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 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Understand that ALL POWERS not specifically granted to the Federal Government are held to the states and the people.

The 10th Amendment doesn't use the word "specifically". It states only that the powers not delegated to the Federal Government are left to the state and people. Indeed, the absence of a word like "specifically" underpins all of the various implied powers of the Federal Government. Incorporating amendments against the states being a prime example.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

But you are incorrect about the rights of States to veto the laws as they apply to the States themselves.

That's wrong. Any given state can refuse to respect, or enforce, any given federal law, but they cannot actively attempt to prevent the federal government from enforcing such a law.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Not one mention was ever made, in the Constitution, that the people are ever to be subject to the Government.

That's quite true, but it really doesn't matter. You cannot have a government, and not be subject to it.

 d-usa wrote:
And according to that line if thinking all speech is legal and it is tyranical to impose any restrictions on it.

Yet here we are...

...not living under a tyrannical government.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:


In order to maintain parity of power, which was the intent of the 2nd Ammendment, then by extension of the Founders' logic, no military technology is allowed to be illegal to own.

Fortunately the Supreme Court of the United States disagrees and has upheld various restrictions for over a century.

 dogma wrote:

...not living under a tyrannical government.

Yet when was the last time you felt that any elected official gave a damn about public opinion, cared what impositions new taxes would place on us, or actually did anything they promised to bring growth back to this country.

Having the people dependant on the government is, to my way of thinking, a form of tyranny. By not encouraging economic growth in this country and by allowing other nations to negatively impact our employment and prices for daily living, they have descended into economic tyrrany. Personally, I am a tax payer. I do not have any problem with wellfare for people who need it. I have lots of problems for those who regard wellfare as something they deserve just because they manage to draw air into their lungs. I am forced, as are all other tax payers to provide for the people who will not support themselves in addition to those who can not.

The tax burden and the laws and regulations that we function under as a society all add up to tyrrany. Is it to the point of Big Brother standing on our collective necks? No. Not yet. But they are hard charging down that road.

Take a look at all the taxes that impact our lives, both directly and indirectly... Then stop for a moment and reflect that our Forefathers balked and rebelled under a much lower tax loading.

The entire reason to keep and bear arms of equal power to the government is to force them to pay attention to us. Simply put, since we are not as well armed, they have less and less reason to care what we think.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Yet when was the last time you felt that any elected official gave a damn about public opinion, cared what impositions new taxes would place on us, or actually did anything they promised to bring growth back to this country.

Earlier today? When I got my last paycheck*? If anything I think politicians pay too much attention to public opinion, or are at least too quick to react to it. Indeed, I consider the debate surrounding taxation to be a prime example of this. The public facade has become so pervasive, and so extreme, that the development of reasonable tax policy cannot occur anywhere other than the backrooms of Congress.

As to promises: what promises? This is particular pet peeve of mine, so bear with me a bit. It is very rare for a politician to promise a specific end goal. You usually hear things like "I promise to work towards energy independence." not "I promise the US will be energy independent by the end of the year."


*I'm a political analyst at a firm devoted to public opinion research. I, and many people like me, earn a great deal of money interpreting the results of opinion polls. You don't pay a company enough to pay my salary if you don't care about the work being done.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Having the people dependant on the government is, to my way of thinking, a form of tyranny. By not encouraging economic growth in this country and by allowing other nations to negatively impact our employment and prices for daily living, they have descended into economic tyrrany.

I assume by "not encouraging economic" growth you mean that you believe present market regulations to be overly restrictive, and present tax rates to be excessive. I can see the first point, but given that present size of the government budget, and deficit, the second is a bit simplistic.

What I don't understand at all is the bit about allowing other nations to negatively impact employment, and prices. My best guess would be that you're discussing the minimum wage, and the absence of protectionist policies? The former certainly lines up with free market ideas, but the latter is a bit out of left field.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

The tax burden and the laws and regulations that we function under as a society all add up to tyrrany.

I certainly don't feel oppressed, so I'm not sure why you do.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Take a look at all the taxes that impact our lives, both directly and indirectly... Then stop for a moment and reflect that our Forefathers balked and rebelled under a much lower tax loading.

Why should I care about the opinions of people that have been dead for nearly 200 years? I mean, some of them had some interesting, though certainly not original, political ideas. But for the most part they're important only for historical reasons.

 dogma wrote:

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Yet when was the last time you felt that any elected official gave a damn about public opinion, cared what impositions new taxes would place on us, or actually did anything they promised to bring growth back to this country.

Earlier today? When I got my last paycheck*? If anything I think politicians pay too much attention to public opinion, or are at least too quick to react to it. Indeed, I consider the debate surrounding taxation to be a prime example of this. The public facade has become so pervasive, and so extreme, that the development of reasonable tax policy cannot occur anywhere other than the backrooms of Congress.

Really? I looked at my paycheck and saw that taxes had gone up. For the record, I do not make over $250K. According to the current President's own words, I would not see my taxes rise by one dime.

 dogma wrote:
As to promises: what promises? This is particular pet peeve of mine, so bear with me a bit. It is very rare for a politician to promise a specific end goal. You usually hear things like "I promise to work towards energy independence." not "I promise the US will be energy independent by the end of the year."

