There is NOTHING in the quoted post that is even close to accurate. You might want to review your sources of information, because it seems like a lot of them are inveterate liars.
October 21, 2008
■Neither ACORN nor its employees have been found guilty of, or even charged with, casting fraudulent votes. What a McCain-Palin Web ad calls “voter fraud” is actually voter registration fraud. Several ACORN canvassers have been found guilty of faking registration forms and others are being investigated. But the evidence that has surfaced so far shows they faked forms to get paid for work they didn’t do, not to stuff ballot boxes…
Election fraud does exist, but hasn’t been shown to be widespread. The New York Times reported in 2007 that a five-year crackdown on such fraud by the Bush administration’s Justice Department had produced 70 convictions at the federal level, including 40 campaign workers or government workers convicted of vote-buying, intimidation or ballot forgery, and 23 cases of multiple voting or voting by ineligible voters. But the Times described these as unconnected incidents and said the Justice Department had turned up no evidence of “any organized effort to skew federal elections.”
Millions of whites want to believe in the delusion of “Acorn’s massive fraud” because they do not want blacks to vote. Also, they want to believe that in 2008 Obama stole the election.
Please provide any evidence whatsoever of massive voter fraud. You do agree that there should in fact be evidence of such charges, I assume.
May I politely suggest that absent such evidence, your position itself is indicative of hyperpartisanship?
What a one-sided viewpoint. Do you really think the Republicans were so powerful between 2000 and 2006 that they could wreck the entire world? With a few 200 to 400 billion dollar deficits and a war in Iraq? They brought down the economies of Europe, destroyed the Euro, collapsed the banking system, destroyed GM’s competitiveness, and created a global real estate bubble and financial derivatives bubble?
And as you yourself seem to recognize, the Democrats had control of the house and Senate from 2006 on. Here we are, five years later. And they bear no blame for anything?
And what deregulation frenzy did the Republicans go on? Regulations went up under Bush, all over the place. About the only thing you can point to is the lifting of Glass-Steagal, but economists are mixed on whether that significantly contributed to the problem. What other deregulation can you think of? And how does it compare to massive new regulatory regimes like Sarbanes-Oxley, passed under Bush, or new entitlements like Medicare Part D, also passed under Bush?
A more realistic assessment would be that the trouble in the economy started in the 1990’s with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This caused a major shifting of political and economic alliances. The rise of China changed the economic landscape. The ‘Peace Dividend’ coupled with cheap money caused a speculative bubble in technology. The Euro was created, which set the stage for massive fiscal problems in Europe.
When the tech bubble popped, rather than allow for a proper correction, the Bush administration engaged in essentially Keynesian policy. It borrowed money and threw it at consumers to attempt to prop up aggregate demand. Bush grew the size of government dramatically, using borrowed money. This was supposed to provide a ‘soft landing’ for the economy, and it sort of did.
Then 9/11 hit, and destabilized the world economy even more. A trillion dollars in wealth was lost in the U.S.. Bush responded with a combination of Keynesian and Supply-side stimuluses to prevent the U.S. from sliding back into recession.
In the meantime, Alan Greenspan convinced himself that the world was now capable of sustaining higher growth rates than in the past because of the internet and other technologies, so he lowered interest rates to historic lows. At the same time, the Chinese adopted a policy of mandatory savings, which caused them to have a surplus of money. This money, coupled with low interest rates, set the stage for the next big bubble - real estate.
The real estate bubble was heartily encouraged by BOTH parties. Bush was trying to socially engineer the country by pushing an ‘ownership society’. The thinking was that if you could get people to actually own their own homes, it would cause them to have more skin in the game so they would behave more responsibly. They’d be better citizens because they’d have something to lose. And it would give them self-reliance and rising home prices would help lift up the middle class.
In the meantime, the Democrats convinced themselves that cheap mortgages and lowered risk standards were the key to lifting up the poor and minority communities. They pushed hard to have borrowing standards lowered, and for the supply of capital for mortgages to be increased.
