Wow. One little comment...anayway "I took the initiative in creating the Internet" Does Gore deserve some credit for supporting high-tech, sure. Is the way he worded the above statement a stretch? Absolutely. Was it as intentional over-statement? I don't know, but if it wasn't intentional, he's being ignorant. If it was intentional, he's being a politician speaking to what he sees as simple-minded folk. Neither is too flattering for him. Anyway, I cannot believe that no one has mentioned the other Reublican heavyweight braniac....QUAYLE!. http://www.xmission.com/~mwalker/DQ/quayle/qq/hall.of.fame.html The Quayle Quote File Hall of Fame It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. -- Vice President Dan Quayle I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change. -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 5/22/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century. -- Senator Dan Quayle, 9/15/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92, The New Yorker, 10/10/88, p.102) This election is about who's going to be the next President of the United States! -- Senator Dan Quayle, 9/2/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is `to be prepared'. -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 12/6/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure. -- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the Phoenix Republican Forum, 3/23/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Also reported by Reuters, 5/2/90 Let me just tell you how thrilling it really is, and how, what a challenge it is, because in 1988 the question is whether we're going forward to tomorrow or whether we're going to go past to the -- to the back! -- Senator Dan Quayle, 8/17/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is. -- Vice President Dan Quayle winning friends while speaking to the United Negro College Fund, 5/9/89 This gem has been added to Bartlett's `Familiar Quotations'. (reported in Esquire, 8/92) (reported in the NY Times, 12/9/92) Take a breath, Al... Inhale. -- Vice President Dan Quayle politely cutting off Senator Al Gore during the VP Debate in Atlanta, 10/13/92. Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia said that Dan Quayle reminded him of one of his grandkids when they've had too much sugar. Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child. -- Senator Dan Quayle, US News and World Report (10/10/88) Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here. -- Vice President Dan Quayle, Hawaii, 4/25/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts. -- Vice President Dan Quayle addressing the 20th anniversary celebration of the moon landing, 7/20/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe. -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) The loss of life will be irreplaceable. -- Vice President Dan Quayle after the San Francisco earthquake, 10/19/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Bobby Knight told me this: ``There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.'' In other words a good offense wins. -- Senator Dan Quayle, in a speech to the City Club of Chicago, comparing the offensive capabilities of the Warsaw Pact with the defensive system of NATO, 9/8/88 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)
Case re-opened. Game on. I would like to advise all the economic *rookies* in this thread to please examine the recent historical GDP data. http://www.bea.gov/briefrm/gdp.htm As you will notice in this graph, W inherited the beginnings of a recession (Q1 2001) when he took office in mid January of 2001. The fact of the matter is that everything Bush has done so far with regard to economic policy has been on the stimulus side. Tax cuts are an example of a fiscal stimulant. Fed Funds rates and Discount Rates (which yes you can argue are the work of the independent Fed, but it was done under Bush's watch, so it is relevant here) have been cut since Bush took office -- an example of an economic stimulus through monetary policy. Economonies move in cycles, the president who happens to be in office during the cycle really has very little influence on the billions of factors that comprise the economy. To say that Bush is the reason for economic decline is simply absurd. This ignores the contributions of the Congress, fluctuations of the dollar, international economies, consumer spending habits, corporate spending habits, external shocks (9/11), heck, even the weather impacts power prices which when excessively high can create inflation throughout the entire economy. Is is Bush's fault that the summer was excessively warm?!?! I can only stretch my arms wide and yawn at the economic amateurism displayed in this thread. Iraq will fall. The economy will rebound in time for the elections. The Dems will fail to field a decent candidate. W will win re-election. CASE CLOSED.
