Split thread: The shift of Tenn. voters toward Republican candidates

[host]

Mod note: These posts have been split off from "Be honest, what would it take you you to change your views on political parties?" because the content is significant enough to warrant its own thread. Carry on, nothing to see here, people.

Originally Posted by Intense1

The OP:

....My late father was a self-described "Harry Truman Democrat", but before he died he was heartsick that the party that he so loved had strayed so far from what my pop felt was HIS democratic party. If Sam Nunn from Georgia had run for King of the World, Pop would have voted for him. Or Bob Dole, though he's a Republican.

What we have on both sides is a sickening lack of a desire to even try to understand the other side's point of view, just a very virolent urge to attack. It's good to have one's ideals and beliefs, it's not good to condemn others for theirs. This concept is considered naive in today's political climate.

Welcome to the forum, Intense1. I have been very curious as to why the majority of Tennessee voters have voted for republican candidates since 2000, and you seem like someone with a reasonable demeanor who I can pose this question to:

Given that the vote of Mr. Gore's "homestaters" in 2000, had the direct effect of costing him the presidency, what have you and your fellow voters who have voted for republican candidates, gained by the shift away from Mr. Gore, and the democrats. I know what you have lost:

1.)The prestige, recognition, and tourism that would have flowed into Tennessee, if Gore had been elected.

2.)The political influence, translated into a higher flow of federal funds into Tennessee, if Tennessee had voted for Gore.

3.)The planning, right about now, and then the completion of a Gore presidential library, in Tennessee, that, along with Gore's birthplace, and his residence, would stimulate worldwide interest, and tourist dollars, and jobs, in Tennessee, as it will, for a long time to come, in Clinton's Arkansas.

4.)A balanced federal budget, replaced by an addition to the federal treasury debt that will mushroom the debt from $5414 billion, in 2001, to at least $9000 billion by Sept. 30, 2009.

5.)Open government....it's gone....reversed from a trend towards justification of the classification of every federal government document, to a new paradigm that began in 2001.....instead free access to documents must be justified, release to the public of presidential documents was delayed in a 2001 executive order, to the point that the presidential libraries complained about the emptiness of their stacks. Documents that had been de-classified, were reclassified, much to the chagrin, and puzzlement of historians who already possessed them.

6.)The peace, and a reputation of the US as a country that was reluctant to ever go to war, and only did so when it was first attacked by another country. The US is now mired in an avoidable war in Iraq that disproportionally claims the lives and limbs of military personnel from less affluent, and more rural states....like Tennessee. The other loss is the opportunity cost of sinking money and a hopelessly flawed military strategy in Iraq, vs. the lost opportunity to lessen the amount of the federal treasury debt, or spend some of the money wasted in Iraq, on new schools, and infrastructure repair, in Tennessee and in other US states.

Good relations and the trust of many other nations' governments, and their citizenry, has also been lost because Iraq was invaded and occupied.

7.)The boundary between church and state....it has definitely been blurred since the 2000 election.

8.)The compact between the federal government and workers rights and workplace safety. The NLRB has been stacked, since 2001, with 5 appointees who comprise the entire board, who are pro-management, none come from a labor, or union organzing background. OSHA has, until the deaths of several miners last year, adopted a policy of lax enforcement and industry self inspection of workplace safety hazards and remedies.

9.)Strong federal Environmental protection iniatives, with a focus on improving air quality. The <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2002/06/14/Business/EPA_eases_air_polluti.shtml">enforcement intiatives that resulted in TECO</a> in Tampa, Fl, dramatically cleaning up it's act.

10.)Bankruptcy protection for individuals. Did the tradeoff of legal protection from debt collection....the ability to make a clean start, after what reputable studies demonstrated is more often bankruptcy induced by illness, worth lowered interest on credit card borrowing, or increased profits to the banks that issue the credit cards, vs. the loss of the option, by Tennesseans, who "enjoy", on average, lower per capita income to begin with, after a financial setback caused by an illness, a fresh start with their debts erased?
Hasn't the only beneficiary of "the Bankruptcy Reform Act", been the financial corps. who successfully lobbied for it's passage?

I could go on....but I'm sure that you get the idea. What economic benefits have come (or will come to your state), and what have Tennesseans gained, vs. what they could have retained, if they had voted for Gore, instead of for Bush? Is the air or water cleaner, are workers enjoying better or even equal protection, is your state a safer or more popular tourist destination, because you vote republican? Do the economic "benefits" to your state and it's people, outweight the impact of an addition of $3600 billion to total treasury debt? Wouldn't a portion of that debt, if it had to be accrued, had been better spent if a mximum of $2000 billion had been borrowed to pay the SSI Trust fund debt, which would have made funding of SSI "privatization", actually practical, and possible?

If most people vote republican, the consequence will be continued "one party rule" of the federal government. Your answers to the list of what Tennessee has gained, to replace the losses on the ten category list above, may give you insight into the continued consequences of voting for increasingly unaccountable, unresponsive, and secret, government administration.

What are the pluses that you perceive, for voting republican, vs. democrat?
I may seem partisan, but I started out neutral, many years ago, and I read a lot. I don't find any benefit for the people of a below average per capita wealth and income state, to vote to deny a "son" of that state, the presidency in exchange for what they've gotten in return.

Is anything that I've posted, untrue? Why would you even consider voting to keep this party in total control? Would democrats do less for Tennesseans? How?

[Intense1]

Greetings. Go get a drink and a snack folks, this might be a long one.

Host, thanks for the questions. I can tell you have thought this through very thoroughly, and can appreciate your candor and obvious intelligence. You might want to know, though, that you have come into a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent.

For the past two decades I have not lived in Tennessee full time. I have lived in various places in Asia, mostly in Japan (7 and a half years - I'm hoping this will get some solidarity with Grace sympathy) and Thailand (hoping for some "awe, she works with impoverished kids" sympathy)

(edit: Since Grace is with Gilda and not Host, I'm hoping that I will get Gilda/Grace sympathy by proxy )

Actually, I am not looking for sympathy, just a bit of consideration as I write from my feelings on being a Tennessean who did not vote for our son, Al. I am joined by millions of others who did the same, and because of the number of D's and R's in our state, I am joined by some good number of Tennessee democrats.

Your points are in BOLD ITALIC.

1.)The prestige, recognition, and tourism that would have flowed into Tennessee, if Gore had been elected.

Tennessee, the Volunteer State, already has egads! loads of tourism, what with being birthplace of the blues and the home of the ever living Elvis (West Tennessee/Memphis), Country Music Capital of the World (Middle Tennessee/Nashville), and the wonder that is the Great Smoky Mountains (East Tennessee/Knoxville). Lesser well-known are the, 1) Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration in Shelbyville, 2) Columbia Mule Festival in, well, Columbia, 3) the Hermitage, birthplace and family home of Pres. Andrew Jackson in Donelson, 4) the Museum of Appalacia, in Norris, 5) Oak Ridge Atomic Energy Museum in, well, Oak Ridge, and 6) Davy Crocket's Log Cabin outside of Jefferson City, which is my favorite because my uncle took me there when I was six and bought me a tomahawk which I promptly used to hit my big brother over the head. Plus, there's always the world famous Bucksnort Trout Farm, in lovely scenic McEwen, just west of Nashville, for those who really want to live on the edge.

Recognition is fine and all that, but we've already produced three presidents - Mr. Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson - more than any of our other bordering states except for Virginia.

Prestige from being Al Gore's home state? Hah! Al hadn't spent hardly more than three days straight in our fair state since he was running for Senate. Most of Al's life (pre 2000) has been spent in D.C., what with his dad being in politics. None of his primary or secondary schooling was in Tennessee, if I am not mistaken. And he often spent down times in Tipper's parents' home state Virginia.

2.)The political influence, translated into a higher flow of federal funds into Tennessee, if Tennessee had voted for Gore.

