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Open thread
- By Phillip Brownlee
- Posted Jan. 8, 2007 at 1:05 a.m.
- Filed under Open thread
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39 Comments
“Today’s Americans hold a different vision of government. It’s one that says Congress has the right to do just about anything upon which it can secure a majority vote. Most of what Congress does fits the description of forcing one American to serve the purposes of another American. That description differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery.
At least two-thirds of the federal budget represents forcing one American to serve the purposes of another. Younger workers are forced to pay for the prescriptions of older Americans; people who are not farmers are forced to serve those who are; nonpoor people are forced to serve poor people; and the general public is forced to serve corporations, college students and other special interests who have the ear of Congress.”
SolDevVB, golfnuts,
You were wrong about Colorado not asking for federal aid.
‘Bush: Disaster Aid for Neb., Colo., Kan’http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6330721,00.html“DENVER (AP) – President Bush signed emergency declarations allowing federal aid to help Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas recover from back-to-back blizzards that shut down highways and knocked out power to tens of thousands of homes.” (continues)
Conservative Evangelical Republicans apparently believe that the right to life begins at the moment of conception and ends at the moment of birth.
Their fight against “welfare” generally affects Aid to Dependent Children. The hodgepdge of regulations (and subsequent administraial expense) comes from their horror at the thought that governmental aid might end up in the pocket of someone, somewhere who’s sleeping on the sofa and watching soap operas while eating bon-bons.
In decidedly un-conservative fashion, they demand all sorts of governmental oversight over funds directed to children whose only sin against the people is that they’ve picked the wrong parents.
When you look at the actual benefits available to the lower classes of citizens (i.e., food stamps, MedicAid, rent subsidies, et al) the typical recipient gets about $15,000 annually. But, because of the beauracracy imposed by legislators…just to be sure there aren’t any welfare “cheats”…the cost to taxpayers is more than $30,000 per case. After all, those social workers and auditors and administrators (and legislators and governors and attorneys general, et al) need to be paid, too.
You could fire all those welfare administrators, all those Social Workers, all those MedicAid claims analysts, administrative assistants, case workers and supervisors… and cut a one-time-only check for $100,000.00 to each eligible “welfare” recipient, and probably solve the problem once and for all for a lot less taxpayers’ money.
Because what matters in America isn’t the ability to get by, but a chunk of capital. Most welfare recipients could take a $100,000.00 nest egg to any bank in town and use it to leverage it into a restaraunt, a store, a service, an enterprise that would contribute to the community. But, thanks to Conservatives, “welfare” is parsed out at barely subsistance levels, month by month, with incredibly expensive administrative costs (to the taxpayer) built into the system.
For reasons that constantly escape me, “Conservatives” in America exist for no reason other than to delay the inevitable.
Research shows that most people under the age of 25 simply don’t understand their parents’ generation’s opposition to same-gender marriage; they think a woman should be given the choice of terminating a pregnancy or carrying the fetus to full term; they know the difference between an in vitro zygote and a walking, talking human being; they believe in God (or not) and still recognize that evolution is the rational explanation of how we got where we are and how we’re getting to where we’re going (even if it might be God’s Plan).
One of the lessons of history is that conservatives have always — consistantly, predictably, and perpetually — been wrong.
Blacks are equal to Whites, women are equal to men, unions are just as legitmate as corporations, Baptists are entitled to the same rights as Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Mormons, and Muslims. Conservatives have always opposed such thoughts.
And conservatives have always been wrong.
There will be stem-cell research.
There will be legal abortion.
There will be gender-specific equality.
There will be religious freedom for all beliefs. (Even non-belief.)
There will be equal benefits (and “marriage penalties”) for long-term committments between two consenting adults, regardless of how they get their jollies in the bedroom.
The only thing standing between those inevitable circumstances is “conservatism,” and it’s nothing more than a delaying tactic; a ploy to win elections now, based on prejudices du jour, regardless of long-term complications and (as in the case of global warming) potential catastrophe.
Conservatives, as they always have been, are wrong.
MoneyHawk,sounds good. Get it kicked off. Cut me the first 100K check…
How come the Bush administration permitted the news media to photograph President Ford’s flag-draped coffin but not the fallen hero’s[]
SolDevVB –
Interesting how every time I mention the cost/benefit analysis of “welfare,” so many so-called “conservatives” are so eager to become welfare cheats.
What happened to “the dignity of work?” Where’s all that rhetoric about the nobiliity of “self-reliance?” Nope, it’s replaced with “cut me the check.”
You hypocrite.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/07/D8MGMSE01.html
I’m sure that we will have a thread on this, since it appeared on the front page of Eagle, but did you see that researchers have found usable stem cells in amniotic fluid?
