In other words,* A is A.*
Why is it that I am constantly required to defend myself in this way? Just why do I have to prove my fiscal conservative bona fides to you? You’re perfectly capable of looking them up yourself. I’m not sure why you care. When’s the last time you were asked to search your own posting history to prove that your own beliefs are what you say they are?
You seem to think I’m not a fiscal conservative. Isn’t it then your job to prove your case? Or do you just get to fling accusations and the other person is obligated to prove you wrong or be found guilty by default? That’s not how the game works.
In any event, I’m not sure we’d agree on the concept of fiscal conservatism. It’s not just balancing the budget. Doubling the size of government, so long as you double the size of taxes to pay for it, is not fiscal conservatism. And spending into deficit in a crisis like a natural disaster, a war, or a recession is not a violation of fiscal conservatism either.
I am a fiscal conservative in the sense that I believe in small government that should not run excessive deficits. I’m not insane about it - I think it’s perfectly rational for a government to run a deficit in a recession - that makes government programs an automatic stabilizer. That debt must then be paid back when the recession ends, at least until it’s within a reasonable percentage of GDP. If that requires tax increases, then so be it. But if you happen to think that government is too large, it can also be paid for by scaling back government spending. In fact, if you think government is too large, it should be paid back by cuts in government spending.
For example, I have no beef with Canada’s current trajectory, even though we are running a deficit. We reduced the size of our government from nearly 50% of GDP down to roughly 35% of GDP. Still a little larger than I’d like, but clearly not in the range where it’s a threat to growth and liberty. We kept our taxes at roughly the same level while we did this, which generated a surplus. We used the surplus to pay down the debt. Once the debt was paid down to a reasonable level, we cut the surplus by cutting taxes and giving the money back to the people. That strikes me as a wonderful way to run a country.
When the recession hit, the combination of a reduction in revenue and increased social costs, plus a mild stimulus program, caused our surplus to vanish and be replaced by a deficit of about 2.5% of GDP. Since that deficit is below GDP growth, it is sustainable. Therefore, I’m in no hurry to cut government spending, or raise or cut taxes, or really do much of anything. The best policy, in my opinion, is one of stability. Don’t make radical changes. Move things slowly and carefully. If you want to shrink government, you don’t have to cut departments willy nilly or throw people off welfare en masse. You simply need to restrict the rate of growth of government to be slightly less than GDP growth, and wait.
In Alberta, we had an out of control debt situation in the 1990’s. Ralph Klein was elected, and he proceeded to cut our bloated government substantially. We were the North American leaders in welfare reform. We trimmed our nurses salaries (my wife was a nurse then, and we took the hit). We cut the budgets of government departments. We didn’t reduce taxes immediately, and instead used the savings to eliminate the deficit. Then we eliminated the debt. I was heartily in favor of all that.
Once we did that, we gave half the money back to the people as tax cuts, and put the other half in a trust fund for the day oil revenues dried up. I was in favor of all of that too. Alberta was truly the most fiscally conservative jurisdiction in North America at the time, and I was a big cheerleader for it all. I penned op-eds in support of Klein, wrote articles and later internet posts in support of Alberta’s fiscal conservative policies.
That’s fiscal conservatism. Don’t let things get out of control, don’t spend more than you need to, don’t run big deficits and big debts, make sure your entitlement programs are viable and fully paid for.
Unfortunately, our current Alberta government is NOT fiscally conservative. They started racking up billions in new debt before the recession even hit. But the Alberta people are still the most fiscally conservative population in North America, and as a result the next election will probably see the Progressive Conservative party thrown out of power for the first time in 38 years. The libertarian-oriented Wildrose Party now enjoys far more support in Alberta than any other party by a wide margin, running on a campaign of cutting government spending and balancing the budget again. I support them wholeheartedly.
In my perfect world, the government would be about 25% of GDP. That’s still a substantial size, not grossly far from where it is now. I would have taxes to pay for that such that during economic good times there is a slight surplus, and during economic bad times there is a slight deficit. That’s about as Keynesian as I’m willing to go.
