Comments Posted By Richard Bottoms
Displaying 231 To 240 Of 362 Comments
WHY IS THE PRESIDENT GOING TO COPENHAGEN TO LOBBY FOR THE OLYMPICS?
So now we're a Third World country unable to afford to host the Olympics.
Check.
No - not check. You just set up an unbelievable strawman. Please point out the specific wording in this piece that says we can't afford the Olympics. Chicago can do whatever it damn well pleases but let's draw the line at placing the burden for financing Daley's glory on the backs of people who don't live there.
Or perhaps you have no qualms about enriching the most corrupt political machine in the country with not only money stolen from their own citizens but from taxpayers elsewhere?
Go on - defend them. Makes you look like the hack you are.
ed.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 28.09.2009 @ 10:13
YOUNG, STUPID THINK PROGRESS RESEARCHER LOSES SANITY IN PUBLIC
How about internet business? E-Bay doing well? Yahoo? Google?
How about the Federal government has carved out a special tax break for internet commerce and advantage that local commerce can't match.
Then there's the fact the the internet exists solely because millions of tax dollars were poured into research into survivable networks for warfare.
It was Stanford and other university undergrads who took advantage of access to facilities and naivete on the part of many universities to start firms like Cisco, Sun, and others launched in no small part due to the largess of tax dollars that supported the universities.
The universities themselves exist more often than not because of tax dollars. Private colleges benefit from tax breaks and from Pell grants and subsidized tuition assistance from Uncle Sugar.
And who were many of their first large customers: the United States military and other universities.
Your tax dollars at work. Again.
Virtually unlimited reliable electricity from grids created from tax dollars. Highways to move their goods.. tax dollars. Basic research from NASA to the CDC.. tax dollars.
This idea that these companies somehow spring into existence and shower cash on their owners and employees with nary a bit of support from Uncle Sam and only through pure entrepreneurial sweat is ludicrous, a fantasy of the Randians.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 27.09.2009 @ 22:22
You are correct that the Democrats won the last election, and can pass laws; those laws must pass Constitutional muster.
True. Obama passes his bill.
You guys sue, it goes to the Supreme Court and we either win or lose.
Rinse and repeat.
Of course by the time it gets there Obama will have appointed Justice #2 so I am not awfully worried about the outcome before the court.
But win or lose before the court we are following our system of law making and constitutional testing. We're not the ones freaking out about the whole thing.
It doesn't bother me if Rick or anyone else disagrees with the mandates. If our guys have the votes to pass it and the Supreme Court says it's legal we win.
If the Supreme Court says it doesn't pass constitutional muster we adjust it until it does. The longer it goes on the louder and crazier the opposition will become to the detriment of scaring off swing voters from the GOP.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 27.09.2009 @ 14:56
The solution is to de-regulate the industry and allow the free market to work. Allow companies to compete across state lines. In the competition to make a buck you’ll see low cost options abound.
Ah yes, we see how well deregulation worked for electricity in California a few years back. >>Enron, cough<<<
Funny how there aren't too many Republican politicians extolling deregulation's virtues, especially in California these days. (Do a Nexus/Lexis search and let me know how many times Meg Whitman comes out for deregulation of anything in 2010.)
The American political systems allows you full access to have your say and for the people who oppose your position to ignore it in favor of theirs.
Not Communism. Not Socialism. Not Fascism.
We won. W O N. Beat you. Threw your team out of the majority and put ours in. At noon, January 20th 2009 you lost the power to set the agenda for at least four years. Kindly, Suck It Up, and stop freaking out over the unfairness of it all for God's sake.
See you at the ballot box next time around. I know you don't have to like it any more than I liked Reagan, Bush I or Bush II. But whatever you do, don't tell me what Obama is doing is un-American.
It couldn't be more American to be given the chance to enact an agenda that you told the people you would do if elected.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 23:22
The problem with mandated health care is that I no longer get to choose whether or not I will participate.
True, but that doesn't bother me at all, any more than mandating contributions to Social Security.
I am not disputing that there is a philosophical argument to be made against the mandate. I am simply saying the people who believe it should be mandated won the last election (pretty handilly I might add) so they intend to set about doing what was run on.
That's how it works in America.
If you run on banning taxpayer support for clinics in the third world that include abortion however much I think that it is a bad idea, if you are George Bush and you have Republican control of the congress you get to have your way.
If you want to go to war with Iraq and you are in charge, we go to war. Tax cuts for the wealthy, done.
Similarly, if Barrack Obama wins the presidency and he has the votes to put his agenda into law, into law it gets put. It won't be at the point of a gun or with squads of Gurkha blue helmets rounding up opponents into interment camps. It will done by a vote in Congress by duly elected officials.
