Tyler Durden at Zerohedge has a post up noting that we need to create 250k jobs a month for the next 66 months just to get back to 2007 levels, and this causes Doug Mataconis to ask:
Now, tell me, how are we going to do that? Because I don’t see how it happens.
What’s this we shit? The libertarian/conservative plan is quite clear- cut taxes, deregulate, drill, ban abortion, attack unions, gut social spending and win the pr war for the Ryan plan to end Medicare, block every administration appointee and job creation plan, and free market Jeebus will do the rest while they blame the economy on Obama and Democrats. Let’s not forget who wanted employment to be much, much worse when they opposed the stimulus and did everything they could to make sure GM and Chrysler died.
So how are “we” going to create all these jobs? Simple, you guys aren’t going to even try. Hell, by playing with default, they are actively trying to make things worse.
We’re in dire straits here, folks, but Michael Moore is fat and Paul Krugman is shrill and a Democrat is President, so there just isn’t much the GOP and libertarians are willing to do about the situation.
BGinCHI
Hey Mataconis, what’s the GOP jobs plan?
Continued wealth concentration at the top?
Until we stop believing the tenets of supply-side economics and trickle-down, we are never going to make any progress in this country.
Lee Hartmann
John: one of your best posts yet.
beltane
Watch out or the trolls will show up calling you Pol Pot and demanding that the blog’s name be changed to Genocide Juice.
I’ve never witnessed treachery on this scale first hand before. “We” cannot do anything until “they” acquire some semblance of morality.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@BGinCHI:
Which is precisely why we, as a country, will continue to believe in supply-side and trickle-down to all ends and at the exclusion of every single other economic theory or solution out there. Because apparently it’ll take the entire nation bottoming out before people will be allowed to entertain anything else.
beltane
Our precious Job Creators are failures. We are a country that likes to reward failure. Lets give them tax cuts so they can fail even more.
AAA Bonds
Look, we stand a decent chance of improving our employment sitch if Democrats don’t shy away from record-high numbers of Americans expressing dissatisfaction and distrust toward “capitalism” and “the free market”.
The mission is to craft phrases and arguments that work as effectively against market absolutism as those we use against majoritarian tyranny.
Regulated trade will necessarily be part of American recovery. Or, we can just let things go how they’re going right now.
Villago Delenda Est
Sums it all up nicely.
Until the low information voters start realizing this, we are screwed…because they keep installing these asswipes into office.
Hunter Gathers
Making unemployment worse is the only way they can win back the WH before Texas becomes a swing state in 2016. Once Texas’ electoral votes become up for grabs, it becomes very, very hard for GOPers to win on the national level.
I was very skeptical on the subject of default. Now I am convinced that we are going to default, but not by choice. Boehner has absolutely no control of his caucus, and will be unable to secure even one vote to raise the debt level unless Dems give in to CouponCare.
Zam
Says the man who doesn’t want to talk about politics today.
Though in seriousness I got into an argument with one of those teabag types while canvassing yesterday, their insistence that they are the only true citizens is the most annoying thing I have ever witnessed. The man continually insisted that no one ever looks out for the “taxpayers” like him so he was happy that Gov Walker was going to slash that shit. All the while railing against deficits.
Professor
Please define the expression:’Free Market’.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Hunter Gathers:
Nah, there’s no worry for them on that part. They’ll just redistrict the hell out of the state so they’ll have a permanently entrenched majority, and then pass even fiercer ‘Voter ID’ laws to ensure that those dirty brown folk don’t get to vote for president. Win-win!
Dennis SGMM
According to John Boehner, May’s poor job creation numbers are the result of overspending, over taxation, over regulation and president Obama. The Republicans will keep pushing this message, and media will them, until the last sparrow in America is spitted on the last coat hangar and roasted over an open fire – all within sight of some perfectly manicured gated community.
beltane
@AAA Bonds: It’s very easy to craft such phrases as the language of economic justice comes naturally to most people. We will never see Democrats doing it because they are afraid of being labelled as Marxists.
It seems the Greeks are not as docile and obedient as we are http://roarmag.org/2011/06/greek-protesters-finance-ministry-revolution/
We are beginning to see the same elements of suck as in the 1930s.
KG
@Hunter Gathers: Texas as a swing state is a ton of trouble for the GOP. I keep playing around on 270towin and it keeps getting harder and harder for me to see a path to the WH for the GOP.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@beltane:
Except thanks to the wonders of Fox News, Limbaugh, and the internets, rest assured, the American People will riot and cull the folks truly responsible for this mess: Hippies, Liberal Academia, and anyone who dares to be unemployed. And then Free Market Jesus will take those of us left up in the Supply Side Rapture and we’ll have free food and beer for all eternity.
Villago Delenda Est
@beltane:
Hence, the second term of the “CEO President”, the deserting coward.
Violet
Should I move to the UK while I have a chance? If we default, there’s no way I could afford to move. Most everything I own will be worthless.
beltane
@KG: The GOP could try to be sane and responsible and acting in the best interests of the country. Instead, the have chosen to cling on tightly to the oldest and nastiest elements of society.
arguingwithsignposts
@BGinCHI:
I think they put that coloring book out last week.
David Hunt
@beltane:
To be fair, that should be re-acquire a semblance of morality. Even Nixon maintained a mask of humanity as he knew it was very important. He had staffers whose job was to use hand signals to tell him someone said something funny to him so he’d know when to laugh. So you see, they had a semblance of morality for a long time. It’s just that they appear to be losing it now…
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@beltane:
Why be fair when you can win?
Bender
@Villago Delenda Est:
\
Irony Meter: “BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”
You guys should be praying that in 2012, the US rewards utter failure.
arguingwithsignposts
Mataconis is a strong argument why OTB should be in the “Blogs we monitor and mock as needed.”
Citizen Alan
“Tyler Durden”?!? Really?!? Tell me, what does it say about someone that they would base their internet persona on (a) a violent psychotic terrorist who is also (b) the imaginary construct of another violent psychotic terrorist?
El Cid
For the moment I am much fucking relieved.
From an ABC interview with Nancy Pelosi (shit, I almost typed “Speaker”, sigh):
Via the Evil Giant Pumpkin.
Suffern ACE
Sadly, I don’t hear voices calling for pulling out of the WTO, erecting trade barriers, attempting to become self-sufficient, pulling out of regional conflicts, and doing come what may. My guess is the “solution” is to push those outside the middle class into $2.00/day jobs. The middle class can go for $5 per day. We’ll all be working soon. I wish someone would have warned us about this situation…
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
B-b-but Ronald Reagan! And Morning in America! And Tear Down that Wall! And Alex Keaton! And PATCO! And American Exceptionalism!
Villago Delenda Est
@Bender:
Given the overloaded clown car that is the Rethuglican primary field, I believe you are the one wishing for the elevation of TOTAL FAIL to high office.
burnspbesq
@AAA Bonds:
Just curious: what the fuck do you mean by “regulated trade?”
Chris
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Frankly, I know the shock therapy treatment’s popular in some circles, but at this point it’s not even guaranteed that that’ll do any good. The same Great Depression that jump-started the New Deal over here brought the Third Reich to power on the other side of the ocean.
Depending on how much ideological commitment there is to the idea that minorities, immigrants, unions, Muslims and liberals (or whoever the scapegoats are) are the reason everything’s gone wrong, hitting the bottom might not even do any good.
(Just to add another layer of depressing-ness to an already depressing topic).
AAA Bonds
@burnspbesq:
AND HERE THEY COME
beltane
@Citizen Alan: That’s also how I feel about our beloved Jane Galt.
Chris
@Zam:
It’s also the root of the problem, since at the end of the day, a lot of them would rather be fucked for life than have to share a better living condition with someone they don’t think “deserves” it.
