Rather sues See BS

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Rather's lawsuit isn't going very well at the moment:

Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit against CBS is getting whittled down like a redwood at an Alabama beaver party.

A Manhattan judge yesterday threw out two more of Rather's claims against the network, including his charge that his former bosses committed fraud by falsely promising to help restore his reputation after he became a "scapegoat" for a discredited story about President Bush's military career.

I thought that forgery must be at the root of Rather's lawsuit.

Was he in fact a "scapegoat" for the scandal, or was he a part of perpetrating the fraud? I suppose that is what a judge will have to decide. I'm not betting on him getting anything like $70 mil, not in his lifetime. Maybe, not even in mine.:D

Say, Libsmasher, just what does this lawsuit about a forged document showing one of the most liberal presidents in modern history in a bad light have to do with the "lib media"? Why would the "lib media" want to attack a lib president?
 
Rather's lawsuit isn't going very well at the moment:



I thought that forgery must be at the root of Rather's lawsuit.

Was he in fact a "scapegoat" for the scandal, or was he a part of perpetrating the fraud? I suppose that is what a judge will have to decide. I'm not betting on him getting anything like $70 mil, not in his lifetime. Maybe, not even in mine.:D

A "scapegoat" for putting something on the air for which he had responsibility? Huh? :confused:

Say, Libsmasher, just what does this lawsuit about a forged document showing one of the most liberal presidents in modern history in a bad light have to do with the "lib media"? Why would the "lib media" want to attack a lib president?

Huh again?? :confused: Bush is certainly a RINO but he's no liberal.
 
A "scapegoat" for putting something on the air for which he had responsibility? Huh? :confused:



Huh again?? :confused: Bush is certainly a RINO but he's no liberal.

Are you going to argue that the president who presided over the greatest expansion of government in recent history is not a liberal? The pres who pushed for a huge increase in entitlements in the form of Medicare part D is not a liberal?

You must have a different definition of the term than I do.
 
Are you going to argue that the president who presided over the greatest expansion of government in recent history is not a liberal? The pres who pushed for a huge increase in entitlements in the form of Medicare part D is not a liberal?

You must have a different definition of the term than I do.

OK PLC1, time to put your cards on the table. Define, exactly, what you mean by "expansion of government" and what you mean by "recent history", because both of them are so subjective as to mean absolutely nothing to anyone. To me "recent history" includes anything from 1979 until today, whereas for my grandson, his concept of "recent history" only includes things that have happened within the last 10 minutes!

By the same token, "expansion of government", even given the USAPatriot Act doesn't even hold a candle next to FDR's "New Deal" or Johnsons "Great Society".

Oh, and one other thing, inflation adjusted, Medicare hasn't increased any more than the rate of the overall budget, so that dog don't hunt.
 
OK PLC1, time to put your cards on the table. Define, exactly, what you mean by "expansion of government" and what you mean by "recent history", because both of them are so subjective as to mean absolutely nothing to anyone. To me "recent history" includes anything from 1979 until today, whereas for my grandson, his concept of "recent history" only includes things that have happened within the last 10 minutes!

By the same token, "expansion of government", even given the USAPatriot Act doesn't even hold a candle next to FDR's "New Deal" or Johnsons "Great Society".

Oh, and one other thing, inflation adjusted, Medicare hasn't increased any more than the rate of the overall budget, so that dog don't hunt.

OK, fair enough.

I think a doubling of the expenditures of the federal bureaucracy qualifies as expansion of government, and the increasing deficit spending that we've seen under the leadership of the current administration also is a symptom of that expansion.

You've got me on the expansion that took place under the tutelage of FDR and Lyndon Johnson, both inarguably liberal administrations. I should have said, "one of the greatest expansions", rather than "the greatest expansion." There have been other liberal administrations in the past recent history, of course.

And, it may be so that outlays for Medicare haven't increased any more than overall budget outlays, which have doubled under this current liberal administration.

The fact of the matter is that the policies of the current administration are much more like those of LBJ than of any other recent president.

I define "recent memory" as "my own memory of political events", not those gleaned from history books. My memory goes back to Eisenhower. Anyone further back than that is not recent memory.
 
Are you going to argue that the president who presided over the greatest expansion of government in recent history is not a liberal? The pres who pushed for a huge increase in entitlements in the form of Medicare part D is not a liberal?

You must have a different definition of the term than I do.

WHENEVER there is a war, there is a big expansion of government - wars are expensive. The other expansion idea, the addition of meds to medicare benefits, was heartily supported by the democrats.
 
OK, fair enough.

I think a doubling of the expenditures of the federal bureaucracy qualifies as expansion of government, and the increasing deficit spending that we've seen under the leadership of the current administration also is a symptom of that expansion.

OK, well at least we have an even starting point. I'm not sure where you got this "doubling of the expenditures" idea from, but I'm looking at a copy of the 2009 Federal Budget right now (from the OMB website), specifically the historic tables, and when President Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget was $1.863 Tn dollars, which translates to $2.19 Tn in inflation adjusted dollars. Today the federal budget is $2.93 Tn, and unless we're supposed to use some kind of "new math", 2.93 isn't double of 2.19, or even 1.863!

