Republican Party has evolved into something very dark

Those same rich corporations are buying the democrats to. Don't get that twisted my friend. Not that I'm defending it, just reminding you that it's a stacked deck.

 

This is so stupid it isn't funny. The largest contributor to the recession was the housing bubble. The moronic idea that everyone should be able to own a home whether they could afford it or not. These policies started under Carter and Clinton. Under Obama the debt has grown almost 6 trillion. I freely admit Bush spent too much money. He started driving the bus toward the cliff. Obama took over and floored it.

Handouts for corporations? You mean like GM.

SS and Medicare were mistakes to begin with however we are stuck with them now. That is the problem with entitlements, once they start they never end. They always cost way more than projections. I do not support getting rid of them now but they have to be changed or they can't sustain. When SS first started it was like a pyramid. There several workers for every person taking SS. It is now like a rectangle. There are close to as many on SS as those putting into it. In the future it will slowly become an inverted pyramid with more people taking out then putting in. Unless big changes are made it is unsustainable.

So you actually think 16 Trillion is debt is not a problem? Are you really serious? I mean really????? I don't think there is any hope for you!!

 

Alan Greenspan was/is not a Randian (he was, in his early days, but gave up on all that long before he was Fed chairman), and Rand was not a libertarian.

Alan Greenspan was a social climber. From Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession:

From Murray Rothbard, writing about Greenspan in 1991:

Rand identified herself as an Objectivist and repeatedly batted away not only the word libertarian, but what it meant. Objectivism is an egoist philosophy which Rand (hilariously) claimed she came up with entirely on her own (well, she did give a little credit to Aristotle). That the political positions of Objectivism sometimes overlapped with the political positions of libertarianism is irrelevant. Objectivism also overlaps in some ways with militant atheism, but to equate the two is obviously absurd.

Also, if you think Ayn Rand is the dominant voice of libertarianism right now, you are sadly mistaken. She was one of the dominant voices in the 70s, and she remains somewhat relevant today simply because her boring book sells so well, but as a promoter of libertarian ideals she's not even in the top 100 of all time. It is only those who are part of the Rand cult and those who are part of the anti-Rand cult that make her out to be a big deal.

The Kochs are the biggest donors to the Republican Party of all time. It is hard to come up with a more anti-libertarian act than that.

But I will say this in regards to the Randian movement today: It has received quite a boost recently due to the shakeup at the Cato Institute. I have also been told that the Randians are taking over the FEE, which if true would be very sad. Cato has been garbage for a long, long time (see here), but FEE has always been pretty good - Leonard Read, its founder, was a great and brilliant man.

So, it will be interesting to see how all that plays out.

Anyways, this post has devolved into rambling. To sum up: you're very wrong, but keep doing your thing because it provides me a laugh.

 

You don't understand the nature of the national debt. The debt is 100% denominated in a currency over which we exercise control. We have not ceded monetary sovereignty. As such, the national "debt" is vastly different from debt held by you and me, vastly different from municipal/state debt, even vastly different from Eurozone national debt.

You can't have the overly simplistic economic worldview of:
1. Debt is bad and unsustainable!!!
2. Once we lose reserve currecy status, we're screwed!!!

Superfluous exclamation points and question marks don't make your viewpoint any less inaccurate. If you can't grasp the concepts of sectoral balanaces, monetary sovereignty, and what constitutes a reserve currency, then I don't think there's any hope for you.

 

SMH.......

 

Keep on truckin'

Those inconvenient facts and operational realities sure get in the way of opinions don't they?

 

Basso is a clown. That is all.

 

Is it a handout if you pay back every thing that was given to you?

