Originally Posted by B Butler

But is it really and truly a lie if they sincerely with their whole hearts believe it? If their world view renders them entirely incapable of perceiving Reality as liberals know it, how does this effect how big a sin of lying they are committing when they attempt to speak on political issues?

It's not a case of relativism.

People are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts.

They filter out facts through their own faulty belief system to arrive at what appears to be rational conclusions, at least to them. But what that represents is either intellectual laziness or ideological blindness to actually address the facts. That is lying to themselves and then foisting the mythical results onto the rest of us.

Originally Posted by B Butler

But is it really and truly a lie if they sincerely with their whole hearts believe it?

A lie? No.

But it isn't true, either.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No businesses exist that were formed before the laws I'm talking about were passed. All businesses that were formed since those laws were passed are shaped by them.

This goes back a long way, but not to before civilization and laws existed. Consider a Medieval one-person cottage-industry type business, say a self-employed weaver.

The weaver invests the capital: he buys a loom, thread, and whatever else is needed to make cloth.

The weaver also does the work: he makes cloth on his loom out of his thread and sells it.

The weaver owns the cloth and so owns the proceeds of sale of the cloth. But does he own it because he invests the capital, or because he does the work? The question doesn't arise, because he is the source of both capital and labor.

When we separate the two, as in modern businesses, though, the question does arise -- and the law answers it. Ownership goes to the owners of capital. But there's nothing in nature that requires this (nature comes with no title deeds at all). The law specifies this, and it is at the heart of the capitalist system.

Government creates capitalism.

This is true in one sense (the governement charters corporations, and allows them to exist as faux people), but it's not true in another sense. Corporatins are not owned by their shareolders. They are legal entities, and own themselves. Stock is merely a contract between legal entitites where the corporation agrees to share its profits with capital holders. That this relationship is not all that well defined speaks of the murky beginnings of the corporation. The movement to "maximize shareholder value" was a product of the Chicago school of eonomics, but is not and never has been mandated by law. Lynn Stout wrote a great piece about this in the LA Times.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

This is true in one sense (the governement charters corporations, and allows them to exist as faux people), but it's not true in another sense. Corporatins are not owned by their shareolders. They are legal entities, and own themselves.

That's not relevant to what I was saying here. (I also don't think it's true; the shareholders do own the corporation. They the corporation is a separate legal entity means only that the shareholders are not the corporation, not that they don't own it.)

What I'm talking about isn't even who owns a company -- it's who owns what the company makes. Let's forget corporate structure for a moment.

Say you buy a hammer. Having done this, you own the hammer. That's common sense. But do you also own anything anyone uses the hammer to build? In common sense, that isn't true. Say you lend the hammer to your next-door neighbor. The hammer is still yours: your neighbor is obligated to give it back. But if the neighbor uses your hammer to build a shed, that doesn't make the shed yours.

Yet that's the logic that applies to ownership of whatever a company produces for sale.

Consider a manufacturing company, say a clothing manufacturer. The investors of capital purchase a space, equipment, and materials for making clothes. By the same common-sense logic applied to the hammer, these capitalists own the equipment and materials, and either own or (if renting) have use rights to the space. But then they hire people to come in and use all that to make clothing. It is not common sense that they, rather than the people who do the work, own the clothing produced.

The law says they do, however. The people who do the work are legally entitled to nothing, except what the company offers them to do that work. All ownership of wealth produced is held by those who invested the capital. No ownership at all goes to those who do the work.

There is no common-sense or natural-justice reason why it should be this way. It could just as easily be that the whole thing was reversed: ownership goes to those who do the work, and those who invest the capital are entitled only to an agreed-upon payment (say to be made after sale of the merchandise) for use of their capital equipment and materials.

