Ghostly Apparition on 20/9/2008 at 02:48
In light of the financial crisis this last week, I was just wondering how conservatives view the events. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the Republicans the ones always saying how they believe in small Government, that government is the problem and that they were the ones in favor of deregulation? That government should get out of the way of business and the financial markets?
IF that's true why all of a sudden is the government bailing out the ENTIRE
financial markets? The same Government that was the problem all this time is now suddenly the savior? The government has to bail their sorry asses out of the mess they've got us in?
The government is planning to buy up all the bad loans to the tune of 500 billion dollars to possibly even a trillion.
I want my money back.:wot:
BEAR on 20/9/2008 at 02:49
Quote Posted by Ko0K
but if this was back in the 1800s, we'd be chopping each other's heads off by now.
Its early yet.
Gryzemuis on 20/9/2008 at 15:03
Quote Posted by heywood
But anyway, your argument seems to be:
McCain is a Republican
Bush is a Republican
Therefore, McCain = Bush
Yep. They are nominated by the same party. They share the same political background. I don't believe a single senator has enough potential candidates for all important jobs so he can replace all neocons, or keep em from having power.
Quote:
I guess if your view on the different streams within the Republican party is that they range from very bad to truly evil, then I can see where that's coming from. But I don't agree with it and I can't argue with somebody who only sees party.
Of course there are small differences between people inside a party. But on major issues, they will be very similar. A good example is health care and politics on financials. Both Bush and McCain want to deregulate them. This week we've seen how that works out. Check out this article from the NYT.
(
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/mccain-on-banking-and-health/)
In this month's issue of some magazine, McCain says:
Quote Posted by McCain
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
Really, if you vote for the Republican McCain, you're gonna get the same soup as what you got when you voted for the Republican Bush. The differences will be minimal.
Gingerbread Man on 20/9/2008 at 15:50
Quote Posted by Ghostly Apparition
Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the Republicans the ones always saying how they believe in small Government, that government is the problem and that they were the ones in favor of deregulation? That government should get out of the way of business and the financial markets?
This is one of the prime reasons why I think anyone who claims to be a Republican
and a supporter of the Bush administration is either lying, ignorant of what the traditional values of the Republican Party have been / of what the obvious values of the latest crop of Republicans have been, or just plain stupid.
I just figure that if Republicans were now what Republicans have typically always been, there would have been absolutely no need for a Libertarian party other than to placate the real wingnuts.
heretic on 20/9/2008 at 17:27
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
This is one of the prime reasons why I think anyone who claims to be a Republican
and a supporter of the Bush administration is either lying, ignorant of what the traditional values of the Republican Party have been / of what the obvious values of the latest crop of Republicans have been, or just plain stupid.
I just figure that if Republicans were now what Republicans have typically always been, there would have been absolutely no need for a Libertarian party other than to placate the real wingnuts.
Agreed,
-and I wish we could repeal dropping the gold standard and wrestle the GOP from the religious right/neocon's grip, but what's done is done.
This is hardly a recent development regardless, as the GOP has been heading this direction for well on forty years.
It's sad that the Libertarian party (which is the only one that still carries the torch of our constitution) is so often decried as a laughing stock.
paloalto90 on 20/9/2008 at 17:52
Not all Republicans are Conservatives.In fact more and more cannot be classified as such.Certainly not Bush on his economic policies and spending.
There isn't enough gold to go back on the gold standard and cover the expanding money supply.I say lets go back to greenbacks!
heretic on 20/9/2008 at 18:15
Quote Posted by paloalto90
Not all Republicans are Conservatives.In fact more and more cannot be classified as such.Certainly not Bush on his economic policies and spending.
There isn't enough gold to go back on the gold standard and cover the expanding money supply.I say lets go back to greenbacks!
If one is not a conservative* then what is it that attracts one to the Republican party since they shat away their fiscal responsibility and self-governance ideals before most of us here were even born?
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the
things they say more often than I do with the Democrats, but it is
what they do that is important...and they sure as hell don't practice what they preach.
Edit: *To clarify, I meant social conservatives. This sort has grown exponentially within the party even as it has largely abandoned any semblance of fiscal conservatism.
