This gets back to the tricky definition of pork, which sometimes appears to be “projects that I think sound bad.” What’s wrong with the government giving money to a hospital in Guam, for example? Is Guam just crawling with hospitals? “Pecan Scab Research” sounds bad, not to mention gross, and so does the “Mother’s Day Shrine Building” and the “Montana Sheep Institute.” But what’s wrong with the government supporting the Guamese hospital or the Agassi College Prep Academy?
While you, as an individual, may believe this, I’ve yet to encounter anyone who advocates increased local taxation in lieu of less federal taxation. Not “righties”, “lefties”, “in-betweenies” or anyone. And as elucidator points out, the minute that states start enacting their own social programs, then you’ve created one hell of a mess.
Hi.
All things being equal, I want all money going to the lowest level of government that can do a given task.
Why? I see no problem whatsoever with different states having different welfare systems, etc. In such fashion, we may find what works best. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
“Pecan scab research” might sound bad, but it’s a reasonable agricultural expenditure to study diseases of a major tree crop. (Pecan scab is a fungus that attacks pecan trees)
The problem with those “Your Tax Dollars At Work” type “exposes” of government funding of research is that just because something sounds like a waste of time or money just going by the title of the organization involved, it ain’t necessarily so.
I can see that, but in Arkansas and Mississippi, the black kids con’t get a subsidised lunch program and they’ll grow up to steal the satellite radio receiver out of your Caddy rather than become cardiologists who will save some White guy’s fat ass from a heart attack. 
Hello there. It’s my pleasure to have met all both of you.
Balkanization. Let’s say that you in (checking. . .) Honduras (thought I recognized that SN) decide to eliminate whatever OSHA might be called there. As soon as everyone in Nicaragua (play along) realizes what a sweet set up you have, they all come and want to establish their businesses there to avoid those onerous and oh-so-mightily unfair OSHA laws that exist back on the auld sod. Are you gonna keep 'em out?
If so, how?
If not, what happens when you’ve managed to destroy the land? Or water? Especially to those who might live downhill and/or downriver from you. Say, in Belize?
Considering there’s two in this thread in just the last few hours, you might consider the possibility that there are more.
Of course not. If the citizens of Honduras want no OSHA, no OSHA it is. I think it’s unlikely they should choose that, but I suppose it’s possible.
I reject the assumption that without OSHA they will inevitably destroy the land (especially since OSHA is not an environmental agency, but I take your point). They may find a system that works more efficiently than OSHA. They may find that in 2006, people are concerned enough about their environments that states that have lax environmental standards have a hard time getting good workers (imagine that – states competing to be the greenest and thus attract residents).
In any event, I think the people who live there (and the local officials they elect) are more likely to care about the conditions in small place like Honduras than are the federales living hundreds of miles away.
If our choices negatively affect other states, that’s where the federal government steps in (utilizing lawyers, guns and/or money, of course).
No, I usually only offer that up when asked. Nice try, though. And I didn’t say you were talking about me.
IOW, you don’t have a rebutal.
It’s as much as a verifiable fact as anything you’ve posted in this thread. 
And the reason I said “often” is because there are some things, like military expenditures, that do have to be handled at the federal level. Again, though, nice try!
Uhm, all the stuff I mentioned is happening now, and we don’t have to post guards at the state borders.
There are other ways to offer a social safety net besides the MW. If the federal gov’t must insert itself, perhaps it can set goals and let us lowly staties decide how we’ll meet those goals.
And I noticed it changed from “justice” to “economic justice”. The former most of us can agree on. Get back to me when you get more than a handful of people who agree on what the latter is.
Most social programs already are handled largely at the state level, and we don’t have Balkanization. I just don’t see the need to federalize tham anymore than they already are.
What’s to rebut? You characterize my post as a gigantic strawman, what do I do, stamp my foot and yell “Is not!”?
Sure, maybe. Any reason to believe that is superior? Other than the fact that it accords with your political philosophy, what recommends it?
And what if they don’t want to meet the goals? George Wallace was a big fan of state’s rights, MLKing, not so much.
Is the popularity of one’s opinion to be the measure? As yours tremble on the edge of world domination?
OK. Why don’t you quote the posts in this thread that made the arguments you said people were making. If you can’t, then it’s a strawman.
Well, we won’t ever know if the feds don’t let us try, will we? Is there some reason that you think your method is superior?
I’d be OK with mandating federal methods if the goals weren’t met. But issues like MW and fundametal civil rights are two completely different animals. MLK and GW were more concerned with the latter, and the feds do have a role to play there.
