As Expected, Obamanomics has Failed

[xr7g428]

Retro, I was hoping for something a bit less philosophical, and a bit more right here, right now oriented. We are all in favor of more puppies and rainbows, but then we also support spay neuter and flood control.

 

For example, I am 100% for gaining control of the Mexican border. I am also in favor of the Dream Act, and work permits. I am very concerned about the plight of children that were brought into the country illegally, grew up here, and have no connection to their country of birth. We can't rebuild the house until we put out the fire...

 

Where do you stand on the issue?

 

I think that if we are going to diddle with the economy, we need to do things that address the problems directly. The biggest problem is employment. If we want more employment, we need to make employees less expensive, not more expensive. There are a number of ways to do this, but a tax credit for employers would be the fastest.

 

I think we need to become self sufficient in energy which means self sufficient in oil. We are currently building more electrical generating capacity in the form of wind and solar, but we were never dependent on imports for electrical power generation. I believe synthetic hydrocarbon production is the answer, and I believe it will take public sector involvement to make it happen. Just stopping the $400BN a year we send to the middle east would solve 80% of the trade deficit. The problem is not the cheap junk at Walmart, the problem is in our gas tanks.

 

So specifically, What do you want?

[grbeck]

Reagan may not have limited the government in any serious way (perhaps, as with Bush, a serious case of "do as I say, not as I do." Would you care to address the hypocrisy?....)

 

No, because I never said that they were saints or never did anything at cross purposes with their campaign rhetoric. (Some of us actually understand how messy governing really is, and don't believe that every word that comes out of a candidate's mouth is the gospel truth. It is fun, however, to watch the fervent Obama supporters squirm when confronted with the candidate's rhetoric and his actions since taking office.)

 

I corrected your misinterpretation of what they did. There is nothing more for me to explain on that one, so, sorry...

 

but what he did do is to bring the vilification of government into the cultural mainstream. To the point where you have large numbers of people today who wake up, get the news on their "socialized" (FCC) airwaves, brush their teeth with their "socialized" water (municipal water supplies that were put in place decades ago by "the guvmint"), send their kids off to "socialized schools", drive to work on their "socialized" roads with their "socialized traffic signals and paint stripes, spend the day under the protection of their "socialized" police and military, use tools run on their "socialized" electricity (if they live anywhere near BPA, TVA, or any number of other "govmint" developed infrastructures), flush the toilet into their "socialized" sewers, relax at the "socialized" park on the weekend, support the role of their "socialized" armed forces in re-making other regions of the world safe for democracy.... and yet at the same time believe with all their hearts that the government can't do anything right; people who don't acknowledge any legitimate need for a "public sector" alongside the private sector, and who have no understanding of how the 2 have interacted to shape this country. Never have so many had so little grasp on reality. Or history.

 

Your first problem is the reverse of those you criticize - namely, you can' t see that building a road, or creating a park, or constructing a sewer system, is a very different task from trying to administer a health care program or run a welfare program or use a school district to "save" students from troubled backgrounds. Not all organizations - whether we are talking about corporations or governments - are good at everything.

 

The Ford Motor Company, for example, does a good job of building cars. It flopped at making radios in the 1950s and 1960s (the disastrous Philco venture).

 

Your second problem is that you spend too much time listening to radical libertarians - who WOULD have government get out of everything - and confuse them with Republicans or people who are generally against the further expansion of government. (Which leads to a question YOU need to answer - given that the size of the federal government today dwarfs anything that even Franklin D. Roosevelt could have imagined, just how much bigger do you believe that it needs to be?)

 

Your third problem is that you can't seem to conceive that, over time, government - just like corporations - could ossify, allow inefficiencies to creep into various processes and witness the creation of little fiefdoms that are more concerned with self-protection than efficiently and effectively serving the taxpayers. Just as the GM of 2000 was not the GM of 1950, the federal government of 1980 was not the federal government of 1950. The free market, of course, has a remedy for this - bankruptcy - but the only remedy for people fed up with not getting a good return on their tax dollars is at the ballot box.

 

Your fourth problem is that you willfully ignore over-reach by the federal government. The federal government is just as prone to mission creep as any other large organization.

 

Just because the federal government built the interstate highway system does NOT mean that the 55- and 65-mph speed limits were good ideas. (Please don't tell me that you supported those laws, too. I can only hope and pray that no one is THAT clueless in 2010.)

 

Government is good at some things - generally tasks that are relatively limited in scope, have definite beginnings and endings and are not completely dependent on the proper behavior of the recipients of government largesse for a successful outcome (building a road system or a dam, for example).

 

You will note, however, that welfare programs, health care programs and even school districts do NOT meet those criteria. Amazingly enough, those programs seem to be the ones where proponents are always crying out for "more money" to solve problems that ultimately CAN'T BE SOLVED WITH MORE MONEY.

 

THAT is what people are rebelling against, and for good reason.

 

Links please. You keep saying things like this, and also that all those other countries' health care systems are failing, or are going to fail - but I'm not seeing it yet.

