Seriously, why aren't more of you...

[Yonivore]

...embarrassed to be Democrats?


9Og4ieKBFbc


"I think the answer is no," Ellison said when asked if he believes regulations kill jobs. "And here is why: When we talked about increasing fuel efficiency standards, the industry responded, and they need engineers and designers and manufacturers, and they need actually more people to help respond to the new requirement."

"I believe if the government says, look, we have got to reduce our carbon footprint, you will kick into gear a whole number of people that know how to do that or have ideas about that, and that will be a job engine. I understand what you mean, because if anything adds a cost to a business, you could assume that that will diminish that business's ability to hire. But I don't think that's actually right. I think what businesses want is customers and what -- if they are selling product, if they have a product to sell they will do well even if they have some new regulations to meet," the Congressman said.
Well, hell, we've had the answer all along! Why doesn't Obama get cracking and just regulate us into full employment?

I think a conservative pundit provided the most charitable explanation for Ellison's idiocy:

“Ellison reveals the truth: the Democrat Party is a band of lunatics who have no idea how private industry works at all.”

But, if only Ellison were the only example of this stupidity...

Dems' Stimulus Idea: More Regulations (http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/587613/201110101854/Dems-Stimulus-Idea-More-Regulations.htm)


Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., issued a report defending the Environmental Protection Agency from GOP attacks. Not only do EPA rules protect the environment, the report says, they are an engine of economic growth.
...
Boxer is hardly alone in this way of thinking. After President Obama announced in September that he was putting new EPA smog rules on ice, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., lamented the jobs that will be lost.

So, too, did economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who said the smog rules "would actually have created jobs: It would have forced firms to spend on upgrading or replacing equipment, helping to boost demand. Yes, it would have cost money — but that's the point!"

The EPA itself claims regulations can stimulate growth, writing in a February report that "in periods of high unemployment, an increase in labor demand due to regulation may have a stimulative effect that results in a net increase in overall employment."

And while Obama apparently understands that regulations can kill jobs — he's put off two big EPA rules out of concern that they will smother the barely breathing economy — he doesn't seem to think getting rid of existing ones will matter one way or another.

"Does anybody really think that that is going to create jobs right now and meet the challenges of a global economy?" he said at a press conference last week.

Given the level of economic understanding on display among our leaders, is it any wonder the economy is foundering?
In the end, IBD makes the definitive comment on the matter:


After all, if regulations were job-creation engines, the economy should be in danger of overheating right about now. Obama has overseen the fastest growth in new federal rules ever, imposing 75 new major regulations in his first 26 months in office at a cost of more than $40 billion, according to the Heritage Foundation.

[MannyIsGod]

http://pwwwblog.ibeatyou.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/bush-dumb-face.jpg
http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/activity/rushmore/rushmore.gif

[George Gervin's Afro]

Presidential candidate Rick Perry often tells audiences on the campaign trail that he will work to “make Washington as inconsequential in your lives as I can.” What the long-serving Texas governor does not mention is that he has relied on government programs, government guarantees and government jobs his whole life.

His campaign insists there is no contradiction.

“He believes the federal government should stop telling people and states how to educate their children and mandating how they manage their health care, among other one-size-fits-all policies coming out of Washington,” spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said in an e-mail. “The federal government ought to focus on the few very important responsibilities they do have, like standing a military, which we are very proud of, and securing the border, which they have failed miserably at doing.”

A look at the record, however, suggests Perry’s anti-Washington animus is more in spirit than actuality.

Perry grew up on a cotton farm in Haskell County, where the perennially struggling economy — then and now — depends on federal crop subsidies. Between 1995 and 2006, Haskell County farmers received farm subsidy payments totaling $81,172,449, according to the Environmental Working Group.

In his 2010 book, Fed Up: Our Fight to Save America from Washington, Perry fulminates against federal bureaucrats who distributed more than $245 billion in farm subsidies from 1995 to 2009. One of the recipients of that largesse was the governor himself, who farmed for a few years after a stint in the Air Force. According to his tax returns, Perry received at least $83,000 between 1987 and 1998, years when he was serving as an elected official.

