The president and his party in Congress face the terrifying prospect of being able to fulfill their campaign promises. They will have no excuse if there is no health-care reform or energy reform, or if there are and they are disasters.
The biggest shock, though, will probably be to the voters. For years they have called for “change,” generally unspecified, while enjoying the status quo more than they cared to admit. (They want health-care reform provided that they can keep their own doctor. They want congressional term limits, but they like their own member enough to reelect him again and again.) They have demanded alchemy from their representatives — expand our benefits and cut our taxes and balance the budget while you’re at it — and then staged hissy fits when the politicians didn’t produce.
Now, when the voters demand change, they may well get it. We’ll see how they like it.
yes, this is an age old tale: everyone is for change is long as it either benefits them and/or protects them.
here’s a bit more on some of these beneficiaries and what it leads to:
“The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.â€
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303014.html
Transparency, eh? Sure. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But Obama did say that this was the greatest country in the world and we needed to change that! The voters went for it.
You asked for it, you got it, … endure it.
When you only have two real choices, and one party you know has tortured, deregulated for financial cronies at our expense, run up an obscene deficit to pay for a war that didn’t need to happen and about which its leader flat out lied to the American people, brought to us international disgrace, national ruin, and who couldn’t even complete a proper sentence, well — of course you vote for “change.” And then Palin! Please, take some responsibility.
That was an impressive belch of kultursmog, A+, rehearsing the usual litany of port-side talking points. Well done. But I wonder…what exactly did Dubya deregulate? I know it’s an article of faith among southpaws that he did, but I’d like some specifics. We’ll leave the rest of the stilted nonsense go for now.
Nice job, Albany … every beloved shibboleth in the petting zoo of international leftism.
[i]one party you know has tortured[/i] — as in applied to three well-known bad guys the same technique we use on 2500 American pilots per year as a routine part of their training?
[i]deregulated for financial cronies at our expense[/i] — as in several well-documented attempts (each blocked by Democrats) to increase regulation on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other GSEs sitting at the heart of the problem with their no-doc, nothing-down, interest-only, deeply-sub-prime lending to certain favored groups?
[i]run up an obscene deficit[/i] — as in combined aggregate deficit for two entire terms less than the deficit of Mr. Obama’s first year?
[i]to pay for a war[/i] — as in more than double federal spending on education, create an entire new $400 B Medicare entitlement, as in subsidize Amtrak for billions a year, as in double farm subsidies, as in…, as in …?
[i]that didn’t need to happen[/i] — as in “screw that 1% of the world’s population living under absolute tyranny,” ignore the rape-rooms, the body shredders, the acid baths, the stoning of girls without the veil; as in remove a vicious dictator with a long history of threatening and invading neighbors and a well-established history of developping (and using) WMD on neighbors and his own people?
[i]about which its leader flat out lied[/i] — as in agreed with every major intelligence service in the world, including France? as in agreed with the Clinton administration? as in the 1900 tons of WMD discovered after the invasion? as in the nuclear program outsourced to Libya?
[i]brought to us international disgrace[/i] — as in being asked by the UN to deal with the problem? as in leading a wide-based coalition of more than 30 nations to remove the dictator and his apparatus of tyranny? as in disliked and excoriated by [i]leftist[/i] governments around the world?
[i]national ruin[/i] — as in millions of people from around the world trying to come here to be citizens?
[i]who couldn’t even complete a proper sentence[/i] — as in, uh, um, … uh, can’t, uh, speak … without, um … his TelePrompTer? and, uh, has, you know, um visited all 57 states.
[i]then Palin[/i] — as in a woman who actually lives everything the feminists [i]said[/i] they believe in, but whose major error was doing it without sucking up to all the usual leftist groups “down for the struggle.”
Albany+ = !clue
Jeffersonian,
Congratulations. You may be the only person on the planet who believes that failure of regulation during [b]8 years[/b] of President Bush and six years of Republican control had nothing to do with the Credit Default mess. Truly amazing.
As for the rest of my “stilted nonsense,” I’m not surprised you have nothing to say. There’s not a defense in the world. The Republican Party will never recover until they take some genuine responsibility for Obama’s election and stop blaming the American public for making the only rational choice available. And yes, Palin matters. No one reasonable could risk that potential presidential outcome — especially after GW.
Southpaw? Cute. Where is your stuff coming from?
Bart,
And I’ve got talking points! There’s not a thing on your list I haven’t heard on Fox a thousand times over.