You've got me on the expansion that took place under the tutelage of FDR and Lyndon Johnson, both inarguably liberal administrations. I should have said, "one of the greatest expansions", rather than "the greatest expansion." There have been other liberal administrations in the past recent history, of course.

Thank you.

And, it may be so that outlays for Medicare haven't increased any more than overall budget outlays, which have doubled under this current liberal administration.

Again, the budget has not doubled.

The fact of the matter is that the policies of the current administration are much more like those of LBJ than of any other recent president.

In what way, specifically? Please detail exactly what you mean by "liberal policies" that are reminiscent of LBJ so that we'll have an even playing field from with to discuss them.

I define "recent memory" as "my own memory of political events", not those gleaned from history books. My memory goes back to Eisenhower. Anyone further back than that is not recent memory.

Fair enough. Using your definition, mine doesn't go back quite that far (Kennedy), but I do know how to dispassionately look at history, I do know how to read the federal budget, and I do know how to find the information that I need to be able to get a reasonably clear picture of history, after all, that is my life long passion, and hopefully my soon-to-be new profession (History Professor).
 
OK, well at least we have an even starting point. I'm not sure where you got this "doubling of the expenditures" idea from, but I'm looking at a copy of the 2009 Federal Budget right now (from the OMB website), specifically the historic tables, and when President Bush took office in 2001, the federal budget was $1.863 Tn dollars, which translates to $2.19 Tn in inflation adjusted dollars. Today the federal budget is $2.93 Tn, and unless we're supposed to use some kind of "new math", 2.93 isn't double of 2.19, or even 1.863!



Thank you.



Again, the budget has not doubled.



In what way, specifically? Please detail exactly what you mean by "liberal policies" that are reminiscent of LBJ so that we'll have an even playing field from with to discuss them.



Fair enough. Using your definition, mine doesn't go back quite that far (Kennedy), but I do know how to dispassionately look at history, I do know how to read the federal budget, and I do know how to find the information that I need to be able to get a reasonably clear picture of history, after all, that is my life long passion, and hopefully my soon-to-be new profession (History Professor).

Well, you're partly right. I did a little research on the budget, and found that the figure I had been given of 3.4 trillion for FY 2008 was a little off. It seems the total is just over 2.9 trillion, up from 1.771 trillion in '98.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2008
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104655.html

Of couse, as Libsmasher points out, wars do increase budgets, however, this budget does not include spending for the wars in Iraq and Afganistan (check the first link for confirmation)

It is likely that the 3.4 trillion figure does include war spending, but I can't seem to find a link to it.

I also remember Clinton being lambasted for having a 1.7 trillion dollar budget in '99, but maybe that was really '98.

So, the bottom line is that non war spending has increased from 1.771 to 2.9 teradollars, for a total increase just shy of 64%.

So, I'll correct my figure to an increase of 64%, but that much expenditure hardly equals a conservative administration in my estimation.

None of the budget excesses and expansions are in tune with the Contract with America, particularly not with the proposed balanced budget act.

http://newt.org/AboutNewt/FAQs/ContractwithAmerica/tabid/186/Default.aspx

The expansion of the Department of Education, hardly qualifies as a conservative agenda. That department was opposed, in fact, by the Republican party when it used to be a conservative party.

And the addition of Medicare Part D, really a benefit to big pharaceutical companies, was certainly not in tune with conservative ideology.

So, my figures may have been a little off, but the fact remains that this administration has shown itself to have been one of the most liberal ones in recent history.

Bush may be a Republican, but he is no conservative.
 
Well, you're partly right. I did a little research on the budget, and found that the figure I had been given of 3.4 trillion for FY 2008 was a little off. It seems the total is just over 2.9 trillion, up from 1.771 trillion in '98.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2008
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104655.html

Right, but those are still the raw numbers, and not inflation adjusted, so they don't really give us a fair comparison of the budget. Also, I thought we were talking about Bush here, and since his first budget was the one for FY'02 shouldn't we start there? From FY '02 until FY '07 (the last year we have hard numbers for), the budget, inflation adjusted, has only increased by 51.72%

Of couse, as Libsmasher points out, wars do increase budgets, however, this budget does not include spending for the wars in Iraq and Afganistan (check the first link for confirmation)

It is likely that the 3.4 trillion figure does include war spending, but I can't seem to find a link to it.

As a rule of thumb, war costs haven't been carried as part of the budget, because there's no way to properly predict what it may cost. If you look at the OMB website, at the historical tables, you'll see that WWII and Korea are accounted for in the budget, but that was done retroactively, and Vietnam and all subsequent conflicts have not been carried over as a function of the budget.

I also remember Clinton being lambasted for having a 1.7 trillion dollar budget in '99, but maybe that was really '98.

