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41 minutes ago
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The President is right
Yesterday, President Obama went on an attack of the Republicans, what with it being campaign season now and all, saying no matter what he says, the Republicans are against it: "If I said fish live in the sea, they'd say no," Obama said.
He also proposed a jobs bill. Now, the Republicans have been saying that this President isn't doing anything for jobs. So what did their first reaction to this all amount to? You guessed it--the Republicans are agin' it: MILWAUKEE – A combative President Barack Obama rolled out a long-term jobs program Monday that would exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways, and coupled it with a blunt campaign-season assault on Republicans for causing Americans' hard economic times.
GOP leaders instantly assailed Obama's proposal as an ineffective one that would simply raise already excessive federal spending. More: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said the plan "should be met with justifiable skepticism." He said it would raise taxes while Americans are "still looking for the 'shovel-ready' jobs they were promised more than a year ago" in the $814 billion economic stimulus measure. So Mitch McConnell seems to be saying "Since you didn't deliver on the increase in jobs a year ago, we aren't going to help you create jobs in America now", or some such. Then listen to this beauty from Rep John Boehner: The House Republican leader, John Boehner of Ohio, added "We don't need more government 'stimulus' spending. We need to end Washington Democrats' out-of-control spending spree, stop their tax hikes, and create jobs by eliminating the job-killing uncertainty that is hampering our small businesses." Right. Let me get this straight. We're supposed to create jobs by just cutting spending. Uh-huh. Right. And how, exactly, is that going to work, Rep Boehner?
The fact is, later this week: An administration official said Obama will propose on Wednesday in Cleveland that businesses be allowed to write off all their new investments in plant and equipment through 2011. You watch--when this gets announced, the Republicans will be against it. I don't know how, since it's a TAX BREAK FOR BUSINESSES TO INVEST IN R & D but they'll be against it somehow. Either that or they'll just belittle it as "too late". Regardless, they'll be negative toward it.
Americans need to wake up to the fact that the "Party of 'no'" is not helping. Or doing anything.
Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100906/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_economy
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14 comments:
Government job creation bills in a nutshell:
"The shallow end of the pool doesn't have enough water--so lets pump some from the deep end--Never mind that the hose leaks, and some of the water won't even make it back into the pool".
It needs to be easier to start a business, easier to expand a business, easier to create a job and hire a worker--and easier to fire a worker if they don't work. It is virtually impossible for a government to create wealth--at best they move it from one person to another. In most cases businesses create wealth--they create a product worth more than the sum of the costs to make it, adding fresh water to the pool. Otherwise they close.
When taxes are too much of that cost, when inefficient competitors are propped up business has less incentive to create.
First things first--welcome back. I missed you. :)
You may well have a point. You've talked this before. Maybe they can't spend us into new jobs but it's a plan and it's an idea and it's a place to start.
If it's not a good idea, then somebody needs to stand up and put forward a good one and right away. And I don't care if it comes from the right or left, Republicans, Democrats, "Tea Party" or wherever. But if the President--no matter who he is--is going to be criticized for not "creating jobs", then he shouldn't be criticized if this kind of spending isn't a good idea.
Everyone can and does complain all day long. Somebody ought to come up with a plan.
If by "easier" to do all these things you mean less EPA regulations or less regulation in the banking industry, either one, you can forget it. We need and want clean air, water and soil and the banking deregulation got us into one heck of a mess, internationally.
mr
An enormous problem here is that it is difficult for a politician or party to take credit for leaving things alone.
Take a look at John Stossel's recent column for examples of what I mean:
http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/09/08/attacks-on-entrepreneurs/
I have run into a similar issue--I want to expand my hobby of making holsters to a legit part-time business. Rather than compete with the zillions of people making holsters for common guns, I want to be able to make them for custom or obscure guns-which means I need the customer's gun to work from. Unless I can do the work while the customer waits, I apparently need to have a dealer and gunsmith's Federal Firearms License. To get the FFL, I need to be in compliance with all local zoning. I am OK to make holsters here, but I don't know if I would have to be zoned based on that, or based on dealer/gunsmith--I may even need separate premises to qualify for the FFL.
Okay, first, I won't waste my time listening to John Stossel's right-wing, bullshit rants. Send me legitimate sources with no clear bias and I'll read or view all day long. But John Stossel? Please.