 

It helps to remember what I posted. For your convenience, here it is:

 

You also ignore that many states and localities have enacted the policies that you support, and they have, over the long term, either failed outright, or brought about unintended consequences. (emphasis added)

 

I didn't mention any nations. We can look right here, in the good old U.S. of A., for failed policies.

 

As I've shown before, the cities with high taxes and heavier government regulations - which, one can assume, you support, based on prior posts - have a smaller middle class, along with greater stratification of social classes (i.e., greater gap between the wealthy and poor, and larger numbers of poor relative to the number of middle class residents).

 

These cities are New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Last time I checked, they were located here in the U.S. They have been run with policies largely favored by Democrats and liberals for decades (despite the occasional election of nominal Republicans, such as Rudi Giuliani as mayor in New York City).

 

I've already brought up California and New Jersey. The policies those states have been following for decades are hardly conservative in nature (again, despite the election of Republican governors from time to time).

 

Regarding health care, Massachusetts has enacted a version of the recently passed national health care plan - it was championed by a Republican governor and presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, no less - and it is turning out to have have serious side effects and is increasing the state deficit. For that matter, Tennessee tried to enact a statewide universal health care plan - TennCare - in 1994. In 2005, it had to remove 190,000 participants, impose limits on the number of prescription medications each participant could recieve, and reduce some other benefits. At this point, TennCare has contracted to basically become the state's Medicare and Medicaid program.

 

If you do want to look at nations, Canada is grappling with rising costs for its health care program, with several provinces desperately attempting to keep the programs solvent in the face of rising demand (and rising costs). For that matter, the citizens of Quebec sued for the right to purchase private insurance, and, in 2006, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in their favor. If the national health care is so great, and insurance companies are so evil, I wonder why people sued for the right to purchase private health insurance (and win).

 

The French system runs a deficit of $14 billion (and that figure is still rising), even though it has long been cited as a model for the U.S. to follow.

 

Expanding beyond health care, I assume that you have been following what has been happening in Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal, where lavish government spending - even with very high tax rates - has basically brought those countries to the brink of fiscal disaster.

 

We all know your position on Smoot Hawley - enacted during a time when overseas trade accounted for a miniscule portion of the economy compared to what it does today. We all know that is one of the history lessons that you have internalized. The US GDP in 1927 was $95.5 bn. Trade activity that year (goods and services, in and out) was $12.7 bn, or about 13% of GDP (netted to surplus of 0.5% of GDP that year). For 2008, total trade activity, in and out, goods and services, was $3,403 bn, against a GDP of $14,441.4 bn, or 24% of GDP, with a net deficit of $821 bn, or 5.7% of GDP. 5.7% of our GDP walked out of the country in 2008.

 

I think I'm getting to the root of your problem. You talk about my "position" on the Hawley Smoot Tariff.

 

My position is based on the historical record, along with the credible interpretation of that record by people who know how to analyze it, not on whether I dislike or like free trade. I therefore take a "position" based on the facts.

 

You are entitled to your positions, and can broadcast them here 24/7, exercising your First Amendment rights. What you are not entitled to is to have others accept your positions - which are really opinions - as facts, or sit back and nod our heads while you push for laws based on those positions.

 

Your post does nothing to prove incorrect the impact of Hawley Smoot on our agricultural sector at a critical time (which, in turn, spurred bank failures in rural communities, making the banking crisis even worse), or that it invited retaliatory measures from Europe, further worsening the nation's economic picture in the critical 1931-32 period.

 

As for those trade surpluses - we ran trade surpluses in the 1930s. Is anyone really going to call those the good old days?

 

We are not "saving" anything: what we are doing is allowing corporations - who are charter-bound to maximize shareholder profit, and whose horizon of responsibility is barely more than 3 months long - to externalize their costs. So Chinese laborers work long hours for low wages, Chinese rivers flow with heavy metals, Chinese landscapes are deforested and turned to dustbowls, Chinese air is polluted (not entirely true: there is a measurable increase in acid rain and ozone in Japan, and as far away as the American Rockies, and the ph of the Pacific Ocean is becoming more acidic - believed to be a result of unregulated emissions from Chinese factories and power plants). So, shareholders profit, Joe Sixpak gets his cheap running shoes and his x-box (for as long as he may still have a job), and our standard of living, environment, and what little remains of our retirement slip down the toilet. The costs are "externalized" (from the shareholders - not from anybody else). If you think you're not paying, think again. This follows unfettered free trade as surely as night follows day. If you had a little less ideology and a little more perceptiveness, this would be obvious.

 

I haven't heard that level of histrionics since the last episode of The Bachelorette.

 

Your post, of course, completely skips over the fact that, under the protectionist scheme you obviously favor, certain corporations will obviously be favored over others, based primarily on their geographic location, as opposed to consumer preferences. Do you really think that we can replace these products with ones produced by mom-and-pop operations and sole proprietorships?

 

Please drop the pretense that you are some sort of anti-corporate crusader, or are protecting us from corporations. You just favor some corporations over others, based on where the headquarters or key factories happen to be located.

