One reason I'm a Republican is that, while we may be cursed with a few of those she describes, the Democrats seem absolutely infested with them.
This lady is well worth bookmarking and reading.
Her latest post (at Dr. Sanity ) ...
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WHAT 'PROGRESSIVES' STAND FOR
Let's get down to the nitty gritty of what "progressivism" is all about, shall we? And, it's all about controlling other people's lives, down to determining the food you and your kids will be able to eat ( because, you know, you are far too stupid to decide that yourself).
For all their happy talk and utopian fantasies, that is the essence of progressivism. Oh, they say it is for your own good...they insist that they are protecting you from the "greed" of those evil capitalists who desire not only your money, but your death--but make no mistake, what they really want is to control your life.
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That last emphasis is mine. She has a lot more to say, but she really nails it right there.
Update - 05 Dec 2010 - Dr. Sanity does not permalink her individual articles, and this one no longer appears on her main page. To find the full article, look in the sidebar at the left of her page, go down to Archives, and click on November 2010, Once that page finishes loading, look for Thursday, November 04, 2010 (near the bottom). The full article WHAT 'PROGRESSIVES' STAND FOR begins there.
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"When faced with a problem you do not understand,
do any part of it you do understand; then look at it again."
~(Robert A. Heinlein - "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress")do any part of it you do understand; then look at it again."
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Thursday, November 04, 2010
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16 comments:
As I write this, please do not label me a liberal. I may be moderate and/or a progressive. Maybe I am an Eisehnower republican as he put in the interstate system and talked about the Military Industrial Complex. Anyway, I would like to point out the failures of the right.
The Bush tax cuts is spent money. It does us no good as it was for the "here and now." Bush got out of Dodge, when s*** hit the fan. I can only tell you that with the tax cuts, we lost the jobs. Our jobs went overseas. No amount of tax cuts and no amount of printing of money will create jobs. And you cannot create jobs if jobs are going overseas. The pundits have said that we don't need manufacturing. Okay, so now where will the jobs come from? It is easy to sit in Houston and say this or that, but in the real world it is 2 billion cheap laborers that want our jobs and/or will put pressure on middle class wages. And you hear nothing from the right. It is just the same old tax cut and laissez-faire (trickle down) failed policies.
We seem to have gone off on a tangent here. I see nothing in my post (or in Dr. Sanity's, for that matter) about taxes (although the subject of Bush's tax cuts is definitely something we disagree on, and will probably continue to be so :-).
The point of my post (and hers) was control; specifically the type of people who worship control and view 1984 as an instruction manual instead of a warning.
I truly believe that people and political parties are divided amongst those who prefer to manage their own affairs and be left the Hell alone, and those who desperately want others to make their decisions for them.
I suspect it has been so since we became able to make decisions, and it ain't likely to change in the foreseeable future.
At present, those who desire control seem to be more prevalent in the Democratic than in the Republican party, and I stand by what I said as to why I am a Republican. That difference seems fundamental to me and more than worth fighting for
Now, if you don't mind, would you tell me how you posted your comment here?
The reason I ask is that you left no trace at all on my site meter (Stat Counter). The only comments that have made it that way (so far) appear to be from spambots.
I'm not quite ready to include you with them just yet; you have google profile (albeit private) instead on coming on as "Anonymous", made a cogent observation in a post that it was appropriate to, and your mention of "sit in Houston" suggests reading outside of the post. If you are, in fact, a spambot, then you have evolved to a level of sophistication approaching HAL-9000. :-)
So, did you come to my site on a regular browser, and use the comment widget to post it? I'm genuinely curious about how the site meter occasionally gets evaded, and hope you will indulge that curiosity.
Thank you :-)
I actually saw you posted on the Kathleen McKinney site. She has tried to stop me posting on her site. For some reason, right wing nuts have a one dimensional vision, and expect that to be for all people. Having it her way, we would have an oligarchy and a theocracy. You cannot debate people like her, her world is perfect in a non perfect world. I also have no use for Hannity or Limbaugh, since they were missing in action under the Bush reign. So far, they have given nothing in running the country.
In answering what you are saying. I can understand your position of control. And it may seem like it. However, I see another control, and that comes from the right. What I see is a deliberate control from the right to lower wages and to reduce the middle class. And it is all because of globalization and the 2 billion cheap laborers who want our jobs and/or lower wages. This is one area of control from the right. I believe if you go to far right or left, you actually end up in the same position. From the right, our jobs are gone, our wages are lower, and now the attack on social security, medicare, and everything else. Well, there is not much left to take from the middle class. And I am not saying these are good programs, I am saying to do something on the unemployment situation instead of the failed ideologies that we see. Do something for the middle class instead of tax cuts to the rich and our jobs leaving the country. I am telling you this as maybe if you sit in one part of the country, you may not know what is happening. Just like, I was pretty much not aware of the housing bubble in other parts of the country.
