The Heisman Trophy, Collegiate Rules, and Capitalism

Deleuze is a snooze.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

So really you three have agreed all along, only Yoda speaks of freedom while PN and JM speak of Freedom?

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If I had a dollar for every existential crisis I've ever had, does money really even matter?

According to the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve is independent within government in that "its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7547584/Th...l-Reserve-Bank

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Conversation getting too heavy. Time for a booty call break.






I don't agree with her politics, but she was great on Three's Company!

The SS reform attempt was in 2005. The Tea Party as we know it didn't exist then.

These are many of the same recommendations that a similar panel offered to Clinton (which was largely ignored), and it's far bolder than what Bush suggested, probably because the panel is recommending what they think ought to be done, and not what they think is politically viable. As I pointed out, there's tension between your criticism of Bush for not putting forward a "serious" proposal and your seeming acknowledgement that a more serious proposal has no chance. You can't criticize in both directions.

The first round of Bush tax cuts were part of a compromise. It's the second round of cuts, in May of 2003, that were the so-called "tax cuts for the wealthy." And those were followed by major growth.

I know this because part of my work at the time involved researching this, and we put a fair amount on the line by predicting that the second round of cuts would spur growth. And it did. I remember waking up that morning and hearing that we'd topped 7% annualized GDP growth in the third quarter of 2003 (I don't care how geeky this makes me sound). It was revised a couple of times (up then down, I believe), settling at something like 6.9%, which is more than double the thirty year average. We had solid growth for roughly three years after that.

Also, what's a "myth"? The idea that our tax policy towards the wealthy affects investment, or that our tax policy towards business affects employment? Because both seem pretty ironclad to me.

Greed is an immutable part of human nature, not an event that happened when baby boomers were born.

You're suggesting that, over the last several decades, no American companies have been reinvesting in America?

It's not even remotely co-opted. Several people have tried, and I've been stunned at how quickly they've been bucked off. The only people who think things like this are the people who only know Tea Partiers from the occasional news blurb or video. They are extremely spread out and regionally-based, for the most part.

I didn't even expected this. I thought it was quite likely that someone would swoop in and become some sort of de facto leader, and start directing the movement a little this way or that, but I've been genuinely surprised and impressed with the degree to which the Tea Party has resisted attempts to control it. Good for them. That's what real decentralization looks like.

I've answered this exact point from you before. And then I did it again like half a dozen posts ago when MattJohn said it. So I'll just summarize: 1) they were abandoning Bush and the Republican party in huge numbers, as evidenced by his plummeting approval ratings and 2) the amount of money being spent then pales to what's being spent now, in terms of both numerical amount and the long-term entitlement obligations it's creating.

Not really; the judiciary is appointed by government but ultimately independent, too. But the main thing I have to ask is: why is this lumped in with your other complaints? I feel like we're bouncing from topic to topic with no attempt to connect them, or any regard for whether or not I've actually disagreed with any of this. I'm not waving a Fed flag over here.

Just about to start reading PN's big ol' post. Either way, I'm thankful for the effort put into it. My behavior is very unpredictable on weekends; I'll end up going out, or staying in and watching two or three movies in a row, or do some other work, or start replying to threads, with no real predictability to any of it, so we'll just see what happens. But I'll read it pretty much right away, I think.

Also, apologies for all the typos. I seem to be making far, far more of them than usual these days, for whatever reason.

[quote=Yoda;714307]The SS reform attempt was in 2005. The Tea Party as we know it didn't exist then.

But that is what many Tea Party candidates are saying about entitlements in general, the comment I made wasn't referring specifically to the Social Security proposal of Bush. The Tea Party didn't come out of nowhere. Republican opposition to Social Security (not all of them, but some of them) began in the thirties when it was first proposed and that was one of the reasons cited. It became more muted over the years because of its popularity, but even before some of the Tea Party candidates started saying it boldly many Republicans in Congress have had the same position and used code language to mask it, just like some racists hide under illegal immigration terminology. Bush wasn't trying to reform Social Security to make it more economically viable. He was trying through subterfuge to undermine it so it would no longer exist. He would have preferred to make it entirely voluntary, which means it would disappear, but used trickery to mask what he really intended. If Democrats and Republicans worked together they could make real reform work and I think it is Republicans rather than Democrats who are the problem because by taking taxes off the table there is no room for negotiations. Democrats politically are more diverse with more moderates. If the more reasonable Republicans, a dying breed, would work with the more moderate Democrats with Presidential leadership from either party it could happen.