 

You also need to learn the relationship between cause and effect. I remember, in December 2004, you praised a decision to reduce water allocations to farmers located in the Northwest (either in Oregon or Washington - the actual state escapes me). The goal was to preserve the river for aquatic life. That is all well and good, but when you make it more difficult and expensive to farm in this country, you encourage people to look for other sources of food. As I said, it helps to understand the relationship between cause and effect.

 

It also helps to know history.

 

Last time I checked, we have long history of importing low-end goods from other, low-wage countries. Before China, it was Taiwan, then Japan. (Even Great Britain - in the postwar years, British wages were less than comparable American wages, which is why many diecast toys were made in that country and so popular here.)

 

The China card is a red herring. And, as I've explained numerous times, manufacturing has remained a constant percentage of our gross domestic product for decades. The idea that we are "losing" our manufacturing base to China or anyone else is a myth.

 

Interesting, every small business owner I have talked to mentions high corporate and personal income tax rates and select state government policies - unemployment and workmen's compensation rates, for example - as factors that either drive them to move their company to another location, or give up the business altogether. All of which you never want to address, because - gasp! - a Republican might have the right solution, and your side is the one standing in the way.

 

You know, just like the immigration debate right now. Your silence on the Obama Administration's actions against Arizona is deafening.

 

We like ourselves, don't we?

 

Generally, while Saturday Night Live skits can be entertaining, they really don't take the place of actual arguments.

 

But, as I said, when you show that you know more than me on various subjects, I'll listen to you. Which suggests you need to spend less time worrying about the level of my self esteem and more time becoming better informed.

 

(Here's a hint - thinking that Noam Chomsky and Dave Korten can actually out-debate legislative staffers on the problems facing various government programs doesn't exactly increase my confidence in your knowledge of various subjects.)

Edited July 13, 2010 by grbeck

[grbeck]

Maybe your past sucked, what with the Gremlin, and being a latchkey child, and all that. Mine was freakin' Camelot by comparison evidently.

 

My past was quite fun, actually, although, given the sales of cars from foreign nameplates versus those from the domestics in 2010, I gather that our experiences with domestic products were the rule, not the exception.

 

Of course, thanks to a more sophisticated view on which products to purchase, I didn't buy a new car that breaks down every month, or use stereo equipment that almost burns down the house.

 

Or perhaps they don't distribute Consumer Reports in Washington state?

 

Oh, and at least I have an imagination.

 

Like a lot of lefties, you confuse bashing Republicans or wailing about corporations or the crisis du jour with creativity.

 

Let's have less imagination on your part, and more knowledge of the facts, please.

 

Yeah, tell you what, why don't you just rent a hall - let's say Beaver Stadium at Penn State - close to you, and it's nice and big. Fill it with the unemployed (you'll have to do 130 shifts to accomodate them all). You and your buddies can lecture them about how healthy the economy and the manufacturing sector are after 8 years of Bush and 30 years of supply side. You can give them all the "proof". Let me know what kind of reception you get.

 

"I can walk!!!!! I can walk!!!!"

 

Which, of course, does nothing to prove incorrect the contention that manufacturing has remained a constant percentage of gross domestic product over the decades.

 

You seem to have trouble telling the difference between the effects of a recession and long-term trends in our manufacturing sector.

 

No one denies that TODAY the manufacturing sector is hurting. That's because we're in a rececssion. But you keep saying - in this thread, and in previous ones - that we are manufacturing sector is vanishing over the long term.

 

This is simply not true, as I've shown numerious times. It might help you to keep that distinction in mind when talking about manufacturing.

 

Look, we've already been over this. I know it was "all hands on deck" at the Beck house. Apparently your "menfolk" just weren't up to the task. Sorry to hear that. Not my fault.

 

It's called hard work. The women in my family (or my wife's family) didn't sit on their butts, waiting for the men to bring home a paycheck. Unfortunately, that fact that your mother stayed home the entire time may be why you have this warped view that we all owe you - or anyone else - a living.

 

Of course, you still gloss over the fact that it was feminists and their allies (hint - not conservative Republicans) who pushed to have women enter the workforce, and even championed laws that could lead to companies receiving sanctions if they don't hire enough women. Have you forgotten that history? Do you realize that companies can be sued for not hiring enough women under discrimination laws? Do you realize that it was LIBERALS and FEMINISTS who pushed for those laws?

 

Yet now it's conservative's fault that women entered the workforce?

 

That's not merely your "imagination" at work - that's pure comedy gold (unintentional on your part, I'm sure, which makes it even better!).

 

That's very kind of you. Is it ok if I bring along a few friends, like David Korten, Robert Reich, or Paul Krugman? Hell, I'll even see if Noam Chomsky can come along. That should make for some lively discussion.

 

It speaks volumes about your actual knowledge of these subjects that, in a discussion about how to address exploding entitlement costs, you believe that Dave Korten and Noam Chomsky would really have anything to add, or could actually prove incorrect the legislative staffers who make it their life's work to know every intimate detail of these programs.

