At the end of the day AOC is an important voice. She is very young and I hope that she is reading everything she can including you, Glenn. I am reading Lofgren's The Deep State. Of course since my early anti-Vietnam war years and as an SDS member, today at 74 I have gained so much perspective. I've been a socialist since childhood wh…
At the end of the day AOC is an important voice. She is very young and I hope that she is reading everything she can including you, Glenn. I am reading Lofgren's The Deep State. Of course since my early anti-Vietnam war years and as an SDS member, today at 74 I have gained so much perspective. I've been a socialist since childhood when I realized that the playing field was not level. I was an outcast in the 4th grade. My mother would drive onto Mission Valley Road in San Diego when it was lined with actual farms before being destroyed by the developer Del Webb. Anyway, I wondered why she had to stop because I thought that if everyone went the same speed that traffic would be seamless. I wanted true equality. Now I realize, as one Zen teacher told me, that everybody's different. As a young adult living in poverty working minimum wage jobs I cried when I saw a beautiful Mexican shawl in a store that I couldn't afford. The Vogue shoot was a big mistake. But she is young. Let's work to keep her on the right path. She can't do it alone. It's exciting to have a good job and a boyfriend who supports her. It's so easy to be entranced by power and money. I would be fine speaking with Trump supporters and those who stormed the Capitol. I've spent my life as an ambassador for those who are different. I know where they are coming from and I'm not a snob.
Suzanne, I'm glad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is enjoying her life, discovering herself, having a supportive boyfriend, while being entranced by power and money. It's a privilege I wish could be afforded to all young Americans. Yes, she's young. I disagree that we need to keep her on the right path, because I see no evidence she has any idea where the path is, let alone the directions in which it can head.
She has an undergraduate degree in economics, and suggested we just "print more money." I was smart enough at age four to understand that money itself has no value, it is a proxy for value that has already been created. She was 29. She demonstrated complete lack of understanding of the difference between a pile of ready cash and a future forgiveness of taxes on income generated by business. When they were teenagers, my daughters knew the difference. She celebrated denying her constituents good-paying jobs. She's young, and I can forgive her ignorance. I have a harder time forgiving her attitude that she should be allowed to learn on the job while proposing and voting on legislation for the rest of us. My objection would be the same regardless of her political positions.
We don't let surgeons "learn on the job" by allowing them to operate on members of the public to discover that the toe bone is not, indeed, connected to the foot bone. We don't allow police officers to walk around with their weapons in hand, shooting randomly at people to practice. What Representative Ocasio-Cortez is doing is malfeasance of office, and those who protect her from the consequences of that are no better than physicians who allow incompetents to perform surgery, or chiefs of police who overlook "just a few unfortunate deaths of innocent people."
I'm a year younger than you. I flirted with socialism because my parents were lost somewhere in a haze between Marxism and the KKK. I demonstrated for Biafra, marched for civil rights, attended sit-ins, was thrown out of multiple venues, spit on, beaten, the whole works. I was completely on my own once I graduated college, and woke up to the fact that the world doesn't owe me anything. Eventually I found my way to libertarianism, social liberal and fiscal conservative, because I recognize that social liberalism is a luxury we can afford only if we are fiscally conservative. That doesn't mean throwing the poor to the wolves. It means that, unlike my friends who are fiscal liberals, I don't outsource my compassion to the government.
I and my family support the homeless, the ill, the hungry, those denied a decent education by politicians unable to free themselves from teachers union teats, the disabled and other marginalized groups. We are far from wealthy, yet we contribute regularly to specific well-run charitable organizations serving eating-disorder patients, patients with autoimmune disorders and needy active-duty military families. We support medical missions to Africa and the Caribbean. I put together a syndicate of college students, attorneys, food banks and undocumented aliens when serving as a volunteer translator for local courts. My biggest supporters were the police, because we finally established an atmosphere in which illegal drivers pulled over for police rather than endangering others with a high speed chase.
You're right, the playing field isn't level. Crony capitalism is no better than socialism at leveling the playing field. I find it ironic that a man who made his money through crony capitalism, a man I abominate, was the first president to work toward a real leveling of the playing field.
Well, since Paul Krugman said it, then deficits don't matter. See what has happened in Zimbabwe, which adopted the same attitude. Or, Venezuela today. Greece. Puerto Rico. Deficits don't matter as long as we are willing to burden our children in order to enjoy ourselves today. They don't matter as long as we can convince other people to accept meaningless pieces of paper in exchange for food, manufactured items, and other things of real value. When the crash comes, it will be sudden and brutal.