Second, sure, you're honest and upright and law-abiding. But the federal laws are for keeping the ones who don't and won't follow those laws from getting and using guns for the wrong reasons. With 350 million people in the country, we need rules. They're called laws. (and I'm not being sarcastic here). It's so we all get along and things don't get too out of hand. It's not fun but it's how we all have to operate.
mr
On the left/right scale, Stossel is up.
And I read your statist left-wing bullshit almost every day...It's a good thing to expand my views, not just listen to other libertarians and gun nuts.
One of the examples:
"In Mississippi, a hair-braider hoping to expand her business was told she needed a license which requires thousands of hours of expensive cosmetology training. But the training doesn’t even include hair braiding."
How does that help anyone other than established cosmetologists and cosmetology schools? Mississippi has since changed the law, other states have not. Google 'hair-braiding license' if you don't want to trust my libertarian bias.
If I return a gun the same day, I don't need to do paperwork--but if I keep it overnight I would have to enter it in my official bound book and keep a record of it forever. How on earth does that reduce gun misuse?
The BATF gets broad guidelines from Congress, but for the most part writes, interprets and enforces its own laws. If a customer asks you to change the wood parts of a gun, that's gun smithing, and can be done under a dealer's license. If you buy a couple guns under a dealer's license and change the wood that is manufacturing and needs a different license. It is perfectly legal for a non-dealer to change the wood on his own gun.
And is it really that much harder for criminals to get guns now than it was in 1967?
I disagree sharply about Stossel. He's so right wing he makes Mitch McConnell look like a Centrist.
A couple thoughts: First, it's like I said earlier, when you 350 million people, you have to have rules and those are called laws. It's so we can all work together and try to make this big mess work.
Second, laws on guns are always going to be there in the hope that we can be a safer society.
Finally, there will apparently always be stupid, minutiae-laden laws in societies, unfortunately. It's up to us and our lawmakers to try to thin them down, weed out the stupid old ones and have them make sense. I can't attest to Mississippi hair braiding laws. I'm certainly not an authority on the subject and have no intention of doing so. I can tell you that businesses that want to protect themselves get with their legislators all the time--going back to the birth of our country--and do their best to make their own industry's standards and rules tough whether it's hair braiding or funerial services or whatever, so they can milk more money out of their clients. As a "Lefist", as you put it, I can tell you I/we have no interest in making the laws more complicated so that industry can benefit.
So don't blame it on us. :)
mr
Stossel:
I mean, I'm pro-choice. I was against the war in Iraq. I think homosexuality is just fine. I want drugs legal and prostitution legal.
That's conservative? He's far from liberal, I will grant that--but he's equally far from conservative, probably equally far from the average centrist on the left-right scale.
The left and right statists have worked hard to make people believe that they are the only options. Liberals especially--If you aren't with us, you are against us.
Yes, we need laws--the people saying we don't are anarchists, not libertarians. But we need a fraction of the laws we have--just because we have a restrictive law doesn't mean we need it, doesn't mean we should keep it.
A big step would be do something to curb the abuses of bureaus and agencies. We should not allow congress to delegate nearly as much legislative power to unelected bureaucrats, and we should separate enforcement from interpretation and creation.
The line between conservative and libertarian is so small as to be infinitesimal. It's like the old phrase of "splitting hairs".
I just Googled "the difference between Conservatives and Libertarians" and got the following from "The Libertarianism FAQ (http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/libertarianism.html#A5):
"A5. How do libertarians differ from "conservatives"?
For starters, by not being conservative. Most libertarians have no interest in returning to an idealized past. More generally, libertarians hold no brief for the right wing's rather overt militarist, racist, sexist, and authoritarian tendencies and reject conservative attempts to 'legislate morality' with censorship, drug laws, and obnoxious Bible-thumping. Though libertarians believe in free-enterprise capitalism, we also refuse to stooge for the military-industrial complex as conservatives are wont to do."
If this is true--you tell me what you think--then it sounds good. It's far too brief a description for me so it falls short by a long shot but it's a good start, overall.
The fact is, there are too many traits that Conservatives and Libertarians share, for starters, and secondly, too many Libertarians come from Conservative backgrounds and I just don't hear that many different ideas from them.
mr
If this is true (from the same Libertarian page), they're nuts. This is unworkable:
"A8. How would libertarians fund vital public services?