To paraphrase Golda Meir, things will get better in this country when conservatives love their children more than they hate the rest of us.
Bruce S
“We’re in dire straights here, folks, but Michael Moore is fat and Paul Krugman is shrill and a Democrat is President, so there just isn’t much the GOP and libertarians are willing to do about the situation.”
The opposing – and IMHO correct – view might best be characterized as “Newt Gingrich is fat, Paul Ryan is shrill, the GOP controls Congress…but there just isn’t much the Democrats seem able to do about the situation.”
Unfortunate but true…
burnspbesq
@Violet:
Poor choice. The Tory/Lib Dem coalition has embraced austerity with all the fervor of the newly converted. The British economy is racing toward 1937 as fast as its little legs can carry it.
El Cid
@Bender:
Given 2 terms of George Bush Jr., we at least know that you guys do.
burnspbesq
@AAA Bonds:
Here who comes? It’s a fair question. Do you have an answer?
Kirbster
If you get shot and sent to the trauma center of the Supply Side Memorial Free Market Hospital, they give the blood transfusions to your assailant to fortify him in case he feels like helping you eventually.
Sly
Boehner circulated the plan back in March, which barely any outlet covered. The bottom line:
Reduce the public workforce. The increased private sector unemployment created by the additional unemployed skilled laborers will force more competition in wages and benefits. The resulting drop in the cost of labor will incentivize hiring.
Let that sink in for a second.
This is Andrew Mellon’s “liquidate labor” resurrected yet again. Making unemployment worse not only makes political sense for Republicans, it makes economic and moral sense as well. It’s not that they don’t have a plan, it’s that the plan they do have can only be described as sociopathic. They’re basic outlook on economic life is “People who work for a living aren’t yet desperate enough.”
Remember when Bush was talking up Social Security Privatization back in 2005, and he told some woman who was working three jobs just to make ends meet that she was “living the American dream”? He was being honest.
chopper
“my god, this beast is starving! why, oh why, didn’t i feed it for so long?” *bites fist*
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@burnspbesq:
And Canada has bought itself 4 years of total Bush-style Conservatism, so that’s a bunk option as well.
Essentially, we’re fucked with no escape plan and no hope.
Violet
@burnspbesq:
I know. It’s my only real choice, though. Outside of trying to move somewhere where I don’t have an ‘in’. I could move to the UK today if I chose. It would be a massive pain, but it could be done.
Villago Delenda Est
Never forget, that Ayn Rand’s ideal man was a child murdering sociopath.
These are the people we are dealing with here.
WyldPirate
Fixed that up for you, Cole.
“Minor bump in the road” on the jobs report my ass, Mr. Obama, you lying sack of capitulating shit.
beltane
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: There is always hope because history doesn’t come to a standstill every time a sociopathic cult comes into power. The international right-wing death cult’s 2,000 year Reich will not go on forever, that is guaranteed.
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@burnspbesq: How’s this for starters – no nation gets to run one single dollar in “trade deficits” against the United States. They buy 200 billion dollars worth of our shit, we buy $200 billion of theirs. AND NOT ONE FUCKING CENT MORE.
We can proceed from there.
charmtrap
“straits” not “straights”
BGinCHI
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik: There’s still the rest of the season of “Game of Thrones” and the Tour de France.
And booze.
Comrade Javamanphil
Apple could hire a million people for a year at 65k and still have cash in the bank at the end of that year. I’m sure if we lower their rate by a few percentage points they will get right on hiring people and lowering that cash reserve. That’s one company among many. The job creators could hire but there simply is not enough demand for their stuff and nobody wants to go first. And until we have a public works project of immense proportions, we cannot have nice things.
Also, too, we can fund those immense projects at 1-3% interest. I bet there isn’t a project on the books that has a lower ROI than that and most have significantly higher. If we really had a CEO President, he’d be borrowing and investing as fast as he could. So stupid.
chopper
@WyldPirate:
no crypto-homophobic slurs! is our troll learning?
El Cid
@burnspbesq: In the original version, it was the UK Soshullist Prime Minister who fully embraced austeritarianism and ignored Keynes himself. Instead the gov’t threw in with the goldbug pound backing policies and hugely sharp budget cuts and layoffs.
The failure of Labour and the whole political establishment to use government spending to create / save jobs was probably a key factor which drove Oswald Mosley — who had proposed just such a plan — into completely going fascist.
Shitloads of people left the government, tried to start another Labour party, and of course chaos and riots in the street.
Hello, W. Churchill. [Though, obviously, there was a *long* time in between. OK, you could pin that crossover on many things, given MacD and his gov’ts got re-elected and so. But so many of those seeing Labour’s election as ushering in soshullism always saw it that way. Probably not convincing to so quickly agree.]
Thankfully, the Brits were sane enough to let Churchill run the war and tossed him out when it was over.
jl
Yes, what Cole wrote was really sweet, I agree.
But Cole gets worked up by the strangest things. I don’t have time to read the comments, but some one above must have surely pointed out that the Working Dog group is an arbitrary name. Lots of dog breeds that originally did work which was and is just as important as Working Group dogs are in other groups: hounds, terriers, herding dogs.
And I don’t know much about dog breeds other than that they all have four legs and are domestic house pets that are not cats.
Cole needs to a little more selective in things to get riled up by.
But maybe the Working Dog classism of the dog world was just an excuse to write a cute post.
Nah, never mind, it’s Cole we’re talking about here.
Reality Check
Looks like we’re headed for a double dip.
Buckle up, folks, 2012 will be a hell of a bumpy ride…
Steve
@burnspbesq: You know, regulated trade, unlike the free trade we have now.
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est: That’s really unfair. His specialty was kidnapping for ransom and dismemberment (didn’t he send the ear or finger or whatever of a little girl to her family as a ransom reminder?), with murder a bonus.
arguingwithsignposts
@jl: um, wrong post?
BGinCHI
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory: That would be super, if we made stuff.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@BGinCHI:
Unfortunately, even if I was truly driven to the bottle, I couldn’t even afford to drink myself dead.
@beltane:
I’m sure thanks to our friends in the energy business and their allies in Congress, we probably won’t even have 200 years left on this planet.
Steve
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory: This, on the other hand, manages to make Donald Trump’s China policy seem enlightened.
UncommonSense
Al gore is fat, too.
You forgot to mention that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Modern CEOs are about maximizing short term profit, and their compensation, only.
The health of the enterprise beyond the closing of the looting window is not their problem.
jl
@arguingwithsignposts: Uh, yeah, that was for the Cole’s ‘I Love Lily” post. How did that happen? I have a lotta splainin to do.
OK, never mind.
I have nothing to say about this post, except that Cole gets riled up by the strangest things. Who cares about this tiny and useless blog post by this Mataconis (whoever he is) that says nothing at all, really?
arguingwithsignposts
@Citizen Alan:
To be fair, the numbers are not just from Tyler Durden, who seems to be a bit of a libertarian ass himself. Lots of people have been saying we need a ton of jobs to even get back to 2007 levels.
El Cid
Also awesome:
HA HA!
Steve
@BGinCHI: No fair cheating: The world’s top manufacturing nation in 2010 was ________.
chopper
so 2011 = floods, drought, tornados, hurricanes, likely crop failures, another recession and possible default of the united states government leading to a massive depression.
that’s just great. looks like i picked the wrong year to stop sniffing glue.
Reality Check
@Steve:
The United States. Lost manufacturing jobs is not the same thing as lost manufacturing. It’s called automation.
pragmatism
@Reality Check: which you’ll apparently cheer.
