Another grand in taxes per year, and this is a good thing?

or a long process of driving private insurers out of business.

to take over the provision of health insurance for EVERYONE just to provide insurance to the 12 million or so who, according to Census figures, truly can't afford it.

Wait what? In 2001, he's on record saying the Supreme Court should have addressed (Communist style) redistribution of wealth and nebulous "political and economic justice" issues, and bemoans the fact that the Supreme Court hasn't (essentially) done any run-arounds on the Constitution! This is the kind of "wisdom" we get from an Ivy League Constitutional scholar? Yeah, to me anyway, this attitude is cause for concern.

1/17/2008, San Francisco Chronicle as reported in the Tallahassee Examiner: "If somebody wants to build a coal powered plant they can, it's just that...it will bankrupt them, because they're gonna be charged a huge sum for all that...greenhouse gas that's being emitted." "...Under my plan..uh..of a cap and trade system, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket." We're in a depression, and the signs of economic malaise were very very clear in early 2008 when he gave this interview...yet he still advocated yet another taxation-by-regulation plan to reduce CO2 emissions by...how high a percentage? 4 parts in 10,000? Another grand in taxes per year, and this is a good thing?

Actually, that's not true:

Spending:

• Bush/Paulson's $700 billion TARP bank bailout, for which both Obama and McCain voted. He was a Senator, so he owns that one;
• The $787 billion "stimulus" plan
• A 2009 budget that is 50% funded by deficit spending. In 2009 alone, the federal government dropped $5,000 of debt onto the backs of every man, woman and child in America.
• A 2010 budget that is also....oh never mind...it's October 20, three weeks past the last budget year, and it's not implemented. We're funding the government on interim authorization. What was submitted was a $3.6 trillion federal budget, with "only" 33%, $1.2 trillion, funded by Americans and foreign states purchasing our Treasury bills. That's another $3,900 in debt payment for every man, woman and child in America. $8,900, or 307 million Kia Rios, in two years! And you thought student loan repayments were onerous! And federalized take-effect-in-2013 health care is such a hot-Hot-HOT issue that it takes precedence over funding the government's 2010 operations? Give me a break.

"Cap and Trade," or the CO2 tax. It's estimated that it will cost every American household an additional $800 per year, according to the leading MIT study's author. That's after Obama's proposed tax credits to reduce the sting. Note that the Republicans are doing simple math to come up with a $3,100 per household per year figure and the Heritage Foundation has calculated $1,500 per year, which are exclusive of proposed the tax credits. We'll know more when/if the bill passes, but it's not there yet. But people are worried about the implications.

Obama versus Joe the Plumber: "I think..when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." That sounds like redistribution, i.e. taking from those who have and giving it to those who have less. Of course, through the appropriate Federal agencies, to properly vetted recipients.

1/17/2008, San Francisco Chronicle as reported in the Tallahassee Examiner: "If somebody wants to build a coal powered plant they can, it's just that...it will bankrupt them, because they're gonna be charged a huge sum for all that...greenhouse gas that's being emitted." "...Under my plan..uh..of a cap and trade system, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket." We're in a depression, and the signs of economic malaise were very very clear in early 2008 when he gave this interview...yet he still advocated yet another taxation-by-regulation plan to reduce CO2 emissions by...how high a percentage? 4 parts in 10,000? Another grand in taxes per year, and this is a good thing?

Speech to the AFL/CIO, 2003: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care plan."

url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbJCBP_2RvI&feature=PlayList&p=F8BCE937BB77AD0F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1]Speech to SEIU 3/24/2007 (starting at 6:21)[/url]: "My concern is to make sure that we have univeral health care for all Americans by the end of my first term...there's gonna be...potentially some transition process...I can envision a decade out, or fifteen years out, or twenty years out..." In other words, parsing his speech, he sees the subsuming of private insurance businesses by a Federal one-for-all program - or a long process of driving private insurers out of business.

While I'm not happy with the price I pay for health insurance, I lay blame on my company's small pool of subscribers, and the states and federal government for limiting the number of health insurance carriers in my state and not on the providers of said insurance. 90% of Americans have health insurance; I, and millions of other Americans, fail to see why the federal government needs, or has the authority, to take over the provision of health insurance for EVERYONE just to provide insurance to the 12 million or so who, according to Census figures, truly can't afford it. Wouldn't an expansion of Medicaid serve the same purpose, without an effective federal takeover of 1/6 of our economic output?

