• Lucytorial said on Jul 31, 2009....

  Obama seems to be really fucking things up huh? not that he didn't inherit a pretty shity start but geeze!

• D6fer said on Jul 31, 2009....

  It's insane lucy! I doubt that our alternative would have been much better though! Our government is out of control here......the two parties have a monopoly, and are merely scavengers of power left over to them by the real rulers that hide in the shadows of broad daylight! 

• Lucytorial said on Jul 31, 2009....

  there seems to be very little actually getting done, and what is getting done is undoing the only decent things that were left.
   
  Fucked up for sure.

• wombat said on Jul 31, 2009....

  Hey, are you Imus?  Just kidding.  I heard similar comments on a radio show here today.  You know the funny thing?  When I am confused about the government and politics, I usually make my "take this side" decisions by reading blogs here on SC.  So thanks for explaining to me how it is.  I don't get much off the slanted news!

  Hubby wants to trade his gas guzzler in, but doesn't want to go deeper into debt for a longer period of time.  I know that stimulating the auto industry is good, but now everyone who jumps on the bandwagon is in debt...just driving a more efficient car?  Well, it's a start maybe?  Guess I still need more info.  But we'll probably just keep paying off the hog.

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 31, 2009....

  I'm amazed that Cash for Clunkers is THAT sucessful.  Between the mark ups and the requirements to get in in the first place (like I would have to find a car that ran on piss to qualify with any of the vehicles in my family).

  If the majority of the Stimulus Bill works like this basically giving money directly back to the people (albeit to do what we want them to do) it'll work all the better since it will all go directly to the economy with much less loss.

  The problem with our government isn't the two party system, not really.  Part of it is the voting system.  Switching to an automatic runoff system would fix much of it.  Once you get beyond a two party system you start running far to great a risk of whackadoos winning.  And I mean real whackadoos, not OBama or Bush who both can say fifty percent of the nation agrees with them.  I mean like Green PArty whackadoos.

• D6fer said on Jul 31, 2009....

  lucy....fer sure!
  
  Wombat....glad I could help.....yeah you can buy a lot of gas for that guzzler with the money you would spend on a new car!
  
  Sean....I'm not sure we can call it a success yet....but yeah...as far as stimulus goes....why not?.....i said a long time ago that they should have given vouchers to mortgage holders to help pay off their mortgages rather than giving it to the banks directly......but that wouldn't be the proper way to pay off your campaign contributors would it?
  
  I am not familiar with the run off system.
  

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 31, 2009....

  You're correct about calling it a success.  That wasn't actually the word I was searching for.  Popular was more the word I meant.  I mean for me it's a no brainer to avoid this or any new car for a while.  I own my car, it's a bit older so my insurance is lowish and I"m finally getting old enough and have enough of a driving record behind me to start getting lower rates.  MAYBE a year ago when gas prices were approaching five bucks and even then only maybe.

  
  

  I support the voucher system for the mortgages.

  
  

  Question:  Would you support a similar system for schools and for health care?  I actually have actually outlined it a bit!! here.

  
  

  3.  The basic idea of a runnoff as I understand it is everybody gets to vote twice.  Once for the guy the want to win and once for the guy they wouldn't mind winning.  If nobody reaches 50%  then the field is narrowed and the anybody who voted for someone who has been eliminated now switches to the second choice.  In my case I would have voted for Ron Paul first and Obama Second.  Ron would have made an actual showing (he had a fair amount of support) which would in turn make him and his party more viable in the future.

  
  

   

• D6fer said on Jul 31, 2009....

  definitely for schools......healthcare?....not so much.....unless there was some way to fund the voucher program directly.....eliminating the feds from getting their hands on the money.....too bad there wasn't some way to do that for all things government. (a thought being born...bear with me)
  

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 31, 2009....

  I don't see a viable method for keeping the government completely out though.

• D6fer said on Jul 31, 2009....

  probably not.....but much could be administered on a more local level.....the feds obviously can not be trusted with the amount of money we give them each year!

