WHAT ROUGH BEAST? America sits of the edge

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[quote="perception
You realize of course that what you are proposing involves creating another huge bureaucracy and since we conservatives favor less gov't---not more--gov't you will immediately encounter resistance.

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A recent study shows that three out of the top five all-time federal spending sprees occurred in the last five years under Republican-controlled Congresses (the other two occurred during World War II). Thus, President Bush appears to have inherited a Congress with established spendthrift credentials.

However, that excuse is diminished by the fact that Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill during his three years in office. Instead, he has agreed to sign every piece of legislation crossing his desk, including a bloated farm bill and an intrusive education bill. In contrast, President Reagan vetoed 22 spending bills during his first three years in office.

In addition, Bush has been the beneficiary of a considerably more favorable party arrangement in Congress. Although Republicans controlled the Senate during Reagan's first term, Democrats dominated the House -- by a 100-seat margin at one point. Bush, on the other hand, has enjoyed the luxury of a GOP-controlled House and Senate (with the exception of a five-month loss of control in the Senate to the Democrats when GOP Sen. Jim Jeffords left the party). While Reagan was sufficiently successful at taming a doubting and often hostile Congress, Bush has demonstrated a lack of conviction in tempering the spending desires of a comparatively receptive Hill.

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blatham wrote:

perc

NIMH points correctly to what I'm attempting to say. When I speak of my preference for the policing of business or human affairs, I'm speaking about just the sort of thing we already do...limiting monopolies, criminalizing false advertising, ticketing folks who run stop signs, establishing and checking building codes, etc. We've learned that the absence of such constraints will allow the worst aspects of human nature to flourish and make our communities a worse place to live.

And, as nimh points out, even the flat tax notion presumes there is a moral good arising from redistribution of wealth.[quote/]

Blatham
It's just as I feared-----you've been lost in the clouds of idealistic academia and you just took a peak at the world. You just decided that we were already doing some of the things you've been ranting about---congratulations.

According to my calculations, the labor unions created the engine that drove the last revolution of redistribution of wealth at the beginning of the 20th century. There was a great amount of violence in that revolution but the effect has been good overall however I grant that more needs to be done and it will be. As our society becomes more and more aware of inequities legislation will be enacted to correct them. The trend is toward providing more social programs but what has been the net effect??????---------more and more jobs are fleeing to other countries because they don't pay for polution clean up, or clean air or social programs, etc., etc. The extention of this trend leads to economic collapse when we must buy all products from other countries because we can't afford to make them here.

What you are talking about would be great in a perfect world but the 3rd world countries need to catch up with their responsibilities regarding "sweat shops" where working conditions are deplorable and there are no minimum wage controls etc.

I find it paradoxical that you want so much freedom in the bedroom but so much control over your daily activities. :wink:

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Blatham,

I know of no state named Leroy.........and what a travesty that any state would try to limit the use of sex "novelties." But I can see the concern of the literal minded in this regard. One never knows what one might do with a "novelty" given imagination and a little creativity. And we mustn't be having any fun in the bedroom. The Constitution is very clear on this point.

Tart,

Yup, we better get our heads out of our asses and pay attention. Otherwise we'll have activist judges telling us what we can do with both. Heaven forbid we should try to think for ourselves.

Dys,

Did you say that? Or is that a quote from someone else? Good point I think, either way. Thank you for sharing. You should join us more often.

Now I'm off to Bleecker and MacDougall Streets and a nice sidewalk breakfast with lots of coffee and the ads for apartments for rent.

ohhhhhhhh..........Blatham,

Reasonably pretty? Come on now, someday you'll have to learn to start telling the truth. ..........What's physical appearance to do with love anyway? Creativity, that's the key. oh, and on the smartness point. Everyone knows how reasonably smart you are.......so no real need to say..............But I think I'm in love, so how could I be objective on this point?

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Perc

I confess I would love to know much more about the history of the guild movement and unions than I do. My father knew a lot about all this, but he'd get worked up and pound his fist on his armchair about situations I thought were to stay in the deep past ("Oh come on dad...you are talking like we still live in a Dickens novel...there's NO chance we'll ever see sweatshops again!") and at the time, I was likely thinking about my hair, and was impatient with him.

