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Yes, the Republicans are the ones pushing infrastructure spending.

Right.

Senate GOP Blocks Obama's $60 Billion Infrastructure Plan

The Republican Budgets CUT Infrastructure Spending

If you need more of a reality check, try Google.

Previous to 1800, the only monopolies were state sponsored, supported, and sometimes enforced monopolies

And that is still the case today. You postulate the existence of mythical stable "free market capitalism based monopolies", but those simply don't exist. ... Large, stable monopolies are the result of, and require, government action.

While I may not have stated it clearly, I don't consider state sponsored monopolies as a valid point. They're propped up by other than economic forces.

Regarding pure free market monopolies: Standard Oil, Microsoft (virtual monopoly), Intel (virtual monopoly), The current ISP situation in the US, which occurred via local government deals, so that one is arguable. For business networks, it's Cisco to a smaller extent (80% or so from the last time I looked). If you step back 1 level where the choice is extremely limited by cabals, there's plenty there. If the government would let them merge, they would be monopolies.

More than 50% of the world's population lives of less than an equivalent $3 US a day. That's not wealthy by anyone's standards.

Well, no, that's not true. Median family incomes is about $9300, and median per capita income is about $2900, worldwide, nearly three times what you claim.

That is self reported, by people with jobs. Is it accurate? Not that the World Bank and others recently changed the poverty measure, reducing the group considered to be in poverty. And there's a considerable number of people without jobs.

"Wealth" is a subjective measure, it can be created, destroyed, and altered just by comparison.

You're playing meaningless semantic games. If you don't understand what the word "wealthier" means in this context, then we can simply put it this way: the world is much better off today than it used to be, across countries and income groups. There is less hunger, less violence, less homelessness, greater literacy, higher life expectancy, etc.

I think the people in Syria for one, might disagree.

A bald assertion

No, not a "bald assertion". The idea that free trade "drains jobs and money" flies in the face of both established economic theory and long term data. The economic theory isn't even hard to understand: if you erect trade barriers, goods get more expensive so the money people have available is worth less. And, in fact, the cost that the trade barrier imposes on Americans is always higher (often a lot higher) than any increased demand in the US. In addition, politically, if the US erects trade barriers against imports, other nations will erect trade barriers against US imports in retaliation, and our export trade will also suffer. Historically, trade barriers have caused everything from recessions and depressions to outright war.

It's still a bald assertion. There have been many documented cases of jobs leaving the country post free trade agreements. So until you provide some facts, you're still making an unsupported assertion that sounds more like a policy plan than anything based in reality. Thanks to numerous studies and facts, I can conclude that free trade has moved jobs out of the country, lowered wages, and has had a relatively pronounced and severe negative impact on our trade imbalances as wealth flows out of the country.

There is also a difference between a trade barrier and shifting costs. If you can't understand that, perhaps tha

It's also protected by our First Amendment.

"or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,"

That they wish to do this not merely in the town square, or at their favorite website, but in their neighborhood, makes no difference.

It may be racist, but it's not merely legal, it's protected. And our President is actively working to subvert the Constitution and make this specifically illegal.

so when your boss asks you to sign a non-disclosure, it's unconstitutional? clearly your freedom of speech is being violated

You are comparing a contractual agreement between two parties not to disclose information with a racist demonstration. What are you getting at and what does a non-disclosure have to do with the first amendment? Clearly gibberish.

It's also protected by our First Amendment.

"or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,"

That they wish to do this not merely in the town square, or at their favorite website, but in their neighborhood, makes no difference.

It may be racist, but it's not merely legal, it's protected. And our President is actively working to subvert the Constitution and make this specifically illegal.

so when your boss asks you to sign a non-disclosure, it's unconstitutional? clearly your freedom of speech is being violated

It's also protected by our First Amendment.

"or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,"

That they wish to do this not merely in the town square, or at their favorite website, but in their neighborhood, makes no difference.

It may be racist, but it's not merely legal, it's protected. And our President is actively working to subvert the Constitution and make this specifically illegal.

They're only breaking the spirit of the law, not the letter.

True. They are 'getting around' the law against exporting crude, by not exporting crude. It seems the law needs to be amended to define better what is considered exportable if they want to stop this.