• SeanRenaud said on Jul 31, 2009....

  That much is clear.  I think a huge step would be having the budget visible and easily broken down.  Too much of what the government handles is written in legalese.  I should be able to google up US Govermnent Spending and see what percent of tax dollars are doing this that and the other.  We'll say military for ease of language.  Once I click on the peice of the pie that says 10% is military I want to know how that is broken up.  How much of it is personell costs, what is RnD, what is medical?  Etc etc.  As the system currently exists we don't know where the waste is.

  Obama is (or was) supposedly going line by line through it to find savings and while that's good and well the fact is that a presidential (at the time candidate) shouldn't have go through line by line.  Like that.  It should be we know that programs X, Y and Z suck. 

  I would also make it more difficult to sue doctors.  Basically the doctor would have to be a retard to get sued.  We practice medicine, we've never perfected it.  Yeah it sucks that when they make bad judgement calls people die but until we get magic healing that is part of the world.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I have quickbooks for my business, and I can instantly click on a button and get pie charts....graphs...data....you name it.....there is absolutely no reason why government can't have the same thing on a larger scale.....quickbooks can track to the penny what I am spending.
  
  Now, I understand that quickbooks can only handle so much data and then you have to move up to a more powerful program....but you couldn't convince me that there isn't something out there that could get the job done with the same net results.
  
  I still think Obama is nothing more than a cog in the machine.....the only real changes are going to come from the people with the big wallets. (Goldman Sachs, G.E., etc.) If they can skim some off of the top, then consider it done.
  
  Tort reform is much needed......I think a "loser pays" legal system would be a lot better....the next time you spill hot coffee on your crotch, maybe you will not look at mickey d's like a cash cow. (I know, not med example...but still)
  

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  No we are in complete agreement here.

  I'm just curious what would be the problem with vouchers for health care.  This is in no way meant to prevent people from spending their own money by the way.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I think it might create a "false bottom" so to speak.......in other words, people with more money would still receive better care, and you know the libs would have a cow over it.....I suppose that could be said for schools too, but standard education costs about the same student to student than healthcare does from one person to the next.
  

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  from what i've read, there are 2 problems with cash for clunkers. one, dealers are having a hard time applying for the rebates after they've written them for the customer because there are so many forms, they are difficult to understand and fill out, and the other problem, there was a much higher demand than anyone had anticipated from the consumer, causing a much higher traffic load on the system to claim the rebates. the program was so much more successful than the government had anticipated that they were happy to put more money into it, it worked better than they thought. they also have increased the staff and capacity for the dealer rebate claim system.
   
  i think trying to get that level of spending breakdown for something like the u.s. military on google would be considered a security breach as much as it would in any business. my guess is that's one reason they don't want to open the books anymore than AIG does. the other i'm sure is the covert stuff they're spending the money on that the general population would object to if it were known.
   
  let me paint a scenario here. suppose the feds gave the auto industry $42 billion over 5 years to produce 1000 automobiles that ran on water based fuel cells and used this rebate scheme to get people to trade in their fossil fuel vehicles for water based ones, stopping the over $700 billion a year going to middle eastern countries and keeping it here in our economy. would that be a good plan, a good use for the taxpayer's dollar? or was that $42 billion better spent on 21 B2 stealth bombers?
   
  i don't like everything that obama's done in the last 8 months, and i'm really leary of this health care time bomb, but i also see that the impending protracted depression that everyone said would happen a year ago didn't happen, and largely due to this administration's efforts. they're not going to get everything right, and they're not going to please everyone. but i think for what they had to work with, they've done pretty well so far, and didn't have to start another war to do it.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I don't know trav......with only a few billion of the original stimulus even been spent yet....I am still waiting for the other shoe to drop....i don't think they've actually fired up the printing presses yet....when they do that, the dollar will most likely plummet and inflation will take off like a rocket.

