patrick.net

FortWayne says

Speaking of changing CPI data, Obama suggested we do this again... another one of those pretend CPI adjustments.

FWIW, Boskin worked his legerdemain under Clinton's watch.

sbh says

curious2 says

I wish her luck finding a Republican she could vote for in a primary

I would greatly appreciate if you would recommend a Republican for me to consider listening to; one who isn't theocratic and extreme. A living Republican, I should say.

I actually like Ron Paul. Despite his clownishness, his son ain't that bad, when compared to the rest.

JodyChunder says

SS was a fine blueprint before all the hand lotion'd Welches in DC got hold of it and started playing grab ass with their whiteboards.

Well said!
So was a lot of things.

CaptainShuddup says

JodyChunder says

SS was a fine blueprint before all the hand lotion'd Welches in DC got hold of it and started playing grab ass with their whiteboards.

Well said!

So was a lot of things.

I think we the people trusted our government with our money for too long and let them for too long get away with robbing us.

FortWayne says

I think we the people trusted our government with our money for too long and let them for too long get away with robbing us.

Government spending has always been a facet of American government. I find it interesting that in this day in age, when taxes are actually lower than they've been in over 60+ years that there are these people going around whining and complaining about it.

You want to talk about spending? Take a look at how much we spent on the Manhatten Project. At the time it was the largest industrial project in the world, consumed more electrical power than the entire US automotive industry combined, and cost literally billions of 1940's era dollars. Look at how much was spent during the cold war with the insane amount of advanced weapons that came out in that period. What about the Space race and the moon landings? Again- another ENORMOUS project that at the time was the single most expensive project in the world.

Many people also seem to forget that spending also means spending on public works. Look at all of those movies from the 50's, with cars streaming down smooth-as-glass, perfect, and new freeways. What about the state parks? Being a park Ranger was a noble, if not outright stable job. What about those scads of post-war government funded tract houses and college educations?

Funny how that when many Americans get all teary-eyed and nostalgic for the "good ole' days", its usually the 1950's, back when government spending from that and the immediate previous period had been and was HUGE. Interesting that a country that is well-funded and well maintained via a sensible taxation system leads to overall contentment of the populace...

CaptainShuddup says

She called today, and was informed that the State of Florida has been covering her part B payments, but Rick Scott put a stop to that a few months ago, to put on a show that he is expanding Medicareas per Obamacare legislation.

Excuse me, but you just wrote in the quote above that Rick Scott caused your mother to have her SS check reduced. How can you blame Obama for something you admit was set in motion by Rick Scott. That's like being mugged and then blaming the landlord of the guy who mugged you for raising his rent and necessitating his decision to rob people to pay the difference. Rick Scott is the one responsible for the hardship of your mother. The two of you and your siblings should blame him.

edvard2 says

Funny how that when many Americans get all teary-eyed and nostalgic for the "good ole' days", its usually the 1950's, back when government spending from that and the immediate previous period had been and was HUGE. Interesting that a country that is well-funded and well maintained via a sensible taxation system leads to overall contentment of the populace...

You're on to something.

A lot of things changed since back then. The absorption of the old southern democrats into the republican party was big. Possibly even bigger was the degree to which corporations and the plutocrats learned how to use propaganda so well that there are literally millions of fortwayne type dimbulbs out there, that think all of this is their own thinking.

A lot of it (the guns, gays, and god part) might simply fit with their brain type. But the rest, I believe is the result of constant "libtard" bashing propaganda from Rush, and Fox, and the rest of talk radio.

sbh says

I would greatly appreciate if you would recommend a Republican for me to consider listening to; one who isn't theocratic and extreme.

Although not a Republican, I've been looking for examples, and it's difficult to find any still in office. Even Illinois Senator Mark Kirk and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, the only two current Republican senators to disagree with their party on marriage equality, are tied to other current Republican policies. I do listen respectfully to former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (who ran for President in 2012 as a Republican, then got the Libertarian nomination instead), former California Governor Pete Wilson, and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Alas I don't see them running for office any time soon, and I don't accord as much weight to politicians' endorsements as I did before realizing politicians tend to exchange endorsements as favors rather than giving candidly their own opinions.

futuresmc says

hat's like being mugged and then blaming the landlord of the guy who mugged you

No. he'll tell you it's like blaming the guy who ran his finger through the wet paint on your car, or no I mean it's like blaming the painter who is ultimately responsible, even if your car is scratched up after the paint dries.

I don't know, these metaphors confuse me.

robertoaribas says

lostand confused says

I actually like Ron Paul. Despite his clownishness, his son ain't that bad, when compared to the rest.