Oh please. I was feeding Internet Usenet groups to my BBS as a kid back in 1987. Thanks a lot Gore, you really helped me get on the Internet. FIDONet helped me do those feeds, not Gore. That's nice that you were on BBSes in the 80's. Not sure how that's relevant since Gore began his work in the 70's. Several universities have had Internet access for a long time before the WWW became popular. Long before Gore was this "driving force" some of you claim him to be. Of course the NPCC Act that Gore developed helped provide funding to connect universities on a larger scale to the internet. I'm sure AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, Genie, et. al. had nothing to do with the Internet boom in the late 80's and early 90's, too, right? Gore was involved in the privatization of the internet. From the CSN: http://www.cosn.org/resources/093000c.htm <I>As Vice President Gore promoted building the Internet both up and out, as well as releasing the Internet from the control of the government agencies that spawned it. ... Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation. </I> People that say Al Gore played any major role in the Internet boom are deluding themselves. Well, the CSN disagrees: <I> But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. ... There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support for its privatization and continued support for research in advanced networking technology. No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President. Gore has been a clear champion of this effort, both in the councils of government and with the public at large. The Vice President deserves credit for his early recognition of the value of high speed computing and communication and for his long-term and consistent articulation of the potential value of the Internet to American citizens and industry and, indeed, to the rest of the world. </I> So does NASA: http://ct.gsfc.nasa.gov/brochures/2000/intro.htm <I>NASA's High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program was established as part of Congress' National HPCC Initiative. This initiative is responsible for catapulting the U.S. into the era of supercomputing, gigabit networking, and computation-intensive science and engineering applications. According to the 1999 President's Information Technology Advisory Committee Report, "a significant portion of our national progress in computing and communications over the past decade has been leveraged from the High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991."</I> Or, from UIC: http://tigger.uic.edu/~wplotk1/usia/hist.html <I>When President Bush signed the High Performance Computing and Communications Act into law in 1991, mandating a massive expansion of the Internet, the new law called for a major role for the private sector.</I> More about the HPCC: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.12/gorecard.html <I>Before major political figures, or even most everyday people, cared about the Net, then-Senator Gore pushed the development of a first-of-its-kind high-bandwidth network intended to carry 3-D graphic images and large data files generated by supercomputers. Three billion dollars flooded the program, and by 1996 the National Research and Education Network was able to transfer 1 gigabyte of data. NREN is a web of federal networks that exists as part of what is now known as the Internet. After appropriations ran out in 1996, the 1998 Next-Generation Internet Research Act was signed into law to update HPCC and authorize additional funds to build a terabyte-capable network for governmental and academic research and technology development. </I> Nope, Gore didn't have any major impact on the internet's development.
Iraq will fall. The economy will rebound in time for the elections. The Dems will fail to field a decent candidate. W will win re-election. Kind of like 1990, eh?
As you will notice in this graph, W inherited the beginnings of a recession (Q1 2001) when he took office in mid January of 2001. The fact of the matter is that everything Bush has done so far with regard to economic policy has been on the stimulus side. Tax cuts are an example of a fiscal stimulant. That's nice and all that Bush provided a consumer stimulant, except that consumer spending never dropped. This was NOT a consumer driven recession. This was a b2b recession - business spending and investment dropped significantly and that's where the job cuts and everything came from (technology, etc). All the tax cuts did was help create a deficit - consumers were spending before and after the cuts. In fact, I believe this month is the first time that consumer buying dropped (outside of September 2001, for obvious reasons). When you create a deficit, the government borrows money. That means investors are pouring money into public sector investment. Where does that money come from? It's money that would have gone into private sector investment...
Looks like I for one will have to give him more credit for supporting the Internet than I did before. I'm not that surprised. I used to like Gore a lot. I remember hearing him speak many years ago and wishing that he would run for President. Then he attended the Clinton school of politics (which works great for slick-ones but not so good for the likes of Gore). It's a shame, since his public persona is nothing like what it used to be.
I'm not that surprised. I used to like Gore a lot. I remember hearing him speak many years ago and wishing that he would run for President. Then he attended the Clinton school of politics (which works great for slick-ones but not so good for the likes of Gore). It's a shame, since his public persona is nothing like what it used to be. I don't really care much for Gore 1992-2000 either (I didn't know of him before that). I agree with you -- I didn't like his attempt to portray himself as someone's he not. Two areas where he does deserve all the credit in the world are his commitment to technology and his commitment to the environment (although I believe he may have been anti-environment earlier in his political career). Overall, my opinion of him in the 2000 election was he was the less-bad of the two candidates.
