That's not actually true, although the legal system treats it as such. Constitutional means compatible with the US Constitution. Some things flatly aren't, even if the court says otherwise.
You won't hear any defense of Bush JR from me on the budget. It's one of the reasons I think single party dominance is a bad idea. The congress basically rolled over and played dead for anything he wanted, including massive additional medicare spending. Reagan and Bush SR basically caved to Democrat demands on entitlement spending. Frankly, I think it's foolish to assign responsibility to the President for budgets.
It was only after the shutdown that Clinton gave in on some of the measures he had opposed and had vetoed, and Republicans gave on some of their budget demands. I don't know enough details to say for certain, but it's at least arguable that Clinton moved center afterwards. I would contend that it was nice to have a congress with big enough balls willing to face down a Democratic President who vetoed their bills.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 1993, as mentioned in your first link, renewed the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. Perhaps coincidentally, the slope turned downward in 1991, not in 1993. Since there were no budget cuts, only revenue increases, it's not exactly surprising that the republicans voted against it. Republicans were never against deficit reduction, but they've very consistently declined to do so when the only method proposed was tax increases.
It was only after the republicans actually took control of the house in 1995, and two government shutdowns over budget battles, that we got Welfare Reform and other spending cuts. There wasn't an actual balanced budget until well after the government showdowns. There is no reason to think it wouldn't have happened without any spending cuts, and there were absolutely none in the 1993 budget.
Really? the only balanced budget in recent history happened with a republican congress. I may be alone, but I think we might get an optimal outcome with Obama retaining office but congress shifting to a republican majority in both houses. Going by party in control of the house, Dem presidents with R house happened for the first time in 50 years under clinton. http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html is an interesting collection of data.
For job growth, I didn't quickly find a good source. It's inherently tricky, because policies rarely have effects right away. How much lag time do you assume when trying to decide who is or is not responsible for job growth? You would almost have to go on a per policy change basis, which would require more knowledge of the effect of particular policies than anyone actually has.
The context doesn't save the quote. The quote is an attack on the possibility that they are smarter or harder working than other people. The context only mentions that someone else helped. It does not recognize that business owners may actually be harder working or smarter than other people, in addition to that help. Other than the later line that I already mentioned, there is no recognition that they are at all responsible for their own success. I think it's likely that he intended to attack a republican strawman (even rabid individualists recognize that other people did things for them. For which they were paid, of course) but his actual language was in fact a lot stronger than he intended.
" I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)" That is directly a dig at the claim that successful people got there through their smarts or hard work. The later line " The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together" does a lot to soften it. Granted, I did use stronger language pointing that out than was truly warranted, because all he technically indicated is that hard hard work and smarts are not sufficient to make someone successful.
The R's aren't focusing on the lines I quoted because "You didn't build that" sums up the same idea in a sound bite.
It's obvious to you only because you think it's a more sensible belief about business. If you didn't have any prior agreement with obama policies, there would be no reason for you to believe he's actually reasonable. Examine that whole speech in isolation. Nothing in the context of just that speech makes your preferred interpretation more likely than the possibility that Obama doesn't think small business owners are even majorly responsible for the success of their business.
Actually, that's entirely true of Obama supporters as well. Since at no point in the full context of the speech did he acknowledge any of the success came from individual effort or talent, you have to believe that he only intended to refer to infrastructure based on other knowledge. If you need the context of other speeches to justify your interpretation of a particular speech, then enough context was not provided to make the claim that his intention was clearly what you think he meant.
No it isn't. The immediate antecedent is the business mentioned in the preceding clause, not the infrastructure from the previous sentence. He spoke... poorly.
Unfortunately for Obama supporters, he may have intended for "that" to refer to the infrastructure spending in the previous sentence instead of the business in the first clause of the current sentence, but that isn't the natural way to interpret it. I'm willing to concede that's probably what he meant, as it harkens back to elizabeth warren's earlier speech, but it's not a provable claim. It's still flawed in numerous ways, as no where in the speech does he concede any responsibility for their own success to the business owner at all. The full context makes it clear he thinks a successful business got there through luck and the support of others. He specifically decried any possibility that they were actually smarter or harder working than other people who were less successful.
The tea party isn't fringe. Birchers and birthers are fringe, but are miles away from having control of their party. The only unifying concept in the tea party is the excessive government budget. That allows for some fringe elements, but they are no more to blame for them than the democrats are for pastor Fred Phelps.
No. That's the problem with so called "positive rights". They absolutely depend on on infringing someone else's negative rights in order to produce them. Positive rights are incompatible with equal rights. Possession of a negative right doesn't interfere in any way with someone else's possession of the same right. The right to live is self negating in some circumstances. The right to not be killed can work for every person simultaneously. Unfortunately, rights are at best mutually agreed upon illusions, so reality might cause us both to die.