Ron and Rand Paul are great! Unless you understand economics, finance, world politics, History, and want to see the US prosper in the future, and have a functioning government.

Other than that, they are great!

Sure Bush and the current crop of democrats who offshore our jobs, sign up for trillion dollar wars, introduce acts like Patriot Act , support the war on drugs are all great for our country.

You guys are throwing out the soup with the baby still in it.

CaptainShuddup says

You guys are throwing out the soup with the baby still in it.

Now you gone and made Jody hungry, dammit.

lostand confused says

I actually like Ron Paul. Despite his clownishness, his son ain't that bad, when compared to the rest.

Absofuckinglutely. Probably the only thing you say that I would agree with.

Just to be clear we would not have astronomical medical costs if LBJ kept is dumb ass ideas to himself, not to mention putting the entitlements into the general fund, not to mention setting inflation into gear by squandering money in Vietnam, to no avail, which led to Nixon having to go off the gold standard which brings us back to today.

LBJ deserves an APOCALYPSEFUCK flag pole shoved up his ass with his carcass proudly displayed in front of the white house.

Richard Wicks says

I showed the math for the debt, why it's probably unpayable, and what the inevitable conclusion will be.

Correct - that darn math just is and doesn't lie, no matter who's at the helm. Unpayable indeed. But the US could still simply default, go to war for money/assets or inflate their way out of it via the printing presses. None of them are favorable scenarios ;)

JodyChunder says

CaptainShuddup says

You guys are throwing out the soup with the baby still in it.

Now you gone and made Jody hungry, dammit.

Mmmm baby...

Automan Empire says

YET called Sandra Fluke a slut who just wants people to pay for her birth control.

Sandra doesnt need birth control
Sandra doesnt need sex during college
Sandra needs a swift kick in the ass
and get told to study and sacrifice for 4 years
to get an education and start a career.

robertoaribas says

she was in law school... thomaswrong, have you ever not been an idiot?

she should be thankful for getting in and focusing on getting her degree not wasting time fucking around..

Your a professor. .. do you want your students to come to class drunk and fucking around getting preggo or getting an education ? Where is your discipline ?

is that why parents send their kids to college ? How is that idiotic.

Im paying for this,,, I AM the tax payer.. and now per Obama, I AM a Investor in American Education... therefore we have rules here to make sure that investment pays off. If you want to fuck around ... GET OUT.. let someone who is serious get an education.

thomaswong.1986 says

let someone who is serious get an education.

Wait a sec...since when was fucking around NOT educational?

JodyChunder says

Wait a sec...since when was fucking around NOT educational?

when you paid for it yourself.. it was your own nickel earned
and not someone else dollar borrowed.

Oothomaswong.1986 says

JodyChunder says

Wait a sec...since when was fucking around NOT educational?

when you paid for it yourself.. it was your own nickel earned

and not someone else dollar borrowed.

Oh don't worry, she'll pay back those "dollar borrowed" student loans... probably slowly and painfully given the way most legal careers are going.

thomaswong.1986 says

.. do you want your students to come to class drunk and fucking around getting preggo or getting an education ?

Sounds to me like she is satisfying the requirements for an MRs.

Richard Wicks says

There's a cost for living recklessly, and the boomers all lived very recklessly. You think Generation X and Y are going to pick up the check EVEN IF THEY COULD?

Welcome to Patrick.net Rick.
The most telling part is the "Even if they could?" and the answer to that would be no. American media has managed to raise the most petty, whiny, greedy, self centered, self concerned generation, the world has ever seen.

I hope I'm around when they realize they lost their Baby Cute long time ago, and ain't nobody going to wipe their ass for them, and give them theater money for a movie and pop corn, while they sleep late everyday, anymore.

thomaswong.1986 says

Sandra doesnt need birth control
Sandra doesnt need sex during
college
Sandra needs a swift kick in the ass
and get told to study and
sacrifice for 4 years
to get an education and start a career.

Thomaswong never listened to Sandra Fluke
Thomaswong has no idea what this is about
Thomaswong sounds suspiciously like Rush Limbaugh

I can understand my never-worked-a-day Mother's path to pathological ignorance of the real world, and her doesn't-get-out-much acceptance of whatever Fox and Rush say, but what is Thomaswong's mitigating factor here?

Richard Wicks says

The United States has a national debt of 16.8 trillion dollars. It has increased on average at 9.4% a year since 1971 - since we left the gold standard. It will be 33 trillion or so by 2020. It will be 80 trillion by 2030 - provided the 42 year trend continues.

A lot of this has to do with the faltering of the US manufacturing and export industries. For example in 1967 the US made something like 65% of all consumer electronics devices ( TVs, radios, computers, phones, etc etc etc) but by the mid-70's most of those same electronics manufactures were bankrupt at the result of cheap competition from Japan. Now its China.