The law that says the owners of capital own all the wealth produced with that capital is the foundation of capitalism. Capitalism could not exist without it. Limited liability and corporate ownership are important to capitalism, but not as crucial as the law that says ownership of wealth follows capital.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The discussion of how the crisis developed is a separate subject, which includes the Democratic Party's refusal to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the CRA, and so forth. Politicians of both parties for years encouraged home ownership, and in some cases (mostly Democrats) strong-armed banks into giving loans to risky buyers with easy terms, which investment banks then bundled into securities as a solution for spreading the risk -- all of which was done under the explicit understanding that if anything went wrong, the government would be there to bail everyone out. Which is exactly what happened. If that's what you mean by "Bush policies", I'll give you partial credit. Bush did encourage home ownership, but he also tried to reform Fannie and Freddie, and the Democrats blocked it. The policies that caused the Crisis were Clinton policies as well as Bush policies. If Romney wants to prop that scheme back up, he can rightly be said to be "continuing Bush policies". If what you mean by Bush policies is low taxes and deregulation, you have no leg to stand on in the first case, and in the second case, you only have an argument where Wall Street is concerned. Not the rest of the economy. But the Dodd-Frank bill has been passed, and all that did was to fix in cement the current standing of the big investment banks, making them even more "too big to fail" than they were to begin with.

The other main cause of the problem was Federal Reserve policy. Interest rates were kept too low for too long. Guess what the result of low interest rates is? People are incentivized to borrow money.

In all of those regards, we don't need to elect Romney to continue Bush policy, because Obama has already continued Bush policy. He replaced one Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary with another, and retained Bush's Fed chairman. Obama and the Democrats supported TARP more strongly than the Republicans did. So what exactly are the "policies that got us into this mess" that Obama has abandoned and Romney would bring back? None, because Obama has continued them all. That rhetorical phrase is a bait-and-switch, intended to suggest that low taxes and deregulation of industry was somehow responsible for the crisis, which is ridiculous and completely divorced from reality. Considering how often he uses the phrase "the last 30 years", Obama is clearly trying to blame Ronald Reagan for the real estate bubble, which is outright lunacy, that only a complete idiot could fall for.

The question at hand for this election, however, is not how the crisis started, but how to fix the economy, and whether Obama has done anything to fix it. We know the answer, after four years. He is an absolute, abject failure. Period. End of story.

I see you have stuck to your narrative, the facts be damned. I won't go to the trouble of, once again, disproving all of this. Ill just note that it didn't pass without notice.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Consider a manufacturing company, say a clothing manufacturer. The investors of capital purchase a space, equipment, and materials for making clothes. By the same common-sense logic applied to the hammer, these capitalists own the equipment and materials, and either own or (if renting) have use rights to the space. But then they hire people to come in and use all that to make clothing. It is not common sense that they, rather than the people who do the work, own the clothing produced.

In the above usage, one might say 'common sense' equates with 'fits with my worldview.' An idealist extremist saying something that is common to universal to a given culture is not 'common sense' is just announcing he has an unusual worldview.

Will you admit that the notion that factory workers own the products produce by the factory is an unusual idea not common in law, economics, morality or western cultural traditions? If you are saying it does not make common sense to you, might you actually be saying that you lack common sense? What makes sense to you is not common?

A new society constructed with entirely different legal, moral and economic could be created in which your approach could be the new normal, but it is easier to make up such a society in one heads than to implement it. After seeing the difference between what Marx proposed in theory and what actually happened in practice, there remains room for skepticism. One has to have some familiarity with human motivations, set up relationships that are realistic when creating a new social system. If a capitalist invested in space, equipment, materials and training for a factory, but was excluded from owning the product or profiting from his investments, is this a relationship that an investor with common sense would enter?

Thus, your hypothetical makes no sense (or dollars) at all. It wouldn't happen. It is not sustainable.

According to Nate Silver Obama has an 80% chance of winning.

Originally Posted by B Butler

In the above usage, one might say 'common sense' equates with 'fits with my worldview.'