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  1.  There will always be a difference between haves and have nots.  That's the nature of the world and the beauty of capitalism.  There are things we can do to partially alleviate it.  I would personally greatly increase the inheritance tax.  If Capitalism is supposed to reward hard work, inteligence and basically being better than the next guy then it should also demand that individuals earn.    Not that you get to be rich because someone once upon a time shared blood with you and was a genius.  You're already going to have the advantage of connections, and experience that other people are going to get.

  I would be interested to see just how much health care costs vary from one person to the next on average.  I'm not denying there are people with various special cases.  And honestly there is nothing to be done for it.  We have that down to a minimum now, once upon a time Circuses were filled with freak shows, but Roe v Wade went a LONG way towards eliminating that (and make no mistake before records were kept so tediously as they are now children with those problems were taken behind the barn a lot of the time)  My point is that if you can't afford to deal with these problems it shouldn't fall to the government.  I think that a bare minimum, like I said before one medical check up, one dental check up and one minor emergency per year and it rolls over.

  2.  Having the Military reveal how it's spending it's money wouldn't be a security breach.  They don't need to tell us the projects per se, though I would like to know what's being spent on improving existing ideas and what's being spent on Star Wars.  But at the very least they could say.  This is what we are paying in salary.  This is what we are paying in maintanence, this is what we're paying in RnD.  Even then, even if I take that answer and just accept it.  Oh well the military is roughly 10% of the budget.  The other 90% can't be filled completely with top secret double classified.

  I don't like this health care plan much at all.

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  i'm not really liking some of the health care plan either. i can understand why the government is taking the view it is on health care, it is taking the 'overall' position if you will. trying to get the most benefit for the most amount of people it can. that means some people will get screwed. let me put it another way. when you're in a war, you send your devision into battle. you know that some will be killed, more will be wounded, equipment will be lost, and it's a risk whether you'll win the battle or not, but you send them anyway for the greater good of everyone. that's sort of the way this health care package is shaping up. one thing i don't like is that it will force me to be on a health care program, the same way i'm forced to pay car insurance if i own a car and want to drive, and i have no choice but to drive in my town, can't even get a job unless you have 'reliable transportation'. so even though i've not made an insurance claim in over 10 years, have only made 1 in my life, and that was because i was hit by someone else in a no fault state, i've paid @ $40,000 for insurance and received $500 for the accident. i'm paying for other people's mistakes. the same with health insurance. i went to the redi med once 3 years ago and the cost was covered by my flex card, the amount having been previously deducted from my check, so i payed for it. i don't use the health care system or the auto insurance system, but i'll be required to pay for everyone else to use them, the same way i'm required to pay for schools when i have no children. i guess in the end, it doesn't really matter how you slice it, whether it's property taxes or income taxes or inheritance taxes or government health care or medicare or increased prices from sales taxes, the government is going to get a good chunck of my check.
   
  as for the stimulus, you know, if they can end up only spending $200 billion of it and stem off a 10 year long depression, i'd say they did pretty well. just because the money is alloted doesn't mean they have to spend it. just the incentive of having the money there could be enough to get investments and loans going again. it ain't perfect, it ain't even the best, but it's better than complete collapse, right?

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  correction: i have no children using the public school system, and both my grandchildren are in private schools payed for by their parents.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  ouch....ya just lost me on the inheritance tax thing.....obviously you dont have kids! Inheritance is what has built this country up to what it is......businesses that are passed down generation to generation....money...property.....without it, i don't see how we could have experienced the growth we have had.
  
  Explain to me how someone besides your own family deserves to get your money when you die? They didn't earn it either.
  
  Abortions today are mostly given to women as a form of birth control....not for medical reasons.....I must say that my opinion on this subject is changing a bit....If these little bitches that are getting knocked up by gang bangers are having abortions then great....I would rather not pay to raise some little piece of shit to be just like his old man.
  