Government regulatory policy should be aimed at keeping markets working, ensuring the free flow of information, and correcting market failures. Social policy should aim at providing a minimal safety net and programs to help displaced workers retrain for new careers.
Government trade policy should promote free trade and open markets. To facilitate this, governments should unilaterally drop their own subsidies, price supports, quotas, and other restrictions to trade. You benefit from doing that even if other countries do not follow suit.
That’s my idea of fiscal conservatism. If you go back in the archives, you’ll find that I supported the Bush tax cuts, opposed almost all the spending the Bush administration increased, and opposed almost all of Bush’s regulatory initiatives. And you might note that had Bush held government spending just to the rate of GDP growth, his deficits would have been very small. Perhaps nonexistant.
When the financial crisis hit I supported TARP, because I thought there was an honest-to-God financial crisis that risked melting down the entire economy. Extraordinary actions were called for. I opposed the corporate bailouts and the stimulus because the need for them did not rise to the level of impending doom, and therefore my first principle of minimal intervention and minimal spending overruled.
Furthermore, if you look in the recent past, you’ll find that I supported the Obama administration’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire, on the belief that right now the thing markets wanted to see the most was a commitment to deficit reduction. That puts me to the left of the Republican party, but is consistent with fiscal conservatism.
I’m actually wavering on that now. The economy is weakening so much that I’m not sure that a huge tax increase is wise. It’s an issue I still wrestle with.
My reputation around here as a ‘Bush apologist’ has to do with two things: My support for the Iraq war, which I’m not going to re-debate, and my tendency to take the Bush side of things when extreme statements are made against the administration by the lefties on this board. For example, for years there would be threads popping up stating that whatever year the thread was written in was ‘one of the worst economies ever’. I would inject a note of realism by pointing to the economic data showing that the Bush recession and subsequent years of low job growth were not by any stretch of the imagination the worst years ever.
People were making that claim during periods where unemployment was anywhere from 4.5% to 7%, and the economy was growing at 2-5% per year, while interest rates were at historic lows and inflation was low. I kept saying, “Hey, one day you’ll be in a REAL bad economy, and then you’ll understand how over-the-top your rhetoric is. You’ll long for an economy like this one.”
Well, now that day is here. I wonder how many of those people still think that the economy hit rock-bottom during Bush’s first term?
You know, it’s just like the Sarah Palin thing. I don’t want to defend Palin. I can think of about 50 politicians I’d rather see as president. If I were on a board full of Palin lovers, I’d be the one calling out her weaknesses. But I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by while people make absolutely insane criticisms of her, attack her family, trash her for for things like the clothes she was given on the campaign trail, saying she has no experience worth mentioning, yada yada.
If this board was full of sane, calm center-left people offering substantive criticisms of Palin’s knowledge, I’d be totally cool with that. But it’s not. It’s got a whole cadre of imbecilic hard-left poo flingers who make Al Sharpton look like a statesman. Against my better judgment, I engage them all too often.
You’re delusional. Yeah, you were forced to step up to inject a note of realism! Like this OP of yours: Sam Stone: "How’s the ‘Bush Economy’ doing now?"That’s just one example. Own up, show an ounce of integrity and take responsibility for your actions. You were entirely a proactive cheerleader. Nobody made you do anything.
Edited to add: Here’s one of my favorite posts from Kimstu from that thread. She’s got your number, and her observations dovetail with the OP of this thread a bit.
I just noticed this lovely slight of hand. “Now that day is here?” No pal, to see something worse than Bush’s first term, we just needed to wait until Bush’s second term.
Which you were cheering for all the while.
. . . and there’s that poo Sam was talking about, right on cue.
Priceless. Couldn’t have said it better.