See you in 2012 if you don't like it.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 23:10
BTW, this is just how the GOP using the anti-abortion issue.
"One more election my friends, just another $100 of your hard earned cash and we'll have a Congress that will legislate Roe v. Wade out of existence. We'll finally seat a Supreme Court to overturn it." But that day never comes.
And just like the insurnace firms know eventually they will lose (same as Big Tobacco lost), they keep the suckers ponying up the cash to fight that evil "socialism".
They are using you, and they know it. The only person who doesn't know it is you.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 18:25
Why exaggerate the exaggeration.
The auto industry spent millions to first fight seat belts, then millions more to fight airbags, even crash resistant bumpers. All safety innovations that have saved countless lives.
Their only motive: greed.
Their willing allies are absolutists who believe all mandates on business to be an intolerable intrusion.
It's hard to believe it now but the only reason seatbelts are mandatory is because the auto industry agreed to them as a bulwark against airbags.
The common sense idea that you should protect yourself when driving became law to help stall the introduction of an even better safety device.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has ruled that air bags or other automatic restraints must be installed in all new cars unless states representing two-thirds of the nation's population pass seat belt laws by 1989.
Auto makers, who have been fighting the introduction of air bags for nearly a decade as too costly and only marginally effective, have gone a long way toward their goal of bypassing the federal regulations. In recent months, they have successfully lobbied for mandatory seat belt laws in the big states of New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Similar measures are pending in 32 other states.
California, representing 10% of the nation's population, promises to provide a pivotal high-stakes test for the auto industry's political prowess.
'Well on Their Way'
"If they get this 10% they are well on their way," said George Tye, a lobbyist representing an influential coalition of insurance companies that, together with consumer groups, favor air bags and oppose the auto makers' efforts. "If they do not get California, they will have real trouble coming up with that two-thirds."
Loren Smith, a lobbyist directing the auto makers' California campaign, conceded that it is "probably the most important state in the union in regard to these seat belt laws . . . and it's a target state."
Bankrupt them, no. But car companies didn't spent millions to fight a common sense rule for any other reason other than greed.
Your opposition to mandates is quite genuine I am sure. And that's the point of my post.
It is being used by Aetna, Blue Cross, and every other insurnace conglomerates to keep their profits high and to forestall mandates to cover everyone.
An extra $19 out over every paycheck to ensure no matter what, everyone 18 or older has insurance is common sense. It may grate on your principles but it is hardly the end of the world.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 18:10
I do not believe in mandates.
Like license plates, or the license to drive a car?
The mandate for health insurance will operate just like the mandate to pay SSI if you have a job. It will appear as $19 out of every paycheck or less than the cost of two tickets to the movies.
I know conservatives love to make such things sound like the end of the world.
But then the same thing was said when seat belts became the law and the automotive industry said it would bankrupt them.
Why must you exaggerate everything? The auto industry didn't say it would bankrupt them. If that is your interpretation, then you are an idiot, I'm sorry, there's no other way to put it.
But you don't believe that. You exaggerate because you cannot argue any other way. I pity you.
ed.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 16:37
HOW SERIOUS IS THE WORLD IN STOPPING AN IRANIAN BOMB?
I pity Israel facing the hostile Islamic nations around them alone, thanks to the idiot in the White House.
Again, if they have the bomb now it isn't because they built it in the eight months Obama has been president.
Israel is much better served having France in the tent pissing out instead of outside pissing in.
Why can't you admit Iran is exactly in it's current position because of what George Bush did or did not do for eight years. Invading Iraq was supposed to provide a bullwark against Iran, free oil production, and cause democracy to flower in the Middle East.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
It's satisfying I guess to you to blame Democrats all the way back to Jimmy Carter, but the fact is Obama inherited the problem and the situation and has had less than a year to craft a solution against GW's eight full ones.
President Obama owns Iran now and unlike his predecessor I have no doubt he will do something more than glare at the Ayatollah. I also have no doubt he will try honest, tough diplomacy before plunging the United States into yet a third war to add to the two that we already have.
If the balloon does go up I also have no doubt that the 101st Chairborne will be safely back home talking tough.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 15:07
No comments on the fact that George Bush allowed the Iranians to build and operate the facility?
Was he a wuss for failing to act, sitting on the knowledge for months (maybe years)?
I expect of course to hear how Obama is a fool for not having blown Iran to hell after eight months in office from the let's have it both ways crowd.
Comment Posted By Richard bottoms On 26.09.2009 @ 12:08