Jeffersonian,
Let’s talk about The Commodities Futures Modernization Act.
As for the other stuff, both to you and Bart, my apology.
The Kinsley article was pure baiting. I don’t know why it was posted.
Jeffersonian and Bart Hall – as a non-American evangelical I have to confess I am very uncomfortable with these kinds of defenses of waterboarding.
Just because something is included in a training course does not mean that when done in a hostile context it does not count as torture. Many activities that are seen as hazing could similarly be made part of a training course – that still wouldn’t make them immoral in the context of hazing.
The kind of argument you are running seems to me to be the equivalent of the kind of argument run by ‘rights of children’ ideologues that do not distinguish between a smack by a parent and a hit by a random adult. They see hitting as morally equivalent in both situations and classify them as assault. You see water boarding as morally equivalent in both situations and classify them as not torture. Surely the error in both cases is to treat the act in abstraction from its context? It’s the same error, committed by (I presume) opposite sides of the political spectrum.
In the interests of consistency, I take it that you would be ok with these techniques that have been highlighted as conducted by American soldiers and CIA interrogators being used on American citizens by foreign governments in such situations where they consider the citizen may be possessing information of importance to that country’s national security? That is, your defence is that these are legitimate and moral techniques, not that it is ok for the US alone to use them?
A spirited debate! Always refreshing.
Voting trends in the past two national elections, and even in the recent minor municipal elections in my city, clearly show that the GOP now appeals only to a shrinking breed: old male Caucasian conservative Christians.
Shades of Daniel 5, methinks.
I wonder how much we will enjoy living in a nation run by young, female, black, left-wing atheists?
[blockquote]Let’s talk about The Commodities Futures Modernization Act. [/blockquote]
Okay, let’s! I’ll start the discussion: It was passed and signed in 2000. Who was President in 2000?
[blockquote]Jeffersonian and Bart Hall – as a non-American evangelical I have to confess I am very uncomfortable with these kinds of defenses of waterboarding. [/blockquote]
I’m puzzled…where did I do this?
You didn’t. My mistake. And my apologies for lumping you both together just because you were both interacting with Albany+
huh. If you think waterboarding (which was approved by Congress at briefings, in spite of what Mdme Pelosi claims) is TORTURE, then you’ve never pledged for a Fraternity on an US College/university campus.
Obama went from “Change you can believe in” to “Change WHAT you believe in”, and is way overstepping the Constitutional mandates of his office to dictate to private American corporations what they can and cannot do for their employees, including now wanting to order companies who have never accepted any TARP funds who they can give bonuses to and how much those bonuses can be. As well as ordering the auto companies to cut advertising budgets and close dealerships.
Frankly, as an umemployed American, I see little hope for the future, and am pinning great hopes on the 2010 elections to help curb this trend.
Jim Elliott
Florida
#15
[blockquote]huh. If you think waterboarding (which was approved by Congress at briefings, in spite of what Mdme Pelosi claims) is TORTURE, then you’ve never pledged for a Fraternity on an US College/university campus.[/blockquote]
It’s true that I have never pledged for a Fraternity on a US College campus. But I’m not sure that my view is quite that causally connected to that fact. My impression is that the view that waterboarding (and other forcible interrogation techniques) should be considered torture tends to exist in proportion to Christian belief in the States. ([url=http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/godingovernment/2009/05/pew_guys_guns_and_abortion.html]From the article that Kendall linked a few days ago[/url]). And that people with a College education are somewhat less likely to have strong orthodox Christian belief than the American average. Taken together, these two statistics suggest that, unless fraternities are composed of a disproportionally high number of Christians, then it would seem that people can experience a fraternity pledging and still view waterboarding [i]in the context of an interrogation[/i] as torture.
From descriptions of the activity waterboarding is designed to make a person’s body experience drowning, which tricks the mind into thinking they are drowning even if they know that they are not. Thus, the person thinks that they are dying.
Given the Bible’s description of the human condition as being enslaved by a fear of death (Heb 2:15), I find it hard to imagine what could be more against the Christian grain than to deliberately induce an experience of the fear that enslaves us and was part of what the atonement delivered us from. Theologically speaking, I’d suggest that this is worse than simply inflicting physical pain on someone.
I can understand such a technique being used to show soldiers and intelligence agents that they will not be able to physically resist what an enemy will do to them. But if such a thing was done as part of a fraternity pledge, I’d suggest that it would be torture in that context as well.
