WASanford's Comments (424)

“I'd like to see the Federal Reserve Bank nationalized. Then instead of borrowing freshly printed money from that institution our government could simply do its own printing. Having that power would free us from the necessity of resorting to indebtedness to accomplish our goals. It would work somewhat like Lincoln’s "Greenbacks" during the civil war. That would, of course, put monetary policy squarely in the hands of our government and some might consider that as dangerous, but we would be able to increase or reduce the money supply as necessary.”

“I agree with you that corporate interests buying the services of our representatives with campaign donations is a big part of the problem we face. It is at the very least unethical and it should be a crime that leads to jail time for both lobbyist and the representative.

Publically financed campaigns can and probably should be done at the state level. This affects both members of the House and Senate as well as state legislators.

Term limits can be imposed by the voters who get a chance at that every two years. Other than preventing a district from reelecting someone they are happy with, I just don't get what the idea of term limits is supposed to accomplish.”

“Term limits solved nothing here in California. They're antidemocratic and if they are a good policy someone will have to show me how.”

“Great comment! All you have to do is look at California and see what a mess direct democracy (Propositions) has done to our state.”

“Publically financed campaigns?”

“Jim, where you say in the first paragraph of your post; “As this month's unemployment numbers confirm, the nation's economy continues to suffer despite recent positive and relatively impressive productivity numbers.” You seem to be counting on increased productivity to save our economy. I disagree! Since the late 1970’s productivity has been growing on a nearly exponential curve and it has exacerbated, not cured our problems

Think about it for a minute. If you have a productivity increase that allows 2 workers to do the same work that was previously done by 10, don’t you have 8 laid off workers? Isn’t that the crux of our unemployment problem? I believe that increased productivity is the main cause of unemployment in our country.

Increased productivity used to mean lower prices which would in turn increase demand and sales. Since the 1970’s however, businesses have taken their profits directly by simply laying off their workers.

When a company is allowed to incorporate, it assumes a responsibility to the society in which it conducts its business. In many cases, that contract has been broken while our government simply stood by. In that failure lay the seeds of our economy’s destruction.”

“Whoops! compensate should have been commensurate. Guess I was keyboarding too fast.”

“This may be so obvious that there’s no need to state it, but let me anyway. Absence a compensate increase in demand; increased productivity is a job killer and since the late 1970’s productivity has been growing exponentially! The obvious cure, sometime near the beginning, would have been to increase demand by lowering prices. That would have left our businesses with increased profitability that would grow as demand increased. But that was not meant to be. Instead, those masters of mankind* took the money for their own pockets, eventually leaving us with a decimated consumer base. We can scapegoat illegal aliens and try to solve our trade deficit**, but I don’t believe they are the crux of our problem which is; how do we re-enable our consumer base in a way that provides ourselves with gainful employment? Answer that question and we will have the solution to recovering our failing economy.

*Adam Smith describes the masters of mankind and their vile maxim in “Wealth of Nations,” Volume III, Chapter IV.
** I’m not saying our trade deficits are not an important problem. They are. But they are only a part of the solution.”

“There is no way that China can steal our jobs and somehow manage to sell their products to us after we've lost our gainful employment. The low wages Chinese peasants earn will not build a nation that can sell its products to its own consumer base. Both the US and China have the capacity to overproduce goods but unemployed people will have no way to buy them. The populations of both societies appear to be headed towards poverty and despair.

Despair is a dangerously combustible commodity. When the population perceives that there's nothing left to lose, revolutions happen. The real power always resides with the people if they have the courage to use it.”

“OK James here is your “wage freeze.” Lee E. Ohanian, a professor of economics at UCLA, has claimed that President Herbert Hoover’s pro-labor policies after the 1929 stock market crash made the Great Depression at least 3 times worse than it otherwise would have been. “By keeping industrial wages too high, (Ohanian doesn't explain the mechanism Hoover would have used to do that!) Hoover sharply depressed employment beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that act drove down the overall gross national product.” Ohanian said. Hoover was trying to stop a recession combined with deflation which would have been disastrous. He was also afraid that wage cuts would cause crippling strikes in the industrial sector, I believe he was correct.

Now take a look around you. How much agreement do you see among the current batch of economists? Nope, agreement on these issues is slim to none. No one, not even an economist knows what causes a recession much less how to cure one.

But Ohanian is quite probably wrong! His work concentrated on wages through that period. It’s as if his mind was made up before he even started his research.

You got it wrong! You tried to put this on FDR and Ohanian’s methodology is very questionable.”

“Thank you for telling us about your father. This is the time for gratitude and thankfulness. He has succeeded in doing what every father seeks to do. He has made himself part of you. He will not die!”

“Where does this stuff come from? The economy was collapsing. How can you reasonably tie growing unemployment to an attempt to freeze wages. Just so you'll know, the NRA (national Recovery Act) established agency's with rather unspecific powers. They cranked out a plethora of regulations. It also established rules that allowed workers to form unions. It's true that unemployment reached 20%, my father was one them, but then dairy farmers were pouring their milk onto the ground because they couldn't sell it for what it cost to produce it.

I seriously considered making the NRA's blue eagle my icon, but I liked Uncle Sam's war poster better.”

“Dean, you've been reading my comments. If the economists are correct in saying that the jobs lost to American workers in the past three decades are never coming back; we need to find some way to make these changes. 1/ Reduce the work week to 32 hours. 2/ Mandate 4 weeks of vacation per year. 3/ lower the retirement age to the middle 50's. 4/ Raise the minimum wage and pay for this by taxing the holy cr*p out of the ungodly profits these large banks are making. They've created this mess and they owe it to us to fix it!”

