Journal zogger's Journal: Blood and Money 32
Blood and money, both are valuable, which is more valuable? It's a remarkably fair choice, everyone gets to choose by their actions what they think is more valuable.
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve. - Anonymous
moof (Score:1)
Presumably TFA's author is talking about congress critters and not lobbyists. I'm pro-lobbying. But not pro- congress critters selling out America with their votes, whether for money or power or Progressive (i.e. neo-Communist) ideals or what have you.
Absolutely.
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Presumably TFA's author is talking about congress critters and not lobbyists. I'm pro-lobbying. But not pro- congress critters selling out America with their votes, whether for money or power or Progressive (i.e. neo-Communist) ideals or what have you.
Since the corruption is inseparable from the lobbying, why do you support lobbying?
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I don't accept the "since", so I can't answer that. I see corruption as being inherently part of lobbying about as much as I see evil being inherently part of freedom -- they often coincide, but 1) in no way do they always do so, and 2) the sometimes-occuring evil does make that which it sometimes coincides with evil.
I believe in, in a sense, a distributive (no relation to distributism, or redistributionism!) property of political speech -- as a * x + b * x = (a + b) * x, so does our freedom of speech distr
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Perhaps you have a different meaning for the term than I do. To me, lobbying is paying somebody else to change the mind of a politician. From that standpoint, free speech and freedom of association could be fulfilled merely by requiring politicians to have an open door policy to their constituents, without the need of professional lobbyists.
If you need to pay somebody else to speak for you, it ain't free speech anymore.
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lobbying is paying somebody else to change the mind of a politician
Yep, I'm for that.
If you need to pay somebody else to speak for you, it ain't free speech anymore.
That makes about as much sense as if you had said if you need to associate with others to speak for your shared interests, then it ain't free speech. I fail to see how merely adding a level of indirection, or amplification, somehow makes something no longer what it is.
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I see you're trying to meet me halfway in understanding your points, but I'm sorry I just am not seeing it your way:
If a special interest group bands together, they are defacto disenfranchising the rest of the constituents;
To me this is no more so than if I study hard and get my mad hacker skills up and consequently am selected over someone else for a job opening, that I've done anything to hurt them.
as long as you have the money to promote your idea that is bad for society, you can promote it
Good. That's a
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Damn, accidentally hit AC- and since this post is about Integrity , I'm reposting. Sorry for the dupe.
Got to stick with your values.
If you're for individual freedom- and you know I'm not, but I'll argue for it for the sake of argument- you've got to stick with both the INDIVIDUAL as well as the FREEDOM. If a special interest group bands together, they are defacto disenfranchising the rest of the constituents; a form of corruption of the system, destruction of the dignity of the individual. However, majori
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No sweat. I'll just add that my conception of proper respect for the individual does not include limiting the individual to choosing only to operate individually. I guess you could say I'm more for the individual, and not so much individuality. That is, I'm for the person, not the concept. Abstract concepts have no dignity to be respected. So this is another reason I'm against collectivism -- I think it's dehumanizing in that it's a concept that's reasoned about like "individuality" is, and is losing sight
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And yet I'd point out, that a corporation IS essentially the same monster as a collective, just under a different moniker. If each person is worthy of respect, and unique respect, on their own, then certainly putting a fictional person's rights above theirs is dehumanizing and will destroy their dignity.
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Unquestioningly. (Now where are you going with this?)
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That's where the corruption comes in. If each person is worth of their own unique and equal respect from our legislators, then giving some people unequal and more respect just because they can afford to pay for it or have formed a union, a collective, or a corporation for the sake of lobbying, you've just damaged the respect for all the normal single individuals in society.
Which is why I'm against lobbying- it's a form of collectivism.
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Collectivism != people forming associations. Consider reclarifying in your mind what the term actually means. [freedomkeys.com]
Maybe think of it as top-down vs. bottom-up thinking. I'm for bottom-up: Let individuals doing what they do decide societal outcomes. And this includes individuals forming associations and then doing what they will via those, if they want. What I'm against is top-down thinking, where the desired societal outcomes are come up with first, and then the people are just an inhuman mass that's a mere compo
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The first definition in your link:
""COLLECTIVISM: Collectivism is defined as the theory and practice that makes some sort of group rather than the individual the fundamental unit of political, social, and economic concern. In theory, collectivists insist that the claims of groups, associations, or the state must normally supersede the claims of individuals." -- Stephen Grabill and Gregory M. A. Gronbacher"
Is the one I'm talking about. By allowing corporations and lobbyists- you're allowing the basic fundam
MIC and alter and sinister (Score:1)
MIC comes from a five star general, and once president. He would know about such things. I saw the speech live on TV. I actually got it, too, at the time, and I noticed the parental authority units were a little somber about the whole deal. It made an impression on people, but, it was soon forgotten. Here is the audio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eisenhower_farewell_address.ogg [wikipedia.org]
transcript page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_industrial_complex [wikipedia.org]
Also reference this guy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedl [wikipedia.org]
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As with all my encounters with Left-leaners, I have no way of knowing if you're dishonest about or genuinely ignorant of decades and longer standing Progressive plans to effectively destroy America (for the intolerable condition of being too liberal [lowercase ell there] of a nation, of all things!). Suffice it to say that the "evilness" of a MIC is not self-evident to me such that merely pointing out its existence is enough to explain its danger, but I'm open to potential correction on this tho, not being
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As with all my encounters with Right-leaners, I have no way of knowing if you're dishonest about or genuinely ignorant of decades and longer standing Conservative Coup to remove our democracy and put the Financial Industry in charge of America and use the MIC to enforce it. Stage 1 succeeded in September 2008- we have no more effective democracy, only tyranny of the financial sector.