I agree that no politician that is a typical politician will make any promises with actual deadlines. They have a remarkable tendency to fail in those due to the efforts of those, either within or without their party, who do not agree with them.

 dogma wrote:
*I'm a political analyst at a firm devoted to public opinion research. I, and many people like me, earn a great deal of money interpreting the results of opinion polls. You don't pay a company enough to pay my salary if you don't care about the work being done.

My personal thoughts on this are as follows; I agree that the politicos pay a lot of attention to opinion polls. They also are not above picking and choosing from amongst your industry to tell the public what those of us who were polled think. I do not believe that they are above manipulating the very way the questions are worded in an effort to engineer their desired outcome. I also tend to think that the entire industry, while I admit that it can and does serve a valid purpose, has zero business being paid for by my tax dollars.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Having the people dependant on the government is, to my way of thinking, a form of tyranny. By not encouraging economic growth in this country and by allowing other nations to negatively impact our employment and prices for daily living, they have descended into economic tyrrany.

 dogma wrote:
I assume by "not encouraging economic" growth you mean that you believe present market regulations to be overly restrictive, and present tax rates to be excessive. I can see the first point, but given that present size of the government budget, and deficit, the second is a bit simplistic.

What I don't understand at all is the bit about allowing other nations to negatively impact employment, and prices. My best guess would be that you're discussing the minimum wage, and the absence of protectionist policies? The former certainly lines up with free market ideas, but the latter is a bit out of left field.

Perhaps a bit, yes. However, if you look at the very fact that our Government pays an insanely large amount of its budget on entitlements, the Government directly reduces the very growth they claim to desire. After all, I don't know about you, but I can think of at least a dozen people I know who either draw wellfare and don't need it or who have friends/family who do. The willingness to not get up and work, to sit around and wallow in whatever mentality it is that makes living on wellfare ok when you are physically and mentally able to work, is what is at the very heart of our present fiscal issues at the national level. Were those people encouraged to get off of the dole and get a job, not only would the government's budget be correspondingly reduced, but its tax=base would be broadened. That is the only way to reduce taxes and encourage even more growth.

As to the part about other nations impacting us (not sure how minimum wage got brought into this, but that's cool)... Understand that I do not support increased minimum wage under the very real understanding that the increase has to be made up somewhere. That somewhere is increased prices for whatever service or product the employer provides. That, in and of itself, completely negates any benefit of increased minimum wage. Lowering the taxes that a business pays, reducing the hit of their pay-roll and insurances, etc. is the way to keep prices down and affordable. By sending jobs overseas, and by buying foreign made products over domestic ones, we tend to encourage the practice from our interface point at the cash register. By increasing prices here on domestically produced items, we drive people to buy abroad where prices are cheaper. It's all tied together, see?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

The tax burden and the laws and regulations that we function under as a society all add up to tyrrany.

 dogma wrote:
I certainly don't feel oppressed, so I'm not sure why you do.

I do not feel oppressed as yet. However, I look at the path our current government is on and i see many parallels with historically oppressive regimes. Back room deals are deals with no public oversight and thus, no representation. Passing legislation without even taking the time to read it, which has happened twice on major legislation, is the worst case of congressional irresponsibility, and it signals a comfortable assurance on the part of the legislators that they will have nothing to worry about from public opinion.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Take a look at all the taxes that impact our lives, both directly and indirectly... Then stop for a moment and reflect that our Forefathers balked and rebelled under a much lower tax loading.

 dogma wrote:
Why should I care about the opinions of people that have been dead for nearly 200 years? I mean, some of them had some interesting, though certainly not original, political ideas. But for the most part they're important only for historical reasons.

The problem with that attitude is very simple. Relegating the lessons taught by our Forefathers to nothing more than mildly interesting history is the first step to not learning from that history. The reason why the Revolution was taught 200 years later was the very real lessons that that history had to still teach us today. I've heard of the current revisionist history that glosses over the hows and whys, and makes the men who led the Revolution into nothing more than casual shrugs of indifference to today's youth. I can not say that I have ever been forced to read it, fortunately, but the looks of absolute cluelessness by our youth tell me that our current education programs are not worth the time our kids are spending in class. It is social engineering. It has been creeping into our schools at ever lower age ranges for decades. If you don't see the connection between re-engineering our history and the easing of government takeover... I honestly do not know what I can do to open your eyes.

Bonecrusher 6 wrote:Take a look at all the taxes that impact our lives, both directly and indirectly... Then stop for a moment and reflect that our Forefathers balked and rebelled under a much lower tax loading.

There was no individual tax loading at that time at all, generally. Most government revenue came in the form of tarriffs, which was the lions share of all tax receipts (like 85%). They have been ever dwindling since then and are now 1.3% of federal receipts. Ben Franklin estimated individuals were paying around 12.5% taxes in 1766. That's pretty close to the 15% Mr. Romney enjoys today, for example.

