Monkeyboy wrote:Obama's latest ad. Shades of the 2004 convention speech in regards to the economy. No mention of McCain.

Sorry, there's no way for me to inbed the video.


http://link.brightcove.com/services/lin ... 1799203760

jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73aiAL1OgUQ[/youtube]

Fun ad of the day.

ashton wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube]Ad[/youtube]

Fun ad of the day.

Coke tax?

Werthless wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:By basic research, I mean research that is sufficiently speculative that no private company has any reason to fund it, since the likelihood of its being profitable is too low.

Companies should only invest in research where it is likely that the returns will outweigh the investment. (Again, the old Bell Labs/ATT model is an exception here, but economically, it functioned as a quasi governmental company anyway.)

Corporate research therefore focuses on bringing the discoveries and inventions of basic research to market. Basic research can then be understood as the raw material for further corporate development.

Government funds lots of research--much of it through the Department of Defense, notably DARPA. But DARPA does lots of basic research. VCRs for instance depend on high density ferrites. Integrated circuits were based on an invention that game out of a government lab.

NSF funds research through grants, as does NIH. This research, much of it conducted in university settings form the basic building blocks of corporate research.

The US is the world's leader in research and innovation precisely because this model works so well, and there's no reason why it wouldn't work with energy.

Fair enough. I don't believe in the US government spending my money on "speculative research" with a low probability of profitability. It is exactly your low hurdle of "success" that you hold for government accountability that guarantees its success. Of course if we spend billions of dollars, stuff will be invented. But that doesn't justify its expense, IMO. However, if it brings you national pride, then I guess you can't put a price on warm fuzzy feelings. To take it a step further, we should spend trillions of dollars on this basic research to really make sure we succeed!! Why wouldn't this work?

pacino wrote:My elementary school was an 'open classroom' style building. It was alright.


Anyway, sales tax is regressive because there ARE items which are now considered standard which get taxed and the ability to pay is much lower for those with less dollars. The push over the past 4 years in PA to expand it to include everything is amazingly regressive, a rep named Sam Rohrer has had a hard-on about it for some time now.

Also, income tax in PA is currently flat and, as the constitution is currently written, a progressive income tax is illegal.

BuddyGroom wrote:I love the part Allison writes about how, if Obama is elected, it will be a comfort to him to again have a president who has read The Federalist Papers.

jeff2sf wrote:Let's get something straight here: Too big to fail really does mean what it says... a failure of AIG would not have just hurt Wall Street, it would have seriously screwed up all Americans. Every one of us. People throw around Great Depression too much, but things could have gotten really really bad.

The bailouts are not really bailing out those firms. They're potentially bailing US out of a world of hurt.

BuddyGroom wrote:We can differ on whether Obama merits honorifics like that, but anyone honestly tell me that intellect, intellectual curiosity and academic achievement shouldn't be among the criteria we seek in a president?

BuddyGroom wrote:Former publisher of National Review Wick Allison, who has an interesting definition of what conservative means, is endorsing Obama despite his disagreement with Obama on some of the issues.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/ ... 442/601632

I love the part Allison writes about how, if Obama is elected, it will be a comfort to him to again have a president who has read The Federalist Papers.

I've been insulted for 8 years now by George W. Bush's lack of accomplishment and lack of intellectual curiosity. Sarah Palin, who reportedly got a D in the only economics course she ever took, seems like a chip off the old block. John McCain, clearly, is better than either one, but not much a deep thinker from that I've seen.

I'm glad to see there's at least one conservative who doesn't think it is elitist to want our president to be an intellectual, to be one of our best and brightest.

We can differ on whether Obama merits honorifics like that, but anyone honestly tell me that intellect, intellectual curiosity and academic achievement shouldn't be among the criteria we seek in a president?

drsmooth wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Let's get something straight here: Too big to fail really does mean what it says... a failure of AIG would not have just hurt Wall Street, it would have seriously screwed up all Americans. Every one of us. People throw around Great Depression too much, but things could have gotten really really bad.

things could STILL get really, really bad. World markets have, for the moment, laughed at the AIG bailout.

The bailouts are not really bailing out those firms. They're potentially bailing US out of a world of hurt.

jeff, you know what a power law function is, right?

draw up an exteme one, and stare at it for hours - days is better. You're looking at the risk profile of a derivative-fueled economy.

or try this - use an aluminum can as a metaphor for a derivatives-fueled economy. It's structurally sound under 'normal' conditions; but stress it sharply (poking your finger hard into the side can be good enough) and you collapse the $#@! right quick.

Can't do that with your grand-dad's old-fashioned steel beer can. That can is inefficient under normal conditions, but try to cave it in with your finger, and, well, better have a splint ready.

Now, you can argue that the sleek, light, aluminum can is to be preferred 99 days out of 100 because it makes optimum use of resources. You might say it takes on the optimum risk of collapse.

That derivatives-fueled economy acts for all the world like an aluminum can.

And as a bloodless economist you might be right to insist that the rewards for that optimization are more than worth the costs. But you know, economics is just an abstraction. Way back, deep thinkers didn't refer to that realm of study as economics. They studied political economy.

For a reason.

Your apology, and I know you don't mean it that way, for the makers of these 'optimal' manipulations of financial risk assumes that the social contract that makes their way possible makes political as well as financial sense "often enough". What social forces necessarily required, or require, an AIG to exist at all, much less to be 'bailed out'?

