There is no feasible alternative. But I think it would be wrong to assume that using both strategies (fiscal/monetary) caused the recession or made the recession worse. And I'm not even sure doing so can be considered a mistake. I think a mistake would be to take extreme measures by selecting one over the other. Mixed economies have proven to be the most stable option.

You keep getting stuck into some kind of mathematical vortex when considering something that is measured by more than mathematics. You are thinking in binary opposites and so there is no centre possible. I cannot even visualize how you see things. It boggles my mind.

The final negotiations included clauses that essentially watered it down. It was a shift towards free market capitalism, but the final clauses clung to the idea of protectionism.

Yes, Obama has taken a centrist approach on tax cuts. He wanted to take the burden off of the middle class specifically. Bush likely took the straightforward conservative approach of small government via lower taxes. The centre-left and most social democrats strongly support progressive taxation. They also strongly support social programs to help the poor or otherwise disadvantaged. I think the right calls this "redistributing the wealth." But at least this all goes on within a market economy.

Balancing a budget isn't a conservative approach, it's a fiscal approach.

Anyway, I've lost what we're on about. Maybe if the average American thinks like you do, ace, and believe there is no centre, that would explain why Pelosi has been demonized. It's a case of a skewed view of economics and history and how the Democratic Party functions. Any mention of socialism in American political discourse is an example of that.

Right, well, in the context of your analogy, your refusal to use national poll results in favor of your own personal poll results is akin to looking outside your window to see what the weather is like in the rest of the nation.

Nobody should put blind faith in anything. However, you must realize that simply saying "I don't trust polls" isn't all that useful a response. Polls should be viewed critically based on objective criteria and one's best judgment. For instance, who funded the poll? Has the polling organization released the raw data? Have they released the questions used? Is their methodology sound? Is the sample representative of the population to which its results are inferred? How accurate have the polling organization's past polls been? Are there any recent events which might render these results obsolete? These are all good questions to ask.

There are a lot of ways that polls can be wrong, but to dismiss them all with a casual wave doesn't make sense if your goal is to understand how your fellow citizens feel about things. This is especially true when your alternative (a small sample of man on the street interviews?) is likely as -if not more- flawed than the polls you criticize. That is why I "attacked" you. Because you presented yourself as being above the trivial nonsense being peddled by pollsters while apparently failing to realize that your methods were likely as or less reliable.

Using both strategies equally, the effect is zero.

Your position boggles my mind.

Which supports my point.


Very few do. And even fewer actually think about the things I think about.

---------- Post added at 05:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:16 PM ----------

On one point I agree that my viewpoint is somewhat localized on this topic. I am sure the anti-Pelosi message did not work in California and some other areas of the country.

Where was this response initially when the topic of polls came up? I simply shared my experience and my knowledge and someone throws in -the polls don;t support your experience, your knowledge - to which my response will always be the same, so what! I trust my judgment, my experiences, what I see, what I discover.

Can I see your answer? Please show your work. I would like to see how you calculated that. :rolleyes:

My position? I've been talking about stuff that is most often found in books with such titles as Macroeconomics: An Introduction.

I don't know how, because this is an example of the effect of centrist politics. By the way, what is your point?


I'm still not sure what that is, but when applied to the real world, it tends to muddy the waters.

Pelosi elected leader today.

I guess it is a good day for her party, or is it?

Anti-Pelosi ads break records – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

It isn't exactly news that conservatives are willing to spend a lot of money in opposition of something.

It's a good day for people who want House Democrats to get things done. I wish the same could be said for the Senate or Executive Branch.

Reminds me of one of my favorite football teams in the 80's and 90's -

http://www.inflexwetrust.com/wp-cont...1289431705.jpg

Given your statement above , and others that I read here that are similar, it seems some get it to a point but fail to connect it to the next level. If the opposition is playing for keeps, shouldn't you? If Pelosi can not beat Republicans playing the game of politics, why do they want her to continue being the leader in Congress?

My point is that I am rather familiar with the things conservatives oppose; what I'm not so certain of is what they support....well, besides failed economic theories and disastrous foreign policies.

I support less government. That concept is vague, therefore it is easier to say what I am against government doing. For example I am against government trying to control my diet, or what I feed my children - I am not sure how to say that in terms of what I am for - how would you do it?

I only speak for myself, I am more libertarian than most.

