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Originally Posted by Atreides88
1) Technically, no. Had the market been able to self-adjust, the firms that are about to fall apart would have failed a long time ago, instead of being propped up by the government even though they were sickly and should have been forced to change their business practices due to market forces.
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The deregulation of the banking industry and the removal of restrictions as to how risky their investments were allowed to be (keep in mind they're investing your money, not theirs) combined with allowing them to grant mortgages to people who should never be granted mortgages, is what caused the banks to collapse. That froze the credit market, which is what is killing off the other businesses. Even as crappy as GM and Ford and Chrysler are, they'd not need a government hand out right now if the government had done it's job and kept the banking corporations in check. The market WAS allowed to "self adjust" and "self regulate" and, as any student of human nature should have recognized, greed took over and screwed everything up.
Additionally, if they can label Obama with the blanket and largely inaccurate label of socialism, then I label the current mess capitalism.
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2) He may not be a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, but he is a big proponent of quasi-socialist policies, and a goodly number of his more vocal supporters are socialists. In Obama's defense, he has become far more centrist as of late.
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That's not much of a defense. I'm very tired of people acting like all socialism is bad. If you truly believe that, then I trust you pay someone for the private roads that you had constructed so that you can drive to work. . .
Socialism of the commons is not a bad thing - by which I mean everyone needs to use roads and it would be pretty silly if everyone had to make their own roads to get them where they want to go. Socialising the vehicle transportation infrastructure makes perfect sense, and it would be idiotic to try to do it any other way, yet the "oh my god socialism is BAD!" crowd never seems to manage to think of that.
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3) I believe the blame falls on both parties and cannot be shouldered by one single party. Many policies started under Clinton are coming to fruition now, just as much as Bush's and Reagan's policies are.
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On this we agree, but then Clinton is really Neo-Con Lite. Signing NAFTA and GAT screwed us over as much as many of the things Reagan and the Bush's did. The very idea that it's a good idea to encourage companies to outsource jobs to other countries is a corporatist viewpoint that is, frankly, an affront to the people of this country, and I would argue that it is anti-American.
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In the end, we as a society are responsible for allowing this to occur because of our own greed and devil-may-care attitude toward the consequences.
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Don't stop there. We're also responsible because no one wants to invest themselves in what's going on. There've been a lot of things that politicians have done over the decades which have been very obviously bad ideas. The no-evidence attack on Iraq, NAFTA, GAT, Star Wars, Iran Contra, the first attack on Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia, and of course Clinton's getting away with not kililng bin Laden for his first terrorist attack on our soil. This latter is a particularly bitter example because the media (of which, yes, I am a part, though due to my location and situation at the time I had no chance of doing anything about) had the choice between hammering Clinton for not getting bin Laden for his first attempt to destroy the WTC, and hammering clinton for getting a blowjob. They picked the Monica scandal not because it was what the people needed to know, but because sex sells and they wanted a titillating story. Pathetic.
4) Fox News is no worse than some of the programming on CNN and MSNBC, just on the opposite end of the continuum. In the end, they're all asshats and anything they say should be taken with a grain of salt. Unless of course you lack the ability to think critically, then join the ranks of mouth-breathers.[/QUOTE]
They're worse. Fox is the only one full of slackjawed idiots who are proclaiming things like Obama isn't the legitimate president because the oath of office got flubbed by the Chief Justice.