If you truly insist on going bear hunting with a stick, I will engage you with my sharp teeth and claws. Consumer spending has remained the backbone of the economy over the past few years, this is true. Consumer spending comprises roughly two-thirds of national GDP. The housing market is at or near a peak right now, as low interest rates have spurred investment here. The Fed has been cutting interest rates over the course of the past two years -- an example of a monetary stimulus (as cited in my previous post). The argument that really floors me, and the argument that I consider to be the most IGNORANT argument on the face of the earth, is that deficits are *always* bad. This is complete and total BS. In times of economic slowdown, it is almost impossible to run a surplus, tax cut or no tax cut. The reason for this is the automatic stabilizers that are built into the economy. The two most obvious ones are tax revenues and unemployment claims (although there are many more). For example, in a bull market, tax revenues are very high, as wage earners are earning more taxable income through increase profits and investors are paying capital gains taxes. This increased tax revenue would help build up a budget surplus, like we saw in the late 90's. However, when the market and economy goes south, tax revenues are less due to decreased profitability, and capital gains tax revenue is slim to none. Add to this an increase in jobless claims and therefore an increase in unemployment benefits paid out, and you have yourself a fine recipe for a deficit, like we have now. For us to turn this deficit into a surplus, we could raise taxes (and further dampen consumer spending), we could slow down government spending (which would take away jobs and r****d economic growth), or we could could government programs like unemployment benefits (which would cause Democrats to erupt). Running a deficit in a slow economic period is the RIGHT THING TO DO. It provides a stimulus to the economy and helps it to climb out of the cyclical trough we are now experiencing. The government finances budget deficits through the issuance of short term securities (like T-bills). I agree in part with your Keynesian "crowding out" theory, but consider this: Investors provide cash proceeds to the government in exchange for the T-bill. The government spends that money, pumping it directly into the economy through spending. The government pays back the investors *over time* in the form of interest and ultimately principal repayment. In an effort to recover from a recession or depression, a stimulus is necessary, and T-bills help foot the bill for that. The thinking is that when the economy improves, the government will have the necessary cash to repay T-bill investors -- in essence borrowing from investors who are reluctant to spend today, and paying them back over time. Remember, it is the economy's reluctance to spend money (be it consumer or corporate) that led to the economic decline in the first place. The government attempts to correct that by issuing debt and injecting it into the economy. Add 9/11 and it's rippling effect into this mix, as well as the war on Afghanistan and you have an impossible situation with which to maintain a government surplus. Class dismissed.
The argument that really floors me, and the argument that I consider to be the most IGNORANT argument on the face of the earth, is that deficits are *always* bad. This is complete and total BS. In times of economic slowdown, it is almost impossible to run a surplus, tax cut or no tax cut. The reason for this is the automatic stabilizers that are built into the economy. First off, no one said deficits are ALWAYS bad. What is almost always bad, in my opinion, is a long-term % growth in the national debt relative to the nation's GDP. That creates an increasing portion of tax proceeds going towards debt-repayment which is an entirely inefficient use of taxes. This is currently happening based on the current deficits and projected future deficits. This creates larger long-term problems in order to solve short-term problems. For an example of this, we could have something like 15% lower taxes today without sacrificing a single government service if we hadn't built up the debts of the 80's and 90's. As for this recession, there's no reason to believe there would have been a significant deficit without the tax cut. There may have been a small one, but likely the deficit / surplus would have hovered around $0, given that we had a large surplus expected before the economic slowdowns. Running a deficit is fine, so long as its a natural deficit. The problem occurred when we added a new tax cut to spur consumer spending, which didn't need to be spurred. The recession pushed us from +$100MM to $0. The tax cut pushed us from $0 to -$100MM or whatever the numbers are. The government finances budget deficits through the issuance of short term securities (like T-bills). I agree in part with your Keynesian "crowding out" theory, but consider this: Investors provide cash proceeds to the government in exchange for the T-bill. The government spends that money, pumping it directly into the economy through spending. The government pays back the investors *over time* in the form of interest and ultimately principal repayment. I agree with this -- if boosting consumer spending was the goal because that money is injected on the consumer-side. The problem is that this shouldn't have been the goal in this particular recession. The focus should have been on encouraging business investment and spending. While less popular, that would have been a focus on decreased business taxes or better yet, incentives for continued business investment. Bush's tax cut was designed well before any slowdown actually occured (early during his campaign). It was simply a tax cut because "cutting taxes is good". The fact that a recession appeared just allowed him to market it as an "economic stimulus" even though that wasn't the original goal and shouldn't have been the primary goal given the nature of the slowdown.