These are many of the same recommendations that a similar panel offered to Clinton (which was largely ignored), and it's far bolder than what Bush suggested, probably because the panel is recommending what they think ought to be done, and not what they think is politically viable. As I pointed out, there's tension between your criticism of Bush for not putting forward a "serious" proposal and your seeming acknowledgement that a more serious proposal has no chance

These topics are really bouncing around, then. The process seems to be: you make a claim, I argue with it somehow, and then you make some other claim, only occasionally bothering to address what I said. Mostly each post just seems to be a jumping off point for some roughly related claim. We were talking about serious attempts at reforming entitlements and Bush's proposal; why would we suddenly switch to what Tea Partiers thought of it, particularly when you say Bush wasn't among them?

Anyway, in the above quote, I think "many" is the crucial word. This is based on, what? A YouTube video?

So, you're reading their minds and then comparing them to racists for what you think their secret beliefs are. Nice.

This is just your speculation, right? It's at odds with most Republicans' public positions and even a lot of their voting behavior. This is the circular reasoning I mentioned before: I point out that a serious attempt to reform SS was made, you say it wasn't serious, and when I ask why you basically say it's because you don't think, deep down, they were being serious. These sorts of psychic powers are unfalsifiable, and more or less contradict what these people are saying and doing on the record. If you want to form stark political conclusions that way, nobody can stop you, but it's obviously not an argument and has little to no evidence to support it. You're just saying "here's what I think all these people secretly believe." My response must inevitably be: okay, but you're just speculating.

Democrats heretofore have taken benefit cuts and raising the retirement age off the table. How does that kill the prospect for negotiation less than Republicans taking taxes off the table, exactly?

I just want to say one thing about PN's post: he has proven my point about Spinoza/affecting/affected. That point is that it is not a rigid structure of good and bad. It's a way of thinking that maximizes your potential. I can't tell you what's good for you. Only you can find that out for yourself, which is why so many people hate Spinoza. There are no definite answers.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

Quick note: just finished reading PN's post. I feel it sets the stage for things pretty well, singling out the primary issues and defining terms and beginning to explain them without quite doing so. Obviously, while reading it dozens of questions popped up in my mind, but I think that's supposed to be happening, so I guess I'll just wait for the Conclusions post to see how it all comes together.

This is what I hate the most about "Federal Reserve private" crap. It ignores all reason for fear.

And now, we must phone debate!

[quote=Yoda;714319]These topics are really bouncing around, then. The process seems to be: you make a claim, I argue with it somehow, and then you make some other claim, only occasionally bothering to address what I said. Mostly each post just seems to be a jumping off point for some roughly related claim. We were talking about serious attempts at reforming entitlements and Bush's proposal; why would we suddenly switch to what Tea Partiers thought of it, particularly when you say Bush wasn't among them?

Anyway, in the above quote, I think "many" is the crucial word. This is based on, what? A YouTube video?


Me (will) speaking:

This joker is hardly unique. Many Tea Party candidates took the position such programs are unconstitutional.

Not all people opposed to illegal immigration are racists. Most are not. But when I hear someone say they are destroying our culture, the same thing David Duke says, an avowed racist, that is a racist. I'm not being psychic when I listen to what a person means instead of what they say overtly. It is no longer accepted by our culture to be a racist so a racist can't say flat out he is a white supremicist . It is no longer accepted, except among the looniest in the Tea Party, to say the government should not have programs like Social Security and Medicare, but the movement supported candidates who took that position and many other candidates said similar things and backed down because it hurt their poll numbers. If you are claiming there isn't a strong distaste for entitlement programs among many hard right conservatives then I think you are not understanding the obvious

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/...d-medicare-are-


Yoda again:

So, you're reading their minds and then comparing them to racists for what you think their secret beliefs are. Nice.


