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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Asking if he is a Libertarian or not
is considered silly??
I don't know about you, but when some one asks me a serious question I don't first judge if it's silly or not.
I just answer the damn question so we can move on
I can't think of a single question that I will not answer.
What's so hard about answering a direct question.
Their silence tells me all I need to know.
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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Their silence tells me all I need to know.
And your incessant noise carries a message, too.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
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[Click to View YouTube Video]
Anyone who posts on a forum could be described as noise.
What have you republicans or libertarians been right about?
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Craig, if I had asked you a question earlier this morning, you wouldn't have answered.
Why?
You weren't online at the time (probably).
Give John the benefit of the doubt. If any of your politi-foes have earned it, it's him.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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I'm Not Talking about John Specifically
I am just making a general point about Republicans and their inability to act as honest brokers.
They usually change the subject or just go missing until the enquiry has dissipated.
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Larry Nelson
Social climber
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Craig Fry wrote:
I can't think of a single question that I will not answer.
What's so hard about answering a direct question.
Craig, I have a question: When did you stop beating your wife?
Just kiddin. ;-)
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Well, setting JE aside, I'd have to agree with you 100% on that one.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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I have never laid a hand on ANY women in a hostile way
Or any animal or pet.
I have the softest heart ever, I get teared up when I see a road kill
We tease our dog about how it's Time for her "Beating"
which is actually just more pets and cuddling.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Right Wing Agenda No. 1, create fear
CPAC 2015 Wants You to Know: You Are In Terrible Danger
From warmongers to conspiracy theorists, all of those present can agree that America needs to be afraid.
By Jeb Lund / The Guardian
February 27, 2015
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/cpac-2015-wants-you-know-you-are-terrible-danger
Welcome to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a three-day-long performance from an improv troupe whose hat has only has one statement in it: you’re in terrible danger. But that doesn’t mean you’re in terrible danger right now. Right now, there are seminars.
more...at link
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Walmart’s Visible Hand
MARCH 2, 2015
Paul Krugman
A few days ago Walmart, America’s largest employer, announced that it will raise wages for half a million workers. For many of those workers the gains will be small, but the announcement is nonetheless a very big deal, for two reasons. First, there will be spillovers: Walmart is so big that its action will probably lead to raises for millions of workers employed by other companies. Second, and arguably far more important, is what Walmart’s move tells us — namely, that low wages are a political choice, and we can and should choose differently.
Some background: Conservatives — with the backing, I have to admit, of many economists — normally argue that the market for labor is like the market for anything else. The law of supply and demand, they say, determines the level of wages, and the invisible hand of the market will punish anyone who tries to defy this law.
Specifically, this view implies that any attempt to push up wages will either fail or have bad consequences. Setting a minimum wage, it’s claimed, will reduce employment and create a labor surplus, the same way attempts to put floors under the prices of agricultural commodities used to lead to butter mountains, wine lakes and so on. Pressuring employers to pay more, or encouraging workers to organize into unions, will have the same effect.
But labor economists have long questioned this view. Soylent Green — I mean, the labor force — is people. And because workers are people, wages are not, in fact, like the price of butter, and how much workers are paid depends as much on social forces and political power as it does on simple supply and demand.
What’s the evidence? First, there is what actually happens when minimum wages are increased. Many states set minimum wages above the federal level, and we can look at what happens when a state raises its minimum while neighboring states do not. Does the wage-hiking state lose a large number of jobs? No — the overwhelming conclusion from studying these natural experiments is that moderate increases in the minimum wage have little or no negative effect on employment.
Then there’s history. It turns out that the middle-class society we used to have didn’t evolve as a result of impersonal market forces — it was created by political action, and in a brief period of time. America was still a very unequal society in 1940, but by 1950 it had been transformed by a dramatic reduction in income disparities, which the economists Claudia Goldin and Robert Margo labeled the Great Compression. How did that happen?
Part of the answer is direct government intervention, especially during World War II, when government wage-setting authority was used to narrow gaps between the best paid and the worst paid. Part of it, surely, was a sharp increase in unionization. Part of it was the full-employment economy of the war years, which created very strong demand for workers and empowered them to seek higher pay.
The important thing, however, is that the Great Compression didn’t go away as soon as the war was over. Instead, full employment and pro-worker politics changed pay norms, and a strong middle class endured for more than a generation. Oh, and the decades after the war were also marked by unprecedented economic growth.
The retailer’s wage hike seems to reflect the same forces that led to the Great Compression, albeit in a much weaker form. Walmart is under political pressure over wages so low that a substantial number of employees are on food stamps and Medicaid. Meanwhile, workers are gaining clout thanks to an improving labor market, reflected in increasing willingness to quit bad jobs.
What’s interesting, however, is that these pressures don’t seem all that severe, at least so far — yet Walmart is ready to raise wages anyway. And its justification for the move echoes what critics of its low-wage policy have been saying for years: Paying workers better will lead to reduced turnover, better morale and higher productivity.
What this means, in turn, is that engineering a significant pay raise for tens of millions of Americans would almost surely be much easier than conventional wisdom suggests. Raise minimum wages by a substantial amount; make it easier for workers to organize, increasing their bargaining power; direct monetary and fiscal policy toward full employment, as opposed to keeping the economy depressed out of fear that we’ll suddenly turn into Weimar Germany. It’s not a hard list to implement — and if we did these things we could make major strides back toward the kind of society most of us want to live in.
The point is that extreme inequality and the falling fortunes of America’s workers are a choice, not a destiny imposed by the gods of the market. And we can change that choice if we want to.
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Man, that musta taken hours to download on your Compaq 386 & dialup modem, TGT.
Good thing the Internet isn't gonna be taken over by your beloved corporations...you'd be fooked!
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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I love that guy's creds as an author of a wingnut conspiracy theory book. I'm certain that those people were a purely random sampling of the people passing by.
Might I suggest that on your next Obama economic failure interweb google query you search for "stock market performance over past 6 years". If that's failure then bring it on!
I'm actually a little sad for you that you must live your life unable to express your thoughts without using other people's words & ideas. It makes you seem like an idiot.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Larry. are you saying that your question about "when did I stop beating my wife" was a loaded question?
Oh, my bad, I answered it anyway.
What do I win.
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dirtbag
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 3, 2015 - 07:52am PT
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Well at least bookworm is not spending the morning fretting over sexual harassment and consensual sex.
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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TeaGeeTea is a living Triplex
simultaneously ignorant, racist,and a coward
his fixation, nay crush, on the US President is psychotic
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apogee
climber
Technically expert, safe belayer, can lead if easy
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Craig, TGT is the perfect example of what you were pointing out yesterday. No dialogue, just throws sh#t out and runs, corner him with facts and he disappears...yeah, that's the typical ST Repug.
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