Thread: The Myth About the High Cost of Regulations

Originally Posted by pudge

If our right-wing friends prefer welfare for corporations, it beggars the mind to consider what our left-wing friends want for private enterprise.

America's left-wing today has more in common with the Republicans of yesteryear.

Look at Teddy Roosevelt. A progressive conservative if there ever was one. His "Square Deal" actually reads like something Obama would pass.

Have your read the Progressive Caucus deficit proposal? The savings were just as significant as the Republican deal only the Progressive Caucus proposal hurt the least amount of people as possible.

They propose immediately doing away with the Bush tax cuts on the top 2%. Mainstream America wants that.

They propose making the capital gains tax more equitable so that it reflects at least the average tax rate of a middle class person. That's a no-brainer, the majority want that.

They propose significant cuts in corporate welfare. The majority are for that.

They propose fair and equitable cuts to the size of gov't, done with an ice pick and not a jack hammer.

They propose hundreds of billions in cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Nobody's for that except Republicans and even the Republicans said no to that, go figure.

A surcharge on millionaires and billionaires that is modest enough that they won't feel it, but meaningful to tens of millions of citizens who need help urgently. A modest increase in taxes in bad times when some are doing better than at any other time in US history while tens of millions are either hungry or hungry for work is a patriotic sacrifice made to help form a more perfect union. A team is as strong as it's weakest link. Those hit the worst during the crash are middle-age people who had been working for quite some time, but now either find themselves totally unqualified for anything else or over-qualified for what there is. These are people that want to work.

Now, if you're telling me that it makes me a left-winger because I think the gov't can utilize its power to get 10 million people working again in the next 2 years, than I'm happy to be called a left-winger.

What's silly is that a right-winger no longer believes that good government is possible. They don't believe it can be made to run well, to help us instead of assisting in hurting us. They believe everything the gov't touches turns to shit. I think the average Republican voter today would be thrilled if a Republican majority could essentially close the federal gov't, give everybody a refund, and let us take care of ourselves.

I'm sorry, but it doesn't make me a left-winger because I'm uneasy about the fact that Republicans would prefer I live in 1872, you know, before there were laws protecting children from the abuses they had been facing in the workplace.

It also doesn't make me a left-winger because I think government can actually help to do big things. Or that it can be run efficiently.

The Progressive Caucus proposal was the most sensible proposal out there, and it's the kind of stuff Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower stood for.

About half the Democrats in congress today are where the center-right was 40 years ago and before that.

You have to raise as much revenue as what you cut. That's the only way out of this mess. A two-pronged approach. That's not a left-wing or right-wing issue because it's fair and balanced.

The free market works better when laws are enforced that protect average citizens from the rot we have seen in our capitalist system, rot that extends over to the federal gov't.

Glass-Steagall was working perfectly fine for America. A worthy and noble trait of being a conservative is that you're naturally apprehensive about seeing big changes. You prefer steadiness over flightiness; certainty over fickleness. Therefore, it is not conservative in any sense to allow Wall Street to write its own rules and then have paid automatons in congress passing these things into law. Letting that happen isn't conservative; it's decidedly a liberal thing to do. To say, "there you go, we wash our hands clean of this, let this do what it will, it must be free on its own terms", that's liberal! That's neo-liberalism economic philosophy. Only in America, conservatives call it conservatism.

There's nothing to beggar the mind about the left's plans for private enterprise, except that the main difference I see is that they are against corporate-socialism while Republicans are steadfast in their protection of corporate welfare. It's just another strange, bizarro issue in America where the left-wing is actually calling for conservatism while the right shouts for a neo-liberal ideology.

There is plenty of irony and hypocrisy from conservatives on this pipeline. Conservatives preach State's rights, local government and severe limits on the federal government. The groundswell of resistance to this pipeline is AT the local and State level. The debates are going on at town board meetings and within local groups. These are the citizens that will have to sleep with this pipeline. Yet conservatives want the feds to dictate.

Originally Posted by Jason Marcel

There's nothing to beggar the mind about the left's plans for private enterprise, except that the main difference I see is that they are against corporate-socialism while Republicans are steadfast in their protection of corporate welfare. It's just another strange, bizarro issue in America where the left-wing is actually calling for conservatism while the right shouts for a neo-liberal ideology.

