After A Great Deal Of Thought

I agree completely, so I have a plan.

This new stimulus package that the govt wants to pass, lets make it truly bipartisan.
Lets give Obama and the dems as much of the stimulus (percentage wise) as they got percentage of the vote in the election.
Lets give the repubs the rest.
Lets then let them use it anyway they see fit, and lets see exactly which ideas work best for the country.

So you are willing to allow the unemployed, homeless and their children die in the street in order to thin the herd? Yes or No?

We've already seen that show. Nice results.

I keep hoping that all the Ayn Rand belivers would wake up and realize what a fool she was. One of her most devoted advocates is Alan Greenspan and she shaped his political attitudes. His destructive impact on the economy is a result of his Rand beliefs.

BBB

Tough for me to comment impartially, Bear. As far as I am concerned, American conservatism is a cancer eating at the body politic of America. I do feel American conservatism has a function in the political process. I think it serves our country best as “the loyal opposition”...keeping the excesses of liberalism under control. In my opinion, American conservatives...and the Republican Party...have shown absolutely no aptitude whatever for governance or true leadership.

As for "let 'em die in the street"--well, I know a couple who would have no trouble at all letting that happen. Not sure of what percentage of them would fall into that category...but if anyone here thinks there is not a percentage who would, they are mistaken. And I dare guess it would be a much greater, and significant percentage than most of us would want it to be.

Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, a one-time member of Rand's inner circle, inflation-obsessed policies grew out of Rand's theories.

Why is America falling apart? Ask Ayn Rand
Collapsing bridges, flooded subways, trapped miners: our recent disasters recall a novel from a half century ago. Fortune's Adam Lashinsky explores the nation's 'Atlas Shrugged' moment.
By Adam Lashinsky, Fortune senior writer
August 14 2007:

(Fortune) -- It was the breaking-news headline last Friday that three construction workers had died in a coal-mine accident in Princeton, Ind., and maybe the markets melting down too, that congealed in my mind a thought I'd been kicking around for a while now: Our country is having an "Atlas Shrugged" moment.

Trapped coal miners in Utah, smashed levees in New Orleans, busted steam pipes and flooded subways in New York City, a collapsed bridge over the Mississippi River in Minnesota, an air-traffic-control system stressed to its break point. Could this really be a description of the most prosperous country on the planet? Can these all be coincidences? Is it time for a good old-fashioned conspiracy theory, the type that a reflection on Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan's early mentor, might inform?

For sensible adults who haven't thought about Rand and her darkly fabulist novel in years, the thing to remember about "Atlas Shrugged" - other than the cloying mystery, Who is John Galt? - is that the country was disintegrating in front of the eyes of our various capitalist heroes. The rail lines in particular were in peril in this 1957 book, a turgid ode to selfishness nonetheless considered a masterpiece by Rand's followers, who call themselves Objectivists.

New Orleans: Where's the money?

In "Atlas Shrugged," society was falling apart because the elites - read: socialists - weren't allowing the markets to function. A drumbeat of deadly railroad accidents punctuated and emphasized the calamity.

Cut to the present. Barely a day goes by that some disaster or another doesn't strike, usually having nothing to do with any natural act. The Indiana accident turned out to be just that, construction workers who fell which, tragically, happens from time to time, in good times and bad.

But the levees? After much consideration the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has now fessed up to its responsibility for poor construction and maintenance over decades. When I was in New Orleans in July I heard a story about a levee that didn't fail. It is operated by Lockheed-Martin (Charts, Fortune 500) at a plant that makes fuel tanks for the Space Shuttle. Workers braved Hurricane Katrina and operated pumps during the storm. The privately operated - but government financed - levees held.

I happened to be in New York last week the day the subways flooded. According to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, it's the third time this has happened in seven months. The New York subway has been pumping water out of its tunnels for a century. Why are downpours disabling New York City now? Likewise the bridge collapse in Minnesota. Accidents happen, but it's inconceivable that such a major thoroughfare in a major city wouldn't be thoroughly and regularly stress tested.

What's causing all this? Could it be the reverse of the "Atlas Shrugged" effect? Might it be that greedy capitalists, comfy in their private jets and third, fourth and fifth vacation homes, aren't paying attention to the national infrastructure that they don't think they need to use?

Democrats: We hate the rich, we love the rich
As for the political leadership, infrastructure spending is one of those rare instances where President Bush's take is spot-on correct, though his words likely won't be heeded because he is so unpopular and divisive. (The immigration debate, where the president has been pragmatic and right from the beginning, also comes to mind.) Asked if gasoline taxes should be raised to pay for infrastructure improvements, the president chastised Congress for favoring attention-getting new projects over boring maintenance needs.