If I fail to intervene, nothing changes from what would occur if i didn't even exist. I can't be said to have caused anything by the definition of cause and effect. Only actions have effects. Inaction alters nothing, and thus can't be said to cause anything. The only reason to conflate inaction and causing harm is to rationalize the use of coercion against others for being insufficiently good for your taste.
Randian capitalism is not based on the labour theory of value. It explicitly disagrees with it. Marginal utility is the general theory of value accept by free marketers. The labour theory of value runs into the simple flaw that the same amount of labor from different people and/or using different materials produces items of different value. As a general note, just because Locke/Rand/Marx/Smith was right on some things does not me he/she was was right on everything.
You want to control other people to make them do what you want. I possess no such desire. How does that make you a defender of individual liberty? A coerced responsibility is still coerced even it's something you personally support. Nothing you have said so far does anything to dispel that.
A free maket is the only sort of market that's fully compatible with freedom. You may have been excluding pure free markets with your "MOST forms" comment, but I strongly doubt it. If you are, you and GP are talking past each other by definining capitalism differently.
I'm not Randian. I think helping other people is intrinsically a good thing. But, the only legitimate method of punishing me for not helping when you think I should, is to not help me in return. You are not justified in robbing me for failure to help. Voluntary cooperation is a wonderful thing. Life on your own tends to be nasty, brutish, and short. But "failing to help" and "causing harm" are different in kind, and the first does not justify the second no matter how much some people want to pretend otherwise.
On an unrelated note, tone down the caps. You come across as a crank when you RANDOMLY capitalize WORDS AND PHRASES.
It is a regulation limiting what private companies can do with the equipment they own. They got to the position they are in with government support, but any strong believer in property rights is going to have issues with Net Neutrality law. The strong believers also didn't care for the sweetheart deals that helped them get their current level of control in the first place. The unfortunate truth is that given 2 firm believer groups and one opportunist group, the opportunist group will come out on top by temporarily aligning with whichever side supports what they want right now. I'm suddenly depressed after writing that. Clearly, I haven't been sufficiently cynical.
The republicans now are not the same people as the republicans then, both politicians and voting public. There is no particular reason to expect a party to be consistent on any given policy over time, especially when the policy in question is fundamentally incompatible with some basic claims of their party platform. Even the 90's proposal did not have widespread republican support.
As for the "party of no" thing it's entirely made up by Democrat partisans. The very same data normally used to justify charges of obstructionism can also be used to claim the democrats just want to bypass debate and ram things through when they are in power. A cloture vote does not necessarily mean there was a filibuster.
Put me among the group that would eliminate sex segregation in sports all together. As it is, we had an issue a couple years ago where female tennis players fought for equal prizes, despite playing 2 fewer sets per match than the males. If we are going to level the playing field, it would be better to do so across the board.
OTOH, I don't care about sports anyways, so my opinion on this matter is pretty much moot.
The classification into man or woman predates the identification of X and Y chromosomes. If they have a functional penis, they are a male... which will usually correspond to XY, but we shouldn't change criteria just because something has been shown to highly correlate.
I have a complaint with the nature of the record. Consider the statement about the US, which is probably only true after the USHCN adjustments are applied, just like when they said the same thing about 1998. Said adjustments have a larger trend than the raw data. Even ignoring that, since the summer isn't over with it's too soon to claim it's the warmest year on record. It may or may not beat 1934.
They do get summers off. All your conversions do is treat it as paid time off instead of unpaid leave, and of course you leave out extra pay teachers get for things like Driver's ed, summer school, curriculum development, etc. (that's somwhat reasonable, since most teachers don't do that, but it should be factored into averages) I'd love to make a starting teacher's salary (and I work for a school district, so I know what it is) while only working their hours. Instead I work 12 months, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for roughly the same annual pay and only 3 weeks of vacation time. However, I know I'm bad at teaching, so I'll decline to inflict myself on students. If only the burnt out teachers who hang around until retirement would do the same.
Maybe the problem is that I recognize 40k per year as decent annual pay for a 12-month full time job. Back when there was a major pay dispute in my area, teachers loved to trot out their pay versus national average, without looking at local average pay versus national average pay. My idea of comparing the ratio of teacher pay to average pay to that same ratio elsewhere was not popular.
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Arguably, Marbury v. Madison was itself unconstitutional. The constitution does not explicitly make SCOTUS the final judge of it's own meaning.
That's not actually true, although the legal system treats it as such. Constitutional means compatible with the US Constitution. Some things flatly aren't, even if the court says otherwise.