When world economies are based essentially on trust - on belief - rather than on an arbitrarily defined unit of value (gold, for example - and I am NOT advocating for any such standard), you have to be able, at some level, at some point, to make a defensible case for the 'AIG test' I've proposed. Otherwise, the bailout is merely a concession that those cheating crooks $#@! you, and that you deserved to be $#@! - because they're 'better' than you. Better at what? Only at selfish manipulation of their fellow human beings.

I hope you can see how that's a devilishly difficult position to defend on its merits, rather than depending on what your politics are.

FTN wrote:

Laexile wrote:If they can't afford them, why are they taking them out in the first place? People want to blame the banks for trying to make a quick buck, but don't the people who took out the loans also share in the responsibility for the financial collapse? I know everyone wants to blame corporate greed, but there was enough greed to go around. There were a lot of people envious of those whose home values were increasing and wanted their share for free.

Point to where I indicated that its not the fault of people. Its my belief that we're nearing the bottom in terms of common sense and practicality across society. I think you have an entire generation living above their means. But it doesn't mean that banks weren't at fault. Its like a child who wants to eat nothing but sweet tarts for dinner. Could they? Sure. But its their parents' job to say "um, no, thats not going to work". I can go into a bank and ask to borrow 500,000 for a house. The bank could give me that money. They can do whatever they want. But someone needs to tell the bank "um, no, thats not going to work". The problem is, everyone in this country, especially in the financial sector, got too comfortable taking inordinate amounts of risk.

People want to blame Republican government deregulation but it was Clinton administration budget director Franklin Raines running Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae's CEO was Jim Johnson, who was part of Barack Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee. Barney Frank has been a huge proponent of government having hands off the companies. But let's blame the Republicans. We know it was their fault.

You're a partisan hack. I never blamed the Republicans for this mess. I blamed Bush and Paulsen for not having a strategy that could be applied across the board. Bail out these guys, but now say we're not bailing out anyone else. What kind of strategy is that?

The solutions favored by Ron Paul is to let companies who are failing fail. This will create a big financial downturn and put a lot of people out of work. The alternative is propping up failing companies. It's unlikely the companies will succeed, so the government is pouring good money after bad. This solution is rarely successful long term. Saving Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie, and others may slow a financial crisis, but it's unlikely to prevent it.

We're not talking about "just a few companies", we're talking about an entire sector (and a big one) of world economy. AIG is the 18th largest corporation in the world. Read that three times, real slow. You cannot let a company like that fail. They have so many enterprises, and are counted on by too many people. You just can't.

I'm afraid that in your partisan hackery, you've missed the entire point. This isn't something that happened yesterday, or even 8 years ago. This is a fundamental problem that goes back decades. The oversight on these companies is awful. These companies are filing for bankruptcy, analysts are estimating what bad marks they have on their books, then they see the real books, and its 100x worse. There needs to be transparency, and until the government steps in, these companies are going to say as little as they have to. And I haven't even got into the speculation aspect of the market, which needs to be massively regulated.

This isn't really a "big government v small government" argument. This is about common sense and protecting the average person.

1. You open the book by recounting the role Cheney played as manager of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential selection process. Cheney, you suggest, milked this position for all it was worth–he gathered compromising information on more than a half dozen figures at the pinnacle of the Republican Party. Do you consider Cheney’s handling of the vice presidential vetting process to cast any insights on Cheney’s later conduct as vice president?

A candidate for the presidential ticket expects to be put under a microscope. Even so, the process that Dick Cheney designed was strikingly intrusive. For one thing, he did not rely on trust. He asked people like Bill Frist, Tom Ridge, and John Kasich to give him direct access to their FBI files (ironically, by way of the Freedom of Information Act, which Cheney has never liked) and to sign waivers of privacy for all health records without exception. He asked the contenders whether there was something that would make them vulnerable to blackmail—and if so, what? (I imagine a sensible person would bow out rather than answer “yes” to that one.) All this has a certain logic: You don’t want a blackmailable commander-in-chief (or understudy), and campaigns don’t want unpleasant surprises.
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The news in my book about this process is that Cheney never filled out his own questionnaire; that the heart surgeon who vouched for his health never met him or looked at his records; and that Bush and Cheney never interviewed anyone for the job until Cheney already had it nailed.

Frank Keating, a buddy of George Bush, disclosed to Cheney that a friend paid his kids’ college tuitions. Federal ethics lawyers had cleared the deal, but it could be made to look bad. (Keating shared his entire vetting file with me, so I’ve examined the circumstances closely.) Somehow a distorted version of this disclosure found its way to Newsweek. Keating tells me Cheney did it. He can’t prove that, and neither can I. But there are circumstantial points in his favor. One is that Keating’s vetting file was very closely held. Bush’s people were not allowed to see it. Besides Cheney, only his daughter Liz, his lawyer David Addington, and his old friend David Gribbin had access. Another point is that Cheney had a motive: friends at the Federalist Society were pushing for Keating to be named Attorney General, and Cheney preferred John Ashcroft. Finally, Keating is not the only one who holds Cheney responsible. John Engler, the former Michigan governor who was also on Bush’s short list for running mate, tells me he sees no way the file could have leaked without Cheney’s involvement.

The selection process was a kind of prologue to the play of the Bush-Cheney years. Bush gave broad guidance; Cheney handled the details. The two of them kept their counsel to themselves, leaving even Karl Rove and Karen Hughes out of the picture. Cheney worked in strict secrecy and sidestepped the scrutiny he imposed on others. And the ersatz “interviews” with people like Frist and New York governor George Pataki, days after Bush settled on Cheney, showed a willingness to use deception to manage the news.