The focus these days is less on freedoms and more upon economic control. We bailed out a bunch of companies in what I look at as more or less of a hostile takeover of private entities by the government.
Rest assured, the companies in question do not view it as a hostile takeover, they view it as precisely what it is: A bailout. Money thrown at them, with a variety of associated restrictions and clauses of course, in order to allow them to continue operating.
If it were
hostile, they wouldn't be
asking for it.
The FED is giving out money like crazy. The treasury has powers it was never intended to have. Congress stepped in and broke a contract between AIG and their employees threatening a 90% tax and asking for the names of all the people who received bonuses. Government is now actively meddling in businesses and further distorting the free market.
First off, there are no powers that have been assumed lately that weren't there to begin with. Some are exercised but rarely, but the truth of the matter is that the economic system is unchanged. The issue of the AIG bonuses is interesting, though an obvious political ploy on the part of Congress to further demonize Wall Street as the creators of the problem (which they, sadly,
are), and to appeal to the current mood of the average American voter. Though I must point out that Congress has not in any way
broken the contract, the special tax (which is probably unconstitutional) merely threatens to make it irrelevant. Which, while ending in a similar result, is not the same process at all.
I don’t know what you are talking about when you say that the stations are typically anti establishment when on a constant basis we are sold on things like the war on drugs, the bailouts, perpetuating the fear, etc.
We're sold on the news that sells, primarily, though through a focus skewed by the particular views of whomever is in charge of a given network. In the case of Fox News, that's a "conservative" skew. Other networks have a "liberal" skew.
The instant that the government steps in and starts actively and directly controlling the news is a point at which we certainly
should worry.
Now he may state that it is not a direct attack against Muslims but then the question remains why does it need to be labeled Islamic extremism and not just extremism.
Because it
is Islamic extremism? I'm about as unPC as you can get. Hell, one of the major reasons I'd like to see the world weaned off of oil has nothing to do with the environment, I'd simply like to see the collapse of the Middle East as an economic influence.
Call a spade a spade. Or, in this case, a bunch of fundamentalist Islamic nutjobs a bunch of fundamentalist Islamic nutjobs. I feel no need to pander to the emotional sensitivities of the Muslim community. If they can't deal with the fact that there is a significant fraction of their religious community that should be shot into the sun, so be it.
No I was right originally as I see the legislative branch these days as largely token as they are voting exclusively along party lines and doing so with little to no debate.
I'm not a huge fan of the two-party system myself. I vote third-party as a matter of principle, though I generally don't even care who I'm voting for, so long as they're not either a Democrat, a Republican, some sort of Marxist (communist/socialist) or a libertarian. The first two are already entrenched in the system and don't need my vote, the last two can't be trusted to drink water without drowning themselves.
Now although I do not suscribe wholeheartedly to the idea I do believe that there is the possibility that the US government was responsible for 9/11 and strangely enough according to recent polling 1/3 of the US agrees with this sentiment.
Recent polls which are conducted over a very small sample, probably pre-selected to match the prejudices of the pollster.
Like most political opinion polls.
Need something where people are portrayed as disliking the government? Hold your poll at a notoriously liberal college, conducted among a sample of sophomores. I could probably get a third of them to agree that George W. Bush eats babies.
Abraham Lincoln for example ignored states rights and soverignety, suspended habeus corpus
Indeed.
Theodore Roosevelt advocated being the policeman of the world.
He's my hero.
Reagan greatly expanded the powers of the federal reserve and although he claimed fiscal conservatism nearly doubled domestic spending.
And one could argue that the subsequent economic recovery was largely his doing.
As for Truman, I had a huge debate over that either early this year or late last year. I don't recall. Not going into it again.
FDR closed banks, made it illegal to own gold, confiscated gold from all those who held it, revalued the dollar which was on the gold standard from 1/20 to 1/35, contrary to popular belief extended and deepened the depression with new deal, and interned Japanese-Americans in internment camps.
Yes, temporarily and with excellent reason; currency and bulk; currency and bulk; necessary currency changes; a popular belief that is popular largely because it's significantly more accurate than the minority opinion that the New Deal lengthened the depression (some of which is believed to be the case because FDR didn't go far enough or continue the program long enough); and yes, that was one of his more shameful moments.
Woodrow Wilson got us involved in WWI, instituted the income tax, Federal Reserve, and is largely blamed for creating the two party system.
He was also a racist, an optimistic fool, and has a host of other evils attached to his name. Your point?
I agree that the current leanings are towards Keynesianism but you missed my point which was that the only time that this kind of legislation can get passed is during a disaster because people are desperate.
Obviously. There's not a politician in the world with any sense who would want to touch the economy when things are going
well. What if he screwed something up?
864 billion so far I believe… that’s roughly $ 2850 per person so far. I don’t know but I consider that significant. It may pale in comparison to the 3.6 trillion that is in the proposed budget this year but it is still outrageous when you realize that it has no clear goal and is largely useless.
You miss the point. Has the government come knocking on your door asking you to pay this bill? No. They have not. Nor will they.
