Seriously? Did you oppose the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (and increased security at airports) as well, given that flying planes into buildings was already illegal? Given the currently existing rules against Iraq having a nuclear program, did you oppose the idea of increasing the inspection regimen?
Regulation is how you catch people doing illegal things.
Daniel
Postwar Record of Debt Growth
1946 258682187409.93
1953 266071061638.57 2.86% D
1961 290216815241.68 9.07% R
1969 358028625002.91 23.37% D
1977 653544000000.00 82.54% R
1981 930210000000.00 42.33% D
1993 4411488883139.38 374.25% R
2001 5807463412200.06 31.64% D
(Tried to get rid of that flying R, but couldn’t do it.)
Anyway, as can be seen, the only triple digit increase in the debt occurred under Reagan/Bush.
The only reductions in the rate of increase in the debt occurred during the last two Democratic Administrations, those of Carter and Clinton. Indeed, the rate of increase under Clinton was the lowest since LBJ.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, this message has not been lost on the markets. Gold stocks bottomed in Nov 2000, shortly after the election. If you need the reason why explained to you, you’re just not paying attention.
Data from: http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/treas/pubdebt
The point of the Homeland Security Dept was to improve enpforcement of existing laws. The “Patriot Act” was an attempt to modify existing laws, but the H.S.D. would have been created independently of that Act. But even the P.A. did not create any new laws (AFAICT).
Your analogy is off.
I never said that. I went off because at least one poster declared that there was no need to debate the various Dem candidates because all that mattered was defeating Bush. Do you agree that there is no need to compare Dean to the other Dems?
The analogy is not off, not for the most part. A lot of what deregulation does is removes oversight from corporations, removes requirements that they do their activities above-board where law enforcement can see it. Those are the regulations we need to put back in place first, the ones that make it difficult to do the sort of thing Enron did.
And if we find out that there are loopholes in regulatory oversight, then we need to create regulations that close those loopholes. When someone finds a new way of cheating on account books, we need to regulate that new way out of existence – or at least out of convenience.
Daniel
I haven’t added it up, but I am fairly certain that at least half the world’s population lives in democracies. India, Japan, Brazil, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Australia, South Africa, every other little country in Europe, even Russia more or less. Lots of African and South American countries are democracies now.
The rest of the world isn’t impressed with you every time the U.S. holds an election. Us bumpkins out here are familiar with the concept of democracy and even practice it every now and then. So, to be honest, it’s not “very important” at all.
Of course not, Dean not yet being the nominee. If you think that’s already decided, then there’s no need to discuss the losers, though. Do you plan to talk about any other candidate’s views in comparison any time soon, or just stick with the Dean-bashing?
Aww, c’mon, Rickjay, you can’t tell me that you didn’t get tears of joy from watching our 2000 presidential election.
There might be other democracies in the world, but surely the US is in a class by itself when it comes to demonstrating what a major election can look like.
Those were tears of joy, right?
Daniel
Soooo, Rickjay, how many of you voted for Paul Martin, your shiny new leader? 
The people in his riding must be so proud. New airports and bridges fer everybody!
We’ve looked at the numbers before (but I have that at home) and I believe the facts show that the sort of rise we have had in discretionary spending in the past couple of years is simply unprecedented. Now, you can argue that these were unprecedented circumstances but the fact is that these spending rises have occurred and they have occurred at the same time that more tax cuts…benefitting largely the well-to-do were passed. No Democrat to my knowledge has ever engaged in this sort of fiscal train wreck.
Well, it is comforting to know that when the going gets tough, Bush will get tough and will work toward balancing the budget on the backs of those who are most in need. And, that he will do this in large part to preserve the tax cut rewards he has given the top 1% of income earners…who were hurting after all, since their tax burden has been so high that their after-tax incomes have barely increased by 150% over the 1980-1997 period (in real terms). The poor and middle class, on the other hand, who have seen quite little (in the case of the middle class…about 10% at the median) to no or almost no (in the case of the poor) increase in their aftertax incomes during that time can certainly afford to give a little more for their country! :rolleyes:
Whether you can quibble with Howard Dean’s numbers or not, the truth is that he is approaching things with a lot more honesty. I heard quotes from the debate the other night where Lieberman and others were hammering him about wanting to repeal the whole tax cut including the parts that do go to the lower and middle class. He explained how tough choice had to be made and he thought the benefits of what he was proposing to do with the money outweighed the losses for these people. That’s a far cry from the deceptive, “You can have it all” politics eminating from this White House. Unfortunately, history suggests that a vast number of the American public prefers to be lied to and told a good story rather than to be told hard truths. More power to him for trying anyway.
What do you interpret this as meaning?
I read it as saying that the richest one percent of Americans will receive a total of $477 billion “over the decade”, and that “an astonishing 52% of the total tax cuts will go to the richest one percent”. So I read that as meaning that $477 billion was 52% of the total, which makes the total $917 billion.
