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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (20417)	3/9/2004 11:53:23 AM
From: rrufff	Respond to of 32873

First of all, there is a stretch comparing Laura Bush with your name or even that Kerry is a Ketchup lover. Laura Bush has done nothing, other than being married to the President. My own personal opinion is that she should be left alone, rather than be the brunt of someone who grabs her name and intends to ridicule. If it is open season on names, then you will lead to all the abusrd examples I gave. I'm not saying it is necessarily to be forbidden but those who run SI seem to want to encourage a civilized message board to distinguish it from Yahoo and RB and others. Why not add rules that help in that direction?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (20417)	3/9/2004 12:35:46 PM
From: Original Mad Dog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32873

Lets say somebody says we went from a booming economy to stagflation, would that be a TOU voilation? Of course not. But if somebody says we are in stagflation (which by definition is a combination of high unemployment and high inflation rates), it is perfectly permissible to take a contrary point of view regarding the factual basis for that statement. In fact, inflation is at a 40 year low. The unemployment rate (5.6 percent) is lower than it has been in 15 out of the past 25 years. Most economists don't define a lower than average unemployment rate combined with the lowest inflation in 40 years as "stagflation". If somebody points out that in the third quarter of 2000 GDP declined, as it did again in the first quarter of 2001, is that an acceptable challenge to the first part of your statement (that this was a "booming economy" before Bush?). When you have posted that it's a bomming economy turned into stagflation, I (or others) have posted things along the lines of the above as a response. I feel that it's more responsible to confront wild factual inaccuracy than to let it go unchecked and allow misinformation on the site to flourish. What if a reader who hasn't checked the numbers reads what you say and concludes we had a booming economy in 2000 and now we have stagflation? Aren't they better informed if they are then readily supplied with the actual inflation and unemployment numbers from official government statistics so they can decide for themselves? Isn't that interplay of fact and opinion one of the benefits of a message board community, especially one that is in part about investing and the economy? And if the site's custodians and managers see fit to snuff out that sort of lively debate, then it will be time to move on, and leave the landscape to those who would prefer not to confront any fact that collides with their preconceived notions. You have attracted such criticisms precisely because your beliefs appear impervious to such fact-based responses. You believe the economy is in awful shape. You feel it in your daily existence, apparently (which may or may not be relevant to the macroeconomic picture, since even in boom times there are pockets of the economy which aren't doing well). You then translate those beliefs and feelings into posts about the economy. You are free to do that; I think everyone should be encouraged to do that. But when you post that we are in stagflation when under every definition of that term I've ever seen we aren't even remotely close, don't get so upset that people respond firmly. When you post (as you did yesterday) that Raleigh, NC has one of the highest unemployment figures in the country, don't get upset when someone (not me in that case) points out that Raleigh's current unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, below the level at which economists generally agree there is "full" employment. When you post (as you did repeatedly a few months ago) that California's corporate tax revenues have declined, expect a response that out of the past 10 years there has been only one year on year comparison where such a decline (a very small one) occurred, and in every other year those tax revenues have increased (nearly tenfold in real dollars in the past half century). You make your statements, and when there are facts which call those statements into question it is not extremism, RW or otherwise, to post a response. You may believe it to be harassment, but it's really no different than responding to someone who walks around saying the sky is green by pointing out that it is actually blue according to most observations. If it is really green, you are welcome to point that out. It's called debate. Your dissertations on outsourcing are another fine example. Should we all remain silent while you attack free trade at its foundations? Or should we point out the ramifications of that point of view, as I and many others have done? Should we not be allowed to point out that outsourcing is part of a larger, beneficial context? That free trade has benefits as well as drawbacks? That our opinion, freely expressed, is that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? Or should readers of the site be left with your opinion, unchallenged, that outsourcing is bad because you know it to be bad and you have talked to people who have suffered from it? You choose not to respond to these challenges, indeed to ignore them, and that's fine. But I don't think others who read your points of view, and might be inclined to believe that we have stagflation and that Raleigh is in an unemployment crisis and that free trade and outsourcing are bad ought only to have the benefit of your opinions. They ought to hear both sides and decide for themselves whose opinion is worthy of respect and agreement. The only other issue is whether these challenges ought to be collected on one thread or spread around in response to where you have posted them. You seem to have a problem with being "followed around" (though at least then the reader of the thread gets to hear your post and the response), and you seem to have a problem with a thread created to collect those responses. Seems to me that short of snuffing out responses which disagree with your opinions altogether, anyone who disagrees with your POV has to choose either to respond where you post or to collect the responses somewhere else and perhaps link to them on the original thread where they were posted so as not to disrupt the flow of that thread's other discussions. I'll leave for another day the fact that you have lied and expressed bigotry on these threads (your derisive comments about parts of California becoming a "little Bombay" come to mind). If there has been a TOU violation in these matters (and I don't think there has been, on either side), it's been yours, not someone else's.