Enter Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which found a great way to make a fortune - trade on the faith and credit of the U.S. due to their standing as quasi-government agencies. This allowed them to buy risky mortgages and sell them off at a higher price because buyers thought that since they were government agencies, the mortgages were safer than they were. This allowed Fannie and Freddie to essentially engage in arbitrage - profiting by transferring risk from mortgages to American taxpayers. They made billions.
The Bush administration tried to warn Congress about Fannie and Freddie repeatedly. But the regulators weren’t listening, because Fannie and Freddie’s shenanigans were fulfilling the regulator’s own political goals. Lowering requirements for mortgages, then bundling them and securitizing them and selling them as derivatives freed up bank capital for more mortgages. And since the banks weren’t holding the risk, they didn’t much care whether the home buyers could afford the houses or were good credit risks. Everyone was flying high.
The result was a massive real estate bubble. And as everyone’s houses went up in price, they stopped saving and even took out second mortgages to blow the money on vacations and toys. Other countries were doing exactly the same thing. They called it the ‘wealth effect’. Soon, everyone became convinced that they were much wealthier than they were, and they consumed accordingly.
Along the way, and for decades earlier, governments around the world had been running up debt, underfunding their retirement systems, and spending their future capital. Corporations followed suit - mollifying workers by trading current wage increases for higher future benefits, all based on the assumption that we were living in a new, faster-growing economy. State governments critically underfunded their retirement systems as a way of getting around their inability to run deficits. These problems have been brewing for decades, spanning both Republican and Democrat administrations.
Then the real estate bubble popped. And suddenly the financial community discovered that those mortgages had been packaged and repackaged and bought and sold so many times that no one knew what the risks inherent in them were any more. The financial system shut down and money stopped moving. This started a panic. Real estate prices tanked. All those crappy sub-prime mortgages went underwater, people walked away from their homes, entire communities collapsed, and trillions of dollars in paper money were extinguished overnight.
Enter TARP, and bailouts of the banking, insurance, and auto sectors. This stopped the bleeding for a while, but when the smoke cleared it became clear that the world had a lot less wealth than everyone thought. The result was that people who thought their houses would pay for retirement had to think again - and start saving. Demand fell. Corporations, also over-extended in this new world, began laying off people. In Europe, the structural problems with the Euro had their band-aid stripped away, exposing the rotten flesh underneath. Suddenly all those countries riding the Euro without the productivity to back it up and with overly-generous retirement plans realized they were bankrupt. Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Greece… All in need of bailouts or major austerity.
In the U.S., the turn to savings in the public sector killed demand, so the government tried to prop it up with more tax cuts and more deficit spending. This highlighted the fact that the U.S. is WAY underwater and has serious problems with the entitlements promised the public.
And here we are: A world with a financial system awash in money injected by central banks, with real estate still declining and risk factors not easing. Global low growth as far as the eye can see. Trillions of dollars in debt coming home to roost in countries everywhere. We’re still trying to figure out how to get out from under it all.
I think that’s a pretty fair assessment of what’s happened. Sorry if it doesn’t jibe with the, “Republicans are the root of all problems” narrative you’re trying to spin. Republicans, Democrats, corporations, central banks, and you and me - we’re all guilty. The world was on a big sugar rush for fifteen years. Now we’re seeing the cavities.
And the Democrats can? You’re assigning all the blame for incivility on the Republicans? After Obama’s “I’m driving, get in the back seat” strutting, and Democrats ramming through health care, and sneering comments about ‘tea baggers’, and union goons beating on people at rallies, and the hysterical, “The Tea Party is RACIST” commentary, following by the ‘The Tea Party is VIOLENT’ commentary? You know, the commentary conveniently forgotten when the left started getting really angry and using violent rhetoric?
Look: The reason partisanship is so severe right now is obvious, and it’s not the result of the evil Republicans or the evil Democrats. People are angry because they’re hurting, and their fighting because the stakes are high. The Democrats are trying to drive an expansion of government that they think is necessary, but is nonetheless unprecedented since at least LBJ. The Republicans see activist government on the rise, and they think it will make things worse. So they’re fighting.
