Words of Wisdom.....

[KaskadskyjKozak]

After 30 years of rhetoric against "big" government by conservatives in control of all key institutions including the media, corporate welfare (which has always been huge) has reached unprecedented levels, and has bankrupted the nation. The same people certainly have no credibility on that topic today.

 

Huh? You talkin' conservative like the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press....it's pretty much a liberal media world once you get off AM radio my friend.

 

What do you expect? J_B is a left wing goon.

[j_b]

I don't ever really recall anyone ever saying anything like that. No person has run under the "We need big government and more of it" platform have they?

 

Precisely! So you agree with me that D'Souza is a liar when he claims that liberals say they want "big government".

 

No, I do not agree with you at all. D'Sousa is spot on the money. Please see my second post re: Barak. He didn't ever SAY he was a big tax and spend liberal.

 

Conservatives said he was big tax and spend liberal. D'Souza is a liar for the reasons I mentionned because liberals never said they were for big government, they say they are for government and not for anarcho-capitalism.

 

Anyway, who cares what pols say, just watch what they do.

Please see my second post re: Barak. He didn't ever once actually SAY he was a big tax and spend liberal, from his budget and spending proposals that is what he is though. Shall I post what he has proposed or have you been reading the news?

 

I never claimed he was a tax and spend liberal. Conservatives did however do just that when they knew it was a lie.

 

BTW JB, IMO Tax and spend conservatives are even worse than Tax and spend liberals. I'm not picking a side here. Tax and spend is Tax and spend is tax and spend. At least the liberals are honest about it and stay the hell out of your personal life...generally. Shit, the tax and spend conservatives want to regulate your sex life, record your phone calls, be able to lock you up without a trial, and just generally stick their noses where it's not needed nor wanted. (Reagan, Bush and Bush for instance) Of course, Hoover tried keeping gov't small in 1929/1930 and we all know how that turned out......in the shoals of uncharted waters, the Captain has to make a choice, I'm glad still it's Barak and not McCain with the hand on the tiller. But what D'Sousa says is right on.

 

 

D'Souza still supports Bush on invading Iraq and corporate welfare for the militari-industrial complexe. He has no credibity on the issue of government spendings.

[j_b]

After 30 years of rhetoric against "big" government by conservatives in control of all key institutions including the media, corporate welfare (which has always been huge) has reached unprecedented levels, and has bankrupted the nation. The same people certainly have no credibility on that topic today.

 

Huh? You talkin' conservative like the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press....it's pretty much a liberal media world once you get off AM radio my friend.

 

Since you think the NYT is liberal, it shouldn't be too difficult to cite their editorial positions on economic and foreign policy issues that would support you assertion. Why don't you also do the same for TV news that most people watch.

[j_b]

What do you expect? J_B is a left wing goon.

 

here comes the neo-fascist thugs.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

What do you expect? J_B is a left wing goon.

 

here comes the neo-fascist thugs.

 

Hey, how's your 5-year plan coming along after the realization of your neo-commie revolution, mr. pinko commie goon? Where will you dig the pits to dump the bodies of all the bourgeois capitalist pigs that you summarily execute?

[j_b]

Oh give it up! Can't you see you've been trolled? It wouldn't truly be a reprise unless massive deregulation also occurred.

 

Whether PP is genuinely a troll isn't relevant since he has been spewing the same GOP/libertarian propaganda for years.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Oh give it up! Can't you see you've been trolled? It wouldn't truly be a reprise unless massive deregulation also occurred.

 

Whether PP is genuinely a troll isn't relevant since he has been spewing the same GOP/libertarian propaganda for years.

 

And you've flung your left-wing extremist excrement at our screens for just as long.

[billcoe]

Since you think the NYT is liberal, it shouldn't be too difficult to cite their editorial positions on economic and foreign policy issues that would support you assertion.

 

The NYT typically supports liberal and democrats for political office editorially speaking. However, this is your job since you were the one who claimed "

After 30 years of rhetoric against "big" government by conservatives in control of all key institutions including the media, corporate welfare (which has always been huge) has reached unprecedented levels, and has bankrupted the nation. The same people certainly have no credibility on that topic today.

 

blah blah blah no proof no links no information from JB that didn't originate inside of JB's head. You didn't even correctly read the posts you are arguing against so your arguments are not even on the point in discussion.