You won't hear any defense of Bush JR from me on the budget. It's one of the reasons I think single party dominance is a bad idea. The congress basically rolled over and played dead for anything he wanted, including massive additional medicare spending. Reagan and Bush SR basically caved to Democrat demands on entitlement spending. Frankly, I think it's foolish to assign responsibility to the President for budgets.
It was only after the shutdown that Clinton gave in on some of the measures he had opposed and had vetoed, and Republicans gave on some of their budget demands. I don't know enough details to say for certain, but it's at least arguable that Clinton moved center afterwards. I would contend that it was nice to have a congress with big enough balls willing to face down a Democratic President who vetoed their bills.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 1993, as mentioned in your first link, renewed the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990. Perhaps coincidentally, the slope turned downward in 1991, not in 1993. Since there were no budget cuts, only revenue increases, it's not exactly surprising that the republicans voted against it. Republicans were never against deficit reduction, but they've very consistently declined to do so when the only method proposed was tax increases.
It was only after the republicans actually took control of the house in 1995, and two government shutdowns over budget battles, that we got Welfare Reform and other spending cuts. There wasn't an actual balanced budget until well after the government showdowns. There is no reason to think it wouldn't have happened without any spending cuts, and there were absolutely none in the 1993 budget.
Really? the only balanced budget in recent history happened with a republican congress. I may be alone, but I think we might get an optimal outcome with Obama retaining office but congress shifting to a republican majority in both houses. Going by party in control of the house, Dem presidents with R house happened for the first time in 50 years under clinton. http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html is an interesting collection of data.
For job growth, I didn't quickly find a good source. It's inherently tricky, because policies rarely have effects right away. How much lag time do you assume when trying to decide who is or is not responsible for job growth? You would almost have to go on a per policy change basis, which would require more knowledge of the effect of particular policies than anyone actually has.
The context doesn't save the quote. The quote is an attack on the possibility that they are smarter or harder working than other people. The context only mentions that someone else helped. It does not recognize that business owners may actually be harder working or smarter than other people, in addition to that help. Other than the later line that I already mentioned, there is no recognition that they are at all responsible for their own success. I think it's likely that he intended to attack a republican strawman (even rabid individualists recognize that other people did things for them. For which they were paid, of course) but his actual language was in fact a lot stronger than he intended.
" I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)" That is directly a dig at the claim that successful people got there through their smarts or hard work. The later line " The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together" does a lot to soften it. Granted, I did use stronger language pointing that out than was truly warranted, because all he technically indicated is that hard hard work and smarts are not sufficient to make someone successful.
The R's aren't focusing on the lines I quoted because "You didn't build that" sums up the same idea in a sound bite.
It's obvious to you only because you think it's a more sensible belief about business. If you didn't have any prior agreement with obama policies, there would be no reason for you to believe he's actually reasonable. Examine that whole speech in isolation. Nothing in the context of just that speech makes your preferred interpretation more likely than the possibility that Obama doesn't think small business owners are even majorly responsible for the success of their business.
Actually, that's entirely true of Obama supporters as well. Since at no point in the full context of the speech did he acknowledge any of the success came from individual effort or talent, you have to believe that he only intended to refer to infrastructure based on other knowledge. If you need the context of other speeches to justify your interpretation of a particular speech, then enough context was not provided to make the claim that his intention was clearly what you think he meant.
No it isn't. The immediate antecedent is the business mentioned in the preceding clause, not the infrastructure from the previous sentence. He spoke... poorly.
Unfortunately for Obama supporters, he may have intended for "that" to refer to the infrastructure spending in the previous sentence instead of the business in the first clause of the current sentence, but that isn't the natural way to interpret it. I'm willing to concede that's probably what he meant, as it harkens back to elizabeth warren's earlier speech, but it's not a provable claim. It's still flawed in numerous ways, as no where in the speech does he concede any responsibility for their own success to the business owner at all. The full context makes it clear he thinks a successful business got there through luck and the support of others. He specifically decried any possibility that they were actually smarter or harder working than other people who were less successful.
The tea party isn't fringe. Birchers and birthers are fringe, but are miles away from having control of their party. The only unifying concept in the tea party is the excessive government budget. That allows for some fringe elements, but they are no more to blame for them than the democrats are for pastor Fred Phelps.
No. That's the problem with so called "positive rights". They absolutely depend on on infringing someone else's negative rights in order to produce them. Positive rights are incompatible with equal rights. Possession of a negative right doesn't interfere in any way with someone else's possession of the same right. The right to live is self negating in some circumstances. The right to not be killed can work for every person simultaneously. Unfortunately, rights are at best mutually agreed upon illusions, so reality might cause us both to die.
