Disenfranchised republican, sick over the bailouts and nanny government

Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
A

AgentDrazenPetrovic

Anyone But the Lakers
Joined
Sep 16, 2008
Messages
7,779
Likes
34
Points
48
What are the alternatives for those that want less government? Libertarian party? They always put out the worst candidates.
 
They only put out the worst candidate this time - Bob Barr (YUK).

I'm writing in Ron Paul, FWIW. He was the LP presidential candidate in 1998 - hardly one of those worst candidates :)
 
1988. Me and my fat middle aged fingers.
 
Funny thing is if we had a nanny gov't, it may have prevented this whole wall street bailout.

Instead of regualtiing wall street, gov't let's them do it their way and then bails them out when they rip off the public.
 
I thought Obama had a great line today. McCain want to futher privatize medical care and maybe even social security. Just like we did with wall street and look where that got us.

This country can't afford to have medical care and social security take the same path as the financial market. But I supopose if repbulicans have their way, they will be hands off, leave it to the private markets and abil those industries out when they fail and screw the little guy.
 
"Go gamble every dollar you can borrow in Vegas. Don't worry about losing, we'll cover all your losses."
 
About seven years ago I went to a LP caucus. It was a trip. Some guys were walking around in suits (less taxes), others were walking around with long hair and jeans (more weed).
 
I don't get where the impetus for abolishing regulation comes from. Regulation adds confidence to the markets, gives consumers faith to invest, increases safety of our products, etc. It is just the industries that want free reign to do what they want, and the result is companies like Enron, whose collapse destroyed the lives of thousands of people. How they've convinced the general population that non (or self) regulation is a good thing is beyond me.

A friend of mine, though, has argued with me that he thinks all government agencies should be abolished--even the FDA. He'd prefer that people died, and then got to sue for damages (like they'd really collect, and as someone who lives near Love Canal you'd think he'd know better).
 
it's_GO_time said:
I thought Obama had a great line today. McCain want to futher privatize medical care and maybe even social security. Just like we did with wall street and look where that got us.

This country can't afford to have medical care and social security take the same path as the financial market. But I supopose if repbulicans have their way, they will be hands off, leave it to the private markets and abil those industries out when they fail and screw the little guy.
Click to expand...

IMO, what you are missing, is that the reason there is any support for these bailouts is because the government got involved in the first place. If the government hadn't been so involved, they could just let some of these companies that took too much risk, fail, and the taxpayers would not be taking the burden. Instead the CEOs making hundreds of millions would be held more accountable.

If the government had never been involved in the mortgage industry, we could have let these reckless lenders take full responsibility. But, instead, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, which now own SO much of the mortgage industry, are basically government agencies that I feel we should never have had.

The point is that ithe problem isn't the lack of government regulation. It was putting the idea out there that the government would be involved and help take some of the burden. If the firms practicing sketchy and reckless business and lending practices knew all along they would HAVE to take FULL responsibility for their greed and actions, they would have been much more strict in their policies.
 
blazerboy30 said:
IMO, what you are missing, is that the reason there is any support for these bailouts is because the government got involved in the first place. If the government hadn't been so involved, they could just let some of these companies that took too much risk, fail, and the taxpayers would not be taking the burden. Instead the CEOs making hundreds of millions would be held more accountable.

If the government had never been involved in the mortgage industry, we could have let these reckless lenders take full responsibility. But, instead, Fannie May and Freddie Mac, which now own SO much of the mortgage industry, are basically government agencies that I feel we should never have had.

The point is that ithe problem isn't the lack of government regulation. It was putting the idea out there that the government would be involved and help take some of the burden. If the firms practicing sketchy and reckless business and lending practices knew all along they would HAVE to take FULL responsibility for their greed and actions, they would have been much more strict in their policies.
Click to expand...

You're talking about poor oversight, which is a different issue. It isn't enough to make regulations, or create programs--there must be strict oversight to ensure that there is no waste, fraud, or abuse. One problem I've found is that, in a lot of government programs, a lot of thought is put into how they will be run, and then once they are in operation, there are minimal reporting requirements, lax oversight, no accounting standards, few audits, etc. It's a big problem.
 
