From Phil:

First folks, I wouldn’t classify myself as liberal. Moderate would be closer, but then, to a neocon, I’m way far left. Calling me a hippie is pretty funny, too, though that was (partially) in jest.

Then from CafeenMan:

Neocons whine about the government wasting money and then provide examples like school lunches, “handouts” to the poor and destitute, social security, education and science.

Actually, not so much lazy thinking, rather just ill-thought out abuse. Whatever his other merits, our host and CafeenMan use “neocon” much like large chunks of the far left do – as a term of base abuse, without any meaning.

Neoconservatives in actualitie actually tend to be much more socially liberal and comfortable with the welfare state than libertarians or paleoconservatives (see for example, the writings of Max Boot). In fact, many neoconservatives are indistiguishable from Scoop-Jackson Democrats.

Not that this matters, as there is no one of the neoconservative tendancy in power in the US (and in fact, Tony Blair for example, was and is more “neoconservative” than Bush or Cheney, for example), and even at the supposed height of its powers, PNAC, for example, had a grand total of….four employees and an annual operating budget of less than $100,000..

Anyway, time to get back to my new draft of the supernova FAQ. Phil, by all means continue posting on politics, but apply the same standard of rigour to that as you to do science…

Bill, on an hourly basis, the War on Poverty costs 8.5 times as much as the war in Iraq. One day the war in Iraq will be over and the troops will come home – and when they do, those troops will still get paid for garrison duty.

The War on Poverty has been going on for decades with no end in sight, and negative progress (imagine – paying people to stay out of the workforce results in them… staying out of the workforce!).

Tacitus: “Well, if you mean I assumed he was a Republican and not a Libertarian then you have a point. ”

Tacitus, I am neither a Republican nor a Libertarian. It’s worse than that; I’m Canadian.

Sheep.

Now are you really saying we shouldn’t have the same standard for companies that are paid in our tax dollars??

Anyone who says anything about “welfare” – do you realize how much this war has cost us?

So spend all our money in Iraq, give billions to crony contractors even though they don’t complete work are still paid in full, and ehh who cares about improving student loans, or pell grants… those are for poor people.

John McCain, by his own comment, voted against the bill because he said it would encourage soldiers to pursue an education instead of re-enlisting. Look it up, it’s available anywhere….

The sad fact, is that you simply parroted what you hear on right wing radio…
There is nothing at all true about it. Showing the salary of those who receive government contracts? I agree! If someone makes an excessive salary for a project that is never completed…there should be accountability, not just a give away, like there is in Iraq. In Iraq, more than 50 percent of the projects haven’t been completed, yet they have been fully paid for. If you understand contracting, you are paid on progression not in lump sums. Which basically means they were paid even though no work was being completed. Guess what – it was your money that paid them billions of dollars to not complete work.

As for the tax increase, it only affects those at 500k and above. It doesn’t even replace the tax that was in place on the upper echelon of incomes that W. Bust repealed. Do you ever wonder why the rate of foreclosure, and jobless continues to increase yet, the market stays high? The wealth has become increasingly centralized.

And btw…there has never in history been a tax cut, and a war at the same time. It’s unpatriotic.

Bad news, neocons… you aren’t one of them. I’m sure BushCo is going to give you a no bid contract worth billions because you support them. Dream on.

Neocons whine about the government wasting money and then provide examples like school lunches, “handouts” to the poor and destitute, social security, education and science.

But those are really low ticket items compared to where the real waste goes – the war industry.

How much does a year of all the above “liberal agenda” items cost compared to a year of Iraq, Afghanistan and other black and covert ops around the word?

It would be far easier to count the number of countries where we aren’t screwing around somehow.

You know what? I don’t like my money being taken from me either. I certainly don’t like my money being wasted. I’d like to waste it myself.

Providing health care for our citizens is LESS EXPENSIVE than not. A healthy, productive citizens costs less than one who is ill all the time because he can’t afford proper medical care and ends up in the emergency room with a far worse malady than he would have had if he could afford to see a doctor and get preventive medicine instead.

And we all pay for those emergency room visits which provide the most expensive, least effective care. You know the person who can’t afford the doctor in the first place can’t pay the bill so it gets passed on to the tax payer.

And that’s how it goes all around. In neocon world, diplomacy is more expensive than war. Basic healthcare is more expensive than emergency room visits. And so on…

Neocons are liars. They really don’t care about money being wasted. They just don’t like anyone “getting something for nothing.”

They want everyone to work as hard as they did to “earn it.” But they didn’t “earn it.” Put them in the society they want to create – one with no social services, etc. and take away the silver spoon they were borne with – the one that provide their medical care. The one that provided their college education. The one that ensure ALL their needs were taken care of when they were growing up and you’ll find most of them wouldn’t make it. They’re fooling themselves if they think they did it on their own.

