At the very time the voters were saying a firm NO to the tax and spend policies that got the state into this mess, Mr. Schwarzenegger was in Washington D.C. He was there to celebrate President Obama's announcement of tough new national auto emissions and fuel-efficiency standards but I wonder if he was also laying the groundwork to ask for a taxpayer funded bailout for his state.
My question is this: Does the US government have the constitutional authority to foist the debt of California upon the other 49 states? A US government bailout of a California debt default would do exactly that.California Treasurer Bill Lockyer petitioned U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to arrange for the federal government to become a standby purchaser of the short-term loans in the event of default.
One wonders if the unions have figured out which of their folk they need to throw overboard to keep the leaking lifeboat on the top of the water.Bravo Californians.
Perhaps it will finally give the state govt. the nerve to stand up to the public employees unions.
My question is this: Does the US government have the constitutional authority to foist the debt of California upon the other 49 states? A US government bailout of a California debt default would do exactly that.
I hope the President and the Democrats in Congress are paying close attention to the financial disaster that is California. They need to realize their own obscene spending spree over the past few months is what leads to this kind of problem. And if the voters in the most liberal state in the country won't shut up and pay for it, you can bet the rest of the country won't either.
In yesterday's special election the voters of California rejected five of six propositions that were supposed to close the state's budget deficit but most likely would have only postponed the inevitable. Hard to believe but voters just did not want to pay more taxes to bail out years of their state government's irresponsible spending.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had pressed for passage of the propositions by saying without the proposed measures education and healthcare services would be drastically cut and inmates would be released from the state's prisons. Despite this fear mongering, the voters decided that their elected officials will have to govern within their means.
Or not.
At the very time the voters were saying a firm NO to the tax and spend policies that got the state into this mess, Mr. Schwarzenegger was in Washington D.C. He was there to celebrate President Obama's announcement of tough new national auto emissions and fuel-efficiency standards but I wonder if he was also laying the groundwork to ask for a taxpayer funded bailout for his state.
I hope the President and the Democrats in Congress are paying close attention to the financial disaster that is California. They need to realize their own obscene spending spree over the past few months is what leads to this kind of problem. And if the voters in the most liberal state in the country won't shut up and pay for it, you can bet the rest of the country won't either.
A poor premise. It's more accurate to accuse rightists of usage of ultimately inefficient fiscal instruments, in light of Reagan's military Keynesianism. That said, as a consistent socialist, I'm willing to oppose liberals just as much as the next person. Their ability to ensure macroeconomic stability in the capitalist economy is problematic.
I needed waders for this pile of illegible pile of Leftist bile. Using made up terminology doesn't make your uninformed rhetoric any more credible.
You are hardly a mere Socialist; a better description is Communist. It definitely defies logic that anyone in this day and age would still be prescribing to such a failed political philosophy. It requires either willful ignorance or the willful suspension of disbelief, OR, being massively ignorant of the historic record.
:roll:
too bad right wingers don't understand the terms communist, socialist, nor fascist. It's ridiculous when you guys spout off.
It's unfortunate that California cares little about its teachers, infrastructure, etc. I know Texas doesn't give a crap about it, that's for sure.
as a noob, i suggest you read up on the Breaking News RulesIn yesterday's special election the voters of California rejected five of six propositions that were supposed to close the state's budget deficit but most likely would have only postponed the inevitable. Hard to believe but voters just did not want to pay more taxes to bail out years of their state government's irresponsible spending.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had pressed for passage of the propositions by saying without the proposed measures education and healthcare services would be drastically cut and inmates would be released from the state's prisons. Despite this fear mongering, the voters decided that their elected officials will have to govern within their means.
Or not.
At the very time the voters were saying a firm NO to the tax and spend policies that got the state into this mess, Mr. Schwarzenegger was in Washington D.C. He was there to celebrate President Obama's announcement of tough new national auto emissions and fuel-efficiency standards but I wonder if he was also laying the groundwork to ask for a taxpayer funded bailout for his state.