The knife cuts both ways, and both sides have their points.
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As with all my encounters with Right-leaners, I have no way of knowing if you're dishonest about or genuinely ignorant...
Perfectly understandable, and in my case I would like you to be assured that it is genuine ignorance -- tell me how AIG has been planning for decades to take over the govt. and how they were going to get the military to go along with that.
both sides have their points
I'm open to the possibility that some/many on the Right have been planning their own kind of un-American coup. I'm only obje
Misunderstood (Score:1)
I am perfectly asware of what you term the left in notions, plans, and schemes to "take over" I just looked further over the years and found out this so called left/right split is an artificial barrier they have gone out of their way to maintain, in order to keep as hidden as possible the duopoly conspiracy-it has been, and still is, the same dudes at the top of this modern return to feudalism/aristocracy stuff, what I have been calling, and has now entered the lexicon, I have heard my term on the radio now
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It looks like our point of contention is one of logic -- that we prolly see reality mostly the same, but that I just totally disagree with the conclusion you long ago have and still believe you can draw from it.
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Perfectly understandable, and in my case I would like you to be assured that it is genuine ignorance -- tell me how AIG has been planning for decades to take over the govt. and how they were going to get the military to go along with that.
.com era bursting, they invented two totally new products: the interest-only-payments variable-rate mortgage
Actually, at this point, it's mainly past history- but it was more than AIG, it was the whole damn financial industry. To make up from the bubble of the
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All that I can understand and agree with, but you spoke of a "decades and longer standing Conservative Coup to remove our democracy and put the Financial Industry in charge of America and use the MIC to enforce it". Please tell me how some on the Right were going to get the Military-Industrial Complex to enforce the financial industry being in charge of America. Starting with what the MIC is to you, might be helpful.
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Started with the Reagan Revolution- Banks got the start of deregulation, and in exchange Reagan got the borrowing power to win the cold war (outproduce the USSR in military hardware, thus bankrupting their collective asses, so to speak). More recently, the MIC has paid the banks back by preventing their coup from sparking a violent populist uprising- through the arming of law enforcement agencies nationwide to do the dirty work of foreclosures.
But I'm going to be quick to point out one thing- it ain't just
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WTF are talking about? Reagan got the borrowing power from Congress, not the banks. And the MIC is a relationship and effect, not an entity. So it cannot "pay back the banks", nor prevent a coup. What prevented violent populist uprising of the bank bailouts was a Republican administration doing it first. And GW's rationalizing that we have to kill the free market to save it or somesuch quasi-sensical junk. What prevented an uprising against the bailouts from really picking up steam was the benefit of the do
sure, easy to prove there is no diff (Score:1)
Here is just one of many examples, this one is so glaring you need a welder's helmet to avoid being blinded. Look at the obviously crooked wall street bailouts/extortion scams, and also the make up of governmental appointees, etc, across what are allegedly the "two extremes" of political thought and party. Started in earnest under the alleged "right wing" and party, then the same exact policies continued unabated under the alleged "left wing" side of things. Look at the economic appointees under both admini
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Wait, Geitner and Bernake are military guys? And what does the military and defense contractors have to do with the Fed?
"Military-industrial complex (MIC) is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationships between governments, national armed forces, and industrial support they obtain from the commercial sector in political approval for research, development, production, use, and support for military training, weapons, equipment, and facilities within the national defense and security policy. It is [wikipedia.org]
Some more (Score:1)
Here's an interesting link
http://www.theyrule.net/html/about.php [theyrule.net]
You can follow stuff around there, then cross reference with campaign donations, etc
http://www.opensecrets.org/ [opensecrets.org]
As to my inclusion of banking and pharma, it is because of the economic power they wield in influencing governments, whether of the so called left or so called right. It is not peeves of mine I hate, it is just further fine tuning of the information to make it easier to understand my main gist, to show how this is interconnected and do
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Ah, so are you saying that yes there's indeed a vast Left-wing conspiracy to take over America, but they're nothing to worry about because they're powerless in the face of an even more powerful cabal (that doesn't care about political positions)?
Blood and money (Score:2)
To paraphrase a saying from the seventies, "blood will get you by in times of no money better than money will get you by in times of no blood."
You can stay alive without money; the homeless manage. But you'd be hard pressed to stay alive with no blood.
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Freewheelin' Franklin.
I was partial to Fat Freddy's Cat.
zap! (Score:1)
Commander roach, and his cockroach army was pretty funny. As was notorious norbert the nark.
I liked the one where they all sat around and got blitzed, then got hungry, and had no food. So they send fat freddy to the grocery store with their last cash and he stops and buys a shotgun instead at the pawnshop so they can go out and "hunt for their food"
bawahgahahah "roof rabbits" heheheheheh
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"Plenty more where they came from..."