The difficulty is this: libertarians (and some Conservatives) favour an -absence- of action. They don't simply favour -different- actions, or actions intended to benefit different groups, but the lack of action alltogether.

It's akin to trying to stop a runaway train. The Leftist (and Neo-Conservative) approach is to redirect the train, send it someplace else, in hopes that it will do less damage "over there" or that the train will simply run out of steam before it hits something. The libertarian (and paleo-Conservative) approach is to try and stop the train alltogether, dead in its' tracks, in order to prevent it hitting anything, anywhere. Sometimes this means applying the brake, sometimes it means using explosives and blowing the tracks. When the train is being driven by leftists (or Bu'ushist* Neo-Cons) who refuse to acknowledge the course it's on, the result is frequently that the L/P-C contingent gets turned into hamburger, and the train keeps going full-speed until it demolishes a hospital, a church, an orphanage, and a gun-shop. This is the result of the last 10-15yrs.


*A term of derision, borrowed with permission from the inestimable William Grigg, of Pro Libertate.

Do libertarians believe that it's government that has created an inequitable society where there is a subset of the population who can't afford adequate health care? Or is it that government has caused the U.S. system to be the most expensive in the world? Do they believe that fully privatizing the system will make it affordable for everyone? Are there any models that exist where this has happened?

Yes, as a result of "corporate welfare" and excessive regulation of the medical industry. Regulation drives up costs, which drives up prices. Likewise corporate welfare, by insulating some companies from market forces while -not- insulating others, and by providing Gov't assistance to companies which deserve to fail, has prevented innovation and kept prices artificially high.

Again, yes, and for most of the same reasons. However, a secondary issue is the fact that US companies essentially bear the brunt of medical innovation and research. They pay for the research, development, testing, and licensure of new drugs for example: that is a cost which the originating company must bear, but which its' competitors do not have to. A pharmacy in France can afford to charge much less than a pharmacy in the US for the same medicine, because that pharmacy's parent company didn't spent the previous ten years and millions or billions of dollars developing the drug. Their per-unit cost is simple: the cost of the pill. The cost to the company which -developed- the thing, on the other hand, includes all the run-up charges as well. Kinda like how the F-35 is 1/10th the price of an F-22 while still utilizing most of the same cool technolgy: the development costs are built into the F-22 (because all that cool tech was developed while the F-22 was) while the F-35 uses what was by then off-the-shelf technology (which is of course much cheaper because it's already been developed).

Not necessarily, but neither do they believe that people who -did- look after their health and finances should be forced to subsidize those who did not. What many libertarians believe is that privitization would lower the cost of health-care enough for private charities, personal savings, and installment payment (which is how I've paid for my health-care since I turned 18) to cover the shortfalls. This would be because Doctors would be free to negotiate payment as they wished, free to carry (or not carry) malpractice insurance, etc.

On the balancing end, libertarians are big fans of consumer-advocacy groups (think J. D. Power & Associates): the kind of outfit who could rate doctors, give a good impression of their fees and services, and get the word out if a doc was crappy, dishonest, or an asshole. So: you find a nice, cheap doctor: he's got minimal insurance, but J. D. Power (or whomever) say he's a real top-flight cutter who's never needed it anyway. On the other hand, an expensive doctor might well be that way because he gets sued every 6mo and needs the cash to cover the settlements: our hypothetical advocacy group would be there to spread the word on that guy too.

None within the western world within the last 50yrs or so, but there are older examples. Mutual-Aid Societies in the US were one archetype which lasted until around WW2, likewise the various left/right-wing anarchist groups in Spain had a rough (but workable) medical network which functioned along similar lines.

Granted, these are imperfect examples: medicine was much less complex and less expensive back then. However, the result of 50yrs of Gov't meddling in the US and Europe has been exploding costs, degradation of service, loss of the "personal touch," the rise of the HMO, and in much of the rest of the West a near-total stagnation in regards to medical innovation. An additional result has been the sorts of horror stories chronicled weekly in the Wall Street Journal: such as the London woman whose family called an ambulance and was asked whether they would prefer for the EMTs to try and save her life or "just make her comfortable" so she could die quickly and save the NHS some Pounds.

'We're Going to Let You Die' - WSJ.com

I'm not too familiar with pharmacy economics, but I'm pretty sure that most pharmaceutical companies are multinationals and that European regulatory hurdles are even higher than in the US.

Also, it would be nice to know how much drug companies actually spend on R&D as opposed to marketing, but alas, the only sources for that type of information are drug companies themselves and they apparently aren't too keen on enumerating their expenses that specifically.