 

This proves to me that you simply have no knowledge of these particular subjects, beyond "Republicans bad, Democrats good" or " We need to go back to 1955" or "Free trade is the root of all evil."

 

You also apparently missed the Krugman articles prior to this administration where he praised free trade. It helps to read what these people have written over their entire careers, and not just the editorials and articles that agree with your views.

 

And I'd love to have Robert Reich over to talk about this speech he gave, which, again, you must have missed:

 

I'll actually give you a speech made up entirely, almost on the spur of the moment, of what a candidate for president would say if that candidate did not care about becoming president. In other words, this is what the truth is and a candidate will never say, but what a candidate should say if we were in the kind of democracy where citizens were honored in terms of their practice of citizenship and they were educated in terms of what the issues were and they could separate myth from reality in terms of what candidates would tell them:

 

"Thank you so much for coming this afternoon. I'm so glad to see you and I would like to be president. Let me tell you a few things on health care. Look, we have the only health care system in the world that is designed to avoid sick people. And that's true and what I'm going to do is that I am going try to reorganize it to be more amenable to treating sick people but that means you, particularly you young people, particularly you young healthy people...you're going to have to pay more.

 

"Thank you. And by the way, we're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."

 

"Also I'm going to use the bargaining leverage of the federal government in terms of Medicare, Medicaid---we already have a lot of bargaining leverage---to force drug companies and insurance companies and medical suppliers to reduce their costs. What that means, less innovation and that means less new products and less new drugs on the market which means you are probably not going to live much longer than your parents. Thank you."

 

Not quite what you bargained for, now is it?

 

Ok, I'll go that far with you: we probably need a "reset" on a number of things. What's your solution to any of these? Let everybody rot in the streets?

 

Not increasing the approporiations for various programs would be a good start.

 

Maybe it's because we had a bunch of worthless Wall Street parasites "diddling" the system by "inventing" new financial "products" that served no useful purpose but to wildly enrich the financiers. Whilst the regulators, cowed by the universal anti-government sentiment whipped up by Reagan and his ideological heirs, sat with their thumbs up their butts. (Or it could have been that thing where the Bush Administration ignored the pleadings of 50 states attorneys general to let them regulate banks in their own states.)

 

Unless those attorney generals were going to stop financial institutions from making loans to people who couldn't afford them, their actions wouldn't have done any good. Considering that it has been the policy of the federal government since the 1990s to expand the availability of credit, particularly to lower-income people, I doubt that this would have been the outcome.

 

Their complaints about "predatory lending" -which, as I recall, were the main thrust of their arguments - were so vague as to be almost worthless. I've sat in meetings where members of ACORN wailed about predatory lending. Their complaints basically amounted to this - that people with poorer credit histories get charged higher interest rates than people with better credit histories.

 

Well, DUH!

 

(The second part of that equation is that since minorities tend to have poorer credit histories, this proves that lending institutions are racist. Which, of course, was part of the motivation for the federal government to encourage looser lending practices in the first place back in the 1990s.)

 

So, I guess if the attorney generals were taking their cues from ACORN (and the leaders most likely were - particularly in states like New York), we would not only have banks giving loans to people who won't be able to pay them back, but said borrowers would also be getting the top-tier interest rates, too!

 

I'm at a loss to figure out how that would have prevented the recent financial crisis.

Edited July 13, 2010 by grbeck

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Mark, Do you recall anything that might have occurred in say September of 2001? Is there any possibility that no matter who was in office, 2002 would not be the same?

 

911 was tragic l donated to the fund, maybe not if Bush Senior had kept his nose out of the Middle East in 1991 it must of helped to create tens of thousands of muslim martyrs in the process which was not a smart move.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQa4iFmkW4&feature=related

 

Edited July 12, 2010 by Ford Jellymoulds

[BlackHorse]

911 was tragic l donated to the fund, maybe not if Bush Senior had kept his nose out of the Middle East in 1991 it must of helped to create tens of thousands of muslim martyrs in the process which was not a smart move.

 

 

A completely uninformed and unwise view of history I'm afraid. First of all, the US had already been involved in the Middle East long before the 1990 / 91 gulf war. Perhaps you have heard of the Marine barracks bombing in Beruit? The Americans taken hostage in Iran in 1979? Any number of other lesser encounters involving the United States. As it happens we absolutely had to send troops to Saudi Arabia in 1990. The Iraqi's had not only taken Kuwait but they were also massing troops on the border with Saudi Arabia. Saddam was a fanatical tyrant and it was only a matter of time before he invaded Saudi. Yes, the war was fought over oil and as it happens it had to be, otherwise the biggest supplier of oil in the world would have fallen under control of a nut job, a massive war would have ensued anyway, and much of the oil producing infrastructure across the Middle East would have been damaged or destroyed. The affect on the world economy would have been catastrophic. Your welcome, we preserved your standard of living and kept the world from being flushed down the drain by a tyrant. By the way, the Kuwaitis were quite thankful that we showed up.

