Pangloss

The Secretary of Defense has lifted the ban on press coverage of coffins returning to Dover AFB from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=6965734&page=1 I think this is the right move because it's more open and above-board, and it also allows for families to continue to opt for privacy if that is their preference. Apparently this is still somewhat controversial and in transition -- some question what would happen if a family is split over the issue, for example. But presumably this could be worked out on a case-by-case basis. Apparently the decision was widely supported by veterans groups. What do you all think?

What the heck? Do you just not understand what I meant? I mean I know I'm not the clearest SOB sometimes, but yeesh. To clarify: I'm not making that argument. I'm pointing out that if ecoli wants to stray into that territory, he's got the academic validity assignment backwards.

Actually it's the predominant economic theory of this age of man, ecoli. Your Mises and pure-market folks are the ones who are lacking in up-to-date pedigree and trying to microwave-defrost some very old reasoning. Personally I don't think academic arguments are appropriate here -- I think this is a matter for gut-punching realities. But if you're going to take a stand on academic grounds you might want to dig a little deeper.

According to ABC News last night, taxes will be raised in three categories: - As previously discussed, the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire, raising the income tax for earners over $250k/yr from 35% to a bit over 39%. Ugly though it may be, this is consistent with the president's campaign promises. - Capital gains taxes will be increased to the extend that they will produce an additional revenue of up to something like $180 billion/year. In spite of the President's promises, this would affect all Americans who own homes, including those who earn less than $250,000/yr. - A reduction in the tax deduction for charitable contributions, also intended to increase revenue by somewhere between 100 and 200 billion dollars per year. The last point was a bit surprising but I think it makes sense. I haven't seen a lot of analysis yet of how deep that cut would be in terms of its affect on the average contributor.

Yes, and poorly. He apparently sees no inherent contradiction in using propaganda to prove that other people are propagandists. I stand by my statement (to which Reaper was responding) that Amnesty International is often wrong. It was, after all, merely an opinion statement in response to Bascule's question. I reject the suggestion that I am simply misinformed by deceivers regarding this organization because the "evidence" supplied by TBK comes from other deceivers.

I do see your point there, and it's given me something to think about. If the "new revenue" stream offsets the "new expenditure" then perhaps it's a wash. It is still a new budgeted expense with an unknown revenue stream to potentially offset it down the line. I don't know much about the collection side of this issue. So basically we're saying that this approach accidentally addresses a problem that it didn't purport to address (eliminating a relatively small but regular loss), while failing to solve a different one (reasons for student default rates). I definitely have to give this issue more thought.

Rofl -- Reaper's link was from Counterpunch, a rag that regularly runs views from the likes of Cynthia "the jews have bought everybody" McKinney and has been accused of antisemitism more often than (and faster than you can say three times) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Wanna run that bit about propagandists by us again?

Rofl.

Yes, and it's a doozie. A massive expansion, and fully FIFTY PERCENT of it paid for by deficit spending. Holy mother of god.

Income for the government "IFF" the default rate is less than the income realized from interest (which, by the way, we want to keep artificially low in order to put more people back in school -- although that, notably, isn't happening yet, and could be a benefit from greater government control). (I know I'm all over the map here.) Also, as I pointed out above, we're out 100% of the money up front. It's budgeted and spent, with the assumption that it will be paid back 6-10 years later.

Well yes, that's what I meant to say. Sorry if I gave the impression that I thought we were presuming a 100% loss. It's my concern that the default rate will climb because the cause of the default rate isn't being addressed by this change (even thought this is what the change purports to address), not that it will automatically zoom to 100% just because the government is involved (I raised that objection as well, but also included its answer). Right. And student loans are a good investment for the taxpayer's money, IMO, as they were before. It's an interesting point that I haven't considered. To summarize, you're saying that under the old approach we could never recover 100% of our money, but under the new approach we can recover all of our money and interest (which realistically means enough interest to potentially cover the defaults). I don't know the answer to the question of whether this will provide a lesser loss over the long term than the other way -- there may be analysis on that point out there that I just haven't seen (and a lot of it probably from special interest groups with their own agendas, unfortunately). I do think it's fairly safe to say that it is a loss one way or another, and that it's probably worth finding out which loss is greater. I don't particularly care that people are profiting -- so long as the playing field is level and the job is getting done right. I do care that the government is hemorrhaging money these days. But the real fly in the ointment here is just that this is a great deal of money that we still have to cover in the short term -- we are the "capital" portion of the investment now. We have to make that money available -- it has to be budgeted and apportioned, regardless of whether it's paid back later. Under the old system we didn't have to do that. We only had to cover the loss. And we're already deep into deficit spending. But we're going to have to lay out billions of dollars for this program every year, at the very time when we're trying to CUT spending to save the economy. Won't that mean that student loans will be subject to rising and falling with the political whims and budgetary needs of the day? With private capital that wasn't be a problem -- all we had to do was keep investors interested. As a side note, something isn't automatically better just because the government does it, and it isn't automatically worse just because somebody's making a profit off of it. Neither of these sentiments should be fueling this discussion, IMO, and I hope they are not.