Generally speaking, maybe, but I'm sure that you know that's a little simplistic. Some of those 'solved' problems may have been long-term ones. E.g., maybe excessive military spending then resulted in the end of the cold war, which has allowed us to reduce our military spending now. Or maybe government investment in technology and the internet ( ) then, has paid off with higher tax revenues more recently.
Economics is truly the dismal science. Seeing as how I was the first to introduce something serious into this thread, let me make amends by posting some more Bushisms. "I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2001 "My pro-life position is I believe there's life. It's not necessarily based in religion. I think there's a life there, therefore the notion of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness."—Quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 23, 2001 "Then I went for a run with the other dog and just walked. And I started thinking about a lot of things. I was able to—I can't remember what it was. Oh, the inaugural speech, started thinking through that."—Pre-inaugural interview with U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 22, 2001 issue "Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment."—Interview with the New York Times, Jan. 14, 2001 (Thanks to Rachael Contorer.) "The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants."—Interview with the New York Times, Jan. 14, 2001 "I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure."—Interview with the Associated Press, Jan. 18, 2001 (Thanks to M. Bateman.) "If he's—the inference is that somehow he thinks slavery is a—is a noble institution I would—I would strongly reject that assumption—that John Ashcroft is a open-minded, inclusive person."—NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw, Jan. 14, 2001 "I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-oriented administration, because I believe the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that's responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be—a literate country and a hopefuller country."—Washington, D.C., Jan. 11, 2001 "I do remain confident in Linda. She'll make a fine labor secretary. From what I've read in the press accounts, she's perfectly qualified."—Austin, Texas, Jan. 8, 2001 "Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods."—Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000 "I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them."—Washington, D.C., Dec. 18, 2000 "The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law."—Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000 "They misunderestimated me."—Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000 "They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program."—St. Charles, Mo., Nov. 2, 2000 "They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people.' And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work."—Portland, Ore., Oct. 31, 2000 "Anyway, after we go out and work our hearts out, after you go out and help us turn out the vote, after we've convinced the good Americans to vote, and while they're at it, pull that old George W. lever, if I'm the one, when I put my hand on the Bible, when I put my hand on the Bible, that day when they swear us in, when I put my hand on the Bible, I will swear to not—to uphold the laws of the land."—Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 27, 2000 "That's a chapter, the last chapter of the 20th, 20th, the 21st century that most of us would rather forget. The last chapter of the 20th century. This is the first chapter of the 21st century. "—On the Lewinsky scandal, Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000 "It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet."—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000 "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000 "If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care, we're going to have gag orders. "I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question."—In response to a question about whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the first debate. Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Oct. 4, 2000 (Thanks to Peter Feld.) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."—Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000 "I will have a foreign-handed foreign policy."—Redwood, Calif., Sept. 27, 2000 "One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected."—Los Angeles, Sept. 27, 2000 "It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."—Beaverton, Ore., Sep. 25, 2000 "We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers."—Houston, Texas, Sept. 6, 2000 "As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards."--CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000 "Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness."--Ibid. "You might want to comment on that, Honorable."--To New Jersey's secretary of state, the Hon. DeForest Soaries Jr., as quoted by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, July 15, 2000 "Actually, I—this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about—when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me."—Ibid. "I think we agree, the past is over."—On his meeting with John McCain, Dallas Morning News, May 10, 2000 "It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."