[url=http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jesse-ventura-you-give-me-water-board-dick]Jesse Ventura[/url]
: You Give Me a Water Board, Dick Cheney and One Hour, and I’ll Have Him Confess to the Sharon Tate Murders
Voting trends in the past [one] national elections, and even in the recent minor municipal elections in my city, clearly show that [a non-conservative Republican running for President] now appeals only to a shrinking breed: [liberals smart enough to know that Obama would be worse.]
Which would be why conservatives aren’t worried, but are smiling.
Obama’s election was exactly the best thing to happen for the Republican Party — we’ll see if they take the opportunity for reform that they so desperately need.
As this is shaping up so far, Obama and the Democratic Congress may be answering that old prayer, “Oh Lord, let our opponents go too far.”
Joe Biden is a less scary one-heartbeat away than Sarah Palin would have been? Eeek. They’d have to forbid him to ever say anything that wasn’t written for him by staff. They should do that now.
And lay off southpaws. I am one. It’s hard enough being left-handed in a right-handed world. I can’t believe you would be so insensitive, Jeffersonian.
Knisley is right: over the last 30 years, the American people have bought into the religion that tax cuts are the solution to all our problems. And yet, they believe that government should be run well and has a role in our society.
Rights cost money. If you want rights at all, someone has to enforce them.
Or, do the conservative thing, make government as incompetent as possible: hire the worst administrators, devalue working for the public or common good, make the job of the administration to undermine government and use it to only serve the interests of the well-connected. Then blame government for administrating poorly, being incompetent, and corrupt. Get into government, do a poor job governing, and then blame the government for all the social problems in the world.
Obama is proving to be quite successful and effective in getting his way. And he seems to actually be the pragmatist he always claimed to be. Which might make him far more dangerous, because he won’t fight the losing battles that will diminish his political capital. It helps that his popularity is still sky-high.
I’m incensed at being called a “high-church moderate”, as if there were something wrong with that!
And Jeffersonian, as a genuine southpaw I’ll thank you to keep your slurs to some other website.
Yikes! Obama and a dominant Democtrat Congress. I hope all you left-wingers who voted for B Hussein Obama remember this platitude: “If you want something bad enough, that’s how you’ll get it.” I just hope he and the Dems don’t totally wreck the country before the next election and a chance to throw them all out. BTW, check out the numbers of each political party and electoral votes 1992 vs 2008. Almost identical. Just two years later, in 1994, the tide turned back away from the Dems. Spend it fast, boys and girls. This, too, shall pass. And I would have loved to have had Sarah Palin as the first woman President. She has 10 times the executive abilities of BHO.
[blockquote]And Jeffersonian, as a genuine southpaw I’ll thank you to keep your slurs to some other website. [/blockquote]
I’ll try to remember to stick to “port-sider” from here on out.
[blockquote]You didn’t. My mistake.[/blockquote]
Thanks, Mark.
I rowed port in high school, so that’s a no-go too.
[blockquote]And lay off southpaws. I am one. It’s hard enough being left-handed in a right-handed world. I can’t believe you would be so insensitive, Jeffersonian. [/blockquote]
How else am I supposed to keep up my status as blog troglodyte? 🙂
Well, I was kidding about the southpaw thing, Jeffersonian, but “port-sider” would be better. Just think of the humiliation. Clinton (Bill) is left-handed, and so is Obama. To say nothing of having machinery diabolically designed by starboard-siders who don’t think about how I’m going to pour water in the coffee maker with the appointed place where I can’t pour it with my left hand. Life is so hard. 🙂
[blockquote]Rights cost money. If you want rights at all, someone has to enforce them. [/blockquote]
Well, positive rights – healthcare, education, housing, etc. – cost a pile o’ money. Traditional rights don’t cost much at all: free speech, free press, free assembly. I don’t think it’s those two cops on the street corner watching the anti-war protestors that is bankrupting our fair nation. It’s the thing you “pragmatists” are thumping the tub for.
The conservative thing is not to make government as incompetent as possible. The government bureaucracies and public employee unions do a good enough job of that on their own. We need to recapture the idea that government exists to serve the citizens in as unobtrusive and economical manner as possible. The wealth of a nation belongs to its citizens and they graciously allow the government to have the least amount possible to run an efficient and responsive government. The cure is not tax cuts, unless they are used to cut expenditures. There is so much waste and corruption (both Republican and Democrat) and whining reliance on government, that I doubt we can restrain and cut the size of government at the ballot box.