Oh, but you see, our state has a balanced budget that has come from something called "Tobacco Money" (having not been around so much in the past 2 decades, I'm not really sure what that is.) We have a state run healthcare program (TennCare), which is, incidentally, eating into that Tobacco Money quicker than a Southern Baptist does a casserole. We have the TVA, which is the world's largest electricity provider (or something like that.) And we have the Tennessee Titans, which we're hoping will generate some sympathy donations from kind-hearted football lovin' folk.

3.)The planning, right about now, and then the completion of a Gore presidential library, in Tennessee, that, along with Gore's birthplace, and his residence, would stimulate worldwide interest, and tourist dollars, and jobs, in Tennessee, as it will, for a long time to come, in Clinton's Arkansas.

Don't want it. With a man so boring as Al, do you think people would actually plan their vacations around visiting the "Al Gore Presidential Library"? We could have offered a package deal - catch the Gore Library, and then take a day enjoying the Bucksnort Trout Farm or the Columbia Mule festival, which, incidentally, actually draws thousands from all over the world. Seriously, it could only be possible to build it in Nashville (he's from Carthage/Sparta, which is a couple of hours outside Nashville, and not a tremendously easy to visit area), but a Gore Library visit would only be another half-day visit tacked on by those who have come to see the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum/Grand Ol' Opry.

Now if he could have built a replica of the very office in which he had invented the internet, now, that I would even pay to see.

4.)A balanced federal budget, replaced by an addition to the federal treasury debt that will mushroom the debt from $5414 billion, in 2001, to at least $9000 billion by Sept. 30, 2009.

Now you're speculating - no one can tell what he would have done. He might have run us into debt investing gajillions of dollars in solar corn windmills. Or, what's more likely, he might have plundered the military and left us in very dire straights in the aftermath of 9/11.

5.)Open government....it's gone....reversed from a trend towards justification of the classification of every federal government document, to a new paradigm that began in 2001.....instead free access to documents must be justified, release to the public of presidential documents was delayed in a 2001 executive order, to the point that the presidential libraries complained about the emptiness of their stacks. Documents that had been de-classified, were reclassified, much to the chagrin, and puzzlement of historians who already possessed them.

Have no idea about this...... but again, speculation. He might have opened ALL documents to historians, and vital secrets could have been revealed. On the internet. Which he invented. Or he could have hired Sandy Berger to go in to the Archives and stash more documents down his pants. Who knows?

6.)The peace, and a reputation of the US as a country that was reluctant to ever go to war, and only did so when it was first attacked by another country. The US is now mired in an avoidable war in Iraq that disproportionally claims the lives and limbs of military personnel from less affluent, and more rural states....like Tennessee. The other loss is the opportunity cost of sinking money and a hopelessly flawed military strategy in Iraq, vs. the lost opportunity to lessen the amount of the federal treasury debt, or spend some of the money wasted in Iraq, on new schools, and infrastructure repair, in Tennessee and in other US states.

Good relations and the trust of many other nations' governments, and their citizenry, has also been lost because Iraq was invaded and occupied.

Or, because of his tree-hugging ozone-sniffing beliefs, we could have been a laughing stock of all technologically advanced nations, not to mention put in financial straights because of countries like China and India who were not included in the Gore-generated Kyoto Protocols, which he would have probably tried to enforce by retooling it into some sort of Executive Order. We could have been buddy buddy with everyone, never upsetting anyone - particularly the Europeans, keeping a warm and fuzzy kumbaya feeling, and been attacked by terrorists anyway. And, I might add, the list of democratic leaders who said "Sadaam has/is pursuing WMD, he must be stopped" is a long one. Look it up, it'll probably have Al's name.

But again - you're speculating. He might have not done anything to Sadaam, leaving him in power, and Sadaam could have decimated another 100 villages of Kurds or Shiites. Sadaam might have built up his chemical/biological weapons stash, and used it again. Al might have moved the UN for more resolutions, and more resolutions and more resolutions, and then UN resolutions would become even more meaningless and powerless than they are now, fit to only become recycled toilet tissue, which is basically what they've become anyways.

7.)The boundary between church and state....it has definitely been blurred since the 2000 election.

Where? Show me. I want to know. I see no law that has been enacted by congress that has interfered with or endorsed religion of any kind. But if you're saying that a citizen doesn't have the right to practice his/her religious beliefs freely - even if the citizen is the President - then that's a bit more than a blurring, it's an infringement of one person's rights.

8.)The compact between the federal government and workers rights and workplace safety. The NLRB has been stacked, since 2001, with 5 appointees who comprise the entire board, who are pro-management, none come from a labor, or union organzing background. OSHA has, until the deaths of several miners last year, adopted a policy of lax enforcement and industry self inspection of workplace safety hazards and remedies.

A president has the right to put whomever he/she wants on the various boards of government, as was evidenced by the Clinton administration's loading of the Civil Rights Commission. Now, I'll agree the mine safety issue has been a disaster for decades, encompassing the presidencies of D's and R's. It's a mess, for sure, and does need to be reformed so that the protection of miners is at the top of all other issues. A better labor union solution for miners is something I would go for. But I'm a Teamser's daughter, so labor is not such a "right-wingy" topic for me. My mom is more financially secure because she receives my dad's Teamster's survivor pension, and I'm grateful for that. Granted, that money probably has come from some hefty Vegas winnings...... hee

9.)Strong federal Environmental protection iniatives, with a focus on improving air quality. The enforcement intiatives that resulted in TECO in Tampa, Fl, dramatically cleaning up it's act.

I'm not familiar with your example, and I'm too caught up in my cold right now to try and think through the research on it - sorry. But "strong" initiatives? At the expense of what? And what responsibility have the individual states in this? Would Al have come down hard on businesses and thrown tens of thousands out of work just for faster results? The business community was afraid of that, if I remember the various news/economic reports and polls at that time. (sorry again - can't site any sources but my memory)

10.) Bankruptcy protection for individuals. Did the tradeoff of legal protection from debt collection....the ability to make a clean start, after what reputable studies demonstrated is more often bankruptcy induced by illness, worth lowered interest on credit card borrowing, or increased profits to the banks that issue the credit cards, vs. the loss of the option, by Tennesseans, who "enjoy", on average, lower per capita income to begin with, after a financial setback caused by an illness, a fresh start with their debts erased?
Hasn't the only beneficiary of "the Bankruptcy Reform Act", been the financial corps. who successfully lobbied for it's passage?

Here I have personal family anecdotal evidence (hee - I call it evidence.) My brother's wife (ex now) loved getting those credit card offers in the mail, and by the time they were going to be evicted from their home because she hadn't been paying their mortgage, they had accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt, with nothing really to show for it but mountains of toys for my nephews and records of cash advances which promptly went to her cocaine dealer. As she was supposed to be paying the bills, he was devastated to discover the extent to which she had gone for her various habits (Xanax, valium, coke, crack, booze, boyfriends, toys, videos). He found all the credit card bills - in a literally huge pile - on the floor of a closet. And before you feel sorry for her for addiction, don't. She took my nephews along for numerous meetings with her dealer/boyfriend, and by all accounts even drove stoned with them in the car. In the fall out, she filed for divorce, using the services of a lawyer who was her mother's friend from highschool (also an ex-judge in our county, very respected.) My brother didn't have the money to pay a simple 1,000 dollar retainer for a lawyer, so HER sister loaned him the money (my mom is on a limited income and couldn't afford to help him.)

And now? She isn't working - hasn't in several years - and has remarried. My brother didn't file for bankruptcy, he's paying off those debts little by little, while paying child support and getting the boys on weekends. My brother wouldn't think of filing - our dad taught us that a man pays his debts. He works two jobs to do so. She bitched when he stopped paying spousal support after her marriage.

The kicker? She volunteered in Al Gore's 2000 campaign.