Over the history of this country, we were at our most prosperous when taxes were far, far higher then what they are now. When Ronald Reagan became president, the top rate was 70% of income over $200K, for example. It was 91% at the same end for 20 years after WW2.

Bonecrusher 6 wrote:I've heard of the current revisionist history that glosses over the hows and whys, and makes the men who led the Revolution into nothing more than casual shrugs of indifference to today's youth. I can not say that I have ever been forced to read it

No offense, but your postings here make that readily apparent.

Take a look at all the taxes that impact our lives, both directly and indirectly... Then stop for a moment and reflect that our Forefathers balked and rebelled under a much lower tax loading.

Forgoing that the tax system was radically different so a straight up comparison is fairly naive, they didn't rebel becuase of the amount of taxes, but that they didn't have someone in government to represent them when taxes were being determined. They even had a simple rhyme that we are all taught as school children that people go on to forget as soon as they want to complain about high taxes: 'no taxation without representation'. It wasn't being taxed that was the issue, it was not having a say in governance, which we have today, so it isn't what the Founding Fathers were dealing with at all.

 Ouze wrote:

Bonecrusher 6 wrote:I've heard of the current revisionist history that glosses over the hows and whys, and makes the men who led the Revolution into nothing more than casual shrugs of indifference to today's youth. I can not say that I have ever been forced to read it

No offense, but your postings here make that readily apparent.

For some reason, I get the feeling that that was supposed to be subtle eye-opener. However, I can not take offense where none is perceived. To me, it reads as a backhanded compliment upon first glance, and only a remark about my recollection of history and understanding of current events after looking at it again. I'll be the first to admit that the school system I was familiar with was far from being the best that was available at the time I was attending. But I do remember learning much more about the formative years of our nation than kids today seem to be. What I do not understand is why the slide away from the facts is not only allowed, but uncared about.

It's fine if you don't agree with me. No one has to. I just ask that people quit turning a blind eye to the things that really are affecting us all, be they historical or current.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ahtman wrote:

Take a look at all the taxes that impact our lives, both directly and indirectly... Then stop for a moment and reflect that our Forefathers balked and rebelled under a much lower tax loading.

Forgoing that the tax system was radically different so a straight up comparison is fairly naive, they didn't rebel becuase of the amount of taxes, but that they didn't have someone in government to represent them when taxes were being determined. They even had a simple rhyme that we are all taught as school children that people go on to forget as soon as they want to complain about high taxes: 'no taxation without representation'. It wasn't being taxed that was the issue, it was not having a say in governance, which we have today, so it isn't what the Founding Fathers were dealing with at all.

I made an oblique reference to that at one point. It wasn't even in specific regard to taxes, but to the backroom deals and last minute passage of legislation with no time to read it. Feel free to correct me, but Obamacare and the Fiscal Cliff deal both were passed with no time for either House or Senate to read them.

There is a huge difference between 'my representative didn't do their due diligence in regards to a piece of legislation' and 'I have no voice in government'.

It also sounds more like 'I didn't get the outcome I wanted' then 'shadowy deals and backroom shenanigans'. In a representative democracy, or really any democracy, sometimes the side we want to win doesn't.

First off, we're not a democracy, regardless of protestations to the contrary. We are a republic. Similar, but not the same.

If our representatives "don't do their due diligence in regards to a piece of legislation" doesn't that equate, for all real results, as "I have no voice in government"?

For what it matters, I did not support the idea of Obamacare, except in one regard. I agree that pre-existing problems should not be disqualifying reasons for insurance.

So... did anyone else notice that their paychecks are lighter now than they were at the end of 2012?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
First off, we're not a democracy, regardless of protestations to the contrary. We are a republic. Similar, but not the same

That old gem. Makes as much sense as saying "that's not food, that's pizza!" Our Republic is a form of democracy.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

My personal thoughts on this are as follows; I agree that the politicos pay a lot of attention to opinion polls. They also are not above picking and choosing from amongst your industry to tell the public what those of us who were polled think.

Of course not, but that's about manipulating public opinion, not determining what it is. The internal polls within any given campaign tend to be very accurate. They have to be, because if they aren't then the campaign is essentially operating on blind chance. Indeed, the reason that politicians pay pollsters to disseminate misleading statistics, or interpretations thereof, is because they're quite aware of what the good data indicates. Probably the most recent example of this was all the noise from the Romney campaign about how internal polls showed a close race, when most every external poll showed a serious electoral vote problem.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

I do not believe that they are above manipulating the very way the questions are worded in an effort to engineer their desired outcome. I also tend to think that the entire industry, while I admit that it can and does serve a valid purpose, has zero business being paid for by my tax dollars.

Of course we engineer questions, in polling you have to. If nothing else any given question is designed to be neutral, and thereby eliminate experimenter's, and respondent, bias. I will grant that some firms have other ends in mind, but that's not always the case. Indeed, if you brush up on statistics its pretty easy to see who is trying to produce a manipulative result by simply reading the relevant methodology section. And if there is no methodology, or significant gaps in the methodology section (*cough*Rasmussen*cough*) then you probably shouldn't put faith in the results.

