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Nothing To Fear But Fearlessness Itself?
theodp writes "In a post last August, Robert X. Cringely voiced fears that Goldman Sachs and others were not so much evil as 'clueless about the implications of their work,' leaving it up to the government to fix any mess they leave behind. 'But what if government runs out of options,' worried Cringely. 'Our economic policy doesn't imagine it, nor does our foreign policy, because superpowers don't acknowledge weakness.' And now his fears are echoed in a WSJ opinion piece by Peggy Noonan titled 'We're Governed by Callous Children.' She writes, 'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.' With apologies to FDR, do we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself?"
What a load of bollocks.
but sheer ineptitude, incompetence, and stupidity.
The way we do elections isn't helping. The media does sound bites, so sound bites are what people have to go on. The education system (run by the left wing for the past 30 years) has now raised two generations of people that don't even know how to balance their own checkbook, much less properly budget for a lifestyle that's within their means.
Mass media tells people "you deserve everything right now," and the masses buy right into it.
It's not so different on the top end. "Company X is too big to fail" means they have carte blanche to do what they want, and the government bails them out... so rather than having a proper market correction, the effects are hidden and come back to bite us in the ass in the form of a repeat of Carter-era Stagflation.
Letting one party have power is a bad thing. It happened with Carter, it happened with Clinton, it happened with Bush, and it's happening with Obama right now. One party in power = government spending like drunken sailors on a binge in shanghai.
If we had a line item veto, I'd say just to keep it split so that the checks and balances built into our system would work. As it stands, I want a republican legislature and a democrat president, simply because the republicans are slightly less likely to spend hog-wild when Congress gets around to writing the budget. If it's not in the budget, the President doesn't get a chance to sign off on it, but when the Democrats stick crap in the budget (see the 1980s and the last two years under Bush), the President's only current method of countering is to veto the whole damn thing and risk the media furor of "OMG HE SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT" to force them to write something reasonable.
Fire the whole damn government and start over, let businesses fail if they fail (otherwise yes, they get bloody fucking reckless and expect a bailout), and get things working as they should for a change.
Oh, and California? What a perfect example. The Granola State (home of Fruits, Nuts, and Flakes) deserves what they got for electing who they elected.
Who is John Galt?
A one-dimensional character in a lousy book representing a fatally flawed philosophy dreamt up by a sociopathic meth addict and hypocrite?
I agree with you about the previous administration, but the current one is clueless. They don't even try to deny their lies.
I wish all the Rayndians would just go Galt already. They're all talk.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Give him and his "real Mcoy" cabinet some time to correct the literal and figurative destruction left by Fuck-Up Incorporated Bush and Cheney. The American economy can recover if Obama has the guts to force criminal prosecutions of many of the "Old American Family" institutions and their bratty sons and daughters that have royally fucked this country up. I also see major cuts (and I mean MAJOR CUTS) in Defense in Obama's second term as president to Power Burst the American economy into overdrive. Watch and see...trust me... Mark this slashdot message for the future in 5 years. :)
AND: "'From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''.....
"In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups."
Thanks Bill Clinton.
Thanks a lot.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
As someone said to me the last time I bothered replying to one of commodore64_love's posts: don't feed the trolls.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
...to really see it in action. The state legislature approval rating was approaching single digits last I heard.
As a Californian, I saw that's that's the government we deserve. We did it ourselves. We decided through an initiative to require a 2/3 vote to pass ANY budget, then in 1978 with Prop 13, we required property tax increases to need a 2/3 vote, we passed inititives to require any tax increase to require a 2/3 vote, but no such requirement to lower taxes. We pass initiatives that lock budgetary allocations, thereby removing the ability of the legislature to make sensible budgets. We are children. We want everything, but never want to pay for anything. We have a radicalized GOP that opposes any revenue increases, but then only wants budget cuts to tax collection enforcement and the poor, but not for their groups. Oh did I mention that the GOP only has 35% of seats in legislature? It's the tyranny of the minority.
God we need a constitutional convention.
Eliminate the 2/3 rules!
Eliminate the initiatives!
Grow the fuck up California!
Oh, yes, of course, if somebody named Barry Ritholts rants about it on his blog, then it must all be true. Sure...
Community Reinvestment Act and similar legislation allowed pressure-groups (such as ACORN and affiliates) to pressure the banks into lowering their standards. On the other hand, the government-controlled mortgage-underwriters — to whom all banks resell most of their mortgages — were arm-twisted by Clinton's government to lower their lending standards. So, pressured by crazy Lefties on the streets on one side to give mortgages to people, who can't afford them, and allowed to do that by the "respectable" Lefties in government, the banks complied...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Whoah, slow down a bit or two.
America is "supporting [India and China's] welfare"? There are so many inaccuracies I could point out to you, but I fear it would be wasted on you. Just to puncture a few:
1. America is not supporting anybody's welfare; American companies are simply maximising their profits by seeking out lower costs. So the richest Americans are earning even more, and on average America gets richer; shame that it doesn't trickle down to you guys, but hey, you believe in capitalism, so why complain?
2. Historically, the West has milked those very same countries for all they were worth; you live your life in comparative comfort because of that fact. So if wealth is now flowing out of the West and into India and China, that is only a small pay-back, as far as I can see. "But I didn't keep slaves", you might say - which is true, of course, but you live on stolen riches, so what is the difference?
We all need, us in the western nations, to have a major change of heart; we can't keep insisting that we live in the sixties or whatever, where the was always blue and we would all get richer all the time. It's just a stupid dream.
San Diego and Orange County. Up near the Oregon border is pretty hickish, and I say that after growing up next to Kentucky.