  I could get behind the medical idea if it were just automatically taken out of your check and placed into your account.....which is basically the HSA....instead of getting in the feds hands.....I suppose you could have the welfare recips get a deposit into their accounts as well......they could contract out the high deductible health insurance for the entire group of welfare recips to the insurance companies, thereby reducing the risk.
  

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  if they can end up only spending $200 billion of it and stem off a 10 year long depression, i'd say they did pretty well. just because the money is alloted doesn't mean they have to spend it.
  
  lol....sorry....this made me laugh....maybe you should re-read it!
  

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  also....I have to take issue with the comparison between the military and health care.....they are apples and oranges.......people can get emergency treatment now without coverage.....war is a little more cut and dry don't you think?
  
  They need to spend much more time on this before they saddle the U.S. Taxpayers with a burden that is irreversible!
  

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  1.  Yes travler you are paying for other people's mistakes and bad luck, and in theory they are paying for yours.  I'm in the same boat as far as insurance goes, except I've never once made a claim.  I haven't gotten into the tens of thousands for it yet, (well I'm probably nearly ten k by now) and all I've gotten back are these cheap ass cut out cards.  I mean not even quality laminated plastic!  Just thicker than normal paper!

  2. You can pass down a business without it being an inheritance, you can promote them and all this other shit.  Anything that you still have when you die whatever.  I strongly disagree with you that our growth has anything to do with passing fortunes along, that isn't unique to this country at all.  I would argue that it probably retards growth by letting money remain trapped in small camps.  Look at the Hilton Twins and tell me the money they will eventually inherit (not the money they've rightfully earned by magically being famous for being famous.  And yes I said that right, most celebrities are athletes, singers, actresses, well known models.  Those two are famous cus they are famous.  Its like a serpent eating its own tail.

  You are right, other people didn't earn it either.  Government gets it and uses it to fund things.  If everybody earned their way we'd by definition be farther along.  As is there are generations of people who will never have to work.  Bill Gates CAN'T spend all the money he has.  He could retire and (particularly if he follows the rich man habit of only having a two or three kids often only one) and they would never need to work for generations.  They could sit idle.

  3.  People can get emergency treatment now without coverage.  And that needs to stop.  It absolutely needs to be eliminated.  No coverage, no treatment.  Please walk back out to the curb and die.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  where do you draw the line on inheritance? some people need that money....some just deserve it....my sis in law took care of her aunts needs as she was aging.....her and my brother are not rich, but when auntie passed away they received a sizable inheritance (100k....something like that) that was put to good use....paid off debt....bought a new car....camper trailer.....more stimulus to the economy than if you gave it to uncle sam to squander.

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  100 K is chump change they can have that.  I'd start drawing the line around the hundred million mark.  Granted if you are clever (or rather just not a moron) you could live off 99 Million dollars pretty much indefinitely but still it's not a prebuilt empire.

  While I recognize that there are certain cases where people have to be given the unearned (welfare) because we really have two opftions, feed them, or not be shocked when they start robbing us.  I have a real problem with anybody getting anything they didn't earn.  (hell in your case her aunt knew she was dying and knew she had 100K.  She could easily have hired the sister in law and accomplished muchly the same thing.) 

  Also I know I haven't been specific on this but I'm mostly talking about adults.  Obviously orphaned kids are going to need that money in one way or another.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I don't think I can agree there....the government is intrusive enough, they take enough money from the taxpayers as it is...and they mismanage it......The rules were already set before the inheritance tax came along....you earn it....we tax it....then it's yours to do what you want with it.....if I choose before I die to leave my money to my kids, then that is what should happen to it.....I earned it....payed my share of taxes on it.....now leave it alone.
  

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I understand your logic.  Your logic is flawless.  However we know historically certain things.  Royalty never ends well and the Hiltons, the Trumps, The Kennedies, the Bushes.  They are Royalty. 

  Depending on how much you really believe of "I still think Obama is nothing more than a cog in the machine.....the only real changes are going to come from the people with the big wallets. (Goldman Sachs, G.E., etc.) If they can skim some off of the top, then consider it done."

