Just my point. Who would have seen an America 2 years ago where taxpayers control the pay of nationalized banks and companies.
The odd person who saw it coming, they existed. Mostly dismissed as crackpots. You are missing the point here. I already went through this with you. We are not here because of Obama, but because of the crisis that hit in 2008. We are not in this position because Obama wanted, as a matter of ideological preference, to be in this position. Tell me how the banks are not paying back and the government is not selling its ownership stake. Did you see the front page of Politico.com today? GM paying back all its TARP money, government looking for the right time to sell their shares. 2 years ago, hell, during the primary campaign, no one running for office on either side was talking about this. So tell me again, how does Obama get tagged as a raging socialist when Bush nationalized these banks and companies after we almost fell off a cliff one day in September 2008?
He has no intention, listen closely, no intention of continuing to control these industries going forward.
It is conservatives who have screamed the loudest for limitations on pay and bonuses at taxpayer owned companies, at least for the time they are taxpayer owned. I agree with them.
And that takes a 2,500 page bill? No one believes that and you can read the healthcare thread to see the reasons why.
Like Irving said, legislation routinely takes more pages than that. Have you ever read legislation? There are all kinds of old english type parliamentary clauses, language, "be it enacted," etc. They have to set up the exchange, deal with how to compensate states, make changes in Medicare, raise revenue, appropriate money, reconcile with previous statutes, put in place funding mechanisms, numerous other things that require alot of written legislation. This is nothing out of the ordinary, but thank you for continuing to prove your ignorance.
It is a fact that no one is forced to drop their current coverage under this bill, and that most Americans will choose to keep the coverage they have now. Independent sources like the CBO have confirmed this. The only thing that will change is the costs will be lower for most people.
Capping the release of a pollutant that makes up a fraction of the emission like SO2 does not compare to capping carbon which IS MOST of the emission. That would be like comparing a faucet filter that removes iron in the water to one that removes hydrogen. And don't get me started on John McCain.
I never claimed that it was of comparable size, just that the concept is in existence and has already worked quite successfully. This is why it should be expanded. I don't have to start you on John McCain, seeing as about 75% of Republicans were on board with this very centrist, market oriented idea in that long ago year of 2008! Lindsay Graham is partnering with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman on a compromise version of cap and trade as we speak.
Pick another Republican more to your liking, and odds are pretty damn good that they were for cap and trade not too long ago. It wasn't socialist until Obama embraced it.
Do I really have to lecture a self-proclaimed expert in economics on this. Ronald Reagan was a believer in supply side economics. Keynesian economics is demand side. Reagan was in the camp of Milton Friedman of limited governmental intervention. This was all in response to the failed stagflation of the 70's. And the results of his policies speak for themselves.
No, you don't have to lecture me, but feel free to prove yourself wrong. I know, Keynesian economics is demand side. Supply side, the idea that taxation is the only factor in economic performance, holds that if we just expand supply, we will have unlimited economic growth with low inflation. We expand supply by cutting taxes, which they claim, expands investment in capital, which in turn increases productivity and economic growth and jobs for all follow. Little problem: the promised investment as a result of the tax cuts never happened, it was actually lower compared to the 1970s. Only problem is that supply side has never worked, and is not taken seriously in any academic circles as a legitimate theory.
Now, what was the cause of the low inflation economic expansion of the Reagan years? Keynesianism, yes, Keynesianism, a focus on the demand side! We had demand pull inflation, too many dollars chasing too few goods, which led to cost push inflation as costs were passed on through the economy. How do we handle this? The fed reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker, raises interest rates, which increases the cost of money, reduces the level of investment in capital, which reduces the level of consumption and we have a crippling 1981-82 recession. So we have a classic Keynesian view of the equation Output=C+I+G+(X-M) reducing inflation by REDUCING DEMAND FOR GOODS AND SERVICES.
Now, Reagan must have engineered that spectacular expansion with low inflation through some kind of supply side genius, right? Not exactly. It was Keynesianism on steroids in every way. The money supply is expanded once more, putting more money into the economy for consumption and investment, which increases demand. Reagan borrows massive amounts of money to infuse into the economy, and pumps a shitload more into it through his defense build up. Tax increases in 1981, 82, 83 and 84, larger than the total amount of the Kemp-Roth tax cuts, are put in place to insure the government can keep from defaulting on this Keynesian binge. So there was no massive increase in supply that magically reduced inflation like Reagan claimed. It was good old fashioned Keynesian demand cutting to kill inflation and then good old fashioned Keynesian borrowing and spending(on steroids) that kept the expansion going. In fact, Summers, Geithner, etc are less Keynesian than Reagan because they have pushed for balanced budgets and paying off debt as a way to stimulate investment(Rubinomics). It worked better in the 1990s than Reagan's 80s Keynesian binge.
So we are left with your claim that Reagan was a monetarist, in the mold of Milton Friedman.