What do ya know? Because of pro-life opposition to “harvesting” embryos, science went another direction and found an alternative. The moral compass worked.
Since this is on the same topic, Monkeyhawk, conservatives have never been against stem cell research. And look how conservative efforts helped guide the issue toward a real solution all can live with; and none have to die for.
Yes MoneyHawk, let’s all believe in common goals, march in lockstep with our right hands thrust to sky expressing our eternal hope that we will overcome any obstacle in front of us.
We will crush our enemies with our taxes, our unrelenting rhetoric that pounds on their soft heads!
We will force our views on them and insist hey conform to our ideals!
We will give them no choice by passing legislation because we are the natural leaders of all wisdom.
We will close down their churches and turn them into Gay/Lesbian Centers of improved hope.
We will blow our marijuana smoke into faces of our children hoping they become more aware of our extra sensory ability to see all truth.
We will scrub the values of those ignorant farmer ancestors and those witless fools of colonial America.
We will champion our cause with sameness, glory of the individual and one common pie for all!
No more private property! The government knows best for us all.
There will be health insurance for all, unemployed, bums and employed! Don’t complain if you support your bum bretheren, embrace him and tell him how his economically challenged lifestyle is not his fault, but the fault of those free enterprisers!
Yes Commrades, follow our cause, sameness, individualism and a government that will pay our every need!
(raises red flag with a yellow star in it.)
Hypocrite? Realist. You start handing out $100K checks and see how many hands open up. Do you think everyone has your moral compass? Do you think there are folks who enjoy ’sittin at home’ checks? Money for nothing?
Therein lies the problem with welfare. Dignity of work is lost on a lot of them. I hope that you are not too Zen to see this.
Is the WSClark troll a disgruntled ex-WE employee?
Outlander – great thought in concept – but just how is it that you propose to collect this amniotic fluid? Most women’s water breaks before they ever get to the hospital, so oh well there goes that down the drain. Take into account the fact that you have a margin of at least some women with some type of disease that would prevent their fluid from being usable, and your amount falls even lower. Then consider that to withdraw amniotic fluid PRIOR to delivery, is EXTREMELY HIGH RISK – in fact, they rarely ever even do amniocentesis any more because A) it is highly likely to cause preterm labor and B) there is always a risk of harm to the fetus from the procedure. Now consider the alternatives – you have cordblood cells, which are good but not as good as embryonic cells. Or you have all these embryo’s that are left over from in-vitro and other such procedures that are just literally getting thrown away – now, your arguement is that it is immoral to use the embryonic cells because those cells comprise a life, correct? Well, isn’t it then immoral to just trash them??? We (those of us who support embryonic cell research) for the most part, okay, well for certain I and I am sure others, are not proposing creating all these little cells solely for this purpose, but are instead saying – if these cells are already there, and are going to otherwise be destroyed, why not use them to better someone else’s life???
Wendy – I don’t know that most women break before getting there. While not wanting to pre-judge that this will work I also wouldn’t want to pre-judge that it won’t.
Wendy, why not?Because of complete freaking idiots living in some fantasy.Only explanation for irrationality.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.
The Bush administration did not reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall.
The White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.
In a federal appeals court filing three weeks ago, the administration’s lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge’s ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs.
The five-page document dated May 17 declares that all entry and exit data on White House visitors belongs to the White House as presidential records rather than to the Secret Service as agency records.
Therefore, the agreement states, the material is not subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
In the past, Secret Service logs have revealed the comings and goings of various White House visitors, including Monica Lewinsky and Clinton campaign donor Denise Rich, the wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich, who received a pardon in the closing hours of the Clinton administration.
The memo last spring was signed by the White House and Secret Service the day after a Washington-based group asked a federal judge to impose sanctions on the Secret Service in a dispute over White House visitor logs for Abramoff.
The chief counsel to another Washington-based group suing to get Secret Service logs calls the creation of the memo “a political maneuver couched as a legal one.”
“It appears the White House is actually manufacturing evidence to further its own agenda,” Anne Weismann, a Justice Department lawyer for 19 years and now chief counsel to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Friday.
The White House and the Secret Service declined to comment.
Last year in the Abramoff scandal, the Bush administration, in response to three lawsuits, provided an incomplete picture of how many visits Abramoff and his lobbying team made to the White House.
The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House committee that collected the lobbyist’s billing records and e-mails.
The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl Rove.
As part of its security function of protecting the White House complex, the Secret Service uses the log information to conduct background checks on people prior to daily appointments and visits.
The memorandum of understanding is an unusual step because it deals with an unsettled area of law.
Federal courts will ultimately decide whether records identifying White House visitors and who they are going to see are under the legal control of the Secret Service or are presidential records publicly releasable solely at the discretion of the White House.