 

Good luck in life with that attitude.

[j_b]

As if you citing a conservative blowhard who pulls arguments out of his ass and whose positions aren't consistant with his rhetoric gave any substance to your posts. Futhermore, have you actually addressed any of the points I made? Haven't so-called small government types been in power for 30 years? Aren't they responsible for "big government" policies and the economic fiasco that followed as well as our diminished ability to answer to it? How are these points not on topic?

[j_b]

"Why Big Government Is Still the Problem

 

By Dinesh D'Souza

 

Is the era of big government really over? In a word, hardly. By Hoover fellow Dinesh D’Souza.

 

Recent source of funding of the Hoover institution:

 

Archer Daniels Midland Foundation

ARCO Foundation

Boeing-McDonnell Foundation

Chrysler Corporation Fund

Dean Witter Foundation [13]

Exxon Educational Foundation [14]

Ford Motor Company Fund

General Motors Foundation

J.P. Morgan Charitable Trust

Merrill Lynch & Company Foundation

Procter & Gamble Fund

Rockwell International Corporation Trust

Transamerica Foundation

 

why should anyone be surprised that some hack who writes for a fake academic institute that is funded by corporations thinks there is no problem with corporate control of government and keeps bleating the same 30-year old drivel about "big government" to prevent investment in our economic infrastructure, after sending jobs abroad for decades? Do you think your readers are fools?

[j_b]

Is "big government" the cause of the largest ever transfer of wealth from the middle class to the upper 1% of the income bracket over the last 30 years? Of course not, on the contrary, that is the handy work of the market fundamentalists who continually blame "big government" for the problem they caused.

 

Is "big government" responsible for the financial fiasco and the collapse of the world economy? of course not, that is the handy work of the market fundamentalists who continually blame "big government" for the problem they caused. Maddoff, the emblematic figure of the casino economy, certainly didn't steal 50 billions over 20 years because of too much government.

 

Is "big government" responsible for the environmental crisis and resource depletion that threaten our very civilisation. Of course not, the market fundamentalists who continually blame "big government" fight off environmental protections and sustainable policies on every front.

 

Is "big government" responsible for invading Iraq and destroying trillions of dollars we don't have (and over a million lives)? Yes, market fundamentalists who happen to have no problem with corporate welfare even though they claim to be against "big government"(what a surprise) shoved a war down the throat of americans thanks to the propaganda in the media, including the NYT.

 

 

[prole]

 

Don't worry j-b, I hear they're working on a cure for the terrible affliction that seems to be affecting the conservatives on this site.

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

[j_b]

I wish it were amnesia but unfortunately it is a willfull attempt at drawing attention away from the unprecedented crisis (economic and environmental) that market fundamentalists have engineered, as well as an attempt at having the taxpayer pay for the misdeeds of the banksters while they get away with the loot. The only role of "big government" in this mess is what the fake small government types (advocates of corporate welfare in disguise) have forced on americans (bloated military budget that benefits the militari-industrial complex, military adventurism and intrusion into the private lives of americans).

[billcoe]

Afraid to post the link where you got that JB?

 

Here: link to wikipedia

 

Here's a more interesting one. rightweb link

 

They say "

Founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, based on the campus of Stanford University, is one of the oldest research institutes in the United States. Funded largely by right-wing foundations and corporate donors, Hoover has been a mainstay of the Republican Party for decades, serving as a virtual revolving door for conservative figures involved in Republican administrations, including the George W. Bush administration, which employed several Hoover scholars. Case in point was the September 2007 announcement that the institution would hire Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting scholar; the former secretary of defense was widely excoriated for his oversight of the Iraq War and left the administration shortly into Bush's second term (Associated Press, September 8, 2007).

 

Another major figure of the Iraq War, former U.S. Central Command chief John Abizaid, has also found a home at Hoover. Past Hoover fellows, including notably Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who were tagged to serve in the Bush administration, include Stephen Krasner at the State Department and John B. Taylor at the Treasury Department. The think tank's ties with the Reagan administration were similarly strong. Reagan advisers associated with Hoover included Secretary of State George Shultz, Attorney General Edwin Meese, and National Security Adviser Richard Allen. Margaret Thatcher and Newt Gingrich have also been Hoover fellows.