I firmly believe that you have to invest in the country, in the people, and in the future. I don't think there should be a strict adherence to policies that do not work. If state capitalism in China and other countries work (some central planning) then do it or anything else that works. All we saw from Bush was "stay the course (trickle down) and he ran the country and both wars into the ground.
Every time Bush would come to Ohio and talk about free trade, the factories would close. Now, that is what I saw. So I have just as much disdain as you do on government control, ignorance, arrogance, and on failed ideologies and policies. I believe you have to meet in the middle.
Some comments & questions:
1. The Bush tax cuts is spent money. It did not create the jobs and prosperity that it was supposed to do.
2. You cannot create jobs, if jobs are going overseas. And if you send private sector jobs overseas, then the government steps in.
3. The government can set the conditions for creating jobs and wealth. So far, neither party knows how to do that.
4. Our biggest problem is globalization and 2 billion potential cheap laborers. It means less in jobs or pay and a diminishing middle class.
5. What widgets can be made here and not some other country?
6. How can you support small business in small communities with factories closed?
7. If you put the money in the hands of the consumer, over half the products on the shelves are foreign made. How does this help our economy and employ more people?
8. The tax cuts was for the here and now. What did it for our future?
9. The fed is printing money and the republicans want more tax cuts to create jobs. However, a lot of our jobs went overseas. So what good is printing more money or having more in tax cuts if they don't work?
10. The only way to move our country forward is to invest in our country, in our people, and in the future. This will take 10 to 20 years.
11. Bush said "stay the course" on the economy and on two wars. They were all ran into the ground. And on the economy to get unemployment down to the 5% level will take some 10 to 20 years.
12. You cannot keep having tax cuts for the wealthy and ignore the middle class.
13. You need upward movement for the poor and the middle class. With jobs gone, there is no upward movement. New products being made by Apple, as an example, are made in China. What jobs do you intend to create in the future, without them going overseas?
14. You cannot run the country on an ideology. We saw eight years of that. Come up with some pragmatic answers.
I actually saw you posted on the Kathleen McKinney site. She has tried to stop me posting on her site. For some reason, right wing nuts have a one dimensional vision, and expect that to be for all people. Having it her way, we would have an oligarchy and a theocracy. You cannot debate people like her, her world is perfect in a non perfect world. I also have no use for Hannity or Limbaugh, since they were missing in action under the Bush reign. So far, they have given nothing in running the country.
Not that simple. I've seen opposing views in the comments she has allowed.
"She has tried to stop me posting on her site."
I think I see why...
You made a number of points in your first comment. Okay, then.
But they are repeated, in toto in this comment, and also in the one following, all in the same post. That is overkill.
I've been guilty of that; for a short while I even used, as my email sig, this quote from Winston Churchill:
"If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever.
Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again.
Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack."
Unfortunately, in commenting, that only turns people off and gets you seen in the same light as you wrote above, following "For some reason...".
If I believe passionately in something, I'll put the comment in as many appropriate places as I can, but will try to never repeat in in the same post. I might fail in that while following up, but the effort will be there.
And, as for "appropriate"; that should be self-explanatory. I write about other things, and if your present comment appeared in a post of mine about movies, I would be going "Give me a break!", while cheerfully blowing it away.
In other words, use common sense. :-)
Do that, and I'll cut you some slack.
Not much of a victory; the few hundred or so hits my blog gets each month probably amounts to a day on Kathleen's blog and maybe just minutes on some of the major ones. Among the mighty oceans of internet blogdom, you are visiting not even a pond, but a puddle.
:-)
Regarding your final comment...
Among your itemized points, this one...
7. If you put the money in the hands of the consumer, over half the products on the shelves are foreign made. How does this help our economy and employ more people?
...raises the biggest, reddist flag of all.
You are basically saying that people shouldn't be allowed to run around loose.
While I have had moments when I would agree with that, thankfully they passed. :-)
I think that pretty well defines the difference between us, and it is fundamental.
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Since I wanted to explain my side of the story, I butted in on a random comment of yours.
On your comment on my number 7, you may misunderstand me. I buy foreign products just as much as anyone else, and it is obvious that products foreign made is cheaper and plentiful. But if it means our jobs, I would go back to the days of paying a higher price.