Studly Pantload, a full-service troll
Cole, that was freakin’ righteous. You don’t get to this level of instensity often, but when you do, we find that the knob goes all the way to 11. I’m reposting this to my FB page when I get home from work, but what I really want to do is print it out on flyers and get it in the hands of as many random passerby as possible.
arguingwithsignposts
@Reality Check: Unfortunately for both GOPers like yourself and Dems, machines don’t vote.
stuckinred
Ya’ll motherfuckers going into full panic. sheesh
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@BGinCHI: Check the numbers. We are still the largest manufacturer on earth – and no, that does not include bombs.
BTW, thanks for the shout out for “Blood Meridian” a while back. Bought it. Great book, could not put it down. Been a long time since I read something that good.
MBunge
Mataconis has a, perhaps inadvertant, point that many leftists should appreciate. Given the structure of our economy and the principles it follows, where are huge numbers of jobs supposed to come from? If you’re not going to have the government employ people to build bridges or just dig holes and fill them back up, what part of our private sector is supposed to lead a job-creating bonanza and why should they do it, especially given that cutting jobs and increasing efficiency has largely been the watchword for the last couple of decades?
Mike
batgirl
Not only are they not going to try and create jobs, but they are going to punish “those lazy folks” who “refuse” to work in those non-existent jobs. Because, according to Republicans the only reason a person is unemployed is because he/she is too lazy or a drug addict (see Florida).
Tonal Crow
@AAA Bonds: This. Democrats have a chance to leverage the Republicans’ Medicare overreach into a sweep in 2012. Will they do it? Or will they concede the game by continuing to play on the Republicans’ fake “deficit reduction” field?
Democrats should be pushing a WPA-style jobs program (that it can’t now pass the House is rhetorically immaterial), saying “when people are back at work” to the deficit crap, and repeating at every possible opportunity that Republicans are trying to end Medicare to give tax cuts to themselves and to rich CEOs who outsource jobs.
Power comes from winning at rhetoric.
Chris
@El Cid:
More of this, por favor?
fasteddie9318
@MBunge: Yeah, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that Doug Mataconis was not surreptitiously proposing a 2011 Works Progress Administration. Even if that is the correct answer.
mds
@Comrade Javamanphil:
You know, I’m known for being unreasonably critical of Obama, but you aren’t asking for a CEO President. You’re asking for a Julius Caesar to send troops to seize the Treasury. Congress still plays a little bit of a role in authorizing government spending. Which is why nihilists are able to threaten to tank the credit of the United States unless we kill off a bunch of poor elderly people for their deranged sexual pleasure.
batgirl
@MBunge:
He has made a point that his side refuses to grapple with. All the GOP wants to do is punish those that are out of work. GOP governors are cutting unemployment across the board, going after SNAP and medicaid. They refuse to recognize unemployment as as structural problem and instead see it as an individual character problem.
Reality Check
@pragmatism:
And you’re calling for…what? Luddism? Smash all the machines and go back to 1950s technology?
It’s not just manufacturing. Think about how many minimum wage Blockbuster Movies jobs RedBox destroyed.
Studly Pantload, a full-service troll
@Villago Delenda Est:
VDE, I realize your heart’s in the right place, but I guess I have to take exception to your trotting out of the term “asswipes.”
You see, real asswipes actually serve a useful – nay, necessary – function in our society. Which is a huge discrepancy from what these right-wing yahoos are able to offer.
jl
As far as substance goes, it is commonly accepted, just through data analysis of historical trends alone that the US needs
at least 150K to 175K jobs created a month to keep up with population growth.
Around 400K jobs created a month to get population employment ratio to pre 2008 recession levels within the usual span of business cycle.
And around 200K jobs a month to very slowly make progress to getting employment ratio back to pre recession levels.
Church Lady
@Violet:
Yes. And hurry.
Silver
Time to start figuring out if you want to be in the Reeks and Wrecks or the Army…
Church Lady
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Oh, I don’t know. Everyone around here seems to think that France is really great. I’m sure the French government would be very pleased to have any one of you settle in over there.
John O
That pretty much captured it, John. Great post.
Studly Pantload, a full-service troll
@Church Lady:
Fucking cite?
Reality Check
My solution? A negative income tax for the poor and unemployed in exchange for the abolition of the welfare state bureaucracy. If you make less than $2,083/month (roughly $25k/year) the government subsidizes you until you hit that level, paid for with the savings from abolishing the bureaucracy and a ‘robot tax’ (tax business owners for every machine they employ that kills a job). But this would mean no Social Security, no Medicare, no Obamacare, no bureaucracy (the program could be run through the Post Office) no food stamps, nothing except your minimum income. If you go blow it on hookers and booze, or are so stupid you don’t save for retirement, you’re on you’re own.
pragmatism
@Reality Check: dingus, i was referring to your double dip comment. protip: you can click on your name after the @ to see which comment i was referring to. maybe you’re the luddite.
shorter RC: “fucking site i hate, how does it work?”
Chuck Butcher
As long as economic outcome measurement of the Two Parties only points out a difference in willingness to screw the public this IS how it will work out. I don’t give a good goddam that the difference between the two is really BIG, the fact that it IS the difference IS the problem.
Oh yeah, I do know that is all the electorate will tolerate and a big chunk of the commentariate here is a symptom and driver of that.
fasteddie9318
@Church Lady: Why are you polluting up the Internets again?
MarkJ
Full On Win
arguingwithsignposts
@Reality Check:
This is your solution? We tried that in the 1800s/early 1900s. Hint: it didn’t work – which is why we have these fucking programs!
Violet
@Church Lady:
Why hurry? Trying to get rid of me?
FormerSwingVoter
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s not the low information voters who are the problem; it’s the wrong information voters. Voters who are convinced that taxes are higher than ever no matter how many times you show them they’ve gone down. Voters who are convinced that if they fellate the powers that be vigorously enough, they just might find us worthy of a couple jobs here and there. Voters who are convinced that any government action of any kind is identical to communism, despite the fact that this would label every government in the entirety of history as Marxist. Voters who are convinced that if a black man isn’t getting shit thrown at him somewhere that they are somehow made less.
Let’s stop pretending that people are uninformed. They are not. They are misinformed – continually, intentionally, and indiscriminately – by madmen and sociopaths who have no concern whatsoever for the effects of their actions, just so long as people who aren’t them suffer so they can feel better about how far ahead in the game they are.
Reality Check
@arguingwithsignposts:
We had a negative income tax in 1900? Or are you so illiterate you didn’t understand my post?
Cat
@BGinCHI:
Pretty sure we still are the largest manufacture on the planet. One of the problems is a large part of its “freedom bombs” which we don’t really sell.
WyldPirate
@stuckinred:
You would be singing a different fucking tune, stuckinred, if the budget axe falls on your neck of the woods…
There is only so long UGA and other universities can crank out grads that aren’t getting jobs…People will quit paying for an education with the hopes that it will provide a “leg-up” and a bright future when it no longer does.
Reality Check
@Cat:
This is true even if you don’t include defense. Yes, this doesn’t “feel” right, but it is, mainly because you don’t go to Wal-Mart to buy a Boeing 747 or nuclear reactor.
arguingwithsignposts
@Reality Check:
We had child labor and company towns too. What’s your point?
pragmatism
@WyldPirate: some enterprising law school graduate in san diego is suing her school because they claimed in 2003 they had an 80% placement rate and she sent out 150 resumes and can only find doc review work. class action forming. http://abovethelaw.com/2011/05/lawsuit-of-the-day-class-action-filed-against-thomas-jefferson-school-of-law/
Reality Check
@arguingwithsignposts:
What the fuck are you babbling about? You’re not even responding to anything I wrote, you’re just plugging in stock phrases together.
Are you a bot?