Virtue-signaling numbskulls will wag their fingers at the hoi pollloi and the greedy capitalists, blaming them for the destruction. Krugman et al will have no clue about their own culpability, and the two real villains - Johnson and Nixon, one of whom brought Social Security and Medicare on budget, the other who was afraid to point out the ticking time bomb - are dead and buried. So, we'll blame Trump, or AOC, or the nearest racist (defined as any white male), and learn the wrong lessons. Happens every time.
You left out Larry Kudlow, and the Chicago School. I guess that when you are old enough to collect Social Security and Medicare, you will refuse it based on your conscience.
You must have missed the part about me being 73. I began collecting social security at the first possible opportunity, and have been on Medicare for a while. And, my conscience is just fine.
When Social Security was established a number of promises were made, all of which have since been broken. The program was known to have a projected surplus for nearly seventy years, which had to be hoarded because it was in danger of having a huge deficit after that point. In the 1960s Johnson brought social security "on budget," meaning that its artificial surplus could be spent to buy votes. Members of congress from both parties jumped at the chance to use free money to get themselves re-elected. Nixon's sin was worse. He knew that by about 2005 we'd tip from surplus into deficit, but did nothing about it.
Had he taken Social Security, and then Medicare, back off-budget, we'd have the funds to weather the storm. But it was spent for special favors, special tax breaks, everybody was special. I argued to acknowledge the Emperor had no clothes, but I wasn't important. The first politician to try to point out the problem was Bob Dole in 1996. Clinton ran scare commercials bout how Dole and the Republicans wanted to take away your social security, and Clinton's margin of victory among seniors was more than 100% of his total winning edge. After he was safely re-elected, he called Dole, told him he had known all along that Dole was correct, but hey, it's politics, now would Dole lead a panel to fix the problem Clinton had denied existed?
Dole's response is not recorded, but I suspect it was primarily four-letter words. I'm a Bill Clinton fan, by the way, because he took advantage of the peace dividend bequeathed him by G.H.W. Bush and the victory over inflation courtesy of Reagan, and then added the toughest thing President can do in the face of a good economy: nothing. He got out of the way and didn't try to manage the economy and we had eight great years.
It's not enough to live through momentous events; you also have to pay attention.
At the end of the day AOC is an important voice. She is very young and I hope that she is reading everything she can including you, Glenn. I am reading Lofgren's The Deep State. Of course since my early anti-Vietnam war years and as an SDS member, today at 74 I have gained so much perspective. I've been a socialist since childhood when I realized that the playing field was not level. I was an outcast in the 4th grade. My mother would drive onto Mission Valley Road in San Diego when it was lined with actual farms before being destroyed by the developer Del Webb. Anyway, I wondered why she had to stop because I thought that if everyone went the same speed that traffic would be seamless. I wanted true equality. Now I realize, as one Zen teacher told me, that everybody's different. As a young adult living in poverty working minimum wage jobs I cried when I saw a beautiful Mexican shawl in a store that I couldn't afford. The Vogue shoot was a big mistake. But she is young. Let's work to keep her on the right path. She can't do it alone. It's exciting to have a good job and a boyfriend who supports her. It's so easy to be entranced by power and money. I would be fine speaking with Trump supporters and those who stormed the Capitol. I've spent my life as an ambassador for those who are different. I know where they are coming from and I'm not a snob.
Suzanne, I'm glad Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is enjoying her life, discovering herself, having a supportive boyfriend, while being entranced by power and money. It's a privilege I wish could be afforded to all young Americans. Yes, she's young. I disagree that we need to keep her on the right path, because I see no evidence she has any idea where the path is, let alone the directions in which it can head.
She has an undergraduate degree in economics, and suggested we just "print more money." I was smart enough at age four to understand that money itself has no value, it is a proxy for value that has already been created. She was 29. She demonstrated complete lack of understanding of the difference between a pile of ready cash and a future forgiveness of taxes on income generated by business. When they were teenagers, my daughters knew the difference. She celebrated denying her constituents good-paying jobs. She's young, and I can forgive her ignorance. I have a harder time forgiving her attitude that she should be allowed to learn on the job while proposing and voting on legislation for the rest of us. My objection would be the same regardless of her political positions.