You know, Hentor, I usually just ignore your posts since your unintelligent brain-droppings are usually too stupid to pay attention to. I mean, you’re the guy who still thinks he ‘won’ the NASA debate, and you keep bringing it up and causing your own fellow travelers to slowly back away from you. You fit my favorite definition of a fanatic: “someone who won’t change his mind, won’t change the subject, and is too stupid to know when he’s beat.”
Oh and Hentor, it took me two pages to provide cites because it took two pages for someone to ASK for cites. When they did, I provided them - non partisan, detailed cites that backed up everything I said in the OP.
But I happened to notice this time that you were careful to link only to my OP, and not to the thread itself. So I wondered what I said in that thread that made you decide not to link to it…
And I found out that you saved China Guy some effort. He was wondering about my fiscal conservative bona fides.
So, China Guy, here are some choice quotes from the ‘partisan Bush apologist’, from that very thread:
Wow, look at me just kissing the asses of Bush and the Republicans.
I’m particularly proud of this one, which I think touches all the bases:
Some backstory on that thread: For four years, people like Hentor had been posting threads any time there was any bad news on the economy, blaming Bush for everything and calling it the ‘worst economy ever’. So when the economy turned around and started performing better, I thought it was only fair play to post a thread about it. Bedlam ensued. As usual.
This board is a sea of partisan left-wing threads, attacking everything Republicans or conservatives in general do. Such threads are usually met with an “atta boy! You found some good dirt this time!” by the other lefties. Everyone has a jolly time reinforcing each other’s prejudices and practicing being holier-than-thou. But God forbid if a hated ‘tighty-righty’ should post a thread criticizing Democrats or praising Republicans. Then it’s “PARTISAN! NO FAIR! YOU SUCK! YOU AREN’T PRESENTING A BALANCED PICTURE!”
Again, that’s the way this place rolls. And I should know better. I should know that on this board, left-wing partisan screeds are de rigeur, but anything remotely received as right-wing partisanship is met with a blast of hostility and mockery, and always ends in a train wreck. Yet sometimes I just can’t help myself. A character flaw, I guess. On occasion, after being snarled at too many times I indulge in a little poking of the bear.
In any event, have a look at those comments above. Those are from one thread. And yet, I still get people saying, “You’ve never said a single bad thing about Bush or a Republican. You’re just an unthinking apologist for anyone on the right.” And China Guy, who’s been around for a long time, honestly can’t remember me saying anything at all critical of Bush’s deficits. But that thread is typical of how I dealt with Bush at a time when I felt best about him. And it was also three years before the financial crisis. From that point, it all went downhill until I was prefacing half the things I say on this board with, “Look, I can’t stand Bush, and I can’t stand the current Republican party, okay?” But that seems to just fall down the confirmation-bias bunnyhole.
Anyway, for anyone who wants to read it, the thread is here. It’s actually quite interesting to read, to see what people were saying in the middle of the Bush years, not knowing the train wreck that was on the way. It’s interesting that I was the one pointing out the Keynesian stimulus of Bush’s deficit spending and tax cuts, and other people denying it. It’s interesting to speculate whether the participants in the debate would have totally flipped positions had we had the same conversation today, replacing Bush with Obama. I think it shows that just about everyone in there was operating with a certain amount of bias, including myself.
Well, I have to say that my own powers of prediction were as horrible as ever in that thread. 
-XT
Is that seriously how you see it? I know Shoden falls back on this line every time something fails to go this way. “boo hoo this board is so liberal.”
So tell me, how many anti-Obama threads have to be started (and followed by a series of atta boys and high fives) before this board is considered conservative enough for you?
It’s the same bullshit as with Fox News vs Main Stream Media. Conservatives spend so much time crying that shit isn’t their way, and that if it’s not as far right as Fox News than it must be far right.
Is this what you want in a message board?
Fuck, every time I hear a conservative bitch about this as an “echo chamber” I lose yet another chunk of respect for them. Grow some fucking balls. You don’t get what you want all the time. There are other view points besides your own, and most of the time your view points are going to be wrong (or outnumbered), that’s just the way it is. There is going to be a [black] Democrat in the Oval Office until at least January 20, 2013–get over it.