Violet
@FormerSwingVoter:
And along those lines, Republicans are trying to stop the Dems from airing ads saying the Republicans want to end Medicare. If the Republicans win this one, it has big implications for the 2012 races.
fasteddie9318
Unreal Choke’s plan is great. You let everybody have a bare subsistence income and then for your largesse, expect them to somehow save enough to pay for their own health care in retirement. Or, really, you expect them to work until they drop dead, which is the point.
arguingwithsignposts
@Reality Check: No, i responded to what you wrote. you wrote no soc sec., no medicare, no medicaid, etc. We tried that. it was called The Great Depression.
Reality Check
Wait, let me try:
Paul Krugman said that in the Gilded Age people used the shock doctrine to turn the country into Somalia, but they had raised taxes on the top 1% they could have had a WPA public works program.
This is kind of fun!
Nate Dawg
Bitch McConnell has already made it clear that everything else–including your Grandma’s healthcare and your job–take back seat to overthrowing the Kenyan usurper.
So yah, we’re screwed.
Teak111
What employment number keeps OB in office? 7, 6, what about 8?
Cat
@Reality Check:
I was trying to say what you said, just very poorly.
beltane
@arguingwithsignposts: The point is that Reality Check thinks there should be a return to child labor and company towns. It’s hard for him to enjoy his trust fund baby status unless he’s able to piss in the mouths of low-wage workers and make them pay for the privilege.
BO_Bill
1. Institute 35% tariffs.
2. End all immigration until unemployment below 5%.
3. Deport illegal aliens.
Reality Check
@arguingwithsignposts:
Pop Quiz: what did I say all those things should be replaced with?
BGinCHI
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory: I stand corrected.
But since, as others point out, we make the most stuff with the least (or at least a lot less) people, I’m afraid the profit for getting our trade balance back would go to the same folks who are currently hoovering up all the capital as it is.
Without some kind of economic redistribution we aren’t going to change things.
Reality Check
@BO_Bill:
Pat, is that you, Pat?
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@Reality Check: Your plan is fucked and is not worthy of serious discussion. I’m not willing to live in that kind of society and I think you’ll find no one else is either.
We are awash in money. The problem is that only a small number of people are holding on to most of it. Let’s take some from those who have more than they can ever possibly use and use it to make people’s lives less shitty.
That’s my plan. Better than yours.
FlipYrWhig
@Tonal Crow:
“Should,” but won’t, because a huge swath of Democrats don’t believe any of that. They either really do believe that “deficits” and “spending” are problems, or they have been convinced that acting as though deficits and spendings are problems helps to win support in their districts. We all need to keep in mind how many “conservative,” “moderate,” and non-populist Democrats are out there. It’s a lot.
jl
‘Reality Check’ needs one.
NonyNony
@arguingwithsignposts:
He’s actually saying replace Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, Unemployment, etc. with a government guarantee of income of $25K per year. If you make less than that you get a supplement. Presumably, if you make nothing he’d hand you a $25K check every year.
It’s a novel solution, I’ll give him that. “I hate welfare so much I want to replace it with a new welfare system that actually DOES pay people not to work” is an interesting scheme on many levels. I’m not exactly sure how you’d go about paying for it – the idea that you can somehow implement his “robot tax” is laughable – how exactly are you going to audit which businesses are replacing workers with machines anyway? And who’d stand for a tax on workers they’re NOT employing? And isn’t that even MORE socialist than most of the die-hard socialists would advocate these days?
John O
@Reality Check:
Make sure all the good folks out there have a whole $25K/yr? Is that about right? In exchange for everything else?
Do you have any idea what a broken leg costs in the ER? Do you have any idea what the median income is in this country? Do you know what median means?
arguingwithsignposts
@Reality Check: I’d answer, but I have an appointment to see Okkervill River/Titus Andronicus this evening with The Somebody. I’m planning to fiddle while Rome burns for the evening, at least.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we have bridges and barbecued pigeons!
Reality Check
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory:
You wouldn’t want to live in a society where people are guaranteed $25,000/year?
Chris
@FormerSwingVoter:
I agree.
Never thought about it that way before, but yep, it’s true. Whatever else you can say about them, the conservatives I know are never short of information. They’re positively bursting with it, and they can’t wait to tell you all about it – though it tends to be shit, and it also tends to sound canned, like they’re reciting answers rather than answering questions (which of course they are).
Can’t say I’m sure what to do about it, though, because they tend to be married to their socio-political fan fiction even more faithfully than to their religion.
Chuck Butcher
Jumpin’ Keeripes On A Stick
When you have a flat 15% cap gains tax (lower than SS/FICA) you encourage short-term profit taking and wealth concentration. Which Party is even thinking about addressing that piece of plutonium? And WHY not? Because the difference is just exactly how much to screw the public. Take your damn pick of methods that would and have actually had effects…
Sentient Puddle
We gotta move these refrigerators, we gotta move these color teeveeeeeeees!
Sorry, I got nothing. But we do need better trolls.
BGinCHI
@arguingwithsignposts: Where?
I loves me the Okkervil River.
Reality Check
Once again I’ve proven that liberals aren’t really about helping the poor or unfortunate, they’re about gaining power for themselves and their privaleged class (public employees and federal bureaucrats).
My plan would would end no-fault poverty, but because it has a minimum of bureaucracy involved, and thus would cost public employees jobs, it’s not even seriously addressed.
aisce
2012 is going to give me an ulcer. this is such bullshit. our president should get reelected with 70% (or maybe 73%) of the vote for all he’s done. and yet this fucking economy.
i’ll begrudgingly admit that some of this is the administration itself’s fault. and if they should have to be wrong, i am glad that it is people like krugman and liberal economists whose values i share who are right.
but motherfucking goddamnit i hate those fucking republicans. they are enemies of the fucking republic. how’s that for irony?
Reality Check
Nixon was about to propose the same thing before Watergate, btw, and it’s a shame he didn’t because it would have exposed liberals for what they are–power mongering utopian planners, not people who are concerned with the poor or unfortunate. That’s just an excuse for them to get more power.
piratedan
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43259001/ns/politics/
first time i’ve heard of an R plan and its not even been offered as legislation yet. Six months after they took control of the house and still nary a bill regarding jobs.
yet its still Obama’s fault
Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@WyldPirate: You’ll be glad/horrified to know that this is already happening. The “education gives you a leg up and gets you ahead” scam is slowly being exposed for the con game that it is and I’m starting to see parents who are not willing to fund their offspring’s
four-year pot-smoking adventurecollege education unless it is at a low-dollar school that is close to home.Education is a wonderful thing. It really is. But it should be the domain of people who actually want to learn about things, not those who want a piece of paper that grants them access to a bigger paycheck.
pragmatism
@Reality Check: confirming your own belief isn’t “proving” anything.
beltane
@John O: We all know that to a wingnut you’re only human if you’ve entered this world via a short trip down a rich lady’s hoo-ha. I am convinced RC is a Marxist provocatuer trying to drum up hatred towards the master class. He is employing every negative stereotype of the rich I can think of. Next, he’ll be asserting the lord’s right of jus primae noctis.
Violet
@piratedan:
Of course there’s not a bill regarding jobs. Republicans wouldn’t do anything that would smack of government creating jobs. That’s soshulism.
BGinCHI
@Reality Check: It’s true, we do want more power.
So that we can keep people like you from procreating.
Montysano
@Silver:
Damn! I was just a minute slow in posting a “Player Piano” reference. I push that book on anyone who will listen, and am thinking it’s about time for a re-read myself.
John O
@Reality Check:
That is HIlariously moronic. And your first paragraph was worse. How about a progressive flat tax? It does a lot of what you say but isn’t so complex and stupid. A better idea goes a little like this:
…
eemom
@Violet:
IIRC Church Twit is of the “America love it or leave it” persuasion. Who’d’a thunk it, eh?