As to your tax dollars funding it: they don't. Most of our funding comes from individual campaigns, with a small fraction coming from government offices paying for our data.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Perhaps a bit, yes. However, if you look at the very fact that our Government pays an insanely large amount of its budget on entitlements, the Government directly reduces the very growth they claim to desire. After all, I don't know about you, but I can think of at least a dozen people I know who either draw wellfare and don't need it or who have friends/family who do. The willingness to not get up and work, to sit around and wallow in whatever mentality it is that makes living on wellfare ok when you are physically and mentally able to work, is what is at the very heart of our present fiscal issues at the national level. Were those people encouraged to get off of the dole and get a job, not only would the government's budget be correspondingly reduced, but its tax=base would be broadened. That is the only way to reduce taxes and encourage even more growth.

Well, not all welfare recipients are unemployed. Indeed I suspect most are not, so that's my first problem with that argument.

My second is that you cannot expect everyone to become magically productive simply because they no longer have the option of receiving welfare. Some may work harder and advance, sure, but others will turn to crime, or simply continue to be perpetually unemployed. There isn't a lot of demand for low skill work in the US, and won't be for a long time. Of course we could provide for better education, but that costs money; as does additional police protection (going back to increased crime).

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

As to the part about other nations impacting us (not sure how minimum wage got brought into this, but that's cool)...

I assumed you were talking about a high (it really isn't all that high) US minimum wage allowing foreign manufacturers to undercut the US as regards labor costs.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Lowering the taxes that a business pays, reducing the hit of their pay-roll and insurances, etc. is the way to keep prices down and affordable. By sending jobs overseas, and by buying foreign made products over domestic ones, we tend to encourage the practice from our interface point at the cash register. By increasing prices here on domestically produced items, we drive people to buy abroad where prices are cheaper. It's all tied together, see?

What items do you think American companies could reasonably produce effectively that they do not already produce?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Passing legislation without even taking the time to read it, which has happened twice on major legislation, is the worst case of congressional irresponsibility, and it signals a comfortable assurance on the part of the legislators that they will have nothing to worry about from public opinion.

It helps that the public is nominally ignorant of the content of legislation, the way legislation is passed, and the issues surrounding both. That's to be expected though, politics in a nation of 300 million is a full-time job. You cannot expect everyone to take on that kind of burden in addition to their more immediate ones.

On to another pet-peeve: legislators almost never read bills in their entirety (neither do voters). They delegate that job to staffers because they have to deal with public opinion (and by extension reelection), which is 98% of American politics at the moment. The fact that any given government official admitted to this is, if anything, transparency; not some lack of government responsibility.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

The problem with that attitude is very simple. Relegating the lessons taught by our Forefathers to nothing more than mildly interesting history is the first step to not learning from that history.

What lesson, that people don't like taxes? I don't even need history to determine that. Conversely, I do need history to understand that my immediate forefathers did not object to taxes much higher than we presently experience. I mean, in 1988 the top marginal rate was 28% and began at a 2011 adjusted 56k USD, now that level of earning is taxed at 25%.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

It is social engineering.

Of course it is, all education is. Some people are less affected than others, but at the end of the day you are defined by what you learn. Passing some other form of instruction off as "social engineering" is just arrogant. It presumes that what you believe is right, and that anything else anyone else believes is the result of intentional delusion.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

It has been creeping into our schools at ever lower age ranges for decades. If you don't see the connection between re-engineering our history and the easing of government takeover... I honestly do not know what I can do to open your eyes.

Considering that the federal government has taken a strong role since the Civil War, I'm not sure pinning the blame on changing opinions regarding the Founders is a sound decision.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
First off, we're not a democracy, regardless of protestations to the contrary. We are a republic. Similar, but not the same.

It is possible to be both a democracy and a republic. You could very easily argue that the US was not a democracy when it was founded, but after the 17th and 19th amendments it would be impossible.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
First off, we're not a democracy, regardless of protestations to the contrary. We are a republic. Similar, but not the same.

And Canada is a constitutional monarchy it's almost as if governments can have more than one defining characteristic.

 dogma wrote:

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

My personal thoughts on this are as follows; I agree that the politicos pay a lot of attention to opinion polls. They also are not above picking and choosing from amongst your industry to tell the public what those of us who were polled think.

Of course not, but that's about manipulating public opinion, not determining what it is. The internal polls within any given campaign tend to be very accurate. They have to be, because if they aren't then the campaign is essentially operating on blind chance. Indeed, the reason that politicians pay pollsters to disseminate misleading statistics, or interpretations thereof, is because they're quite aware of what the good data indicates. Probably the most recent example of this was all the noise from the Romney campaign about how internal polls showed a close race, when most every external poll showed a serious electoral vote problem.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

I do not believe that they are above manipulating the very way the questions are worded in an effort to engineer their desired outcome. I also tend to think that the entire industry, while I admit that it can and does serve a valid purpose, has zero business being paid for by my tax dollars.