Where did I say that? You’re using the term “economic justice” as if it meant something specific. I’m just as concerned about economic justice as you are-- but we have a different definition of what it means. Alll I said is that you can’t get people to agree on what “economic justice” is. So, while a cry for “economic justice” is appealing emotionally, it doesn’t mean anything specific, intellectually.
Oh? Strawman status is dependent on whether or not one is making a direct reference to a previous post? News to me. Which memo was that?
Didn’t say it was. The “small government” meme is usually presented as a truism, as if it were some obvious fact that doesn’t require substatiation. I’m only saying “Sez who?”.
Sure they’re different. But why should the fed gov have a role in one but not the other? Again, “sez who?”
You’re not making a lot of sense here, John. If it doesn’t mean anything specific, then how could you have any definition at all, much less one that differs from mine?
Anyway, back to Trent Lott…
I’m wondering about the whole Bill Frist thingy. There was a lot of opinion at the time that Trent’s demotion had more to do with grooming Bill Frist for bigger and better things than with Trent’s rather clumsy gesture to an old fart. I really don’t think he was making any appeal for segregation any more than I think John Kerry was dissing the truth. It was an opportunity seized upon for another end entirely.
So is the “Frist wing” eclipsed and the “Lott wing” ascendant?
“…John Kerry was dissing the troops…”
Sheesh.
Exactly. elucidator is being uncharacteristicly ignorant in this thread about government and where it’s large and where it isn’t.
Business oversight and regulation isn’t expensive, and is definitely needed. No clear thinking conservative would disagree with that.
However, the runaway costs of the federal government mostly have to do with taking money away from some groups of people and giving it to other groups of people. Most conservatives properly recognize this. Cancel Social Security, Welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and Foreign aid and any other program where the government is just handing money out to people and you’d save what? It’s definitely more than half the federal budget. Probably more like 60-70%.
Yes, conservatives like to have a strong well funded military. So what? Simply because there is one area where conservatives do want to have the government spending doesn’t mean you can mock them because they want smaller government in other areas. The military is less than 20% of the budget.
Ermm . . . yes . . . Actually, that was the point about “small government conservative” hypocrisy that I was trying to make.
Guess I should have been clearer.
Well, for now I stand by my statement. After all, there have only been two, and The Dope is hardly representative of the general population.
This is where I lose you. It appears that you’re saying that you’ve no problem with the government stepping in as mediator, but you don’t want them establishing a national norm. Do I have it? Because establishment of said norm would, to my eye, eliminate the need for them to ride to the rescue, after the damage has already begun happening.
But you’re not actually advocating such a radical departure?
No, but if you hold up an argument, especially an exageratedly absurd one, that no one in the thread is making for the purpose of shooting it down, that’s a strawman. Like this:
No one in this thread has advocated the elimination of anti-polution laws. It’s wonderful that you think we need such laws, but everyone else in the thread thinks so, too.
It doesn’t mean any one specific thing, if you prefer. So your exhortation that I concentrate on “economic justice” will not send me in the direction you want me to go since my definition will be quite different from yours.
The point was that the Republican debacle last week was due to their poor leadership and lost credibility. They’re keeping the same poor leaders, and on both sides of the building at that.
I really don’t think you’d want to bet on *that * happening.
The first statement is fine, the second one is *way * out on a limb. OF COURSE a good reason to vote for someone is the expectation that they’ll form part of a bloc that will push the country in the direction you want it pushed. That’s why parties exist. And FTR, it isn’t because Lott is a scumbag that he’s convinced a lot of people to vote against the Republicans, it’s knowing that a Republican would be pressured to support a scumbag for leader if he wanted to get anything done.
Except for the large numbers of people who aren’t covered, who do get only the now-ancient federal-level wage. Do we forget about them because so many people are luckier? Not outside the fantasies of Libertaria. That’s another thing government is for.
Never been such a thing. Too hard to maintain party unity, either way.
You know how fast that changes once the primaries are under way. How many recent “finalist” candidates *were * anointed Front Runners this early? Carter? Clinton? Nope, nobodies at the time. Likewise, you can ask President John Glenn and President Pete Wilson what good the early buzz did them.
Obviously. 
Now how about an assumption that “anybody but another Republican” will be an effective platform, though? Hell, it’ll even work for the *Republican * candidate, who is going to have to claim to somehow be a different kind from the ones who’ve screwed up so thoroughly in this administration.