Reality Check
@BGinCHI:
Ah, more Fascists tendencies of the left revealed. First this mornings threats of genocide and revolutionary violence, and now sterilization programs.
grandpajohn
@El Cid: So it takes a woman governor to exhibit balls and call these traitorous bastards
on their anti-american game playing bullshit.
stuckinred
@WyldPirate: Yea, we’ve been totally insulated from it all. Come on man. . .
eta
In Georgia we have had record budget cuts and record enrollment every year for the past 12 years. It’s nothing news around here.
Chris
@Reality Check:
We also make outrageous claims, like we invented the question mark.
beltane
@BGinCHI: Reality Check only copulates with his sticky, sticky hand. There is no danger of offsping.
pragmatism
@Reality Check: nice victimized hyperbole. you poor poor soul you.
Reality Check
@John O:
Would you also abolish the rest of the welfare state in exchange for that kind of plan? That’s the real question.
sukabi
think maybe he needs to study the “Clinton Plan” of job creation…… or the FDR WPA plan…those seemed to work,
if they’re “stuck on Bush” for their answers, we’re all fu<ked.
grandpajohn
@Reality Check: You know if you can’t at least bring your C game here, you really ought to quit making a fool of yourself or people will start to thing you really are a stupid brain dead asshole
Martin
@Teak111: Any number. 2010 was the referendum on jobs, and in exchange for those free-market teatard governors, states have gotten zero jobs and an assload of anti-labor and abortion bills. I don’t think the GOP has any serious credibility as an alternative to Dems on jobs.
Berial
According to some unemployment is already at ‘Great Depression’ levels. I think this overstates it a bit but we really need jobs to be THE news story. Why it isn’t on the news every day, all day; instead of ‘deficits bad’ I don’t completely understand.
stuckinred
@Reality Check: No, the real question is fuck you dolt.
BGinCHI
@Reality Check: Is this Jonah Goldberg?
Hey Jonah, you should run for office. You’re so smart and handsome.
John O
@Reality Check:
No, I would bolster it by cutting defense and renouncing our Imperialist nature.
SteveinSC
@Reality Check:
No, it’s actually called
ChineseWalmart “Sweat-Shop” LaborWhiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory
@Reality Check: Wrong. It would make it the law of the land. Again, you are not serious and your plan equates to institutionalized murder of the poor, elderly, disabled and sick.
@Reality Check: Median income in the United States is $40,000, plus Medicare, plus Medicaid, plus Social Security, plus Obamacare, plus whatever benefits private employers provide.
That’s the floor. I am willing to negotiate up from that.
arguingwithsignposts
@BG in CHI it’s in philly, although you should check. i think they’ll be in lincolnland soon.
Makewi
If it wasn’t for Republicans this would be a perfect world. It’s too bad the Democrats are basically powerless having only the executive branch and the upper house of the legislature.
FormerSwingVoter
Chris: They reject all outside sources of information. Words have different meanings for them (“Freedom” means “lack of government”, “liberal” means “evil”, etc.). They’ve been told to accept only the word of their Trusted Sources and reject everything from everywhere else, making their arguments completely immune to data or reason (anything that indicates they might be wrong about anything is from someone who’s “in on it”).
Conservatives have a lot of information, but it’s all false. It’s all based on controlling their emotional reactions so that they react “properly” to any outside stimulus. It’s the gameplan from 1984 writ large – NewSpeak and DoubleThink, but in a voluntary format.
If you can get your followers to shun outside information, viewpoints, and people, it’s easy to get them to agree with you. This is how cults work. I am not exaggerating – if you look at how cults function, they work in the exact same way as conservative media.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Ha. Did anyone here learn about depression-era America? Anyone have any idea how ridiculously long elites went on about how there was nothing that could be done about the depression? Treasury view and all that shit? I personally think it’s ridiculous no one has learned from the past, but it’s not particularly surprising
Reality Check
@SteveinSC:
Textile mills, children’s toys factories, shoe factories, etc were long gone from this country while China was still starving under Mao.
stuckinred
@Reality Check: God, you a dumber than you sound.
Tonal Crow
@FlipYrWhig: That seems to imply that the Blue Dogs are an excuse. They’re not. Liberal Democrats should be plowing the rhetorical ground on this with an eye toward shifting the debate. It’s not going to happen instantly. It’s a slow, difficult job that we’ve got to begin now.
arguingwithsignposts
realityche@k @158 – now i know you’re just making shit up. when did mao die again?
Reality Check
@arguingwithsignposts:
The 70s. Textile mills died in the 50s in the South, and in the 1920s in the north.
If anyone should be pissed at China, it should be Mexico.
stuckinred
@Reality Check: Flock you:
Tonal Crow
@Reality Check:
Um, seniors get, you know, strokes, which, you know, can easily cost $100,000 in medical bills. A senior without Medicare could easily end up spending her entire “guaranteed $25,000” on hospital bills for the rest of her life. And no, a private insurer won’t take the risk of insuring her except for a premium that guarantees an actuarial profit — in other words, a premium unaffordable to most seniors. That, in short, is why your plan doesn’t replace Medicare. I’ll leave it to others to point out the other problems in it.
stuckinred
@arguingwithsignposts: NOW?
Chris
@FormerSwingVoter:
Right. And the “cult” analogy is perfectly appropriate.
I’d add, though, that they realize the rest of the world doesn’t agree with them, and often have their own nagging, not-admitted doubts about their “truth.” So they seek out and consume the “information” from their trusted news sources with an enormous appetite, so as to have as much knowledge and arguments both to throw at the world around them and to reassure themselves of what they’re not completely sure is true.
It explains why they’re so full of bad information and so eager to share it. It also explains why Fox News is still the most popular news outlet in the country. It’s more than just a news outlet. To them, it’s practically a priesthood, a papacy and a godhead.
Cermet
@Reality Check: Never have I seen or read such as stupid an asswipe as you – even as a troll you reach a new low in stupidity – what happened to the trolls that were both fun and had a few working neurons?
DPirate
Point your finger every which way; the cultural evolutionists will say denial is useful for our wellbeing or we wouldn’t suffer from it at all. If you think for a minute that the democrats aren’t equally to blame for the mess, then you’ve got it bad.
It needs to get a lot worse before anyone is ready for real change. I was hoping McCain/Palin would win so by 2012 Monty Python could say “and now, something completely different!” Sadly, no. We bought the sucker ploy again and got GOP-lite. The little dutch boy’s are hard at work sticking their fingers in the dike while the water nears drowning level.
I’ll allow that the democratic party is nicer than the GOP, but it’s the niceness that a psychopath might show to a stray cat – feeding the poor thing body parts of his victims.
To my mind, posts like this are a much bigger problem than the super-crazy of the fanatic right. It isn’t wrong, it is just deceptive.
stuckinred
James Arness Dies: ‘Gunsmoke’ Star Dead At 88. Damn
arguingwithsignposts
@realitycheck – you might want to tell those textile mills in the palmetto state that were closing in the late 90s.
FormerSwingVoter
@Chris:
Heh. It reminds me of the hypothetical ‘Missouri does not exist’ bestselling book.
Dennis SGMM
@Reality Check:
You really should ground your comments in fact rather than just spewing out whatever the voices in your head tell you.
Here’s a list of the larger American textile manufacturers to chew on. The largest exodus of textile manufacturing began late in the Clinton administration (Ex-NAFTA).
BGinCHI
@arguingwithsignposts: Enjoy the OR show. July 29 here at Schubas: Heartless Bastards (early show, acoustic), Richard Buckner (headliner, record release).
WereBear
Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
No meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget, expenses such as an independently audited financial statement.
Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
Former members often relate the same stories of abuse and reflect a similar pattern of grievances.
There are records, books, news articles, or television programs that document the abuses of the group/leader.
