**
I don’t.
Seeing as I don’t beleive Republicans have a monopoly on pragmatism, this is not a problem.
I don’t recall his slogan, but having workable real world ideas involves more than a slogan.
Scylla: “I don’t recall his slogan, but having workable real world ideas involves more than a slogan.”
No doubt. But it’s gonna take more than a hasty post from you–premised on a dubious assumption that you yourself aren’t prepared to defend–to convince me that all the “workable real world ideas” are on the side of the Republican party.
Just to provide a smidgeon of ideas beloved by the recent and/or or current Republican administrations, which (to put it mildly) may not be be either workable or pragmatic, I give you the following:
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SDI
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“Clear Skies” initatives that involve rolling back rules that have demonstrably improved the air and will allow more pollution
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tax cuts on dividends that are alleged to pay for themselves and the huge deficits they will create (on the brink of wartime no less) via discredited stimulus theories (i.e. supply side economics, shown to be bogus in the 80s)
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the voluntary approach to rampant corruption in business accounting practices
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voluntary approaches to fuel conservation, greenhouse gas emissions
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straightfaced proposals that drilling for oil in Alaska will solve looming energy problems
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demands for nation-building without either budgeting for such nation-building (viz. Afghanistan/Iraq) and while injuring the relations with allies necessary to such nation-building
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pretending that an easy-to-defeat enemy (Saddam Hussein) is a way of “solving” a hard-to-solve problem (Al Qaeda/militant Islamic fundamentalism)
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proclaiming love of diversity while attempting to undermine admissions policies that help to ensure diversity (and promoting other policies shown to diminish diversity)
You’ll have to pardon me if every single one of these ideas doesn’t strike me as being in the least workable or pragmatic. Rather, what the Bush administration in particular seems to promote is short-term self-interest for an extremely narrow segment of the American public, gussied up in misleading reading that borders on downright Newspeak.
So far as I can tell, the only “truth about human nature” the present administration seems to cherish fully is that you can fool some of the people some of the time–and you can make it unlikely or even impossible for the rest of the people to bother voting.
Mandelstam, your choice of the word “may” isn’t pragmatic. It’s not much of an argument to say, "conservatives aren’t pragmatic because liberals don’t think their current ideas will work, although nobody really knows.
A better test would be to compare lists of conservative and liberal ideas that have actually been proved to work or to not work. Looking at the big ones, IMHO:
– Civil rights was a liberal campaign that worked.
– The Cold War was a conservative position (supported by hard-headed Democrats) that worked.
– Vietnam was a liberal war (supported by Republicans) that didn’t work.
– The recent Afghanistan war was a conservative war that worked.
– The War on Poverty was a liberal position that worked poorly.
– Social Security and Medicare were liberal positions that worked very well.
– Federal support for medical research is a liberal position that worked well.
– Federal support for education has been a disaster.
– Public housing has been a disaster.
I think the difference is that people who are pro-life (probably conservatives- but not necessarily) feel that the most basic personal freedom, the right to live, should be extended to the developing child in the mother, and that if one individual’s rights trump another’s, it should be in favor of the one who cannot represent him/herself and who stands to die if their rights are violated.
Certainly this should not be the beginning of an abortion debate, even though I am completely and precisely correct in my views.
You know, I’ve come to the conclusion that there certain things and people that are just not worth my fucking time.
At the top of the list are the false attributors, those people that insist on attributing things to me that do not follow from my arguments.
Usually I make one attempt to clear things (which I just did,) and then if the person in question inists on continuing with Strawmen, the I consider him to be a worthless debater.
Here’s your false attributions:
- My post was not hasty
- I am happy to defend it. I am only willing however to defend the arguments that I made. Not the ones you’d like to pretend I did.
- I don’t want to convince you that all the workable real world ideas are on the side of the Republican party. I don’t want to convince of this because I didn’t say it, and I didn’t mean it. Not only that, I corrected this false attribution you made to me in my last post.
Do not falsely attribute positions to me that I have not made.
december: “your choice of the word “may” isn’t pragmatic.”
Under the circumstances, it is entirely pragmatic. My point wasn’t to insist that all of those programs are unworkable, but to make clear that from my view their pragmatism is, to say the very least, debatable. To have gone any further would have been to hijack the thread unnecessarily.
" It’s not much of an argument to say, “conservatives aren’t pragmatic because liberals don’t think their current ideas will work, although nobody really knows.”
Actually, I didn’t say that, but whatever. In any case, the upshot of your statement is premised on the false assumption that there is “real” knowledge–or at the very least total agreement–with respect to your own examples. But the truth is that things are much more complicated than you are likely to let on.
“-- Civil rights was a liberal campaign that worked.”