Somebody must be comparing apples to oranges, because $477 billion is not 52% of 2.29 trillion.
So either their statement that almost half the tax cut is going to the top one percent is wrong, or the total amount is not $477B, or the total amount is not 2.29 trillion over ten years. Or something.
I don’t think I said that. As your cite shows, the deficit is projected to disappear even if Dean does not rescind the tax cuts.
No, he states explicitly that he will increase spending by $100B over the first two years, plus another $5 billion on homeland security, plus unspecified but probably larger amounts on Medicare, Social Security, and others.
I have to do some actual work. I will try later to run some numbers assuming that the 2.29 T total is correct, and see what that means.
Regards,
Shodan
Believe it or not, I actually said some good things about Dean in the other thread (“Conservatives are afraid of Dean”, or whatever it’s called). I probably should have repeated some of them here. I’ll try better to live up to your high standards in the future.
So uhh, Dean’s promised to balance the budget by 2011, eh? Wow, looks like its going to go that way anyway. What a miracle worker he will be. Maybe next we can talk about how he’ll make sure that Saddam will face justice for his crimes. I really don’t see a good reason to choose him over any of the other canidates.
Sounds great, except that you simply made up the 20-30,000 numbers. Dean never says this amount from any cite I have seen. What Dean does say on his web site is that he will continue to have US troops there for 2 years and beyond.
Look, I’m in favor of the war in Iraq. I support it. But, it’s just odd to me that the same folks fuming mad with Bush for keeping our troops there don’t seem to mind that Dean plans on keeping our troops there.
I think Dean has it made it clear why he thinks voters should vote for him over the other (serious) Dem candidates:
I’m not sure if Clark can claim #1 or not, but this is what Dean is expecting to get him the Dem nomination. It seems like that is what he will also use as his selling points in the general election (if he get’s the Dem nomimnation), although it is possible he may try to emphasize something else if events force him to.
So, all Bush has to do is start using the wold “multilateral” and all these problems will be solved?
The word unilateral has no meaning, except possibly “something the democrats don’t like”. Bush could double the size of the coalition and his opponents would continue to call his efforts unilateral. “Multilateral” is equally meaningless.
And you know this how?
This whole thing is arguing against a strawman. Nobody said that people who lost money in Enron were stupid or greedy.
I would argue that it’s financially stupid if you invest solely in one company as some did with Enron, though. If you diversify, then you can’t get hurt that bad, even if some of your investments liquidate as Enron did.
This is a very typical liberal attitude. Take a system that works better than anything the word has ever seen (Capitalism in America the way it is today) and regulate it into mediocrity just so that there is no risk in any of it.
That’s right, I keep forgetting. Those 60% of us who think Bush is doing a good job aren’t paying attention. We are all being brainwashed by Carl Rove. :rolleyes:
You see what I mean? If you could actually step outside yourself and watch this sillyness you would see the humor in it. The anti-Bush crowd, on the SDMB and elsewhere, is so far gone it’s just comical at this point.
The way you describe Bush and his advisors and staff reminds me of characters from the Cobra organization from the old GI Joe cartoon.
How is it more definite what Dean is saying.
Here is his “definite” statement from his web site:
**
A democratic transition will take between 18 to 24 months, although troops should expect to be in Iraq for a longer period.
**
What about this do you find definite?
No. It’s silly to think that it will matter in the minds of the attackers if there is a UN badge on the uniform of the troops they are fighting. UN facilities and personal have already been attacked in Iraq. Red Cross personel have been attacked. Iraqi government personal have been attacked.
What reason do you have to believe that anyones attitudes will change with UN involvement? There is absolutely no reason to think this.
I’m quoting this for Debaser’s edification. The rest of his post is a set of straw men and non sequiturs not worthy of responding to.
Daniel
You’re going to have to spell out how I am making a straw man argument because I don’t see one.
I also don’t know what you are talking about with laissez-faire economics. I didn’t say anything about our system being laissez-faire. What are you talking about?
Huh? So, when Dean talks about regulating entire industries he just means he plans on enforcing existing laws and policies? Not making any new ones? Bullshit.
Thanks, I was running low on smug condescension.
I do think Bush should cut the budget instead of raising it. I already said he is loosing some credibility by not doing more cuts on spending.
I don’t have to “spin myself into nots” by simply stating the obvious, though. If liberals were in charge, then spending would be going up even faster.
You are forgetting about scope.
The impace of 9/11 was way more important than an energy company that was poorly run going out of business.
9/11 was a new thread that America had never faced in such a meaninful way before - Terrorism. There wasn’t any structure in place to deal with this threat. A new one had to be built.
The Enron scandal was something we have seen before. The S&L scandals, black monday, even the great depression have resulted in massive amounts of laws and protections so that bad things won’t happen to the markets. There is already an intire industry and structure that is in place.
You know what? For the most part, it worked. Enron is out of business. That’s the solution with capitalism.