Yes he was, because he had gutted the military budget by $50 Bn, and used it to increase the federal budget all the while claiming that he was "balancing the budget". All he did was play a shell game on America, and there are people out there that still belive it. Well, he may have "balanced the budget" on paper, but our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have been paying for his "balanced budget" with their blood because they didn't have the equipment they need to do the job. Do YOU think that he did a good job?

So, the bottom line is that non war spending has increased from 1.771 to 2.9 teradollars, for a total increase just shy of 64%.

So, I'll correct my figure to an increase of 64%, but that much expenditure hardly equals a conservative administration in my estimation.

Again, and I really can't stress this enough, you're using raw numbers, not inflation adjusted ones, which means that you're comparing apples and oranges. In inflation adjusted dollars, the budget has actually increased by an average of 10.29% per year over the past 10 years, and 10.38% per year if we only count Bush's budgets, which is fairly consistant with every budget (+/- .5%) for every budget since the end of Korea.

None of the budget excesses and expansions are in tune with the Contract with America, particularly not with the proposed balanced budget act.

http://newt.org/AboutNewt/FAQs/ContractwithAmerica/tabid/186/Default.aspx

No they're not, as the '06 elections proved, but I think that if we're all honest about it, we have to admit that during every war time in our history, budget constraints have gone out the window, and like it or not, we are still in the middle of a war.

expansion of the Department of Education, hardly qualifies as a conservative agenda. That department was opposed, in fact, by the Republican party when it used to be a conservative party.

Mayhaps my memory is a bit foggy, but wasn't it Eisenhower who made HEW a cabinet position in '53? Now, I want to be clear, there are only a few things that would make me happier than to see DoEd completely go away, if for no other reason than the fact that they've done nothing noteworty since Carter made it a full blown Department, but given that we do have the beast, NCLB was at least an attempt to get them on the ball and to start doing the job that they're getting paid to do, namely to actually educate our children.

And the addition of Medicare Part D, really a benefit to big pharaceutical companies, was certainly not in tune with conservative ideology.

Another area of agreement, but then again I would like to see all of the social programs that are consuming the vast majority of our budget every year abolished immediately. The only explaination I've heard that comes close to being able to justify these increases was political blackmail on the part of the Congress. If the President wanted his war funding, he was going to have to give them what they wanted, namely more social spending. I'm not making excuses, Bush is in fact a RINO, but I don't think that even a RINO would have done that without some pressure from somewhere (but I could be wrong).

So, my figures may have been a little off, but the fact remains that this administration has shown itself to have been one of the most liberal ones in recent history.

Again with the generalizations? :confused: Seriously, he's nowhere near as liberal as Clinton was, and he's not even on the same continent with Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, Truman, or FDR. In fact, in my own not so humble opinion, I think that Nixon was more liberal than Bush.:eek:

Bush may be a Republican, but he is no conservative.

Well, he's certainly not a member in good standing of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" if that's what you mean, and he's nowhere near the Paleoconservative that I am, but...given the choice between him and Gore or Kerry, there really was no choice, just as there's really no choice today between McCain and Obama.
 
Right, but those are still the raw numbers, and not inflation adjusted, so they don't really give us a fair comparison of the budget. Also, I thought we were talking about Bush here, and since his first budget was the one for FY'02 shouldn't we start there? From FY '02 until FY '07 (the last year we have hard numbers for), the budget, inflation adjusted, has only increased by 51.72%

So, according to your figures, the federal budget increased by 51% over five years. I can't think of anything else that has gone up that much, with the possible exception of gasoline. I seriously doubt that the average salary went up over 50% in five years, at least mine didn't. The fact remains that the size of the government, reflected in the cost, is going up a lot faster than the rate of inflation.

As a rule of thumb, war costs haven't been carried as part of the budget, because there's no way to properly predict what it may cost. If you look at the OMB website, at the historical tables, you'll see that WWII and Korea are accounted for in the budget, but that was done retroactively, and Vietnam and all subsequent conflicts have not been carried over as a function of the budget.

The budget figures we have for 2008 don't include spending on the war either.

War spending may not be predictable, but it is a certainty that war is not going to be free, and needs to be accounted for somewhere. This one has been funded exclusively by borrowed money.

Yes he was, because he had gutted the military budget by $50 Bn, and used it to increase the federal budget all the while claiming that he was "balancing the budget". All he did was play a shell game on America, and there are people out there that still belive it. Well, he may have "balanced the budget" on paper, but our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq have been paying for his "balanced budget" with their blood because they didn't have the equipment they need to do the job. Do YOU think that he did a good job?

A good job? I remember thinking, when he was denigrating the office of president by screwing interns and lying about it, that we couldn't do much worse. I was wrong about that, of course, as we did do much worse in a lot of ways.

It's difficult to maintain that he actually "gutted the military budget". I've heard that phrase before, and wondered just how, when we spend more than any other nation on Earth on our military, seven times as much as second place Russia, as a matter of fact, how our military budget can be said to have been "gutted" by anyone.

