Wez
DA
He wasn't able to provide any of his "research", so I chalked it up to more unfounded hate of fact checking that shows their narrative to be off or just wrong.
Ponderable
- Thread starter Bruddah IZ
- Start date
He wasn't able to provide any of his "research", so I chalked it up to more unfounded hate of fact checking that shows their narrative to be off or just wrong.
I do wonder what the Republican party will morph into after this election? It's easier to see which direction the Dem's will go, after watching how open large swaths of America were a socialist independent for president named Bernie Sandars. Hillary is the end of the old guard as plainly the progressives movement is on the upswing. But it's less clear what the path forward looks like for Republican's.
At this point Cruz can't even win the Republican primary... so you'd have to think the christian conservative movement has the most to lose. That said Ted has kinda been running the show for a while with the whole shut down the government and helping push Boehner out political moves. And now you they take conch shell away and give it to who? Who gets to speak for the party then? Even if Trump wins and the nation becomes more isolationist... think Ted is making it pretty clear it will bring about a party civil war? Also what if Trump loses, it sure seems to me the GOP voters might have some issues with handing it back to Ted. After a week of watching the GOP convention I just feel like I've got more questions then answers...
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It appears he is still running against Cruz, and that he is willing to let the conscientious (or die-hard) Cruz supporters go. In a way he is right - those voters won't make any difference in the foreseeable result.
"We have a President who believes that he alone can solve all of their problems through executive orders, regulations and partisan votes on major legislation...."
First of all I put no numbers and never used the word excessive...you go from painting portraits with a crop duster to just making stuff up?
But I will use this finding as an example:
Obama’s Executive Order On Immigration Overturned
The judge used Obama’s own words, that he couldn’t change a law just because he doesn’t like it, and actually the judge issued the ruling stating that just because congress fails to act, doesn’t give the president the power to act in it’s place.
https://radio1370.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/obamas-executive-order-on-immigration-overturned/
The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a series of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration on Monday night, frustrating the administration’s efforts to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and delivering a major setback to a core policy initiative of the president’s second-term agenda.* The Justice Department said on Tuesday morning that it would appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/fifth-circuit-obama-immigration/415077/
The SCOTUS had to let this one stand as it was 4-4 tie.
Where is Scalia when you need him?
GOP lifer says "no" to Trump.
https://goplifer.com/2016/07/22/resignation-letter/
https://goplifer.com/2016/07/22/resignation-letter/
Our leaders’ compromise preserves their personal capital at our collective cost. Their refusal to dissent robs all Republicans of moral cover. Evasion and cowardice has prevailed over conscience. We are now, and shall indefinitely remain, the Party of Donald Trump.
I will not contribute my name, my work, or my character to an utterly indefensible cause. No sensible adult demands moral purity from a political party, but conscience is meaningless without constraints. A party willing to lend its collective capital to Donald Trump has entered a compromise beyond any credible threshold of legitimacy. There is no redemption in being one of the “good Nazis.”
I will not contribute my name, my work, or my character to an utterly indefensible cause. No sensible adult demands moral purity from a political party, but conscience is meaningless without constraints. A party willing to lend its collective capital to Donald Trump has entered a compromise beyond any credible threshold of legitimacy. There is no redemption in being one of the “good Nazis.”
Wez
DA
Well of course you couldn't use the bullshit claims associated with that subject of the topic that Snopes blew up, but you certainly used the sound bite of Executive orders, even though it's been proven BO has not made use of them anymore then any other President before him.
That's the problem with right wing chumps, they bite onto a sound bite and refuse to let it go, no matter how much reality is put in there face.
Just as you started the former "Something to Ponder" thread with a bullshit Alinsky quote, and got dismantled by Snopes. No wonder you hate Snopes, it keeps exposing your bullshit.
You don't evolve Lion, you just hold onto what "feels" best for you. Fortunately, as the Trump campaign has shown, you have a lot of company.
Bruddah IZ
DA
How Different Is Trump From Other Politicians?
July 21, 2016, 9:28 am
This was an interesting profile of Trump featuring his ghostwriter on Art of the Deal. Frequent readers will know that even years before he came on the Presidential stage, I was never taken in by the Trump-is-a-great-businessman meme (most recently here).
In the New Yorker article, Trump's ghost says that Trump is not nearly as smart as he is made out to be, he is petty and childish and vain and self-absorbed. He apparently makes promises he never keeps and has made a mess of a number of his businesses. He has a short attention span and a shallow understanding of most issues.
