Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence

[dcarrigg]

Re: single payer

"geographic and power monopoly". You mean like governments? They are a monopoly, once elected, for years; with powers of coercion and intimidation that private industry doesn't have. Ever tried to fight city hall or the IRS? Or the excessive regulations that destroy productivity and impose extra costs?

Government is answerable to the people in a Republic. Private enterprise is not. I don't mind private companies making my jeans. I don't want them making my laws. I want a say. That's democracy. You seem to want to destroy that. Maybe you don't. But when you can call it a monopoly, you ignore the fact we all get a vote. I own stocks in lots of companies. I have no say as to who the Chief Executive is or what he does.

Reasonable regulation is fine, and punishment to egregious infractions is needed. Then why haven't any bankers or Wall Streeters gone to jail for the AFC? What about the massive corruption and bankruptcies of alternative energy companies run by donors to the President's campaign?

Who knows. You won't find me defending it. You won't find me defending JP Morgan or Enron or Healthsouth or Tyco or Lehman or Worldcom either.

Like I said all these "ploticians" are liars and crooks; throw them all out and come up with a new system.

At least we can throw them out. Can't do the same with corporate leaders. They even tried to defeat a provision of the Dodd Frank act that would even give shareholders a non-binding vote on executive pay. It's autocracy vs. democracy so far as I'm concerned.

By the way, I wanted to see what you had to say about my comments here. I'm particularly interested in what you have to say about the pie. Let me know what you think.

[Rajiv]

Re: single payer

You may want to explore the website - Physicians for a National Health Program

[jpatter666]

Re: Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence

But to your point, there are some things the government does not do well at all. IT projects seem high on that list. The only bright side is that it gets us closer to single payer.

You are right -- as an IT guy who once worked in Federal, most projects were a disaster. Occasional DOD projects were the exception because they were often cutting edge and thus drew the top programmers.

Nice article on why these projects tend to be disasters.....

"Why do so many government software projects go off the rails? “Big, custom projects are unique by definition, so they are sold as promises, not as finished products. Every vendor promises the same thing, so the one who promises to do it at the lowest cost often wins; when the project turns out late, bad, and over budget, too many executives have too much invested in its success to admit defeat”

http://baselinescenario.com/2013/10/...ment-software/

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence

... Every vendor promises the same thing, so the one who promises to do it at the lowest cost often wins; when the project turns out late, bad, and over budget, too many executives have too much invested in its success to admit defeat”

I have seen that done intentionally for military hardware projects too. Win the project by bidding to the unreasonably low estimate; spend it all; then go back for the other half of the money.

[jpatter666]

Re: Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence

I have seen that done intentionally for military hardware projects too. Win the project by bidding to the unreasonably low estimate; spend it all; then go back for the other half of the money.

Oh certainly -- that's why most military contracts moved to cost-plus models.

I'm just saying that those projects tended to draw the top programmers so they had a reasonable chance of successful deployment.

The difference between a top programmer and a guy just drawing a paycheck is often 10-50X or even more. I am not kidding.

[vt]

Re: single payer

Hey DC- Go Redsox!! I love the Celtics too On this we can agree.

As for Government answering to the people:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77486.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/prospern...the-law-again/

With a business I can vote with my dollars and go elsewhere, evidently politicians of both parties can be bought often. And activist shareholders can get changes made by corporations.

As for you wanting answers to your other link I state succinctly that I want to see the middle class and poor helped, but they are not by "a you didn't build that mentality. Income inequality is eliminated by putting this nation back on a growth path; something this administration is not doing.

Where are the promised infrastructure projects to put blue collar construction workers back on the job? The TARP money went to banking buddies and favored political allies like false solar boondoggles. It went to inefficient government projects.

The reason boomers have collected more social security is the incredible increase in longevity and the fact that many not collecting were born close to when the law was first passed. It takes a few decades to accumulate funds to pay for a system that is not invested like a pension fund should be. It was set up like a Ponzi scheme. Plus the birth rate dropped which further hurt stability.

The proposal I favor is to simply gradually increase the age one can collect, simply because the young will live even longer than the boomers. I have not called for any cuts in benefits for the young or an increase in their taxes.

Taxes have already been raised on high income owners. The problem is not in revenue, it's in wasteful and unproductive spending. It's also fraud:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_16...isability-usa/

There are other frauds from both parties:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwein...a-prison-cell/

The inmates have taken over the asylum:

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/11...-bash-at-plaza

Let's throw anyone who violates laws in jail regardless of political leanings. Let's outlaw all lobbying. Term limits. The law applied equally to politicians as to citizens.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57323518-10391709/confronting-pelosi-on-insider-trading/

I'm not on the radical right, but in the concerned center. I would like to see you condemn both sides of the political spectrum as I do. I come from a farming and blue collar background. No silver spoon and I am far, far from rich.

We are both business owners. Do you provide a pension and 401K for employees? Do you pay 100% of their health insurance? I do.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence

I have seen that done intentionally for military hardware projects too. Win the project by bidding to the unreasonably low estimate; spend it all; then go back for the other half of the money.

That used to be SOP at Sunstrand.