Denny Crane said:
"Go gamble every dollar you can borrow in Vegas. Don't worry about losing, we'll cover all your losses."
Click to expand...

Exactly. For every Republican I hear whining now about us becoming socialist to fix this, I can't help but wonder, "Where were you 7 years ago when our Republican administration and our congress weren't making it absolutely clear that federal deposit insurance didn't extend to every big financial institution in this country?"

This is the exact same crap that happened in the late 1980's with savings and loans, and it happened then also as a result of deregulation (albeit initially started under the Carter administration, but carried out in full under Reagan).

The "socialism" didn't start now. It started with deregulation. The essence of socialism is that people make whatever decision they want, and the government picks up the pieces. That's what's happening, because those are the rules we put in place in deregulation. At least in the old system there were basic rules in place to limit the exposure the government faced.

Oh, and do you know the richest irony of all? McCain was one of the Keating Five, who took campaign contributions in exchange for ensuring the Lincoln Savings and Loan got buried much deeper in debt. And McCain and his chief economic adviser, Phil Gramm, had their fingers all over the re-writing of the regulations that got us where we are now. The guy is up to his armpits in being on the wrong side of these messes.

The reason he's railing against "greedy Wall Street types" is because the only one else he can whine about is himself.

New rule:

If you want to deregulate financial institutions, you have to make it clear AT THE SAME TIME that the government has no interest in bailing out anybody if crap hits the fan years down the road.

Followup rule:

If you want to cut taxes, you have to cut government AT THE SAME TIME, and not have faith in "starving the beast" some decades down the road.

Because this is a pretty consistently recurring pattern we see here. "Government is bad. Don't pay for it. Get it off your back. But if something goes wrong, government will cover everybody's ass. For free. (Or at least we'll borrow from the Chinese.")

If you want to cut taxes and cut regulations, fine. Just make it clear whose services you plan on cutting RIGHT NOW and which industries will NEVER EVER see any federal protection.

All Republicans have been selling is that "A spoonful of sugar" without getting around to the "medicine." And here's where we are as a result.
 
I'm not against regulation per se, but more freedom and competition. There's a big difference. For some reason, some people seem to feel that absolute capitalism is a society with no rules.
 
Dumpy said:
I don't get where the impetus for abolishing regulation comes from. Regulation adds confidence to the markets, gives consumers faith to invest, increases safety of our products, etc. It is just the industries that want free reign to do what they want, and the result is companies like Enron, whose collapse destroyed the lives of thousands of people. How they've convinced the general population that non (or self) regulation is a good thing is beyond me.

A friend of mine, though, has argued with me that he thinks all government agencies should be abolished--even the FDA. He'd prefer that people died, and then got to sue for damages (like they'd really collect, and as someone who lives near Love Canal you'd think he'd know better).
Click to expand...

Regulation breaks the markets.. When they're broken, something is bound to go wrong no matter how good the intentions are behind the regulations. Regulations always have unintended consequences.

Deregulation is a misnomer almost all the time. It's really RE-REGULATION, and it's generally the kind of thing that games the market in someone's favor, and you don't want that at all.

Reregulation is exactly the cause of the energy crisis in California under Gray Davis. The morons that ran the state (many still do) Reregulated things so the market was so badly broken and you saw the result. Enron was the product of Regulation. Everything you can think of that's bad about corporations is the product of Regulation.

How people can buy into the concept of there being some magic fix to the regulations that break the free market is beyond me. Yet they keep trying and it never works out as planned.