Which all leads me to ask -- how does this make him any different from most other politicians, including the one he is running against for President? Is he unique in these qualities or merely unique in his inability or unwillingness to hide them? Does he have more skeletons in his closet, or does he just engender less personal loyalty so that more of his insiders speak out?
Don Boudreaux quoted a great bit from H.L Mencken the other day:
The state – or, to make the matter more concrete, the government – consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
July 21, 2016, 9:28 am
This was an interesting profile of Trump featuring his ghostwriter on Art of the Deal. Frequent readers will know that even years before he came on the Presidential stage, I was never taken in by the Trump-is-a-great-businessman meme (most recently here).
In the New Yorker article, Trump's ghost says that Trump is not nearly as smart as he is made out to be, he is petty and childish and vain and self-absorbed. He apparently makes promises he never keeps and has made a mess of a number of his businesses. He has a short attention span and a shallow understanding of most issues.
Which all leads me to ask -- how does this make him any different from most other politicians, including the one he is running against for President? Is he unique in these qualities or merely unique in his inability or unwillingness to hide them? Does he have more skeletons in his closet, or does he just engender less personal loyalty so that more of his insiders speak out?
Don Boudreaux quoted a great bit from H.L Mencken the other day:
The state – or, to make the matter more concrete, the government – consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
Bruddah IZ
DA
How many democrat lifers said no to Hillary, opting for Bernie without substitute, even now?
You obviously don't care to or are incapable of discussing anything in an adult way.
You prefer to cast aspersions & categorize folks who have a different view than yourself.
You have shown what a condescending, judgmental, pompous ugly ass punk you are.
With the restart of the website, you have doubled down in your stupidity and inability to be civilized...
By the way the executive order I was referring to was turned over by the court, the court ruled that just because Barry didn't agree with a law he could not circumvent the law through EXECUTIVE ORDER.
You got that CHUMP?
Bruddah IZ
DA
That's funny. Published does not equal truth. Certainly Clinton, Comey and Lynch have taught us what blatant lies are.
Wez
DA
It's childish to post lies and then call into question the validity of a site that exposes the bullshit you post.
Stop posting bullshit and we become more civil.
Bruddah IZ
DA
… is from page 67 of Joel Mokyr’s forthcoming (October 2016) volume from Princeton University Press, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (footnote deleted; link added):
Max Planck famously noted (with some exaggeration) that a new scientific insight never triumphs by convincing its opponents, but only because these opponents eventually die off. Within technology there was and still is considerable resistance to inventors coming from vested interests, known (somewhat unfairly) as Luddism. Deirdre McCloskey (2016a, p. 94) points out that such words as “innovation” and “novelty” in the past often had negative connotations. An emotional attachment to traditional ways of doing things made novelty look suspect.
It is more than passing strange that the opponents of new patterns of trade and of new methods of production, financing, and distribution – it is remarkably odd that those who are expressly afraid of, pessimistic about, and (hence) hostile to an economic future made open-ended by entrepreneurial creativity and market competition – include not only people who self-identify as “conservative” but also many people who self-identify as “Progressive.” The only “progress” such “Progressives” really want is the progressively more expansive and harsh use of force to prevent individuals from acting in ways that “Progressives” do not understand and fear.
Max Planck famously noted (with some exaggeration) that a new scientific insight never triumphs by convincing its opponents, but only because these opponents eventually die off. Within technology there was and still is considerable resistance to inventors coming from vested interests, known (somewhat unfairly) as Luddism. Deirdre McCloskey (2016a, p. 94) points out that such words as “innovation” and “novelty” in the past often had negative connotations. An emotional attachment to traditional ways of doing things made novelty look suspect.
It is more than passing strange that the opponents of new patterns of trade and of new methods of production, financing, and distribution – it is remarkably odd that those who are expressly afraid of, pessimistic about, and (hence) hostile to an economic future made open-ended by entrepreneurial creativity and market competition – include not only people who self-identify as “conservative” but also many people who self-identify as “Progressive.” The only “progress” such “Progressives” really want is the progressively more expansive and harsh use of force to prevent individuals from acting in ways that “Progressives” do not understand and fear.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Bruddah IZ
DA
One Weird Trick That Will Sell Your Tax Increase to the Public
July 22, 2016, 10:09 am
Here is the trick: You want a tax increase for X. The public is never going to approve of raising taxes for X. So you bundle 95% X with 5% Y, Y being something the public is really excited about. As much as possible, you never mention X in any discussion of the tax increase, despite most of the funds being dedicated to X, and instead focus solely on Y. If history is any guide, you will get your tax increase.