“My opponent is trying to scare farmers and ranchers by lying about my record,” Perry said in 1990, campaigning against incumbent Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower. “He says I support eliminating our farm program payments. That’s not true. I’ve participated in the program as a producer. My neighbors participate. I know what would happen to rural areas of Texas if these programs were discontinued. I do not support such an action.”
Changing point of view

Twenty years later, Perry contends Washington has spent too much to “prop up” agricultural subsidies. “If Congress would just allow the market to work, American consumers would undoubtedly be much better off,” he writes in Fed Up.

After graduating from Paint Creek High School in 1968, Perry left the family farm for Texas A&M University, one of the nation’s “land-grant institutions.” The state’s agricultural and mechanical university, which had a decisive influence on Perry, owes its existence to a 19th-century federal program that transferred federally controlled land to the states to establish and endow “land-grant” colleges. As a public university, A&M continues to rely on taxpayer monies, both state and federal.

Graduating from A&M as a member of the Corps of Cadets in 1972, Perry accepted an Air Force commission. For the next five years, the federal government not only paid his salary and provided him a place to live but also allowed him to see the world as a pilot ferrying supplies in the Middle East and Europe.

After his 1977 discharge, Perry went to work helping his father grow cotton. The Perrys, like their neighbors, relied on federal price supports set up to insulate growers against the vagaries of the weather and free-market uncertainties.

Government salary

Former Democratic Congressman Charlie Stenholm, who represented Perry’s West Texas district for many years, agrees with him on subsidies. “The days of farm subsidization are over,” he said last week. “If the rest of the world would eliminate theirs, I’d eliminate ours.”

That’s about all the two men agree on these days. “Once he decided to run for statewide office (agriculture commissioner), Rick took off on a different tangent,” Stenholm said. “He’s not the same man I knew back then.”

By the time Perry sold his 40-acre farm in 1998, claiming a $17,693 loss on his federal income taxes for that year, Texas taxpayers had been paying his salary for nearly a decade. They continue to do so — $300 a month as a state representative in the early days, $150,000 a year as governor, in addition to numerous fringe benefits and a generous retirement package. Taxpayers also pay $10,000 a month, plus expenses, for the Perry’s rental home in West Austin while the governor’s mansion is restored.

“He has worked very hard during his time in government to make sure Texas is the best place to live, work and raise a family by applying fiscally conservative principles that have made Texas economically competitive and a leader in job creation,” Cesinger said.

The anti-Washington campaign rhetoric belies the fact that federal money consistently has made up close to a third of the state’s budget during Perry’s tenure in the governor’s office, and will total about $54.4 billion for the next two years. In 2009, the governor and the Legislature used federal stimulus funds to fill most of a $3.3 billion hole in the state’s budget, and the governor continues to call on Washington for disaster relief, most recently for last month’s disastrous Central Texas wildfires. Texas also gets more federal money for defense and veterans affairs than any other state.

“It’s fascinating to watch him as governor taking as much federal money as he has, while bad-mouthing the federal government. It’s hypocritical,” said Stenholm, a conservative Blue Dog Democrat still bitter about the mid-decade redistricting scheme backed by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and supported by his erstwhile friend in the governor’s office, a plan that ended up getting him beat.

Help from Washington

Perry is not the only presidential candidate whose anti-government words appear to be at odds with his deeds. Michele Bachmann worked as a lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service; a family farm in which she has an interest received nearly $260,000 in federal farm subsidies. Ron Paul, a flight surgeon in the Air Force after finishing medical school, has spent most of the past two decades in Congress. Newt Gingrich was a lecturer at two publicly funded universities before serving in Congress for two decades.

“Why does anyone believe politicians who shake their fists against government while comfortably ensconced as government insiders?” Gregg Easterbook, writing in Washington Monthly, asked recently.

He suggested that the answer lies with the voter, alluding to a 2008 Cornell Research Poll that found that 57 percent of Americans denied they ever had benefited from any “government social program.” Asked specifically whether they ever had taken out a student loan or relied on a mortgage-interest deduction, Social Security or other government social programs, almost every respondent admitted they had.

“It’s almost inevitable that there are going to be inconsistencies in what candidates say and what they do once in office,” said Allan Saxe, an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas at Arlington. “It’s called being human.”