I maintain, rather seriously, that if a survey was published which definitively showed illegal immigrants vote for Republicans by a large majority when legally allowed to vote, the Democrats in Congress would have a bill passed within the week to mine the border with Mexico.
Obama is showing himself to be anything but a pragmatist. His actions are quite consistent with his basic distrust of the American way of life, which is to be expected given his teenage indoctrination by the Communist mentor hand picked by his Socialist grandfather. Follow this with a leftist, Ivy League education in both undergraduate and Law school and how can you expect anything different.
On the torture front, does anybody remember the Malmedy massacre that took place right before the Battle of the Bulge. My father-in-law was in the Ardennes during the battle, and he said as news of the massacre spread among the U.S. troops, when Germans were captured, no SS troops were taken prisoner. Play the thought game where your family is on a plane that is scheduled to be blown up and you have a terrorist prisoner that you know, for a fact, has detailed information about the plot the could prevent it from happening. Where would you draw the line to save your family?
Before you dismiss this as a false proposition, remember that this is exactly the situation our nation faced in the time after 9/11. There are no easy answers and all of those so quick to condemn or completely dismiss such situations need to think about it longer and harder.
[blockquote]I rowed port in high school, so that’s a no-go too. [/blockquote]
I’m going to have to issue an apology to the Rowing-American community, too??
You’re going to have to stick with right-wing and left-wing, Jeffersonian, and even those are misused. How many times have we seen Nazis and Italian fascists compared to genuine “right-wing” conservatives, which is entirely backwards? Maybe “statist” will do for the left, and for the right, well, I don’t know. I can’t think of one word that would be good, other than conservative.
Daniel,
[blockquote]On the torture front, does anybody remember the Malmedy massacre that took place right before the Battle of the Bulge. My father-in-law was in the Ardennes during the battle, and he said as news of the massacre spread among the U.S. troops, when Germans were captured, no SS troops were taken prisoner. Play the thought game where your family is on a plane that is scheduled to be blown up and you have a terrorist prisoner that you know, for a fact, has detailed information about the plot the could prevent it from happening. Where would you draw the line to save your family?
Before you dismiss this as a false proposition, remember that this is exactly the situation our nation faced in the time after 9/11. There are no easy answers and all of those so quick to condemn or completely dismiss such situations need to think about it longer and harder. [/blockquote]
I think this is part of what unsettles me about the defences of these practices. The arguments are set up as ‘torture is wrong, but the forcible interrogations (e.g. waterboarding) our servicemen/intelligence agents did are not torture.’ But after a while the argument shifts to, “these conditions justify actions that we generally consider immoral” (e.g. your given example suggesting that in response to Nazis conducting a war crime, the Allies engaged in their own, and gave no quarter to the enemy.)
(I’m disappointed at the example, to be honest. If it was wrong for the Nazis to kill Prisoners of War, then it was wrong for the Allies to not give quarter to the enemy. We are monotheists, not polytheists. God is the God of Jew and Gentile, Allies and Axis. Morality is not nation-specific. If you are right, and Allied servicemen did what you imply, then they will face the same judgment that the Germans will on the Last Day – however much the fact that our side won the war meant that they escaped human justice.)
My problem with this shift in argument is that it seems to parallel the kind of style of arguing I experience from revisionists in ecclessiastical contexts – the stated position is quickly shifted when it is pushed.
My question is: what is the defence? Is it that waterboarding is clearly not torture? Or is that torture is legitimate in the post 9/11 situation? The two arguments are mutually incompatible, and yet the first seems to morph into the second.
If waterboarding is not torture, then why only three detainees subjected to it? Why is it not standard practice in all interrogations – used by police on US citizens in criminal inquiries as much as by the military in national security issues? Why was this legitimate technique only used three times?
I’ll agree that life does present some ‘grey areas’ for moral discernment and war especially so. But the ‘bomb in the plane that your family is in’ is not a good defence. Our system of government and judiciary includes the idea that people shouldn’t have control over matters where they have a vested personal interest. It’d be like saying, “Let the victim decide what is an appropriate judgement for the accused.”
It is also an extreme case, that (despite what you claim) is not ‘exactly’ what America has faced the last couple of years – an imminent attack with a person in custody known to have vital information that would prevent the attack. Extreme cases make bad law. I can accept as morally legitimate people lying to protect Jews from the Holocaust, killing someone to save the life of a third person who is being attacked by the person you are forced to kill, lying to the person with the axe as to which direction the small child ran so as to save the child’s life, and Bonhoffer being involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Life has grey areas. But it’s not good moral thinking to begin with such examples.