“ALQaeda is in Germany, Spain, France, and the Netherlands among others world wide. Should we attack these countries? No? Then why are we fighting in Afghanistan?

The lesson we should take away from Vietnam is this: We lost the war and our fears were NOT realized. LBJ and Nixon were feeding the American people a line of you know what.”

“During WWII the whole eighth air force was dedicated to dropping bombs on Germany. We were not trying to kill Germans, we were destroying the infrastructure that allowed Germany to continue its war. We were destroying refineries, railroads, and factories. Not one of those bombs were dropped in order to kill anyone!

The support that the Taliban receives, comes from the poppy fields that are out in the open and are thus vulnerable. If we were serious about defeating the Taliban, we'd have destroyed that crop and found where past crops were stored and destroyed them as well. It would have been easy to put spray rigs on our predators and used them to defoliate those crops. But we're not serious about winning this war, we are instead making it last as long as humanly possible.

For the sake of the American people we must quit Afghanistan! The citizens of a country at war are not free! This puny excuse of a war threatens our very civil liberties and is turning us into expendable serfs.

We must end this war now!”

“Dr. Somov’s statement is very enchanting. But when I dropped it into my MS Word editor a green line appeared under the “is”. Word’s editor suggested changing”is” to “are” which makes even less sense. Even Word’s grammarian didn’t catch on. Both of the verbs are in the present tense which disturbs the statement’s expected logic. We normally expect a somewhat different statement such as “Take a look at what of what you were that is no longer you.” But somehow the corrected grammar takes the magic from the statement. Do we know whether Dr. Somov was a bad grammarian, or was he artistically trying to cause a dissonance in the logic of his statement? I suggest he was doing the latter.

Whether or not he/she is aware of it, every human being comes with a complete set of beliefs that are instilled in him/her from birth. First the family educates the child through toddlerhood, and then society takes over further socializing and educating the child through early adulthood. If the family is involved in a religious tradition, religion becomes an integral part of the belief set. This belief set is slow to change and is vigorously defended even to the extreme we witnessed on 11 Sept. 2001. The protagonists on that day were, after all, promised paradise.

Does our set of beliefs enslave us? I would say it does, but I would also say that it may not be possible to be human without it.”

“How does one keep him/her self in jail when he/she is the jailer? All you have to do to escape is to want to escape. As far as being grounded is concerned, isn't it better to be grounded in yourself rather than culture, habits or other like things that are so easily changed? I don't think I want an anchor, they're so damned heavy and such a chore to carry around.

Let's try to not think circularly, I get dizzy too easily.

In short, the way to be free is just be yourself.”

“War is taking this wayyy too damned seriously! I thought I'd made that point. My bad! I'm against all wars and I'm in total agreement with BrianMac. Let's just have an enjoyable debate and enjoy the fun. Killing one another should not be on our agenda.”

“Ah, yes. But in Leviticus the law has no mercy! Fornicators are to be stoned to death, other sins are punished by either death or expulsion from the society and even a rash on the skin could result in expulsion if it looked like leprosy.

Pay attention to what Jesus does as well as to what he says in these stories. He goes among the lepers, he forgives sins, (John 4: 1-42) and he turns the tables on those who insist on rigid enforcement of the "Law." Luke 10: 25-37. The story of the Good Samaritan isn't about a good deed, it's about who we should consider our brothers to be. But you have to read the preceding verses and to know of the differences between the Samaritans and the Jews to catch the real meaning of that parable.

You are right, but so am I.”

“There is a Christian orthodoxy that was established during the first four centuries. Many of the books that were circulating at that time were left out of it. The establishment of the orthodoxy was necessary because there were many flavors of Christianity during the first centuries. One of the most popular was Docetism which held that the creation of the world was either a tragic mistake or an act of evil and the only escape from it was death. The Christian notion that the souls of the dead go to heaven may be a holdover from that tradition.

Thank you for introducing me to Detrich Bonnhoffer, I will certainly look him up.”

“Thank you for helping another human being. I hope it has put much joy into your life. Feel free to believe whatever you like, you've shown that you can handle it well.”

“Polarization is what makes for a good debate. I see the problem as our taking it far too seriously. Inasmuch as I can find no objective evidence to prove Gods existence, I'm agnostic. I agree with Jesus message as i understand it, but that may be just me as much as him. That said, I'm very suspicious of those who claim to be devout. What crime have they or are about to commit against humanity?”

“Huh! Where in the Bible did you find that? Are you describing the last supper or did you have the wedding party miracle in mind?

Jesus was a teacher with an agenda. He was trying to make his society more just. To that end, it was necessary to teach against the laws as found in Leviticus. This story is an example of that; it begins with chapter 8 in the book of John. Jesus is teaching in front of temple when the Pharisees dragged a young woman to him claiming that she had been guilty of fornication. "Shouldn't sinners such as her be stoned to death?" they asked. Now if you know what Leviticus says about fornication, you would expect Jesus to counter with "Where is the man? He's as guilty as she is." But this would acknowledge the law as set forth in Leviticus. Instead he sat silently before saying "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." a wholly unanticipated response. Then he waited while the crowd melted away and when it had, told the woman to "Go, and sin no more."

This story does not seem to have been in the original text, we have earlier whiteness’s of John that do not include it.”

“I think it's a "misery loves company" thing. Otherwise they get nothing from it.
I agree with you and you've been fanned!”

“That's murder! committed by a society that I want nothing to do with. So much for your "all loving God."

I have a fourteen girl living in my household who I deeply love, so DrJoeA this story really strikes home for me. We have to find some love for those who live around us, extend some understanding to them, and, when necessary, forgiveness for their transgressions. But, more importantly, we have to be ready to provide help when it is needed. Anything less than that is unforgivable!”