------------

Yes, I could go on as well, and as you've noticed, I already have!!! I'm not so sure that we could have benefited materially from Al's having been president - again, speculation. But what I do know is this: Tennessee did not forsake Al Gore, Al Gore forsook Tennessee. He did not represent the values of our state, so our state did not vote for him. West Tennessee is very democratic, East Tennessee is very republican. Middle Tennessee is where the battle is won, and he couldn't win the hearts and minds of Nashville. Period. Full stop.

We have 2 Republican Senators, and have since Al left the senate. Our Representatives are 5/4, dems to reps. Right now our Gov is a dem, but the one before him wasn't. And even our democrats are fairly conservative, compared to many nationally. So when you castigate us for not voting for more liberals, you might want to check and see just what kind of state Tennessee is first, and what we hold as important in regards to values. We are southern, and we are for the most part, conservative, even democrats.

We didn't kill the Limburgh baby, we didn't cause the stock market crash of '29, we didn't cause the great depression, we didn't kill Kennedy, we didn't shoot J.R., and we didn't cause Albert Gore, Jr. to lose the 2000 election. He did that, all by himself (not the other things, just the election.)

[Intense1]

Sorry, Host, didn't answer your other questions before. I shall attempt to do so now.

If most people vote republican, the consequence will be continued "one party rule" of the federal government. Your answers to the list of what Tennessee has gained, to replace the losses on the ten category list above, may give you insight into the continued consequences of voting for increasingly unaccountable, unresponsive, and secret, government administration.

First, did you think you could convert me? Hee hee..... I am resistant to your solar-powered political ray-gun, as I have on my trusty nuclear republican armor.

Haven't you noticed that in our political spectrum, power is a pendulum? It shifts from left to right, and because of that, things seem to balance out. In the 60's, people were tired of the Johnson Vietnam war stuff, and so didn't support his party's candidate, they went with Nixon. After the crap that was Watergate, people didn't want any reminders of Nixon and dishonesty, so they went with Carter, the more "moral" choice. After Carter, people didn't want the sense of helplessness that went with the Iran hostage situation NOR the whole energy crisis, so they went with Reagan, the "power" guy. And so on. Political power is just that way, and I think America is better for it. Even if it means that my party is out of power for a while - ESPECIALLY if it means this. Sitting on the sidelines tends to cause a group to sharpen what they believe, and that can only mean better choices for us citizens.

And, just to mention, republicans have only been in power of both houses of congress for the past 12 years. Democrats had it a long time before then, and yet were vulnerable when the electorate were presented with a very consise, well-writen plan for where republicans wanted the country to go (Contract for America). The electorate went for it, and in a mighty way.

What are the pluses that you perceive, for voting republican, vs. democrat?

While I admire the traits of some democratic candidates, on the whole, I trust republicans more. Especially with all the Foley stuff going on. Yes, that is a strange opening of this point, but let me explain. Back in the 70's when two congressmen were caught with page seduction issues, one (the republican) resigned, one didn't (the democrat). The democrat went on to stick it out and received A STANDING OVATION by the democrats on the floor of the house, THREE TIMES. He had sex with a 17 year old girl, and he got a STANDING OVATION? Where, I ask you, is the honor in the democratic party? WHERE? Mr. Foley resigned, even before all the stuff came out about the IM's he'd sent that boy. And what are the democrats doing? CALLING FOR RESIGNATIONS. Yes, I know there is all the who-knew-what-when stuff, but the fact remains: Republicans take responsibility for their actions, democrats wave off their responsibilities and are APPLAUDED for it. Where is the honor, I ask you?

That's not to mention the Louisianna representative who was in possession of 90,000 frozen dollars. Did Ms. Pelosi ask for his resignation? No. Why not? Because democrats want to keep that seat, and if they don't address it, then it doesn't become real. You let a republican get caught with frozen bucks and he'd be hoist from the house ceiling.

I may seem partisan, but I started out neutral, many years ago, and I read a lot. I don't find any benefit for the people of a below average per capita wealth and income state, to vote to deny a "son" of that state, the presidency in exchange for what they've gotten in return.

You seem to think we're all just sitting here barefooted counting our Food Stamps and hoping that we can make ends meet. Tennessee is a very prosperous state on the whole. If you consider that many elements in the stats regarding poverty include the Appalachian region, then perhaps you can understand that it's actually not so poor here. Our unemployment rate is something like 5.8 percent (yes, above national, but it's not in the double digits like many states are) and we've seen a net job growth of 55,000 in the last couple of years. Coupled with the fact that we don't have a state income tax and property values are very attractive, it makes great sense for you to move here!!! Yea!! Come on! Join us....you know you want to. We have hundreds of universities and colleges that are top-notch schools, and a very diverse population. And we have Elvis. He always shows up, somewhere or another, looking for donuts, thank you very much.

An article in the Tennessean newspaper a few months ago told of a few families who had moved to Tennessee from other states, most notably, California. They had sold their small houses in their home states and moved here, and were AMAZED at what kind of house they could buy for their money. And equally amazed at how cheap is is to live here, compared to their former home states. And some of them, self-described middle class, moved into Brentwood, a more affluent section of Nashville.

Is anything that I've posted, untrue? Why would you even consider voting to keep this party in total control? Would democrats do less for Tennesseans? How?

Democrats could do well for Tennessee, just show me the democrats you have in mind. I have no interest in voting for someone who does not represent our values (I include all of Tennessee's values), and I'm not alone. There's millions like me. We're here, we're conservative, get over it.

Yee-Hoo! Got my own thread, and at such a young age.

[host]

Intense1: Wow...thanks for the detailed reply. I'm only going to address three areas that you responded to, in this post. I'll try to get to more, tomorrow.

<b>Al Gore is a visionary, he did not claim that he "invented the internet: </b>

http://www.mediaresearch.org/BozellC...ol20001010.asp
<b>Gore Lies Prove Media Power Shift</b>
by L. Brent Bozell III
October 10, 2000

......Nearly every Gore gaffe that's become part of the campaign talking points was originally ignored by the major media, which attempted to strangle the mistakes and embarrassments in the crib. Now that they're resonating, liberals are huffing and puffing about how Gore's gaffes aren't really gaffes. He didn't really say he "invented the Internet," they complain, he "took the initiative in creating it." The real point here isn't the complete lack of distinction between "inventing" and "creating" the Internet. It's that Gore said this on March 9, 1999, to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, and Blitzer didn't even blink. He didn't follow up. His eyebrows didn't even move. He just asked another question. The statement went completely unreported on television for ten days.

That same pattern of media apathy and omission has followed almost every other Gore boast and flub. .....

Intense1, I've recently posted much about L. Brent Bozell III's 19 year disinformation campaign to control the news media by branding much of it as having a "liberal bias", for the purpose of convincing people to read "news" filtered by sites similar to his CNSnwes.com, newsbusters.org , MRC.org , and townhall.com . He tries to intimidate the actual US working press, with his false and misleading accusations of their "liberal bias", and by "selling" MRC's "research. In 1992, Bozell claimed that "90 percent" of articles about "liberal media bias" were based on MRC "reasearch.
<b>Here is the actual background of the myth that Al Gore said, "I invented the internet.":</b>
Al Gore had more influence over the rapid development of the internet, than any other federal legislator:
(Take note of the dates of the articles that I've cited, and that 1994 was considered the year of "early" adapters.)

http://www.sethf.com/gore/
<b>Al Gore "invented the Internet" - resources</b>
by <a href="http://sethf.com/">Seth Finkelstein</a>

<p>
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/09/president.2000/transcript.gore/" target="62d019beaeaf6dca44b7aceb6e823279">Transcript: Vice President Gore on CNN's 'Late Edition'</a>
</p>

<blockquote><p>
BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and
international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit
of the politics right now....
</p><p>
....GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my
campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope
that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel
that it will be.
</p><p>
But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American
people. I've traveled to every part of this country during
the last six years. During my service in the United States
Congress, <b>I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I
took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of
initiatives that have proven to be important...</b>
</p></blockquote>

<p>
The origins of the story:
</p>
<dl>
<dt><a href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,18390,00.html" target="e14996b366604267d354b74ba9c09d22">No Credit Where It's Due</a>