What Clinton really gutted in order to balance the federal budget was the Social Security fund. He. along with every president since LBJ, "borrowed" from that fund, with no intention of ever paying it back. The Bush budget of '07 also "borrowed" 1.77 billion. It isn't the military budget that is in trouble as a result of shifting money from one place to another.

Again, and I really can't stress this enough, you're using raw numbers, not inflation adjusted ones, which means that you're comparing apples and oranges. In inflation adjusted dollars, the budget has actually increased by an average of 10.29% per year over the past 10 years, and 10.38% per year if we only count Bush's budgets, which is fairly consistant with every budget (+/- .5%) for every budget since the end of Korea.

Am I reading your figures correctly? 10.29% in inflation adjusted dollars? The federal budget has been increasing by over 10% more than the rate of inflation?

No wonder we're in trouble and have deficits approaching half a trillion!:eek:

Doesn't that confirm what I've been saying all along, though?

No they're not, as the '06 elections proved, but I think that if we're all honest about it, we have to admit that during every war time in our history, budget constraints have gone out the window, and like it or not, we are still in the middle of a war.

Yes, we're still in the middle of a war, a war that is being funded exclusively by borrowed money. Meanwhile, federal spending on other things has soared as well, thus creating that huge deficit.

Mayhaps my memory is a bit foggy, but wasn't it Eisenhower who made HEW a cabinet position in '53? Now, I want to be clear, there are only a few things that would make me happier than to see DoEd completely go away, if for no other reason than the fact that they've done nothing noteworty since Carter made it a full blown Department, but given that we do have the beast, NCLB was at least an attempt to get them on the ball and to start doing the job that they're getting paid to do, namely to actually educate our children.

The Department of Education is an expensive failure, IMO, and the NCLB is doing more harm than good Education is a function of the states, not of the federal government. As such, a conservative would oppose any expanison of the D of E, and would, in fact, work to scale it back.

A brief history:

Education, United States Department of, executive department of the federal government responsible for advising on educational plans and policies and administration of the department, which provides assistance for education and carries out educational research. It was established (1867) as an independent government agency and then transferred (1869) to the Dept. of the Interior as the Bureau of Education. In 1939 the bureau, by executive order, was transferred to the Federal Security Agency, which in 1953 became the Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare. It became an independent department in 1979.

http://plus.aol.com/aol/reference/Educatio/United_States_Department_of_Education?flv=1


It seems to go back quite a few years, but became an independent department durning the Carter administration, with vocal dissent from Republicans, as I recall.

Another area of agreement, but then again I would like to see all of the social programs that are consuming the vast majority of our budget every year abolished immediately. The only explaination I've heard that comes close to being able to justify these increases was political blackmail on the part of the Congress. If the President wanted his war funding, he was going to have to give them what they wanted, namely more social spending. I'm not making excuses, Bush is in fact a RINO, but I don't think that even a RINO would have done that without some pressure from somewhere (but I could be wrong).

I've heard the "Democrats made me do it" argument before, and I don't buy it. I think the expansion of Medicare, for example, was due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, but can't really prove that one either.

Yes, the first thing that needs to be done to save Social Security, for example, is to get it out of the general fund and start paying back the IOUs, while using the money only as it was intended, for pensions. As it is SS has become both a source of money for welfare as well as to pad spending, as I've described above.

Agreed. Social programs need to be taken out of the federal budget, and maybe, someday we'll get a real conservative in power who will do just that. We don't have one running currently, so it's not likely to happen soon, but someday it will have to happen. We can't continue to spend more than we have indefinitely.


Again with the generalizations? :confused: Seriously, he's nowhere near as liberal as Clinton was, and he's not even on the same continent with Carter, Johnson, Kennedy, Truman, or FDR. In fact, in my own not so humble opinion, I think that Nixon was more liberal than Bush.:eek:

Not if you define liberal as being in favor of the growth of governmnt and conservative as being a fiscal conservative, no. FDR, maybe, the rest, no. It all depends on how you define the terms.

Well, he's certainly not a member in good standing of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" if that's what you mean, and he's nowhere near the Paleoconservative that I am, but...given the choice between him and Gore or Kerry, there really was no choice, just as there's really no choice today between McCain and Obama.


No, there is no choice for a real conservative administration, nor has there been for some time.
 
So, according to your figures, the federal budget increased by 51% over five years. <snip>The fact remains that the size of the government, reflected in the cost, is going up a lot faster than the rate of inflation.

Actually, a lot of things have gone up much more than 50% since Bush took office, but the biggest point is that that's an average of just over 10% per year since his first budget, which is in line with every other budget increase, by every administration since the end of Korea.

The budget figures we have for 2008 don't include spending on the war either.

War spending may not be predictable, but it is a certainty that war is not going to be free, and needs to be accounted for somewhere. This one has been funded exclusively by borrowed money.

