News & Politics Thread

that I just thought about is this: Obama did not make himself the representative of the pro-choice movement (though I’m not so sure he’d object to being that). ND did by breaking tradition and inviting him. Again, had they broken tradition with just about anyone else, I’m not sure it would have been that big a deal, but ND made him the face of the pro-choice movement with their invitation, and the school leaders had to know that would happen when they invited him. So, regarding ND’s president and Co., either we have extremely inconsistent Catholics here, or we’ve got some extremely naive people running the school – I’m thinking the former.

Everyone knows that Alabama is a red state and its going to probably be anti Bama. Can we get back to the Crimson Tide….instead of Rush Limbaugh wanna – be’s?

it’s not “does brian cook want to eat your children?” but instead “why does brian cook want to eat your children?”

i’d say that the inflation of value in the securities market was more closely related to the speculative value of real estate. the dramatic rise in housing and commercial real estate values over the last 15 years (well up until about 2 years ago) along with the deregulation of energy markets that occurred in 99, and the rapid growth of “exotic securitized debt instruments” like Credit Default Obligations is what caused this…. in that order; real estate exploding when it shouldn’t have, energy being traded as an asset class instead of commodity, and obfuscation of underlying values in nearly every bond sector. thats what caused it. so the next question is how could this have been avoided? the answer is through more disciplined regulation of the market. the thing is the banks and the folks in power (from 99 to 2004 was the real time where action could have helped) didn’t grasp the extent of the danger we were facing, that or they did, but were just too greedy and didn’t want to stop the party in the meantime… (i think it was a little of both, greed, and a lack of understanding just how bad they were screwing up)

unregulated electronic trading of energy supplies is dangerous and should be stopped immediately before we are faced with another scenario like last summer. it has been in practice since early 2000. clinton signed the bill sent to him by phil gramm. bush and the republican congress had oversight of this up until they lost power in 06’. the democractic congress has had the capability to reign this in since it took power in early 07. as of yet they have not done so, and it’s a shortcomming on their part.
 they are, just like republicans, in the pocket of the energy industry so any reform will likely be half-assed at best.

the further de-regulation of banks and insurance companies created by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed for the kind of over leveraging and under reporting that caused the downfall of banks like Lehman Brothers.

the real estate market has sorted itself out. historically houses cant cost more than 3 times the area’s average annual income. in the Phoenix area where i live, the annual combined income of a family is about 50-70k, meaning our overage houses should have cost between 150 k and 210 k. they were selling em for 250-400k to those same families. clearly that was unsustainable and it’s been resolved. they wont sell for that much now, and banks wont give out loans for that much now either.

so who benefited from these things, and who had the ability to change them? who brought them about? well the energy and securities industries created the issues with trading energy and CDO’s. and they enjoyed record profits from these things. pretty much every CEO is still in place, or was given a multi million/billion dollar severance package (see angelo mozilo ) and for the real estate issue, banks again were the big beneficiaries, along with politicians who were enjoying the collateral benefits of a happy, seemingly well off plebacite. so we know who the banks are, who were the politicians in charge during this time, reaping the benefits, and ultimately asleep at the wheel? again it’s clinton signing this crap into law, and the gramm lead senate who authored the bills. and it was the bush white house and republican controlled congress who had 6 years to see what was happening. either way they either failed to recognize the colossal error of their ways, or they chose to ignore it, instead choosing to pass the buck onto the taxpayer….

anyway you slice it. clinton bears some responsibility for this mess, but the vast majority of it was a direct result of republican legislation, and it could have been stopped or altered during the 6 years of frenzied profit taking that was overseen by a republican white house and congress.

i’m glad to have someone like obama in office, because he wasn’t involved in alot of this crap, hillary’s husband was, and she didn’t say anything to the contrary.

obama doesn’t have any of this blood on his hands. so hopefully he’ll do something to clean it up. the republicans, and DINO’s like clinton, have proven themselves completely incapable of doing so.

this isn’t, as you say, a ‘no meat on Fridays’ issue. This is core Catholic doctrine. That doesn’t mean that all Catholics agree with it (I personally find that odd, but that’s a religious discussion), but many Catholics have reason to be upset IMO. If it was a less fundamental issue, a commencement address wouldn’t be such a big deal, but one that goes against such a huge issue – that’s gonna cause protests every time it’s tried.

i wouldn’t say he was responsible for the hurricaine, just responsible for the aftermath of the hurricaine turning into a disaster.

but i HAVE to go at least pretend i was doing chores. the wife is about to get home… these tough choices, they tend to get put off til the last moment dont they…..i pretty agree with your whole second paragraph by the way… as far as the first, i guess so. but i would add to that, whats the point of trying to revive a dead worthless institution?

i personally feel our country would be so much better off if we had a viable and vibrant 3rd and 4th parties. i wish the green party USA would alter it’s platform a little bit to be more welcoming to fiscal conservatives and gun owners, or that the libertarian party would ditch Austrian Economic School children and join the real world.

