Hey flipper,

"flipper" wrote in message
...
I often refer to some as being "delusional" or "self propagandized"
but seldom use the L word. However, if you believe none of them are
intentionally deceptive then you are either naive or being
deliberately obtuse.

I think a lot fewer people are deliberatly deceptive than is generally
believed.

Insurance: monies (voluntarily) paid to hedge against a 'bad' event
one hopes never happens and, so, one hopes to never see the money
again. You put in and only get back some degree of 'restoration'
should the covered bad event occur.

Mmm... see whole life insurance? Plenty of insurers have offer various "cash
value" policies for many decades now.

Although when it comes to life insurance, whole life is generally considered
less of a value than term (traditional) life insurance. :-)

Taxes (general), as they are supposed to be: monies levied to fund
government services to the benefit of all members of society. You put
in and receive the benefit of services just like everyone else.

No country has ever had a tax system that benefits all citizens equally.

Taxes, for 'transferring wealth': monies levied under the notion that
some people have too much so it should be extorted and given to others
(voluntary giving by the owner is called "charity."). You put in,
someone else gets it, and you get nothing for your efforts.

Some people derive some psychic income from it...

Retirement: monies socked away (invested) during productive years for
future income after one is unable to work. You put in and (if you live
long enough) you get back.

After one is unable to work? At least today in the U.S., relatively few
people are incapable of not working after they retire; I sure view retirement
more as "future income such that one can *choose* to work ...or not."

Don't you think it matters which of these someone is trying to foist
on you and whether they're actually as represented?

I think the problem is that one word (insurance/taxes/retirement) isn't enough
to describe the motivations behind social programs today; most of the time the
motivations are numerous and varied.

I am quite aware of how one can justify things to themselves but,
again, that isn't the issue. The issue is presentation and argument to
the public.

A 'justification' hidden, because it wouldn't sit well, comes pretty
darn close to the L word, don't you think? How about deliberately
knowing the listener will misconstrue the meaning?

I agree with you there. It's a fine line being being very direct with people
and trying to sugarcoat or "spin" a policy you're pushing, but clearly at some
point the later degrades into outright mispresentation and becomes morally
questionable. As a group most politicians seem to place their "morality line"
far further out than you or I would...

Heck, I feel a little uneasy when, e.g., my boss tells me to change the
setting on a graph to, say, 10dB/division so that some +/-1dB perturbations
don't "jump out" at the customer on a 1dB/division graph and "scare" them. :-)

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman." You know what
"sexual relations" are, don't you? Clinton knew what people would
'hear' and what he could claim he 'meant' if questioned under oath.

Clinton was clearly being dishonest there and deserved his impeachment for it.
(Yeah, it was a waste of time, but what else are you going to do when the guy
misbehaving is the president?)

Btw, care to make a guess as to what "clean coal" means? Does it mean
sulfur free?

No, I figure it means "less sulfur than what we've traditionally been
burning."

The reason you find it "difficult to know" is because it's
deliberately obfuscated.

Yeah, I expect you're correct there too. You make some good arguments there
for being wary of cap-and-trade and I'll have to go do some more reading on
the matter...

Pelosi does you one better. She just won't let you read the damn bill
at all and "you have to pass it to find out what's in it." smirk,
wave hand, grin, wave hand, giggle

I believe the new house is going to put an end to that nonsense, at least.

You mean like Roosevelt's primary 1940 campaign promise to stay out of
the war in Europe despite his firm conviction it was necessary and
inevitable?

Hmm, I'll have to read up on that -- I'm not familiar enough with it to
comment.

Progressive-liberal-socialists and Jeffersonian Constitutionalists are
opposite ends of the spectrum.

Yeah, but the distribution is more Gaussian than bi-modal, right? -- So in
practice most people aren't as far apart as you might think.

Might be, but unfortunately for the rapist the vast majority of people will
never buy it.
Then why did you propose it as rational?

I suggested the rapist might consider it rational, not that most everyone is
slowly going to come to decide that that's the case.

It ain't ever gone significantly the 'other way' yet, short a
revolution.

Relative to 1776, perhaps so, but it certainly ebbs and flows every two years,
even if the overall trend is monotonic.

If anything, at the moment
the country seems to be more in the mood for longer mandatory sentences for
criminals rather than letting judges or juries decide.
That hardly qualifies as an increase in 'freedom', now does it?

Crime *victims* might think so.

'Text' surrounding the Constitution is not nearly so 'rare' and
'mysterious' as you try to imply.

Actually I'm not trying to imply that it's rare -- just (sometimes)
mysterious, as with the Bible. (...and I imagine several orders of magnitude
more texts regarding the Bible have been produced than those regarding the
U.S. constitution!)

people are
constantly shifting a bit on the exact interpretation.
It isn't "a bit."

A bit here and a bit there and soon we're talking major migrations...

The left has so successfully mangled the Constitution that many, if
not most, people have no idea what it really says and means.

Ouch. Well... what should we do about that? Revolt or still try to fix
things?

You either don't hear, haven't heard, or don't believe what liberals
tell you. You consume way too many resources. You not only steal it
from the rest of the world but it's unsustainable and you're either
going to learn how to live with a lot less or they'll make you.

You can only push people so far and so fast before they do revolt, though...
so perhaps our country will suffer the death of 1,000 cuts rather than having
revolts in the street, but at least it gives some folks (those with marketable
skills and/or wealth) time to get out. Heck, that was Jim's strategy for
awhile, as I recall...

even though of all the "good ideas" the funded
one are presumably the best.
Presumed by who? A government bureaucrat that's doesn't know a quark
from a quack?

Well-known and respected people working in the field. Granted, sometimes it
becomes a bit circular -- as with climate research -- but that's the best
approach I can think of.

Like snail tunnels under overpasses, airport terminals where there are
no passengers, and HD radio because, otherwise, no one would know it
worked?

I don't expect all research projects to be successful -- just most of them.
:-) The examples you've cited are, indeed, largely failures insofar as the
public getting a got bang for its buck goes.

Repeating something that was 'reported' may be unwise but it's nothing
at all like the deliberate tactic of class demonization.

Agreed, but it's hard to believe that at least *some* of the folk repeating
"$200M/day!" either were purposely out to misled or at least "didn't want to
know" if it was correct or not.

By the same token, liberals are all for quiet respect when they're
speaking. It's only when conservatives are speaking that you're to
disrupt and shout them off the stage.

Yeah, that does happen a distressing amount of time and it's sad when
liberal-types don't realize just how hypocritical it is.

A false argument based on a false premise. They do not 'chose' a cell
phone OVER toilets. They do not HAVE the choice.

Why not? Shouldn't the government just stay out of the way and figure that
sooner or later they'll voluntarily choose to pool their own meager savings
together and buy some toilets?

Uh huh. And I suppose you show the safety of air travel by pointing to
crash sites.

If, e.g., one country had a lot more crashes than another you certainly could
(...and people do...).

The price of freedom is vigilance.

Good point...

Let me ask you a question. What do you imagine the scope of 'special
interest groups' would be if government were not funding and
controlling their interests?

It'd be greatly reduced, I expect.

---Joel