The California Supreme Court is obviously quite liberally populated with liberals who of course will take the liberal point of view. Incidentally, the conservative view is that it is not the prerogative of the court to decide what the law should be, but rather the court should limit itself to interpreting what the law is. Otherwise, the courts become the supreme law of the land with no checks or balances of any kind on them. And that, in the conservative view, is a very dangerous thing.
What is in dispute is your claim that America's lower middle class did better under Reagan than it did under Carter.
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Foxfyre wrote:The alternative is that your view is simply soextremely far to the right that everything thing seems extremely left. Ever stop to ask yourself if perhaps you are just out of touch?
Interesting observation, Deist. Reminds me of an ancient German joke where a driver hears a radio announcement: "There's a vehicle driving in the wrong direction on interstate 55." Says the driver: "One? Hundreds!"
Foxfyre wrote:When you factor in high fuel costs coupled with massive shortage and long lines at the pump during the Carter administration--this was not the case under Reagan--
When you factor in double digit inflation, double digit unemployment in some states and unacceptably high average unemployment, double digit interest rates exceeding 20%, staglation during the Carter administration--this was not the case under Reagan--
As Parados said: The "real" in "real income" means that the figures are adjusted for changes in price levels. Your "when you factor in ..." cop-outs don't work, because the stuff is already factored into the calculation of real income.
There Krugman Goes Again
In his Monday column, New York Times writer Paul Krugman claims to (borrowing the headline) “Debunk… the Reagan Myth,” arguing that Ronald Reagan’s economic policies “did fail.” (The column does not mention that Krugman worked for Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1982"1983.)
In fact, Krugman devotes precious little space to examining (or debunking) Reagan’s economic policies or their performance. The column is mostly a lament that Americans view Reagan positively and that Democrats have not challenged (and may even share) that opinion.
Krugman’s criticisms comprise just seven of the column’s 37 sentences (and three of the seven are throwaway lines). Here they are verbatim:
For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before " and the poverty rate had actually risen.
…
[T]here wasn’t any resurgence [in productivity growth] in the Reagan years.
…
Like productivity, American business prestige didn’t stage a comeback until the mid-1990s….
In short, Krugman makes four criticisms: Reagan’s policies resulted in (1) stagnant middle-class incomes, (2) an increase in the poverty rate, (3) stagnancy in productivity growth, and (4) stagnancy in “American business prestige.”
Are those claims true and do they show that Reagan’s economic policies “did fail”? Let’s look at the data. (Hyperlinks connect to the relevant federal data sets.)
MIDDLE-CLASS INCOME To determine the course of middle-class income over Reagan’s presidency, let’s examine the U.S Census Bureau’s Current Population Reports on median real income over time. That is, let’s look at inflation-adjusted family income and household income for families/households that are in the exact middle of all U.S. families/households.
From 1981 to 1988 (which roughly corresponds with Reagan’s tenure), median real family income grew 11.1 percent while real household income grew 10.3 percent. Those growth rates are in the top third of the 30 eight-year periods from 1968"1975 to 1998"2005.
To be fair, Krugman did not speak of middle-class income over Reagan’s tenure, but instead compared middle-class incomes of “the late 1980s” with the decade before. So we look at the data again and find that, in 1986, despite two recessions (1980, 1982) in the intervening years, median family income was 10.7 percent higher than a decade ago and median household income was 10.3 percent higher. The following year, median family income was 11.8 and 11.0 percent higher than a decade before. (The gains were smaller in 1988.)
In contrast, income growth during Bill Clinton’s administration only eclipsed Reagan’s 1986 and 1987 numbers once: at the height of the tech bubble in 2000, family income was 12.3 percent higher than a decade previous (however, household income was lower than Reagan’s 11.0 percent). Further, the George W. Bush administration eclipsed those numbers in three straight years " in 2001, 2002 and 2003, both family and median income gains over the preceding decade were higher than the best Reagan or Clinton numbers. Curiously, Krugman does not credit G.W. Bush with being more successful, economically, than either Reagan or Clinton.
POVERTY Krugman is correct that the poverty rate was higher at the end of Reagan’s term than it was “a decade before” in 1978. However, the poverty data show much more that Krugman doesn’t discuss.
In 1978, 9.1 percent of families and 11.4 percent of individuals in the United States were living below the poverty line. The year marked the penultimate in a previously unprecedented span of years (beginning in 1972) where the poverty rate for families fell below 10 percent. However, both rates began climbing in 1979, preceding the onset of the twin recessions of 1980 and 1982. Poverty topped out at 12.3 percent for families and 15.2 percent for individuals in 1983.