No war spending has ever been included in the budget, ever. The only reason we see it in the OMB historical tables for WWII and Korea is that it was later added to give a proper accounting of the cost of the wars. The fact of the matter is that during WWII, the Department of War consumed 95% of our entire federal budget, and if we hadn't dropped the nukes on Japan, by March of '46, the US would have been completely bankrupt. Every war has been fought on "borrowed money", starting with the Revolutionary War, and continuing on to the present day. No country in the history of the world has been able to fight a war without going into debt to some extent or another, so I'm not sure where you're going with this line of thought.

A good job? I remember thinking, when he was denigrating the office of president by screwing interns and lying about it, that we couldn't do much worse. <snip> how our military budget can be said to have been "gutted" by anyone.

OK, I can answer that one for you. Under the Clinton administration (not counting the cuts by GHW Bush), the US Army lost 4 active duty Divisions and 2 reserve Divisions, which translates to 205,000 troops, or 1/3 of it's pre-Clinton strength. The Air Force, thanks to Clinton, lost 5 tactical squadrons, nearly 100 bombers, and 30 percent of it's personnel. The Navy was forced to mothball 70 ships, including 3 complete carrier battle groups, and more than 30% of it's personnel, and even the Marine Corps lost 22,000 active duty and 3,300 reservists. Billy boy personally ensured that the US would not be able to fight 2 consecutive wars simultaneously, which is precisely why we've got troops pulling their 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and why it's taken us as long as it has to fight the insurgents off long enough for the Iraqi government to be able to stand on it's own.

What Clinton really gutted in order to balance the federal budget was the Social Security fund. <snip> It isn't the military budget that is in trouble as a result of shifting money from one place to another.

Don't take this the wrong way PLC, but that's horse-hockey. Any time someone wants to get peoples emotions up, they claim that somebody is raiding Social Security, with no intention of ever paying it back, and it's just as much of a red herring now as it ever has been. Again, you have to remember who writes the spending Bills, and to acknowledge that if Congress didn't want to spend the money, they simply wouldn't write the legislation. Oh, and one other thing, who controlled Congress when Bush allegedly "borrowed" the $1.77 Bn? In other words, who really spent the money?

Am I reading your figures correctly? 10.29% in inflation adjusted dollars? The federal budget has been increasing by over 10% more than the rate of inflation?

No wonder we're in trouble and have deficits approaching half a trillion!:eek:

Yep, you read it correctly, and it's been that way, with few exceptions, +/- 1%, since at least 1929. If you really want to get mad, think about this, in 1929, in inflation adjusted dollars, the US budget was $309.44 per capita, in 1941 (pre-WWII budget), thanks to FDR's "Screw Deal" it had jumped to $1,425.64, by the time we get to the end of LBJ's administration, his "Great Society (read "Communism") had jacked it up to $5,235.65. When we then look forward to Jimmy Carters abortion of "economic expertise", by the time he left office, $6,661.35, and if that wasn't enough, by the time Bill Clinton got finished screwing Monica and us, we were up to $7,674.84, and finally we're up to today where it's $9,051.89 per capita. Now, compare all of that to the 1946 budget (written before the bombing of Japan) when we had the biggest, and strongest military in the world, we had full employment, and full production (no, I haven't forgotten rationing, but that's not important for the purposes of this discussion), and we were at only $4,107.26 per capita.

Oh, one other thing about the debt and deficit. The deficit is only $162Bn, and has been declining since '04. It's the debt that seems to be the cause of most peoples concerns, but most people have no real idea what and where our debt really is, what it means, and why it's not necessarily all a "bad" thing, but that's a topic for another thread.

Doesn't that confirm what I've been saying all along, though?

Not really, but we're closing in on it. We've gotten from "doubling" the government to acknowledging the fact that government has increased at the same rate it has for more than 50 years. I believe that we're in the same ballpark as far as our belief that government is too big, and that it's spending a lot of our money on things that not only are anathema to the constitution, but that most Americans neither want, nor need...but, and in my opinon this it huge, we can't properly deal with a problem is we don't accurately identify what the problems really are.

Yes, we're still in the middle of a war, a war that is being funded exclusively by borrowed money. Meanwhile, federal spending on other things has soared as well, thus creating that huge deficit.

Addressed above.

The Department of Education is an expensive failure, IMO, and the NCLB is doing more harm than good Education is a function of the states, not of the federal government. <snip> It seems to go back quite a few years, but became an independent department durning the Carter administration, with vocal dissent from Republicans, as I recall.

I agree, and your source confirms what I thought. As for opposing it, I can't say exactly what effect NCLB has had as far as "expanding" the DoEd, but it did answer the concerns that the vast majority of people were voicing about those concerns, that children were being pushed through the system without actually learning anything. The down side is that now, just as when they mandated an outcome for females in the military, the agency simply lowered the standards instead of forcing them to comply with the existing standards. The good things that I know of for certain is that under NCLB, it made it much easier for parents to be able to transfer their children from a failing school to one that actually performs without having to sell their home and move. It also facilitated parents ability to opt out of the public school system and home school their own children, as it is supposed to be! Charter schools, and private schools enrollments have increased exponentially under Bush's education reforms, so if it has harmed the public schools system, then perhaps it was the smack upside the back of the head that they needed to start doing the job they've been getting paid to do all along. Personally, I think it's a case of "unintended consequences" actually turning out in the favor of the American people for a change.