By privatizing them. Taxation is theft -- if we must have a government, it should live on user fees, lotteries, and endowments. A government that's too big to function without resorting to extortion is a government that's too big, period. Insurance companies (stripped of the state-conferred immunities that make them arrogant) could use the free market to spread most of the risks we now 'socialize' through government, and make a profit doing so."
Privatizing much of government would totally, utterly and completely screw the middle- and lower- classes.
mr
If all this shown here: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/libertarianism.html#A5 accurately depicts what Libertarians hold true, you know this isn't workable, actually, right?
In some ways, for instance on the draft and army, this is more Left wing than any Liberal I know or have read. Other parts are extremely Right wing. And understand, the labels aren't important to me. What's important is how it could be used to run the country and whether it's truly workable or not. What I read here wouldn't work in the real world, not en toto.
ke
Just like there are moderate and extreme right- and left-wing views, the same is true of libertarians. There is also a good bit of debate whether we should be pure and have our own party, or if we should be pragmatic and try to work within the two-party system by guiding the mainstream away from statism. The Libertarian party tends to get the extremists--Many of us refer to ourselves as small-l libertarian to distinguish ideology from the party.
You've also got me thinking about my own views (which is a big part of why I keep arguing with you...) and I am more concerned with libertarianism at the federal level, less so at the local government level. I'm still for libertarian state and local government, but statism there isn't as harmful.
The right wing's militarist and authoritarian tendencies are a hugely important difference. A libertarian government would not have invaded Iraq, would not have passed the PATRIOT act, would not continue the drug war.
Note that the FAQ's author considers himself an anarchist--technically a libertarian, but extremist even among libertarians. I think several of the FAQ answers reflect his views rather than the majority of libertarians--particularly privatizing vital services.
But there are quite a few non-vital services that should be privatized, or at least brought to a more local level of government. Slashing the size of the federal government by half is only a start.
this is more Left wing than any Liberal I know or have read. Other parts are extremely Right wing.
Exactly. This is why when you keep saying "right" referring to libertarian ideas, I keep saying "up". Maximizing personal liberty for all, emphasis on property rights (including your own right to your own body) and personal responsibility (less corporate shielding) while retaining enough government to prevent me from taking your property or liberty just because I am bigger, or have a gun--or badge. The tragedy of the commons as a cautionary tale to be avoided.
I don't know if I want to transform the US to a fully anarcho-libertarian country, but we need to go a long way in that direction before "how far" becomes a problem. I'll work with anerchists, libertarians and Libertarians towards that goal for at least that long. There are some hard questions that I don't have answers to-but I am not going to worry much about them until more of the easy stuff is fixed.
Just like there are moderate and extreme right- and left-wing views, the same is true of libertarians. There is also debate whether we should be pure and have our own party, or pragmatically work within the two-party syste.
You've also got me thinking about my own views (which is a big part of why I keep arguing with you...) and I am most concerned with libertarianism at the federal level--statism is less harmful at lower levels of government.
The right wing's militarist and authoritarian tendencies are a hugely important difference. A libertarian government would not have invaded Iraq, would not have passed the PATRIOT act, would not continue the drug war.
The FAQ's author considers himself an anarchist--technically libertarian, but extremist. Several of the FAQ answers reflect his views rather than the majority of libertarians.
(part 2--blogger made me split my comment)
There are quite a few non-vital services that should be privatized, or brought to a more local level of government. Slashing the size of the federal government by half is only a start.
this is more Left wing than any Liberal I know or have read. Other parts are extremely Right wing.
Exactly. This is why when you keep saying "right" referring to libertarian ideas, I keep saying "up". Maximizing personal liberty for all, emphasis on property rights and responsibility while retaining enough government to prevent me from taking your property or liberty just because I am bigger, or have a gun--or badge. The tragedy of the commons as a cautionary tale to be avoided.
I don't know if I want to transform the US to a fully anarcho-libertarian country, but we need to go a long way before "how far" becomes a problem. I'll work towards that goal for at least that long. There are some hard questions that I don't have answers to-but I am not going to worry much about them until more of the easy stuff is fixed
I agree with your statement: "I think several of the FAQ answers reflect his views rather than the majority of libertarians--particularly privatizing vital services."
When reading it, I assumed, from his (or her) stances that they might be taking some free reign and describing his/her views as fully Libertarian when others might disagree or at least differ on degree of what they are promoting.
Less government? Sure. But we do need to be protected, one, and two--we need to start with the military/industrial complex.
mr
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