I wish I had time to address all the nonsense and stupidity and false assumtions that this silly little screed of yours evinces, but I don’t so I’ll just have to call it stupid as hell and let it go at that. Hopefully Sam or “Shoden” or one of the board’s other clear thinkers will be along soon to set you straight.
I don’t care if there’s 100 anti-Obama threads or just one. What I care about is that if someone starts one, it’s treated the same way that an anti-Republican thread is - i.e. don’t attack the poster for being a ‘partisan’ or subject their OP to a level of scrutiny you wouldn’t give to a pro-Obama or anti-Bush post.
For example, look at the supposed errors that got my last thread pitted and myself labeled as a ‘joke’. I said that 'three strong Obama supporters have written scathing editorials against the administration’s policies", and then I listed them.
I will grant you that the adjective ‘strong’ may not have been necessary. And one of the three was only a supporter of some of Obama’s policies, and not necessarily of Obama himself. Another argument was that one of the three op-eds wasn’t really that strong in its condemnation. All fair, debatable points. But not exactly egregious errors, and all points could be reasonably debated without resorting to ad-hominem attacks or dismissals followed by rolleyes.
But the essence of the thread was that people who had once supported Obama are turning against his policies. At least one of them was about as harsh an editorial as you can get, and even the ‘mild’ one said that Obama was now continuing the most fiscally irresponsible federal policies in U.S. history. I don’t consider that a mild comment coming from a former supporter, but your mileage might vary and we can debate it.
Instead, we nitpicky details elevated to the level of lies, we got the usual character assassination crap and personal insults, we got a meta-discussion about my single-tracked anti-Obama brain, and the inevitable questions regarding my motivation, why I post on American politics as a Canadian, etc.
It’s true that I could have gotten a better result had I worded my OP in a less tendentious manner. I could have written it gently, being careful not to ruffle any feathers. I could have formed some statements as questions. But the fact is, if the result would have had any negative implications for Obama, I still would have been attacked by the usual suspects.
In the meantime, I run into gross errors all the time uttered by lefties on this board, and I let them go if they’re not central to the person’s point or if the correct answer doesn’t materially change their point, because I think that’s the fair way to debate. Or if I correct them, I give the person the benefit of the doubt and assume they were simply mistaken, and not lying or acting as some shill for a political group, or just blurting out talking points from the DNC.
I gave a perfect example earlier: A post in which an OP’s claim was taken as gospel when he said that 1-10% of the people have 90-99% of the wealth, and even when I corrected the grossly incorrect number (which DID change the whole premise), the very same people that tend to call me a liar for dropping a decimal point were like, “Hey, who cares what the actual number was anyway? We know what he meant.”
Can you understand how frustrating it gets when that pattern repeats itself over and over again through the years?
The bottom line is that any conservative or anti-Obama post on this board automatically qualifies as ‘poking the bear’. There are a number of posters who simply become outraged any time I post something they don’t want to hear, and they start flinging poo. Hentor has made a career out of spending his time researching every post I’ve made in the past 11 years looking for ‘gotcha’ arguments or inconsistencies he can then use to attack me. China Guy demands that I go back and bring forward evidence that I am who I say I am. These are all personal attacks. They have nothing to do with what claims I happen to be making at any given time.
So to answer your first question, I don’t care if this board is conservative or liberal. I don’t care if I’m outnumbered 1000-1, or if there are 1000 anti-Republican posts for every anti-Democrat post. All I care about is that the content of each is treated fairly.
Gosh, Sam, why didnt you say something sooner?
Did you link to that thread? Because, if it’s the thread I remember, that guy was ridiculed. It was in the Pit, and people were all over him. But maybe I’m thinking of a different thread…
Sam, I meant what I said in the OP: You’re actually a reasonably interesting poster and debater when you turn off the partisanship. That’s all.