When you do not have a economy that exports then you will grow deficits. Plain and simple. It also doesn't help that from the 50's-80's the US spent a HUGE amount of money on cold war related stuff.

If McCain hadn't allowed himself to have his campaign worked over by Karl Rove along with some of the lesser intelligent decisions he made during that campaign ( like choosing Palin) he could have possibly gotten my vote. Even now he occasionally goes against the grain and actually uses some common sense. I knew several others who were just like me who at one time had some respect for him until he actually ran for office.

The Professor says

In the future, I vow to throw my vote to some 3rd party candidate that has no chance of winning but says something I want to hear

Welcome to my world!

The Professor says

In the future, I vow to throw my vote to some 3rd party candidate

You know if enough people wake up to the fact that they is 2 sides of the same coin maybe the Libertarians could make some in roads? It sure as fuck is about time don't you think?

The Professor says

McCain would never get my vote! NEVER!

In the context of the conversation I mentioned McCain only because of all the GOP politicians, he had maybe at least some degree of common sense. I didn't vote for him either.CaptainShuddup says

Welcome to my world!

Yeah right.

Vicente says

Republicans want to eliminate SS entirely

-------------------------
Really? Please explain?

But, but....Wait, what? I thought Obamacare wasn't going to cost a dime? I thought everyone was going to keep the same doctor and the same insurance? I thought Obamacare wouldn't raise taxes? Because this is what he and Pelosi told us, so it MUST be true. So can we look at the 1200+ pages before we let our senators vote on it? What?!! They can't? Why not? Because they have to vote for it first before they get to look at it? WTF?

Can anyone here on pat.net explain why one of the 'architects' of Obamacare (Max Baucus) is calling Obamacare (in his words) a 'TRAIN WRECK'??

I could have told anyone that this 'community organizer' was WAAAAY over his head on this (and many other things)...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/max-baucus-obamacare_n_3101801.html

AverageBear says

Really? Please explain?

“50% of beneficiaries under the Social Security program use those moneys as their sole source of income. So we’ve got to protect today’s seniors. But for the rest of us? Listen, we’re going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.” -Eric Cantor, 2011

He didn't say "reform", he said "cannot exist".

Pete Sessions floated a bill to do just that. Paul Ryan is on the record about it. Rick Santorum had it in his platform. Republicans have repeatedly used language that their reform efforts are only a first step down the slippery slope toward eliminating it entirely and putting all our eggs into Wall Street basket.

indigenous says

CaptainShuddup says

Welcome to my world!

Yeah right.

I voted for Nader every time he ran.
The Democrats did such a good job of strong arming any effective Independent candidate, threatening Nader with arrest for showing up at the Democrat debates, spreading misinformation, character assassination through the media, that they are now scared to run on an independent ticket.

That is why both Kusinich ran on the Democrat platform, and Ron Paul ran on the Republican ticket.
I was forbidden to vote for Ron Paul in the 2012 primaries, because I didn't have the GOP stamp on my forehead.

Since it was an Asshole contest, I voted for McCain in 2008, as the lesser of the two assholes, and wanted to vote for Romney as the lesser of the two Assholes, but ended up having something more important to do on November 6th than waiting in a 4 hour line to vote for a guy I didn't believe in. SO I didn't vote at all 2012. I was at the Hospital with my wife getting a surgery done, that was three month saga trying to get a hospital to even check her pulse, let alone perform a life saving LEEP procedure. Welcome to Obamacare!

I'm sorry to hear about your wife and I hope she is doing well now. But you can't blame Obamacare on that situation when back then and even now nothing from it has even been implemented yet.

As far as Nader, well I don't really have a great deal of respect for him mainly because one of his most famous actions was in writing "Unsafe at any speed", which basically lambasted the Chevy Corvair, which was made at a time when GM and Ford were considering making smaller, more efficient cars. The faults he pinned on the Corvair later were found by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to be no different from any of the other more typical cars of the period. But as a result of the PR damage the book caused GM discontinued the car and went right back to making the same big cars they'd always made.

So ironically Nadar might have done more in regards to impeding fuel economy by dissing the Corvair. Had it been a great success, perhaps GM would have invested more heavily in more cars like that.

But the bottom line is that he damaged a company's perfectly good product's reputation based on what later turned out to be inaccurate information. Thus I can't really put my trust and faith in someone who acts in such a manner.

Vicente says

Pete Sessions floated a bill to do just that. Paul Ryan is on the record about it. Rick Santorum had it in his platform. Republicans have repeatedly used language that their reform efforts are only a first step down the slippery slope toward eliminating it entirely and putting all our eggs into Wall Street basket.