Of course we engineer questions, in polling you have to. If nothing else any given question is designed to be neutral, and thereby eliminate experimenter's, and respondent, bias. I will grant that some firms have other ends in mind, but that's not always the case. Indeed, if you brush up on statistics its pretty easy to see who is trying to produce a manipulative result by simply reading the relevant methodology section. And if there is no methodology, or significant gaps in the methodology section (*cough*Rasmussen*cough*) then you probably shouldn't put faith in the results.

As to your tax dollars funding it: they don't. Most of our funding comes from individual campaigns, with a small fraction coming from government offices paying for our data.

I can freely admit to being somewhat mollified on this point, then. I may not agree that manipulating the numbers is a good thing, but it's much easier to stomach if it is being done in response to the contract from a given campaign.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Perhaps a bit, yes. However, if you look at the very fact that our Government pays an insanely large amount of its budget on entitlements, the Government directly reduces the very growth they claim to desire. After all, I don't know about you, but I can think of at least a dozen people I know who either draw wellfare and don't need it or who have friends/family who do. The willingness to not get up and work, to sit around and wallow in whatever mentality it is that makes living on wellfare ok when you are physically and mentally able to work, is what is at the very heart of our present fiscal issues at the national level. Were those people encouraged to get off of the dole and get a job, not only would the government's budget be correspondingly reduced, but its tax=base would be broadened. That is the only way to reduce taxes and encourage even more growth.

 dogma wrote:
Well, not all welfare recipients are unemployed. Indeed I suspect most are not, so that's my first problem with that argument.

My second is that you cannot expect everyone to become magically productive simply because they no longer have the option of receiving welfare. Some may work harder and advance, sure, but others will turn to crime, or simply continue to be perpetually unemployed. There isn't a lot of demand for low skill work in the US, and won't be for a long time. Of course we could provide for better education, but that costs money; as does additional police protection (going back to increased crime).

It is true that most welfare recipients are at least partially emloyed. And it would seem that they are the able bodied ones who mostly deserve the assistance, as long as they are never ceasing the struggle to move onward and upward. I understand that in many areas where th edole is so pervasive, it is because there are few, if any jobs. So, the question then becomes, how would you go about bringing in more jobs? I can think of only one way to do it, and that means making it economically viable for a potential employer to bring jobs into those areas.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

As to the part about other nations impacting us (not sure how minimum wage got brought into this, but that's cool)...

 dogma wrote:
I assumed you were talking about a high (it really isn't all that high) US minimum wage allowing foreign manufacturers to undercut the US as regards labor costs.

It isn't that high depending upon where you are and what you're used to paying/being paid.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Lowering the taxes that a business pays, reducing the hit of their pay-roll and insurances, etc. is the way to keep prices down and affordable. By sending jobs overseas, and by buying foreign made products over domestic ones, we tend to encourage the practice from our interface point at the cash register. By increasing prices here on domestically produced items, we drive people to buy abroad where prices are cheaper. It's all tied together, see?

 dogma wrote:
What items do you think American companies could reasonably produce effectively that they do not already produce?

The question is less what could they produce more effectively, than it is what couldn't they produce? When one looks at everything that has gone into chasing jobs out of this country, you can not help but see (in some cases) artificially inflated pay-rolls, insanely plush pensions, and the necessarily following increased prices that a producer has/had to charge. Were those conditions great for the employees who were working for those companies? Sure were. But look at the steel industry or the automotive industry now. Those two reasons are very much in the forefront of why the industries are in the condition they are. The steel industry became so overpriced that not only do we not manufacture most of our steel anymore, we send scrap to China to be processed and returned to us at a much lower cost, including trasportation across the Pacific. The Big Three in the auto industry are, if you look past the facades, are very fragile, and still are carrying a lot of overburden from the boom years of the 70's through the 90's. Of course new regulations and taxes weigh in on this as well.

Were it more economical for businesses to operate in this country, there is literally nothing that we could not produce at least as well as any other nation's industries.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Passing legislation without even taking the time to read it, which has happened twice on major legislation, is the worst case of congressional irresponsibility, and it signals a comfortable assurance on the part of the legislators that they will have nothing to worry about from public opinion.

 dogma wrote:
It helps that the public is nominally ignorant of the content of legislation, the way legislation is passed, and the issues surrounding both. That's to be expected though, politics in a nation of 300 million is a full-time job. You cannot expect everyone to take on that kind of burden in addition to their more immediate ones.

On to another pet-peeve: legislators almost never read bills in their entirety (neither do voters). They delegate that job to staffers because they have to deal with public opinion (and by extension reelection), which is 98% of American politics at the moment. The fact that any given government official admitted to this is, if anything, transparency; not some lack of government responsibility.