I've heard the "Democrats made me do it" argument before, and I don't buy it. I think the expansion of Medicare, for example, was due to pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, but can't really prove that one either.

I didn't say I "bought" it, only that it was one of the answers that I had been forwarded, and given the timing of it, when the war was very unpopular, it's at least plausible.

Yes, the first thing that needs to be done to save Social Security,<snip for brevity> As it is SS has become both a source of money for welfare as well as to pad spending, as I've described above.

Personally, I think that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as all of the other social programs should be terminated altogether. Give the people every cent they've paid into the system (at 6% interest, and minus any monies they've already received) and shut the doors. No more Section 8, no more HUD, no more Food Stamps, no more WIC, no more AFDC, no more welfar, no more of any of it.

We can't continue to spend more than we have indefinitely.

Agreed, 100%

Not if you define liberal as being in favor of the growth of governmnt and conservative as being a fiscal conservative, no. FDR, maybe, the rest, no. It all depends on how you define the terms.

I define conservative by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and the rest of those guys in the white wigs and funny britches, so by my way of thinking even Reagan was a bit to the left.:D

No, there is no choice for a real conservative administration, nor has there been for some time.

Agreed, and I don't see us having one within my lifetime, unless we have another Revolution, tear it all down and start all over again with people who not only know what the constitution really says, but who will actually abide by their oaths of office and really "...support and defend..." it, instead of twisting and subverting it for their own purposes.
 
Actually, a lot of things have gone up much more than 50% since Bush took office, but the biggest point is that that's an average of just over 10% per year since his first budget, which is in line with every other budget increase, by every administration since the end of Korea.

Which doesn't make Bush worse than the others, just not better. You do make a good point that the size of the federal government has been increasing for longer than Bush was in office.

No war spending<snip> you're going with this line of thought.

Going into debt to one extent or another is not the same as failing to ask the electorate to provide any funding for the war at all. Sure, we can have our tax cuts, yes, we can still continue to spend on social programs and whatever else feels good. Sacrifice for the war effort? Why, no, if we ask people to do that, they might not support the war. Let's ask them to support it by putting a little ribbon on their SUV, not by actually paying for even a small part of it.

OK, I can answer that one for you. Under the Clinton administration <snip>. Billy boy personally ensured that the US would not be able to fight 2 consecutive wars simultaneously, which is precisely why we've got troops pulling their 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and why it's taken us as long as it has to fight the insurgents off long enough for the Iraqi government to be able to stand on it's own.

How we can't afford to fight a pathetic third rate nation like Iraq, while at the same time trying to root out the Taliban in Afganistan is beyond me. We still spend far more than any other nation on our military. Clinton may have cut it back, but it still remained the most expensive and most powerful military on the planet. Just how much do we need to spend in order to feel secure?

Don't take this the wrong way PLC, but that's horse-hockey. <snip>Oh, and one other thing, who controlled Congress when Bush allegedly "borrowed" the $1.77 Bn? In other words, who really spent the money?

You can blame Congress for raiding the SS fund if you want, but the fact remains that it was raided, and has been raided ever since LBJ put it in the general fund. To say that Congress alone raided the SS fund is the same as blaming all excessive spending on Congress. The pres asks for money, the Congress approves. The Congress passes spending bills, and the pres either signs or vetoes. The pres didn't veto one single spending bill that the Republican Congress passed in six years, not one, while the national debt soared to unmanageable proportions.

Yep, you read it correctly, and it's been that way, with few exceptions, +/- 1%, since at least 1929.

Oh, that makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing. OK, so we can't blame bush for everything. Does that make him a conservative?

Or only no more liberal than his predecessors?

Oh, one other thing about the debt and deficit. The deficit is only $162Bn, and has been declining since '04. I

The deficit is only 162 billion? It has been declining since '04?

This was the prediction in '04:

* he new CBO report projects deficits totaling $1.9 trillion over the ten-year period from 2005 through 2014. A more realistic assessment — one that uses CBO estimates but incorporates likely or inevitable costs, following the same methodology that was used in the September 2003 report by the Committee on Economic Development, Concord Coalition, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities — shows a ten-year deficit of $5.2 trillion.

* Under these assumptions, the national debt climbs from $4.0 trillion today to $9.7 trillion by the end of 2014
\

Wow! A national debt, which is nothing more than the accumulation of all past deficits, after all, of 9.7 trillion by the end of 2014.

That 9.7 trillion figure is somewhat familiar, isn't it? We made it six years early! How about that, the goal has been reached in only 4 years, not ten.

And, we're expected to do even better in the future.

Another 482 billion for '09. At that rate, the debt could be 13 or 14 trillion, and that's if the 700 billion bailout doesn't go sour.