The thrust of your defence seems to be, “The end justifies the means”. I don’t think that is compatible with the character of God.
Katherine,
I like chicken wings, so that’s out, too.
how about:
Statists for the left
Constitutionalists for the right.
Re: Mark, #32 –
I am not trying to say the ends justify the means. I also do not think the Quakers have all the answers when it comes to the best way to oppose evil. I honestly do not know what the answer is when it comes to combatting terrorism. I would think that just the right combination of drugs and psychological manipulation could get the job done best.
It seems like we are well on our way to a system of vendettas, in the traditional sense. The bizarre thing of it though is that my moral views are probably more in line with a traditional Moslem than with a typical TEC booster. I wish that traditional, conservatives from different societies and religions could get together and hold firm against the lunatic fringe of all stripes.
libraryjim, most of the time leftists have not been statists. They have been anti-monarchists and antagonistic toward power rooted in entitlement. However, among the variety of leftists, you have Authoritarian leftists like Stalin; democratic leftists like Olaf Palme; libertarian leftists like Rudolf Rocker, Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Kropotkin, or the like. However, the right has often worshiped military power and the rule of might, or the divine right of kings.
RE: # 12
Jeffersonian,
Now, now, as you know, the relevant legislation was advanced within days of Bush being ruled to be our legitimate President by the Supreme Court. The legislation was chiefly the work of Phil Gramm and sponsored almost exclusively by Republicans, and presented to a lame-duck President as a part of an omnibus spending bill on his way out the door.
The dread NYT has some nice stuff on this, but her are a few bits from the Business section on Gramm and the mess:
[i] He [Gramm] could be impolitic. Over the years, he has urged that food stamps be cut because “all our poor people are fat,†said it was hard for him “to feel sorry†for Social Security recipients and, as the economy soured last summer, called America “a nation of whiners.â€
…
His economic views — and seat on the Senate banking committee — quickly won him support from the nation’s major financial institutions. From 1989 to 2002, federal records show, he was the top recipient of campaign contributions from commercial banks and in the top five for donations from Wall Street. He and his staff often appeared at industry-sponsored speaking events around the country.
…
Gramm and the ‘Enron Loophole’
In 2000, Senator Phil Gramm played a central role in writing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, a law that would open the door to unregulated trading of credit default swaps, the financial instruments blamed, in part, for the current economic meltdown.
…
But there was another aspect of this legislation that, earlier this decade, helped produce another financial meltdown: the collapse of Enron, the Texas energy company.
The commodity futures act, in addition to allowing unregulated trading of financial derivatives, included language advocated by Enron that largely exempted the company from regulation of its energy trading on electronic commodity markets, like its once-popular Enron Online. The provision came to be known as the Enron Loophole.
E-mail written by Enron executives and lobbyists — which became public as part of a federal investigation after Enron collapsed — shows how top Enron officials closely monitored negotiations on the bill. They paid particular attention to Mr. Gramm, who before a final agreement in late 2000 was trying to press other key figures on Capitol Hill and at the White House to agree to concessions that would further curtail regulation of trading.
Enron’s primary concern was that Mr. Gramm’s insistence at getting these additional free-market concessions — most of which were unrelated to Enron’s business — might scuttle the whole deal, killing Enron’s chance of getting the loophole it sought.
Enron was a major contributor to Mr. Gramm’s political campaigns, and Mr. Gramm’s wife, Wendy, served on the Enron board, which she joined after stepping down as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. [/i]
Jeffersonian, please let’s not pretend that deregulation of markets isn’t the Swan Song of the Republican Party and its agents.
That’s odd, Albany, because it was such a terrible idea and so controversial that it passed on a voice vote (i.e. no roll call) in the Senate and with more Democrat votes in the House than Republican. Care to revise and extend your remarks?
Enron blew up because A – they made bad trades decisions (which no regulation can prevent) and B – they engaged in fraudulent conveyance of debt (much like the Social Security Trust Fund does).
And anyway, this has what to do with the 2007/8 meltdown?
[blockquote]libraryjim, most of the time leftists have not been statists. They have been anti-monarchists and antagonistic toward power rooted in entitlement. However, among the variety of leftists, you have Authoritarian leftists like Stalin; democratic leftists like Olaf Palme; libertarian leftists like Rudolf Rocker, Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Kropotkin, or the like. However, the right has often worshiped military power and the rule of might, or the divine right of kings. [/blockquote]
I feel better knowing you and your fellow leftists are on guard against the menace of impending monarchy, John. Predatory democracy seems to inspire little but insouciance in you all, however.