[fmccap]

A completely uninformed and unwise view of history I'm afraid. First of all, the US had already been involved in the Middle East long before the 1990 / 91 gulf war. Perhaps you have heard of the Marine barracks bombing in Beruit? The Americans taken hostage in Iran in 1979? Any number of other lesser encounters involving the United States. As it happens we absolutely had to send troops to Saudi Arabia in 1990. The Iraqi's had not only taken Kuwait but they were also massing troops on the border with Saudi Arabia. Saddam was a fanatical tyrant and it was only a matter of time before he invaded Saudi. Yes, the war was fought over oil and as it happens it had to be, otherwise the biggest supplier of oil in the world would have fallen under control of a nut job, a massive war would have ensued anyway, and much of the oil producing infrastructure across the Middle East would have been damaged or destroyed. The affect on the world economy would have been catastrophic. Your welcome, we preserved your standard of living and kept the world from being flushed down the drain by a tyrant. By the way, the Kuwaitis were quite thankful that we showed up.

How about keep going and go back to 1953 to get a little more of the story?

[xr7g428]

Think of the first Iraq war in a different perspective:

 

Iraq invades Kuwait and we turned them back before they could move on to Saudi Arabia.

 

Germany invades Poland and we turned them back before they could invade any place else.

 

Would we have been happy to let Hitler do the things that Saddam was doing?

 

We will never know, but we may have avoided a much broader, more bloody war. (Certainly nothing like WWII, of course)

[Roadtrip]

Whatever.

Reagan may not have limited the government in any serious way (perhaps, as with Bush, a serious case of "do as I say, not as I do." Would you care to address the hypocrisy?....) but what he did do is to bring the vilification of government into the cultural mainstream. To the point where you have large numbers of people today who wake up, get the news on their "socialized" (FCC) airwaves, brush their teeth with their "socialized" water (municipal water supplies that were put in place decades ago by "the guvmint"), send their kids off to "socialized schools", drive to work on their "socialized" roads with their "socialized traffic signals and paint stripes, spend the day under the protection of their "socialized" police and military, use tools run on their "socialized" electricity (if they live anywhere near BPA, TVA, or any number of other "govmint" developed infrastructures), flush the toilet into their "socialized" sewers, relax at the "socialized" park on the weekend, support the role of their "socialized" armed forces in re-making other regions of the world safe for democracy.... and yet at the same time believe with all their hearts that the government can't do anything right; people who don't acknowledge any legitimate need for a "public sector" alongside the private sector, and who have no understanding of how the 2 have interacted to shape this country. Never have so many had so little grasp on reality. Or history.

 

 

My grasp of reality -- and history -- in terms of the function of government dates back to my high-school civics and government courses in the early 1970s, when I was taught that the function of government is to provide what the private sector cannot. Such as what you listed above. And even though you were on a roll, you were remiss in suggesting other government contributions to our society, like airports, transit systems, and NASA. I freely acknowledge these public needs (even NASA was an important need during the Cold War era).

 

No conservative that I know of has suggested that these basic functions of government constitutes socialism. Your argument is a straw man. What conservatives rail against is the depth, breadth, and mismanagement of our government, and its costly outcomes.

 

When private businesses invest in something -- whether it be a new delivery truck or a new manufacturing plant -- they conduct what is called a "net present value analysis" (Google it) to determine whether the present value of future cash flows as a result of the investment would be greater or less than some other investment. This is financial prudence, and subject to ownership approval. When government decides to invest in something, it submits an RFP (request for proposal), subject to the bidding process (and call me cynical, subject to kickbacks and bribes). Government agents (whether they be politicians or functionaries) tend not to be held accountable for cost over-runs (it's merely other people's money). In the private sector, gross underestimates of costs would be considered unethical and grounds for termination.

 

It's called "malinvestment."

 

Three classic cases:

 

1. The French investment in the Panama Canal. It was a worthy vision on the part of the French. They sold government bonds to the people of France to finance their effort. They had no idea of what they were getting into, and they eventually failed and abandoned their effort. Later, Teddy Roosevelt purchased the rights to the Panama Canal and finished the job. (Some say that the French psyche has never been the same.) The point is, the French were ill-prepared and under-equipped, regardless of how much funding they had.

 

2. Denver International Airport. Originally estimated to cost $2.2 billion, when it was actually completed two years later than its originally scheduled completion date, DIA cost about twice as much as what taxpayers were promised. Some of the delay was because of the original contractors' defects in the automated baggage-handling system; another was because of cracks detected on the concrete runways. Both of these delays can be traced to corrupt bid awards, the latter to a preferred minority contractor. Four billion dollars later, though, DIA is a pretty cool airport!

 

3. The New Mexico Rail Runner. Governor Bill Richardson somehow got this absurd boondoggle passed in spite of economists' warnings. It's a commuter train that runs from Belen (about 25 miles south of Albuquerque) to Santa Fe. The idea is to ease the transit burden of those who live in ABQ who have state jobs in Santa Fe. (Santa Fe is the state capitol, and for reasons I have never been able to figure out, the median home price in Santa Fe is roughly about $450,000, which is why most state employees -- even though they are highly paid -- commute from ABQ.) One-way ticket on the Rail Runner from ABQ to Santa Fe: $7. Cost to taxpayers per passenger: $28.