Count me as someone who'd do away with most of hthe federal agencies, including the FDA. Let's talk about the FDA. Drugs that could cure people who have no other hope are refused. They didn't stop people from getting sick with the recent pepper scare, nor did they even get it right about what made people sick (it was tomatoes first, right?). Blame Bush! The FDA didn't stop people from getting sick after drinking tainted Odwalla juice before Bush was in office - and Odwalla is the kind of corporation run by pinko left wing hippy types (of all things). Oh yeah, the lawsuits and settlements from Odwalla didn't bring back the dead, but it was the best that could be done. Maybe the real answer is that a HUGE corporation called ADM actually produces and processes the vast majority of our food and the FDA oversight has nothing to do with the quality.

Off my soapbox for now.
 
The mission and oversight of FDA has been effectively castrated under the Bush administration. Drugs are approved after MINIMAL testing.

Agencies like FERC ensure that standards are in place for companies to interact with each other . . . and ensure that customers are not gouged for the price of (necessary) utilities like gas and electricity.

Are you including reporting requirements in that also like those required by the SEC, which increase faith in the markets and in the finantial information released by companies?
 
Dumpy said:
I don't get where the impetus for abolishing regulation comes from. Regulation adds confidence to the markets, gives consumers faith to invest, increases safety of our products, etc. It is just the industries that want free reign to do what they want, and the result is companies like Enron, whose collapse destroyed the lives of thousands of people. How they've convinced the general population that non (or self) regulation is a good thing is beyond me.

A friend of mine, though, has argued with me that he thinks all government agencies should be abolished--even the FDA. He'd prefer that people died, and then got to sue for damages (like they'd really collect, and as someone who lives near Love Canal you'd think he'd know better).
Click to expand...

In general I would agree. The problem is that the republicans want to deregulate everything (airlines, wall street...) and the democrats want to regulate & control everything (farmer subsidies...) for their whims & kickbacks. It would be nice to find a solid middle ground.
 
BLAZER PROPHET said:
In general I would agree. The problem is that the republicans want to deregulate everything (airlines, wall street...) and the democrats want to regulate & control everything (farmer subsidies...) for their whims & kickbacks. It would be nice to find a solid middle ground.
Click to expand...

That's the grossest generalization I've ever seen. Farm subsidies in particular know no party boundaries, that's all determined by state boundaries. Also I think you completely miss the point of regulation and oversight of industries and the economy. The goal (for both sides) is steady, dependable, economic growth with decent profits, while minimizing people "gaming" the system, limiting corruption and greed and trying to minimize the impacts of inevitable economic downturns. There's just two basic fundamental differences of philosophy (epitomized by economic thinkers like John Maynard Keynes on one side and Milton Friedman on the other.)

We're essentially dealing with center-right, and center-left politics/economics in this country, not Fascism vs. Communism.
 
Nikolokolus said:
That's the grossest generalization I've ever seen. Farm subsidies in particular know no party boundaries, that's all determined by state boundaries. Also I think you completely miss the point of regulation and oversight of industries and the economy. The goal (for both sides) is steady, dependable, economic growth with decent profits, while minimizing people "gaming" the system, limiting corruption and greed and trying to minimize the impacts of inevitable economic downturns. There's just two basic fundamental differences of philosophy (epitomized by economic thinkers like John Maynard Keynes on one side and Milton Friedman on the other.)

We're essentially dealing with center-right, and center-left politics/economics in this country, not Fascism vs. Communism.
Click to expand...

Nozick and Rawls are more recent than Keynes and Friedman.

Nozick died in 2002, but he ruled.
 
Denny Crane said:
Nozick and Rawls are more recent than Keynes and Friedman.

Nozick died in 2002, but he ruled.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall Nozick retracted (or at least qualified) some of the more hard-core libertarian ideals he had espoused in his "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" book. Then again I've only read excepts so I should probably keep my yap shut and just go ahead and get that and "The Examined Life." before commenting.
 
Nikolokolus said:
I seem to recall Nozick retracted (or at least qualified) some of the more hard-core libertarian ideals he had espoused in his "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" book. Then again I've only read excepts so I should probably keep my yap shut and just go ahead and get that and "The Examined Life." before commenting.
Click to expand...

You may be confusing him with JS Mill, who retracted a few of his most hardcore libertarian ideals he had, in his later days.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)
Back
Top