 

Hoover became an ideas factory for George W. Bush before he was elected president. In the summer of 1999, Bush, then the governor of Texas and in the early stages of his presidential campaign, paid his first visit to California as a candidate. At the time, Bush's campaign was at pains to portray him as a moderate, "compassionate" conservative who would soften the hard edges of Republican economic and social policy. But a few analysts looked beyond the rhetoric to take a closer look at the advisers who provided the intellectual foundation of his campaign, and in the process saw signs that Bush was not the post-ideological moderate he appeared to be. The Christian Science Monitor noted that one of the biggest tipoffs was Bush's close association with the Hoover Institution, which had already "emerged as the early core of Mr. Bush's brain trust."

 

The Monitor reported that there were "many interesting aspects of this relationship, not least of which is the juxtaposition of the think tank's staunchly conservative heritage and the candidate's moderate political persona. But whatever the attraction, the relationship has blossomed fully, with no end in sight" (Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 1999).

 

Hoover is particularly influential in its advocacy of free-market economics and a hawkish foreign policy. On economic issues, the think tank has served as a home to some of the most important right-wing economists of recent years, including the late Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winner Gary Becker, Nixon and Reagan adviser Martin Anderson, and author Thomas Sowell. W. Glenn Campbell, Hoover's influential former director, was a free-market economist, as is its current director, John Raisian.

 

Hoover fellows have also been influential for their right-wing stances on environmental issues. Fellow Thomas Gale Moore is a leading climate change skeptic, having authored the 1998 book Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global Warming. Fellow Bruce Berkowitz is the author of the 2001 Hoover Digest article "The Pseudoscience of Global Warming." And Gale Norton, who as George W. Bush's first secretary of the interior took a notably laissez-faire attitude toward environmental issues, is also a Hoover alum. Norton, a lawyer and lobbyist with ties to the energy industry, was a fellow from 1984-1985 (University of Denver press release, December 29, 2000).

 

On foreign policy issues, Hoover includes a mix of traditional realists and neoconservatives, but its fellows tend to be united around the goal of an aggressive U.S. foreign policy and have been a driving force behind military action in Latin America and the Middle East. At the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, eight Hoover fellows (including Becker, Gingrich, Allen, Pete Wilson, and Martin Anderson) sat on the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Department think tank that was once chaired by Richard Perle (The Nation, March 28, 2003). In addition to policymakers like Shultz, Rice, and Rumsfeld, Hoover fellows also include such hawkish intellectuals as historian Niall Ferguson, classicist Victor Davis Hanson, and historian and staunch Cold Warrior Robert Conquest. There is no sign that the think tank's foreign policy influence is waning, as any future Republican administration would likely be well-stocked with Hoover alumni; Rudy Giuliani's chief foreign policy adviser, for instance, is the Hoover fellow and Iraq hawk Charles Hill (Harper's, August 27, 2007).

 

Although Hoover is best known for its right-wing stances on economics and foreign policy, it also hosts a number of well-known social conservatives. One of the most prominent is Dinesh D'Souza, who was been harshly criticized by liberals and conservatives alike for his 2007 book The Enemy At Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11, which blames U.S. social liberals for causing Muslim radical anger. Another prominent socially conservative fellow is Mary Eberstadt, author of anti-feminist tracts like Home-Alone America (2004), which blames the rise of working motherhood for all manner of social ills (National Review, November 30, 2004).

 

In addition to subsidizing the research of its many fellows, Hoover also serves as an idea factory through the publication of two journals: Hoover Digest, a quarterly journal edited by former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, and Policy Review, a well-known right-wing journal of ideas edited by Hoover fellow Tod Lindberg that was long associated with the Heritage Foundation but was acquired by Hoover in 2001 (Policy Review website).

 

The Hoover Institution's wide-ranging political influence over the last few decades is in contrast to its relatively humble origins. When it was founded in 1919 by future president Herbert Hoover, it served mainly as a collection of scholarly documents related to World War I. By the 1940s, the institution had begun recruiting scholars to use the documents, but it still had not become a think tank in its present sense (see the Hoover Institution website).