I hope the President and the Democrats in Congress are paying close attention to the financial disaster that is California. They need to realize their own obscene spending spree over the past few months is what leads to this kind of problem. And if the voters in the most liberal state in the country won't shut up and pay for it, you can bet the rest of the country won't either.
as a noob, i suggest you read up on the Breaking News Rules
for one thing you posted no article content or a link to said article.
doubt they would give points because you are new, but i have been gigged for not including a link in Breaking News
Extremely insightful question; I see no provision in the Constitution that allows Congress to "transfer" such a debt. Of course the Constitution, which governs the Union, was never intended for such duties. We are a Union of Independent States with their own sovereignty.Somebody sure is:
California Rejects Schwarzenegger?s Budget Measures
My question is this: Does the US government have the constitutional authority to foist the debt of California upon the other 49 states? A US government bailout of a California debt default would do exactly that.
I needed waders for this pile of illegible pile of Leftist bile. Using made up terminology doesn't make your uninformed rhetoric any more credible.
You are hardly a mere Socialist; a better description is Communist. It definitely defies logic that anyone in this day and age would still be prescribing to such a failed political philosophy. It requires either willful ignorance or the willful suspension of disbelief, OR, being massively ignorant of the historic record.
:roll:
as a noob, i suggest you read up on the Breaking News Rules
for one thing you posted no article content or a link to said article.
doubt they would give points because you are new, but i have been gigged for not including a link in Breaking News
than it does not even belong in breaking news, now does it?Uh...that isn't from a news source, DJH. She presumably wrote it herself.
And it is equally ironic when "Left Wingers" are called on their Communistic views that rail about the subtle differences between Socialist and Fascist.
Bottom line; all three are very similar in that they require a one party rule mentality and usurpation of freedoms, civil rights and to centralize control to the politicians. They are political ideals that lead to the loss of civil liberties and forcing mediocrity onto their citizens.
Oh, also...
This is simply a flagrant abuse of political theory and economy. Fascism and socialism are rather distinct from each other, and in many cases, are outright conflicting ideologies. To consider the elements of fascist political and cultural ideology and economy, we might look at Umberto Eco's conception of "Eternal Fascism," or Zanden's Pareto and Fascism Reconsidered, for instance.
Firstly, as Zanden puts it, "[O]bedience, discipline, faith and a religious belief in the cardinal tenets of the Fascist creed are put forth as the supreme values of a perfect Fascist. Individual thinking along creative lines is discouraged. What is wanted is not brains, daring ideas, or speculative faculties, but character pressed in the mold of Fascism." This is not consistent with the socialist principle of elimination of alienation as defined by Marx's The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Such elimination necessitates revolutionary class consciousness, which obviously conflicts with "obedience, discipline, faith, etc." Revolutionary class consciousness is also rather inconsistent with the "cult of tradition" identified by Eco as an integral tenet of Eternal Fascism. "[T]here can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message."
From an insistence on revolutionary class consciousness comes opposition to class itself on the part of the socialist. This is egregiously contradictory to the elitism that constitutes a core tenet of fascism. As Eco writes, "[e]litism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism."
Fascism also has a necessarily anti-democratic nature. As Zanden notes, "the mass of men is created to be governed and not to govern; is created to be led and not to lead, and is created, finally, to be slaves and not masters: slaves of their animal instincts, their physiological needs, their emotions, and their passions." Similarly, Eco writes that "the Leader, knowing his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler." This strongly conflicts with the participatory elements of socialism, as it necessitates the collective ownership of the means of production. For instance, Noam Chomsky notes that libertarian socialism is "based on free voluntary participation of people who produce and create, live their lives freely within institutions they control and with limited hierarchical structures, possibly none at all." Other forms of socialism are of course necessarily democratic at the very least.
I have seen many such treatises attempting to distance Fascism from Socialism but if we seperate the idealistic beliefs of either ideal and we look at BOTH in actual practice, we find little that differentiates the two.