This is just your speculation, right? It's at odds with most Republicans' public positions and even a lot of their voting behavior. This is the circular reasoning I mentioned before: I point out that a serious attempt to reform SS was made, you say it wasn't serious, and when I ask why you basically say it's because you don't think, deep down, they were being serious. These sorts of psychic powers are unfalsifiable, and more or less contradict what these people are saying and doing on the record. If you want to form stark political conclusions that way, nobody can stop you, but it's obviously not an argument and has little to no evidence to support it. You're just saying "here's what I think all these people secretly believe." My response must inevitably be: okay, but you're just speculating.

There's that word again: "many." So your conclusion is, in fact, based on anecdotal evidence then? Or some vague sense of what you think most Tea Partiers are like? I'm not dismissing this out of hand for drawing any type of conclusion, but let's be clear what these claims actually consist of.

I wasn't taking issue with whether or not some of these people are racist. Whether I happen to agree with your reasoning or not (I think it's a bit flawed, but whatever), I've concluded there isn't much point in arguing about it. What I was taking issue with is comparing people who want to abolish entitlement programs with bigots, as if the two opinions have anything in common beyond being minority opinions.

A person, maybe, though it's a lot different with lots of people. Or when the things you think they mean are contradicted by repeated public statements and actions on the record. See below for more...

I understand the logic behind someone shielding their real views from the public, and I understand that it sometimes happens. Makes perfect sense. But saying it happens in general, or maybe for one specific person in a specific instance, is far different from assigning it to a large swath of a party, or pretending you can divine which people are doing this and which are not. You can certainly make the observation, but you're using it to try to refute a specific thing at a specific time.

See how the claims keep narrowing? Now it's just a "strong distaste" and it's just among "hard right conservatives." If you keep moving the goal posts, then yes, my responses will change.

The link's broken, but a) these are still just anecdotes being used to make generalizations, and b) if you spend much time on CrooksAndLiars.com, I can't say I'm surprised you believe all this. I think even the people who agree with it would concur that it has a pretty naked agenda.

I'm confused: did you intend to reply to this?

All that was on that link was Joe Miller, the Tea Party Republican Senate candidate for Alaska on Face the Nation saying the government shouldn't be involved in Medicare and Social Security. There were no editorial comments on the page. I found the clip on youtube, which is longer, but still has those comments.

When I said extreme distaste I meant they would like to get rid of it if they could and I think it is obvious that thinking is prevalent in the Tea Party movement, but not all Republicans in Congress.

So much constructive, practical, realistic, valuable discourse... must... introduce... useless... theories...

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"Loves them? They need them, like they need the air."

Hey man, where's WWJS?

EDIT: BTW, a plow horse has more in common with an ox than it does with a race horse.

Hopefully we are united!

Capitalism is, first of all, a good thing. At least, it has it's good and bad characters---like all things.

Good: It instantly assumes a kind of egalitarianism in commodities, since everything is ultimately traced back to Capital itself---an undifferentiated, abstract well of value.

Good: Capital is precisely what Deleuze meant by a Body without Organs, i.e. what he wants us to become. Of course, Capital is an abstraction---or, to be more concrete, little bits of metal, paper, plastic, and now bytes that serve as universal vouchers---while we are complex organisms capable of "making an issue" of our own being. (However, for Deleuze's pure materialism, we and Capital are not so different inasmuch as we are both processes that function entirely beyond our control, but this is not something I would try to push onto you.) Still, this "decoding" of all commodities into a free flowing, null-signifying language is, in the purity of the idea itself, a beautiful thing.

Good: Capitalism seems to work in the way that intends FOR THE MOST PART. To be honest, the reason why I love Deleuze's critique of Capitalism is that it in no way presumes a "fundamental failure" of the system or an inevitable "disaster" like Marx does: no, for Deleuze these shaky predictions come in too late. The problem is already there in Capitalism's perfection. But let's be honest here; Capitalism seems to have done pretty much what it set out to do, with a few rough spots here and there due to some inherent, self-sustaining imbalances like speculation bubbles, inheritance, worker exploitation---which are, to be fair, being compensated for fairly well by state interpositions, unions, taxes, and the like. This is why, to many, it is considered to be "the end of history"---in that it is, while not perfect, at least the general system by which we should from now on operate, only tweaking and amending to as needed. Indeed, it does seem to situate itself on at least some sort of developmental cusp or climax.