As such, the concept of averaging out the cost of the war/bailout/whatevah across the number of citizens in the United States is
irrelevant to the matter at hand.
What financial bite there ultimately is over any of those issues is something that the average citizen will feel only at several removes.
To answer your question I have been directly affected by this.
My condolences. However, you (and the people like you) are the exception, not the rule.
The reason that there has been no widespread mobilization of industry is because there is no declaration of war. If we declared war and fully mobilized we could have been done over there in 6 months. Instead we are deciding to bleed.
And you are deciding to be naive. We were done with major military action within substantially less than 6 months. A police action, on the other hand, does not require a widespread mobilization, either of the military or the economy.
Where the ball was dropped has nothing to do with an insufficient level of military presence, it has to do with an insufficient level of infrastructure restoration on a reasonable time scale. Had we moved in, restored power/water/electricity,
rebuilt the country as fast as we tore it apart (none of which would have required more
soldiers than were already present), a substantial amount of the insurgency would have been reduced.
Putting troops on every corner only suppresses violence; it does nothing to address the underlying issues.
Realistically, however, the fundamental problem (pun intended) remains the same. The entire region is overrun by the aforementioned fundamentalist nutjobs who gleefully kill their own people in the hopes of creating some sort of perverse islamofascist paradise.
Alternately, of course, we could suppress the insurgency the old fashioned way. And I mean the
OLD fashioned way. Carthage, for example.
This is not a direct result of the patriot act I will admit but the fact is that our system of checks and balances is not currently checking anything.
Our system of checks and balances works just fine. Laws that are unconstitutional get struck down. Laws that the majority wants to pass still require interaction with the opposing party. I'd be
happier with a third party in the mix, but for the moment, the system does work, albeit in a somewhat confusing fashion at times.
I wont dispute that they can but name one executive order that has actually been overturned by congress
Name one that was so utterly egregious that Congress felt it would be worthwhile
to overturn. Bear in mind that a few have been struck down, though that was through the legal system, and a very large number have been reversed by subsequent presidents.
For example because I am a ron paul supporter I have been labeled an extremist and as such the Missouri police have asserted that I have a high likelihood of being a terrorist and should be approached with caution as I am showing early warning signs of being a militia member.
All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares.
In short, you're operating under the assumption that just because a document listed a variety of means by which a law-enforcement officer could spot a militia member, and the various potential threats he might face from said militia member, that all people who carry those same signs will be assumed to be militia members and treated as such.
The fact of the matter is that the document is probably fairly accurate in its summation both of the recognizable signs of militia activity/membership, the typical political leanings of the average militia member, and their basic ideology.
Suck it up. You've chosen a candidate loved by libertarian rednecks.
Then I think that you are naïve. If we were given all of the information then why is it that so much information still gets refused with the freedom of information act in place.
Of course we don't get
all the information. We
can't get
all the information, because some things are classified for a
reason. You are naive to think otherwise. A government that keeps no secrets is vulnerable on substantially more levels than a government that keeps
some secrets.
About what doesn’t matter you are skirting away from the question I was asking. I was asking if you had absolute trust in government or if you believed that they were capable of lieing. Do I believe that stuff… not necessarily but that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t consider it. You seem to be of the opinion that it is beyond the realm of possibility that the government has an agenda that may be negative for the common US citizen and you are completely ignoring the fact that history has shown that people in power will do whatever necessary to keep and expand the power they have.
No, you're simply phrasing your issue in terms of black and white whereas I'm telling you it's a vastly more complicated issue with an infinite number of shades of gray.
If you're defending it this vociferously, it seems likely that you DO believe it. That somehow there is a vast government conspiracy to rob the common man of his political power and render the United States into some sort of quasi-Fascist oligarchy.
See, I can make those sorts of statements too.
I find it amusing that part of the problem with the whole "vast government conspiracy" is that the typical conspiracy theorist can't make up their minds as to the actual competency level of the conspirators. I mean, they are simultaneously ascribed powers and cunning of near mythic proportions, while being denigrated as incompetent and feckless.
There's a really good South Park episode about that.
I don't trust the government to do what's right for me. I do, however, trust the government to do what they think will get them
re-elected. It's a fine line between what's right for me and what will let them keep their jobs at times, but the fact of the matter is that
we are the government. The people who
run it are the people we appoint.
I think the current election system
sucks on a variety of levels, but that's a different debate entirely.
Your entire argument is based upon faith without actually looking at any of the arguments and judging them based upon merit. I will admit that most of the conspiracy theories seem far fetched and probably are but that doesn't mean that the possibility should not be considered.
Whereas your entire argument is based on the idea that just because someone is saying something critical of the government, that automatically means that their accusations somehow have merit.
I do not agree.
The instant someone says something that is an
obvious lie in one of these so-called documentaries, is the instant that I typically turn it off and stop wasting my time. I can draw my own conclusions from the available information, thank you very much, and don't need it spoon fed to me in support of some lying, manipulative wretch's agenda.
Actually it was fine the way I wrote it. That phrase appears in several different forms throughout his book and I chose the one that I liked best.
Whatever floats yer boat.