Also also, government frequently plays a large part in the germination of new treatments and technologies via publicly funded research institutions which take ideas from the notebook and test their feasibility via translational research.

I shed no tears for the pharmaceutical industry.


Finally, it's easy to blame the ills of society on government meddling because most of us are completely unfamiliar with how society would be without a meddling government. However, it is for precisely this reason that anyone who claims to understand the effects of ending government meddling is full of shit. Despite the rainbow tinted pictures they often paint, libertarians don't know what would happen if their dreams came true. I suspect that things would likely get unbearably bad before they got better, and that's assuming that they'd get better at all.

What's more, drug companies hold the patent for their drugs for the first 10-12 years of availability during which they make much more than their R&D money back. Particularly on medications for chronic conditions such as arthritis and hypertension. Yet, you don't see their prices going down once they've recouped their R&D money. Therefore, I don't really understand the comparison with France. Are we supposed to begrudge them for offering fair prices for their medications?

---------- Post added at 07:54 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:28 AM ----------

I will agree with you about government influence on the declining quality of health care in that when Medicare instituted the practice of using Diagnosis-Related Groups (I think it's called) in the early '80s to standardize care and discharge planning for medical conditions requiring hospitalization or long-term care, insurance companies immediately saw the cost-saving benefits and today nearly all, if not all, insurance companies control the parameters of our healthcare in the same way.

That said, leaving millions of people uninsured and needlessly dying or suffering lifetime disability is not a reasonable alternative. These things don't happen in a bubble. You will pay and your healthcare is going to be affected one way or another. Why not just put the boogeyman on the table and accept that healthcare is not like cars or computers, everyone has a right to health and we all benefit from a society that has the ability to practice preventive healthcare and early detection of disease.

Well said, I agree.

It might just be me but your assertion that a libertarian favors an absence of action would imply that the libertarian's approach to stopping a runaway train would be to do nothing about it.

I wonder if the libertarian "hands off" approach would apply to Pelosi's creation of the Office Of Congressional Ethics (an unnecessary bureaucracy that investigated 69 ethics complaints against House members and recommended action on 13 of them?).

Will the newly elected Tea Party Republicans, who are so adamant about cleaning up Washington, stand by quietly when Boehner dismantles the OCE?
Where is the outrage among our conservative colleagues?

Wondering why thy house didn't kick Charlie Rangel out today. So much for ethics.

The full House has not voted yet.

But are you suggesting that the House use different standards for expulsion than other previous findings of ethics violations?

I would agree with you that the House needs to make its ethics penalties more punitive...but I dont agree with changing the rules in the middle of the game. In the history of Congress and most recently, the only Members expelled were those convicted of a crime in a criminal court...and a few expelled for their support of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

A "censure" is more punitive than a "reprimand" and is fitting in this case, based on existing standards.

Let the Republicans, who will draft the new House rules, establish harsher punishment going forward. I would absolutely support such House rules.

But why do away with the OCE?

Many of us don't get outraged over things that don't matter. My perception is that Congress will do a superficial job of policing its members and that they will never impose real consequences for ethical violations that do not rise to the level of prosecutable criminal activity. My perception is that nothing really changed with OCE and I admit that I could be totally wrong because I do not follow these issues very closely but I wanted to respond to the question. In summary the issue is just not that important to me.

Ethics investigations in Congress should be processed by an independent commission, not by people's peers (which always results in partisanship and back scratching)

There's no time like the present to start making an example of corrupt politicians. Rangel went 17 years without paying some taxes? Why is he even in office, let alone not in jail or heavily fined?

I don't know the details of what the Republicans plan. If they are implementing strong ethics rules and don't need the OCE. I agree with what Derwood said about some independent group filing and handling ethics violations claims.

Given that he is not facing criminal charges, he should be required to pay back taxes, which is what the committee recommended in its findings, along with being censured.

So you think the House should ignore its own standards and Rangel should be held to a higher standard than any previous Member of the House who faced ethics charges and be expelled w/o having been found guilty of criminal offenses.

Based on what? Certainly not based on precedent or the current House standards of ethics...so it must come down to your partisanship.

The honorable thing for him to do is resign. The dishonorable, partisan response to hold Rangel to higher standards than any previous member of Congress.