An ironic statment from a poster who will slap up a Wall St Journal editorial every time there is a political debate over a judicial nomination with a controversial civil rights record; a poster who thinks tort reform is a grave necessity (when the courts are crucial to civil rights).
Bottom line: you think civil rights was a liberal campaign that worked. But as one moves from the Democratic center towards the left, people are much more likely to think of it as a work of progress that needs continued support.
(Note the implicit distinction between Democrats and “liberal” which is just the very beginning of what is too simplistic in your thinking.)
“-- The Cold War was a conservative position (supported by hard-headed Democrats) that worked.”
Hard-head Democrats such as John F. Kennedy who brilliantly handled the Cuban missile crisis (after utterly screwing up the Bay of Pigs)? To wit, the cold war was never a uniquely “conservative position.” What planet were you on in the 1960s? As a schoolkid in the 1970s growing up in one of the most liberal cities in the country I was still taught to hide under my desk in case there was a surprise nuclear attack. The cold war was an era, not a party platform.
“-- Vietnam was a liberal war (supported by Republicans) that didn’t work.”
And Vietnam was nothing if not proof that the Cold War and its policies crossed party lines (for better and worse). I doubt very much Richard Nixon would have agreed, when he decided to accelerate and expand Vietnam, that he was fighting a “liberal” cause.
“-- The recent Afghanistan war was a conservative war that worked.”
That war was broadly supported by Democrats as well as Republicans. You are right that many liberals (though by no means all) were opposed. Whether it “worked” or not really remains to be seen as history in Central Asia and the Middle East is still unfolding. Most opposition wasn’t to do with how long it might take to get rid of the Taliban, but to do with other more complicated factors. Even people as left as myself–and I am left enough that I don’t generally call myself a liberal–felt ambivalent towards war in Afghanistan after 9/11.
“-- The War on Poverty was a liberal position that worked poorly.”
I think it’s fair to say that what the Johnson administration chose to call the War on Poverty was not a great success, and was at best a partial success in need of reform. But that is a very far thing from saying that all anti-poverty programs involving government are failures. Head Start, for example, works and it is one of those programs that Bush is trying to quietly gut by starving it death. At the same time, the most recent gains in anti-poverty (though fairly paltry and completely gone by now) were made under Bill Clinton’s watch at a time of full employment. Clinton, while hardly a liberal, is a Democrat.
“-- Social Security and Medicare were liberal positions that worked very well.”
Generous of you to say so, but, in this instance, food for thought on the pragmatism of the Bush admin: since they are still determined to privatize the former as much as they can get away with; and the recent proposal to states to “loosen” regulations on the latter is a backhand way of downsizing it.
“-- Federal support for medical research is a liberal position that worked well.”
I’m sure that Republicans are not against federal support for medical research. And they’re certainly not against handing over the profits for that research to their favorite phamaceutical company (Democrats do that too.)
“-- Federal support for education has been a disaster.”
An unfounded proposition.
Scylla, you are free to think that I’m a worthless debater if you wish to. I didn’t mean to get your back up. If you re-read your post you’ll see that it wasn’t in the least qualified. The implication was that Republicans are pragmatic, and others just get dreamy about changing human nature. It’s just not as simple as that.
– Public housing has been a disaster. **
[/QUOTE]
Sorry december, I missed public housing, but I don’t think it’s necessary to say another word. Please pretend that the final line of my post was deleted.
An Arky it seems to me that you are agreeing that “undeserving recipients” should be denied help. You don’t disagree with what Balle M wants, you just disagree with her use of an insulting term.
I’d say that the real problem is that the people you both consider undesering did not get the right help at the right time in their lives. In many cases, getting the right help when they were children would have headed them in a different direction; they would not have grown up to be undeserving. The best way to have helped them, in many cases, would simply have been better schools. Much better schools, starting at about age 3, with school breakfast and lunch programs for those who need them. In some cases, an additional need might have been to be rescued from an abusive or neglectful or chaoic home.
I don’t really consider myself a member of either of the big two parties, but I prefer the Democrats. The Republicans cater to the religious right, want to re-outlaw abortion, and, rather then reforming services for the poor, they seem to want to eliminate them. Also, the Repubs claim to be against big govt and high taxes – but when in power, they do not cut down on waste and inefficiency, they do not shut down any of the more unnessasary govt depts. In short, they don’t do anything substantial to downsize govt. And if govt continues to grow, so will taxes. When they do cut taxes, almost all of the cuts go to the wealthy, and, as they don’t downsize the govt, the cuts result in more debt and deficits.
The Dems, OTOH, are at least honest about what they want. They want a high level of social services, and are willing to accept high taxes to pay for them.