I get now that now you are a “fiscal conservative” and define it as small government, etc. I guess this would be in a libertarian sense. And that this is related but not the same as fiscally conservative.
And thanks for digging up those quotes. This board is not really searchable and I give up after a few minutes if I don’t get lucky.
All that said, in the original thread that caused me to open this one you went for linking dubious claims to make your case. The 'three strong Obama supporters have written scathing editorials against the administration’s policies."
Obama’s “speech writer and supporter” got called out on it. I can’t be bothered to debunk the Kramer stuff. I’m not sure Kramer’s alliegence, but he just says “I heard all the former Obamists on the street saying they think he’s a disaster now.” And your intel on Intel was way off.
The issue is that when it comes to these types of political threads, you position grossly inaccurate assertations and then sulk off when called on it. And it sure appears that you make the claims to sway people because facts and logic won’t.
This week here in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty made the news when he rejected a federal grant to pay for comprehensive sex education after having accepted a similar grant for “abstinence-only” education.
This is the kind of decision a conservative certainly can be “counted upon” to make, but it certainly is not the right one.
Abstinence-only flies in the face both of the research and the “reasonable person” standard. It is the worst sort of the supersition-based, knee-jerk, conservative mentality to perpetuate this cruel, counter-productive and futile effort to stamp out premarital sex.
Whether Pawlenty is acting out of his own conservative beliefs or as a sop the conservative base in preparation for a presidential bid hardly matters, except that in the latter case it further calls into question the motives behind his decision-making.
Next I give you the strange case of one John McCain. What goes into his decision-making depends on what month it is, but the only time he makes the right one is when it’s something that pisses off conservatives.
And how about stem-cell research? Good thing we have conservative leaders who can be “counted upon” to see to it that embryos continue being destroyed rather than being used to create miracle cures.
You’ve been playing both these cards for a while now, SA. Do you not see the contradiction?
To me the dumbest, demonstrated, thing so far is to see Rand Rover and Starving Artist (IIRC) still in the thread when Sam Stone already has made clear that guys like them are just full hot air, or something worse, regarding scientific issues like AGW.
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The three of us aren’t members of some club. We aren’t required to agree on absolutely everything even though we are all fiscal conservatives. For example, I very much disagree with SA’s social conservative views. Also, I’m not sure what counts as “being in this thread.” I haven’t posted for a while. Finally, you act like the second that Sam says he doesn’t agree with me on something I’m supposed to no longer “be in the thread.” That’s obviously ridiculous.
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You have lumped me into a group you call “deniers” based on the fact that I don’t toe the line and believe 100% of what the Democrats tell me (like you do). But Sam’s views and my views are not all that much different. The only difference I see is that he’s willing to believe that the earth is warming and man caused it, whereas I maintain some reservation on both of those points because of how the science on those points has been conducted. After that point (i.e., what to do about it), Sam and I largely agree.
Yeah right, you said that my position was moronic, Sam Stone like me agrees with the science.
The inescapable conclusion is that Sam is also considered to be a Moron by you, also you are not smart enough to even notice when the people you support are in reality dissing you.
Listen you moron, if there is no AGW then there is no need to do anything about it.
And once again, **Sam **demonstrated already that you are indeed a denier full of Hot Air. Deal with it.
You seem to think that I regard Sam as some deity, so you delight in pointing out where he and I disagree. Well, guess what, I don’t think that and I am perfectly fine with our disagreement.
As far as “the science” on AGW–I’m the one following the science. I am perfectly happy accepting that the earth is warming and man caused it, as soon as that is proven by science that is free from the effects of politics and doesn’t rely so heavily on such subjective modeling. Feel free to declare victory and post a bunch of links, as is your wont.
Here’s something else for you to think about, as far as “the science”–why don’t you think that it’s too late to do anything about global warming? A lot of scientists are saying that. Why don’t you believe it? Why are you a denier on that point?