Followers feel they can never be “good enough”.
The group/leader is always right.
The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
Citizen_X
@Reality Check:
NOW WE SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM!
Villago Delenda Est
@NonyNony:
Well, if you couple the negative income tax with no cost to patients universal health care modeled on the VA, along with government housing, a 25k a year negative income tax would work for a great number of people.
The problem is, getting the parasite overclass, which gets off on people suffering, to go along with it.
Villago Delenda Est
@stuckinred:
Not just that, he was “The Thing” in the fifties original!
SRW1
@Reality Check:
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
Think I’ll go and eat worms
Long thin skinny ones, short fat juicy ones
See how they wriggle and squirm
Bite their heads off, suck their juice out
Throw their skins away
You should see how well I thrive
On worms three times a day
Feel better now that you have been ‘seriously addressed’?
Makewi
@Reality Check:
You do realize you are arguing with people who believe that the world is superman or lex luthor and the only way to be superman is to show how much you agree with whatever progressives are calling for? Right?
They don’t understand what you are saying and what’s more, they don’t want to understand what you are saying.
That said, you’d never entirely get rid of welfare, nor should you. There will always be a segment of the populace who simply cannot take care of themselves through no fault of their own. Add to that a segment who wants to do better but just needs a temporary helping hand.
What we desperately need is a workfare in which that help is tied to effort. We also need an education system that educates in all cases.
kth
@Reality Check: It’s not being seriously addressed because (whatever its merits) you can’t deliver more than 10 votes for it from your social Darwinist side of the aisle.
When a plausible Republican presidential candidate proposes this, then I’ll think about it. Until then, I prefer to discuss things that actually have some chance of being enacted.
grandpajohn
@John O: well its obvious he doesn’t know what reality means
SteveinSC
@Reality Check:
Gone from New England, maybe, gone from SC? Wrong. Read, learn, it’s what’s for dinner.
harlana
It’s such a fucking no-brainer that Dems need to “demagogue” Medicare just like the right wing accuses them of doing, over and over, at every opportunity. Use fear the way they do. Just keep reminding the people they’re coming for their Medicare
Great post, great comments, but the trolls could be better.
Steaming Pile
If the GOPers were smart (that’s a big IF), they’d just nominate Mitt Romney and call it a day. Reason: He was Governor of Massachusetts, not a member of Congress who can be asked how he or she voted on, say, the Ryan budget. He’s free to lie his ass off about how he’s gonna focus on jobs, jobs, jobs, and whatever else the Democrats and independents would like to hear, all without sounding like a hypocrite. Fear Mittens.
Gravenstone
@Reality Check:
Fixed that for ya, fuckknob.
Ghanima Atreides
i dunno.
i think i’ll wait and see what Obama does before I start freaking out.
The founders and framers might have built something into the constitution like the Sword of a Thousand Truths.
They were pretty savvy about human nature.
fasteddie9318
Goddamn, it’s like Troll Central in here.
SteveinSC
@Reality Check:
No flamer like an ignorant flamer, unless maybe Mao was 100 years old in 2003 and still kicking, you fucking moron.
burnspbesq
@Whiskey Screams from a Guy With No Short-Term Memory:
And that works how, exactly? What’s your enforcement mechanism?
SteveinSC
@burnspbesq: I can answer that: tariffs.
Scott Supak
Donate to get-out-the-vote efforts that target the young. They have the most to lose.
The Other Chuck
@Reality Check:
The fact that you’re incapable of understanding does not mean the other guy is babbling.
MikeBoyScout
HELP WANTED:
289
grave diggershole makers needed for immediate project in Washington DC. No experience necessary. Shovels provided.289
grave diggershole fillers needed for immediate project in Washington DC. No experience necessary. Shovels provided.harlana
Over 140,000 workers were laid off in April, an increase of initial unemployment claims rising by over 25,000 from March. When job creation is discussed, it seems that corresponding job loss, is never mentioned.
Turgidson
I’m sure I’m not the first to mention it, but this thread is a perfect opportunity to reiterate my denunciation of Stalin and the broccoli mandate.
MikeBoyScout
Today’s jobs report is no reason to panic, but it is a long time past due to hammer the importance of creating jobs again, not only for the unemployed, but for the security and well being of the currently employed as well.
And yes, hammering the importance of the jobs issue includes beating republicans and Galtan fellow travelers over the head repeatedly with any and every method until they see the light, or see no more.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I’ve never seen so many come out in support of pie in one single thread.
jwalden91lx
Awesome-ist post ever.
(Is awesome-ist a word? If not, it should be invented solely on the merits of this post.)
Joel
This is one of those issues that Yglesias nails. The jobs being lost are in the public sector. This is what a conservative economy looks like.
jwalden91lx
@beltane: This whole post if full of taglines for the site!
Makewi
@SteveinSC:
What impact to tariffs have on pricing? For that matter, what impact do you suppose import limits would have?
Just Some Fuckhead
I guess after we throw every moderate Republican solution at the problem without success, we can try the conservative Republican stuff again. Eventually, some Republican idea has to work.
Tonal Crow
@MikeBoyScout: Yes. And some of the hammering should take the form of a proposal to begin a WPA-style jobs program to build renewable energy and other necessary infrastructure. And of a “not until we’ve got people working” to the the Republicans’ must-“address”-the-deficit-now Koolaide mania.
It doesn’t matter that we can’t currently get anything remotely resembling this through the House. It doesn’t matter that Blue Dogs will object. The remaining real Democrats have to plant the rhetorical seeds for victory in 2012. Only if that occurs will we get a chance to do the right thing.
burnspbesq
@SteveinSC:
I can answer that: tariffs.
Setting aside the fact that Republicans will never go for it because it’s a revenue-raiser, how do you square that with the United States’ treaty obligations as a member of the WTO?
PurpleGirl
@Professor: I’d say that it means No Regulations Whatsoever, so that every business can do whatever the hell they want.
Brazilian Rascal
I think we can trust the Dems to ride the Ryan plan backlash into at least a moderate victory in 2012.
After which a good number of them will embrace austerity measures with both hands, because you know, bond vigilantes! David Brooks says that the people with the right genes will always be successful, so there’s nothing to worry about! Just hang in there a bit longer and keep shopping!
Political cultures can’t ever be reformed. They have to crash. I used to believe this wasn’t the case. Brazil in 1999 and the US in 2009 changed my mind.
Q.Q. Moar
@Reality Check: “Once again I’ve proven” Jack shit.
PurpleGirl
@MBunge: But we keep being told that if we cut taxes more, then jobs would be created. Well, taxes were cut in the early 2000s, right… so where are the jobs that were created?
Tonal Crow
@PurpleGirl:
They’re in China.
Jesse
@Reality Check: You haven’t proven shit, because your plan relies on somebody picking money from the fucking money tree and handing it out. “Robot tax”, my ass.
I don’t care how many people the federal government employs, but there are some things I need that government to do. If you think eliminating *part* of the federal bureaucracy will pay for your magical money fairy checks- go look. It won’t.
(I say *part* because, when pressed, you’ll admit the need for a court system, the army, and a bunch of other federal shit.)
Your plan is not being taken seriously. You seem to think this is because we are all attached to bureaucracy. In fact, the plan is not being taken seriously because it is not worth taking seriously, and the fact that you’re an asshole doesn’t help.
danimal
So, when Obama wins reelection in 2012, will the GOP adjust their tactics and negotiate on measures to move the country forward, or will they introduce Articles of Impeachment on Jan 21, 2013? The future of our country likely depends on the answer. Yes, I’m shrill, but I believe this deeply.
I believe there are still some downtrodden moderate Republican patriots who really don’t like the Tea Party approach and will pull the plug on the crazy if they get a chance. But I don’t know that they can win that battle.