Not really, but we're closing in on it. We've gotten from "doubling" the government to acknowledging the fact that government has increased at the same rate it has for more than 50 years. I believe that we're in the same ballpark as far as our belief that government is too big, and that it's spending a lot of our money on things that not only are anathema to the constitution, but that most Americans neither want, nor need...but, and in my opinon this it huge, we can't properly deal with a problem is we don't accurately identify what the problems really are.

I think we're in agreement here.

The original discussion started about he liberal or conservative credentials of the pres. You have made some good points that he isn't the only big spending liberal on Capitol Hill. Do you still think that Bush is a conservative, though?





I agree, and your source confirms what I thought. <snip> Personally, I think it's a case of "unintended consequences" actually turning out in the favor of the American people for a change.

Charter schools and parents having a choice are all good things. Surely there must be a better way to go about that than creating a test centered curriculum and spending billions of federal dollars on what is not, in the final analysis, a federal responsibility. The result of more charter schools is, as you said, an unintended consequence.

The real reason for NCLB is most likely the cozy relationship between the Bushes and the Hills, of McGraw Hill, the test publishers, but that's speculation on my part. There are better ways of assessing student achievement than by hours of testing, and yes, the test takes several hours, I know, I've given it. After the first half hour or so, most young kids are so sick of testing that they're likely to mark answers at random. The results doesn't really affect them anyway, not in the younger grades.

I didn't say I "bought" it, only that it was one of the answers that I had been forwarded, and given the timing of it, when the war was very unpopular, it's at least plausible.

It is one of the talking points used to excuse the "conservative" president: The Democrats made me do it! It's pure, unadulterated hogwash.



Personally, I think that SS, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as all of the other social programs should be terminated altogether. Give the people every cent they've paid into the system (at 6% interest, and minus any monies they've already received) and shut the doors. No more Section 8, no more HUD, no more Food Stamps, no more WIC, no more AFDC, no more welfar, no more of any of it.

Yes, but what about the people who paid into SS and Medicare for 40 years? Aren't they owed something? Such programs need to be reformed, not abolished. As for the welfare state, I agree totally. No one should get something for nothing. If they really are down and out, then the government could be an employer of last resort, but we'd be much better off to let the states take on that role.

Agreed, 100%



I define conservative by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and the rest of those guys in the white wigs and funny britches, so by my way of thinking even Reagan was a bit to the left.:D

Well, Reagan was known for deficit spending. He and his supporters blamed the Democratic Congress for that, of course. Bush has no such convenient scapegoat, as the Republicans were in charge of Congress for six years of his term in office.

Agreed, and I don't see us having one within my lifetime, unless we have another Revolution, tear it all down and start all over again with people who not only know what the constitution really says, but who will actually abide by their oaths of office and really "...support and defend..." it, instead of twisting and subverting it for their own purposes.

Probably neither of us will live to see such a thing.
 
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Which doesn't make Bush worse than the others, just not better. You do make a good point that the size of the federal government has been increasing for longer than Bush was in office.

I agree, but we have to consistantly bear one thing in mind when judging any President, and it something that amazingly enough, at least to me, that most people always seem to forget, and that is that it's the Congress who holds the purse-strings. A President can say "I want to do this, that, or the other thing", but unless Congress writes and passes the legislation that will make it a reality, it doesn't matter what the President says, and in fact, it's the Congress who has a nasty history of completely ignoring not only what the President wants to get done, but what the American people sent them to Washington to do in the first place.

Going into debt to one extent or another is not the same as failing to ask the electorate to provide any funding for the war at all. <snip>

Since the Civil War, WWII is the only time that the American people have actually had to make any real sacrifices at home. We didn't do it during the Spanist American War, we didn't do it during WWI, Korea, or Vietnam. The sacrifices that are made though is perhaps the greatest sacrifice, that of our sons and daughters, and in my mind, that far outweighs any "belt tightening" that might be suggested.

How we can't afford to fight a pathetic third rate nation like Iraq, while at the same time trying to root out the Taliban in Afganistan is beyond me. <snip>

We not only can afford to, we are doing it. The challenge is not a lack of funding, it's a lack of personnel and equipment, thanks to President Clinton and his gutting of the military to pacify peoples cries for a balanced budget. He had to make a choice, and he made the same choice that liberals always make, he sacrificed our military and national security so that he wouldn't have to inconvenience the millions of slackers we have by making them get off their lazy butts and get a job and take care of themselves!

How much do we need to spend? The only way to answer that question is to answer another question first, and that is how much is our economic prosperity worth? If you think that we should go back to a time where we only have what we can produce here at home, where we go back to a time where all of the cheap trinkets we all buy were "Made in America" by a below minimum wage American worker, then we don't need much of a military. If on the other hand, you prefer having those same cheap trinkets available to us, but made somewhere else, so that our work force can be freed up to do jobs that pay far more, then we need a very strong military to ensure that our trade interests and trade routes are secure and open to commerce.

