Pangloss

Well, that's what I'm asking JohnB.

No costs were concealed regarding Iraq funding, Mokele. The accusation is that they were "creatively managed", etc. Not hidden, just buried under mounds of rubble. Which is exactly where NSF funding was placed in the stimulus bill. You wouldn't have known about it any more than I would have were it not for the fact that some enterprising opponent dug it out and shoved it under the nose of some reporter. SIGNERS aren't even reading it, much less every citizen. So again, what is the difference?

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE51G5X720090222 It is audacious, especially when you look at a key statistic that the reporters haven't calculated yet (more no that below). But I think it's what has to be done. First, a key quote from the article above: Very clever of the president to phrase his statement around values based on "the economy" rather than the budget. The budget is only 3 trillion versus 14 trillion for the economy, so the figures look very small, when in fact they're quite large. A cut from 26 to 22% of "the economy" represents 4% of $14 trillion. That's $560 billion. In other words, he's saying that he's going to cut spending by $560 billion. From a $3 trillion budget. That's, what, about 19%? The article also talks about how some of the savings would come from ending the war in Iraq, but the problem with that statement is that that war spending, which the article states as $190 billion in 2008, wasn't on the budget. And it's unclear exactly how the deficit is being calculated -- the $1.5 trillion figure clearly does not include the new stimulus package, for example. (That starts to get really complicated, too, especially when you realize that the stimulus package included tax cuts, which affect next year's budget.) At any rate, I guess the thing to really wonder is what it is that could be cut for a savings of $560 billion. Even if we subtract, say, $100 billion for reductions in Iraq (probably ridiculously optimistic, but what the heck), you've still got to find $460 billion to cut somewhere. Discretionary spending is the usual target, which is basically spending that's not part of entitlement programs (where we guarantee certain spending because of a law that was passed). The king of that hill is Defense, which is something in the general neighborhood of the amount we need to cut ($613 billion this year) (casual reference). Unfortunately Defense isn't as easy to cut as it sounds. People assume that it's all going to buy F-22s and Trident submarines, but in fact only something like 20% of the Defense budget goes to buying things (casual reference). Most of it typically goes to payroll and operations. So really the only way to make BIG cuts in Defense is to lay people off. And he'd be considering that at a time when unemployment is one of the chief economic concerns. Hm. So let's say you cut a couple hundred billion from Defense anyway, and consequences be damned. That's still going to leave you with a shortfall of several hundred billion dollars that you need to cut. Where would those cuts come from? And here I come to my key point, so I'll go ahead and bold it for clarity: Other discretionary spending in the current budget came to $520 billion. This is basically the budget of the Executive branch -- all those Departments of This and Agencies of That. So this includes homeland security, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and so forth. It also includes Education, the EPA, funding for scientific research, NASA, and so forth. So we spend about $520 billion in that department, and we're looking to cut about $300 billion from it. Not a pretty picture, is it? My my, it's going to be an interesting year for politics!

How is that different from the inclusion of NSF funding in the economic stimulus bill? You can say what you like about its economic impact, but many inclusions on that bill were done for ideological reasons and then back-justified for their economic impact. That's a violation of transparency. I get that you guys are angry with me for attacking your pet science funding, but this is about politics, and as such I think these comparisons are valid. If you want to find some common ground here we can say this is ultimately a matter of opinion, and perhaps NSF funding might even be an efficient way to boost the economy. But like it or not there are people in this country who will see no less validity in their own opinions about spending versus yours. That's how it is in a democracy.

Hmm, nnnnnnoooooooooo it does seem to be the presence or absence of an item that matters. I mean, just going by the OP and subsequent responses. Let's take a look:

I don't appreciate that reply. If you can't come up with an intelligent response to my perfectly reasonable questions, then you should not hit the post button at all. Would you like to have a discussion about that, or can we return to talking about the economy? You're all hot and bothered about subject changes lately, and yet here you are turning this into a discussion about Pangloss. Wow, dude. Can you just answer the damn questions and stop with the red herrings?

And we know what's been spent on Iraq, too. We're sitting here talking about it, so by your definition how is it not transparent? What I think is that if the line item in question were about keeping another Terri Schiavo alive (assuming Republicans were still in power) then you and everyone else on this board would be falling all over themselves to reach the keyboard so they could accuse Republicans of trying to hide such funding in this bill. Hide. To sneak one over on us. To pull the wool over people's eyes. You know. The opposite of transparency.