Perhaps they should get rid of the ban altogether? Seriously, with the trade deficit spiraling out of control, it makes no sense at all to ban exports. Rather than question BP for 'getting around' the law, we should question why we have such bad law in the first place.

Agreed. That's why I said 'if they want to stop this'.

They're only breaking the spirit of the law, not the letter.

True. They are 'getting around' the law against exporting crude, by not exporting crude. It seems the law needs to be amended to define better what is considered exportable if they want to stop this.

Perhaps they should get rid of the ban altogether? Seriously, with the trade deficit spiraling out of control, it makes no sense at all to ban exports.
Rather than question BP for 'getting around' the law, we should question why we have such bad law in the first place.

It is really telling that the ATF gave over 2500 guns to Mexican drug cartels, and no one from the ATF, DOJ, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the IRS targeted political opponents during an election year, and no one from the IRS, DOT, or Obama Administration is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that Obama campaign donors at Solyndra got $500,000,000 of tax payer money, promptly went bankrupt, and no one from the DOE is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the Fed prints $75,000,000,000 a month, totaling over $4,000,000,000,000 in the last 5 years, and no one from the fed is sitting in jail.
It is really telling that the president himself breaks the PPACA on a daily basis by announcing parts he will be temporarily or permanently not enforcing, and he's not sitting in jail.

Wow, that's a fun list. I count 3... 4? outright lies, 4 completely made up scandals, 1 thing taken completely out of context, several words that don't mean what you think they mean, and a complete lack of understanding as to how civics works.

It's always fun to debunk these kinds of lists, because I always learn something new, usually something that makes me proud of what our country is doing.

The only sad thing is that it takes me hours and the people posting them will either blindly ad hominem them ("YOU LINKED DAILYKOS THAT MEANS YOU ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD~!~!"), call me a "liberal commy fagg 'MERICA hater", or ignore me and go right back to posting about how Obama was raised by Karl Marx on the Socialist Moonbase on the dark side of Mars or something. Or go back to quoting from the sites those guys run. Same difference, really.

Anyway, lets go!

1. Fast and Furious was made up. The entire thing was based on one right wing ATF source, who was discovered to be lying. It has been debunked so often that even the actual GOP doesn't mention it, only ultra-far right idiots in the Tea Party talk about it nowadays.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/20/irs-scandal-democratic-acorn_n_3785717.html

2. Ditto for the IRS scandal, which was also made up. Darrel Issa asked the investigator to ignore the fact that the IRS was looking at all groups claiming to be charities, as they are REQUIRED TO DO BY LAW, and merely provide him talking points on Republican ones. The real scandal? The IRS failed to notice 10 out of 11 of the Koch brothers fake charities were fake charities. You'll note that Issa doesn't even bother talking about this one anymore, he's too busy trying to use Benghazi to kneecap President Hilary Clinton before her 2016 victory.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/26/1219172/-Here-s-how-Darrell-Issa-manufactured-the-IRS-scandal

3. Solyndra's loan was one of Bush's projects, not Obama's, and there's a HUGE difference between George Kaiser (a billionaire who raised a whopping 50-100k for Obama) and the Kaiser Family Foundation (a charity he started). There's a whole boatload more of made up crap about Solyndra, it's a very transparent manufactured scandal to try and drive us away from Solar and Wind technologies -- because oil will never run out or anything. I'll just leave this link as an exercise to the reader:
http://ourfuture.org/20120926/the-phony-solyndra-solar-scandal

4. Literally not true. The "Fed prints $75,000,000,000" is such a common meme that there are so many Tea Party sites shatting it out that it's hard to discover it's source. Took a while, but I found it - The fed is buying back a bunch of T-Bonds and Mortgage Bonds at the rate of 75 billion a month as part of the stimulus package, but that's not "printing money." The Feds have a FAQ entry up on it here, for those who don't roll

According to this http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009104319/g20-manufacturing-output-capita he would be mostly right

I didn't say the USA doesn't manufacture anything. Get rid of the outliers, though, and most Americans aren't creating anything. Most Americans don't even know how to use any of the machines that permit such massive output. At any given time, machines whose creators are dead are still operating... to whom do we give the credit for the output of robots?

According to this http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009104319/g20-manufacturing-output-capita he would be mostly right. There is only a few other per-capita output countries higher than the US.
And none with an even close to the amount of manufacturing produced in the US overall.