</dt>
<dd>
The original <em>Wired News</em> article by Declan McCullagh, Mar. 11, 1999,
which started the claim:<br />
"It's a time-honored tradition for presidential hopefuls to claim
credit for other people's successes. ... After Gore took credit for
the Internet, ...<br />
(note - first use found so far of "invent" wording is in a mailing-list message headline composed by Declan McCullagh, publicizing a Republican press release from the story:<br>
<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010531124315/http://www.politechbot.com/p-00285.html" target="0a1ac4c44826104216d0cbd9f0a8a90c">House Majority Leader Armey on Gore &quot;inventing the Internet&quot;</a>
)
</dd>
<dt><a href="http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,18655,00.html" target="32067309c5f08c7cb2df3ad827addccb">The Laugh Is on Gore</a>

</dt>
<dd>
One follow-up <em>Wired News</em> article by Declan McCullagh, Mar. 23, 1999,
pressing the claim:<br />
"Al Gore's timing was as unfortunate as his boast. Just as Republicans
were beginning to eye the 2000 presidential race in earnest, the vice
president offered up a whopper of a tall tale in which he claimed to
have invented the Internet."
</dd>
<dt><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20001027190912/http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39301,00.html" target="3e2c48059737d08ba99d40c49cda40f5">The Mother of Gore's Invention</a>
</dt>
<dd>
A much later <em>Wired News</em> article by Declan McCullagh, Oct. 17, 2000,
stating:<br />

The basic debunking of the story:

<dl>
<dt><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040104090503/http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore.and.the.Inte.html" target="3c28c921bb5f1bbd7776691d87cf7ad1">Al Gore and The Internet</a>
</dt>
<dd>
<em>Red Rock Eater News Service</em>, Phil Agre, Mar. 28 2000<br />
"That Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has got to be the
most successful flat-out lie since, well, the last one."
</dd>
<dt><a href="http://dir.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gore_internet/index.html" target="046a3b7b59ebc53f9a105bea32d8ba37">Did Gore invent the Internet?</a>

</dt>
<dd>
<em>Salon</em>, Scott Rosenberg, Oct. 5, 2000<br />
"Actually, the vice president never claimed to have done so -- but he did help the Net along. Some people would rather forget that."
</dd>

<h3>Three internet founders, Kahm, Cerf, and Farber, vouch for Al Gore:</h3>
<dt><a href="http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html" target="9c036d9a9a6c58ec87af8ad7dbc5fb75">Al Gore's support of the Internet, by V.Cerf and B.Kahn [ I second this djf]</a>
</dt>
<dd>
Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, seconded by Dave Farber, Sep 28 2000<br />
"Bob and I believe that the vice president deserves significant
credit for his early recognition of the importance of what has
become the Internet."
</dd>
</dl>

More debunking of the story:

<dl>
<dt><a href="http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/wiggins/" target="f1127dfe2e13b74be30bfda834313487">Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet</a>
</dt>
<dd>
<em>First Monday</em>, Richard Wiggins, October 2000<br />

"This article explores how the perception arose that Gore in essence
padded his resume by claiming to have invented the Internet. We will
then explore Gore's actual record, in particular as a U.S. Senator in
the late 1980s, as an advocate for high-speed national
networking. Finally we will examine this case as an example of the
trivialization of discourse and debate in American politics."
</dd>

<dt><a href="http://www.dailyhowler.com/h032699_1.shtml" target="2dcf118b56cae86eaf1b70e6e70e1069">Dick Armey faxed out some Internet spin. The press corps typed it up.</a>
</dt>
<dd>

<em>Daily Howler</em> March 26 1999<br />
"Did Vice President Gore "invent the Internet?" Better yet: Did he say
that he did?"
</dd>

<dt><a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0004.parry.html" target="6ffe2deee0dbbe08036a65ce1cade418">He's No Pinocchio - How the press has exaggerated Al Gore's exaggerations</a>
</dt>
<dd>
<em>Washington Monthly</em>, Robert Parry, Apr. 2000<br />
"But an examination of dozens of these articles, which purport to
detail the chief cases of Gore's exaggerations and lies, finds
journalists often engaging in their own exaggerations or
even publishing outright falsehoods about Gore."
</dd>

</dl>

Yet more debunking of the story:

<dl>
<dt><a href="http://www.dailyhowler.com/h032999_1.shtml" target="fe8be7f17450aa86f7377700df197caa">What Gore had said wasn't silly enough. So Dick Armey--and the press corps--reinvented it.</a>
</dt>
<dd>
<em>Daily Howler</em>, Mar. 29 1999<br />
"Why didn't Blitzer challenge Gore's remark? Why didn't journalists
comment originally? Easy. They didn't do so because what Gore had said
wasn't that far off--until, with the help of credulous scribes, Dick
Armey reinvented the story."
</dd>
<dt><a href="http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml" target="811d69073e35efa90cf8c81680fa7acc">Inventing Invented The Internet!</a>
</dt>
<dd>

<em>Daily Howler</em>, Dec. 3, 2002<br />
"No one said Boo about Gore's remark. Then, the RNC spin-points arrived"
</dd>
</dl>


Detailed Internet-history debunking of the story:

<dl>
<dt><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20030815205809/http://swexpert.com/C7/SE.C7.MAY.99.pdf" target="fc7ed6d1c56a338337ef1da9814c55eb">Revisionist Internet History</a>
</dt>
<dd>
<em>Matrix News</em>, John S. Quarterman, April 1999<br />

"Almost all of the complaints I've seen about Gore's statement do not
come from the people who should have the most to say about it. The one
who should know as well as anybody, Vint Cerf, had quite a different
opinion, ..."
</dd>
</dl>

Study of the story:

<dl>
<dt><a href="http://www.igs.berkeley.edu/research_programs/ppt/papers/Gore412.pdf" target="5eb3e3dc7ecfa5d1f532855c650608ce">When Truth Doesn't Win in the Marketplace of Ideas: Entrapping Schemas, Gore, and the Internet</a>
</dt>
<dd>
Chip Heath &amp; Jonathan Bendor,
Stanford University,
March 10, 2003<br />
"... we study an example where Al Gore was falsely attributed with saying
that he "invented the internet." We show that the false version of
Gore's statement dominated the true one in mainstream political
discourse by a wide margin. This is a clear failure in the marketplace
of ideas, which we document in detail."
</dd>
</dl>

Last updated: Fri Apr 28 09:14:05 EDT 2006

THE BILL GATES BET FUSING TVS, PCS, PHONES A SURE THING; [NORTH SPORTS FINAL Edition]
James Coates, Tribune Staff Writer.. Chicago Tribune (pre-1997 Fulltext). Chicago, Ill.: Oct 21, 1993. pg. 1

.....Considered a visionary since he formed Microsoft before he was old enough to vote, Gates said the coming web of cable-telephone-computer links isn't exactly an electronic or <b>information "superhighway," a name frequently used by Vice President Al Gore</b>, who heads the president's technology task force.

"It's not a highway, because governments build highways, and I certainly don't want the government to build this," said Gates.

He added, "It's not a highway, because on a highway everybody goes down the same road. This is more like a lot of country lanes."

But while he dislikes the name, Gates is enraptured by the idea....

The Internet-This Year's Virtual Favorite for `Man of the Year'; [Home Edition]
MICHAEL SCHRAGE. Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext). Los Angeles, Calif.: Dec 23, 1993. pg. 1

With holiday hindsight, Time magazine's decision a decade ago to name the computer as its "Man of the Year" doesn't look half bad. This year, Time's Zeitgeist award should go to a technology that's got more character, influence and complexity than any purely human contender.

It's a uniquely American medium that's grown more rapidly than John Malone's TCI ever did; that's even more global than Ted (1991 Man of the Year) Turner's CNN, and is light-years more interactive than Barry Diller's QVC Network, with or without Paramount.