Fuck the whole bag anyhow, I'm decided bitches.Inline Image:
http://i432.photobucket.com/albums/qq41/dgn75/Cthulhu08.jpgheywood on 20/9/2008 at 19:30
Quote Posted by Ghostly Apparition
In light of the financial crisis this last week, I was just wondering how conservatives view the events. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't the Republicans the ones always saying how they believe in small Government, that government is the problem and that they were the ones in favor of deregulation? That government should get out of the way of business and the financial markets?
IF that's true why all of a sudden is the government bailing out the ENTIRE
financial markets? The same Government that was the problem all this time is now suddenly the savior? The government has to bail their sorry asses out of the mess they've got us in?
The government is planning to buy up all the bad loans to the tune of 500 billion dollars to possibly even a trillion.
I want my money back.:wot:
Well, I'm not a Republican and not really a conservative either. I'm more of a pragmatist, but my basic values are libertarian and I'm probably more of an economic conservative than most people here. So I'll answer.
The government's response to this crisis has me infuriated. For one thing, this is going to be a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers of all income levels to cover the losses of very wealthy individuals and institutional investors. And a massive transfer of risk - the federal government just became the biggest speculative investor of them all. Also, preventing over-valued markets from correcting is absolutely the wrong thing to do. Japan did this and it resulted in a decade of stagnation.
Regarding regulation - I'm not opposed to it. I do believe that regulation is required to keep markets healthy (how much depends on the market). So I'm open to changing regulatory rules for financial services companies, like restrictions on mortgage lending for example. But bailouts plus regulation won't do a damn thing to suppress demand for high risk, high return investments. If anything, it will encourage more speculation while giving us a false sense of security.
As I said a few days ago, I believe the Fed's loose monetary policy has been fueling the speculation that's caused boom and bust in market after market for the last 20 years. We want to have enough capital available for investment that new businesses can start and existing ones can grow. But when there's more capital available than there are low to moderate risk investment opportunities, the excess goes into high risk speculative investments. It looks like the Fed is going to keep interest rates low and not touch the reserve requirement for banks. That's just going to keep the problem of speculative investing going.
One last point: many on the left are pointing the finger at banking deregulation (specifically Gramm-Leach-Bliley in 1999) as the cause of the problem. This act repealed the portion of Glass-Steagall which separated commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers. But of the financial institutions that either failed or are being bailed out, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch were strictly investment banks and AIG was primarily an insurer. On the other hand, "full service" institutions like Citigroup seem to be weathering the storm. So I'm not buying their argument.
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
This is one of the prime reasons why I think anyone who claims to be a Republican
and a supporter of the Bush administration is either lying, ignorant of what the traditional values of the Republican Party have been / of what the obvious values of the latest crop of Republicans have been, or just plain stupid.
I just figure that if Republicans were now what Republicans have typically always been, there would have been absolutely no need for a Libertarian party other than to placate the real wingnuts.
You need to talk to LittleFlower.
Ko0K on 20/9/2008 at 20:39
Quote Posted by heywood
Well, I'm not a Republican
That's pretty hard be believe, considering how good a job you are doing at impersonating a wingnut.
Starrfall on 20/9/2008 at 22:34
McCain, on his 2000 run in his book "Worth the Fighting For":
Quote:
"I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I'd had the ambition for a long time."
McCain would go on to lie about his feelings regarding the confederate flag. Here's what he said about that:
Quote:
"I had promised to tell the truth no matter what," (McCain wrote in the book) "When I broke it, I had not just been dishonest, I had been a coward, and I had severed my own interests from my country's. That was what made the lie unforgivable."
Here's excerpts from an analysis of a recent McCain ad, for one of many examples of the lies he's telling this time around:
Quote:
The ad claims Obama will raise taxes on electricity. He hasn't proposed any such tax. Obama does support a cap-and-trade policy that would raise the costs of electricity, but so does McCain.
It falsely claims he would tax home heating oil. Actually, Obama proposed a rebate of up to $1,000 per family to defray increased heating oil costs, funded by what he calls a windfall profits tax on oil companies.
So it's safe to say that the old John McCain would think that the new John McCain is a self-serving coward.