  We may as well stop bothering with democracy and let the people who run the country run the country as they see fit. They already seem to be, they just occasionally toss us a bone so we feel better.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I don't know if democracy can get us out of this mess either truthfully......but short of armed revolution, it's our only hope.....The choice seems to be between organizing such a huge uprising, or systematically dismantling the political machine that we helped build....either way, it's going to be a tough row to hoe.

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I think democracy could get us out of this.  It simply will not because the reality of it is that life isn't bad.  We as Americans for the most part don't discuss life and death politics.  We talk quality of life politics and there is a world of difference.  There won't be an armed revolution until and unless we are truly talking about life and death politics.

  Now if people want to start taking baby steps we need to start by making a bigger deal out of politics and truly holding our politicians ransom.  I think with the technology we've created over the last thirty years that we can acheive a kind of democracy that wasn't possible when the Founding Fathers built our Constitution.  Average people MUST become more involved and involved personally.  I'm not against the media, I think the Right whines way too much about it, but when voting time comes around we make our decisions based not on debate, half the people don't even know what they are voting on.  Instead we rely on commercials paid for by either side.  That's got to stop and it has to start with people.  We can start here.

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  my point about war and the medical industry was about how the federal government views such issues. they see it as more of a triage issue, give the most care to the people who will benefit the best. but 'the most' and 'the best' are subjective terms and the government, not joe citizen, defines what that means. so gramma gets screwed for her new heart because 25 year old tim can pay taxes for the next 50 years if he gets it. i didn't say i agreed with this ideology, i said it's the ideology the federal government has on everything. and i don't remember which senator said it, or maybe it was obama, but they said they don't have to worry about health care, they've got the best in the world. it was the rest of the country they were trying to fix.
   
  yes, i'd rather the feds didn't have to spend a dime to fix the economy. i wish the greedy fucks who took those high risk derivatives would have been fiscally responsible. i wish the banks wouldn't have sent black loan officers into poor black churches and convinced the congregations that they could have a $250,000 loan for $300/month, and the congregation called it 'a miracle' (that's not racist, it was directly from a news report). i wish thousands of greedy upper middle class white people wouldn't have taken advantage of the deals thousands of swiss bank representatives offered them to illegally stuff their money in numbered accounts to avoid paying taxes on it. i wish we weren't involved in two wars that have so far cost $3 trillion over oil. i wish allot of things, but i can only deal with the reality, and i know that if the feds had done nothing, the ensuing meltdown would have made 1929 look like 2001. so they, as i account it, alloted @ 1.4 trillion dollars (between republicans of '08 and dems of '09) to stave off that melt down, and so far they've only spent about $200 billion. i'd rather that they only spend $200 billion and stave off a major world meltdown than spend $1.2 trillion and stave off a major world meltdown.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  trav....have you seen this post?....more so the relating article?.....it explains that situation pretty well.

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I only got through half of the website you linked D6 and I mean to get through the rest.  But it seems to link back to my basic plan of why not just suspend Democracy, admit who runs the country and call it a day.  The history of the world has been filled with kings passing from father to son.  Why fight it, or more precisly why pretend that we are outside it?

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  ok d6, so goldman-sachs, bank of america, citicorp and aig use unethical practices to make money, and are really good at it. whoever said capitolism was ethical? in fact, capitolism is inherently unethical, because you have to find some edge over your competition, whatever that edge is. i.e. you can't play fair in a capitolist system or you'll lose. america's financial system has been modeled after this pattern since before thomas jefferson, it's 'the way business is done in america'. just like with the medical system, i really don't like it, i think it should be different, i think it sucks, and i'd love to string all those self important, golden parachuted assholes up under their lear jets by their collective balls and fly them to tahiti that way, but it's still the fact of life. the strongest, most cunning, most ruthless win in any market as long as they can get away with it. and hey, isn't it the american dream to live like a king if you can afford it? wouldn't you take the multi million dollar salary for signing papers and having conversations with bankers if you could get it?
   