The Bush administration’s agreement with the Secret Service “at a minimum will serve to postpone a final resolution of who these records belong to,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.
“This memo reflects the Bush administration’s view of American government, which is that the people’s business should be conducted behind closed doors.”
In the mid-1990s, a conservative group, Judicial Watch, obtained Secret Service entry logs through a lawsuit.
Secret Service records played a significant role in the Whitewater scandal in the 1990s, supplying congressional Republicans with leads to follow in their investigations of the Clintons.
A decade ago, Senate investigators used Secret Service logs to document who visited the White House during the fundraising scandal surrounding President Clinton’s re-election campaign.
The task of digging out Abramoff-White House links fell to a House committee that collected the lobbyist’s billing records and e-mails.
The House report found 485 lobbying contacts with presidential aides over three years, including 10 with top Bush administration aide Karl Rove.
Did you all see this?
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/16411216.htm
WTF?
Cargill is gonna build ethanol plants? Maybe right there in River City?
WTF?
Gee do ya think that “pending” news had anything to do with the article in today’s paper (by the same writer) about whether ethanol is good or bad?
Damn. And y’all wanna bitch about RANDY? Roflmfao…
But I gotta say, hats off to Cargill. They know how to make money on the front end and the back end, and how to hedge all bets in between.
Subsidies? I hear the sound of freakin’ PIGS running for the trough.
WTF?
Gee, do ya think they believed they could sneak that little tidbit in on governor leadership’s coronation, er, I mean inaguration day? No one would notice?
Only in Kansas…..
Gotta keep that irrigated corn growin’ and flowin’.
Just like the subsidies.
Ralph Nader’s union views were reported here: “Editors Claim Firing by Nader Based on Unionization Attempt” By Peter Perl The Washington Post Jun 28, 1984, page B3
Trouble with a TEE,which rhymes with C,which stands for Cargill.Right here in river city.
SolDevVB –
“…Dignity of work is lost on a lot of them….”
*THEM?!*
heeheehee Tracy!
*THEM?!*
Welfare recipients? Thought that was the topic. Sorry you were confused.
I played horn in so many musicals that the stupid things are permanently burnt into my onion.
I got the horse right here,his name is Paul Revere,this guy says the horse can do….
Awwww……….TURN IT OFF, HELP!
Wendy,
You beat me to the punch on the amniotic fluid. The thing is, it would seem that waiting for the water to break, even in the hospital, wouldn’t be a good thing. Wouldn’t that mean the fluid could become contaminated? Which leaves only amniocentesis. Having had one, I can truthfully say it isn’t a pleasant experience. And, yes, there are risks. I was scheduled for another amnio during a subsequent pregnancy, but the fetus had attached to the front wall of the uterus (back and sides are most common), and it would’ve endangered the fetus. The doc called it off.
For those out there who don’t know about amniocentesis, this is from dictionary.com: “a surgical procedure for obtaining a sample of amniotic fluid from the amniotic sac in the uterus of a pregnant woman by inserting a hollow needle through the abdominal wall, used in diagnosing certain genetic defects or possible obstetric complications.”
And it ain’t a little needle, guys. It’s at least 8-10 inches long. It goes straight in near the belly button. No anesthesia is used. A sonogram is used to watch where the needle is going.
And you, “SolDevVB,” were first to forfeit your supposed dedication to “the dignity of work.”
You’ve exposed yourself to be a ready and willing welfare recipient, if only it were lucrative enough.
Typical hypocritical “conservative.”
Please stay well informed on the stem cell issue. It is our greatest hope for medical advances that will bring treatments and cures for many of today’s worst illnesses.
First, there are treatments today from adult stem (AS) cells. Research with these cells had been ongoing since the 1940s and within the last 10 – 15 years great wonderful things have happened. But the significant limitation to AS cells is they can’t be made into tissue or organs. They’ve “decided” what they’re going to be (i.e., cord stem cells are blood cells…). In recent years AS cells have been reprogrammed but it involves injecting their nuclei into egg cells or enucleated ES cells ‚Äì something about egg cells and embryonic stem cells causes chromatin remodeling (genes that were permanently turned “off” in an adult cell can be turned back “on.”). No one (yet) knows the mechanisms controlling this phenomenon. So in this reprogramming you are using a human egg.
Embryonic stem (ES) cells have generated tissues and complex organs in animals. With “nuclear transfer” (i.e., cloning) it is possible to generate genetically identical replacement organs, thus reducing rejection. But because this is cloning… Well, you know the problems. And ES cells have been researched for LESS THAN 10 years (as compared to 70 years for adult stem cells). There is a long ways to go but with sufficient funding and time it will happen.