your point on single shooting deaths to a degree. There would be a minimal increase in the number of guns on a given campus due to the super law-abiding. However, the fact that you were willing to break the law and bring a gun to campus in your car suggests that many, many others are taking them onto campus anyway – many of them being the kind of folks who are going to blow people’s brains out in single shooting deaths anyway. The guns are there, along with the booze, already. People get shot on college campuses every year, and even though I see your point, I don’t think the increase in single-shooting deaths would be noticeable, and certainly not enough to equal the rampages we’ve seen in recent years. I don’t know why we’re discussing this, though (I guess ’cause it interests us!) because a law allowing licensed gun carriers to have them on college campuses is NEVER gonna happen!

how exactly does the rich having more money in savings stimulate the economy? i mean surely the rich dont go around spending every free dollar they have, otherwise they wouldn’t be rich in the first place. so how does them having more income translate into increased spending?

it seems to me that the population that is forced out of necessity to spend nearly 100% of it’s income within a month of earning it, would be the population you’d want to target if you were aiming to increase the flow of money and the exchange of goods and services. after all since that population is so used to spending all their money, wouldn’t allowing them to keep more of their paychecks translate much faster into an increase in economic activity?

if you are close to destitute, flat broke. then society as whole is going to take up some of the slack for you and ease your tax burden, thus allowing the potential for economic stratification and also allowing for a collateral benefit to the economy at large by allowing that persont o participate in it buy not having taxed away their last free dollar.

if you’re middle class, then the economy is working for you, you have been able to take advantage of what our society offers,(supposedly decent) jobs. and so society is going to ask you to contribute back to society in the form of a reasonable tax rate. something around 25 to 30 %. after all these taxes help keep society running, which in turn keeps those (supposedly decent) jobs coming.

if you’re rich, then the economy is working fantastically well for you. you are taking full advantage of everything society has to offer (including the police who keep the rabble far far away from your doorstep and vacation homes). and because this is working out so well for you, and you have more money than you know what to do with (literally, you have monthly income that far exceeds your expenses and needs) we are going to tax your income at a slightly higher rate than we tax the income of the middle class.

it’s seems equitable to me. for more equitable than a flat tax or a consumption tax. a consumption tax would be just about the most un-fair system i can conceive of because 100% of the lower and middle class’s earnings get consumed pretty quickly, and thus would be subjected to taxes. however the rich/ruling class can get away with spending as little as 5 or 10% of their income, thus sheltering 90-95% of their income from taxes.

consider that the wealthiest 1% of americans make more than the bottom 50% combined. and the top 5% of americans earn more than the bottom 80% combined. sounds like the economy is working superbly well for the rich and ultra rich. and they are also clearly the most able and well positioned segment of the taxbase to absorb an increase in taxes and a reduction of income. fair is fair.

I’m just saying that limiting the production of the more marketable cars is stupid and the government should keep their paws out of the auto industry.

is not going to pay ridiculous prices for a small car that won’t even show a return on investment (car price vs gasoline price) for years.

When the technology for hybrids or alternative fuels becomes cheaper and more reliable, you will see people switch to those types of vehicles. Right now its not worth it for what you get in the eyes of most people.

you were commenting on my “GM employees/managers/whomever”. Obviously I was talking about management – easy to figure out within the context of my paragraph.

every talking head i see on TV and hear at work. however this comment “We know that the Union has been satisfied (GRRRRRR” made me think that perhaps you were engaging in it to…

i think we can all agree that the execs at GM for the last 10 years did about as poorly as they could have done, even if they were trying to screw up, they might not have done it any better.

was not that consumers didn’t want to pay less for gas, it’s that consumer’s weren’t clamoring for it. consumers are stupid, businesses are supposed to be smart. consumers in 2007 didn’t see the oil price spikes ahead, but all decently ran businesses did. (thats why the european airline industry didn’t nearly collapse but ours did; the european airlines had been planing for higher fuel prices, our had not)

and businesses need to make tough decisions all the time, the decision to lower the quarterly dividend for the sake of long term ROI used to be a commonly held principle. it’s GM’s fault for deviating from that principle.

and not to be argumentative, but you said “GM may well have survived longer if the gov’t hadn’t mandated anything” would GM have been running fine through 2007 into 2009 without any of the 50plus billion it’s got from the gov’t in emergency aid? i hardly think so.

i think if we let GM do it’s thing and didn’t have any government interferance what-so-ever, you’d have seen them go into bankruptcy a few years ago, and those plants would be employing the same workers, and they’d be building much better more fuel efficient cars as we speak.

and for the record yes, it pisses me off a great deal to see just how much money we’re wasting on these complete failures as organizations like AIG, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, GM, Chrysler, and the rest…

jumbo shrimp – tax returns – postal service – baby grand – boneless ribs – FOX NEWS

of Fox News they must be lying at every turn.

Tired Lefty argument.