[Polish_Silver]

Re: single payer

I think the main difference is in engaging in legitimate above-board accounting or not. Clearly somehow the private hospitals and big banks can pull insane return off the same business as the little not-for-profits. Either they are that much more "efficient" or they are cooking the books. And sure enough, we get how many bank bailouts and incidents like the Richard Scrush affair. That's the thing about inserting the "free" market into where it doesn't work. It's all built on fluff, mark to model nonsense, and outright illegal accounting scams. The free market seems to work great for restaurants and knick knacks and electronics and clothes. It seems to work terribly with hospitals and banks and insurance companies and the like. Who would have guessed that geographic and power monopoly conditions aren't conducive to opaque private ownership other than Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and the rest of the classical liberals?

It's the way banks are structured. Classic corporate welfare. All the public guarantees (deposit insurance and much more) supposedly balanced by public sector oversight. If banks were setup according to Kotlikoff's limited purpose banking, there would be almost no oversight needed, and it would be a functional free market. Weird, that in many fed publications, they refer to banks as mediators between savers and borrowers. Well, in the current system, they are not. The borrowing is 10X the savings. In Kotlikoff's system, borrowing = savings (or less) and the banks really would be intermediaries.

[lektrode]

Re: single payer

and ummm....
YEAH, PLUS ONE TO ALL THIS TOO!!!!

3 in 10, anyone?

Government is answerable to the people in a Republic.

By the way, I wanted to see what you had to say about my comments here. I'm particularly interested in what you have to say about the pie. Let me know what you think.

Hey DC- Go Redsox!! I love the Celtics too On this we can agree.

...

[LazyBoy]

Re: single payer

I don't want to ascribe brilliance to actions motivated by God knows what, but timing the GOP's antics so as to distract the country from the rollout was a nice bit of happenstance. The press used to complain that Reagan was the "Teflon president" because no problems would stick to him. Only now the GOP is the "Velcro congress" where every problem sticks to them.

I doubt it matters that the much of the media blamed the GOP. Most people have picked their team and can't conceive of changing. The media outlets are only preaching to their choirs.

[LorenS]

Re: single payer

For the sake of argument, let’s assume the following to be true: Barack Obama is not a stooge, a cipher, an empty suit, or a puppet. He is not incompetent, indecisive, or deranged. He is, in fact, intelligent, purposeful, and rational. Let us further assume that Obama is sincere in his actions, if not always his rhetoric, and that his actions, from the persecution of whistleblowers to the assassination of American citizens, are premeditated, planned, intentional and taken without ambivalence.

What do we make of this? On the surface, it means that Obama is as culpable as he is capable. His icy certitude has always been his most grating affectation. Yet there is no one to hold him accountable for his crimes against the Constitution, high and low, not even the Visigoths of the House. Despite the daily hysterics fulminating from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, Obama is the choice of the elites, the man they want at the helm at this fraught moment for global capitalism.

And the exact same article could have been written about Bush, and it would have been just as wrong. Neither of these two guys were qualified for anything more than running a Burger King night shift.

What would Romney have done different? Who is really running the show? Obama is a junior level politician with no real world experience doing anything. He's blatantly incompetent and I said the same thing about Bush. It's a facade. What's behind the curtain?

Let's fact it, we're now a banana republic. We export mainly dollars and it's pretty clear who really runs the show. MF Global collapses and they pretend they can't figure where $1B dollars went? Get real, the treasury tracks all transactions over $10,000 - you can't possibly not know where the money went.

[vt]

Re: Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/22/delay-suddenly-not-dirty-word-at-white-house/

[“Your website is so f***ed we have use the same strategy that we used to salvage the Iraq war?” – Comedy Central’sJon Stewart discussing President Obama’s announced “tech surge” to repair the ObamaCare Web site.]

When you lose John Stewart, it's over.

There are congressional hearings starting for the private contractors that set the website up. This is total incompetence at the government and contractor level, unless the government ignored warnings to wait.

[lektrode]

Re: Obama Lays Bare Liberal Impotence

....When you lose John Stewart, it's over.

would say that happened right about here....

There are congressional hearings starting for the private contractors that set the website up. This is total incompetence at the government and contractor level, unless the government ignored warnings to wait.

its not like it was an 'unexpected' all-of-a-sudden, no warnings kind of job - or that it involved 'new/untested' technologies

and it collapsed, even in places where 92% are already covered ? (and who's setup was built by same outfit = crony ops)

[flintlock]

Re: how liberals are reading events

What has happened with the website is an embarrassment to the entire nation, but it's no surprise. And its not just that the Obama administration screwed up, its their reluctance to take responsibility. Heads should roll. I rank almost all politicians pretty low but Obama is really in seriously over his head. Sadly, he may be looked on favorably compared to what we get in the future considering the way people base their vote today.

[flintlock]

Re: how liberals are reading events

I will say that the level of what constitutes school meal assistance is not as low as you might think. Lower cost of living in the South might be a factor also. Not sure if school meal assistance is adjusted for that or not.
My wife is a teacher and some of her kids on various assistance are picked up by Moms driving Mercedes SUVs. Lots of gaming the system out there, especially here in GA where a large black market exists in some industries. But the truth remains, a lot of people struggling out there. The fact that Mom and Dad may be part of the reason doesn't help the kids who are blameless.

Distance from Mexico is a major factor so no surprise the results skewed in the south. School systems are being sunk by illegal immigrant costs. I would argue the southern states have not only their own poor but the refugees from other states where the cost of living is higher. Ironically the poor always flee to where prospects are better, not worse, making some states appear worse than they otherwise would. For decades, every time Texas went through an oil slump we got a herd of fly by night contractors from there. When their economy returned, so did they.