  sometimes though, as this article so elloquently pointed out, some of those super rich corporations forget that they can't exist without either the government controlling them with tax money injections (socialism), or a healthy working middle class to buy their products. they get too greedy. then we have a 'bubble' where everyman says 'hey, i'm gonna get rich', and ends up losing everything. i've seen it happen 5 times in my 48 years, and always when the white house party changes. that's very telling to me also.
   
  enough of this ramble for now :-)

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  I'm sorry, but I can't just accept it and move on.....if you read the entire article, you will see how Goldman Sachs infiltrated the government far beyond anything ever done before under the Clinton Administration, where they literally were able to change laws to allow themselves to gain even more control and then legally rip us off!.....these guys carcasses would be hanging from a bridge in a pre-60's America....and some other countries today......they continued their siege under Bush and are now in bed with Obama.....Democrat and Republican wink and nod politics are the smoke screen that blinds most Americans......and i am amazed that anyone would be ok with that.  

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  i'm not disagreeing with you d6. i'm saying that 1. they're not the only ones to be doing this, all you gotta do is be friends with someone in washington and you get the same or similar benefits, and 2. it's always been that way. look at the corps that got bailout money and the ones that didn't and you'll know who were the friends of the politicians and who weren't. i've read similar articles about people from citigroup, aig, and bank of america. i read articles like this about people from haliburton and enron. i have no doubt that there are people like this from google and microsoft. the people of goldman-sachs don't hold all the positions in all the banks in the world, or all the political positions in our country. other people from other major companies hold some of those positions, including people from citigroup, aig and gm. one of the common things they have is that they either were from one of those huge companies, or had the support of someone in one of those huge corporations (like fienstein). it's the way business and politics in america has been done since america became a country. the only president to ever really take this system on was thomas jefferson, and the result was a worse depression than 'the great depression'. just as ignoring human rights is one of the negative aspects of communism, political nepotism is one of the negative aspects of capitolism. one must exist for the other to exist.

• D6fer said on Aug 01, 2009....

  yes, but up until 10 or 15 years ago, those companies had regulations and parameters to abide by......now they are running roughshod  over our pocket books and stealing pensions.....they need to know that we know.

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  that's their best kept secret, why they can get away with what they do, and what 'free market' and 'trickle down' is all about, right?

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 01, 2009....

  The regulation breakers are basically fall into 2 camps.  the ones Regan broke and the ones Clinton Broke.  As far as the current chickens are due the more culpable is Clinton.  He's the one who let banks start investing.

  Its only sort of a "free market" issue anyway.

• travelr712 said on Aug 01, 2009....

  and there's the ones bush broke, and the ones carter broke. they've been whittling away at those rules ever since they were made in the 40's. bush is the one that let non-regulated investment banks role mortagages into derivatives.

• SeanRenaud said on Aug 02, 2009....

  Incorrect.  Clinton is the one who let the banks move into deritives.  It was like his farwell address for some unfathomable reason.  And I can't find anything solid Carter did wrong but I'm sure there are things

   

• javadewd said on Aug 05, 2009....

  So I'm confused. If you do the math, it only accounts for about $100M. That means about $900M is still "in process?" And then nobody wants to release the paperwork to show "what a success" this program is... Hmm... Now they just increased their budget another 200%... Does anybody smell Chicago corruption yet? Seems everybody who benefited from the first BILLION got not only a free pass, but another TWO BILLION you know, for the effort.
  
  I agree that at face it looks like a handy program. Most local dealerships, however, are bypassing the actual government program and adding more money to the trade-in without destroying the car. They announced in different media here that the program is too cumbersome, tedious and time-consuming (and the website keeps crashing, too!) so to claim the program a "success" is like Sean claiming he's not from California or something. I guess in some quasi-universe, it's not a total fucking lie.
  

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