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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (2581)	9/22/2008 9:27:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

If it did grow 40%, then that shows the problem is spending growth. Have a measured level of spending growth and taxes could have been cut still further and we also would have a better fiscal balance. To be fair to Bush its not all his fault, 9/11, Afghanistan, Rita, Katrina, etc. where not his fault (sure he order Afghanistan, but I would have held him at fault for not doing so, as would most Americans). And much of the growth was in entitlements which Bush doesn't really control. OTOH 1 - He did little to even try to cut spending. 2 - When he did try to reform entitlements, he failed miserably. In a sense not his fault, certainly not a moral fault. But it is an example of ineffectiveness (even though ineffectiveness would reasonably have been expected) 3 - He created a new entitlement (or greatly expanded an old one depending on how you look at it). Somehow I don't think you would be so sympathetic to a Dem administration. I don't know how you can read that post as being sympathetic to Bush. It must just be "negative events" that only happen in Rep admins... because the growth in spending % has been much higher for Reps than Dem admins since Vietnam. Dem admins since Vietnam ended. You only have two. One was Carter, who had disastrous results (I don't think his policies where as bad as his results, he also had "negative events", although more in terms of chronic problems than sudden shocks. Also being "better than his results" is an awfully low hurdle for his policies to jump over). The other was Clinton. Clinton benefited from all sorts of things that helped him keep spending down. I've detailed them before in other posts, including ones to you I think, so I won't bore you with running through the list again. But despite the fact that Clinton had better than typical circumstance to work with and Bush had worse, the difference in spending is so great that Clinton has to get credit relative to Bush. As for "negative events" and Democrats, the most obvious example is FDR who increased spending much faster than Bush (and also over more years), but with "negative events" like the depression and WWII a HUGE increase was understandable. Nationalizing huge swaths of American industries smacks of communism, not even socialism. Many Democrats want to do the same with the health insurance industry (which would be bigger, and presumably more permanent) is that communism in your opinion? Some on the left want to do it with chunks of the energy industry. I oppose it all around. Also "nationalizing huge swaths of American industries", esp. in the plural, might be a bit of an overstatement. (And the statement has to be REALLY big to be an overstatement in this case, since the reality is so big as it is, it takes a lot to make a statement that exaggerates it. Believing me I don't want to downplay this policy idea, its big and IMO bad as a matter of principle and practice.)

To: Road Walker who wrote (2581)	9/23/2008 9:57:06 AM
From: RetiredNow	1 Recommendation Respond to of 86356

Good post, John. And this is the biggest problem of all: people who generally believe in Republican principles and decide to speak up about the fact that the last 8 years has seen a Republican Party that has parted ways with those principles, are derided as liberals, when the fact is that these Republicans who put country first are the biggest patriots of all. The sheep who continue to defend Bush are the worst kind of citizen. Anyone who can't think for him/herself, gets what he deserves, a shitty leader who has destroyed this country in so many ways in record breaking time, 8 years.