The fact of the matter is that until 1973, our military budget has always been higher than our social spending, but today not only does social spending outstrip our military spending, social spending is 3 times MORE than our military spending! In the 2007 budget, we dedicated $553 Bn for national defense, but we dedicated over $1.8 TN for social programs! Tell me we're not living in a Socialist country when we're spending over 60% of our federal budget every year on social programs! The fact of the matter is that we're spending more per capita on social programs than the Soviet Union did at the height of the Cold War!

You can blame Congress for raiding the SS fund if you want, but the fact remains that it was raided, and has been raided ever since LBJ put it in the general fund. <snip>

It's not a matter of blaming them "if I want", it's a fact. Again, Congress holds the purse-strings, and Congress is the only ones that can write a spending Bill, and Congress is the ones that write the budget, so blaming the President is, in my mind, intellectually dishonest. The President can ask for anything he wants, but it' up to Congress to decide where the money is going to come from. You're also failing, as you did earlier, to understand the actual numbers.

Our debt hasn't "soared to unmanageable proportions" under Bush, and the facts and figures simply don't support that assertion. Go the the OMB website, download the historical tables, take the time to study them, and you'll see that along with our budget growing an average of 10% every year, our debt has also grown by an average of 10% since before the Great Depression!

Again, and I don't want to hit this too hard, but you're simply operating under a gross misunderstanding of the facts, probably because that's what the lame-stream media WANTS you to believe, because it's politically expedient for them to want you to believe it.

Oh, that makes me feel a lot better about the whole thing. OK, so we can't blame bush for everything. Does that make him a conservative?

Or only no more liberal than his predecessors?

If you honestly feel that way, you have a rather strange way of determining what "conservative" means, and extremely unrealistic expectations of what a President can and cannot do. Name your perfect "conservative" President from our history, and I'll show you someone who did exactly the same things, if not MORE, than you fault President Bush for doing.

The deficit is only 162 billion? It has been declining since '04?

Again, go look at the OMB's historical tables (and don't forget to inflation adjust). In 2004, inflation adjusted, the deficit was $450 Bn, in 2005 it was $335 Bn, in '06 it was $255 Bn, and in '07 it was $162 Bn, so yes, the deficit has been falling since '04, and that with 2 wars going on at the same time.

I think we're in agreement here.

The original discussion started about he liberal or conservative credentials of the pres. You have made some good points that he isn't the only big spending liberal on Capitol Hill. Do you still think that Bush is a conservative, though?

"Conservative" and "liberal" are measures of proportion, and compared to me, we haven't had a "conservative" President since Thomas Jefferson, compared to what we've had in the last 50 years however, yes President Bush is conservative. Perhaps not as conservative as Reagan, but a lot more conservative than Clinton, Carter, Johnson and Kennedy, and just as conservative as Ford, Nixon, or even Ike.

Charter schools and parents having a choice are all good things. Surely there must be a better way to go about that than creating a test centered curriculum and spending billions of federal dollars on what is not, in the final analysis, a federal responsibility. The result of more charter schools is, as you said, an unintended consequence.

If you've got a better suggestion, other than the complete abolishment of the DoEd (because it's already been mentioned), I'd love to hear it.

It is one of the talking points used to excuse the "conservative" president: The Democrats made me do it! It's pure, unadulterated hogwash.

I never said that "the Democrats made me do it", I said that he had to make a deal with Congress, and I'd appreciate it if you'd refraing from attributing to me things that I didn't say. Also anyone who doesn't realize that back room deals are a political reality (regardless of whether it happened in this case or not) is naive on a level approaching being dangerously ignorant.

Yes, but what about the people who paid into SS and Medicare for 40 years? Aren't they owed something?

I was very clear PLC, so in case you simply overlooked it, I said that they should get their money back, at 6% interest, less any money's they've already received. That's better than any interest rate that they'd have gotten from any bank in the last 30 years, so they would be getting back exactly what they are owed.

Such programs need to be reformed, not abolished.

I simply disagree. They not only need to be ablolished, they need to be OUTLAWED!! It is not the governments responsibility, nor is it their Right, to take money from anyone and give it to anyone else, and it's sure not within their perview according to the constitution for them to be able to promise to put the money in a lock box, but then turn around and use it, and then saddle future generations with paying for it again!

Well, Reagan was known for deficit spending. He and his supporters blamed the Democratic Congress for that, of course. Bush has no such convenient scapegoat, as the Republicans were in charge of Congress for six years of his term in office.

Ok, look, there's something you've really got to get an handle on, it's not about democrats or republicans in Congress, it's about Congress itself. Ever since it was decided that Senators were going to be elected by popular election rather than being appointed by their states legislatures, the system has been broken, because there is not "check and balance" between the needs of the states and the desires of the people. Today it's all about what the people want, and Senators and Representatives owe their political careers to pandering to those same said people, and if they want to stay in Washington, they've got to "bring home the bacon", so all they care about is "pork barrel speding" and "special interests" instead of what's best for the nation as a whole.

Probably neither of us will live to see such a thing.

Nope, becasue as I said in another thread, I'm unelectable.
 
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