We don't let surgeons "learn on the job" by allowing them to operate on members of the public to discover that the toe bone is not, indeed, connected to the foot bone. We don't allow police officers to walk around with their weapons in hand, shooting randomly at people to practice. What Representative Ocasio-Cortez is doing is malfeasance of office, and those who protect her from the consequences of that are no better than physicians who allow incompetents to perform surgery, or chiefs of police who overlook "just a few unfortunate deaths of innocent people."
I'm a year younger than you. I flirted with socialism because my parents were lost somewhere in a haze between Marxism and the KKK. I demonstrated for Biafra, marched for civil rights, attended sit-ins, was thrown out of multiple venues, spit on, beaten, the whole works. I was completely on my own once I graduated college, and woke up to the fact that the world doesn't owe me anything. Eventually I found my way to libertarianism, social liberal and fiscal conservative, because I recognize that social liberalism is a luxury we can afford only if we are fiscally conservative. That doesn't mean throwing the poor to the wolves. It means that, unlike my friends who are fiscal liberals, I don't outsource my compassion to the government.
I and my family support the homeless, the ill, the hungry, those denied a decent education by politicians unable to free themselves from teachers union teats, the disabled and other marginalized groups. We are far from wealthy, yet we contribute regularly to specific well-run charitable organizations serving eating-disorder patients, patients with autoimmune disorders and needy active-duty military families. We support medical missions to Africa and the Caribbean. I put together a syndicate of college students, attorneys, food banks and undocumented aliens when serving as a volunteer translator for local courts. My biggest supporters were the police, because we finally established an atmosphere in which illegal drivers pulled over for police rather than endangering others with a high speed chase.
You're right, the playing field isn't level. Crony capitalism is no better than socialism at leveling the playing field. I find it ironic that a man who made his money through crony capitalism, a man I abominate, was the first president to work toward a real leveling of the playing field.
Even Paul Krugman says that deficits don't matter. Money today is meaningless unless your are poor. Then, it's everything you don't have access to.
Well, since Paul Krugman said it, then deficits don't matter. See what has happened in Zimbabwe, which adopted the same attitude. Or, Venezuela today. Greece. Puerto Rico. Deficits don't matter as long as we are willing to burden our children in order to enjoy ourselves today. They don't matter as long as we can convince other people to accept meaningless pieces of paper in exchange for food, manufactured items, and other things of real value. When the crash comes, it will be sudden and brutal.
Virtue-signaling numbskulls will wag their fingers at the hoi pollloi and the greedy capitalists, blaming them for the destruction. Krugman et al will have no clue about their own culpability, and the two real villains - Johnson and Nixon, one of whom brought Social Security and Medicare on budget, the other who was afraid to point out the ticking time bomb - are dead and buried. So, we'll blame Trump, or AOC, or the nearest racist (defined as any white male), and learn the wrong lessons. Happens every time.
You left out Larry Kudlow, and the Chicago School. I guess that when you are old enough to collect Social Security and Medicare, you will refuse it based on your conscience.
You must have missed the part about me being 73. I began collecting social security at the first possible opportunity, and have been on Medicare for a while. And, my conscience is just fine.
When Social Security was established a number of promises were made, all of which have since been broken. The program was known to have a projected surplus for nearly seventy years, which had to be hoarded because it was in danger of having a huge deficit after that point. In the 1960s Johnson brought social security "on budget," meaning that its artificial surplus could be spent to buy votes. Members of congress from both parties jumped at the chance to use free money to get themselves re-elected. Nixon's sin was worse. He knew that by about 2005 we'd tip from surplus into deficit, but did nothing about it.
Had he taken Social Security, and then Medicare, back off-budget, we'd have the funds to weather the storm. But it was spent for special favors, special tax breaks, everybody was special. I argued to acknowledge the Emperor had no clothes, but I wasn't important. The first politician to try to point out the problem was Bob Dole in 1996. Clinton ran scare commercials bout how Dole and the Republicans wanted to take away your social security, and Clinton's margin of victory among seniors was more than 100% of his total winning edge. After he was safely re-elected, he called Dole, told him he had known all along that Dole was correct, but hey, it's politics, now would Dole lead a panel to fix the problem Clinton had denied existed?
Dole's response is not recorded, but I suspect it was primarily four-letter words. I'm a Bill Clinton fan, by the way, because he took advantage of the peace dividend bequeathed him by G.H.W. Bush and the victory over inflation courtesy of Reagan, and then added the toughest thing President can do in the face of a good economy: nothing. He got out of the way and didn't try to manage the economy and we had eight great years.
It's not enough to live through momentous events; you also have to pay attention.