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52 comments on Wolcott: "Worse Than a Fool"

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Prof. Goose on March 23, 2006 - 11:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
my only quibble with your logic is this Bill, while it is the executive that controls foreign policy in our system, it is the Congress that writes the checks.  The Democrats controlled the pursestrings over the entirety of the time period, and therefore at best implicitly endorsed any action taken...so, both sides are complicit in this in my opinion.  To try to blame this on a person or a party when it happened twenty years ago is going to be a very tough case to make.
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prole on March 24, 2006 - 12:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I get so damned tired of this type of equivocating on the part of conservatives.

Reagan - 1980 - 1988
Bush 1 - 1988 - 1992
Clinton - 1992 - 2000
Bush 2 - 2000 till present

Seem that the bulk of the responsibility lies with Republicans and their policy apparatchik.

Given the above which group or subgroup of Democrats are you going to pin the blame on.  BE SPECIFIC!!!!!!

Stop seizing every opportunity to transfer blame when it's plain to all where the buck should stop.

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Prof. Goose on March 24, 2006 - 1:21am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
now that's funny.  I haven't been called a conservative in a very long time, not since I was last in the politburo anyway...  

was I not clear the first time?  And I quoteth:

my only quibble with your logic is this Bill, while it is the executive that controls foreign policy in our system, it is the Congress that writes the checks.  The Democrats controlled the pursestrings over the entirety of the time period, and therefore at best implicitly endorsed any action taken...so, both sides are complicit in this in my opinion.  To try to blame this on a person or a party when it happened twenty years ago is going to be a very tough case to make.
Now, if I read that correctly, and I do, since I wrote it, I said that the Democrats controlled Congress over that WHOLE PERIOD (save the Republicans having the Senate by two or three seats for six years (81-87)--but that's technically irrelevant really because the actual spending of money in American government is done by the House of Representatives, which was controlled by the Dems the entire time.
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Sterling on March 24, 2006 - 5:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Actually the Republicans had a working majority in the House during that period because they had a faction of Southern Democrats, lead by Phil Gram, who had not yet jumped to the Republican party, who voted with the Republicans.  That's why Reagan was able to get legislation through Congress.
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prole on March 25, 2006 - 4:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The Biggest non-answer I have seen recently.

You failed to address the criticism and only spoke in vague generalities.

Why don't you apply the same discipline to your political musings that you apply to Peak Oil analysis?

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Oil CEO on March 26, 2006 - 2:42pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think his initial comment sufficed. This is an oil website, not a political one. Democrats and Republicans are both definitely to blame. When was the last time you saw John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid stand up and announce their conversion to peak oil? The problem is one that is seriously rooted in every aspect of our culture, corporations, and in every part of the political spectrum in Washington. Did you think the Oil companies and Detroit only gave money to the Republicans? Who are you kidding?
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Three Blind Mice on March 24, 2006 - 1:24am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Frankly, the buck doesn't stop. And that's the problem. The cycle of political power generated by the processes of lobbying and media control affects all parties. Every politician is for sale - if not because of what they did to get in, then because of what they need to do to stay in. "Politics is the art of compromise". They are all compromised, every one.

War, and assassination are just the flower of American politics. The root is monopoly. It is no historical accident that the greatest wars and revolutions have followed from polarization of wealth, and all historical American injustice can be traced to the exigencies of tycoons. In our time, with its record dozens of billionaires and its record hundred trillions of debt, we endure total corruption.

The question then is not where to transfer blame. It is what to change, specifically, to end monopoly and the tendency toward monopoly. How do we fix the buck so that it will stop, not in the pockets of the billionaires, but in the goods and services that are real social wealth?

FDR's great promise of the 4 freedoms - freedom from fear, freedom of worship, freedom of speech, and above all freedom from want - everywhere in the world - is far farther away today than it was when he made it. We had a great country, once. Now we are pariahs abroad and slaves at home. Our money does not serve the opportunity for social goods, but the perpetuation of social evils.

The buck is broken. If we don't fix it very soon we will be too.

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52 comments on Wolcott: "Worse Than a Fool"

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