Sometimes I wish there were a real Twilight Zone and Rod could give all the cons a dose of their own medicine. We can see them put their money where their mouths are and pull themselves out of poverty with no help from anyone – particularly the government.

Robbie on 24 May 2008 at 10:09 pm:

Never heard of this supply & demand subject huh?

Well, at least you managed to stay awake through the first week of HS Economics. It’s too bad, because later on there’s this wicked plot twist where it gets into the importance of this thing called “regulation”. Maybe you can pick up a textbook second-hand somewhere.

I’m with you on the subsidies, but I think there’s something else to consider about this situation.

The government has a large hand in the oil companies high profits (although their profit margin is reasonable) in a different way. They have artificially limited supply by not allowing new drilling and refining, which plays right into the oil companies favor. If the prices rise the oil companies make a bigger and bigger profit so they lose interest in increasing supplies.

This artificially limited supply also reduces the amount of competition and prevents smaller oil companies from rising up and expanding and leveling the playing field.

I am reminded of the effect of price controls on housing and wage controls. Housing price controls artificially drive up demand which in turn limits supplies because so many people want cheap housing. The same happens in wage controlled situations.

This situation is different, but they seem to follow the same basic principles (supply and demand!). The supply is artificially limited so as demand increases the price has to because the supply can’t.

LastHussar: “A true ‘Free Market’ is a disaster, because it DOESN’T self regulate.”

Never heard of this supply & demand subject huh?

Every Fair Tax plan I’ve heard about includes tax breaks for basic needs spending just like people making below a certain amount get with the current tax system.

LastHussar: “Progressive taxation has the strong looking after the weak.”

The problem here is that it removes economic freedom and is legislating morality the same way banning pornography is. I argue that it’s not the government’s job to do these sorts of things

No one’s claiming the rich shouldn’t help the poor; the rich help the poor all the time through real charity. Taking the money through taxes and redistributing it how you see fit is not charity.

The only people who would call it fair are the rich, because they pay less. For every gain at the top, someone at the bottom has to pay.

The reason that those at the top pay more tax proporionately is that they have a higher disposable income, and suffer less (or not at all). Who hurts the most- someone on $20k who has to pay $2000, (10%), or someone on $200k who pays $40k (20%)? Will the person on $200k have to worry about childrens clothing bills, or the central heating breaking down? Howabout getting sick and needing $10k of treatment?

Placing all taxation on sales then means that basic items become more expensive proporionately for the poor. A fridge here in the UK costs as low as £250, up to £2500 (ish). Sales tax on the cheaper will be a bigger proportion of the poors’ disposable income than the tax on the big fridge will be for the rich, plus the rich person has a choice of fridge- the poor person is stuck with the £250 one. In addition some products are flat priced (eg fuel), so they already are a larger proportion of a poor persons income.

Progressive taxation has the strong looking after the weak. The sometimes repeated arguement the poor should improve is just plain foolish-
i) Not everyone can be above average, despite the pronouncements of at least republican.
ii) As the average income goes up, so do prices- some people actually get worse off. This is not just inflation due to rising costs, the market charges as much as it thinks it can get.
iii) There are limited places at the top- there is a finite number of CEOs. BUT those CEOs all rely on the ‘little people’- sneer at someone who earns a 10th of you if you must, but can you fix your own boiler?

In addition, there is history giving reasons the rich should help the poor. Ask the French and Russians!

A true ‘Free Market’ is a disaster, because it DOESN’T self regulate. Snake oil salesmen proliferate, and prosper even when the theory says they should lose custom. In fact just two words show how much Capitalism relies on government.

Sub Prime.

Governments all over the world are now bailing out economies because it turns out profit at any cost can not be trusted.

BA: “Again, I’ll note that the GI Bill, which is a good bill, was supported by Republicans who were vulnerable when it comes to re-election in November. The others voted “no”.”

That discredits your argument right there, and is what I was just trying to say above.

The Republicans know they can’t paint this issue positively with the people in their favor so they voted for the bill (and I’m sure they think it’s a good bill as well).

Well, if the Democrats had a mandate about the war in Iraq the Republicans would be in the same situation as they are in on the GI Bill. They would have to vote for it, even against the President, if they had any interest at all in staying in power, which they care about more than anything.

Ronald Reagan got much of his agenda passed with a Democrat controlled House (a larger portion than they have today as well) and Senate (although that changed after he got in office) because he had a mandate from the people. A 45 state landslide followed by a 49 state landslide will do that for you.

The mandate from the people claimed by the Democrats would do the same thing for them were it true. The results are that it is clearly not.