What a specific example? You want a tax increase to fund a huge public transit boondoggle. The public is not buying it. So you rebrand the public transit project as a "transportation bill", you throw in a few highway improvements, you talk mainly about the highway improvements, and you get your public transit bill.
Another example is general revenue increases. Most of these tax increases go to increasing the salary and pensions of bureaucrats and senior administrators that aren't really doing anything the public wants done in the first place. So you say the tax increase is to improve the pay of three (and only these three) categories of workers: police, firefighters, and teachers. The public likes what these folks do, and could mostly care less about what anyone else in local government does. So even if the taxes help about just 3 teachers among 3000 other bureaucrats, you sell it as a teacher salary increase.
It is because I understand this one weird trick that this sort of story does not surprise me in the least:
'Yikes!': Some Arizona teachers see little from Prop. 123
For months leading up to the vote on Proposition 123, supporters of the public education funding measure pleaded for its passage, saying it represented money for teachers.
But as the first installment of cash has gone out, many teachers may find Prop. 123 is a smaller windfall than they hoped. And voters may be surprised to learn where some of the money is going.
In some cases, teachers will collect less than 20 percent of their district's Prop. 123 funds. Some districts will use most of their money for other purposes, ranging from textbooks to computers to school buses, according to an Arizona Republicsurvey of district spending plans.
The measure was sold as a way to direct money — significant money — to teachers and classrooms....
With no rules on how the money can be used, each school district has tried to address its own priorities. While many supporters of the measure invoked teachers as the main reason to vote for Prop. 123, others in the public school systems have staked a claim to the money, especially after many went years without raises beginning in the recession.
Those seeing raises include relatively low-paid secretaries, custodians and bus drivers. But it also includes superintendents, principals and mid-level administrators who don’t work in classrooms.
That may not sit well with voters who opposed the measure or with supporters who thought they were doing something more substantive for teachers.
July 22, 2016, 10:09 am
Here is the trick: You want a tax increase for X. The public is never going to approve of raising taxes for X. So you bundle 95% X with 5% Y, Y being something the public is really excited about. As much as possible, you never mention X in any discussion of the tax increase, despite most of the funds being dedicated to X, and instead focus solely on Y. If history is any guide, you will get your tax increase.
What a specific example? You want a tax increase to fund a huge public transit boondoggle. The public is not buying it. So you rebrand the public transit project as a "transportation bill", you throw in a few highway improvements, you talk mainly about the highway improvements, and you get your public transit bill.
Another example is general revenue increases. Most of these tax increases go to increasing the salary and pensions of bureaucrats and senior administrators that aren't really doing anything the public wants done in the first place. So you say the tax increase is to improve the pay of three (and only these three) categories of workers: police, firefighters, and teachers. The public likes what these folks do, and could mostly care less about what anyone else in local government does. So even if the taxes help about just 3 teachers among 3000 other bureaucrats, you sell it as a teacher salary increase.
It is because I understand this one weird trick that this sort of story does not surprise me in the least:
'Yikes!': Some Arizona teachers see little from Prop. 123
For months leading up to the vote on Proposition 123, supporters of the public education funding measure pleaded for its passage, saying it represented money for teachers.
But as the first installment of cash has gone out, many teachers may find Prop. 123 is a smaller windfall than they hoped. And voters may be surprised to learn where some of the money is going.
In some cases, teachers will collect less than 20 percent of their district's Prop. 123 funds. Some districts will use most of their money for other purposes, ranging from textbooks to computers to school buses, according to an Arizona Republicsurvey of district spending plans.
The measure was sold as a way to direct money — significant money — to teachers and classrooms....
With no rules on how the money can be used, each school district has tried to address its own priorities. While many supporters of the measure invoked teachers as the main reason to vote for Prop. 123, others in the public school systems have staked a claim to the money, especially after many went years without raises beginning in the recession.
Those seeing raises include relatively low-paid secretaries, custodians and bus drivers. But it also includes superintendents, principals and mid-level administrators who don’t work in classrooms.