Hitler’s Fascism was not that far off from Soviet Communism; both political ideals wanted to dominate the world; both were repressive SINGLE party regimes; both preached about the common man/woman citizen; both repressed religion and freedom of expression; both had vast secret services which intimidated their societies and prevented many from escaping their repression; the list is LONG and there are many other similarities.
When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction...The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood. Not only the masses, but even the Party must be subject to "vigilant control from above," so Trotsky held as he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to State priest. Before seizing State power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the rhetoric of people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from below, but their true commitments were quite different. This was evident before and became crystal clear as they assumed State power in October 1917.
Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name. The influx and taking over of the people by the 'party,' that is, predominantly the newcomers (the ideological communists are more in the urban centers), has already destroyed the influence and constructive energy of this promising institution - the soviets. At present, it is the party committees, not the soviets, who rule in Russia. And their organization suffers from the defects of bureaucratic organization. To move away from the current disorder, Russia must return to the creative genius of local forces which, as I see it, can be a factor in the creation of a new life.And the sooner that the necessity of this way is understood, the better. People will then be all the more likely to accept [new] social forms of life. If the present situation continues, the very word 'socialism' will turn into a curse. That is what happened to the conception of equality in France for forty years after the rule of the Jacobins.
Idealists of all kinds – metaphysicians, positivists, those who support the rule of science over life, doctrinaire revolutionists – all defend the idea of state and state power with equal eloquence, because they see in it, as a consequence of their own systems, the only salvation for society...This fiction of a pseudo-representative government serves to conceal the domination of the masses by a handful of privileged elite; an elite elected by hordes of people who are rounded up and do not know for whom or for what they vote. Upon this artificial and abstract expression of what they falsely imagine to be the will of the people and of which the real living people have not the least idea, they construct both the theory of statism as well as the theory of so-called revolutionary dictatorship.
The differences between revolutionary dictatorship and statism are superficial. Fundamentally they both represent the same principle of minority rule over the majority in the name of the alleged “stupidity” of the latter and the alleged “intelligence” of the former. Therefore they are both equally reactionary since both directly and inevitably must preserve and perpetuate the political and economic privileges of the ruling minority and the political and economic subjugation of the masses of the people.
Now it is clear why the dictatorial revolutionists, who aim to overthrow the existing powers and social structures in order to erect upon their ruins their own dictatorships, never were or will be the enemies of government, but, to the contrary, always will be the most ardent promoters of the government idea. They are the enemies only of contemporary governments, because they wish to replace them. They are the enemies of the present governmental structure, because it excludes the possibility of their dictatorship. At the same time they are the most devoted friends of governmental power. For if the revolution destroyed this power by actually freeing the masses, it would deprive this pseudo-revolutionary minority of any hope to harness the masses in order to make them the beneficiaries of their own government policy.
We have already expressed several times our deep aversion to the theory of Lassalle and Marx, which recommends to the workers, if not as a final ideal at least as the next immediate goal, the founding of a people’s state, which according to their interpretation will be nothing but “the proletariat elevated to the status of the governing class.”
Private property in the industry of the Third Reich is often considered a mere nominal provision without much substance. However, that is not correct, because firms, despite the rationing and licensing activities of the state, still had ample scope to devise their own production and investment profiles. Even regarding war-related projects, freedom of contract was generally respected; instead of using power, the state offered firms a number of contract options to choose from. There were several motives behind this attitude of the regime, among them the conviction that private property provided important incentives for increasing efficiency.
This paper examines the value of connections between German industry and the Nazi movement in early 1933. Drawing on previously unused contemporary sources about management and supervisory board composition and stock returns, we find that one out of seven firms, and a large proportion of the biggest companies, had substantive links with the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Firms supporting the Nazi movement experienced unusually high returns, outperforming unconnected ones by 5% to 8% between January and March 1933. These results are not driven by sectoral composition and are robust to alternative estimators and definitions of affiliation.
The reason Capitalism trumps all other of man’s idealistic political endeavors and fantastical notions about what constitutes the ideal Government is the "human" factor.