This is the inevitable result of big government. When you politicize everything, expect big political fights. You can’t blame Republicans for riots in Greece, can you? Anger is flaring up everywhere, because the promises made to the people are being broken, because reality is asserting itself. The pie just became a lot smaller, and we’re fighting over who gets the pieces.
You realize this applies equally to Democrats, right? You don’t think they’ve been fearmongering and spreading hatred? Did you hear Maxine Waters, an elected official, say the Tea Party can go to hell yesterday? Did you hear that Joe Biden either said, or didnt’ disagree with, the statement that the Tea Party is a bunch of terrorists? Did you see Obama tell seniors that they might not get their cheques because of the dastardly Republicans? Obama is the blamer-in-chief. He’s constantly pointing his finger at other people and tut-tutting them. You don’t think that contributes to incivility?
Both sides are sowing fear, because none of them have anything to be proud of. Approval of congress is at historic lows. None of them can run on their record of accomplishment.
Wow, Sam. That is a lot of words. I’d really like to thank you for comprehensively sharing so much of your opinion with us. Few people here take the time to document their opinions so exhaustively, and I can’t think of anyone who is more generous in sharing the documentation of their opinions than you.
I type fast.
Now, do you have anything of substance to add, aside from your snarky little sarcastic drive-by?
On the other hand, we have your post, Hentor, which has many fewer words, and none of them of any worth.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, in a way. Allegations were raised about Chester Arthur’s ability to be president since his father was Irish and he moved frequently as a child. An attorney hired by political opponents variously claimed he had been born in Ireland or Quebec.
In addition, questions about the natural born citizenship clause have been asked about various candidates for president, for reasons ranging from birth abroad (McCain, George Romney) territorial birth (Goldwater) and birth to a parent with foreign citizenship (Charles Evans Hughes).
Just like with President Obama, none of these other efforts went anywhere.
Details of the Chester Arthur situation.
Just more proof that hyperpartisanship isn’t all that new.
Was there a serious question about raising McCain’s eligibility? I’ve only heard it mentioned in an ironic context “they say it’s a huge deal that Obama was born outside of the country, and he wasn’t, and yet McCain wasn’t born in the country and not a peep”. I’ve never seen anyone seriously question McCain’s eligibility.
And it wasn’t just questioning if Obama was eligible - that would be reasonable enough - but once it was established that he was indeed, it went into full blown conspiracy theory fact-denying mode. At that point no amount of proof mattered. Obama is an outsider! He’s not one of us! He’s alien! … no subtext there, I’m sure they were all concerned about his paperwork, really.
By “none of these efforts went anywhere”, if you mean they didn’t disqualify him for the presidency, that’s true. But I’d say a movement that has earned significant media time and a significant place in the political discussion for years, as a conspiracy that’s fervently believed by a non-insignificant fraction of the voting public, it went pretty far.
To point to McCain and Obama as two candidates that had their eligibility questioned, therefore all sides are equally wrong etc etc is some extremely weak equivelance. The scrutiny towards Obama was about 10 orders of magnitude higher than any scrutiny - if there was any at all - for McCain. As for Arthur, Romney, Goldwater, Hughes - I really don’t know in their cases so I can’t comment.
I’ll jump on the fox news band wagon, although I’ll make a bi-partisan effort to extend it to the compartmentalization of news media in general.
Back in the day, everyone basically listened to the same news and had the same set of facts to work from. These days the reality shown by fox and the reality shown on the daily Kos, are basically relying on two entirely separates sets of facts. That mixed with an echo chamber in which people can choose what information to expose them selves to, and where people generally have friends who all agree with their world view, can reinforce this dichotomy. As a result the opposing side seems either irrationally disconnected from reality, or evilly lying about it to advance their own ends.
Who asked about an equivalent situation? All Lightnin’ asked is whether it had happened before. Turns out it has.
Heh.
I really like this explanation.
I hate to do this - I really do - but I don’t think I can respond to this point by point. I’m going out of town and I’ll only have occasional internet access on my ipod. And responding to this point by point would pretty seriously derail the thread. But if you do want to continue this, when I have regular internet access again in about 8-10 days, we can start a new thread and debate it point by point if you’d like.