I'm still trying to figure out why tea pottiers support a hypocrite..

discsuss

[ChumpDumper]

That's the same Heritage Foundation that proposed Obamacare before they called it Obamacare and were against it.

[JoeChalupa]

I'm not embarrassed at all. No more than republicans are embarrassed by Bachman, Palin, Perry and Bitch MConnell and Boner.

[Yonivore]

Apparently, I've struck a nerve.

[ChumpDumper]

...

[MannyIsGod]

Apparently, I've struck a nerve.

If responding is a sign that a nerve has been struck then the Occupy Wall Street folks must have struck a lot of them in you.

[Yonivore]

If responding is a sign that a nerve has been struck then the Occupy Wall Street folks must have struck a lot of them in you.
Responding with unrelated nonsense is the sign...not, simply responding.

Do you agree with the Democrats job-creation straegy?

[ChumpDumper]

...

[Oh, Gee!!]

"Job creation" may be (or may not be) a by-product of gov't regulations but it is not the goal. The goal is to regulate corporations to ensure as much as possible that they don't pollute, use illegal hiring practices, steal from the customer, etc. Regulation is needed, and if jobs are created as a by-product, then that's just icing. The question is whether they kill jobs, raise prices, stifle R&D, etc. to such a degree as to outweigh their usefulness.

[101A]

"Job creation" may be (or may not be) a by-product of gov't regulations but it is not the goal. The goal is to regulate corporations to ensure as much as possible that they don't pollute, use illegal hiring practices, steal from the customer, etc. Regulation is needed, and if jobs are created as a by-product, then that's just icing. The question is whether they kill jobs, raise prices, stifle R&D, etc. to such a degree as to outweigh their usefulness.

It's the ", etc" that really gets a little out of hand.

[RandomGuy]

Apparently, I've struck a nerve.

Strawmen don't have nerves.

What the Democrat said did show a limited grasp of microeconomics though.

Not any worse than some of the stupid shit you or the tea party in Congress has come up with in recent years.

For people who advocate free market systems, you seem not to know how they work.

[ElNono]

Same question asked to Republicans when Palin received the nomination, tbh

[FuzzyLumpkins]

For people who advocate free market systems, you seem not to know how they work.

I think these bears QFT designation.

[Blake]

Apparently, I've struck a nerve.

seriously, why do people like you simply flip a party switch at the polls?

[Agloco]

Apparently, I've struck a nerve.

Feel free to keep your head in the ground.

[Yonivore]

seriously, why do people like you simply flip a party switch at the polls?
People like me don't "simply flip a party switch at the polls."

[Bill_Brasky]

Both parties are retarded and the retarded public continues to pick sides and fight over which piece of shit stinks less.

[Yonivore]

"Job creation" may be (or may not be) a by-product of gov't regulations but it is not the goal. The goal is to regulate corporations to ensure as much as possible that they don't pollute, use illegal hiring practices, steal from the customer, etc. Regulation is needed, and if jobs are created as a by-product, then that's just icing.
I'm with 101A, it's the etc... that causing the majority of the problems.

But, even with the three you mention, there's overreach.

It's fine to have laws that mitigate pollution but, the policies that dictate exactly how corporations -- down to the most minute detail -- will meet pollution standards are unnecessary. Develop a standard, justify it, and them measure the results; punish polluters and leave compliant companies the fuck alone.

On illegal hiring practices, you're going to have to be more specific because, I don't think private employers should have any restrictions who they hire, who they fire, and who they retain...regardless of the reason. It's my business and no one is required to patronize it or work for it.

Again, stealing from customers would also have to be more specifically defined. Because there are already criminal laws against theft. If you mean you want to protect consumers against their own stupidity of blindly buying into idiotic commercial enterprises -- like the Madoff nonsense -- I'm opposed.

Let the buyer beware -- if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is.


The question is whether they kill jobs,...
They do. While Congressman Elliston may believe businesses just pull another wad of cash out of their pocket and hire people to help comply with the regulations, the fact is they shift the burden -- usually from salaries for productive work to salaries for compliance officers. Or, they shut down; or, they cheat.