Hazel: *In short, they don’t do anything substantial to downsize govt. And if govt continues to grow, so will taxes. *
I just want to mention, Hazel, that government has been declining as a share of GDP for quite a while now. I don’t have exact figures handy for you, or the time to hunt them down–but that certainly was true in the Clinton era. (It’s possible that because of federalization of airport security, Homeland Security, and the huge defense build-up this trend has now reversed, though, again, I don’t have exact figures handy.)
I agree with the rest of your post quite a lot. And actually Head Start programs have been found to work best when they start before 3 years old. (By the time a child is 3 a lot of what s/he is able to become has already been predetermined.) And I also agree with what I think you’re implying: which is that Republicans talk a lot about downsizing but, in reality, have their own pet pork barrel projects, etc.
Still, I do want to point out that the vision of more comprehensive education as a way of helping people when it counts the most-- whether it begins at 3 or even earlier–is not consistent with a “less government is always better” view, or with a view that sees taxcutting as a consistent social priority.
Personally, I think it’s a bit illogical to take a position either for or against “government” in the abstract. Government is good when it’s working, and bad where it’s not. I could never be a Republican–especially a right-leaning Republic such as Bush–b/c that is tantamount to supporting government programs that I think are unnecessary (e.g., endless military waste) while starving those that are important (e.g., Head Start).
I also think there are times when taxcutting can’t or shouldn’t be a social priority. That is, if you want to spend, then you’ve got to tax b/c otherwise you’re just shifting the burden to the future which is short-sighted economics in the extreme. I particularly disagree with the wasteful kind of taxcutting Bush is now proposing: taxcutting that will not stimulate the economy both b/c it doesn’t kick in until years from now, and b/c the people benefitting already spend a king’s ransom. There is a lot of consensus among economists that the most stimulative kind of taxcutting is directed towards the working poor and the middle class, esp. via payroll cuts. Yet Republicans almost never get behind this form of taxcutting. And, to be fair, many Democrats don’t either.
Mandelstam, I agree about tax cuts. We should not be cutting the income taxes of the rich, we should be cutting the income taxes and payroll taxes of people in the lower middle class and below. They’re the ones who will spend it immediately, and they’re the ones who need a break. As for the rich, and the big corporations, we need to close the loopholes and whatever else allows them to avoid so much of the taxes they should in theory be paying.
Have you even bothered to look up what the different strata pay in taxes? My god, under Bush’s proposal the “lower middle class” will have their tax burden slashed.
How is it so impossible for you people to see that tax cuts necessarily go to those who pay taxes, not to those who do not. We are at the point now where the top half of incoming earners are paying virtually all of the income tax. I do not think that is a fair situation at all.
And Hazel, conservatives want good education just as much as liberals do. However many of us do not think the best way to accomplish this is to put more money in the hands of the teachers unions. As for school breakfast and lunch programs, we have had those for as long as I can remember.
And the most troubling thing that you posted was about removing children from homes that you deem to be unhealthy. Who appointed you god? Can’t you see the danger that allowing a government agency to remove a kid from a home because it is “chaotic” poses to a free society?
And why do you think that those at the low end of the scale should pay nothing for the services they receive? they already pay no income tax, now you want them to get free social security too? Where is the incentive to make a better world for yourself when you never have to get off the sofa to live a middle class lifestyle?
Texican, I’m fairly certain that it’s you who don’t have the facts. I can’t tell precisely which “Bush plan” you’re now describing, but, to apply your thoughts to one recent Bush proposal, lower middle class people as a group don’t tend to pay tax on dividends since they don’t tend to receive any in the first place.
The distinction I’m making is between income tax and payroll tax. For the working poor and many more comfortable working-class and middle-class people payroll taxes are the greatest share of their personal tax burden (fot the poor usually most of their tax burden).
Please provide a citation for the “slashing” of lower-middle-class taxes that you are describing. As you search for it, please also bear in mind that in promoting their latest proposals the Bush admin has been using a lot of misleading averages: i.e., telling us what Americans will gain “on average” or what business will gain “on average” when the reality is the great majority will get almost nothing while a small number will get the lion’s share.
Okay, just to inject some real numbers in here from the U.S. federal budget historical tables:
Year Deficit in billions
1991: 269
1992: 290
1993: 255
1994: 203
1995: 164
1996: 108
1997: 22
1998: (surplus of 69)
1999: (surplus of 124)
I don’t really see a strong correlation between falling deficits and when the Republicans gained control of Congress…It started falling well before and just continued falling.
The fact that the Clinton budget predicted deficits into the future probably has more to do with the fact that he underpredicted economic growth than anything else. You’ve got to give the Republican Presidents like Reagan and Bush Jr. credit on that score…They certainly don’t seem to underforecast economic growth and thus overforecast deficits!!!