You are right in you claim in that that the US is measured as the largest manufacture. The thing is that the measurements are done wrongly. You buy a Chinese toy dog for $0.2; you add a little label at a cost of $0.03 with $0.07 of labour ; you sell it for $2. You claim to have done $1.70 of manufacturing. The real truth is that the Chinese factory did $2 worth of manufacturing but doesn't yet have the contacts to realise that value.

You need to learn how to read charts. That chart and every other chart you can find show pretty much the same thing. Without the colors to tell the difference, you wouldn't be able to tell whether it was Dems or Reps causing the filibusters.

The number of filibusters by either side has been steadily rising. It doesn't matter who started it. All that you can guarantee is that the other party will do the same shortly after.

Regarding "Most of our industry and manufacturing jobs have already left the country", you should be aware that US manufacturing output reached an all-time high in 2008, and although our most recent economic recession did reduce output, it is back to 2002 levels.

It is true that US manufacturing jobs are being reduced. However US manufacturing industry is doing OK due to productivity increases (mainly automation). This is similar to what happened with agriculture, we went from a country where 80% of people farmed, to one where 2% of people farm yet they produce far more food with their motorized combines and GPS-aided fertilizer applications than when 80% of people hooked up their plow to their ox.

"The problem is, manufacturing brings in money, consuming loses it." You really need to read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations", because he debunked this back in 1775. A nation's wealth is not the quantity of gold and silver in its vaults (achieved by trade), but the total of its production and commerce.

Most of US GDP consists of creation of wealth inside the country. US GDP in 2010 was $14.7 trillion. The whole 2010 trade deficit was $500 billion, about 3% of US GDP (which is a bit of double counting, because the trade deficit is subtracted from US production to arrive at the GDP number). And in truth, about half the US trade deficit is due to petroleum imports.

"it gets to the point where more and more people in the US are unable to afford to purchase these goods."

Yet US average incomes are going up (and medians are at least stable), so apparently you are wrong.

If the U.S. manufacturing sector were a separate country, it would be tied with Germany as the world's third largest economy. It would also be larger than the entire economies of India and Russia combined.

"The best way to make money is to make something." I'd argue the best way to make money is to design something. Take the iPod, designed in the US by Apple, using some parts designed in the US but built in non-Chinese Asian factories, for final assembly in China. About one half the retail price of $299 from the sale of an iPod goes to American companies, mainly for design.

Now I will agree that I am concerned about the ability of the US labor force to be able to adopt the skills required to become designers. However, they will either be competing with cheap workers from developing countries, or they will be competing with robots for manufacturing jobs, so we better figure out how to educate our people better.

The perception that the US manufacturing sector is anemic, in decline, or that it no longer manufactures anything is false.

The United States is the world's largest manufacturer, with a 2007 industrial output of US$2.69 trillion. In 2008, its manufacturing output was greater than that of the manufacturing output of China, India, and Brazil combined, despite manufacturing being a very small portion of the entire US economy as compared to most other countries.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009104319/g20-manufacturing-output-capita

Well, you can start here. The US produces more than anyone else in the world.

First, as even your link attests, Republicans haven't used filibusters 3x as much as Democrats did - they're just on pace to, which is very different; keep in mind that many of those cloture votes were used to stall the health care bill. Also, if you take a look at another graph on your reference, you'll notice that cloture votes have been trending up for over a decade as both parties use every rule possible to get their agendas enacted and their opponents' agenda disrupted. It's because of this trend that senators of both parties have brought up the so-called "nuclear option" from time to time.

The insane part about those votes is that filibusters and 3/5 majorities have nothing to do with the Constitution. All the Constitution says is that the Senate has the right to set its own floor rules. The entire reason cloture exists at all is because somebody decided it was a good idea to throw it in over 200 years ago.

Then again, if you want some true madness, there's always the "disappearing quorum" trick.

Democrats did occasionally use filibusters, as every minority has. But Republicans have used filibusters 3x as much as Democrats did when Republicans had a slimmer minority before them, and far more than usual. Republicans even threatened to eliminate the privilege they now abuse specifically to prevent Democrats from stopping long-term judicial appointments, though Republicans prevented more judicial appointments before that, under Clinton.