But since we have globalization, it is the question of doing something in our country to create jobs or just sit back and let everyone in the world take over our jobs. Now, I know the broken record by republicans-more tax cuts and cut spending. But we had the tax cuts and we still lost our jobs. And I don't think that Obama went far enough to put policies in place to make our country work better. Okay, I am raising a red flag. I will list a number of things we should do that would help preserve the middle class. And at least, Paul Ryan and I would agree on the education, along with the Hudson Institute.
I will post it separately.
1. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.
2. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.
3. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.
4. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.
5. Consider an "American job elimination tax" on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.
6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.
7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.
8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.
9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.
10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.
11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming.
12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.
13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.
14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.
Will try this again.
1. Invest in your country: That is energy independence for security and jobs. Also a new air traffic control system that will save 12% on fuel. The savings to the airlines can go to build new aircraft. A high speed internet system. Perhaps high speed rail.
2. Invest in your people: That is mandatory vocational training. We live in a globalized world and you can no longer rely on factories. We have to be an educated society.
3. Invest in the future: Federal research grants to be given to universities and business to bring out new technologies. Today there are no new jobs to go to for those unemployed. You need new areas of growth. No playing games with embryonic stem cell research.
4. Fix the antitrust laws that Reagan relaxed. Monopolies and consolidations destroyed jobs.
5. Consider an "American job elimination tax" on companies that move out of the country. These companies do not pay middle class wages, healthcare, pensions, social security, or city and state taxes.
6. Get away from failed ideology. We saw it for 8 years. Tax cuts was used as an ideology. It did not prevent recessions. And did not create prosperity. You still have to solve problems. Ideology does not solve problems.
7. Supporting small business sounds nice and it is heard in Washington, but it does not work in my community as the big business left. That means you cannot have small business as people lost their jobs. Besides, small business will never pay what big business paid in wages.
8. We are losing the middle class. We cannot compete with 2 billion cheap laborers in the world that want our jobs. There are not enough jobs to go around. Competition is good, but it can be harmful also. All we are doing in this country is build the same business environment so that we can knock the other guy out. A person loses his job and has no place to go to. And the reason is that we did not invest in our country, in our people, and in the future.
9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.
10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.
11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming.
12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.
13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.
14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.
15. Create an hour period each school day for freshmen high school students to study any subject for a month (9 months-9 subjects) that they would have not normally have taken. It may be the hardest of subjects in which students would have been afraid in failing like algebra, geometry, calculus, languages, music, or any other subject including learning sports, like golf, football, baseball, or tennis as examples. There are many retired people who would like to teach what they learned in life. There could be a test at the end of the month, but this would only to see if the student learned anything in that subject and would not count against him in his grade average. The point is to have students learn as much as they can on different subjects and to see if they like a certain subject that they did not anticipate.
16. And finally, I don’t think our electoral political system works anymore. Every candidate is bought off and it takes huge amounts of money to run a campaign. I would suggest a management team or a turn around specialist to be appointed as president for a couple of years or more. And there would be a board of directors who he answers to and for the middle class. The parties are riddled with failed ideologies. We can do better that what we have.
17. One final point. I have tried to think of everything to preserve the middle class. I am afraid that the elites and the republicans and the economists will have their way, and their way to create jobs is to have you do away with the minimum wage and and all wages and pay people a dollar to five dollars an hour. The forces of a potential 2 billion cheap laborers is too powerful for any economic response on our part. Only then, according to them, will we have an equilibrium capable of producing jobs in our country. At the loss of the middle class.
9. Have commissions to cut government spending. It seems to be the only approach to doing this. Obviously, one side or the other will complain, but something has to be done now.
10. Government appointed jobs and organizations need to be slimmed down. Every 50 to 60 years we need to go through this. There are too many secretaries, deputy-secretaries, under-secretaries, and under-under-secretaries. Information gets loss through the process and government becomes ineffective. The last time this was done was with the Hoover Commission in the late 40’s.
11. Pour money into new drugs and preliminary medical science. Drugs are becoming less resistant to diseases. And potential super bugs are coming.
12. Fix the infrastructure. It is the reflection of our country and to the rest of the world.
13. And if we have not kept up with it, every school should have physical education. Also wash your hands when you come home to prevent viruses and less trips to the doctor. And as we see so often, stop throwing pop cans, etc. outside the car.
14. We need to slow down urban sprawl. Inner cities are being abandoned. As people leave there is no money left to support the inner city. This maybe controversial to some, but at some point we will have to deal with the problem. Sprawl also takes away from farms and spreads cities out too far in a time when you have empty buildings. We cannot have cities in decay. And cities in decay cannot create jobs and small business.