I can not argue your points all. Yes, it is true that governing a nation of 300 million is a very busy job, and it's only going to get worse. But I submit this to you... If the regulations and constant passing of laws that generally are already on the books in one fashion or another were instead halted in place and the stuff on the books was actually enforced rather than buried, then their job loading would be significantly reduced. None of absolves those we elect from their responsibility to vote how their constituency sent them to Washington to do.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

The problem with that attitude is very simple. Relegating the lessons taught by our Forefathers to nothing more than mildly interesting history is the first step to not learning from that history.

 dogma wrote:
What lesson, that people don't like taxes? I don't even need history to determine that. Conversely, I do need history to understand that my immediate forefathers did not object to taxes much higher than we presently experience. I mean, in 1988 the top marginal rate was 28% and began at a 2011 adjusted 56k USD, now that level of earning is taxed at 25%.

No... Taxes were only a part of it as Ahtman expounded upon. The lesson is not standing by while an electorate that disregards their oaths to uphold the Constitution continues to vote themselves more power and less responsibility. The Electorate is beholden to us, not the other way around. They have laughed at how they have us over a barrel, and with the weight of public ignorance on their side, they are very correct. The only real difference now is that we have 545 would-be tyrants in D.C. rather than one tyrant across the Atlantic. The results of action/inaction are both more immediate and more pervasive, if less in your face today than it would have been then.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

It is social engineering.

 dogma wrote:
Of course it is, all education is. Some people are less affected than others, but at the end of the day you are defined by what you learn. Passing some other form of instruction off as "social engineering" is just arrogant. It presumes that what you believe is right, and that anything else anyone else believes is the result of intentional delusion.

Again I can not argue with the points. What I wonder is just how much of what I learned in school was engineered by a social agenda and how much was actual history. I also wonder how much of what I was taught was mixed with learning how to think rather than being indoctrinated with bare a minimum of functional what to think.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

It has been creeping into our schools at ever lower age ranges for decades. If you don't see the connection between re-engineering our history and the easing of government takeover... I honestly do not know what I can do to open your eyes.

 dogma wrote:
Considering that the federal government has taken a strong role since the Civil War, I'm not sure pinning the blame on changing opinions regarding the Founders is a sound decision.

I admit that I didn't realize that there was a form of the Department of Education clear back to 1867. What a brief reading of what the duties of that original institution were encompassed nothing more than counting and tracking the numbers of schools and what they taught. Also a quick read of the Department of Education in it's current form shows that it was begun under Carter in '79. Over the ensuing years, the DE has become less a monitoring agency than it has a means of regulating what is taught and how. Changing the curriculum at a national level, which is more and more the case every year, is their responsibility, unless I'm much mistaken. Otherwise, why would anyone care about placement or standardization tests?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
First off, we're not a democracy, regardless of protestations to the contrary. We are a republic. Similar, but not the same.

 dogma wrote:
It is possible to be both a democracy and a republic. You could very easily argue that the US was not a democracy when it was founded, but after the 17th and 19th amendments it would be impossible.

Unfortunately this is true. In any case, as we have agreed with the work-load of our current electorate, I really don't know that it would be possible to have a true Republic anymore.

 Cheesecat wrote:
I think an underground base, would be better than a castle more concealable.

Absolutely. But for playing make believe army games the castle is way more cool.

And we all know what these nutters are really doing.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
We today are very dumbed down compared to back then.

No, we're not. People have these completely flying rodent gak crazy ideas that people used to be all totally learned. It's not true. We've never been more educated than we are now.

Now, you might look around and say 'man but there's so many stupid people around.' Well it used to be a hell of a lot worse.


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 Ouze wrote:
Somalia is the most bootstrappy country in the world. It's truly a libertarian utopia.

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 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
First off, we're not a democracy, regardless of protestations to the contrary. We are a republic. Similar, but not the same.

You don't know what you're talking about.

A republic just means you don't have a monarch as you formal head of state. So the UK (and by extension Australia, New Zealand and other members of the Commonwealth) are not a Republic. Whereas the USA, where the head of state is elected by the people every four years, is a republic.

Whether you're a republic or not you can be all sorts of anything else. You can be a dictatorship and a republic. Or an oligarchical semi-democracy and a republic (like ancient Greece). Or, in the case of the USA, you can be a representative democracy and a republic all at once.

 sebster wrote:

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 Grey Templar wrote:
We today are very dumbed down compared to back then.

No, we're not. People have these completely flying rodent gak crazy ideas that people used to be all totally learned. It's not true. We've never been more educated than we are now.

Now, you might look around and say 'man but there's so many stupid people around.' Well it used to be a hell of a lot worse.

Have you read material published back then? The reading comprehension level is way above what many people today read in College. Try the Federalist Papers, that was something written for everybody. Its got some very complex language.

Compare our school reading material for 1st-4th grade children with what they used in those same grades. The material was much more complex back then.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 sebster wrote:

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 Grey Templar wrote:
We today are very dumbed down compared to back then.

No, we're not. People have these completely flying rodent gak crazy ideas that people used to be all totally learned. It's not true. We've never been more educated than we are now.

Now, you might look around and say 'man but there's so many stupid people around.' Well it used to be a hell of a lot worse.

Have you read material published back then?

Have you ever contextualized the society of the time back then with who were allowed to publish, or could afford to publish things back then? It wasn't a cross section of society, and the vast majority of people were not well educated, and literacy levels are nowhere what they are today either.