I’m willing to respond to this in general terms, but in general I hate when people simply dodge points made by others, so I try not to do it myself, and this is definitely something I’m doing now.
Anyway - yes, I think the general policies of the republican party when they held a dominant position in the US government were a significant contributing factor in the economic meltdown that had worldwide effects. The 200 to 400 dollar deficits are a lie, since so much of it was hidden with special appropriations bills and such, but I don’t think running a deficit wrecked the world, nor do I think that’s happening now.
They didn’t create some of the problems like in Greece but the downturn in the entire world economy exacerbated essentially every financial problem in the world. It wouldn’t be the full blown crisis that it is.
But most importantly they created an environment in which the very concept of “regulation” became an inherently evil and damaging concept, like it was a disease that did nothing but destroy anything it touched. There was no nuance, no room for reasonable and prudent regulation.
But it wasn’t just through the removal of reasonable regulation, it was the refusal to consider regulation to add some safety and honesty to new practices like credit default swaps. It was a deliberate effort on the part of the administration to de-fang regulatory agencies by having them run by people who thought regulation was evil and who refused to do their jobs and carry out the law.
It seems to my non-expert view credit default swaps were the thing that really made things come crashing down. It created a phantom insurance program of sorts in which several times the wealth of the world was passed around in guarantees. Essentially it was looked at as a risk free investment - you gain a bit on the swapping, and the only time you lose is if the entire system comes crashing down, and that certainly couldn’t happen, right? But when the system started crashing, it was all intertwined with the default swaps, and everything came crashing down.
The sick thing about it is that the original people behind the idea weren’t exactly wrong - government stepped in with a bailout before the full consequences of their actions came home. It’s absolutely sick how many of the people that wrecked the world economy never actually suffered for it.
But to speak in more general terms, I think the thrust of my point is correct. Whether or not you think my blame is misplaced or exaggerated, the republicans can’t point to the period of their dominance - one in which they were handed a booming economy with surpluses, which they quickly squandered, in which tax cuts were promised to lead to an economic boom that never happened and yet still cost us in deficits, in which a completely senseless war that killed a million+ was fought, a possibly unrepairable black mark on the United States’ reputation - there’s essentially nothing positive to point to politically post-2000. They can’t run on “elect us, remember what happened the last time? It was awesome” because their policies were all failures. So they have to dial up the hate strong enough - convince people that the other side will absolutely destroy everything, and they won’t think about the reality of what happened last time their side was in charge.
You do so well when you stick to issues, Sam. You’re easily one of the best posters on the board on specific topics. Which makes it all the more dissapointing when you feel a need to defend the republican party - which is all the more strange in that it’s not even your turf. You have no obligation to be part of their tribe. You deep down don’t even like most of their policies. You probably don’t like the crony capitalism or what they actually do with their power (as opposed to what they claim to stand for). But you apparently feel the need to be tribal because you’re against progressive policies, and they do, so you feel a partisan kinship towards them even if you don’t actually support their real world results. The irony is that this was exactly my point from the start - your anti-progressive (and I really hate the term “progressive”, by the way, but it works better in this context than liberal) stance overwhelms the scrutiny you might have for the pro-conservative stance.
The reason I can say this is that I don’t really think you can possibly really think what you’re saying here. That the republicans have lowered the rhetoric in recent years is so blatantly obvious, and so overwhelming, that I don’t think any reasonable, critical person could think otherwise. I have no partisan loyalties to the democrats - I’m totally comfortable pointing out their flaws.
The Republicans have fostered fearmongering and hatred about Obama from the start. They enjoyed all of the kooky secret muslim communist stuff and subtly encourage it - certainly they make no effort to discourage it. They crank up the “THE DEMOCRATS WANT TO DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU LOVE!!!” rhetoric non-stop. They utterly refuse to negotiate or compromise on pretty much any issue. They hold the country hostage over everything until they get their way.
There’s so many obvious examples and this is so simple, clear, and black and white, that I honestly don’t even know where to start if you want specific examples. I don’t think you honestly fail to recognize it either, you’ve just let partianship sweep you up.