There was a book recently published on the Triangle Shirtwaist Building fire in New York City link Though this event took on a special symbolism, it did so because it was a paradigm case of the consequences of unfettered greed and of that species of personal ambition that scrambles over others with NO thought to them. Ken Lay, the mutual fund boys, GM selling cars they KNOW will, in some percentage, be involved in accidents where the petrol tank will explode and immolate the passengers, or George Bush with Harken, etc....it's the same animal.

But that fire led not merely to new notions regarding how business ought to be checked, but also to a whole host of notions regarding how the US ought to arrange relationships between those with wealth and power and those without...the New Deal.

It is NO surprise to me that even though the period of American history that followed after the onset of New Deal policies was the period when America's wealth and productivity began to really boom, many folks who are yet among the most advantaged wish to see the New Deal notions and arrangements dismantled. 'Wealth' is relative - it has meaning only as a relationship to others around one. In another culture, Ken Lay would be strategizing to somehow get a third goat, and become the richest guy in the village. And George Bush would be trying to bully some other kid to make sure that other kid understood who was on top.

And as Tartarin points out, it isn't just in human relationships where this pathology plays out, but in the relationship between humans and their enviornment along with the other creatures that share the environment with us.

It's a lousy model we are following. That we are losing jobs to Myanmar and Burma and China isn't because of the New Deal arrangements, it's because we've exported this business model to the rest of the world so as to reap even greater wealth for the few who already have it.

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Lola -- Are you still in NYC? If so, please please run down to the Drawing Center and check out that show. I kid you not.

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Blatham:

A good deal of what you have said about the "New Deal" is off the mark because you insist upon "spinning" every social ill as being motivated by individual greed or some sinister political evil. You completely avoid cause and effect of economic needs of a nation. Social and economic needs of a nation are tightly integrated and can only be managed by a gov't that is attuned to those needs through close scrutiny by the electorate of that nation. Any effort to maximze either economic over social or vice versa will result in conditions that will lead either to economic collapse or social revolution. The revolution to redistribute the wealth of the US by the labor unions prevented conditions that would have made led to social revolution as envisioned by Marx. It gave new life to the term private enterprize and thus the American dream was born instead of social reform which would have led to State controlled Socialism in this country.

The "New Deal" was an economic program----mostly artificial at first----which put people back to work through gov't make work projects. It is difficult to conclude whether these artificial projects would have yielded the desired effect had not WWII come along and stimulated a huge war machine that really put people back to work.

When this country and it's system fails( It will eventually says history) IMO it will be because the Social side became too powerful and brought about the collapse of the economic side by making unreasonable demands on the amount of money available.

I think we can forestall that eventuality for some time by raising the level of prosperity in all the 3rd world countries. Higher wages in those countries will produce the same result it did in this country in the 20th century. Until every head of household has a productive job which will provide enough money for a decent way of life----most of your social programs are "pie in the sky".

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Now, here's a new thought... from a Frontline panel discussion on Apocalyptic religious beliefs...American evangelism as Mary Kayism.

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Another way to explain the prevalence of apocalypticism in American thought is to see it as simply one manifestation of evangelical, traditionalist religion in general, which remains much more prevalent and vital in America than in Western Europe, for example. This, in turn, probably can be explained at least partially in terms of the structure of American religious life. America has never had a state church or an established religion. We have had a competitive, free-market form of religious life, which encourages the rise of new religious groups, charismatic religious leaders, and the use of extra-denominational techniques to win a following, such as revivals, radio, television, mass-market paperbacks, etc. All this has encouraged high levels of religious activism in America in general, and a high level of interest in biblical prophetic and apocalytic writings in particular.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/roundtable/dos.html

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and its a high profit/low cost operation with side benefits in the Elmer Gantry tradition. As Jimmy Swaggart says when caught with the woman with love in her heart and cash only, please, "forgive me lord, for I have sinned, but keep them checks and cash coming in." Jim and Tammy Baker made Enron look like childs play in the bilking of america.

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dys

Where is Swaggart these days? Popoff is still around, though doing the smaller rooms since Randy caught him up with the high-tech line to Jesus.

This quote above caught my attention because I'd never previously considered any negative consequences of not having single state religion.