 

The think tank began to assume its present form in the late 1950s. In 1959, Herbert Hoover gave the institution a mission statement, which it keeps to this day:

 

"This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights, and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity. ... Ours is a system where the Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social, or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves. ... The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man's endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life. This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library. But with these purposes as its goal, the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system" (Hoover Institution website, emphasis in original).

 

In 1960, Herbert Hoover picked a young right-wing economist named W. Glenn Campbell to serve as director, a position he kept until 1989. Campbell built the institution into a major player, increasing its endowment from $2 million to $125 million and luring high-profile scholars like Friedman after they had retired from other institutions. The Hoover Institution also gained influence because of Campbell's close relationship with California governor and future president Ronald Reagan. "When [Reagan] became president, we had a bonanza," said fellow Melvyn Krauss, and the Reagan administration was quickly stocked with Hoover fellows (Stanford Report, November 28, 2001).

 

Although Hoover is hosted and partially funded by Stanford University, its right-wing politics have led to a fair amount of strife with the broader university community. The Nation reported that "during the Reagan presidency, close links between the administration and Hoover prompted Stanford faculty to draft a petition demanding investigation into the relationship between the university and the think tank. ... Faculty also battled the planned construction of the Hoover-backed Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Reagan Center for Public Policy on campus. In 1985 Stanford's trustees, led by chairman Warren Christopher, agreed that the library and a small museum could be built in the foothills overlooking campus but that the Hoover-run policy center would have to go elsewhere" (Nation, March 28, 2003).

 

Hoover's ties to the George W. Bush administration have led to renewed strife with the university. In 2003, a group of students drafted a petition alleging that the Hoover Institution's mission statement was improperly politically motivated and calling on the institution to reform the mission statement or lose its university funding (Nation, March 28, 2003). And in April 2006, a group of more than 1,000 protestors forced a meeting between Bush and Hoover fellows to be moved to the home of fellow and former secretary of defense George Shultz (Stanford Daily, April 21, 2006).

 

Although Stanford donates about $1 million to Hoover's library and archive annually, the bulk of the institution's funding comes from returns on its endowment and from individual, corporate, and foundational donations (Nation, March 28, 2003). Conservative philanthropic foundations have contributed vast amounts of money to Hoover in recent decades—nearly $24 million from 1985 to 2005, according to MediaTransparency.org. Donors that have given more than $1 million to Hoover include such right-wing stalwarts as the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation (MediaTransparency.org). Richard Mellon Scaife of the Scaife Foundations and Shelby M.C. Davis of the Davis Foundation also sit on Hoover's Board of Overseers.

 

Corporations have also been quite generous in their donations to Hoover. ExxonMobil has been a notable contributor, giving $295,000 to the institution between 1998 and 2005 (ExxonSecrets.org). Hoover-based climate changed skeptics like Moore and Berkowitz have been helpful to ExxonMobil and the rest of the energy industry. And the major conservative foundations, many of which were founded by captains of industry aiming to promote free enterprise and keep their fortunes out of government hands, have funded Hoover fellows such as Friedman who were responsible for increasing the influence of free-market economics. One source calls Hoover "one of four leading policy institutions that pulled the nation's economic policy to the right in the early 1980s" (MediaTransparency.org)."

 

Exxon contributed $295,000? over that 7 years? I'm shocked I tell you. Thats $42,142.85 a year! Shocking. Do you have any idea what Exxon makes in a quarter?

 

[billcoe]

Go ahead and click on and read that rightweb link, ya might learn something.

[j_b]

Why would I be afraid of posting a wikipedia link? But, why don't you answer the substance of the post? Is it surprising to have a hack claim his employers aren't responsible?

 

Btw, that was only the 3rd time in as many weeks that you played the "librul media" card while stomping away and never responding to any arguments I put forward. How many more times are you going to do this?

[billcoe]

How many more times are you going to do this?

 

Why bother with your often off-topic non-substantiated claims that seem to have importance to you? I don't and won't. Why would I? Maybe someone else cares, but speaking for myself, my interest in your all too common opinionated rants and minutia can be measured in micro-give-a-shits.

 

 

Sorry dude. I bet you are a nice guy in person too, I'm just sayin' is all.

[j_b]

"scholars"? certainly not. A bunch of propagandists and ideologues for corporatism is what they are.