One might, if one wishes to be a curmudgeon and to dismiss an idea out of hand. One might, if one has no awareness of economic history prior to the arising of capitalism and has no clue how the current legal usage arose in the first place. One might, in short, if one is sufficiently narrow minded as to confuse one's own cultural assumptions for the baseline of reality.

Will you admit that the notion that factory workers own the products produce by the factory is an unusual idea not common in law, economics, morality or western cultural traditions?

An unusual idea? No. Not common in [current] law? Yes -- the difference being that I know WHY it isn't, whereas you are making the mistake of supposing it to be much older than it really is. Not common in economics? No; economics presumes nothing about who owns what. Not common in western cultural traditions? No, because those traditions go back to before capitalism existed.

Start with the concept of the commons (and don't just preface that word with "tragedy of the" and dismiss it -- we're talking about what is or is not a part of western cultural tradition).

The capitalist way of defining ownership is only a few centuries old. Western culture is much older than that.

Krugman: Republican base is ‘elderly white people arguing with empty chairs’

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says that the Republican Party has adopted extreme anti-immigrant positions to appeal to their base, “which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.”

During a Sunday panel segment on ABC News, Krugman pointed out that Clint Eastwood’s bizarre conversation with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention last month was illustrative of the party’s base.

“Arizona is a third Hispanic,” conservative columnist George Will noted. “The Republican Party spent 20 debates in the primary competing to see who could build the longest, thickest, tallest, most lethally-electrified fence. And Hispanics said, ‘I detect some hostility here.’ And it’s going to take a long time to undo that.”

Krugman agreed that the GOP’s move to the extreme right during the primary had hurt their standing with minority voters.

“The Republican Party is where it is because that’s where the base is,” Krugman agreed. “You watch that whole primary process, Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is, by and large, elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.”

Tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also lamented that the Republican Party had completely given up on winning certain parts of the country.

“So what I keep telling them is, maybe we need some libertarian-type Republicans who might be popular in those areas,” he explained. “Maybe a less aggressive, more socially tolerant, but still fiscally conservative policy that that may be more libertarian might do better in California, might do better in Oregon, Washington, New England.”

“Our problem in the presidential election is we’ve given up 150 electoral votes before we get started.”

Meanwhile the GOP base keeps accusing blacks and Hispanics of voting Dem out of racism. Thus is the path to the Republicans' political oblivion.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

The discussion of how the crisis developed is a separate subject, which includes the Democratic Party's refusal to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the CRA, and so forth. Politicians of both parties for years encouraged home ownership, and in some cases (mostly Democrats) strong-armed banks into giving loans to risky buyers with easy terms, which investment banks then bundled into securities as a solution for spreading the risk -- all of which was done under the explicit understanding that if anything went wrong, the government would be there to bail everyone out.

The dirty secret was that the predatory lenders out-competed Freddie and Fannie, and both were pulled kicking and screaming into the real estate bubble. Paradoxically the federally-promoted loans intended to get low-income people from urban slums to the suburbs fared better than those of conventional lending, in part because Freddie and Fannie were not as predatory.

Liar loans? "You're just a clerk -- let me make you a CPA for our purposes"... we should have been investing in the sort of economic activity that turns accounting clerks into accountants. "You are good for more than your income suggests" -- sure, because if someone buying too much house for his income got repossessed then the lender might turn a profit so long as housing prices were going up. In the first couple of years of almost any housing loan, the payments go almost entirely to interest which is profit.

Meyer Rothschild operated on a basic principle of good lending -- never cut a deal bad for the borrower. Contemporary bankers could have fared better had they heeded such advice from the 18th century, but they got greedy and saw only the quick profits and not the potential for losses. They couldn't imagine that real estate prices could go down, in part because they sincerely believed that "the Good Lord isn't making any new real estate". People ignored the essential reality behind any bubble -- that any commodity can be overpriced.