It's called the Internet and there has never been a mass medium quite like it.

No one really "owns" the Internet, and no one really "manages" it. But over the past year, it has exploded into public consciousness as the multimedia phenomenon that merits serious attention from anyone who wants to understand what the future will look like.

In barely 12 months, the Internet has gone from a technovelty to a chic media cliche. The Net became a front-page story in every major newspaper in America (including this one); cover story for magazines such as the New Republic; a standing reference on CNN, and, inevitably, the inspiration for a New Yorker cartoon-two canines at a keyboard, with one pooch saying to the other, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."

<b>When Al Gore speechifies about-all together now!-"The Information Superhighway,"</b> when Bell Atlantic Chairman Ray Smith waxes lyrical about his company's proposed $30-billion-plus acquisition of TCI, and when Barry Diller preaches the gospel of multimedia interactivity, their visions are based less on pie-in-the-sky promises than the Internet's astonishing growth and evolution. Media convergence? Internet defines the state of the art. Book publishers, magazine publishers and cable companies who hadn't even heard of the Internet two years ago now pump their media content into the Net. Can Sega and Nintendo be far behind?

Originally designed 25 years ago to be the computer network for the Pentagon's research community, Internet has evolved into the most important computer network in the world...... It is often cheaper to log on to Internet than to subscribe to cable TV.

But far more important than any information it carries are the communities that Internet creates. The Internet is more about relationships between people than data bursts between machines. .....De Tocqueville would marvel-but perhaps not be surprised-at the Internet as the natural technological extension of those dual American ideals, democracy and the frontier.

In fact, the Internet embodies just the kind of paradoxes that Americans are so good at and the rest of the world finds so irresistible. .... It's a network for the elite, yet it's very egalitarian.

There's no real government, yet no real anarchy. It's a creature of government planners that's also the soul of new enterprise and entrepreneurship. It's a product of Cold War funding that has become a virtual playground for children of all ages. The brightest scientists in the world use it as a medium for collaboration. Businesses want to turn it into a marketplace. There's pornography, and there's the Bible. People have best friends there that they've never met in person. Even the French, despite their fears of American technological imperialism, want to post imagery of their art treasures on the Net.

The Internet has been relentlessly growing and succeeding because it represents everything that's best about America.....

Of course, the Internet now faces precisely the same kinds of questions and doubts that inevitably confront any growing community:

* Just how commercial will the Internet become when the Barry Dillers and Raymond Smiths decide to take a byte?...

....In many respects, making the Internet "Man of the Year" would be less a recapitulation of Time's 1982 award to the computer than a reminder of Time's first "Man of the Year" in 1927-Charles Lindbergh. Then, an adventurous American and a new technology captured the imagination of the world. Today, it's only appropriate that we have an adventurous community and a new technology that's doing the same thing.

U.S. Calls for Creation of Global Computing Network Communications: Gore urges nations to work together to link homes, schools and offices around the world.; [Home Edition]
Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext). Los Angeles, Calif.: Mar 22, 1994. pg. 3

The United States urged all nations Monday to help build a "network of networks" that could pump billions of dollars into the world's economy by linking computers in homes, schools and offices around the globe.

Vice President Al Gore told a U.N.-sponsored conference on telecommunications development that the world has the financial and technical resources to spin such a web, which he called a "global information infrastructure."

"We now can at last create a planetary information network that transmits messages and images with the speed of light from the largest city to the smallest village on every continent," Gore said.

According to the United States, a world computing network could be built and run by the private sector.

Gore noted in his speech that the network is already being built in bits and pieces as fiber-optic cable is laid under seas and across continents.

His announcement coincided with the creation of a joint venture between Microsoft and McCaw Cellular that appears to share the global network philosophy.

Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, and Craig McCaw, who built McCaw Cellular Communications into the largest cellular telephone company in the country, formed Teledesic Corp.

The new company, to be based in Kirkland, Wash., is proposing to build a $9-billion system of 840 small satellites that would circle the globe to form a communications network.

*

In his speech to an audience including some of the world's top policy-makers and the biggest names in the communications industry, Gore said the United States will throw its weight behind the global network project.

He described a vision of an intelligent web capable of improving international communications, of raising businesses' productivity, taking education to the farthest corners of the world and even promoting representative democracy.

"The global economy will also be be driven by the growth of the Information Age. Hundreds of billions of dollars can be added to world growth if we commit to the" network, Gore said.

The nine-day conference was organized by the International Telecommunications Union, a U.N. body with 182 members. It will also work on an action plan to extend modern communications to the least-developed countries.

According to the ITU, despite numerous technological breakthroughs and the fact that telecommunications have proved to be a profitable venture around the world, there is a huge gap between rich and poor nations.

While the 24 high-income developed countries have 70% of the world's telephone lines and only 15% of its population, ITU Secretary General Pekka Tarjanne said that two-thirds of the world's homes still have no phones.

The ITU estimates the world must invest about $530 billion by the year 2000 to boost "tele-density"-a measure of main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants-to 14.5 from 10.

However, Tarjanne noted recent success stories among developing countries that have managed to build up their telecommunications, singling out Botswana, Turkey, South Korea and Chile.

"There is no blueprint for success, although there are common points that can be adopted by developing countries," he said.

*

Gore and Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem, who in 1990 opened his country's ailing telephone system to private-sector operators, spoke in favor of privatization and competition in telecommunications.

Gore noted that privatization has spurred development of telecommunications in dozens of countries, and he urged others to follow the lead of Argentina, Chile and Mexico.

"But privatization is not enough. Competition is needed as well," Gore said. "Today, there are many more technology options than in the past, and it is not only possible but desirable to have different companies running competing but interconnected networks."

GOVERNMENT ON-LINE: NATIONAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW; [FINAL Edition]
Barbara J. Saffir. The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext). Washington, D.C.: Sep 2, 1994. pg. a.21

INFO-GRAPHIC,,Twp CAPTION: When Vice President Gore released his first National Performance Review (NPR) report last September, more than 100,000 copies were downloaded electronically within a week. Gore, who sees widespread access to information technology as crucial to his "reinventing government" initiative, has long boasted an Internet e-mail address (vice.president@whitehouse.gov). He has made NPR information available through the Internet, on government bulletin boards (including FedWorld and Office of Personnel Management) and via commercial computer networks. The following shows how to obtain electronic versions of National Performance Review documents and how to communicate with NetResults, the "electronic arm" of NPR. 1) NETRESULTS NetResults, an organization of government employees and private citizens linked by computer, helps promote NPR's recommendations for improving government. Using computer networks as its primary vehicle, NetResults links government workers and other citizens to each other and to the information they need to achieve the changes recommended by NPR. NetResults also acts as an umbrella network, fostering the creation of subsidiary networks, such as IGNet. Internet path: gopher ace.esusda.gov Menus: go to Americans Communicating Electronically then to National Performance Review Information Note: Beginning Tuesday, NPR and NetResults will begin trials of its World Wide Web access (http://www.npr.gov) What is available: NPR announcements, reports, newsletters (called the "NPR Reinvention Roundtable"), success stories and information on NPR "Reinvention Councils" and working groups, such as the President's Management Council and Community Empowerment Board. Reports include the Executive Summary, "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less" along with subject- and agency-specific reports as they become available. ....The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory worked with NetResults to create a colorful, point-and-click Internet environment that makes finding NPR information easier and more pleasant. + The Defense Evaluation Support Activity (DESA) group teamed up with NetResults to create a multimedia CD-ROM version of NPR's second annual report, due out Sept. 14. The disk is designed to come alive with videos, sound and words. The report will also be available in a paper version; in electronic text, accessible through the "old-fashioned" Internet; and in images and hypertext in a new hi-tech Windows-like Internet environment. + Vice President Gore and the NPR will host their first "electronic town meeting" this fall. The experimental Internet e-mail-based conference, which will be conducted over approximately two weeks, is designed to engage federal workers nationwide in National Performance Review activities. To obtain more information, send an Internet e-mail message to info@town-hall.ai.mit.edu. - By Barbara J. Saffir (saffirb@twp.com), with research assistance by Roland Matifas

Senators Near Compromise on 'Information Highway'
Burgess, John. The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.: Jul 10, 1991. pg. C1

Senators J. Bennett Johnston (D-LA) and Albert Gore Jr (D-TN) have reached a compromise under which the White House would select the federal agencies to lead in the development of high-performance computers and a national network of "information highways."

