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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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May 13, 2011 - 01:18pm PT
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I have had a face to face discussion with John McCain on this issue, I think he is wrong, we don't agree on everything.
The evil one
Fattrad, you can have an opinion on the best way to cut out a brain tumor, too. It doesn't mean that you have any expertise in either subject.
McCain lived through it.
I posted the link to the US interogator who says it is the wrong thing do do, who interrogated 1300 prisoners in Iraq.
What is your expertise, tuning people up?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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May 13, 2011 - 01:20pm PT
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When will the 2003 Republican tax cuts kick in?
Only five years after these stimulating giveaways to the rich, we were losing 700K
job a MONTH, and then stock market's decline was destroying trillions in savings.
Ok, Boner. WHERE ARE THE JOBS YOU PROMISED?
What legislation has your House passed that creates jobs?
None
But plenty of time spend defunding NPR and Planned Parenthood. VERY IMPORTANT STUFF
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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May 13, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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Ken M,
I am currently owed money from the Kern County Council of Governments for a study funded by Caltrans. We await Caltrans' payment, which is six months overdue. I rather doubt that I'm alone.
More importantly, the State's budget is largely fiscal fiction and is putting its bond rating into junk levels. As if that isn't bad enough, the state and local governments' pension obligations, which will put an enormous strain on future budgets, keep getting swept under the rug.
Pretending we're OK because California is (almost) currently paying its bills invites financial disaster. We should both be dealing with our spnding issuess and continuing the current tax rates, rather than cutting them. Brown's budget does the latter, but does almost nothing to the former. The Assembly Republicans' budget purports to deal with the former (but doesn't really, because it focuses too much on the short term) while purporting to avoid keeping taxes at current rates. The legislative Democrats proceed as if there is no budget problem.
And you wonder why I'm pessimistic about California's governance and financial future?
John
Edit: I don't recall the last time California defaulted, but every time it issues warrants (which happens with too much regularity) it's really defaulting.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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May 13, 2011 - 02:03pm PT
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Ken M,
I have experience using a big flashlight to get info from one enemy combatant, I got the information I wanted.
The evil one
Just as I thought. Breaking the law to achieve the goal. Same category as illegal aliens that the GOP is unwilling to give a break, under any circumstances.
Of course, the argument is always made about the nuclear bomb about to go off, and your suspect knows where it is.
Where did your suspect tell you the nuclear bomb was?
Oh, there wasn't one. This is what happens with torture. It gets justified on the basis of a very unlikely scenario, and then it gets used for any trivial thing. And then it gets used for entertainment.
I was always struck by this passage of a torture survivor:
"and then they struck me with a hose on the bottom of my feet until I passed out. I couldn't walk for days."
"and what were they asking you to reveal?"
"they didn't ask me anything."
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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May 13, 2011 - 02:08pm PT
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Pretending we're OK because California is (almost) currently paying its bills invites financial disaster. We should both be dealing with our spnding issuess and continuing the current tax rates, rather than cutting them. Brown's budget does the latter, but does almost nothing to the former. The Assembly Republicans' budget purports to deal with the former (but doesn't really, because it focuses too much on the short term) while purporting to avoid keeping taxes at current rates. The legislative Democrats proceed as if there is no budget problem.
This is simply not true. Brown's budget contains 12-13 Billion dollars in cuts, as demanded by the Repubs before they would consider allowing voters to vote on tax extensions.
He put in the cuts, then the Repubs backed out of their word. It is clear that they can be trusted on NOTHING. Their goal is to destroy the state gov't, thinking they can blame it on the dems, then take over.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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May 13, 2011 - 02:19pm PT
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Ken, Brown's budget does nothing regarding pension reform, and makes sure the public employee unions that bought and paid for his elections feel no pain. I don't have time today to get into detail, as I'm late for a meeting (sadly, one in Fresno, and not on the cliffs) that will take the rest of the day, but I'll agree on this: Brown's proposal comes closer to solving the problems than either those of the Assembly Republicans nor those of the legislative Democrats.
John
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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May 13, 2011 - 02:55pm PT
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And means test both Medicare and SS, much much so than now.
