say, "Oh they'll definitely iron out those massive oversights that reduce the whole concept to nothing! Of course they will!" but again, knowing the power and influence of the people behind it, the whole point is for those flaws to exist.

>> ^Edgeman2112:
sigh. I thought this would be an intelligent argument. She starts by trashing the people who came up with the idea in a generalist way. Cmon lady.
"This idea is brought to you by a guy at Enron and a guy at Goldman Sachs who brought us the mortgage crisis!"
This is like saying, "This idea is brought to you by a guy who lives in Germany; a country that had Adolf Hitler as its ruler!"
Kirk Cameron should've been the host of the video. No, I didn't watch the rest.

sigh. I thought this would be an intelligent argument. She starts by trashing the people who came up with the idea in a generalist way. Cmon lady.

"This idea is brought to you by a guy at Enron and a guy at Goldman Sachs who brought us the mortgage crisis!"

This is like saying, "This idea is brought to you by a guy who lives in Germany; a country that had Adolf Hitler as its ruler!"

Kirk Cameron should've been the host of the video. No, I didn't watch the rest.

>> ^enoch:
i think burgneil is talking about cap-n-trade and if you look into it...well..seems it will be a new market to exploit but not really deal with the issue of climate change.
maybe im wrong but im SOOO against cap-n-trade.
if you ripped me off,stole my money and ruined my business,why would i ever put you in charge of anything again?
the people who brought you Enron and energy trading?sub-prime mortgages?yep..now they bring us Cap-n-trade.
no thanks.


thanks for the clarification. Cap and Trade on coal plants have been in place in NY for a year and a half, and the general consensus from peers in the scientific community is that they aren't effective enough. I have no opinion of the political aspect because rest assured who ever is doing the speaking has his own agenda and it's almost always a devious one.

i think burgneil is talking about cap-n-trade and if you look into it...well..seems it will be a new market to exploit but not really deal with the issue of climate change.
maybe im wrong but im SOOO against cap-n-trade.
if you ripped me off,stole my money and ruined my business,why would i ever put you in charge of anything again?
the people who brought you Enron and energy trading?sub-prime mortgages?yep..now they bring us Cap-n-trade.
no thanks.

>> ^Stormsinger:
Fictitious? What fuckin' world have -you- been living in?
Union Carbide, Blackwater, Monsanto, Big Tobacco, Enron, Worldcom...just to name a few of the bigger evildoers out there. There are, of course, literally thousands of other examples.

I was referring to Google. That list is insignificant compared to the sheer amount of evildoing big governments have perpetrated throughout human history.

And please don't conveniently forget to mention which of these companies had ties to government.