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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Blue wrote: Should I bring up Carter next? And the housing program he initiated?
Yeah...please do as it was one the most successful government housing programs ever and with the highest payback.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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This is where you lose me, bro right, I retract the word "nasty".
Please note, I have no problem with people practicing their religion as long as it's personal between them, their family and their god. Just keep it out of government, as Goldwater said, and the 1st Amendment says. And I include Islamic Fundamentalism. I have absolutely no quarrel with Islam. I know quite a few Muslims and every one of them is a very decent person. Unlike some Christians I know, none of them has tried to tell me what I should believe.
Neither you nor I want to live under a religious theocracy if it's Islamic, why should we accept "Christian" control of our government?
As for denying science. We do that at our peril. Seriously.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Are you referring to the mob of unwashed riff-raff who are currently disgracing whats left of American liberalism? Yet another carefully reasoned response supported by facts. Entirely predictable.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Tell me, when did America first become its very own country?
Well that sounds like a trick question. Make it more specific. Independance from Britain, declaration of independance, etc..
Yeah...please do as it was one the most successful government housing programs ever and with the highest payback.
Carter was the Genesis of the Community Reinvestment Act that led to Acorn, Fanni/Freddie, and our current mess.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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OOOh Ooooh Ooh... Pick me, pick me, I know the answer because I lived there.
Morocco.
Okay what do I win.
Hey HighTraverse, Good stuff!
Please note, I have no problem with people practicing their religion as long as it's personal between them, their family and their god. Just keep it out of government, as Goldwater said, and the 1st Amendment says. And I include Islamic Fundamentalism. I have absolutely no quarrel with Islam. I know quite a few Muslims and every one of them is a very decent person. Unlike some Christians I know, none of them has tried to tell me what I should believe.
Neither you nor I want to live under a religious theocracy if it's Islamic, why should we accept "Christian" control of our government?
As for denying science. We do that at our peril. Seriously.
Morocco, a Muslim Arab Monarchy, was the first sovereign nation to recognize the nascent America.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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HT: Freedom of Religion was pretty much alive in the Colonies soon after they were settled. In England there was religious freedom by the early 1700's.
Ummm, no. That would be NO. Many of the settlers of the US were from sects that were persecuted, and so emigrated. Where they promptly set up and persecuted everybody else. The most famous being the pilgrims who settled in New England. The intolerance broke down over time, but not until the late 18th century was there something like freedom of religion in much of the US - freedom, that is, if you were educated, well to do, part of the ruling class, and living in an urban setting. There is arguably still not freedom of religion in the US, given the intolerance shown to non-Christians. You haven't elected any but professed Christians as president in decades, although whether most of them actually believed in it is another matter. Most probably just thought Washington was worth a mass.
The English (and Scots and Irish) were virulently intolerant in religious matters until well into the 19th century, and often later. Certainly the state (mostly) stopped executing people for their religious beliefs after the late 17th century, apart from the whole witchcraft nonsense. And of course those pesky Indians, whose Christianization and extermination often went hand in hand. But there was abundant religious intolerance throughout the British Isles and what became the US until well into the 19th century, or later. Certainly not freedom of religion in any real meaning of the word.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Wes, if you want to have a discussion, fine. I'm not going to play US History trivia with you.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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That the government has become much more accountable to the money provided by special interests, including corporations. Corporations are "people" and now have the legal right to spend as much $$ on political candidates as they like. Then there are the "citizens" like Koch Bros and many many more who own corporations who will benefit directly from the laws they try to influence. Regardless of the benefits such laws provide society.
The problem is more complex than this. For one, unions are special interests also, despite the fact they are always left out of the discussion by liberals. Unions have given workers higher pay and everything they want to feel secure in their jobs, but at the small cost of their jobs, which have been off-shored. The other problem is that we, as voters, do not always read the Economist, and we don't see that countries like China and India are gaining on us in job skills and streamlining costs, so we start to vote ourselves more job security and higher wages in the form of regulation, which of course has the opposite effect in the long run because it makes us less competitive. In real terms, auto workers were paid much more before unions.
I have made it a point to keep up with world economic trends since the early 90s, and I have been surprised our middle class has held on as long as it has. I kept wondering when we would have to pay the piper, and I think it is funny that now it has happened, people are blaming corporations for it. I guess it is an easy argument for someone who doesn't want to look below the surface.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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CA
Your last post is one of the most reasonable you've put up. There's a lot of truth in union excesses. Where you go awry is when you absolve corporate excesses. The "union problem" is a manifestation of the built-in tension between capitalists and labor. To a capitalist, labor is a cost. A cost to be minimized. The working man/woman knows this. Hence unions. Without unions, YOU'd not have company assisted (it used to be fully paid) health insurance, a 40 hour work week, social security, any kind of pension, not even 401k. There would still be child labor and garment factory fires that killed hundreds. There'd be no mine safety.
All of society's workers, of all financial levels, have benefited from labor unions' existence. Please tell me how it has hurt the corporations. And don't try the "GM failed because of the unions" ploy. Ford has the same unions. GM crashed solely because of really bad management. There are some excesses with unions, just as there are with Capitalists. Which is why they both need to be regulated. Unions have lost about 2/3 of their power compared to Corporations in the US since Reagan. You want to take the rest?
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Rachel Maddow last night. Covering the Oakland general strike.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/#45142791
A little before 1/2 way she encapsulates the OWS (world wide) complaint succinctly:
the people believe they are underserved by our economy and by our political system which has been captured by the 1%
Note the very clear distinction: "underserved by our economy". The fundamental complaint is NOT about capitalism. It's that the people are underserved by BOTH capitalism and the government. And the root cause is the corruption of the political system by the 1%.
The complaint is NOT that capitalism or government are in themselves bad.
Sure there are radicals, but I think Maddow got the feeling of the majority of OWS active and passive supporters.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Not to mention the unrelenting greed of the oil & gas Cabals jacking fuel prices beyond reason to suck the life blood out of the world economy.
Fats You don't know what you think you know.
My uncle was a top exec with Eastern Airlines at the time.
He didn't bitch and whine about unions but about the never ending rise in fuel prices,
Hard costs are relatively easy to factor in and compensate for but not rapidly rising fuel costs.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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The airlines were crashed primarily by terrible union contracts and a little bit of poor management. What? the price of oil didn't have anything to do with it?
9/11 didn't significantly reduce air travel for a couple of years?
Airline pilots and air crews shouldn't have limited work hours and minimum layovers?
De-regulation didn't lead to cost cutting?
Please be specific about the bad parts of the union contracts.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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I can't wait till Obama's second term and a rapidly stabilizing economy.
Then all these Corporate apologists and TeaBaglican'ts will have to whinee and complain about will be how Obama is putting all the Repo-men out of work.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Haha, now the Boston Tea Party and Declaration of IndependEnce are trivial?
Not the events, but having the dates of certain events memorized is.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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I'd like to think we could have a more or less reasonable discussion without dissing each other. With that I'll resort to the old schoolyard ploy: "THEY started it!"
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Yeah! And my dad can beat up your dad! So Nanny nanny boo boo state,
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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I'm all for opposing gov't backed corp's, but the OWS clowns appear to be against wealthy people and ALL large corporations, which I'm not.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Skipt, your bias does not make the OWS supporters wrong.
That you do not understand them or their motivations does not negate their patriotism or righteous protest.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Quote Here I'm all for opposing gov't backed corp's, but the OWS clowns appear to be against wealthy people and ALL large corporations, which I'm not.
Which is it, bluering. Make up your mind.
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