Unless your family was waaaay out in the boonies, or your local town couldn't afford a teacher, you went to school. And you had pretty advanced learning material when you did. The textbook was usually the Bible, because it was the one book every family had and you would have regardless of how much money you made. Can you imagine 1st-5th grade kds today reading a book with the same reading level as the Bible? They would struggle.

The reading level of the people back then was more advanced at an earlier age than we have today.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Unless your family was waaaay out in the boonies, or your local town couldn't afford a teacher, you went to school. And you had pretty advanced learning material when you did. The textbook was usually the Bible, because it was the one book every family had and you would have regardless of how much money you made. Can you imagine 1st-5th grade kds today reading a book with the same reading level as the Bible? They would struggle.

The reading level of the people back then was more advanced at an earlier age than we have today.

You think there was better, and more widely available, public education in the mid 18th century?

Just some stats for people who actually think the generation born in the information age is dumber than other generations (or less educated).

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d04/figures/fig_03.asp?referrer=figures
http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38qw
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2001/04/22/are-we-getting-smarter.html

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

I can freely admit to being somewhat mollified on this point, then. I may not agree that manipulating the numbers is a good thing, but it's much easier to stomach if it is being done in response to the contract from a given campaign.

While appreciate your ability to listen to reason, I would also suggest that you brush up on statistics. Politics or no, its a good thing to have a working knowledge of.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

It is true that most welfare recipients are at least partially emloyed. And it would seem that they are the able bodied ones who mostly deserve the assistance, as long as they are never ceasing the struggle to move onward and upward. I understand that in many areas where th edole is so pervasive, it is because there are few, if any jobs. So, the question then becomes, how would you go about bringing in more jobs? I can think of only one way to do it, and that means making it economically viable for a potential employer to bring jobs into those areas.

How would you, as the Federal government, bring jobs back into a steel town?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

The question is less what could they produce more effectively, than it is what couldn't they produce?

Were it more economical for businesses to operate in this country, there is literally nothing that we could not produce at least as well as any other nation's industries.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Unless your family was waaaay out in the boonies, or your local town couldn't afford a teacher, you went to school. And you had pretty advanced learning material when you did. The textbook was usually the Bible, because it was the one book every family had and you would have regardless of how much money you made. Can you imagine 1st-5th grade kds today reading a book with the same reading level as the Bible? They would struggle.

The reading level of the people back then was more advanced at an earlier age than we have today.

You think there was better, and more widely available, public education in the mid 18th century?

People had a more advanced level of reading skills. Thats all.


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 Cheesecat wrote:
Just some stats for people who actually think the generation born in the information age is dumber than other generations (or less educated).

Did I ever claim they were dumber?

Dumb =/= your level of reading comprehension. Likewise you can be intelligent without being able to do high level math.

People back in the 1800s were not less intelligent than people around today. They were quite intelligent.

If anything, without today's gadgets and modern technology you had to be even more intelligent to solve your problems. You couldn't just go look it up on Google you had to think about it.

Yeah my fault, I misread your words but I still disagree that a less educated society would have better reading comprehension.

 dogma wrote:
How would you, as the Federal government, bring jobs back into a steel town?

I don't know enough about the steel industry to even begin to make a guess. I do know that some companies have managed to survive with the additions of new tech, but it has also made keeping the numbers that they once employed unsustainable. Anymore than that would require someone who was well versed in that segment of industry to answer. There's obviously a demand, even in today's economy.

 dogma wrote:
Do you know anyone that would work for the rates that Indonesian and Chinese unskilled laborers earn?

No. But I also don't know anywhere in the U.S. where cost of living would even begin to allow it. All part of the same issue. Higher wages demand higher prices. Higher prices which all cry out for higher wages, especially if one wants to add any luxuries. That's just the way it is. My chief lament is that there are people who are more than willing to feed the beast by pining for higher minimum wages. It'll just drive prices up again, sending more jobs out of the country, and making those of us left working have to earn more just to maintain our own current status.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

If the regulations and constant passing of laws that generally are already on the books in one fashion or another were instead halted in place and the stuff on the books was actually enforced rather than buried, then their job loading would be significantly reduced.

 dogma wrote:
Politicians don't actually enforce laws, they merely respond to their constituents; many of whom want changes to the law.

Never said they did. I merely said that they make their own work loads worse by passing new laws that layer over existing laws that, were they enforced, would negate the need to pass new laws.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

The lesson is not standing by while an electorate that disregards their oaths to uphold the Constitution continues to vote themselves more power and less responsibility. The Electorate is beholden to us, not the other way around.

 dogma wrote:
Weird typos aside, that's idealistic nonsense.

I'm only half awake right now, so I'm not seeing the weird typos. How is it idealistic nonsense? Is the government not beholden to us? Is that not a direct result of the Revolution and the creation of a new government? Were those not lessons learned during the years leading up to the Revolution?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
Over the ensuing years, the DE has become less a monitoring agency than it has a means of regulating what is taught and how.

 dogma wrote:
I'm not aware of any US Department of Education policies that regulate teaching.