 

As with these three examples, when the government invests, it goes lickety-split, seemingly without any regard to costs and accountability. Other examples abound.

 

Thus the term "malinvestment" -- there is a negative return to taxpayers.

 

Politicians can sometimes get by with negative returns. Most of the time, people in business can't.

[Ford Jellymoulds]

A completely uninformed and unwise view of history I'm afraid. First of all, the US had already been involved in the Middle East long before the 1990 / 91 gulf war.

 

Yes some country who's name slips my mind and some daft bastard Donald Rumsfeld chap kissed Sadams arse and loved sucking Sadams cock back in 1983, and helped arm Iraq war machine up to the the teeth with military hardware in the Iran/Iraq war of the early 80's, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait helped to smuggle the weopons of mass destuction into Iraq through their borders to use against Iran at the time, what country started the pro Iraq "Operation Staunch" it slips my mind.

 

 

 

Al Qaeda training camps in Florida that trained nearly all "Saudi Arabian" born and bred mass murdering arseholes terrorists never got much shock n' ore in Florida as US trained terrorists piloted Boeings into the twin towers, Bush should have invaded Saudi Arabia if he was looking for retribution but wanted to finish off his Dads unfinished business rather than hit Saudi Arabia hard home of the pilots who flew the Weopons of Mass destruction into the twin towers..

 

UK 7/7 London bombers mass murdering arseholes terrorists were all British born and bred who probably would have not become martyrs if it was not been for the two Bush Gulf wars that stirred up a muslim hornets nest worldwide, bLiar didnot bomb the Midlands mosques in the UK at the time to route out Weopons of Mass destruction.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Ford Jellymoulds

[goinbroke2]

I guess there you have it, nobody should ever do anything to (what is it today, muslims? oh yeah) muslims because they will get us back later. We better just hide in a corner and ignore the badguys. Maybe they will only hurt other people and leave us alone right?

 

 

 

Gee, you sound like somebody else from that country jelly...what was his name again...hmmm, rymes with "hamberlin" I think......

[BlackHorse]

Yes some country who's name slips my mind and some daft bastard Donald Rumsfeld chap kissed Sadams arse and loved sucking Sadams cock back in 1983, and helped arm Iraq war machine up to the the teeth with military hardware in the Iran/Iraq war of the early 80's, and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait helped to smuggle the weopons of mass destuction into Iraq through their borders to use against Iran at the time, what country started the pro Iraq "Operation Staunch" it slips my mind.

 

Al Qaeda training camps in Florida that trained nearly all "Saudi Arabian" born and bred mass murdering arseholes terrorists never got much shock n' ore in Florida as US trained terrorists piloted Boeings into the twin towers, Bush should have invaded Saudi Arabia if he was looking for retribution but wanted to finish off his Dads unfinished business rather than hit Saudi Arabia hard home of the pilots who flew the Weopons of Mass destruction into the twin towers..

 

UK 7/7 London bombers mass murdering arseholes terrorists were all British born and bred who probably would have not become martyrs if it was not been for the two Bush Gulf wars that stirred up a muslim hornets nest worldwide, bLiar didnot bomb the Midlands mosques in the UK at the time to route out Weopons of Mass destruction.

 

 

blah blah, bollocks Jelly. All of that doesn't change the fact that Saddam had to be stopped in 1991. We gave the Russians B-29's and countless other military assests during World War II, are we also to blame then for the rise of Stalin? Before you answer don't forget that many a British soldier road to the European front during that war in American built Sherman tanks. Are we then to blame for the later actions of your own country?

 

At any rate, before you go pointing the finger at Bush and America about how we got things stirred up in the middle east maybe you better take a trip back to around 1923 when the British Empire divided up various sections of the Ottoman Empire, thus creating the map we currently know as the Middle East and there were a whole lot of Arabs that were hacked off about how you guys went about it. Gosh if you hadn't been mucking around in their part of the world maybe none of this would have happened.

Edited July 13, 2010 by BlackHorse

[Ford Jellymoulds]

blah blah, bollocks Jelly. All of that doesn't change the fact that Saddam had to be stopped in 1991. We gave the Russians B-29's and countless other military assests during World War II, are we also to blame then for the rise of Stalin? Before you answer don't forget that many a British soldier road to the European front during that war in American built Sherman tanks. Are we then to blame for the later actions of your own country?

 

At any rate, before you go pointing the finger at Bush and America about how we got things stirred up in the middle east maybe you better take a trip back to around 1923 when the British Empire divided up various sections of the Ottoman Empire, thus creating the map we currently know as the Middle East and there were a whole lot of Arabs that were hacked off about how you guys went about it. Gosh if you hadn't been mucking around in their part of the world maybe none of this would have happened.

