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Default The Rat behind the Podium

distro pruned to rcm

On Thu, 20 May 2010 21:27:09 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

snip
What's worse is the republicans have said they want to do more
of what they did when they ran things. This is like the captain of the
Titanic wanting to be a ship's captain again. And guys like him would
give him another shot at hitting another iceberg. A football comparison
is in order. The right wing guys need to understand that the two Bush
terms were like the last few years of the Detroit Lions, the worst team
in football and they set a record for the most losses in a season. No
one is going to hire the head coach again. We'd be just as stupid if we
hired the republicans to run the country again. Now, we are a dumb
country. But not that dumb.

Hawke

============
You're at least half-right.

The problem is that in the aggregate over the last 30 years,
both parties have become captives of special interest groups
and the economic elite. This is called "regulatory capture"
when it is "only" a department or agency rather than the
entire government. To be sure some of the specific special
interest groups may change with the parties in power, but
the economic elite remains supreme. The serious and
continual/accelerating socio-economic/cultural decline has
been a totally bipartisan effort.

It is tempting to attribute gross moral turpitude/failure to
the people accountable, which may be true in some cases, but
the evidence indicates that simply replacing the existing
politicians with other ones is not a partial solution or
even palliative/anodyne.

One of the more depressing possibilities is that the U.S.
specifically and the "west" in general have "shot their
bolt" and reached the end of their life cycle as major
powers, much as the occurred with the Chinese and Arab
cultures. This will only be proven "after the fact," but
prudence dictates considerable contingency planning should
be occurring.

Other factors include (1) grossly excessive legislative
tenure in a highly toxic environment [i.e. the Washington
D.C. "culture"] combined with disproportionate isolation
from the "real world;" and (2) governmental service well
past the onset of senility/dotage, where they are still
living in the "reality" of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie
and Harriet Nelson." [For our younger readers see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adv...ie_and_Harriet
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver ]


-- Unka George (George McDuffee)
...............................
The past is a foreign country;
they do things differently there.
L. P. Hartley (1895-1972), British author.
The Go-Between, Prologue (1953).
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Default The Rat behind the Podium


"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
distro pruned to rcm

On Thu, 20 May 2010 21:27:09 -0700, Hawke
wrote:

snip
What's worse is the republicans have said they want to do more
of what they did when they ran things. This is like the captain of the
Titanic wanting to be a ship's captain again. And guys like him would
give him another shot at hitting another iceberg. A football comparison
is in order. The right wing guys need to understand that the two Bush
terms were like the last few years of the Detroit Lions, the worst team
in football and they set a record for the most losses in a season. No
one is going to hire the head coach again. We'd be just as stupid if we
hired the republicans to run the country again. Now, we are a dumb
country. But not that dumb.

Hawke

============
You're at least half-right.

The problem is that in the aggregate over the last 30 years,
both parties have become captives of special interest groups
and the economic elite. This is called "regulatory capture"
when it is "only" a department or agency rather than the
entire government. To be sure some of the specific special
interest groups may change with the parties in power, but
the economic elite remains supreme. The serious and
continual/accelerating socio-economic/cultural decline has
been a totally bipartisan effort.

It is tempting to attribute gross moral turpitude/failure to
the people accountable, which may be true in some cases, but
the evidence indicates that simply replacing the existing
politicians with other ones is not a partial solution or
even palliative/anodyne.

One of the more depressing possibilities is that the U.S.
specifically and the "west" in general have "shot their
bolt" and reached the end of their life cycle as major
powers, much as the occurred with the Chinese and Arab
cultures. This will only be proven "after the fact," but
prudence dictates considerable contingency planning should
be occurring.

Other factors include (1) grossly excessive legislative
tenure in a highly toxic environment [i.e. the Washington
D.C. "culture"] combined with disproportionate isolation
from the "real world;" and (2) governmental service well
past the onset of senility/dotage, where they are still
living in the "reality" of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie
and Harriet Nelson." [For our younger readers see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adv...ie_and_Harriet
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver ]


-- Unka George (George McDuffee)



a guy in england talking about a "one party state", almost sounds like he's
talking about here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0qdZANdKnQ

funny commentary about the press.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cko7BImRAfQ


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Default The Rat behind the Podium


============
You're at least half-right.

The problem is that in the aggregate over the last 30 years,
both parties have become captives of special interest groups
and the economic elite. This is called "regulatory capture"
when it is "only" a department or agency rather than the
entire government. To be sure some of the specific special
interest groups may change with the parties in power, but
the economic elite remains supreme. The serious and
continual/accelerating socio-economic/cultural decline has
been a totally bipartisan effort.


Well, yes and no. It's true that corporate interests have been
increasing their influence over the federal government in the last few
decades. But there is a difference. The republican party is wholly owned
by business interests and has been as long as I can remember. They have
always been doing their best to help business and at the cost to the
workers. Democrats are also susceptible to corporate interests too but
they have a different agenda than the republicans do. The two parties
have fought to varying degrees of success against each other to advance
different agendas. Until 2000 when for the first time in my memory the
republicans won the trifecta and were the one party government. That's
when you saw the accelleration of the influence of corporations on
government and on the policy of not regulating markets or corporations
as a rule of thumb. You never would have seen anything like that under
one party Democrat rule. We have that not and you are not seeing
anything like the "capture" demonstrated under the republicans.



It is tempting to attribute gross moral turpitude/failure to
the people accountable, which may be true in some cases, but
the evidence indicates that simply replacing the existing
politicians with other ones is not a partial solution or
even palliative/anodyne.


No, it does help. Replacing someone like Dick Cheney with a Joe Biden is
going to make a big difference. But the problem is structural. It's the
electoral system. The privately financed electoral system is at the
heart of the problem. Lobbyists are the other problem but that pales in
comparison to the financing of elections. Not until we have public
financing can we hope to eliminate the influence of the corporations.
Now that the right wing Supreme Court has given corporations the green
light to throw any amount of money they want into elections it's all the
more important that we move to public financed elections.


One of the more depressing possibilities is that the U.S.
specifically and the "west" in general have "shot their
bolt" and reached the end of their life cycle as major
powers, much as the occurred with the Chinese and Arab
cultures. This will only be proven "after the fact," but
prudence dictates considerable contingency planning should
be occurring.


That is a possibility but not one that I subscribe to. We're
experiencing a period of major changes to society and to the world right
now. It's a bumpy period right now and the western powers still have a
lot going for them. But even for the best empires it's not always smooth
sailing. Now is one of those times for the west. They should come back
strong in the coming decades.



Other factors include (1) grossly excessive legislative
tenure in a highly toxic environment [i.e. the Washington
D.C. "culture"] combined with disproportionate isolation
from the "real world;" and (2) governmental service well
past the onset of senility/dotage, where they are still
living in the "reality" of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Ozzie
and Harriet Nelson." [For our younger readers see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adv...ie_and_Harriet
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver ]



The tea partiers and the electorate in general has been making like they
have had it with most leaders. It remains to be seen if they actually
follow through with their replacement. I believe they won't. But we are
moving in the right direction. Evidence of that is that we were
definitely moving in the wrong direction when Bush was president. Now we
are doing so many things completely opposite of what the republicans did
we must be headed in the right direction. Only time will tell but doing
the opposite of what proved to be bad policy is usually the right thing
to do.

Hawke
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