As usual, though Democrats might not be so good, Republicans are far worse. Saying "they both do it" is a false equivalency that hides Republicans being so bad that they paralyze governement. Right when Democrats are working to fix things Republicans broke with their majority.

This incident underscores the importance of fighting monopolies and ensuring the availability of competitive choices. If Microsoft had succeeded in driving all other browsers out of the market in 2000, then today, we would not have any other choice and would be forced to use a browser with a dangerous security risk.

We should applaud the recent work by the European Commission in demanding that Microsoft design their European version of Windows to allow users to choose the browser that they want -- thus, allowing them to never install Internet Explorer. The European Commission has been better advocate of free-market competition than the American Federal Trade Commission.

Therein lies a bit of irony. Washington often claims that the USA is a freer free market than the European Union. Yet, the Union is the political body which hit -- hard -- Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior.

Hell No! Microsoft is an American company - AMERICAN!

WE are the only ones that can pick on them - not those cigarette smoking - wine sipping - half-assed socialist - high tax - cowardly - freedom hating - Europeans!

It's one thing for us to bitch and moan about MS -we're Americans - but the Europeans!? Hell no! MS brings MONEY into the US! They provide jobs to Americans!

Wait a tic, I think I'll change my mind.

Ah, fuck'em.

"UCLA" does not disagree with my facts. Two (count them, two) scientists at UCLA disagree with my facts. Harold Cole and Lee Ohnian are right wing tools, bent on discrediting any 'liberal bias.' There have been numerous refutations of their conclusions since they wrote that paper. Here's one:
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020603/fdr-failed-myth

is to continue the expenditure of U.S. federal dollars on military
fiascos.

Good luck in the Gulag.

Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout

Survival depends on the military-industrial-Congressional complex.

Good luck in your gulag.

Seditiously As Always,
Kilgore Trout

What's more, we'll be billed for each of those at least once more, in direct and/or indirect costs. Now that those messes have been made, the best case scenario is that we will bear the burden of cleaning them up very soon. More likely is that they will be allowed to fester until the cost of righting the mistakes of the corporatist elites will be far more. Consider corporate welfare. Each of the $10,100,000,000 bestowed on Exxon-Mobil and other petroleum cartels not only comes from our tax payments today, it adds to our future tax and household expense burdens by prolonging the use of petroleum as the primary transportation fuel source beyond sustainable levels, and discouraging rapid adoption of alternative energy sources. Switching away from petroleum will without doubt be required. On cannot reasonably argue that it will not run out eventually, and it will be more trouble than it's worth much sooner than the "Drill, baby, drill" morons want to believe.

By postponing this inevitable switch, we only shorten the time available in which to do it and constrain ourselves to endure the transition with lower supply and higher demand, thus higher prices. From Econ 101/102, the relevant graph is a demand curve. Corporate welfare, like all mismanagement of collectivized expense, costs the collective at least twice: once to screw up, and at least once more to get it right. In the special case of a shrinking supply, the nature of economic forces states beyond a reasonable doubt that exponentially increasing long-term costs will be the result. Political science tells us in the current petroleum crisis to expect the same pressures, combined with corruption within (throughout is more like it) the military-industrial complex to result in more neo-colonial invasions, which will cause intermittent, marginal reductions in demand. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians are just the tip of the iceberg, unless petroleum consumption begins to drop faster than supply, very soon.

Conservatives, for the most part, do not want the government to enter our lives. However, we value the following rights as tantamount to freedom: a) free speech, b) freedom of commerce, c) the right to hold property and d) the right to get income from the investment of that property. That is why, as a rule, you will see conservatives balk at any sort of proposed rule about what kind of car, house, medicine, or anything else that a person might own or buy.

Conversely, the liberal would legislate the federal right to ALL property, and impose regulations on ANYTHING. Liberals always complain about "conservative fascism", but, then, their solutions always involve creating ever more regulation (and thus, devaluing property). Liberals might make you free in the Khmer Rouge sense of the word, but, ultimately, they make you poor.

What was your role in facilitating the Saving and Loans Crisis?

Thank you for your PatRIOTism.

PatRIOTically,
K. Trout

Funny how quick people are to point out that funds are still increasing while ignoring the fact that the smaller-than-planned increases will still force cutbacks in education programs.

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