From there, though, poverty under Reagan moved downward steadily, reaching 10.4 percent for families and 13.0 percent for individuals in 1988. Both rates fell further in the first year of the George H.W. Bush administration. However, neither rate would be that low again until 1997, the year after welfare reform passed Congress. The poverty rate for families would not duck below 10 percent again until the last two years of the Clinton administration and the first three years of the George W. Bush administration.
PRESTIGE On this point, I cannot challenge Krugman. He gives no evidence to support this claim, and I know of no data sets that measure “prestige.”
PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH Krugman is correct that the data show productivity growth under Reagan was around 1.4 percent a year, not much higher than the previous period 1973"1979 (1.2 percent) and a little less than the subsequent period 1990"1995 (1.5 percent). Those numbers are all considerably lower than the 2.8 average annual increase for 1947"1973 and the 2.5 percent for 1996-2000.
Krugman does not mention the productivity rate for 2000"2006; at 2.7 percent, productivity growth is even higher under the George W. Bush administration than it was in the best of the Clinton years. Again, curiously, Krugman does not credit G.W. Bush with being even more successful economically than Reagan or Clinton.
This raises a question: If the average productivity growth rate increased over the last five years of the Clinton administration, and that growth continued (at a slightly higher rate) through the first five years of the G.W. Bush administration, then does policy (or politics) have much to do with productivity? The recent spurt in U.S. productivity seems the product of cheap computers and Americans’ special talent for using them, not the machinations of Washington, D.C. More broadly, significant increases in productivity growth have much more to do with stochastic innovation than White House actions (except, perhaps, Al Gore’s creating the Internet).
KRUGMAN CONSIDERED This leads to a broader question: How much credit can any president take for economic growth that occurs during his presidency?
To be sure, Reagan deserves some credit for improving on the economic trends of the 1970s, but credit should also go to Gerry Ford and Jimmy Carter for taking the first steps toward deregulation, and to Paul Volcker and the Fed for tamping down inflation. Likewise, the economic success of Clinton and George W. Bush owe some debt to Reagan (and, in W’s case, to Clinton) and much to Alan Greenspan (not to mention Silicon Valley). If the United States successfully combats the current economic slowdown, the credit should go to Ben Bernanke and his Fed colleagues, not to any stimulus package cobbled together by the White House or Capitol Hill.
Economic policies are intended to have long-term effects (though those policies can have some immediate effects). But economic conditions are only partly the product of economic policies " they are products of many different decisions by many different economic actors, most of whom are not elected. Politicians receive far too much credit and blame for current economic conditions.
Krugman’s claims about the Reagan record are misleading and, in the case of middle-class income, outright false. But more significantly, the concept underlying Krugman’s column is facile.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/01/24/there-krugman-goes-again/
Quote:So long as nobody's unalienable, civil, legal, or Constitutional rights are infringed or jeopardized, Conservatism pretty much takes a live and let live attitude about most things.
That is an interesting argument Fox. Then you turn around and claim there is no infringement in requiring people be married before they adopt.
Quote:So, you are arguing that as long as homosexuals enter into a sham marriage they should be allowed to adopt? But that isn't what the Arkansas law says.Equal protection is there because the rules and regulations apply equally and without prejudice to all persons without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, country of origin, social standing, financial standing, or sexual orientation.
The only problem would be if the law required persons to be straight before they could marry. But it doesn't. It doesn't care whether people are straight or gay. Everybody is identically subject to the same rules and regs without prejudice.
So, in other words, marriage for you does not have anything to do with love or caring for the other person. You feel marriage is nothing more than a legal contract that makes certain governmental benefits available to you. Wow. What utter nonsense from you.
Let's look at your argument.
1. You argue that marriage is the most beneficial to children. (There is no real evidence to back this up. Studies have shown that children of gay parents do just fine.)
2. You claim marriage is available to all as long as they are willing to marry someone they are not attracted to.
3. You claim this ability to marry someone you don't want makes it equal.
4. That means you think marriage is NOT about love but is only utilitarian in its nature.
Please defend your position on marriage since you think love should have nothing to do with it.
Interesting Fox since you have said that you are fine with something similar to marriage for gays, just not marriage.
Since the law specifically only gives married people those benefits and since you think the law sees marriage as something simply utilitarian, what is your argument against gays marrying? Marriage appears to have no meaning for you other than a contract recognized by government. So what is your objection to allowing gays to marry? It would give them the benefits that you say you are fine with.
You are discriminating against gays by preferring married people be allowed to adopt but then denying gays the ability to marry. I don't know why you don't see that.
Since the best interest of the child should take preference, does that mean you oppose the ban on adoption by gays pushed for and passed by conservatives in Arkansas?