This “announcement” of stem cells in amniotic fluid that are somewhere between AS and ES cells and that they have been successful in generating complex organs is absolutely fantastic news!
But it shouldn’t mean we put all our eggs into one basket when we have such great hope for cures and treatments.
Did anyone notice this work with amniotic stem cells has been going on for many years? Did you google amniotic stem cells and discover news articles about this work from 2004? Now, has anyone wondered why this “news” appeared on the front pages of papers NOW? NOW, when later this week the House has the subject of increased federal spending for embryonic stem cell research on the agenda? Does this “timing” seem very convenient?
Let’s get behind research of all types of stem cells! We and our families will be the winners in this situation!
Tracy–
Of course Bush has to put the visitor list under lock and key.
If he didn’t, it would show that he lied when he said he didn’t remember meeting the man.
In fact they met many times over the years and at least half a dozen photos of Bush and Abramoff together have been acknowledged BUT NOT RELEASED by the White House.
It’s like when Clinton said he didn’t have sex with that woman Monica Lewinsky, except instead of illicit sex, it’s illegal money.
Who can blame Bush for trying to weasel out of it?
Lying like a bast@rd has worked pretty well for him so far . . .
Brilliant analysis of President Cuckoo-Banana’s latest troop surge plan from web editors at http://www.democraticunderground.com
“For the past four years, George W. Bush has insisted that when it comes to troop levels in Iraq, he listens to his generals. Of course, if the generals ever made suggestions that Bush didn’t like, then obviously they were more than welcome to find employment elsewhere. Take Gen. Shinseki for example, who was given the boot after making the ridiculous suggestion in 2003 that it would take several hundred thousand troops to succeed in Iraq.
“But now that the generals – and, in fact, everybody else in the world – think that it’s time to start pulling troops out of Iraq, George W. Bush has a better idea. He’s going to send more troops! Huzzah! That should solve the problem.
“If you’re looking for proof that Bush always listens to his generals, check out this snippet from a December article in the London Times.
‘General George Casey, the senior commander in Iraq, and General John Abizaid, commander of US forces in the Middle East, fear that a troop increase will only delay the time when Iraqis take responsibility for security and could provoke further violence.’
“Now check out this snippet from a CBS news story last week:
‘Meanwhile, Mr. Bush is shaking up his top military and diplomatic teams in Iraq, as he prepares to unveil his new war strategy in a speech to the nation next week. Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, and Gen. George Casey, the chief general in Iraq, both are expected to leave their jobs in coming weeks.’
“See? Bush always listens to his generals. And if he doesn’t like what they’re saying, he can easily get new ones.”
Could it be that the logs were a “treasure trove” to the Whitewater prosecutors, and thus the White House is aware of the evidentiary value thereof, and wants to cut off access? Oh, surely not; it’s just a matter of who has control over them, so important “national security” issues aren’t compromised, right? [/sarcasm]
If you have not already done so, please contact your Wichita city council person and ask them to vote NOT to allow the construction of a Wal mart at the intersection of Kellog and Oliver.
It will be approved. The key now is to extract concessions in traffic flow, buffers, etc.
I live on South Terrace. This Wal mart would be less than 3 blocks from my house.When I heard about it, I put my house up for sale immediately because I knew the property values would drop. They have and I have not been able to sell my house for anything close to what it would have been worth. And that is just the fear that they might build the store.
Please tell your councilman to vote against Wal mart!
I don’t know about stem cells, but after reading this whole mess I now support involuntary sterilization of Kansans. :)
Has anyone else read Crichton’s latest book, _Next_. There is a college aged character who takes fertility drugs so she can produce more “eggs” that she can sell at nice prices. She has enough spending money for the year, for very little work and discomfort. Being blond and blue-eyed makes her genetic material worth more money.
Interestingly, like some of Crichton’s work, it is informed by current happenings.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2006-03-15-egg-donors-usat_x.htm
It should be pointed out that the long-term risk of this practice is unknown. There may be similar risks with the amnioscentesis.
It would be nice if the alternative with the amnio-fluid would work as well as stem cells. That would help reduce the moral quandry. But seldom are there easy/simple choices with stuff like this.
In Crichton’s book the selling of eggs sure reminded me of the moral issues surrounding slavery.
But conservatives, one argument is that the selling of life is profitable and therefore should be left to free market dynamics. Right?
Crichton is pretty conservative, but for the record, he is against the selling of genetic material and letting free market forces reign.
Money hawk,Are you really that sophomoric to jump on what I said rather than the underlying meaning? If you think my hypothetical is unique, you have a very bright outlook on the welfare system.
What you are saying might work in a utopian society. The sad fact is there are many more individuals looking for handouts that would wreck this program as you approach it.
HiG’night
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