Um, the left is against corporate welfare? News to me. GM, TARP, Solyndra. Heck, even OWS, when they put out their list of demands, #2 was for more corporate welfare.

Originally Posted by adaher

Um, the left is against corporate welfare? News to me. GM, TARP, Solyndra. Heck, even OWS, when they put out their list of demands, #2 was for more corporate welfare.

Link?

Originally Posted by adaher

Um, the left is against corporate welfare? News to me. GM, TARP, Solyndra. Heck, even OWS, when they put out their list of demands, #2 was for more corporate welfare.

What does any of that have to do with "the left?" You've already stipulated the dems are a conservative party. As for OWS what exactly is their #2 demand? I don't recall any call for corporate welfare.

Green jobs program. Green jobs programs are corporate welfare. Have been for 40 years.

Originally Posted by adaher

Green jobs program. Green jobs programs are corporate welfare. Have been for 40 years.

I'll take your word for it. I suppose a desire to shift corporate welfare from oil companies to green technology can be seen as supporting corporate welfare. In any case you make a good point that the left is not anti business.

The left is anti successful business. Businesses that are failing are good and should be supported, by taking money away from the successful businesses.

Originally Posted by adaher

Green jobs program. Green jobs programs are corporate welfare. Have been for 40 years.

I guess the space program was corporate welfare. BTW, where is the link for "OWS, when they put out their list of demands, #2 was for more corporate welfare."

Originally Posted by adaher

The left is anti successful business. Businesses that are failing are good and should be supported, by taking money away from the successful businesses.

Virtually everybody in Congress voted for those bipartisan measures to save millions of jobs, and it occurred under a Republican president. This "left" of yours is almost completely non-existent.

Originally Posted by adaher

Um, the left is against corporate welfare? News to me. GM, TARP, Solyndra. Heck, even OWS, when they put out their list of demands, #2 was for more corporate welfare.

That is because they aren't "left" at all. One again, all of these measures were approved by a vast majority of Congress. Furthermore, the Solyndra loan dates back to GWB and the Energy Policy Act of 2005:

Solyndra Hearing: Blame It On Bush, Say Obama Officials - ABC News

After spending months touting the Obama administration's decision to loan $535 million to the California solar energy upstart Solyndra, top officials took a new tack Wednesday while testifying before Congress about the company's abrupt shut-down and bankruptcy: the loan, they said, was actually the Bush administration's idea. The Energy Department's top lending officer told Congress that the Solyndra loan application was not only filed during President Bush's term, but it surged towards completion before Obama took office in January 2009.

"By the time the Obama administration took office in late January 2009, the loan programs' staff had already established a goal of, and timeline for, issuing the company a conditional loan guarantee commitment in March 2009," said Jonathan Silver, who heads the Energy loan program.

What is really ironic to me is that granted the Solyndra loan was a bad idea that likely should have never been approved. But it cost each taxpayer approximately $4. Big whoop.

And I can't find any mention about "green jobs" and OWS. What exactly is a "green job" anyway? A clean energy job? What is to terrible about that? Don't you think that the US should be spending huge amounts of R&D dollars trying to find more effective means of energy generation than oil and coal?

Many of your political positions and rhetoric represent the extreme right. Most Tea Partyers aren't that conservative. Most Republican congressmen aren't that conservative. Merely because they disagree with your personal opinions doesn't make them "leftists". It makes them slighlty less conservative than you.

Originally Posted by adaher

The left is anti successful business. Businesses that are failing are good and should be supported, by taking money away from the successful businesses.

Of course. I guess that's because they hate america.

Originally Posted by timj219

Wow do you really own 3 TVs? My wife talks about buying a second one sometimes but I can't see the sense in it.

Yep. One in the family room, where we spend much of our time. One in the bedroom and one in a guest room. Actually, I also have one in my den, but it's an old tube type and it doesn't get much use.

A typical leftist rant, having no value in today's world. Who cares what TR espoused 100 years ago? If the government could use its power to get 10 million people to work in the next 2 years, why has it failed to do so in the last 3 years?

Nope. A litany of "progressive" talking points. Much sound and fury... well, you know the rest.