You accepted Parados's numbers without question.
I would hold the very same opinion about judicial activism had the people voted by referendum to allow gay marriage within the existing law and the court chose to overrule that because they didn't like the outcome. (And I bet you would be hollering to high heaven over the viscious, homophobic, mean spirited, right wing wacko court too and I bet you wouldn't give a damn what they wrote as opinion for why they did so.)
I don't have to read the opinion to decipher whether the court did or did not overturn the will of the people. Why they did so might be fodder for another discussion, but it is irrelevent to the fact that they did it. A conservative court would not have done so.
One of the reasons we need the most serious, competent, and Constitutional rights-minded justices on the Supreme Court is graphically illustrated in the Kelo vs New London case that allows the government to forcibly transfer private property to other private entities 'for the public good'.
First on Justice Scalia’s required reading list is the U.S. Constitution. “Get your constitutions and read the doggone thing, don’t just read the Supreme Court cases,” he admonished the students. “You’re interpreting a constitution. You should always go first to the provision you’re interpreting.”
His announced lecture topic was a basic talk on separation of powers, and his first question to the students was constitutional -- “Where does the principle of separation of powers appear in the U.S. Constitution?” he asked.
That’s when Scalia told the students to read their constitution. “Like so much of our constitution, it is there with economy of language. Lean & mean,” he said, as he outlined the powers of the legislative branch, the executive branch and the judicial branch as spelled out in Articles I, II and III.
Scalia says the constitution’s framers were trying to create not just separation of powers, but “equilibration” of powers between branches to that no branch can overwhelm the other two, which led to the bi-cameral legislature we have -- the House of Representatives and the Senate.
“How many of you have read the Federalist Papers?” Scalia asked. Relatively few hands went up. “You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Scalia lightly scolded the audience. “It should be required reading. Buy a copy.
“If you read the Federalist Papers you can understand how brilliant our framers were. If you want to understand the constitution; if you want to understand why they did what they did; and why we shouldn’t have another constitutional convention today, you gotta read the Federalist Papers.
"If you remember nothing else from today’s lecture. It costs a couple of bucks. It comes in paperback.”
To Scalia, the most important way to look at the constitution and its definition of judicial power is to know what its framers intended. “Look at what it means now by looking at what it meant then,” he said. “Otherwise, you have no standard.”
He calls himself an “originalist,” because he believes his task as a jurist is to determine the intent of the constitution’s framers. “That’s what they meant by Judicial Power,” he explained. “Otherwise there would be a radical departure from the constitution.”
He also feels strongly that the courts must be reactive, not proactive and must not “ride herd” on the other branches of government.
“The legislative branch still passes laws that we find unconstitutional but it doesn’t seem to matter to them,” Scalia said, drawing one of the many laughs he earned during his lecture.
When it comes to the role of the judicial branch, Scalia feels it was not originally meant “to decide the meaning of the constitution " we do that by accident. The court has to interpret the constitution.” That of course, is the principle of judicial review.
The last item on Scalia’s list of required reading is Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville, in which the author observed that the U.S. “judges have enormous power to nullify legislation.”
The heart of Scalia’s lecture was about the Doctrine of Standing: “The Doctrine of Standing is central to the separation of powers. It’s one of those restrictions upon judicial action that prevents judicial incursion into principally the executive (branch).”
“The Constitution does not permit allowing just any citizen to sue because the judicial power is the power to decide on a controversy raised by someone who has been harmed," he added. "That’s the function of the courts. To prevent harm to individuals. That’s what the Doctrine of Standing is all about.”
“Some issues will never come to court because there is no one to raise the issue,” he said. “Resign yourself that there are some governmental actions that are unconstitutional that are not the business of the courts. There must be individual harm, not a generalized grievance.”
It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself….
It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure….
In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights….
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful….”
So, how do you feel about the conservatives that passed the gay adoption ban?
Foxfyre wrote:You accepted Parados's numbers without question.
They aren't Parados's numbers, they're census data. So yes -- by default, I do trust the US Census Bureau and mistrust think tank advocacy pieces. Even if the think tank is libertarian.
Debra, I can see how somebody like you would misinterpret my statement re Kelo that you linked, but I adamently opposed the court's decision on Kelo on other threads and that was my intent on the one you cited. My definition of a serious, competent, and Constitutional rights-minded court is one that understands and respects the intent of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution and who does not attempt to undo that or write its own law based on emotionalism, prejudice, and/or ideological convictions.
parados wrote:
So, how do you feel about the conservatives that passed the gay adoption ban?
I don't know whether they considered themselves conservatives or not.