No should Buffet and Gates be "entitled"to Medicare and SS just because they "paid in"
Yes, lift the cap on SS, no cap at all, and pay Medicare and SS on ALL earnings,
including dividends.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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May 13, 2011 - 11:06pm PT
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When someone sets prices above the market rate, there is a glut, like OPEC found out with oil. When they set them below the market rate, there is a shortage, like the Soviet Union found out about everything. Under the proposal of jghedge and locker, the government will set the price of medical care too low, and
YOU'RE GONNA DIE
(with apologies to P. J. O'Rourke)
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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May 13, 2011 - 11:15pm PT
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WE want Universal, taken out of our Taxes
Really? The only polls I've seen are that we want our health care paid for by someone else's taxes.
John
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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May 14, 2011 - 12:07am PT
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Ken M,
He told me where to find the larger supply of PCP.
And, Calif has had to issue IOU's several times in the last few years.
The evil one
Why not just beat his child to death in front of him? Oh! That would be wrong?
And Ca has made good on every IOU.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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May 14, 2011 - 12:21am PT
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In the interests of fairness there were two problems I found with the interesting healthcare poster.
1. Massive outpatient costs. There is an implication that doing things inpatient is cheaper. NO! It is MASSIVELY more expensive to do things inpatient, not to mention much more dangerous. I would NEVER have a procedure done in a hospital that I could have as an outpatient. Never.
2. Doctors make too much. SOME doctors make too much. Specialists of various sorts are off the wall.
However, primary care physicians (Family Practice, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics) make sometimes 1/5 of what a cardiologist, for example, makes.
(BTW, a cardiologist IS an internist. You have to become one, before the other. However, they are paid a salary for this) Any specialist who also states they are in internist is correct, sort of. However, that is not what they do, and when they do, they do it poorly.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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May 14, 2011 - 01:53am PT
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Obama '12. Obama '16. Obama '20.
If Obama is re-elected in 2012, with Democrat majorities in both houses, he'll have considerable ability to forward a progressive agenda. The Republicans and teabaggers would be unwise to think that blind obstructionism will work twice.
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apogee
climber
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May 14, 2011 - 01:59am PT
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A progressive agenda.
Such nice sounding words.
What do they mean, again?
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apogee
climber
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May 14, 2011 - 02:49am PT
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Anyone?
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apogee
climber
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May 14, 2011 - 02:51am PT
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Run, Newt, Run!
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apogee
climber
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May 14, 2011 - 03:10am PT
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Who can blame him?
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 14, 2011 - 11:49am PT
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th — 17 months after Boeing announced plans to build here and with the $2?billion plant nearing completion — the NLRB, collaborating with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), charged that Boeing’s decision violated the rights of its unionized workers in Washington state, where some Dreamliners are assembled and still will be even after the plant here is operational. The NLRB has read a 76-year-old statute (the 1935 Wagner Act) perversely, disregarded almost half a century of NLRB and Supreme Court rulings, and patently misrepresented statements by Boeing officials.
George Will
South Carolina is one of 22 — so far — right-to-work states, where workers cannot be compelled to join a union. When in September 2009, Boeing’s South Carolina workers — fuselage sections of 787s already are built here — voted to end their representation by IAM, the union did not accuse Boeing of pre-vote misbehavior. Now, however, the NLRB seeks to establish the principle that moving businesses to such states from non-right-to-work states constitutes prima facie evidence of “unfair labor practices,” including intimidation and coercion of labor. This principle would be a powerful incentive for new companies to locate only in right-to-work states.
The NLRB complaint fictitiously says Boeing has decided to “remove” or “transfer” work from Washington. Actually, Boeing has so far added more than 2,000 workers in Washington, where planned production — seven 787s a month, full capacity for that facility — will not be reduced. Besides, how can locating a new plant here violate the rights of IAM members whose collective bargaining agreement with Boeing gives the company the right to locate new production facilities where it deems best?
The NLRB says that Boeing has come here “because” IAM strikes have disrupted production and “to discourage” future strikes.
Since 1995, IAM has stopped Boeing’s production in three of five labor negotiations, including a 58-day walkout in 2008 that cost the company $1.8 billion and a diminished reputation with customers.