Then who is it that sets/monitors the national standards of education? If they don't do something to justify their existence, then why is there a segment of the government that siphons off 10's of billions of dollars a year?

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Otherwise, why would anyone care about placement or standardization tests?

 dogma wrote:
Because they're easy means of assessing the ability of students, absent any other criteria.

And who uses or needs them? I can understand the State level education departments being interested. I fail to see why the Federal level really has any need to exist or be involved, beyond compiling information from the states themselves.

Less Educated is not the correct word to use. They were not less educated. Given what there was in total to teach they were not less educated. Its just that in the time between now and then we've begun to teach more things to people. But the people of times past were not less intelligent.

Just because you are taught more things doesn't make you smarter. Knowing more things isn't what defines your IQ.

its the ability to rationally think through a problem that makes you smarter. These people's situations would have by a matter of forcing them to think more made them smart. Its all the hard work of previous generations that creates what we have now. If anything that only logically makes people today use their brains less, because they can simply use what has been learned before. Sure they can now go farther, but more people won't do that. There are smart people around today, but the Geneticists and Doctors of today are not more intelligent than the Farmers and Doctors of the 19th century. The people that lay the foundation of a science are probably the smartest people that ever go into that field of study, they started with nothing after all.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Less Educated is not the correct word to use. They were not less educated. Given what there was in total to teach they were not less educated. Its just that in the time between now and then we've begun to teach more things to people. But the people of times past were not less intelligent.

Just because you are taught more things doesn't make you smarter. Knowing more things isn't what defines your IQ.

its the ability to rationally think through a problem that makes you smarter. These people's situations would have by a matter of forcing them to think more made them smart. Its all the hard work of previous generations that creates what we have now. If anything that only logically makes people today use their brains less, because they can simply use what has been learned before. Sure they can now go farther, but more people won't do that. There are smart people around today, but the Geneticists and Doctors of today are not more intelligent than the Farmers and Doctors of the 19th century. The people that lay the foundation of a science are probably the smartest people that ever go into that field of study, they started with nothing after all.

While you are correct that education and intelligence aren't the same thing it's pretty common knowledge that education is more accessible, extensive and diverse in modern America than any of it's previous generations.

Yeah, its more accessable, however I feel that quality has slipped. We lost quality in order to teach more things, not all of them useful.

We need to teach our kids some more useful things. Like how to handle money, responsibility, or home economics. These need to have more of a focus.

I feel that if we pushed reading comprehension earlier on in the school system we could improve the ability to learn in other areas and accelerate the entire learning process. Too much time is spent getting the kids writing properly when they should be reading. Reading is a far better method of teaching proper spelling and punctuation than having them memorize rules. its all about motivation. Nobody wants to learn about the proper use of commas, but if they read literature(and enjoy it) and have some minor reinforcement of the rules of grammer they will find it much more palatable to learn it. And will be more motivated to learn.

Our education system sucks in this country. One problem is that if a child misbehaves(likely because they don't like schol) we suspend them. Which is probably what they wanted in the first place. The problem is that school is seen as something undesirable. It used to be that getting suspended truly was punishement. Given the current culture its not.


One thing I can say for certain. We don't value an education nearly as much as we once did.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:
My chief lament is that there are people who are more than willing to feed the beast by pining for higher minimum wages.

Raising the minimum wage isn't exactly a major political initiative.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Never said they did. I merely said that they make their own work loads worse by passing new laws that layer over existing laws that, were they enforced, would negate the need to pass new laws.

My mistake then, but the way US legislation works is that any change to law requires the passage of a new law.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

I'm only half awake right now, so I'm not seeing the weird typos. How is it idealistic nonsense?

Perhaps there weren't any, I was watching the replay of the Seahawks game when I wrote that (ie: drinking beer, eating pizza, and chuckling).

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Is the government not beholden to us? Is that not a direct result of the Revolution and the creation of a new government? Were those not lessons learned during the years leading up to the Revolution?

No, it isn't. You might object to government policy, but mounting a revolution is something entirely different. And, even if it happens and is successful (which it is unlikely to be), you're still likely to end up with a government very similar to the one you rebelled against.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

Then who is it that sets/monitors the national standards of education? If they don't do something to justify their existence, then why is there a segment of the government that siphons off 10's of billions of dollars a year?

They regulate standards for the receipt of federal funding.

 Bonecrusher 6 wrote:

And who uses or needs them?

Colleges.

 Ouze wrote:
Somalia is the most bootstrappy country in the world. It's truly a libertarian utopia.

As long as you don't understand libertarianism, this is absolutely true.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Have you read material published back then? The reading comprehension level is way above what many people today read in College. Try the Federalist Papers, that was something written for everybody. Its got some very complex language.

I think you'll find that any time traveller that got suddenly transported to the modern day and was told to pick up our key documents would have just as difficult a time deciphering them. Our language is structured slightly differently, many words have changed meaning, and we've added a whole lot of new words for all the ones that have fallen out of use.