 

It not a British are wonderful thing to me, if warmonger Bush Senior had not invaded Iraq stirring up a muslim Hornets nest in the first place and kept his big nose out of the place then l am pretty certain the tragedy of 911 would have never happened, same goes for British dope poodle bLair and Bush Seniors son no weapons of mass destruction war it was not Iraqis that flew Boeings into the trade centre they came from Saudi Arabia Bush/bLiar invaded the wrong country and the 7/7 tragedy that followed was a tragedy.

 

Nearly all Americans are great l am just not to keen on a few like the Bush's & their British poodle bLair - Marvins pure magic.

 

Blackhorse is not listening Marvin.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RangerM]

....if warmonger Bush Senior had not invaded Iraq stirring up a muslim Hornets nest in the first place and kept his big nose out of the place then l am pretty certain the tragedy of 911 would have never happened...

Bush Sr. was blasted for NOT invading and deposing Saddam at the time.

 

Blaming (or putting blame on) Bush Sr. for 9/11 would be a "WTF" moment, Jelly.

Edited July 13, 2010 by RangerM

[Ford Jellymoulds]

Bush Sr. was blasted for NOT invading and deposing Saddam at the time.

 

Blaming (or putting blame on) Bush Sr. for 9/11 would be a "WTF" moment, Jelly.

 

You don't have to tell me about Bush senior, Rumsfeld and Saddam were best of buddies in the Iraq/Iran war what would the have done without US chemical weapons, helicopters etc to use on Iran and his then gas his own people.

LINK

 

 

 

 

1983 Rumfeld best of buddies with his bestest mate Saddam no expensive homeland security required back then PRE-GULF WARS.

 

 

Saudi Arabian 911 bombers were muslim nutters that were motivated by attacks on muslims in the Gulf by Bush Senior why do you think they done it RangerM? Why did Bushie junior invade Iraq not Saudi answers please, we were spun the lie from bLiar about weapons of mass destruction being there?

Edited July 13, 2010 by Ford Jellymoulds

[Edstock]

We gave the Russians B-29's

Nope. Gave 'em lots of stuff, but no B-29's.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu-4

[RangerM]

You don't have to tell me about Bush senior, Rumsfeld and Saddam were best of buddies in the Iraq/Iran war what would the have done without US chemical weapons, helicopters etc to use on Iran and his then gas his own people.....

 

Saudi Arabian 911 bombers were muslim nutters that were motivated by attacks on muslims in the Gulf by Bush Senior why do you think they done it RangerM? Why did Bushie junior invade Iraq not Saudi answers please, we were spun the lie from bLiar about weapons of mass destruction being there?

 

Unfortunately, when one makes a deal with the devil, it is often the case that the outcome will be bad, as it was in this case. I don't disagree that we often "stick our noses" where it doesn't belong, however to blame someone for the actions of others completely absolves the others.

 

Bush Sr. (Gulf War 1) was responding to SH's invasion of Kuwait, and after the country was freed, we stopped at the border. Bush took hell for that, and it's possible (along with his violation of the "Read my lips..." pledge) it cost him the Presidency. You can say all you want that our presence in Saudi Arabia was offensive to some (true enough), but to say that gives the 9/11 bombers free and clear reason to do what they did ignores reality.

 

The reality (at least as I see it) is we aren't liked regardless of what we do.

 

As far as WMDs, most everyone in the world (that mattered) believed they were there. We will have to agree to disagree about anyone knowingly lying about it.

[goinbroke2]

You intentionally missed his point.

 

Besides, once they had them and the States didn't go "get" them..technically they left them there for them or "gave" them to them...holy crap, to many thems going on here..LOL! The States never "took" their aircraft back in effect "giving" the aircraft to the soviets. :stats:

[goinbroke2]

Ranger, as someone else who's has field time, we both know that the WMD most likely were there but "dissapeared" in various ways for various reasons. To try and explain it to a civy is pointless.

 

 

What happens in the field, stays in the field. :shades:

[RangerM]

Ranger, as someone else who's has field time, we both know that the WMD most likely were there but "dissapeared" in various ways for various reasons. To try and explain it to a civy is pointless.

 

 

What happens in the field, stays in the field. :shades:

Full disclosure, I am a civilian, too. I did have an opportunity for the USNA, but didn't pursue it.

 

The "Ranger" portion of my ID is a Boy Scout reference, not military.

[xr7g428]

By Jelly's account, we should have just let the Germans have the f'ing island.

[Ford Jellymoulds]

By Jelly's account, we should have just let the Germans have the f'ing island.

 

If it was a just war you can count me in put me in the front line against the Germans better still secret services should have had the nutter Hitler bumped off earlier maybe the Israeli secret service should have had Saddam bumped off in a quiet way earlier without creating 10,000's of spineless Gulf War muslim martyrs , Pearl which was last invasion of the US was bang out of order the spineless Japanese got their just deserts for it.

 

911 was no different to Pearl that hurt me in the heart just as much as it hurt you, you had the whole world on your side behind you after 911.

 

But nearly all the pilot terrorists that flew the Boeings into the twin towers came from Saudi Arabia they are nothing more than spineless cowards why did you have to go into Iraq on the back of a Bush/bLair no weapons of mass destruction lie its a bit like you nuking Italians in Milan for Pearl instead of Hiroshima & Nagasaki its was not long after shock n ore the world public opinion turned against us.