Well here's an Obama decision I disagree with. I understand its source and these things tend to be very complex, though, so I'm trying to keep a fairly open mind about it. Currently student loans are, in the main, privately funded but federally backed, which means that if the student is unable to pay it back the government steps in and covers the loan. Since this is a 100% guarantee of repayment, investment was a no-brainer and that meant that plenty of money was available for lending to students (in fact this change, stemming from the Clinton administration, is generally attributed as the source of the great educational explosion of the late 1990s and early 2000s). Of course it also meant that schools could make easy money through predatory lending -- "putting butts in seats" to pull in that loan money when in fact the student had no real intention of staying there. The administration has decided to fix this problem by forcing all student loans to pass through the Federal Direct Student Loan Program, which cuts the private lending sources out of the ballgame completely. All funding is to be derived from the federal budget. So now taxpayers have to pay up front for the entire loan amount and hope they get paid back. Whereas before the taxpayer only had to pay if the student was unable to pay the loan back. Even if the latter was a really high percentage, it was still less than the total amount. And there's nothing in this program that would even address the problem of payback percentages. In fact some would even argue that the payback percentage will drop even further, because it's a government program rather than a private entity, with presumably less capability for collection. (Though I admit that's a long chain of assumptions.) A better way to go would be to continue the highly-motivated private funding sources with 100% guarantee, and address the problems by putting the government's foot down on accreditation methods. Currently schools don't even have to have regional accreditation, which is relatively strict and difficult to obtain and maintain -- any fly-by-night accreditation source is sufficient. There's no oversight whatsoever. I can create a school and collect financial aid from students TOMORROW. Raising the bar to the nation's six primary regional accrediting bodies would solve that problem instantly, while retaining a wide variety of educational avenues, including private, for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix (which is accredited through the North-Central regional accrediting body). There are even large numbers of "trade schools" with regional accreditation. Here's an article on Obama's plans: http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BarackObama/idUSTRE51P5YE20090226 What do you all think?

If you keep posting like that, that's gonna be me on the left and you on the right. BE NICER!

Because any investigation by the DOJ that's as politically charged as this one would in fact equate to an investigation by the White House. As I said before, Congress can investigate on its own. It appears increasingly likely that it will do so, in fact.

And yet, somehow blike found a nicer way to put it than you did....................

First of all, you're putting Bill O'Reilly's words in my mouth, which is not appropriate or accurate at all and quite insulting. I firmly believe that there are mainstream liberals and that they are quite distinct from the far left, and I've done absolutely nothing to equate the two in this thread. Second, in answer to your question, your own poll draws a SHARP contrast between investigation and prosecution/trial, showing only 41% support for the latter. Not exactly "vast". This 2007 poll showed that only 40% of Americans supported impeaching President Bush. 55% opposed. http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/15689 This Wikipedia article lists several other polls, none of which show a higher "impeach" preference (all show a lower level of support). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_to_impeach_George_W._Bush Bascule, my purpose on this subforum, as always, is to talk about politics, not demonize people's honestly-held opinions. President Obama's approval rating is somewhere between 62 and 68%. In political terms, that's basically a credit line. In my opinion he can spend it overhauling healthcare and fixing the economy, or he can spend it on throwing his predecessor in jail. Not both. That's a statement about political realities, not whether liberals are crackpots.

Whoops!

That speech was awesome, btw. I've been trying to figure out the best way to approach a new thread on it. Any suggestions?

Interesting replies, thanks. It sounds like the "9/11" phrasing kinda stuck in spite of the apparent local date reversal. Interesting that the London bombings took place on 7/7 -- a convenient Palindrome for that tragic event. I'm sure some two-bit psychics somewhere have made great hay with that fact.

I guess that's fair enough (to both iNow in #62 and bascule in #64).

Exactly. BTW, I'm not entirely disagreeing with iNow's post #66 above. I think he's certainly got a point about such things, and probably The Bear's Key is just over-expressing a similar point. There's no question people are disappointed with the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and other issues. But that's a far cry from the kind of anger or outrage commonly expressed by the far left. I don't see that kind of emotion coming from mainstream America. I think people are focused on the economy and not really thinking about Bush much at the moment at all. And I think President Obama is very much in tune with that sentiment. He has clearly identified and focused on the emotional tone of this country, and zoned right on in what it wants him to do. And that synergy is absolutely forward-looking, not backward-looking. And part of the reason for that is the simple fact that in the current political climate of this country, for whatever the reason, whomever's blame it is, "investigation" (which might be a good thing) looks all too much like "politics" and "retribution" (which the country vomits at even a hint of). And there's just no way around that fact at the moment.

And yet most of the issues currently aimed at Bush were present in the 2004 election cycle.

I think if you guys want to refute the technical realities you're going to have to do better than suggesting that the Israelis throw pillows at Hamas terrorists. War machinery is funny that way -- it doesn't care a whole lot about ideologies or politics. The stuff either works or it doesn't. And I still haven't seen any evidence here that they've specifically chosen this particular equipment because it hurts people more than equally effective alternatives.

Hey YT, just out of idle curiosity, do folks across the pond actually refer to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington it as "11/9"? I know you guys show your days before your months by convention, but I know you also get a lot of our news and entertainment media over there (in fact I imagine that far more British people know that we do our dates "backwards" than Americans know that British do theirs "backwards"!). Would the average person know what I meant if I said "9/11"? Just curious. (Edit: Moved into a new thread. I'm going to move this over to the General forum since it's not really about politics and doesn't follow our posting convention here.)

Fear isn't what stopped impeachment of President Bush. At least not fear of President Bush. Fear of public reaction, perhaps. That may seem strange given the reported 71% figure, but remember, the man was re-elected in 2004 by 50.7% of the population. It takes a little while to push that much opinion from one side of a dividing line to the other. It also seems to me at times like this that there is a real lack of understanding here for just how much people hate partisan politics. Or at least what thy perceive to be partisan politics coming from what they view as the opposition. I've heard people call in to the Rush Limbaugh show and complain about how partisan those liberal democrats are. No, really. And I've heard Air America callers scream the same sort of nonsense -- as if it actually makes sense. Those people aren't stupid, they're just too-rarely exposed to a truth that's unencumbered by a convenient, familiar, comfortable ideological shield. Nobody talks to them without an agenda. Ever.