He's right. Liberals like Chuck Schumer agree. "Routine but important things like maintenance always get shortchanged because it's nice for somebody to cut a ribbon for a new structure," Schumer recently told the New York Times.

Today's Randians, of course, have an answer to our woes: Privatize everything. No way a bridge falls if a profit-seeking company, properly incentivized, had been charged with maintaining it, goes the argument. That, however, is dangerous thinking. There are certain things the market just can't be trusted to handle. Imagine that bridge-maintenance company having to cut expenses this quarter by delaying work for just a few days. Imagine how the CEO might feel if the stock would drop if he couldn't make the quarter.

The markets don't always work for the public good. Just ask CEOs of mortgage lenders that pushed no-documentation loans, which anyone with common sense knew was just asking for trouble. The solution isn't to abolish government. It's to make government work better.

We'll get through this. We always do. As a country we'll become outraged at our crumbling infrastructure and demand that our leaders fix it. By punishing their stock prices - what they really care about - lenders and home builders who duped people into spending beyond their means will get their comeuppance. And then the stocks markets and the economy will be just fine. Plutocrats will realize that their limos travel over bridges and that their employees take the subway.

Who is John Galt, anyway?

Alan Greenspan is the number one rated culprit on this list. ---BBB

Twenty-five people at the heart of the meltdown
by Julia Finch, with additional reporting by Andrew Clark and David Teather
The Guardian UK
Monday 26 January 2009
(Part 2)

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

Alan Greenspan, chairman of US Federal Reserve 1987- 2006

Only a couple of years ago the long-serving chairman of the Fed, a committed free marketeer who had steered the US economy through crises ranging from the 1987 stockmarket collapse through to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was lauded with star status, named the "oracle" and "the maestro". Now he is viewed as one of those most culpable for the crisis. He is blamed for allowing the housing bubble to develop as a result of his low interest rates and lack of regulation in mortgage lending. He backed sub-prime lending and urged homebuyers to swap fixed-rate mortgages for variable rate deals, which left borrowers unable to pay when interest rates rose.

For many years, Greenspan also defended the booming derivatives business, which barely existed when he took over the Fed, but which mushroomed from $100tn in 2002 to more than $500tn five years later.

Billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffett might have been extremely worried about these complex products - Soros avoided them because he didn't "really understand how they work" and Buffett famously described them as "financial weapons of mass destruction" - but Greenspan did all he could to protect the market from what he believed was unnecessary regulation. In 2003 he told the Senate banking committee: "Derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so".

In recent months, however, he has admitted at least some of his long-held beliefs have turned out to be incorrect - not least that free markets would handle the risks involved, that too much regulation would damage Wall Street and that, ultimately, banks would always put the protection of their shareholders first.

He has described the current financial crisis as "the type ... that comes along only once in a century" and last autumn said the fact that the banks had played fast and loose with shareholders' equity had left him "in a state of shocked disbelief".

Republicans don't have a problem spending/wasting tax dollars and passing on the burden of debt to future generations. Hell, they practically invented that second part (deficit spending!). They just don't like it when we spend it on making the country better for its people.

Actually...with no disrespect intended....Frank is the only one who came close to answering my question.

I agree completely that there is a segment of society that will never be productive...that choose to be a useless drain on society and will never do more than subsist on the government tit as long as it's hanging out.

So if nothing will make these people of use to society...then are you willing to put 'em on their own....actually let them and their families die in the streets of starvation disease, the cold... because I think our history...world wide... has proved that's the only real solution to these types. I'm not condoning or condemning, not making a judgement...I'm asking.

I think I read somewhere that conservatives give a lot of money to charities to help the less fortunate. Government should not be a charity.

But, no, I would not be willing to allow the unemployed, homeless and their children die in the street in order to thin the herd. I would do my best to personally help them or guide them to the proper NGO that can.

thank you.

"Trouble is, when the rubber hits the road... you far right tough types don't have the stones to let people just plain die on the street....let little children suffer and allow the infant mortality rate to triple. That wouldn't fit in with your self perceived "good American Christian" status."

BUT I DO BELIEVE IN GIVING PEOPLE A HAND UP NOT A HAND OUT!

even those that are just gaming the system and will never help themselves up?

I know another good one:

If you give him a fish, he'll eat for a day...if you teach him to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime.

Or you can say, "Ahhh **** 'em. Let 'em die in the streets."

That's actually what the Bear is talking about!

yup....declare for one team or the other.....

say what you mean or mean what you say....either one will do.

No, I wouldn't let anyone die on the streets. But I'd much rather the support came from neighbor helping neighbor than the government running ineffective social programs.

Sounds as though you have a hard-on for government.

WE is the government!

You, me, the Bear--all of us.

What is your problem with government???

OUR government isn't very efficient (ask me how I feel about FEMA).