 

We never spent the 100's billions on homeland security before the Bush's led us into two Gulf wars, the world was not full of anti American/British muslim martyrs that don't wanna fight you but operate in small spineless groups now as a result of it, the Bush's should have kept our noses out of the Gulf we had no reason at all to go pick a fight as they never attacked us before 1991 Gulf War, why take sides in the Iraq/Iran war nothing become of it you still got fuel to your gas guzzlers you were suppling arms to Iraq's Britain was doing the same for Iran?

 

We should have kept out the way let the daft muslim bastards kill each other given them a wide birth, and so giving them enough rope to hang themselves with, the winner would still have sold us oil without creating an Anti American muslim martyrs hornets nest. Which was much better than Bush's Gulf War option which turned the whole Muslim world against us the whole thing has become a bloody mess.

Edited July 13, 2010 by Ford Jellymoulds

[BlackHorse]

You intentionally missed his point.

 

Besides, once they had them and the States didn't go "get" them..technically they left them there for them or "gave" them to them...holy crap, to many thems going on here..LOL! The States never "took" their aircraft back in effect "giving" the aircraft to the soviets. :stats:

 

Exactly. Look I know how the TU-4 came to be Edstock. The US could just as easily have bombed the B-29's on the ground or sent in a ground force to either retrieve or destroy them pretty easily. We didn't and therefore we in effect "gave" them the bomber.

Edited July 13, 2010 by BlackHorse

[BlackHorse]

 

 

But nearly all the pilot terrorists that flew the Boeings into the twin towers came from Saudi Arabia they are nothing more than spineless cowards why did you have to go into Iraq on the back of a Bush/bLair no weapons of mass destruction lie its a bit like you nuking Italians in Milan for Pearl instead of Hiroshima & Nagasaki its was not long after shock n ore the world public opinion turned against us.

 

 

 

 

Last I checked, there were no German pilots or luftwafe airplanes attacking Pearl Harbor, and yet we sent a whole lot of American men, women and military hardware to England to attack Germany after Pearl. Why? Because the Germans and the Japanesse were allies. Now, across the Middle East, terrorists have a number of nation states that are their allies, and one of the chief among those was Iraq who supplied terrorist groups with places to train and the funding needed to buy equipment and pay for manpower. Just because 19 guys from Saudi did the deed does not mean that Saudi Arabia declared war on the United States. We went to war on terrorisim. That means we go hit them where they feel most at home. This is all pretty basic stuff to grasp Jelly. Furthermore, it wasn't just the CIA and MI6 that thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It was also the KGB (or whatever they call themselves now) and China and France. In fact Saddam later admitted after he was caught that he purposely had his forces act in such a way as to convince the world that he still had a large arsenal of WMD because he was afraid that if he didn't the Iranians would attack Iraq again.

[Edstock]

Exactly. Look I know how the TU-4 came to be Edstock. The US could just as easily have bombed the B-29's on the ground or sent in a ground force to either retrieve or destroy them pretty easily. We didn't and therefore we in effect "gave" them the bomber.

Your entitled to your opinion, but the USSR was an official ally at the time, so ordering an airstrike on an official ally was probably not in the cards. The airstrike might not have been doable, anyway, because of the distance to where they had landed in Soviet territory. Sending a ground force may have been equally difficult, in December 1944 as the weather in that part of the world is nasty, and the planes didn't stay there very long.

 

And, as you know, they had to take one of the 3 B-29's all apart, to reverse-engineer the plane, which took almost 3 years, and it was almost 5 years before it went into service, in 1949. I suppose that yes, the US "gave" the USSR the B-29, but it was still a major time-consuming effort to copy.

[BlackHorse]

Your entitled to your opinion, but the USSR was an official ally at the time, so ordering an airstrike on an official ally was probably not in the cards. The airstrike might not have been doable, anyway, because of the distance to where they had landed in Soviet territory. Sending a ground force may have been equally difficult, in December 1944 as the weather in that part of the world is nasty, and the planes didn't stay there very long.

 

And, as you know, they had to take one of the 3 B-29's all apart, to reverse-engineer the plane, which took almost 3 years, and it was almost 5 years before it went into service, in 1949. I suppose that yes, the US "gave" the USSR the B-29, but it was still a major time-consuming effort to copy.

 

There's little point in you and I debating some trivial fact from World War II on this thread. Perhaps we should dedicate a thread to it. At any rate, the Russians might have been an "official" ally but don't make the mistake of thinking that it means that Chruchill and Truman were the least bit fooled about who they really were. When our planes landed there and we asked for them to be returned and the Russians said "No" then how much of an ally can they have been. As far as airstrike not being doable, think about it, our planes landed there, therefore they could reach there, therefore they could be bombed there. What were the Russians going to do about it? They knew as well as we did that they would never survive a ground war against the Americans and the British and if they had started one I think we can all pretty much bet that the Germans would have been happy to kick in some tanks and troops in order to get half their country back. We gave them the planes.