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/print?id=833922
And at the ninth annual international Webby Awards in New York this week, one particular Net figure finally received his due: Former Vice President Al Gore.

Officials at the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences honored Gore with the Webby Lifetime Achievement award in recognition of his pivotal role in the development of the Internet over the last 30 years.

Gore had been skewered during the 2000 presidential campaign for his remarks that suggested he was the Net's creator. But <b>Vinton Cerf, one of the scientists who helped craft the actual Internet architecture, acknowledged that Gore was responsible</b> for crafting important legislation and lending needed political support for "the information superhighway."

The former vice president accepted the award from Cerf. But like other Webby winners, the usually talkative Gore had to limit his acceptance speech to five words or less.

Thus, remarked Gore, "Please don't recount this vote."

Tiffany Shlain, founder and chairperson of the Webby Award

http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/cenear/950327/art16.html
Chemical & Engineering News,
March 27, 1995
Policy Issues Permeate Efforts To Create Information Infrastructure
Wil Lepkowski,
C&EN Washington

....Also handy is NII's most recent progress report, which recounts information superhighway projects in the various government agencies. The Tennessee Valley Authority, for example, is linking schools within its region. The Small Business Administration is transferring Ballistic Missile Defense Organization encryption technology to business use....

.....The fascination to much of this is the politics. The new Republican majority in Congress has one vision of the information future; the Clinton-Gore Administration has another. The tension is bound to rise as the goals of NII under a Democratic Administration are played out against the "less-government-is-better" philosophy of Congress' Republican majority.

There already are clues. NTIA's budget for carrying out some of the above goals - its Telecommunications & Information Infrastructure Program - totaled $64 million for fiscal 1995. It includes matching grants for hospitals, schools, libraries, state and local governments, and various nonprofit institutions. In two recently enacted rescission packages, however, all those programs have been eliminated. Similar programs slated to be funded by other agencies face similar threats. <b>President Clinton will probably veto those cuts.</b>

The Gingrich school of information policy may be high on information's potential, but it is low on any federal government involvement in catalyzing its progress. That is consistent with the belief by Gingrich and PFF that the information revolution implies, even mandates, less government. Is that true? No one knows yet, but here is what one expert in the computer field has to say.

<b>Robert E. Kahn</b>, president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Reston, Va., and one of the founders of the Internet, says: "It seems uncontested that governments have a fundamental role to play in the funding of advanced research and development which can push the frontiers of technology and knowledge. It also seems clear that governments must provide the necessary oversight to ensure that the standards process is fair and equitable.

"Governments must also take responsibility for helping to resolve problems that arise where independent decision-making by multiple countries intrudes on further interworking problems. The U.S. government must provide the leadership in many dimensions, including the removal of barriers where they inhibit and can be removed; the insertion of legal, security, or regulatory mechanisms where the national interest so dictates; and the direct stimulation of public-interest sectors that require and merit government assistance," Kahn says.

<b>Right now, the components of that Global Information Infrastructure are plodding toward Gore's goal</b> of seamlessness through NII by its various task forces coordinated in the Commerce Department. All reports on the subject say it won't happen overnight and will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The goal is to have the television set, for example, give way to computers receiving broadband signals via satellite and onto fiber-optic cable from everywhere in the world. Interactivity, not couch potatoism, it is promised, will be the characteristic of the new age.

<b>Gore's NII lists several categories in which information is part of public policy:</b>

* Telecommunications, broadcasting, and satellite transmission.
* International communications and information policy.
* Library and archives policy....

....The issues are as much social as technical and are only beginning to be fleshed out through the various committees and working groups that make up NII. "While industry is beginning to build the information superhighway," says a January report on NII prepared by the General Accounting Office (GAO), "little is known about how the superhighway will be structured and what services it will provide."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore.html
Issue 14.05 - May 2006

<b>The Resurrection of Al Gore
He invented the Internet (sort of). He became President (almost). Now Al Gore has found his true calling: using the power of technology to save the world.</b>

One evening last December, in front of nearly 2,000 people at Stanford's Memorial Auditorium, Al Gore spoke in uncharacteristically personal and passionate terms about the failed quest that has dominated much of his adult life.......The audience was filled with Silicon Valley luminaries: Apple's Steve Jobs; Google's Larry Page and Eric Schmidt; Internet godfather Vint Cerf; Yahoo!'s Jerry Yang; venture capitalists John Doerr, Bill Draper, and Vinod Khosla; former Clinton administration defense secretary William Perry; and a cross section of CEOs, startup artists, techies, tinkerers, philanthropists, and investors of every political and ethnic stripe.....

<b>Info on the impact to Tennessee of the loss of a Gore presidential librabry, Using GHW Bush and Clinton data</b>

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:...s&ct=clnk&cd=3
Tom Kelly, Ph.D.

Economist & Director of
Baylor Center for Business and Economic Research
Spring 2005
Executive Summary


* The George Walker Bush Presidential Library Center located along Interstate 35 near Baylor University in Waco, Texas will attract between 300 and 500 thousand visitors annually.



* The location of the George W. Bush Library at Baylor University will both enhance and benefit future presidential scholars and visitors because of its regional synergy with the George Bush Library at Texas A&M University and the LBJ Library at the University of Texas at Austin.



* The Central Texas region has a travel for seminar/training index of 1.6, meaning that it has 60 percent more travel for seminars and education than the state average. This is undoubtedly due to its incidence of universities as well as its central location. The George W. Bush Library will add significantly to the index further reflecting the advantages represented by this location quotient.



* The construction phase of the George W. Bush Library will have a total economic impact of $209.7 million on the Central Texas region.



* The staff and operation budget of the library and school of public affairs will have an ongoing annual economic impact of between $12.7 million and $14.1 million on the Central Texas region.



* The impact of visitor spending on the Central Texas region would amount to between $8.6 million and $13.8 million each year, based on between 300 thousand and 500 thousand visitor person-days.



* The George W. Bush Presidential Library Center will add an estimated 72 full-time and 21 part-time employees as library staff. As many as 10 visiting lecturers could be expected to participate with permanent Baylor faculty members.



* The number of additional tourist-related jobs generated in the region will be between 260 and 344, based upon visitor attendance between 300 and 500 thousand person-days.



* ..... <b>the Clinton Library that opened in November has already helped generate $367 million in new development in downtown Little Rock, a city of similar size as the greater Waco area.</b>

Introduction.......

<b>Read the rest of the preceding article for the info on the tourism and revenue that is lost to Tennessee, and consider that all of the job growth in the state, according to the Fed, is concentrated around just three urban areas. The Gore library could have been built in a more rural area of Tennesssee, that could us this kind of permanent economic stimulus.</b>

http://stlouisfed.org/publications/r...ankruptcy.html

.....These statistics, however, disguise the fact that personal bankruptcy filings are not equal across the country. For example, at the state level, <b>Tennessee had the highest rate of personal bankruptcy filings in the nation,</b> with over 10 filings per 1,000 persons last year—nearly twice the U.S. rate—whereas Massachusetts ranked last with 2.8 filings per 1,000 people.....
<center>http://stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2005/d/pages/bankruptcy.html</center>
Eighth District States vs. the Nation
The table provides a comparison of personal bankruptcy filings in Eighth District states with average bankruptcy filings in other states. Of the Eighth District states, Tennessee had the greatest number of filings per 1,000 people last year (10.5) and Illinois had the lowest (6.3). On average, Eighth District states had a filing rate of 7.7 per 1,000 people compared to an average filing rate of 5 per 1,000 people in other states. Thus, on average, states located in the Eighth District had roughly 2.7 more individuals per 1,000 filing for personal bankruptcy.