Pliny
Yeah guys, if we can just make sure Obama wins and the Democrats get a House majority plus a filibuster-proof Senate, everything will be fucking peachy. Wall Street will be regulated and Medicare For All will pass right away. What the fuck is wrong with you.
fasteddie9318
@burnspbesq:
Maybe that last bit is the problem. The being a member of the WTO bit.
Pliny
“Any day now the President and his party will cast off their center-right disguise and do something truly progressive for the economy! Any day!”
–John Cole and almost everyone in this thread
Tonal Crow
@Pliny: Strawman much? Better government is a long-term project.
Pliny
I saw an idea out there for the Treasury to just ignore the debt ceiling and keep selling bonds (that investors would almost certainly keep buying). Of course this would never happen unless Dean Baker woke up one day inside Tim Geithner’s body, but I’m pretty sure the debt ceiling has never been tested in court, and I doubt SCOTUS would have the balls to default.
El Cid
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yes, but after a while those ideas are new again. And bold. And gutsy.
Caz
You do realize that the Ryan plan doesn’t “end medicare,” right? It doesn’t end anything, it just makes some changes, like providing a voucher to people to buy their own insurance. Either you’re lying or ignorant about it.
The D’s had two full years with total control and did nothing about the budget. They still have the Senate and Prez, but still no budget. They spend all their time scaring people with lies about the GOP.
The economy is worse now than it was when Obama took over. The deficit and debt are at record highs, unemployment is over 9%, the housing market continues to tank, and food and gas prices are going up.
Why the hell are you still riding the Obama train?? Are you that stupid and/or loyal that you’re going to stick with him and the progressives until you are on the street yourself??
It’s one thing to bash the GOP – I’m the first one to say they are corrupt. But the D’s are as bad or worse.
You’re an idiot, lol.
Mike in NC
@El Cid:
Awesome. Two months ago the GOP terrorists in Raleigh tried to extort the governor into accepting an unspecified 13% budget cut that would have thrown thousands of people out of work, and they tied it to extending unemployment benefits for tens of thousands of people already hurting. Apparently they had no plan to compromise and even the House majority leader later admitted “maybe we went too far”. Fucking sociopaths and nihilists.
freelancer
@Caz:
Yes, and a plan to mothball water treatment plants and mail everyone a check for $25 to cover unregulated, for profit bottled water for a year isn’t ending access to potable water, it just “makes some changes”.
aka Both sides do it.
This is the most disengenuous thing I’ve ever read.
Sly
@Reality Check:
What does this even mean? Are you living in 1860 and think Obama is Boss Tweed?
No. You’re living in a country where the top ten percent of income earners own seventy percent of the wealth-producing assets, constituting a “privileged class” that does not include accountants for the Office of Thrift Supervision, state troopers, county clerks, or school district superintendents.
But they all get decent pensions that private sector workers use to get before their employers got the bright idea of switching over to defined contribution plans, thereby fucking over an entire generation, so clearly everyone in the public sector is a privileged elitist.
Tonal Crow
@Caz:
You do realize that you’re lying, right? Medicare currently pays for a fixed (large) percentage of as much medically-necessary care as a person needs. With Ryancare, on the other hand, each senior will get a voucher that can be used toward buying a private insurance plan — if any can be bought for the price, which Ryancare practically guarantees will not be so, except perhaps for minimal plans that are the functional equivalents of Death Panels.
Thus, Ryancare ends Medicare.
Berial
I’ve finally put Caz into the pie filter. I just don’t understand why some of these posters come here and repeat the same lies over and over even after several other posters point out the lie with facts. Do the pie eaters not realize they have the moral equivalence of a crack whore?
I take it back, at least everyone knows what the whore is getting out of the deal. What the hell are they getting out of it?
Tonal Crow
@Caz:
Republicans can’t get out of bed without lying. When Obama took over, the economy was shedding 700,000 jobs per month (http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth ). Now it’s adding jobs, though far too slowly — because Republicans have blocked the real stimulus we need.
I am nearly convinced that Republicans are a fifth column, perhaps in cahoots with the Taliban.
Tonal Crow
@Berial: They come here to spread propaganda because propaganda furthers their masters’ purposes. And they’ve drunk so much Koolaide they think that their masters’ benefit is their benefit — and/or they’re being paid to post bullshit.
El Cid
@Mike in NC: It’s not a terrible assumption by Republicans that whatever they do would be pushed through because the Democrats have so often gone along. And remember, it never has to be all of them, usually just enough of conservative or single-issue / local favoritism Democrats to make the vote.
But it seems to me that in the past there was a whole lot more advance polling and planning and strategy and PR and such by Republicans when pushing through big measures, and plenty of willingness to split goals up among different bills at different times.
It seems to me and many others that now they’re a lot more ‘floor it’ and trying to shove through the maximal goals.
And I don’t think it’s just because of TeaTard types and fears that someday Democrats would get back in so get it all through right now right now go go go…
I think a big part of what reshaped the Republican party and base is that they finally achieved absolute power over every branch of government from 2002 – 2006. President, Congress, and Supreme Court. Also most state governments. I think most. At least the largest in a while.
They finally were in the position to tear down the generations of ‘librul’ and not-sufficiently-pro-super-upper-class programs they had so hated and planned for generations against themselves.
Their most enthusiastic supporters were enraged that their Mad Max fantasies of what would happen — given an eternity of the right promising what it would do once in power (ban evolution, kill the EPA, eliminate the IRS, throw all the immigrants out, make gays illegal, and so forth) — didn’t actually happen.
Sure, it was psychotically deranged governance from the point of view of the sane; but for those who lived to see the promised Kingdom of Crazy Awful once ‘their’ side could finally win, and win big, I think it was a shock.
I think it was a shock that the right wing could triumph and hold every branch and yet not be so loved by all, because all the good Real America hated Democrats and libruls and hippies and so on, that they could ever, ever lose an election.
So they went nuts. They had what was almost absolute power, they’d grown up on how the right would unleash Chang (see GHW Bush) once on that glorious day when they won.
First they lost to NANCY PELOSI A SAN FRANCISCO LIBERAL, and then, of course, they lost to A MUSLIM NAMED BLACK GUY.
Oh, sure, at all the important levels it was the standard power elite and the super-rich that the GOP leaders cared about and why they launched the big money astro-turfed “tea party” type shit and Stalin Summer (health care).
But I think you really have a deranged sense of not getting what they deserved, what they had been promised, and especially to have blocked from that by the people they had always believed were outnumbered and that once those Democrat librul parasites lost, no one would ever go back.
Odie Hugh Manatee
One of my customers stopped by the other day and he brought up politics right after I solved his problem (right-click illiterate). I call the guy ‘that crazy Russian’ and for a perfectly good reason that I’ll leave out of this. He’s a full-metal winger in his early 50’s who dislikes Obama, intensely. Very. Lots. We’ve have had some spirited political/economic ‘discussions’ in the past but he came to me a changed man that day.
He started out with ‘you know I really want Obama out of office’, to which I thought ‘tell me something I don’t already know’ but he ended that line with ‘but with the candidates the Republicans are attracting, I’m probably going to end up voting for Obama to keep them out of office.’ After hearing him say that, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I asked him why and he said that ‘they’re nuts!’, then asking ME ‘what’s happened to the Republican party?’, sounding convincingly confused as to how this could have happened.