So you know every bit of spending that was in the stimulus bill, then?

So two wrongs make a right?

I am not the one who raised the issue of transparency in this thread. I'm simply responding to that point with an obvious correlation to an obvious conflict with what this group seemed to favor when the shoe was on a different foot. We're not talking only about Iraq funding in this thread, iNow, we're talking about the entire budget. Please do try to stay on subject. By the way, did you hear your "Nobel Prize-winning economist" Krugman this morning on This Week say that he thought having some expenses outside of the budget was a good idea? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that he sells out his objective value as an economist for ideological gain. Defense spending = bad, social spending = good. That's the Paul Krugman idea of economic science.

I'm simply pointing out that putting funding for the National Science Foundation in the economic stimulus package was, under the terms of moral judgment stated in this thread, exactly the same thing as hiding secret spending on Iraq. Funny thing about politics: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

So now you all agree with me that NSF funding had no place in the stimulus bill. Cool. Also, I noticed the interesting equation of transparency and accountability with the idea of predictability in the first paragraph of that quote above. An interesting thing, given the fact that we just spent a trillion dollars off the books, unsupported by income, and already acknowledged to be insufficient to the purpose. Meaning we're going to do it again, not budgeted, but on the spur of the moment, "as needed". Interesting.

Well and there at least we have some common ground -- I'm sure you would agree with me, then, that if Bush had, for example, cheated on his wife Laura, and then lied to the American people about it, then we wouldn't even be having this conversation, yes? We'd be moving on, albeit with that additional taint on the tatters of his reputation. Unfortunately that's not how most partisan Bush-bashers see it, and I think there's be just as much clamoring for his prosecution under those conditions as there is right now. Put another way, I might agree that it's unfortunate that those actions that you view (and I don't entirely disagree) as more serious than Clinton's are going to be insufficient to overcome the political ramifications of such an investigation.

I guess the Bush administration has now become "the Enron of presidential administrations", in addition to all their other labels. Oh well.

I've read recently that small business employs 70% of the labor force. But I'm sure there are many good people in big business too -- the Warren Buffet types who will have a major impact, especially in terms of leadership. Anyway, I did my part this week, farming out a web site job to a former student. For me it was like "pfft, it's only a couple grand, and I have no time for it", but for him it was like "OMFG, that's months of rent and food!!!!" It's funny how that works.

Well that's your mistake right there -- you think the Justice Department is an instrument of justice. iNow, that slippery slope point of yours is just an avoidance of the fact that such an investigation is inextricably political. If it does happen it wouldn't take place if it weren't for the opposition party coming to power, and you'd be using a partisan political instrument to conduct the investigation. So even if the Justice Department's motivations were pure and the hearts of congressional Democrats not hell-bent on revenge, you still cannot extricate politics from the investigation of a former president. Can not. It is impossible. So don't sit there and pretend this would be a fair and impartial "investigation" into "criminal activity". That's just nonsense. Such is not possible, therefore whether or not such takes place is a political decision, not a decision regarding justice. Or at least not just that.

Right, you need a 64-bit OS to view all 4 gigs of RAM. It's normal for 32-bit XP (or 32-bit Vista) to see only 3gb when there is really 4 in the system.

I thought the current media meme was that the stimulus bill was extremely complex -- so much so that nobody even bothered to read the whole thing. Perhaps it's something more along the lines of "it's all gobbledygook, so only a monkey with no English could have written it"? I'm kinda grasping at straws here. So you don't think it was a reference to Obama at all, but rather a statement by the artist that perhaps the stimulus bill is an unintelligent course of action, or something along those lines, yes?

Why would a monkey write a bill? Is that another icon I've missed somehow? Wow, I'm really starting to wonder about my education!

Clear to you, certainly. But we've already established that you don't represent a mainstream view in this country. Want to see how your view that lying presidents are less important than spying presidents stacks up against the national opinion? You could be right, but I don't think it's as clear-cut as you make it out to be -- you're spinning the situation to justify you're predetermined position that Bush needs to be punished for his sins. If we actually put this out there as a normal tool for use on a regular basis, do you really think it will only be used for the public good, and never for retribution? Really? I think you're smarter than that. Also, who's "we"? President Bush didn't go after Clinton. He damn well could have, not so much for Monicagate but for his arguably criminal handling of the Justice Department of Janet "I hire psychologists to teach children to say that their parents molested them" Reno, and probably dozens of other offenses hither and yon. Instead he chose not to. Do you understand why?