...raise prices,...
Or, they raise prices to offet the additional costs.


...stifle R&D,...
Money spent on anything else is money not spent on R&D.

[Yonivore]

Both parties are retarded and the retarded public continues to pick sides and fight over which piece of shit stinks less.
Well, Bill, one of them has to.

[Blake]

People like me don't "simply flip a party switch at the polls."

Fooled me.

[Yonivore]

Fooled me.
That's something you'll have to deal with.

[Blake]

That's something you'll have to deal with.

When was the last time you voted Democrat?

[Spurminator]

I'd be embarrassed to align myself with either of the two parties, especially if I spent hours a day repeating what they tell me to say.

That said, someone who was once considered a viable Republican Presidential candidate said these words on national TV:

“When you take the 9-9-9 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil’s in the details.”

So I would say Team Red has plenty to be embarrassed about.

[cheguevara]

Both parties are retarded and the retarded public continues to pick sides and fight over which piece of shit stinks less.

+10000

this is it. Stupid idiots keep taking sides and blindly accusing the opposing side. this is why IMO this country is fucked.

the Senate votes down ObamaJobs but yet they get together to vote to insult Mother China. how fucking retarded is that? how is insulting China going to create jobs?

and the saddest thing is the House is in even more pathetic state. they can't pass jackshit. A group of monkeys could probably get more shit done.

[Yonivore]

and the saddest thing is the House is in even more pathetic state. they can't pass jackshit. A group of monkeys could probably get more shit done.
They've actually sent over a hundred bills to Harry Reid. You should check his inbox. The obstructionists are Democrats in the Senate.

[cheguevara]

They've actually sent over a hundred bills to Harry Reid. You should check his inbox. The obstructionists are Democrats in the Senate.

exhibit A of a sheep picking sides and blindly accusing the opposing side.

because of lemmings like this one, this country is fucked. More to come.

[Th'Pusher]

They've actually sent over a hundred bills to Harry Reid. You should check his inbox. The obstructionists are Democrats in the Senate.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/type/h

Yeah. The house has passed some quality Bills that are sitting in Reid's inbox.

In all seriousness, this website is pretty useful. I particularly like the money trail tab under each bill detailing the interests for and against each bill and the Top recipients for both supporting interest groups.

[Sportcamper]

Yonivore- Most of us are pretty much embarrassed by both parties…

[Yonivore]

Yonivore- Most of us are pretty much embarrassed by both parties…
So, what's your alternative?

[Spurminator]

So, what's your alternative?

Hold them both responsible instead of being a shill for one or the other.

Mock shills.

[ElNono]

It's the team mentality... for guys like yoni, you have to be part of the team... "the cause"...

[Blake]

When was the last time you voted Democrat, Yoni?

[Yonivore]

When was the last time you voted Democrat, Yoni?
I must have missed the question.

I vote Democrat in some local races, when I know the candidate or when I don't think political ideology is that much of an issue and I like the candidate.

I want to say the last time I voted Democrat on any Statewide race would have probably been in the 80's but, I can't recall for whom it was.

I've never voted for a Democrat President.

[Blake]

I must have missed the question.

I vote Democrat in some local races, when I know the candidate or when I don't think political ideology is that much of an issue and I like the candidate.

I want to say the last time I voted Democrat on any Statewide race would have probably been in the 80's but, I can't recall for whom it was.

I've never voted for a Democrat President.

so basically you just never vote Democrat.

just as worthless as flipping a party switch, imo.

[Yonivore]

so basically you just never vote Democrat.
Not even basically.


just as worthless as flipping a party switch, imo.
You're challenged, aren't you?

[Wild Cobra]

exhibit A of a sheep picking sides and blindly accusing the opposing side.

because of lemmings like this one, this country is fucked. More to come.
Wait a minute.

Legislation starts in the House. They have the power. If bills aren't making it to Obama's desk, you have no choice but to blame the senate.

[Blake]

Not even basically.

You're challenged, aren't you?

Just confirming my belief that you are really nothing more than a partisan hack.

[Sportcamper]

So, what's your alternative?

Decimation...

[Yonivore]

Decimation...
Well, we'll see how that works out for ya, won't we?