The NLRB uses meretricious editing of Boeing officials’ remarks to falsely suggest that anti-union animus motivated the company to locate some production in a right-to-work state. Anyway, it is settled law that companies can consider past strikes when making business decisions to diminish the risk of future disruptions.
The economy is mired in a sluggish recovery. But the destructive — and self-destructive — Obama administration is trying to debilitate the world’s largest aerospace corporation and the nation’s leading exporter, which has 155,000 U.S. employees and whose 738 million shares are held by individual and institutional investors, mutual funds and retirement accounts. Why? Organized labor, primarily and increasingly confined to government workers, cannot convince private-sector workers that it adds more value to their lives than it subtracts with dues and work rules that damage productivity. Hence unions’ reliance on government coercion where persuasion has failed.
The NLRB’s complaint is not a conscientious administration of the law; it is intimidation of business leaders who contemplate locating operations in right-to-work states. Labor loathes Section 14(b) of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which allows states to pass right-to-work laws that forbid compulsory unionization. But 11 Democratic senators represent 10 of the right-to-work states: Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Bill Nelson (Florida), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Ben Nelson (Nebraska), Harry Reid (Nevada), Kay Hagan (North Carolina), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), and Jim Webb and Mark Warner (Virginia). Do they support the Obama administration’s attempt to cripple their states’ economic attractiveness?
The NLRB’s attack on Boeing illustrates the Obama administration’s penchant for lawlessness displayed when, disregarding bankruptcy law, it traduced the rights of Chrysler’s secured creditors. Now the NLRB is suing Arizona and South Dakota because they recently, and by large majorities, passed constitutional amendments guaranteeing the right to secret ballots in unionization elections — ballots that complicate coercion by union organizers.
Just as uncompetitive companies try to become wards of the government (beneficiaries of subsidies, tariffs, import quotas), unions unable to compete for workers’ allegiance solicit government compulsion to fill their ranks. The NLRB’s reckless attempt to break a great corporation, and by extension all businesses, to government’s saddle — never mind the collateral damage to the economy — is emblematic of the Obama administration’s willingness to sacrifice the economy on the altar of politics.
georgewill@washpost.com
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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May 14, 2011 - 11:56am PT
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Herman Cain is the best I've seen yet for conservatives in the race.
But I'm a bigot, so I could never vote for a black man....I'm so screwed.
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shut up and pull
climber
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May 14, 2011 - 12:30pm PT
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David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'
An election-season essay
By David Mamet
published: March 11, 2008
John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?"
My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice.
Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot.
Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage.
When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the paper and wrote a retraction, praising the play as the masterpiece it is.
Every playwright's dream.
I once won one of Mary Ann Madden's "Competitions" in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a "10" of anything, and mine was the World's Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: "I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I've ever written. When you read this I'll be dead." That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.
My prize, in a stunning example of irony, was a year's subscription to New York, which rag (apart from Mary Ann's "Competition") I considered an open running sore on the body of world literacy—this due to the presence in its pages of John Simon, whose stunning amalgam of superciliousness and savagery, over the years, was appreciated by that readership searching for an endorsement of proactive mediocrity.
But I digress.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed.
But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president who is self-interested, corrupt, suborned, and realistic, and his leftish, lesbian, utopian-socialist speechwriter.
The play, while being a laugh a minute, is, when it's at home, a disputation between reason and faith, or perhaps between the conservative (or tragic) view and the liberal (or perfectionist) view. The conservative president in the piece holds that people are each out to make a living, and the best way for government to facilitate that is to stay out of the way, as the inevitable abuses and failures of this system (free-market economics) are less than those of government intervention.
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the f*#k up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
This is, to me, the synthesis of this worldview with which I now found myself disenchanted: that everything is always wrong.
But in my life, a brief review revealed, everything was not always wrong, and neither was nor is always wrong in the community in which I live, or in my country. Further, it was not always wrong in previous communities in which I lived, and among the various and mobile classes of which I was at various times a part.
And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.
For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.
To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.
The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.
Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.
I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.
Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.
And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.