Although Eighth District states have a relatively higher rate of bankruptcy filing, the annual average growth in bankruptcies in the District since 1980 has been slightly lower than that of other U.S. states—7.2 percent vs. 7.8 percent. Within the District, Arkansas had the highest average annual growth rate (10.8 percent) and Illinois had the lowest (6.1 percent). Although Tennessee had the highest rate of bankruptcy of all District states (and the nation) last year, the average annual growth in bankruptcies in Tennessee was less than that in most other Eighth District states.

The table also shows that Eighth District states had an average per capita income that was nearly $3,000 less than other U.S. states’ last year and an unemployment rate that was 0.6 percentage points higher than other U.S. states’. Comparing these data with the bankruptcy data suggests both per capita income and unemployment have a negative relationship with personal bankruptcy filings.8 Note, however, that while Tennessee had a higher bankruptcy filing rate than other states did, it had per capita income that was higher than that of most other Eighth District states. Although a definitive causal relationship can be determined only by more rigorous statistical methods, the negative correlation is supportive of the finding that, at a given point in time, lower-income individuals may be more likely to file for bankruptcy, given relatively less financial literacy and less diversification of fewer financial assets.

<b>Because a majority the people of Tennessee voted republican, their representatives and president imposed a greater hardship on Tennessee, due to it's highest per household rate of bankruptcies in the nation...IMO, that's "tough love", and another example of voters who vote against their own best interests....you're all just one illness away from needing chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, you file at the highest per capita rate, of any state, and now, that option is gone.</b>

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/bu...rint&position=
March 9, 2005
Bankruptcy Bill Set for Passage; Victory for Bush
By STEPHEN LABATON

.....Final passage of the measure is now an inevitable formality.

House leaders have said they will quickly approve the legislation once the Senate completes work on it as early as this week. President Bush has said he intends to sign it. His predecessor, <b>President Bill Clinton, killed the measure in his final days in office in 2000 after it had been passed by Congress by declining to sign it at the end of the legislative session, issuing a so-called pocket veto.</b>

The sponsors of the legislation say that it will have the effect of lowering the costs of goods and services for all consumers by making it easier for companies and issuers of credit to collect unpaid debts rather than passing those costs on to everyone else. In the last 30 years, bankruptcy filings have steadily increased, rising eightfold since Congress last rewrote the bankruptcy laws.

But critics said the measure was a thinly disguised gift to banks and credit card companies.... They said that the measure would impose new obstacles on many middle-income families seeking desperately needed protection from creditors, and that it would take far longer for those families to start over after suffering serious illnesses, unemployment and other calamities.

The votes on Tuesday were the second legislative victory in recent weeks both for Mr. Bush and <b>the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, himself a possible presidential contender in 2008. Mr. Frist nimbly moved both the bankruptcy bill and another bill last month making it more difficult to bring class-action lawsuits through the Senate.

In both cases, he unified the Republicans to beat back every effort by the Democrats to water down or delay the measures. In both cases, he also reached a deal with House leaders in which the Senate blocked any significant changes to the measure in exchange for a commitment from the House that it would adopt unaltered what the Senate approved.</b>

The White House applauded the votes on Tuesday.

"The administration supports the passage of bankruptcy reform because ultimately this will lead to more accessibility to credit for more Americans, particularly lower-income workers," said Trent D. Duffy, a deputy White House spokesman. "The fact that the Senate was able to set aside those issues and move toward passage shows it's another bipartisan accomplishment. Coupled with class actions, it shows we're off to a good start.".......

....In a letter to Congress two weeks ago, 104 bankruptcy law professors predicted that "the deepest hardship" would "be felt in the heartland," where the filing rates are highest - Utah, <b>Tennessee</b>, Georgia, Nevada, Indiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio, Mississippi and Idaho.

More than a year ago, I posted the following article, in this post:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...1&postcount=28
on this thread: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=85081

http://www.healthaffairs.org/press/janfeb0505.htm

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005

<b>Middle-Class Workers With Health Coverage Represent Most
Medical Bankruptcies In America, Health Affairs Article Says

Authors Say Trend Shows Need For Safety-Net Program For Chronically Ill,
Importance Of Separating Health Coverage From Employment</b>

....<b>Abstract</b>


In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to bankruptcy, we surveyed 1,771 personal bankruptcy filers in five federal courts and subsequently completed in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half cited medical causes, which indicates that 1.9-2.2 million Americans (filers plus dependents) experienced medical bankruptcy. Among those whose illnesses led to bankruptcy, out-of-pocket costs average $11,854 since the start of illness; 75.7 percent had insurance at the onset of illness. Medical debtors were 42 percent more likely than other debtors to experience lapses in coverage. Even middle-class insured families often fall prey to financial catastrophe when sick

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...081900413.html
<b>Bankruptcy Reform Gave Creditors Too Much</b>

By Michelle J. White
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Monday, August 21, 2006; 12:00 AM

Last fall, following years of intense lobbying by the credit card companies, Congress passed the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005" (BAPCPA). While U.S. bankruptcy law was very debtor-friendly prior to BAPCPA, it has become much more pro-creditor today.

Bankruptcy law must balance two conflicting objectives: helping debtors who experience adverse shocks by discharging some of their debt, and promoting credit availability by enforcing the obligation to repay.
Discharging some debt when adverse shocks occur is valuable because it reduces the decline in debtors' consumption, thus providing partial consumption insurance and reducing the costs of debt. These costs include debtors' illnesses turning into disabilities because they cannot pay for medical care, debtors' families becoming homeless because they cannot pay rent, and debtors' children dropping out of school in order to work, leading to lower earnings as adults.....

......Under BAPCPA, both bankruptcy procedures have been retained, but debtors' right to choose between them has been abolished......Debtors who file under Chapter 13 must use all of their incomes above a consumption allowance for five years to repay. BAPCPA also instituted new requirements that more than double the costs of filing, from less than $1,000 to around $2,500. It also reduced the amount of debt that is discharged in bankruptcy, lengthened the minimum period that must elapse between filings, and required debtors to undergo credit counseling and take a debt management course.

The main effect of those changes is that non-opportunistic debtors will avoid or delay filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay the high costs of filing, or their gain from filing is smaller, or they are ineligible to file. Creditors gain because they now have longer to collect penalty interest rates and fees and more opportunity for garnishment of debtors' wages.

For opportunistic debtors, the impact of BAPCPA is mixed. BAPCPA made it more difficult to use some of the most popular bankruptcy planning strategies -- debtors can no longer move to Florida and use its unlimited homestead exemption unless they move more than two years before filing, and debtors can no longer shelter assets by renovating their homes unless they do so more than three years before filing. But opportunistic debtors can still use trusts to shelter assets in bankruptcy and BAPCPA provides a new bankruptcy exemption for up to $1 million of assets in tax-sheltered individual retirement accounts ($2 million for married couples who file). Opportunistic debtors can also pass the means test and qualify for Chapter 7 even if they have high incomes, by spending more on categories that increase their consumption allowances.

Under BAPCPA, fewer non-opportunistic debtors will file for bankruptcy because they cannot afford the high costs of filing. Those debtors will be worse off because they have less consumption insurance. But opportunistic debtors will continue to find bankruptcy worthwhile as long as they plan in advance and have good lawyers.

In the same thread, in this post, I also wrote (excerpt from my post):

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...1&postcount=15
I believe that there is an increasing inability of voters to vote in their own best interests. The March 10, U.S. Senate bankruptcy "reform" bill vote seems to reinforce this argument:

1.) The 20 senators from the ten states with the highest numbers of bankruptcy filings per number of total households (!6 Repubs, 4 Dems) all voted to pass the bill which will financially harm their constituents.