For every Rosa Luxemburg there were a thousand Pete Seegers, for every Daniel Patrick Moynihan a hundred Dalton Trumbos. Today’s America Left, like yesterday’s, is completely and thoroughly statist, authoritarian and dirigiste. From campus speech codes to the Fairness Doctrine, from massive transfer payment schemes to micromanagement of industries it gobbles up, the Left pants to use the coercive power of the omnipotent State to immantize its loathsome eschaton.
Re: #37
My goodness, Jeffersonian, you go from one evasion to another. Anything for the cause, right?
As you know, the nasty part of the legislation in question was the actual delight of the chiefly Republican deregulators which they inserted into an omnibus spending bill in the end moment’s of Clinton in order to get it through. Your bunch like the deregulation, ours the necessary spending. You kow how the process works. Stop pretending.
What Enron has to do with it, as again you know, is that Enron is a part of a corporate deregulatory pattern advanced by your side. And once again, it had very unhappy results. But here you take a detour and dodge. At no point do you address Gramm and the article’s point about his never nasty tie to Credit Default Swaps. You just look for a way to change the subject. I would too, as Gramm is the virtual Platonic From of the failed world-view and cynical political mode of operation of the Republican Party.
I need to clam down. Too many typos. Sorry.
Both clam and calm. I’m retiring.
The noisy right-wing brat pack, including Rush and his dittoheads, has been complaining since Newt was a pup about how Congress never gets anything done.
I listen to Rush and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him complain like that. If anything I’ve heard him say the best thing that could happen is for Congress to go on vacation for a while so they can’t take more rights away.
Coming out of retirement, it might surprise Jeffersonian that I find much to agree with in his remark:
[i]For every Rosa Luxemburg there were a thousand Pete Seegers, for every Daniel Patrick Moynihan a hundred Dalton Trumbos. Today’s America Left, like yesterday’s, is completely and thoroughly statist, authoritarian and dirigiste. From campus speech codes to the Fairness Doctrine, from massive transfer payment schemes to micromanagement of industries it gobbles up, the Left pants to use the coercive power of the omnipotent State to immantize its loathsome eschaton.[/i]
The loathsome eschaton is a bit overt the top, but there’s much to recommend the rest of it.
[blockquote]My goodness, Jeffersonian, you go from one evasion to another. Anything for the cause, right? [/blockquote]
Not at all. I simply pointed out that the bill was passed with more Democratic votes than Republican in the House, a datum that cannot be disputed. It was so uncontroversial that it wasn’t even debated in the Senate and was waved through on a voice vote. Surely a gimlet-eyed Democrat could have raised a hand and asked for a roll call vote before sending this on for a Democratic President’s prompt signature. You’re acting as if this was rammed through over the valiant protestations of right-thinking people everywhere, but that just isn’t the case. Furthermore, it’s not even tangentially the cause of Enron’s failure, nor that of the current situation.
There is Republican guilt in this mess, but it isn’t in deregulation, but in the promotion of policies that caused the real estate bubble to continue from the Clinton years (not to mention loose money from the Fed). And the federal government isn’t one to stymie the very goals it is pursuing, in this case wide home ownership.
Should also like to point out the Bush (43) kept in place many of the Clinton appointees (judges, etc), and so kept many of the policy makers in place.
Clinton on the other hand, fired all of the Bush 41 appointees right off the bat when he took office.
And now back to the show.
[blockquote]Your bunch like the deregulation, ours the necessary spending. You kow how the process works. Stop pretending. [/blockquote]
Deregulation…like [url=http://www.reason.com/news/show/130328.html]this?[/url]:
[blockquote]Since Bush took office in 2001, there has been a 13 percent decrease in the annual number of new rules. But the new regulations’ cost to the economy will be much higher than it was before 2001. Of the new rules, 159 are “economically significant,” meaning they will cost at least $100 million a year. That’s a 10 percent increase in the number of high-cost rules since 2006, and a 70 percent increase since 2001. And at the end of 2007, another 3,882 rules were already at different stages of implementation, 757 of them targeting small businesses.
Overall, the final outcome of this Republican regulation has been a significant increase in regulatory activity and cost since 2001. The number of pages added to the Federal Register, which lists all new regulations, reached an all-time high of 78,090 in 2007, up from 64,438 in 2001.[blockquote]