That may not sit well with voters who opposed the measure or with supporters who thought they were doing something more substantive for teachers.
Crickets....
Bruddah IZ
DA
The Problem Is That We Should Not Care About "Democracy", We Should Care About Protection of Individual Rights
July 19, 2016, 10:26 am
Perhaps this is yet another negative legacy of Woodrow Wilson and his "Making the world safe for democracy" meme. We talk all the time about allying with and siding with and protecting democracies, but all "democracy" really means in practice (at least today) is that the country has some sort of nominal election process. Elections are fine, they are less bad than most other ways of selecting government officials, but what we really should care about is that a country protects individuals rights, has free markets, and a rule of law. If a county has those things, I am not sure I care particularly if they vote or pick leaders by randomly selecting folks from the phone book.
You can see this problem at work here, in an essay by Ilya Somin:
Most democratic governments – including the United States – condemned the attempted recent military coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and welcomed its failure, citing the need to respect Turkey’s “democratic” institutions. But in the aftermath, Erdogan took the opportunity to persecute his political opponents on a large scale, including firing thousands of judges who might constrain his authoritarian tendencies. Erdogan’s government was also severely undermining civil liberties long before the coup, even going so far as to pass a law criminalizing “insults” to the president, under which hundreds of people have been prosecuted. Erdogan’s own commitment to democracy is questionable, at best. He famously once called democracy a tram that “you ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
This raises the question of whether the coup attempt against Erdogan might have been justified. More generally, is it ever justified to forcibly overthrow a democratic government? In this 2013 post, written after the successful military coup against Egypt’s radical Islamist government, I argued that the answer is sometimes “yes.” There should be a strong presumption against forcibly removing a democratic regime. But that presumption might be overcome if the government in question poses a grave threat to human rights, or is likely to destroy democracy itself by shutting down future political competition.
While we can argue if Erdogan is "committed" to democracy, I think it is pretty clear that he is not committed to the protection of individual rights.
What we need is a new alliance not to protect the world for democracy -- that word may originally have meant what I want it to mean but now it seems possible to just check the democracy box merely by having some kind of voting. We need a new (much smaller than the UN) alliance to make the world safe for, what? We need a name. What do we call a country with strong protections of individual rights, free markets, and the rule of law?
July 19, 2016, 10:26 am
Perhaps this is yet another negative legacy of Woodrow Wilson and his "Making the world safe for democracy" meme. We talk all the time about allying with and siding with and protecting democracies, but all "democracy" really means in practice (at least today) is that the country has some sort of nominal election process. Elections are fine, they are less bad than most other ways of selecting government officials, but what we really should care about is that a country protects individuals rights, has free markets, and a rule of law. If a county has those things, I am not sure I care particularly if they vote or pick leaders by randomly selecting folks from the phone book.
You can see this problem at work here, in an essay by Ilya Somin:
Most democratic governments – including the United States – condemned the attempted recent military coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and welcomed its failure, citing the need to respect Turkey’s “democratic” institutions. But in the aftermath, Erdogan took the opportunity to persecute his political opponents on a large scale, including firing thousands of judges who might constrain his authoritarian tendencies. Erdogan’s government was also severely undermining civil liberties long before the coup, even going so far as to pass a law criminalizing “insults” to the president, under which hundreds of people have been prosecuted. Erdogan’s own commitment to democracy is questionable, at best. He famously once called democracy a tram that “you ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
This raises the question of whether the coup attempt against Erdogan might have been justified. More generally, is it ever justified to forcibly overthrow a democratic government? In this 2013 post, written after the successful military coup against Egypt’s radical Islamist government, I argued that the answer is sometimes “yes.” There should be a strong presumption against forcibly removing a democratic regime. But that presumption might be overcome if the government in question poses a grave threat to human rights, or is likely to destroy democracy itself by shutting down future political competition.
While we can argue if Erdogan is "committed" to democracy, I think it is pretty clear that he is not committed to the protection of individual rights.
What we need is a new alliance not to protect the world for democracy -- that word may originally have meant what I want it to mean but now it seems possible to just check the democracy box merely by having some kind of voting. We need a new (much smaller than the UN) alliance to make the world safe for, what? We need a name. What do we call a country with strong protections of individual rights, free markets, and the rule of law?