Yeah I don't know about this whole chimp=president iconography. So any appearance of a chimpanzee in a political cartoon means "The President"? How come I never got the memo on this? Y'all could be right, but at the very least it seems ill-advised.

That's a fair point. But let's try a hypothetical here: Let's say I am a banker, and under some unusual conditions that aren't important here, I am told by the government that they will back any one-time loan that I make. I say "groovy", and I loan you $100 trillion, to be paid back next Tuesday. You blow it over the weekend on chicks and beer, and next Tuesday rolls around and you say "sorry Pangloss, I ain't got it." My question for you is this: Is there not a point where ideologies become irrelevant to the realities of the situation at hand? I agree that we don't know enough to make some of the decisions we've been making lately. The problem is that we don't know enough to refrain from making them either. The libertarian/market crowd has been crooning a toon that they don't actually know the ending to -- this idea that the market will correct itself is all well and good, so long as you're okay with a change from a $14 trillion economy to a $14 economy. Are our principles really THAT important? I keep thinking about that global warming video where the guy makes the choice boxes and asks whether you're talking about columns or rows. You know, this one: zORv8wwiadQ This keeps feeling to me like the same kind of situation here, and it just feels to me like we keep coming back to an argument of "we can't afford to do nothing", even if we leave the media influence completely out of it. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedABC News' late-night program Nightline ran an interesting piece tonight about unusual niche opportunities in the midst of the housing crisis. They interviewed one enterprising real estate broker who showed the reporter a house that he was fixing up that he had specifically bought for resale -- you know, a "flipper" -- the sort of thing that is blamed for getting us into this mess, right? So he's like Mr. Evil, surely? But no, he's just a hard-working guy who wants to turn a profit, just like anybody else. Yes, the house was worth $380k a couple of years ago and he bought it off foreclosure for 80k, but when asked whether he felt bad for the people who "lost their home", he pointed out a couple of things. The "owners" had "purchased" the house with 100% financing, and had lived in the house basically rent-free for 18 months prior to foreclosure. And when they left they took absolutely everything with them, from appliances to lighting fixtures -- stuff that was supposed to remain part of the house. So as he saw it they actually got a pretty good deal. (Sounds like it to me too.) So he bought it for 80k, he's fixing it up, putting about $20,000 of his own money into the place, and hopes to sell it for around $140k. He's taking risks here that aren't covered by any government programs, and in the process he's employing local labor -- painters, landscapers, electricians and repair people. And he's doing this with several houses. IMO that's what will ultimately save the economy. I'm still supportive of the idea of a stimulus plan, so long as it remains incentive-based rather than socialistic in nature, but in the end I do think it's going to be hard working folks like this guy who turn things around.

So you're saying that there's an established tradition of comparing presidents to chimpanzees that I just wasn't aware of? Something the Post readership would have immediately connected on? I suppose that's possible. Seems odd, though. Did that start with Bush?

I'm not sure I get this thing. Take a look at this cartoon: Yes, it's clearly a reference to the recent news story about the Connecticut woman who was attacked by a chimpanzee and was subsequently shot by police, but the thing I don't understand is why the cartoonist thought that the reader would be able to make a humorous connection with the president and his stimulus bill. Why would the police shoot the president? I don't get it. Can someone explain the joke to me? I don't see how I can figure out whether or not it's racist if I don't understand it. But if the only connection between the chimpanzee and the president is the comparison of African Americans to apes, then surely that is an example of racism, isn't it? What do you all think? Here's a link to a story about this: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5766822.ece

You're probably right about pointing out that we already have an investigation and judgment against Bush that could be followed-through on. But the above quote is certainly not legal reasoning and is actually a really good example of why NOT to pursue Bush. If this really is pursued then those kinds of statements really need to be left at the door, lest you make real the very thing that politicians are most afraid of and one of the things that brought down the Roman Republic -- automatic prosecution of all former leaders. Be careful what you wish for, lest you actually get it. Clinton wasn't impeached for pot smoking or receiving fellatio, he was impeached for lying. I happen to think that action was a huge mistake, but it is wrong for a president to lie. If you want to measure relative wrongs, go right ahead, but as above I recommend avoiding comparisons. They don't serve your case and if they are actually used they dig us deeper into a place we really don't want to go as a nation. Anyway, like I said, have fun storming the castle. Who knows, you could end up getting what you want.