"A witty saying proves nothing" -- Oscar Wilde
If I fail to intervene, nothing changes from what would occur if i didn't even exist. I can't be said to have caused anything by the definition of cause and effect. Only actions have effects. Inaction alters nothing, and thus can't be said to cause anything. The only reason to conflate inaction and causing harm is to rationalize the use of coercion against others for being insufficiently good for your taste.
Randian capitalism is not based on the labour theory of value. It explicitly disagrees with it. Marginal utility is the general theory of value accept by free marketers. The labour theory of value runs into the simple flaw that the same amount of labor from different people and/or using different materials produces items of different value. As a general note, just because Locke/Rand/Marx/Smith was right on some things does not me he/she was was right on everything.
You want to control other people to make them do what you want. I possess no such desire. How does that make you a defender of individual liberty? A coerced responsibility is still coerced even it's something you personally support. Nothing you have said so far does anything to dispel that.
A free maket is the only sort of market that's fully compatible with freedom. You may have been excluding pure free markets with your "MOST forms" comment, but I strongly doubt it. If you are, you and GP are talking past each other by definining capitalism differently.
I'm not Randian. I think helping other people is intrinsically a good thing. But, the only legitimate method of punishing me for not helping when you think I should, is to not help me in return. You are not justified in robbing me for failure to help. Voluntary cooperation is a wonderful thing. Life on your own tends to be nasty, brutish, and short. But "failing to help" and "causing harm" are different in kind, and the first does not justify the second no matter how much some people want to pretend otherwise.
On an unrelated note, tone down the caps. You come across as a crank when you RANDOMLY capitalize WORDS AND PHRASES.
It is a regulation limiting what private companies can do with the equipment they own. They got to the position they are in with government support, but any strong believer in property rights is going to have issues with Net Neutrality law. The strong believers also didn't care for the sweetheart deals that helped them get their current level of control in the first place. The unfortunate truth is that given 2 firm believer groups and one opportunist group, the opportunist group will come out on top by temporarily aligning with whichever side supports what they want right now. I'm suddenly depressed after writing that. Clearly, I haven't been sufficiently cynical.
The republicans now are not the same people as the republicans then, both politicians and voting public. There is no particular reason to expect a party to be consistent on any given policy over time, especially when the policy in question is fundamentally incompatible with some basic claims of their party platform. Even the 90's proposal did not have widespread republican support.
As for the "party of no" thing it's entirely made up by Democrat partisans. The very same data normally used to justify charges of obstructionism can also be used to claim the democrats just want to bypass debate and ram things through when they are in power. A cloture vote does not necessarily mean there was a filibuster.
Put me among the group that would eliminate sex segregation in sports all together. As it is, we had an issue a couple years ago where female tennis players fought for equal prizes, despite playing 2 fewer sets per match than the males. If we are going to level the playing field, it would be better to do so across the board.
OTOH, I don't care about sports anyways, so my opinion on this matter is pretty much moot.
The classification into man or woman predates the identification of X and Y chromosomes. If they have a functional penis, they are a male... which will usually correspond to XY, but we shouldn't change criteria just because something has been shown to highly correlate.
I'm shocked. I rarely see anyone who remembers that Male and Female are sexes rather than genders. Masculine and Feminine are genders.
I have a complaint with the nature of the record. Consider the statement about the US, which is probably only true after the USHCN adjustments are applied, just like when they said the same thing about 1998. Said adjustments have a larger trend than the raw data. Even ignoring that, since the summer isn't over with it's too soon to claim it's the warmest year on record. It may or may not beat 1934.
They do get summers off. All your conversions do is treat it as paid time off instead of unpaid leave, and of course you leave out extra pay teachers get for things like Driver's ed, summer school, curriculum development, etc. (that's somwhat reasonable, since most teachers don't do that, but it should be factored into averages) I'd love to make a starting teacher's salary (and I work for a school district, so I know what it is) while only working their hours. Instead I work 12 months, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for roughly the same annual pay and only 3 weeks of vacation time. However, I know I'm bad at teaching, so I'll decline to inflict myself on students. If only the burnt out teachers who hang around until retirement would do the same.
Maybe the problem is that I recognize 40k per year as decent annual pay for a 12-month full time job. Back when there was a major pay dispute in my area, teachers loved to trot out their pay versus national average, without looking at local average pay versus national average pay. My idea of comparing the ratio of teacher pay to average pay to that same ratio elsewhere was not popular.
Oh, forgot to add: I love how bad teachers will universally blame the parents, even when other teachers with the same kids do a much better job.