Which is exactly what happened. If that's what you mean by "Bush policies", I'll give you partial credit. Bush did encourage home ownership, but he also tried to reform Fannie and Freddie, and the Democrats blocked it. The policies that caused the Crisis were Clinton policies as well as Bush policies. If Romney wants to prop that scheme back up, he can rightly be said to be "continuing Bush policies". If what you mean by Bush policies is low taxes and deregulation, you have no leg to stand on in the first case, and in the second case, you only have an argument where Wall Street is concerned. Not the rest of the economy. But the Dodd-Frank bill has been passed, and all that did was to fix in cement the current standing of the big investment banks, making them even more "too big to fail" than they were to begin with.

Considering the results -- you ignore that John Maynard Keynes himself suggested that in good times taxes must go up just to dampen speculative booms. People were making easier money (for a while) by flipping houses than by doing just about any conventional toil or even starting small businesses. High taxes on easy money -- money obtained by speculative activity or from executive compensation (often as bonuses for offshoring manufacturing) should have been taxed at very high rates.

The other main cause of the problem was Federal Reserve policy. Interest rates were kept too low for too long. Guess what the result of low interest rates is? People are incentivized to borrow money.

Without the speculative boom and wars for profit, it is entirely likely that the Bush Administration would have found America in a recession long before 2007 -- perhaps not as severe, but enough to ensure that Dubya would be a one-term President.

In all of those regards, we don't need to elect Romney to continue Bush policy, because Obama has already continued Bush policy. He replaced one Goldman Sachs Treasury Secretary with another, and retained Bush's Fed chairman. Obama and the Democrats supported TARP more strongly than the Republicans did.

What choices were there? In September 2008 the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission laid down the law on the Bush Administration. In view of how easily Dubya acceded to TARP, which violated every one of his economic principles, I almost suspect that that troika had more power behind them than is usual for central bankers. Joint Chiefs of Staff, maybe? I can't be sure, but it makes some sense. The Democrats would have complied... and the Speaker of the House is very high in the line of succession to the Presidency.

So what exactly are the "policies that got us into this mess" that Obama has abandoned and Romney would bring back? None, because Obama has continued them all. That rhetorical phrase is a bait-and-switch, intended to suggest that low taxes and deregulation of industry was somehow responsible for the crisis, which is ridiculous and completely divorced from reality. Considering how often he uses the phrase "the last 30 years", Obama is clearly trying to blame Ronald Reagan for the real estate bubble, which is outright lunacy, that only a complete idiot could fall for.

"Last thirty years"... that would seem to correspond to the start of the recent 3T, which would include Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Dubya. It is no surprise that President Obama more blames the 112th Congress (which exemplifies 3T values to a preposterous conclusion) than himself. He is a realist.

The question at hand for this election, however, is not how the crisis started, but how to fix the economy, and whether Obama has done anything to fix it. We know the answer, after four years. He is an absolute, abject failure. Period. End of story.

The bad business practices, the culture of unreflective greed, and the politics that enabled and rewarded predatory behavior in the economy took several decades to culminate in the worst economic meltdown in nearly 80 years -- a meltdown that simply recognized that much of what America invested in was overpriced $#!+ that in the end could do nobody any good. It's going to take several years to invest just to replace the bad investments of the Double-Zero Decade. The investments will imply bigger sacrifices than they would have cost ten years ago because they will be low-yield, long-term investments that offer no fun and that people can't sell and run from without being ruined.

That's how things were in the early years of the last Crisis Era. The cycle has come full turn. But all in all, the 1930s prove to have been a good time in which to invest in new business because people had taken a deep reduction from the expectations of New Era economics. Much of the investment was sweat equity and customer service -- toil as a substitute for money, and the development of the personal loyalties of customers through good habits of owner-operators. Such created the most powerful war machine that the world had ever known and created the basis for post-WWII (that is, post-Crisis) prosperity.

Considering how depraved America became in the degenerate years of the Bush II Administration... we are fortunate that we aren't in even worse shape.