15. Create an hour period each school day for freshmen high school students to study any subject for a month (9 months-9 subjects) that they would have not normally have taken. It may be the hardest of subjects in which students would have been afraid in failing like algebra, geometry, calculus, languages, music, or any other subject including learning sports, like golf, football, baseball, or tennis as examples. There are many retired people who would like to teach what they learned in life. There could be a test at the end of the month, but this would only to see if the student learned anything in that subject and would not count against him in his grade average. The point is to have students learn as much as they can on different subjects and to see if they like a certain subject that they did not anticipate.
16. And finally, I don’t think our electoral political system works anymore. Every candidate is bought off and it takes huge amounts of money to run a campaign. I would suggest a management team or a turn around specialist to be appointed as president for a couple of years or more. And there would be a board of directors who he answers to and for the middle class. The parties are riddled with failed ideologies. We can do better that what we have.
17. One final point. I have tried to think of everything to preserve the middle class. I am afraid that the elites and the republicans and the economists will have their way, and their way to create jobs is to have you do away with the minimum wage and and all wages and pay people a dollar to five dollars an hour. The forces of a potential 2 billion cheap laborers is too powerful for any economic response on our part. Only then, according to them, will we have an equilibrium capable of producing jobs in our country. At the loss of the middle class.
Enough, Enough, ENOUGH!!!
Remember what I said above about overkill?
I've just let SIX comments through, and they mostly amount to control, control, control.
You have managed to update 1984.
I think I've been more than fair. If anyone thinks otherwise, they can see your comments in their entirety above.
You should start your own blog.
Like Kathleen, I'm forced to draw a line, and I suspect for the same reasons.
I'm sorry, but we're done.
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Note to Woody,
How do you explain then that after the Bush Tax cuts receipts to the Treasury went up? Did you know that for 2007 the Treasury took in more in taxes than any year of the Clinton Administration. Your perspective clearly has a flaw in it. And just for your information, I have voted straight Democrat until this last election. I was a Scoop Jackson Democrat! Sadly, now that he is gone, there is only one party calling for smaller, less intrusive government.
Hi Woody -
I think the reason you have had people block you from their blogs is that you seem to be trying to turn it into *your* blog. Did you really have to post your comments over and over and over again? As a casual reader who stumbled across this blog, let me say that it got really annoying, and many people would dismiss you as an overly-wordy schizo whose train of thought has gone off its rails. (I don't think that's the case - you seem to have a lot of clearly-identified ideas, but you don't seem to have your own place on the web to talk about them.)
All that said, my overall impression is that you are an extremely pessimistic person, who sees things through crap-colored glasses. Some of your points are good ideas, that could possibly be developed into useful practices, but many of them are simply statements of very negative viewpoints and opinions, presented as though they were facts. Many of them *can't* be argued as facts, because they are as subjective as opinions on art.
A minor, but easy-to-use example: "the infrastructure ... is the reflection of our country ... to the rest of the world". Is it? 90% or more of the world will never visit America, and those that do will never see 99% of the country. How then will fixing infrastructure improve our image in the world's eyes? And is that really important? This sounds more like a personal annoyance than a political or economic issue. (Actually, many of your points sound like personal annoyances.)
Repeating pseudo-facts also makes you resistant to reality - such as the repeated comment about 2 billion people wanting our jobs. Where did you get that number? What percentage of the jobs in the U.S. could be done by a person outside the *city* of the current worker doing that job, never mind across an ocean and speaking a different language?
It sounds like you've had some bad experiences, probably involving an industry that moved to another country - which probably means an industry that doesn't require a high degree of human skill. I'm sorry if that did happen to you, but it doesn't mean that the rest of the country's jobs are at risk of being outsourced, or that there are no new jobs being created. The U.S. has a general trend of outsourcing low-skill jobs when practical and replacing them with higher-skill jobs - just not necessarily in the same places.
The times change, and if you don't try to change with them, you'll likely end up as a bitter, resentful person, metaphorically trying to convince the weather to be different from what it is, and then cursing the heavens when that doesn't happen. I think you'll find you get much better reactions from people if you try to see the brighter side of some things in life, and you'll find you enjoy life more, as well.
Just my $0.02.
-Rob
Thank you, Rob, and also for checking out the other posts.
I treasure that amount of curiosity in others (because it's so rare), and hope you drop in some more from time to time.
How do I know this?
My site meter (StatCounter) notes the visits, but otherwise doesn't tell me all that much about you; so don't worry about your privacy.
What does it tell me? Check out HOW do spambots evade my site meter? . I suspect this is typical of other site meters as well.
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