On paper Communism looks terrific to some, it has NEVER appealed to me, but in actual practice the temptation to corrupt those ideals to elevate one's own economic conditions and power over his fellow man supersedes the desire to follow the ideology. In other words, human nature trumps the ideology; which is why Communism is such a failure.
Only Capitalism understands the desire and greed of man. Capitalism doesn't care if you are black or white, if you are rich or poor, whether you are man or woman or where you came from; it only cares about bringing two parties together in an agreement to exchange goods or services.
The founders of the United States realized that if the proper Democratic principles and laws were designed to take advantage of such a Capitalist idea, it had a chance for successfully creating a great and free society.
The most ironic thing I see today are people who denigrate this ideal and treat it as if it is some kind of evil. I blame this on the systems of education we see in the Western hemisphere which is infested by teachers who carry the dark seed of Socialism within them and attempt to plant/indoctrinate it into their students through their teachings.
But REALITY trumps idealism and the best friend we have is the historic record. It is the ONLY thing we can look at and point to the abject failure of all other ideologies. The USA form of Democracy is a shining beacon to the world for those who wish to truly free their societies and provide them with the tools for peaceful coexistence and prosperity.
The ONLY thing that can destroy that which has developed into the most diverse, powerful and free nation in the world is our own ignorance of what it is that makes it so great; it wasn't political correctedness and it certainly wasn't creation of a Government that is the people's nanny.
[The government] possesses some unique features that distinguish it from the firm. Such features allows the government to regulate competition, reduce uncertainty and provide a relatively stable exchange environment. Specifically, in the area of industrial policy, the government can help private enterprises tackle uncertainty in the following ways: first, locating the focal point by initiating projects; providing assurance and guarantees to the large investment project; and facilitating the exchange of information; second, reducing excessive competition by granting exclusive rights; and third, facilitating learning and diffusion of technologies, and assisting infant industry firms to build up competence. The history of developmental success indicates that the market and the state are not opposed forms of social organisation, but interactively linked (Rodrik, 1997, p. 437). In the prospering and dynamic nations, public-private coordination tends to prevail. Dynamic private enterprises assisted by government coordination explain the successful economic performances in the post-war Japan and the Asian newly industrialising economies. It is their governments' consistent and coordinated attentiveness to the economic problems that differentiates the entrepreneurial states (Yu, 1997) from the predatory states (Boaz and Polak, 1997).
I am always amazed how easily the gullible, uninformed, uneducated are willing to give up their freedoms to some political ideal that promises nothing more than to take away choice and reduce everyone to the same mediocre outcomes. Then allowing these political leaders, who are only interested in maintaining their political power, to turn them into slaves working for more than six or even eight months of the year to send their paltry wages to this vast Government bureaucracy in the FALSE belief that ONLY a huge and vast Government can provide for man's well being when all along it is us as individuals given the freedom and legal framework to decide for ourselves what it is WE think is in our own best interests that can do it.
The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid.
Right now thanks to a lack of education, but in many cases thanks TO a poor education, we are watching the United States become that which the founders feared the most; a Community Organizing States of America where the differences between the major political parties become blurred and where the citizens are actually gullible enough to want to believe that politicians can solve all their societal and economic needs. I rue the day that I should live long enough to see this occur. But at the pace we have recently seen, it might actually occur during my generation and not my children’s.
Unlike you I did not need to READ someone's ideas about what I believe in or cut and paste them here; these are my own thoughts based on my experience, knowledge of history and education which fortunately at the college level occurred when I was more mature and experienced so that I could put my lessons in context of REALITY.
Sorry for the treatise, but you asked for it. I close with this; show me ONE REAL instance where Communism has or is actually working better than the system we have in the United States. If we honestly look at Fascist regimes along side of Communist regimes in the historical sense, what we see is little difference in the real outcomes of both extremes.
In Spain, during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties . . . this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was very quickly collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganised and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high-salaried managers, or the authority of the state.
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