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Blatham,

Are you suggesting that Jimmy Swaggart, TBN and all the rest are the end product if a free market in religious ideas? Interesting idea. Perhaps in a similar way PETA, Earth First, et. al. are the equivalent end product in a free market for environmental advocacy. Other examples are equally tantalizing.

Read your link. I liked O'Leary's piece best. America is the creation of Europeans who chose to abandon the established order and, often at great risk, attempt to found a new life on a new frontier. California and BC are the last stops for those who can go no farther.

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On November 10, 2002 Swaggart denounced the Prophet Muhammad as a "pervert" and a "sex deviant. In March 89, some woman named Catherine Campen gave an interview to Penthouse magazine, in which she claimed to have had an extramarital affair with the preacher. Between July 87 and January 88, they had met up on ten separate occasions. She mentioned beating him with a riding crop, but only after Swaggart convinced her to do it.
Then in July, Penthouse ran an exclusive interview with the prostitute, Debra Murphree. She claimed that Jimmy once inquired whether he could **** her child (nine years old). During a preaching tour of California, Swaggart drove his white Jaguar into the town of Indio. There he propositioned 31-year-old Rosemary Garcia, who promptly got in the car. Then they were pulled over by the cops for driving on the wrong side of the road.
Garcia told a Palm Springs TV news crew that Swaggart had picked her up, then inquired where they could find a motel with in-room porn. When the reporter asked why Swaggart had approached her, Garcia said: "He asked me for sex. I mean, that's why he stopped me. That's what I do. I'm a prostitute." His operation raked in more than $150 million annually. Every week, his television program "The Jimmy Swaggart Telecast" attracted eight million Jesus freaks.

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Popoff, Swaggart, the Backers (sp?), Crouch and the rest are more comic figures than religious. Carnival charlatans who prey on the ignorant and credulous. There are more or less equivalents in other areas of life, but few are so ubiquitous, dramatic, and obviously absurd.

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You forgot another name.

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Popoff, Swaggart, the Backers (sp?), Crouch and the rest are more comic figures than religious. Carnival charlatans who prey on the ignorant and credulous.

George W. Bush

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I have no interest and no concern for the Jimmy Swaggarts of this world. I have great concern for the millions of innocent, albeit naive, needy souls that fall victim to the panderings of greed mongers that prey on them under the umbrella of "freedom of religion" and blessed by a tax-free status.

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The Jaguar and much more that Jimmy has was purchased by the owner of two large trucking companies where I live, they are holy rollers and as thick as thieves. Very eccentric and gaudy like the TV christian show hosts.

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Ahem---can we leave this romp in the muck and get back to topic................?

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oh, but perc, the muck is soooooooooo dirty. I personally always loved Swaggart's style. The folks paid for what they got. Inspiration and a show, with lots of muck and flare. Jimmy's microphone over the shoulder was a trademark, just like his cousin, Jerry Lee, married a thirteen year old and Great Balls of Fire later..... Now, what was the topic? Oh yes, the question is the neocons and the lifeless, muckless, guilt ridden version of religion that seeks to tell the rest of us what is moral and allowed. I don't think so...........

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Quote:

Are you suggesting that Jimmy Swaggart, TBN and all the rest are the end product if a free market in religious ideas? Interesting idea.

george

I had not ever considered American religious behavior as another instance of entrepreneurialism. But it is a compelling thought. The marketing aspect has always been evident, as Dys alludes to (one might rewrite Miller's play as Death of a Southern Preacher) but it also makes some sense to view the variation and competition as a free market phenomenon, and quite typically American.

Perhaps it ought not to be surprising that some folks are going for dominant market share; likewise, the ubiquitous advertising, and the warning of dire consequences if we don't choose their product along with the denigration of competing products (the anti-Christ in Rome), etc.

One might observe that there's nothing too surprising here, that it is just competition of ideas within a free market context, and thus we ought to expect a multitude of voices springing up and competing, and that the picture is not at all unlike political groups in a democracy. But then that poses another conundrum...why the hell are there only two political parties?

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California and BC are the last stops for those who can go no farther.

It seems damned unfair to have been born at the end of the line.

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Dys denies everything saying "I saw nothing officer, I was just coming home late"

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WHAT ROUGH BEAST? America sits of the edge

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