And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do I speak as a member of the "privileged class"? If you will—but classes in the United States are mobile, not static, which is the Marxist view. That is: Immigrants came and continue to come here penniless and can (and do) become rich; the nerd makes a trillion dollars; the single mother, penniless and ignorant of English, sends her two sons to college (my grandmother). On the other hand, the rich and the children of the rich can go belly-up; the hegemony of the railroads is appropriated by the airlines, that of the networks by the Internet; and the individual may and probably will change status more than once within his lifetime.
What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.
But if the government is not to intervene, how will we, mere human beings, work it all out?
I wondered and read, and it occurred to me that I knew the answer, and here it is: We just seem to. How do I know? From experience. I referred to my own—take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period, and a better production.
The director, generally, does not cause strife, but his or her presence impels the actors to direct (and manufacture) claims designed to appeal to Authority—that is, to set aside the original goal (staging a play for the audience) and indulge in politics, the purpose of which may be to gain status and influence outside the ostensible goal of the endeavor.
Strand unacquainted bus travelers in the middle of the night, and what do you get? A lot of bad drama, and a shake-and-bake Mayflower Compact. Each, instantly, adds what he or she can to the solution. Why? Each wants, and in fact needs, to contribute—to throw into the pot what gifts each has in order to achieve the overall goal, as well as status in the new-formed community. And so they work it out.
See also that most magnificent of schools, the jury system, where, again, each brings nothing into the room save his or her own prejudices, and, through the course of deliberation, comes not to a perfect solution, but a solution acceptable to the community—a solution the community can live with.
Prior to the midterm elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flack. The congregation is exclusively liberal, he is a self-described independent (read "conservative"), and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first—that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon each person to hear the other fellow out.
And so I, like many of the liberal congregation, began, teeth grinding, to attempt to do so. And in doing so, I recognized that I held those two views of America (politics, government, corporations, the military). One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other—the world in which I actually functioned day to day—was made up of people, most of whom were reasonably trying to maximize their comfort by getting along with each other (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, on the freeway, even at the school-board meeting).
And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.
At the same time, I was writing my play about a president, corrupt, venal, cunning, and vengeful (as I assume all of them are), and two turkeys. And I gave this fictional president a speechwriter who, in his view, is a "brain-dead liberal," much like my earlier self; and in the course of the play, they have to work it out. And they eventually do come to a human understanding of the political process. As I believe I am trying to do, and in which I believe I may be succeeding, and I will try to summarize it in the words of William Allen White.
White was for 40 years the editor of the Emporia Gazette in rural Kansas, and a prominent and powerful political commentator. He was a great friend of Theodore Roosevelt and wrote the best book I've ever read about the presidency. It's called Masks in a Pageant, and it profiles presidents from McKinley to Wilson, and I recommend it unreservedly.
White was a pretty clear-headed man, and he'd seen human nature as few can. (As Twain wrote, you want to understand men, run a country paper.) White knew that people need both to get ahead and to get along, and that they're always working at one or the other, and that government should most probably stay out of the way and let them get on with it. But, he added, there is such a thing as liberalism, and it may be reduced to these saddest of words: " . . . and yet . . . "
The right is mooing about faith, the left is mooing about change, and many are incensed about the fools on the other side—but, at the end of the day, they are the same folks we meet at the water cooler. Happy election season.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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May 14, 2011 - 08:12pm PT
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Rather than read Mamets 3 year old column, you could join me in hearing him in person in two weeks:
http://hammer.ucla.edu/calendar/detail/type/program/id/837
MAY 31 TUE 07:00pm
Hammer Conversations
Ricky Jay & David Mamet
Acknowledged as one of the world’s great sleight of hand artists, Ricky Jay has received accolades as a performer, actor, and author. His books have garnered two New York Times Notable Books citations, a Best Books of the Year acknowledgment from the Los Angeles Times, and a Grammy nomination. His new book is Celebrations of Curious Characters. David Mamet is the award-winning author of numerous plays including Oleana, Glengarry Glen Ross (1984 Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award), American Buffalo, and Speed-the-Plow; screenplays for such films as The Verdict, The Untouchables, and Wag the Dog; and the novels The Village, The Old Religion, and Wilson. Jay and Mamet are long-time friends and collaborators.
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