Bruddah IZ
DA
Republican Administrations Are Just As Incompetent as Democratic Administrations: Governor Doug Ducey in AZ
July 18, 2016, 1:00 pm
Strong supporters of both political parties maintain a delusion that all government problems are the result of the incompetence of the other political team, rather than the inherent incentive and information problems facing all government efforts.
Republicans, for example, made fun of Obama's competence with the horrendously bad rollout of the Federal Obamacare exchange. But now, Doug Ducey's Arizona Department of Revenue is having the same problem.
As of this month, the agency is requiring that all multisite businesses (like mine) must file online rather than with pen and paper. So we logged in today to file our report. What a disaster! The only thing I can even compare it to is stories of the early days of the Obamacare exchange. First, the site is set up so that even a relatively simple return must have data entered across scores of pages. In basic layout, it is probably the worst site of any of the ten states we do business in.
But what has really made today a nightmare is that it is taking 5-10 minutes to load each page. The agency clearly was not ready for the load. Combined with a site design that requires many many page loads to complete simple tasks, and it makes filing (a 10 minute or so job on paper) a multi-day nightmare. Four hours into it and I have not completed one location out of 15 or so I need to enter.
When I called the DOR, they basically said I had to suck it up. I begged them for some sort of simple accommodation -- I have filed by paper for 13 years, why not allow me to file by paper for one more month until they get their act together? No dice. They instead suggested that my accounting staff come in at midnight tonight to do the work when the load on their servers would be lower.
If anything, the response from Republican Doug Ducey's office was even more insulting. They said to me that this change had been announced for months, as if it was my failing to enter the system in a timely manner that was the problem. According to Ducey's staff, I could have avoided the whole problem by filing my June revenue numbers a few months back, lol. I patiently explained that June numbers could not be reported until the bank statements had arrived and were reconciled, such that most all returns had to be filed between the 15th and the 20th of the month. And what is more, if this had been in the works so long, why hadn't the Administration seen fit to do an adequate job of testing the site and preparing for adequate capacity?
The answers from the governor's office were just as absurd and arrogant as any coming out of the Obama Administration about the failures of the exchange. Which again proves to this libertarian that there is no much real difference between the Coke and Pepsi parties. The problem is the government -- without the accountability brought by market competition -- trying to do these sorts of things.
July 18, 2016, 1:00 pm
Strong supporters of both political parties maintain a delusion that all government problems are the result of the incompetence of the other political team, rather than the inherent incentive and information problems facing all government efforts.
Republicans, for example, made fun of Obama's competence with the horrendously bad rollout of the Federal Obamacare exchange. But now, Doug Ducey's Arizona Department of Revenue is having the same problem.
As of this month, the agency is requiring that all multisite businesses (like mine) must file online rather than with pen and paper. So we logged in today to file our report. What a disaster! The only thing I can even compare it to is stories of the early days of the Obamacare exchange. First, the site is set up so that even a relatively simple return must have data entered across scores of pages. In basic layout, it is probably the worst site of any of the ten states we do business in.
But what has really made today a nightmare is that it is taking 5-10 minutes to load each page. The agency clearly was not ready for the load. Combined with a site design that requires many many page loads to complete simple tasks, and it makes filing (a 10 minute or so job on paper) a multi-day nightmare. Four hours into it and I have not completed one location out of 15 or so I need to enter.
When I called the DOR, they basically said I had to suck it up. I begged them for some sort of simple accommodation -- I have filed by paper for 13 years, why not allow me to file by paper for one more month until they get their act together? No dice. They instead suggested that my accounting staff come in at midnight tonight to do the work when the load on their servers would be lower.
If anything, the response from Republican Doug Ducey's office was even more insulting. They said to me that this change had been announced for months, as if it was my failing to enter the system in a timely manner that was the problem. According to Ducey's staff, I could have avoided the whole problem by filing my June revenue numbers a few months back, lol. I patiently explained that June numbers could not be reported until the bank statements had arrived and were reconciled, such that most all returns had to be filed between the 15th and the 20th of the month. And what is more, if this had been in the works so long, why hadn't the Administration seen fit to do an adequate job of testing the site and preparing for adequate capacity?
The answers from the governor's office were just as absurd and arrogant as any coming out of the Obama Administration about the failures of the exchange. Which again proves to this libertarian that there is no much real difference between the Coke and Pepsi parties. The problem is the government -- without the accountability brought by market competition -- trying to do these sorts of things.