I hope that clears up my opinion on this issue.

Let’s make it a billion! Please!

BA: “That is so misleading it’s incredible. First off, the polls show that people are unhappy with Congress because Democrats haven’t been able to reverse the damage done by the years of having the Congress Republican-controlled Congress.”

That doesn’t hold up Phil. If that were the case then the Republicans would be the ones with the low approval ratings, not the Democrats. That case would be very easy for the Democrats to the people and have them on their side. The Republicans would be too scared to block anything the Democrats did if the Democrats really had the mandate from the people they claim to have.

What seems more likely to me is that the Democrats got into power riding on the Republicans huge failures and the Republican voters distaste for their own elected officials, not some uprising by the people pushing them.

I’m bored of going back and forth here, though. Clearly you guys aren’t interested in learning or opening your eyes. If you were, you wouldn’t be so silly and hostile.”

Now you’re making more assumptions about the posters here without claim to back it up. Just saying “you believe that, you just don’t know it or won’t admit it” isn’t a logical argument.

The words conservative, liberal, neocon, spoon, apple all do have specific meanings, you are right, but that doesn’t mean people will necessarily stick to the same one all the time. And it’s been my experience that people have different meanings for words and it’s not easy to tell which one they have in mind.

Frankly, you are the one that seems silly and hostile to me.

Yep, war is expensive, but war has always been expensive, I never known of a cheap conflict. I could understand the concern because of this fact about a G.I. Bill being too expensive, the government spends money as if cash comes from a grove of magic money trees.. $2.9 trillion for an annual budget? I think a few hundred billion can be shaved off of that.

I would like to see the G.I. Bill pass, I would though also like to see some budgetary cuts somewhere to make up for it, the deficit spending doesn’t have to be higher then it already is, there is no excuse baring a national emergency otherwise. We really need to spend less.

Nice play from the Fox News handbook. You get called out and you fall back to insults and unverifiable generalities,”Well, *people* use it in different ways.” Who are “people”? That’s not an answer. You made a very silly assertion and I called you out on it.

Neocon is a very well defined term and anyone who even glancingly pays attention to politics over the last 20 years knows what it means. Maybe in your Bizarro land it is standard practice to make up your own definition of terms, but I don’t. I use the common definitions.

Now, you will probably claim to not be a supporter of the Bush administration and say you’re independently minded. O’Reilly does this same play, and it just doesn’t work. Because when it comes down to the issues you attack the opponents of Bush policies, and you are on the same page as the Bush administration even when you don’t know it. Privatization is great, Government is bad? That’s a neocon core value. Paying lip service to small government while expanding its role and the powers of the executive branch to record levels? Yep neocon again.

I’m bored of going back and forth here, though. Clearly you guys aren’t interested in learning or opening your eyes. If you were, you wouldn’t be so silly and hostile.

Why should someone who makes more money pay a higher percentage? How is that fair?

But one thing you didn’t consider is that people with more money would still pay more in taxes because they buy more. That’s the whole point of having more money. The tax on a Cadillac Escalade would be a lot higher than the tax on a Hyundai Accent.

“President Bush has the lowest approval ratings in the history of this country for a reason. Lamborn is in lockstep with him. Where does that leave him?”

That would leave him twice as popular as the Democratic Congress!

That is so misleading it’s incredible. First off, the polls show that people are unhappy with Congress because Democrats haven’t been able to reverse the damage done by the years of having the Congress Republican-controlled Congress. The ethics scandals — almost entirely Republican, with few exceptions — haven’t helped. And the Republicans have been very obstructionist, especially in the Senate where the Dems have a slim majority. Again, I’ll note that the GI Bill, which is a good bill, was supported by Republicans who were vulnerable when it comes to re-election in November. The others voted “no”.

And guess what: there are many groups who look into how safe we are, including ones run by our own government, and many of them have said we are less safe now than we were before all the draconian rules were implemented. Nothing has been done to safeguard our borders. nothing has been done to safeguard our docks (oh, wait, we were gonna sell that job to Dubai, that’s right!), nothing the TSA has been doing actually does any good as has been shown by repeated testing, and on and on.

Instead of knee-jerking and throwing around insults, you might want to do some actual reading. You’d find out that what you’re saying is grossly inaccurate.

But seeing as how it just cost me $60 to fill my tank, I don’t like knowing that Exxon made $11.7 billion in one quarter last year, yet our government gives them subsidies.

I dunno? Why don’t you consult the “World Safe Meter?” Maybe there’s one on the Democrat’s website? You know, a scale of 1 to 10 on how safe we are?

Seriously, when you figure out a way to measure how “safe” we are, then come back and get with us on this, until then, let’s just expose your statement for what it is: Sophomoronic…