The first cite here from AcidKid is from the Congressional Republicans and even their biased timeline shows deficits falling and the economy doing well before Clinton agreed to negotiate with Congress on their plan in 1997. They are taking credit for the progress from '94 to '97 (which was already being made before '94) because of the financial markets being hopeful that the Republicans being in power in Congress would do good things…a dubious assertion at best.
The third cite is from the National Center for Policy Analysis, a strongly conservative think-tank. Thus to call them even-handed is dubious. They are only “even-handed” in the sense that even they can’t bring themselves to claim that Congress deserves more credit than Clinton for balancing the budget! In fact, they say:
So, there you have a conservative think tank admitting that Clinton deserves most of the credit for balancing the budget for heaven’s sake!
[In fact, AcidKid was very generous in his cites being that 2 were from Republican Congressional sources, 1 was from a conservative thinktank, and only one was from a presumably unbiased source (Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia).]
Well, you can believe that Bush is largely responsible for the $3000 you get back this year but color me skeptical. For one thing, I believe the affects of the lower rates would probably already be in having less withholding so they couldn’t be a part of a tax refund.
I also got a $3000+ tax refund this year but the reason for mine is that I am having lots of extra taxes taken out of my paycheck. Why? Because I owed (and almost owed penalties) on my 2000 tax return because my mutual funds had done well and the money in the bank was earning healthy interest rates. So, I decided I needed to withhold more. Well, this year, needless to say, the mutual funds did shitty and interest rates are anemic. Hence, my income outside of salary is small and hence the large refund. [And, by the way, my income is high enough that I am into the range where the Bush tax cuts really do give me some real money back…although that doesn’t change my mind about strongly opposing them. If you are telling the full story about your own income, I can pretty much guarantee you are not in the range where the kinds of refunds you are talking about can be due to the Bush tax cuts.]
That’s a good one. Define American = Republican and then accuse non republicans of being anti-American. By the same token democrats could call republicans anti-American. With a list that starts like that I am not even going to bother reading the rest.
Besides, defending America unconditionally is not a virtue in my eyes at all. Humanity, freedom and moral values are absolute and those are always to be defended. As long as America represents those values one can be pro-American but it would be very wrong to be pro-American if and when America represents oppression, agression or other evils. Being pro-America means wanting America to do what is right, it does not mean supporting America when it is wrong. Much less when you equate America = Republicans.
Mandelstam has already pointed out how you have bought into the deceitful rhetoric from the Administration and its friends on this. (The basic idea is that if nearly all the federal taxes you pay are in payroll taxes rather than income taxes [as is true for many low income folks], a say 15% cut in your income tax will be a pretty negligible decrease of your total tax burden.) Here are a few links to let you in on the truth on the distributional aspects of the Bush plan:
http://www.spinsanity.org/post.html?2003_01_26_archive.html#90256017
http://www.ctj.org/stim03.pdf
http://www.ctj.org/html/gwb0103.htm
Well, I don’t either. But, I’d rather get at the root of the problem rather than the symptoms. And, the root of the problem, my dear Texas friend, is that they pay virtually all of the income tax because they get virtually all of the income. (See, that’s the part that those nifty WSJ editorials leave out.) For example, if you look at why the share of income taxes on the top 1% has nearly doubled since 1980 (which the WSJ editorial page took pains to point out), you find that it is not because those mean liberals are taxing them more harshly but rather because their share of the income has more than doubled…in fact, it went up by almost a factor of 2.5, leaving one to ponder why their share of the taxes didn’t keep pace. [The raw data is here.]
It is true, by the way, that the income tax is progressive, e.g., the top 1% have 20.8% of the income but pay 37.4% of the tax, and the top 50% have 87% of the income and pay 96% of the tax. However, this progressivity is much more dramatic in the income tax than once all federal taxes (especially the payroll tax) are factored into the equation. Taxes at the state level, such as state income taxes and sales taxes also tend to be neutral to regressive. Any wonder that Bush focusses just on the two most progressive taxes—the federal income tax and the estate and gift tax!?!
Texican, I must say that I am quite curious where you get your information from. Between this and the recent thread involving Kyoto, I feel like one could make a mini-career out of setting your facts straight.
Just to highlight a few amazing numbers from the CTJ study, here are the average tax cuts under the Bush 2003 tax cuts for various income groups:
Lowest 20%: $6
Next 20%: $99
Middle 20%: $289
Fourth 20%: $657
Next 15%: $1841
Next 4%: $3524
Top 1%: $30127
Bottom 60%: $131
Top 10%: $5578
It was always pretty great to be rich, but boy is it ever great to be rich during the Bush administration!
I must have missed your response to me on a Kyoto thread. could you please point me to it? I am curious as what your spin on the facts is.