Sounds like Paul Ryan and Rick Santorum wanted to actually separate the $$ that seniors paid into, from the gov't; remove that $$ from the 'magic box slush fund' as it's currently constituted and called "Social Security", and have it allocated into a savings/401K/IRA acct of some sort. Taking the $$ that these people paid into, and **GASP** take it away from the gov't, so that seniors can manage it on there own, and **GASP** not trust the gov't's promises that the $$ will be there when they need it?

After Pelosi's 'you have to vote for it before you get to see it' moment, I wouldn't trust anything this administration says......

Sooo, what's the problem you have with these ideas? I know it makes so much sense, it's labeled 'radical'....

edvard2 says

But you can't blame Obamacare on that situation when back then and even now nothing from it has even been implemented yet.

Really you do know that October every thing but the mandated part will have been in place. What do you guys, think there's rooms and rooms of technical and administrative people who on January 1st is going to flip some magical switch and then Abracadabra Obamacare will light up, sputter, the 20 Diesel engines the size of Niagara falls will fire up, and massive smoke stacks will start churning out thick smoke, signalling the new era of Obamacare, and everything will somehow be different than they are right now at this moment?

AH Crap!!!! You're still waiting to see what's in it, aren't you?

If Obamacare was the traveling Circus, at this point they would be tearing down the tent, and loading it onto a train, taking the show to the next city.

THIS IS THE A GAME!

edvard2 says

As far as Nader, well I don't really have a great deal of respect for him mainly because

Because he was the blue print for pretty much how the Liberals do everything today, by hijacking ignorance and fear, and injecting their own logic into the works.

Sounds about right to me, the Sons always resent the Fathers, to some degree.

edvard2 says

So ironically Nadar might have done more in regards to impeding fuel economy by dissing the Corvair.

--------------------------------------
Ed, The Corvair was more about sportiness, not so much 'economy'... Nader was calling out a GM product that put its engine in the back, which relied on its inferior, antiquated rear suspension. Porsches of the day didn't have this problem. GM did eventually correct the suspension problem, but to allude Nader was the cause of Detroit's unwillingness to build a small, light, gas sipping cars is a crock of sheep dip.

Detroit built (and builds) what Americans want. Period. We didn't want to buy small, stuffy cars back then. And guess what? Detroit obliged.... Meanwhile, over in Europe, GM and Ford were building all sorts of small 4 cylinder cars during the 60's and 70's.. why? Because Europeans wanted them. End of story. one and done.

AverageBear says

Taking the $$ that these people paid into, and **GASP** take it away from the gov't, so that seniors can manage it on there own, and **GASP** not trust the gov't's promises that the $$ will be there when they need it?

The problem with such an idea and also why it would be such a monumentally bad idea is that by taking SS out of a government controlled fund and instead putting into a 401k, or such fund is that then you would have a situation where the value of those funds would be strictly tied to the performance of the stock market.

The other problem with that is if you were to suddenly flood the stock market with 100's of millions of new buyers this would in turn dilute the total shares, an thus performance would be drastically reduced.

So what these "genius" politicians are suggesting is that it would be a wayyyy better idea to take everyone's money and bet it all on black, because even though I suggest everyone should have a 401k and stocks, that's precisely what it is. Its betting. This isn't a radical idea. Its a stupid idea no matter what side of the isle you're on. SS is meant to be a readily available, constant, and consistent form of income. Sticking them into stocks totally defeats that purpose.

AverageBear says

Ed, The Corvair was more about sportiness, not so much 'economy'... Nader was calling out a GM product that put its engine in the back, which relied on its inferior, antiquated rear suspension. Porsches of the day didn't have this problem. GM did eventually correct the suspension problem, but to allude Nader was the cause of Detroit's unwillingness to build a small, light, gas sipping cars is a crock of sheep dip.

Baloney. The Corvair was in fact mean to and eventually did become an entire lineup of mainly economy cars. They made not only a 2 door and convertible version, but they also made 4 door sedans, vans, and pickup trucks using the same platform. Not sure what a Porsche has to do with a Corvair as again- they were not sold or marketed as sports cars unlike the Porsches of the day.

The reason the Corvair was created was as a direct competitor to Volkswagon, which at that time was enjoying some success in the US market.

The Captain said: everything will somehow be different than they are right now at this moment?
In California, we'll have the exchanges. Interestingly enough, most of the insurers beat Kaiser on price. I'd say that's radically different than what we have now. A year into it is where it will get even more interesting. Will Kaiser have capacity and become more aggressive in pricing? Or will rates rise to meet Kaiser where they're at now?