I don’t know the context of what Waters said. If Biden was referring to holding the country hostage over the debt ceiling, then I don’t feel that it’s a bad comparison. Saying “we’re going to trash the country’s economy on purpose if you don’t give us exactly what we want” is pretty much a terroristic threat. They created a crisis entirely - manufactured it out of thin air - that lead to the harm of the US economy in order to push a political point. They threatened to plunge the US economy into chaos, and in the end, when they got their demands, only damaged it moderately. I also don’t know the context of Biden’s remarks (or as you imply, non-response) but I think a neutral observer would actually assess the debt ceiling incident as terroristic. The closer analogy would be taking hostages and making demands, but since it was for political purposes, I don’t think it’s inaccurate to label it as using terrorist tactics.
As far as saying the social security checks might not go out - is that not simply factually true? The Republicans were threatning to cause the US to be unable to borrow around half of its day to day operating budget, and social security checks were one of the things that might’ve been cut. How is that in any way a misrepresentation of the truth?
Obama has actually been far too soft. The Republicans have stated that they have a plan to use every political trick in the book to stop every single thing Obama wants to get done, and they’re willing to do anything, including wrecking the US economy, to do it. Obama has a lot of ground on which to rightfully blame them and call them out even more than he has. One of his biggest problems, actually, is that he isn’t harsh enough. He repeatedly tries to make bipartisan gestures and compromise, which almost always ends up being that republicans get what they want. And he’s opposed by people who actually celebrate harm to the country so long as it’s also perceived as harming him.
Really Sam, I implore you to reconsider your partisan allegiance to the republican party. I have great respect for the stuff you post when you’re essentially not being a partisan, but it all goes south very fast when you feel the need to act like any of the board’s other partisans.
Edited to add:
This is totally uncalled for. You should wish that everyone on this board substantiates their position as much as he does. How in the world is expanding upon and supporting your points a negative? You wish that you could be consistently as substantial.
So none of the people Acorn falsely registered voted?
Oh I love the facts in this thread. Bush crashed the economy? The tech wreck happened long before the 2000 election or the 2001inauguration. He clearly inherited a failing economy. It is quite clear many here disreguard any facts that don’t support their agenda.
They didn’t falsely register anybody, that’s why the charges were dismissed. If somebody fills out a registration card as Mickey Mouse, they are required by law to turn it in any way, with notation.. It is illegal to throw away registration cards, even if they are known to be false.
Stop. Listen to me, please. I’m begging you.
Acorn paid people to get voter registrations filled. Okay? They hired a lot of folks, and some of those folks realized that they could hit their quota of registrations by using fake names. They thought, “Why should I hang out in front of the supermarket all day, when I can just fill out my sheet with random names?” Okay?
Those few crooked people that Acorn hired filled out sheets with names of football players, Mickey Mouse or just nonsense words.
Acorn, the organization itself, not the contractors it hired to get registrations found some of those names. But the law was such that they couldn’t just erase them. Because obviously, you shouldn’t be able to un-register someone to vote because you think their name is fake. So Acorn flagged many of those names before they turned the sheets in to the various elections boards. Okay?
Now, I ask you. If Mickey Mouse is registered to vote in a neighborhood in, say Detroit. Do you think he will show up to vote?
Seriously. I’m begging you. Think about this for just a second. This isn’t about voter fraud. It is about voter-registration fraud. Voter-registration fraud doesn’t lead to fraudulent votes. And it was hardly wide-spread in any case.
Acorn was the victim here. Please stop thinking that they were stealing votes. You’re smart enough to understand this. This is just a lie that some people who hate Acorn (because they get poor people to vote, and poor people vote Democrat).
He’s responsible for most of the deficit. The Bush Tax cuts and the wars are huge drivers of it.
Bush spent a few trillion dollars on his tax cuts and they didn’t help the economy. Again, this is factual. If he didn’t put those tax cuts in we’d be in much, much better shape. Remember, Obama’s contribution to the deficit was the Stimulus. Bush’s was the Tax Cuts, the Wars and Medicare Part D. All of Bush’s deficit drivers are still going on.
I agree.
Well, Chester A. Arthur, sort-of. At least, there were rumours about him.