2. Utah has the most bankruptcy filings, yet it's households average $12000 more income per year than in Maine, which is 48th on the bankruptcy filing frequency list. As in voting, avoiding bankruptcy seems more related to sound decision making than it does to your income amount.

3.) Seven senators from the ten states with the lowest bankruptcy filings
voted against the bill. All seven are democrats, and include John Kerry.
(9 Repubs, 10 Dems, 1 Ind.)

4.)The nine states with 2003 household income averages above $50,000 are represented in the U.S. Senate by 11 Democrats and 7 Republicans.
Seven of these highest income states voted for Kerry in 2004.

The nine states with 2003 household income averages under $37,200 are represented in the U.S. Senate by 7 Democrats and 11 Republicans.
Eight of these lowest income states voted for Bush in 2004.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LI...n=1&vote=00044
.....Tennessee: Alexander (R-TN), Yea Frist (R-TN), Yea .....

........2004 Household Bankruptcy Rankings, by State 2003 HH Income
1- Utah: Bennett (R-UT), Yea Hatch (R-UT), Yea $49276
2 -Tennessee: Alexander (R-TN), Yea Frist (R-TN), Yea $37523....

Intense1, the primary reason that this post is so "content rich", is because of the degree of my amazement that there seems, on your part, and I'm guessing, on the part of many others, a tendency to so cavalierly dismiss the decision to vote republican, brush aside Al Gore, and not weigh the impact of those voting decisions. I've shared why I think that your opinions have been manipulated by folks such as Bozell, and that it has cost you much. Until you can recognize that, you cannot assess what you have gotten in exchange for your votes, from your republican politicians. The large credit card issuing banks got much, and Texas will get another presidential library, but I don't see anything for Tennessee voters.

[Intense1]

Wowy, you sure do like your sources, don't you Host? Own Google stock, or somethin'? I won't try to answer all of your sources/points, just the main idea that I think you overlooked in your path to quote/source what seemed like every word I even thought of typing.

My main point in my posts was that my response to you came from my feelings about why we as Tennesseeans didn't vote for Al Gore in 2000. These feelings come from personally knowing several democrats who didn't vote for him (including my sister and her husband, who had voted mostly for democrats until then), and from my sense of being a native of our fair state, thereby knowing some of the culture here.

And, if I am not mistaken, you are not a native of Tennessee, so you will not be able to fully embrace the reasonings behind why we did what we did.

But to get to your points, as they were:

1. The whole "invented the internet" thing - gosh, dude (or dudette - don't know which is appropriate), learn what "tongue in cheek" means! At the least, learn to laugh at what Al himself still to this day laughs and jokes about. I do have a modicum of intelligence to know that he didn't mean that he actually invented the internet.....

2. "Brent Bozell III"? Who's he? And what ever happened to BB II and BB I? Will there be a BB IV? (just imagine a green-eyed woman in the Music City burbs wearing black sweatpants and a tan shirt with a pooched out jaw and raised left eyebrow, with a slight smirky like smile)

What about Ted Turner and his 25 plus years of castigating conservatives? And what about his recent crap.....

Host, both sides claim liberal or conservative bias in the press. You do not have a valid argument, as it isn't totally quantifiable by objective evidence. It's subjective, according to how one feels when a news anchor is reporting a story that puts one's affiliation in a poor light. Hey, live with it - the press is who they are. We conservatives have had to live with it for years, perhaps you libs have to deal with Fox News now, just as we have had to deal with Ted's CNN crap for years.

3. The library thing - almost all the presidential libraries are located within a few miles of a major city with a current infrastructure in place. Al is from Carthage - which has a population of about 2,200 people, even though it is the county seat of White County. It would have to be in Sparta, and while I will admit that Sparta is a decently sized city (about 25,000 residents), it is still 2 HOURS OUTSIDE OF NASHVILLE, AND NOT EASY TO GET TO IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS. I've been there, I know the road system here, and even I made a couple of wrong turns (I am actually decent at following a map, btw.)

4. As for that etherial economic boom that would happen with an Al Gore Presidential Library, or even with an Al Gore presidency? Hey, we've seen 50 k job growth over the past few years, and that can easily be attributed to the George Bush tax cuts. So if Al Gore were president, we might have lost jobs. Go figure.....

5. "Because a majority the people of Tennessee voted republican, their representatives and president imposed a greater hardship on Tennessee, due to it's highest per household rate of bankruptcies in the nation...IMO, that's "tough love", and another example of voters who vote against their own best interests....you're all just one illness away from needing chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, you file at the highest per capita rate, of any state, and now, that option is gone."

Wow, it's taken you, HOST, to give us Tennesseans the answer to our lives. It's that we should have voted Al in as Pres in 2000. That is sooo stinkin' simplistic, it doesn't even rate an answer, especially to someone who doesn't know what life is like here.

You see, folks like you seem to spur us on to be even more who we are. People who think they know what we need, even more than we do.

Simply put - we did not vote for Al Gore as president in 2000. Get over it. And I would offer an encouragement to you, Host: Hurry, run, don't stop to get your belongings, just get out of the vineyard, because the sour grapes are driving you nuts.

Sorry, Host, forgot to add the following:

1. Al Gore was a popular senator up until he began running for Pres back in 1988 - his pro-life rating was 84 percent until that time, but after then, it fell, which for a very conservative state like Tennessee, was not welcome.

2. His support of Bill Clinton during the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal and his continued support afterwards lost Al lost of support.

3. Tennesseans vote with more than their pocketbook - they use their hearts, souls, morals and patriotism. We don't just vote for someone who might make us rich - we ask "rich at what cost?". We're more mature than those who just vote with money in their mind, because we know that money is only a part of life.

An addendum to the previous post.

[The_Jazz]

Intense1, as a TN native who's been gone for a while but still has lots of friends and family there, I got a good chuckle out of:

Tennesseans vote with more than their pocketbook - they use their hearts, souls, morals and patriotism. We don't just vote for someone who might make us rich - we ask "rich at what cost?". We're more mature than those who just vote with money in their mind, because we know that money is only a part of life.

If I read this correctly, you're basically turning Tennesseans into Texans, at least in terms of egos. Seriously, everyone (and I mean everyone) uses more than their pocketbook in the voting booth. They use all of the things you listed and more. People in Chicago use the exact same things when we vote here (except for the dead - they vote straight Democrat!). Having voted in Tennessee elections for 15 years and seen Knoxville politics from the inside, I've got to tell you that Tennessee isn't any more special than the other 49 states. You're right about the motivations to vote, but not about claims to be special.

Also, ask Jake Butcher and Ned McWharter about Tennesseean voting with their wallets. They both know a whole lot about that considering their electoral histories.

[Intense1]

Hey Jazz, welcome to the fray that is this thread.

Glad my little sentimental rant about how we decide in the voting booth gave you a humorous bump. It wasn't my intention to give off a "wooooo... we're special-er than everybody else" vibe - I was responding to Hosts's posts (hee that rhymes) that almost exclusively had to do with finances and a financially motivated electorate. No claim to specialness here. Not Texas, so sir. But didn't we send the first batch west to settle Texas, way back when?

Oh, off topic a bit..... how come the dead tend to vote Democrat? Some dead Memphians voted for Ophelia Ford to take over her brother's vacated state senate seat after he was indicted in a fed sting called "Tennessee Waltz" last year. What is it that makes the democratic party more attractive to those already passed on to the other side? What do they know that we repubs don't?

Jake Butcher - now that's a name I haven't heard in years. He out of jail yet? Ned Ray is front and center at every democratic function, so he's still kickin. But you left out Ray Blanton..... remember when Ned swore in Lamar Alexander a few days early because they were afraid that Blanton would pardon a prisoner that was under federal investigation? Yikes but we've got a history with greedy governors.

Bet you're glad to be in Illinois, where nothing like this would ever happen.... ha.

[Ustwo]

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury." - Alexander Tytler

We are well on our way.

Oh and intense1 welcome to the boards, very nice reply