 

Did you ask PP about substantiating his claims and for a link at the top of this thread? nope, you didn't. Did you ask D'Souza to substnatiate his claims? nope, you didn't. It seems to me that your need for substantiation is very selective. What a surprise (not).

[j_b]

I should add that you are deluded if you really think that I need to substantiate my statement according to which conservatives have been in control of all key institutions including the media for the last 30 years. Anybody who doesn't think so is either clueless or in bad faith and there is little I can do about either of these conditions.

[tvashtarkatena]

Any discussion involving the term Big Government is likely to be a generic circle jerk all around. The world and history are just a bit more complicated than that.

 

Regarding the NYT, which I've read every day for decades, it's probably accurate to say that the editors are centrist to liberal, but, to it's credit, the editorial section regularly prints all viewpoints, including the most extreme neocons. Their columnists are also varied in their viewpoints.

 

What strikes me about the paper is that it's quality of journalism and opinion is much higher than most others. You tend to get opinions and news from the source more often; the paper has a deep, worldwide, on the ground reporting presence, and access to those making the news is as good or better than anywhere else. It is not without its flaws, and it has had its embarrassments, but it remains arguably the most respected newspaper in the world.

 

In any case, a well informed person should read more than one source, but, personally, I don't waste too much time with sources that have an agenda (as think tanks invariably do) or blogs, where anything goes and there is are no consequences for conjecture or inaccuracy.

[j_b]

Regarding the NYT, which I've read every day for decades, it's probably accurate to say that the editors are centrist to liberal

 

what is the editorial position on so-called free trade? NAFTA? assymetric globalization? attacking Iraq, Afghanistan? and on , and on. I challenge you to tell us which editorial positions on economics and foreign policy can be qualified as liberal.

[Peter_Puget]

"scholars"? certainly not. A bunch of propagandists and ideologues for corporatism is what they are.

 

Did you ask PP about substantiating his claims and for a link at the top of this thread? nope, you didn't. Did you ask D'Souza to substnatiate his claims? nope, you didn't. It seems to me that your need for substantiation is very selective. What a surprise (not).

 

J_B's comment is very revealing. For ease of reference here is my first post:

 

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

 

The title was Words of Wisdom. Obviously the words themselves were intended to be self-"substnatiating." No links required. For J_B however the words required an "outside authority" to evaluated - Wisdom depends the source not the content. This belief of J_B's explains the manner in which he posts.

[j_b]

PP's drivel is golden and doesn't need substantiation. What a troll.

[prole]

"scholars"? certainly not. A bunch of propagandists and ideologues for corporatism is what they are.

 

Did you ask PP about substantiating his claims and for a link at the top of this thread? nope, you didn't. Did you ask D'Souza to substnatiate his claims? nope, you didn't. It seems to me that your need for substantiation is very selective. What a surprise (not).

 

J_B's comment is very revealing. For ease of reference here is my first post:

 

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

 

The title was Words of Wisdom. Obviously the words themselves were intended to be self-"substnatiating." No links required. For J_B however the words required an "outside authority" to evaluated - Wisdom depends the source not the content. This belief of J_B's explains the manner in which he posts.

 

Then perhaps "Rhetorical Diarrhea" might have been a better title?

[tvashtarkatena]

Regarding the NYT, which I've read every day for decades, it's probably accurate to say that the editors are centrist to liberal

 

what is the editorial position on so-called free trade? NAFTA? assymetric globalization? attacking Iraq, Afghanistan? and on , and on. I challenge you to tell us which editorial positions on economics and foreign policy can be qualified as liberal.

 

The NYT editorial board was quite critical of the invasion of the Iraq, as I recall. Regarding Afghanistan, that military effort received broad support from all political viewpoints; both because the Taliban were so violently anti liberal, particularly in their treatment of women, and because that's where Al Qaeda and OBL were based immediately after 911. Regarding NAFTA, the board urged environmental and job protection safeguards that were largely not put into place.

 

There are ideologs of every political stripe who lose the ability to rethink viewpoints because they refuse to taking in new information or filter their information to sources that agree a priori with their world view. I like reading conservative columnists (the pros, not the ass clowns) for example, to better understand the various perspectives that make up a politically mixed and often divided society. Plus, I don't go in much for the grand theories or grand conspiracies; two things ideologs the world over seem a bit too fond of.

Edited January 9, 2009 by tvashtarkatena