I ran into this hilarious pic of a Republican restaurant owner who is voting for Obama giving him a huge hug and lifting up off the floor, ROFLMAO!

Originally Posted by Odin

According to Nate Silver Obama has an 80% chance of winning.

Yep, and as Nate indicated this is before the complete bounce from the convention has yet to fully reveal itself. The bounce is 2-3%, the expectation is it will go to 5% but Silver says its possible to go higher.

Good news so far.

Romney's chance is with the Oct. 3rd debate; he's got to win it big time. Or, an Oct surprise like Obama running around in a tank. Not likely.

Originally Posted by Odin

According to Nate Silver Obama has an 80% chance of winning.

The President is just about in the run-out-the-clock mode. Some possibilities are disappearing for Mitt Romney... like Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. What is on the other side for Obama campaign as abandoned opportunities isn't so clear. Maybe as President he just couldn't campaign in Indiana and never thought Georgia, Montana, or the Dakotas worth the effort this time.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

The President is just about in the run-out-the-clock mode. Some possibilities are disappearing for Mitt Romney... like Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. What is on the other side for Obama campaign as abandoned opportunities isn't so clear. Maybe as President he just couldn't campaign in Indiana and never thought Georgia, Montana, or the Dakotas worth the effort this time.

And still Romney won't release his long form birth certificate.

I think it's a bit early to celebrate, myself.

Originally Posted by B Butler

And still Romney won't release his long form birth certificate.

I think it's a bit early to celebrate, myself.

I'm worried about the money -- we haven't seen the full impact of Citizens United. We'll see.

For those who don't trust the two major parties to support the changes we need to make, or are too beholden to the power of money, there is an alternative.

Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I'm worried about the money -- we haven't seen the full impact of Citizens United. We'll see.

CNN reports Obama outraises Romney for first time in months

A good sign.

The thing about Citizens United is that it allows spending of unlimited money that never flows through a candidate's campaign funds. There are laws applying to Romney's official campaign funds requiring full disclosure of sources and limiting individual contributions and forbidding direct corporate contributions that don't apply to some third party putting on an ad in support of him or tearing down Obama; also, any ad bought directly by the Romney campaign must be so identified, which creates its own limitations. In short, the amount of money that Romney has raised is only a fraction, probably a small one, of what he and his corporate backers are prepared to spend on the election.

Originally Posted by B Butler

CNN reports Obama outraises Romney for first time in months

A good sign.

For whom, prey-tell?

Prince

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The thing about Citizens United is that it allows spending of unlimited money that never flows through a candidate's campaign funds. There are laws applying to Romney's official campaign funds requiring full disclosure of sources and limiting individual contributions and forbidding direct corporate contributions that don't apply to some third party putting on an ad in support of him or tearing down Obama; also, any ad bought directly by the Romney campaign must be so identified, which creates its own limitations. In short, the amount of money that Romney has raised is only a fraction, probably a small one, of what he and his corporate backers are prepared to spend on the election.

Also, Citizens United is more likely to affect the House and Senate races. A progressive Democrat may be pulling even or even ahead with the Republican around mid-October, and then a Koch or Adelson-funded PAC pours a million $$ into teevee ads and the Democrat is finished.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The thing about Citizens United is that it allows spending of unlimited money that never flows through a candidate's campaign funds. There are laws applying to Romney's official campaign funds requiring full disclosure of sources and limiting individual contributions and forbidding direct corporate contributions that don't apply to some third party putting on an ad in support of him or tearing down Obama; also, any ad bought directly by the Romney campaign must be so identified, which creates its own limitations. In short, the amount of money that Romney has raised is only a fraction, probably a small one, of what he and his corporate backers are prepared to spend on the election.

There may be some unintended consequences to the supposed beneficiaries.

Outside groups might push an agenda that offends most voters. Wage cuts, tax shifts from the rich to the non-rich, and destruction of workers' rights or consumer choice might cause trouble to a candidate who holds no such agenda. Political advertising from such groups might prove shrill and offensive or suggest that the outside groups have more power and influence than the candidate. Such might make a candidate's bid for election more difficult.