 

OT
Everytime I see this

I see this
http://beforeitsnews.com/economy/20...-today-the-results-are-startling-2449770.html
Where was all the outcry when we got robbed blind? R's n D's too busy fighting each other over chump change to see the real problem

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2012/08/15/general-motors-is-headed-for-bankruptcy-again/

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/300075/obama-and-gm-cook-books-john-lott-jr

 

When did I blame it on Obama???? I said the policies were pushed under Carter and Clinton. The Community Reinvestment Act was passed under Carter. Under Clinton this was used to push banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford them. Were these loans then sold around the investment community for several years until they finally bottomed out? Yes that is what happened but the policies that caused them to be made in the first place took place under Democratic administrations. Blaming it on the banks when the government strong armed them into making the loans in the first place is rather silly.

I believe all of the following companies have gone bankrupt after receiving Obama money.

Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra (received $535 million)
Beacon Power (received $43 million)
AES’ subsidiary Eastern Energy
Nevada Geothermal (received $98.5 million)
SunPower (received $1.5 billion)
First Solar (received $1.46 billion)
Babcock & Brown (an Australian company which received $178 million)
Ener1 (subsidiary EnerDel received $118.5 million)
Amonix (received 5.9 million)
The National Renewable Energy Lab
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar (received $400 million)
Chevy Volt (taxpayers basically own GM)
Solar Trust of America
A123 Systems (received $279 million)
Willard & Kelsey Solar Group (received $6 million)
Johnson Controls (received $299 million)
Schneider Electric (received $86 million)

When did I say SS was not paid with tax money??? I said it is unsustainable. I said SS was like a pyramid when it started. Do you realize that when SS began there were 16 workers contributing to SS for every one receiving it? That number is down to 3 contributors for every receiver and getting worse. There is no lock box for SS, the money goes straight to the treasury. I never said it should be privatized only that changes have to be made for it to be sustainable.

Do you know what makes private healthcare inefficient? The malpractice lawsuits and malpractice insurance. It causes doctors to order all kinds of unneeded test to cover their butts. Obamacare did absolutely nothing to address this issue. I know a single payer system is the Nirvana all liberals want. A big reason why a system like Canada has cost less is fact that the highest courts in Canada have set limits on awards for medical malpractice and the fact that the liability laws in this country make it extremely difficult to establish negligence. The Democratic party is so beholden to trial lawyers it will never let that happen.

Trillion+ annual deficits for as far as the eye can see. If we do not get this under control we will all suffer the consequences.

 

SweetLou, I'm completely with you. I have a couple of friends that are republican, but that political bedlam of a party has gone so far right, and it's rubbed off on the base to the point that the idea of associating with hardcore conservatives is a turn off.

And yes, each party has it's flaws, but the Dems have compromised a 100X more than the Repubs.

 

l.

Only the cognnoscenti can be aware of the true libertarianism.

Again I am reminded so much of how libertarianism and communism are so a like. Neither has actually been tried, but we have the Soviet Union to show the perils of in the real world putting many of its tenants into practice and the mess that resulted. The true believer says it is just that we did not put all tetants into practice. There might have to be starvation for a few years till collective farms get started, but it will be nirvana once they are in operation.


Now with various libertarian tenants such as market deregulation of markets, we may have just had a near collapse of the financial markets, but trust us if we had just had more it would have been such a perfect thing.

Little folks might suffer as they are stripped of social security, medicare, public schools, libraries, minimum wages, the fourty hour week etc. but it will all be so swell once we have true libertarianism.

Now I have a laugh. Your heroes Rand, Ron and Paul Ryan all support the Republcan Party. The Kochs still contribute to the libertarian cause. Sorry if folks outside the cult can't follow the twists and turns of libertarian infighting.
True fans of communism can discuss the ins and out of Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin, Lenin, and a hundred of other figures as if they are still alive in their little meetings even today and scoff at those who don't know the obscure debates they have.

.

Thanks for pointing out how the Kochs were founders and big financiers of the CATO Institute.

Hey at least it gives you some consolation as you contribute to upward flow of society's resources to those above your paygrade.

 

Do you also find it outrageous when you deposit your money at a bank and they lend to a company goes bankrupt?

You may not like it or agree with it, but the fact that we have monetary sovereignty in a fiat currency regime means that a Treasury bond is a liability more like a bank deposit than a traditional debt instrument.