You are hilarious. Lets look at monetary theory, summarized as the idea that, looking at the quantity of money(M) in the economy, and given constant velocity, that is turnover of money(V), we can predict the level of price(P) and quantity of output, (Q) in a given year. Only problem is velocity is not stable, and MV=PQ has never, ever predicted the level of price or output accurately in any year. That is all monetarism is. Completely different than supply side. Its simply a prediction model that does not work. Reagan never, to my knowledge, used this equation when trying to predict economic growth, though if he did, it may explain alot about why he left us that much debt.
Reagan may have claimed the Milton Friedman legacy by talking about small government, but as you should understand, talk is cheap when the supply is unlimited! Reagan's actions are what matters, and they show otherwise re: limiting government. Reagan spent more than Clinton, asked a liberal Congress for $27 billion more spending than it passed into law,borrowed massively, ran huge deficits, etc. The list of regulations expanded rather than shrunk, and he was a more protectionist President than many before him.
The results speak for themselves indeed: A pretty tepid economic expansion when compared with some other ones.
How about a critique from the right flank of economic thought on what I just mentioned?:
The Myths of Reaganomics - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Institute
How the Government Dealt With Past Recessions - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com
Here is what monetarism is:
http://www.britannica.com/nobelprize/article-9053341(Reagan never advocated this in public, it was largely discredited by the time he took office, and even if he secretly liked it, he never proposed it be official policy, nor did his advisers)
Here are his ratings by other groups:
Obama had a 95 percent liberal rating from Americans for Democratic Reform, THE liberal advocacy group that ranks all members of Congress.
The American Conservative Union gave Senator Obama a lifetime score of 10 out of 100.
Really?, you're gonna link me to a media matters study to point out my flawed and biased thinking?
The ratings, 95% and 10% just say how often he went with their issues. It does not tell us anything about Obama's views on an ideological spectrum. You expect him to get good marks from a conservative group?
That media matters study uses sound methodology and cites its non partisan sources. An organization can have a general bias but use facts that can be checked out. If you had read that or the other article I linked, there is no spinning in there at all. Media Matters is not Fox News or Rush Limbaugh, you know, the people who routinely get called out by fact check, Washingtpost Spin meter, et cetera. They have a pretty clean record.
Show me where what they point out about the national journal methodology is in any way wrong. The National Journal admitted they had a flawed methodology for the study that called Kerry the most liberal. Again, you call me out for using media matters, then you use interest groups, and supplement it with this junk national journal? Critical thinking here, how could you take them seriously when the only time someone gets the "most liberal" ranking is when they are the most prominent Democrat at the time?
Either way, if you think that any site with a viewpoint is automatically off limits, fine, here is some more:
110th Senate Rank Ordering
10th most liberal in 2007:Obama
Who is More Liberal, Obama or Clinton?
There are 88 Representatives and 8 Senators to Obama's left!
And guess what, they are the ones I mentioned off the top of my head in the last post.
FactCheck.org: 'Lying' About Being Liberal?
Even the joke National Journal that named Obama most liberal in 2007 had him 10th and 16th in other years!
So even by the methodology these guys use, Obama is in no way the most liberal. If you had any independent mind at all, or any common sense of politics, you would know this. How could you see Boxer or Sherrod Brown or Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist and claim Obama is the most liberal?
Plus, all of these charts use percentage of votes with their party. It says very little about what the ideology of that party is. If Harry Reid is voting the Democratic party line, he will look very liberal, though he is actually a moderate to conservative Democrat.
I would like to see a chart that calculated political views based on legislation introduced, alternate legislation supported, stated views etc. For example, Bernie Sanders and Barbara Lee and the Congressional Progressive caucus routinely introduce legislation that never even makes it out of committee. Maybe 5 Senators and 35 Reps would support it, the left of the left people. People like Obama, Kerry, etc are never given a chance to vote against this, which would make them look more conservative. On a similar note, people like Graham, Orrin Hatch, Pete Domenici, Chuck Grassley and Dick Lugar would look alot more "liberal" if we included legislation that the likes of Ron Paul and Jim DeMint routinely introduce and get nowhere with.
It would be a much more accurate portrayal of "extremes" in views than would merely percentage of time voting with the party. The Democrats would have their views altered more here, however, as they are the centrist party while Republicans have become increasingly extremist. This is important when trying to decide who sits where on the spectrum.
Take a look at how much influence the far right, you know, Jim DeMint and Eric Cantor have over the Republican Party.(Its alot)
Then take a look at how much influence the far left has over the Democratic Party- say Barbara Lee, Bernie Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Their agenda items are not even brought up.
So the agenda Obama is voting in line with most of the time is alot less extreme than the agenda McCain votes in line with most of the time. So Obama is far from the most extreme member of a party that is decidedly more centrist than the other major party, and both parties are right wing parties in the grand international scheme of things. So Obama and Socialism in the same sentence is the equivalent of saying "I am an idiot."
Boooooooo
I do like that you can poke fun at yourself now and again.