The current ethics rules that Pelosi pushed through (with much arm-twisting of her own party) are the toughest in the history of Congress...not only with the creation of the quasi-independent OCE (members of the OCE are private citizens and cannot serve as members of Congress or work for the federal government) but with much tougher gift standards, travel standards, etc.

Could they be stronger? Absolutely. Just as it is undeniable that they are still the strongest ethics rules ever adopted by Congress.

And Boehner has made clear that ethics are not high on their agenda so it is highly unlikely that the Republicans will implement stronger ethics rules than currently exist (and that he intends to gut).

He will walk, get his slap on his wrist, it is pathetic. He was in the committee of Ways and Means, is the most ironic part of it all.

The House ethics committee voted 9-1 on Thursday to recommend censure. That is not just Republicans, or Democrats. No one has the balls to say we need to throw the bum out. In my book they are all afraid to take that step since that means they can be next if they mess up.

And Newt Gingrich was minority whip when he was found to have violated House ethics rules with tax violations around a questionable tax-exempt organization that he used for political purposes.

Gingrich was reprimanded (less than censure) and temporarily gave up this leadership role (only to on to become Speaker), just as Rangel gave up the chairmanship of Ways and Means. Gingrich paid $300,000, just as Rangel is expected to pay back taxes.

How do you justify a penalty beyond those established in the House rules and/or ethics guidelines used in the past?

I am not defending Rangel.....I just dont believe in double standards, particularly when they come off as partisan.

I think the turn this thread took is a good example of why (amongst other things) some on the right don't really like giving the government having a larger role in society. It often seems like we in the US have a contradictory view of the federal government. On one hand they are supposed to be an impartial arbitrator a group of elected officials that only have our best interests in mind built to stand against corrupt corporations and greed to help us maintain a fair and equitable society.

Yet time and time again we see government waste, redundancy, corruption, greed and scandal which seemingly nobody can or will do anything about. We've almost become a society that just accepts the feds are complete and utter fuckups built largely of the elite who are totally out of touch with the average American and our needs as a country.

The two concepts of government simply don't mix very well.

I get the feeling that a lot of Libertarians/far right simply feel they are in a better position to manage their own lives/livelihoods better then a massive, out of touch federal government who can't possibly have the best interests of everybody at heart. They seem to feel that you can't legislate a fair society and the government shouldn't have the power to try in the first place, its none of their business, they don't have the ability to properly micromanage a nation of 300 million and we as a people should have the right to win or lose on our own merits.

Its not perfect, and like most things once taken to extremes it begins to fall apart but there is something to be said for putting limits on where/when the govt should be involved in our daily lives based on nothing more then their track record alone.

Something is happening, I am starting to read posts on TFP that I agree with. Again, well said.

Since when is tax evasion not a crime? Note that one of the reasons Charlie Rangel was before this committee was for not paying taxes for some 17 years? How far do you think that you or I would get if we suggested to the IRS auditor that we pay only back taxes with no interest or penalties?
If you're going to be serious about draining the swamp, as Nancy Pelosi claimed she was going to do, then there's no time like the present to do more than have Charlie stand before his peers and get a toungue lashing

I get it.

You think the House should ignore its own existing rules and long-standing standards of punishment.

I disagree.

Pelosi implemented the toughest ethics standards in the history of Congress (I have said they dont go far enough) that you guys just cant bring yourself to acknowledge. If Boehner keeps them in place, or even better, expands them, I will applaud him.....but dont count on it.

Thanks. I don't always agree with the far right and at times I violently disagree with them but I do believe they bring some good ideas and much needed balance to the table (I guess the same could be said for both sides). I feels like we put a disproportionate amount of faith in the federal government when we have no where else to turn but often over look that they don't always do the best job...or if they can/should be doing the job at all.

I don't know, I suppose its always good to have balance.

The inefficacy of the federal government can't be seen in a vacuum when you have people running (or helping to run) the federal government that believe programs are unnecessary and therefore appoint unqualified people to the job or defund programs and then use that as evidence said programs don't work. (For example, see: George W. Bush/FEMA/Hurricane Katrina)

But isn't that just another part of the problem Secret? On top of everything else you also have those running the show actively rooting for certain (all?) programs to not only fail but completely disappear. I think for a large majority of the country to really even begin embracing a bigger role for the US government the feds themselves are going to have to begin giving people a reason to have a little faith in their elected officials and the government itself...I'm not sure I see that happening.

Thanks for linking that book btw. I think I might order that it, looks really good.