--Reuters, May 5, 2000 (Thanks to Allison Fansler.) GOV. BUSH: Because the picture on the newspaper. It just seems so un-American to me, the picture of the guy storming the house with a scared little boy there. I talked to my little brother, Jeb—I haven't told this to many people. But he's the governor of—I shouldn't call him my little brother--my brother, Jeb, the great governor of Texas. JIM LEHRER: Florida. GOV. BUSH: Florida. The state of the Florida.—The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, April 27, 2000 "Reading is the basics for all learning."—Announcing his "Reading First" initiative in Reston, Va., March 28, 2000 (Thanks to Carl LaRocca.) "I understand small business growth. I was one."—New York Daily News, Feb. 19, 2000 "We ought to make the pie higher."—South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000 "The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case."—Pella, Iowa, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News, Jan. 30, 2000 "Will the highways on the Internet become more few?"—Concord, N.H., Jan. 29, 2000 "This is Preservation Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve."—Speaking during "Perseverance Month" at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, N.H. As quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 2000 "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000 "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
A couple of things. First of all I said the internet was around before Gore brought up the amendments to the bills. Sencond if you would have read the whole thread including the dates listed on the thread you would have seen that Gore's involvement was prior to 1987 use of the usenet groups. That's right AOL COMPUSERVE and all the rest got into it after Al Gore's involvement. He helped make those things possible. Again I'm not saying that he did it singlehandedly, but he did work to move Apranet from the govt. into the mainstream. From there companies like those you mentioned above got into it. Again if you check some of the thread that posted new stories backing up the fact that Gore did play a part you'll see that there was some help from Gore. I'm not saying he introduced the Internet, or that he singlehandedly caused the business boom that coincided with the internet boom. I am saying that he did help make that possible for the others that carried the torch.
We did not know we were in a recession until after the tax cut was signed into law. I clearly remember that in August 2001 economists' consensus agreement (since their hind sight is only 20/20) was that the recession started in March 2001. Bush Jr pushed for the tax cut in January 2001. To justify the tax cut, Bush bad mouthed the economy. Is it a coincidence that 2 months after bashing the economy on a daily basis from his bully pulpit that the ecomony tanked? I am not saying that Bush is the reason for the recession, just that a contributing factor. Maybe the country needs less Bush leadership wrt the economy? And boy look how much that stimulus packaged helped!!! I actually agree with some of the tax cuts, especially wrt estate taxes, but ... It amazes me that the "conservative" Republican party appears to be more interested in lining the pockets of its constituents versus doing the conservative thing and reducing the deficit.
Yea! This makes my day. And I like "class dismissed" too, except that you forgot the ALL CAPS. Don't let me down like that! Okay, now I know you have dismissed me, an educator, from your class, and I know you have closed the case, so excuse me for trying to, ahem, discuss. 1) Iraq will fall. Iraq, a bizarre colonial creation, never rose. As much as he is feared and hated in the region, most other states of the Middle East fear his removal even more, as they see no other way of holding together the disparate factions of "Iraq." I hate Saddam as much as the next person, but I really want to know what happens if Iraq falls, like you and Dubya promise. Any comments? US peace keepers for the next decade? That wouldn't cause any resentment. Uh, yeah it would. 2) Economy will rebound in time for elections. "Economics" is in no way a science. Two years ago Greenspan was a genius, but it turns out he was more like a shaman, a reader of tea leaves (no offense intended to tea leave readers). Since it is a highly non-linear system with dozens of interdependent variables, I can say with some confidence that the health of the economy in two years is about as easy to predict as the weather in two years. If you're saying "what goes down must come up," I would agree with that general trend, but neither you nor I, nor your economics website can say when with any more authority than a random all caps statement. 3) Dems will field a lame candidate. Probably. I liked Cuomo junior, but he's not even going to run in NY. Gore will probably run, and I will fall on my own sword and then Trader J doesn't have to read any more of my posts. 4) W wins again. Very possible. He is a likable guy, and will probably maintain some popularity, unless the economy stays as bad as its been lately. I mean, I would want to have a beer with him, and he might make a good, say, baseball commish. Okay, we can RECLOSE the CASE now. Thanks for letting me reopen it briefly.