I had him grab a seat and we then had a very interesting and frank discussion about voters who vote with their gut and those who use their brains to process reality and come to the conclusion that a particular vote would really be in their interest while another would not. That there are far more of the former voters than the latter, with much of their lack of knowledge being that they are too busy keeping their noses to the grinding stones to make ends meet, though there are many other reasons that include racism, hate, bigotry and such. That all of these reasons are exploited by the Republican party with their excellent grasp of the sound bite and crowd-tested phrasing of issues, both real and imagined, and the feeding of this black and white view to the masses via a medium largely owned by the rich. Reported on by people making much more than him or myself, people who don’t have to worry about making ends meet like most people do. IOW, they’re bought and paid for to do what they do; mislead and misinform.
That the people who we see on TV do not report reality but prefer to run with whatever narrative that fits their view and pushes their agenda or that of their employer. What was interesting is that this time the guy actually listened to me and asked questions when I mentioned an issue that he was uninformed or misinformed about. I had a computer there and brought up links to info to back up what I was telling him. He respects my knowledge in computers and now it seems that he respects my political knowledge. All I can say is that if he is scared of his party and with my knowing what a proud wingnut he is, then the Republican party is in deep shit if there are more out there like him.
One thing that is clear is that the Ryan plan was a bridge too far for him. He was absolutely aghast that “my party” could propose and almost unanimously vote to implement it. He said that he never saw it coming, thus his surprise and anger. I spelled it out for him; the rich own congress, as do their businesses and the financial markets. That the purpose of the Ryan plan is to kill Medicare, funnel money directly to the insurance companies, shift increasing medical costs onto the elderly & disabled, plus give even more tax cuts to the wealthy and big business. That the ‘plan’ is to enrich the rich and powerful and make everyone else pay for it with their lives and money.
I explained regulatory capture and how it has ruined the markets and enriched the few at the expense of many. I explained the revolving door between business, the financial markets, “think tanks” or other forms of wingnut welfare that the rich provide, and our government. That our government is not interested in changing this because it has become a route to easy money for them for the rest of their lives. That the more “investment opportunities” our government gives big business, the thinner our wallets get.
In short, we really don’t stand a chance with anything the Republican party proposes. They just can’t be taken seriously when they have completely derailed and are partying in the wreckage. I also told him that while it would be nice to think of the Democrats as our saviors, the rich have corrupted enough of them to make getting anything of substance done, such as raising the low taxes on the rich and cutting corporate welfare, impossible. In the meantime, all we can do is vote for the lesser of two evils. It’s that or give up on it. Unless more people start paying attention to what is really going on and hold politicians accountable for their lies and deceptions, things are only going to get worse. The good news, I told him, is that at that point people will start paying attention because they can’t afford a home, utilities or even food.
I told him that unfortunately I believe that we are going to need disaster, or a very near disaster, for people to actually start paying attention to reality and demanding real action from politicians. He really didn’t like to hear that but I think it’s the truth. He hopes not.
It was an interesting conversation that tells me that the Repubs are in trouble over the Ryan plan (of attack). I was glad to have the talk with him and I hope it wakes him up a bit more to what is really going on out there.
El Cid
@Tonal Crow:
The notion of the fifth column (i.e., the general marching on Madrid in the civil war announcing that his forces would be met by a 5th inside Republican Madrid) is based on the notion of a clandestine enemy. It’s mostly a bullshit claim either to scare the opponents or to slander some section of the opposition.
These guys aren’t clandestine in either their identity or in their nation-destroying programs.
I think they’re basically a base of the Freikorps and a party of the South Africa’s apartheid-launching National Party.
Actual Confederates were never in power over the whole Union, and especially not in ‘modern’ times, so I think the NP is a pretty good parallel.
Hmmm. I take that back. The National Party held power from the late 1940s to the first free elections of ’95. And South Africa didn’t fall apart (not the white part).
The GOP couldn’t do that, even to perpetuate evil. Maybe the Confederacy is the more appropriate model. What was I thinking?
Just Some Fuckhead
That’s a great story Doug. I think one of the most important things we can do as liberals is to make sure other people know it, know there’s an option to the default conservatism of America, know people just like themselves vote differently.
That example will eventually pay dividends when they realize their own side isn’t attuned to their needs.
burnspbesq
@Caz:
Your ignorance and bias are showing.
Even if it were designed to be adequate (which it isn’t) “premium support” for private insurance isn’t anything like first-party reimbursement. Medicare is not like private insurance. If you force seniors to buy private insurance, what you have is so unlike Medicare as it has existed since 1964 that it is absurd to call it the same thing. The Ryan plan ends Medicare. Period. Full stop. No semantic Calvinball allowed.
NR
@Tonal Crow:
A project that hasn’t even started yet. A project that we’re actually getting farther and farther away from even as we speak. Thanks to the Democrats.
Berial
@NR: Wow, that was a convincing reply. Gonna start talking about rubber and glue next. Tell ya what just tell me more about pie.
Geeno
I always heard this joke with the punch line …
Lone Ranger: Tonto, we’re completely surrounded by Indians!
Tonto: What’s this “we” shit, white man?
Svensker
@Reality Check:
Your plan? Your plan? What’s your exalted position that we should be interested in your plan?
Perhaps the first part of your plan should include remedial spelling.
NR
@Berial: Gotta love the dialogue around here.
“Hey, the Democrats aren’t doing shit to stop the corporate takeover of America.”
“Better government is a long-term project.”
“That project hasn’t even started yet and the Democrats are actively impeding it.”
“Wow, that was a convincing reply!”
Sheesh.
Svensker
@Reality Check:
Was there broccoli involved?
Midnight Marauder
@Reality Check:
Your plan is clown talk.
The only thing your performance in this thread has proven is that no one should ever regard your “ideas” with any legitimacy from here on out.
Marc McKenzie
@Chris:
Gotta agree with you on this, Chris.
Marc McKenzie
@Cermet:
Actually, Cermet, this line from a Stephen King novel sums it up best:
“Your plan and the stuff that comes out of my ass***e have a very curious resemblance to each other.”
Marc McKenzie
@stuckinred:
Yeah, it sucks. And he was the original “Thing” in THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD!
Chris
@El Cid:
I think it goes back to the Reagan years, actually. The man was a God to them, that they thought had truly restored America to the way it should always have been, and put an end to the DamLibruls’ place in government forever. Both times since his election that a Democrat’s made it into office, they’ve gone absolutely ape-shit.
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
That is a great story… especially since the guy appears to have actually woken up to what his party was doing, for real. We need more people like him… sadly, I suspect the anti-Ryan backlash will be guided mostly by independents who’ll swing back to the GOP the next time the Dems have the wind in their sails.
@Marc McKenzie:
Thankee!
mclaren
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Excellent post. I wish there were as many long thoughtful discussions as yours.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
Only breaking in to inform you this is stoled. You may now return to your regular troll-bashing.
Joey Maloney
“Get them welfare people to work filling in the Bering Strait and charge them Indians a buck a head to go home. It’s a good sound business solution.”
Comrade Javamanphil
@mds: I said nothing of the sort and that is a blatant misreading of my post. I never criticized Obama or addressed the role of congress in budgetary matters. Instead I focused on the GOP’s fascination with business leaders (they are the ones that seem to value a CEO president) while they completely fail to understand even the most basic of business concepts.
Nickws
@Makewi:
You two whiny anti-Left social authoritarians, with your obvious and irrelevant misreading of Pat Moynihan’s 1960s attack on social workers, you deserve each other. That’s what I understand, hombre.
Whiny ‘conservative communitarian’ fucks. Your type make the glibertarians and supply-siders look well adjusted.
john f
@Odie Hugh Manatee: That was a great post. I used to be a “talk radio” conservative/libertarian type back up until about ten years ago and I started seeing some of this then. I wish I could get through to some of my coworkers but a few are just founts of “misinformation” pumped full of talk radio slogans like I used to be.
john f
@El Cid: A good analysis of the conservative voter. They really can’t believe that their fellow Americans gave them a chance and then went on to vote in the other party after a few terms.