If such ads in Michigan indicate anything they looked ominous -- even Orwellian. Know well: Orwellian propaganda works to the extent that no alternative, whether old values or current dissent, remains as a challenge.

Originally Posted by Odin

According to Nate Silver Obama has an 80% chance of winning.

Nothing but sheer fantasy from a partisan hack.

With these economic conditions its highly unlikely Obama pulls out a victory. Fridays jobs numbers are only the beginning, They'll probably be revised down in October. 1.7 GDP not a good sign. Of course the Obama cheerleading media its doing its best to help him out. If Obama was Repub, every night you'd see another story of some sad sack without a job trying to make ende meet....Obama's bounce will be limited and not lasting.

Here is an economic forcast of the election that has been right since 1980.

http://www.colorado.edu/news/release...ado-study-says

I would give this more credence than Silver's "analysis"

Originally Posted by Weave

Nothing but sheer fantasy from a partisan hack.

With these economic conditions its highly unlikely Obama pulls out a victory. Fridays jobs numbers are only the beginning, They'll probably be revised down in October. 1.7 GDP not a good sign. Of course the Obama cheerleading media its doing its best to help him out. If Obama was Repub, every night you'd see another story of some sad sack without a job trying to make ende meet....Obama's bounce will be limited and not lasting.

Here is an economic forcast of the election that has been right since 1980.

http://www.colorado.edu/news/release...ado-study-says

I would give this more credence than Silver's "analysis"

Maybe I shouldn't be giving away free advice to the opposition this far away from the election but I'll tell you why you goppers see your strategy backfiring. All of your strategists are so in love with everything that Reagan did that they follow the former actors scripts, pun intended, without discernment.
Specifically, back at tHe 1980 debate Reagan asked "are you better off" and it closed the deal with undecided voters.
But there were some critical reason why it could work.

First, Reagan was already close to closing the sale before the debate. He, unlike Romney, had gotten a big bump from his convention speech which demonstrated his ability to connect. That ability would earn him the nickname "the great communicator."
Can anybody really call Romney the great communicator with a straight face?

Second, and more telling, context matters. When Carter became president in 1977 the memory of the oil embargo and resulting recession were still fresh but, and I remember this from being in high school, then starting college and having my first 3 entry level jobs in the Carter years. the economy generally seemed to be getting better until the Iranian revolution spiked oil prices again and coupled with th hostage crises left Carter vurnable to the "are you better off" line of attack.

Today asking Americans are they better off than 4 years ago focuses the memory squarely on the stock market crash of 4 years ago this month.
Bush was still president and Obama's election was not secured yet. So yes, as long as the economy does not crash on a scale where the stock market loses half of its value quickly and millions of jobs don't disappear than by all means we are better off than we were when Obama came into office.

Your strategists set the bar so low for Obama it's almost incredible that they couldn't see the contrast. This is not 1980.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Your lobbying group tiptoes around it, but they point out that much of our taxmoney does not got to teaching kids. It goes to union bureaucrats, although they can't come out and say it.

You seem to have a BS excuse for everything. From now on, I'm going to respond to all your BS posts with these two words: Provide data! No data, no cred.

It's Sept, with less than 60 days to the election, and you are getting yourself photographed with this guy -



and saying crap like this -

With the Evangelical leader perched in a chair behind him, Romney unveiled a new version of his stump speech, reworked to include a riff on the pledge of allegiance — which he spontaneously led the crowd in reciting — as well as a fresh applause line.
"The pledge says 'under God,'" Romney declared to a hangar full of flag-waving partisans in rural southern Virginia. "I will not take God out of the name of our platform, I will not take God off our coins, and I will not take God out of my heart!"

- having to appeal to your Evangelical base???

And this appeals to Independents, exactly how???

Incredible. Welcome, but frankly, just incredible.