From a 2001 Chicago National Public Radio interview: "The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical I think as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. At least as it's been interpreted..." Wait what? In 2001, he's on record saying the Supreme Court should have addressed (Communist style) redistribution of wealth and nebulous "political and economic justice" issues, and bemoans the fact that the Supreme Court hasn't (essentially) done any run-arounds on the Constitution! This is the kind of "wisdom" we get from an Ivy League Constitutional scholar? Yeah, to me anyway, this attitude is cause for concern.

Well, it's late and this post is long enough. Tomorrow, I'll scratch the surface of President Obama's mentors and appointees, and why they too worry conservatives.

On to fear versus deep concern:
Fear:1. a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.

Concern:3. to trouble, worry, or disquiet: I am concerned about his health.

Really, Pint0, do you not understand the difference? What a bullshit reply.

D. Turtle, that's an interesting NYT article; however, Brungart asserted that continuing Bush's tax cuts explains the Obama administration's deficits. The article you referenced cites the accumulation of deficits based on Obama's continuing Bush's policies. The two are distinct, as continuation of Bush's policies includes spending for Iraq and Afghanistan.

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

NOT with them. Conservatives do not approach problems from a standpoint of empirical reasoning but one of emotion and "gut feel".

This is because Democrats have been attempting to play the centrist game for so long that they've lost sight, largely, of the need to directly challenge the opposing side's ideology.

The problem is that "reasonable" Republicans who still remain part of that party have become rather adept at not seeing the uglier sides of the groups that are part of their coalition, or they rather neatly employ their own form of doublethink to avoid the dilemma. As for hard-core conservatives, there is no dilemma, of course. They are right and everybody else is wrong in their view and it's on everybody else to change —not them.

They do not see the problem in that way. In fact, they see it precisely the opposite way: prohibition and punishment eventually will work in the end and they remain steadfast in that conviction despite all empirical evidence to the contrary. See the War on Some Drugs and Zero Tolerance laws.

See Calvinism. Cost is merely an excuse and "socialism" is seen as a threat to the Divine Plan according to Calvinist doctrine. It does come down to "who deserves what" with many of these people. Bill Kristol even let that one slip out on a panel show just a few months ago discussing healthcare reform and why universal coverage paid for by the government would be a Bad Thing™.

Once again, the reasons that most conservatives oppose universal health care involve (1) automatic assumption that anything government-run is (a) going to be steeped in inefficient bureaucracy that pays more attention to process than outcome, ratcheting up costs while driving down service; (b) will have less incentive than a for-profit corporation to achieve outcomes that are both cost-effective and customer-oriented; (c) going to result in rationing that reduces the overall availability, or quality, of care for all; (d) going to provide an opportunity for "infiltration" of political ideology into health service.

A Republican will stand there and argue about principles;

In short, 1/3 of the deficit is caused by the recession, 1/3 by Bush, 1/3 by Obama's actions. Of course this ignores the fact that Bush policies caused or worsened the recession and that many of Obama's actions were dictated by decisions Bush made during his terms, but ...

Most folks will not believe something which they consider to be unreasonable. The problem is addressing the fallacious aspects of their reasoning. If they haven't got empirical evidence, that should be addressed. It often isn't, because people try to play around the Golden Mean.

I also find that liberals and conservatives routinely talk past each other, which was a major component of my original post.

Once again, the reasons that most conservatives oppose universal health care involve (1) automatic assumption that anything government-run is (a) going to be steeped in inefficient bureaucracy that pays more attention to process than outcome, ratcheting up costs while driving down service; (b) will have less incentive than a for-profit corporation to achieve outcomes that are both cost-effective and customer-oriented; (c) going to result in rationing that reduces the overall availability, or quality, of care for all; (d) going to provide an opportunity for "infiltration" of political ideology into health service. I have never once heard a conservative insist that universal health care is abhorrent because some people deserve suffering. The implication of, "There's no reason for somebody not to have a job," is not, "I think some people ought to suffer."

The latter description could easily apply to virtually every political party, and faction, out there. Most Americans refuse to listen to each other -- in part because the expectation of enlightening debate has been driven way down by the twenty-four hour media "blah blah" cycle.

Conservatives don't study the War on "Some" Drugs the way you do. They hear, "We should legalize this drug," and they think, "Oh, my God! That's awful! You're suggesting that we should let people get smashed out of their minds and potentially hurt themselves or others!"

Most people want Good Outcomes™. You may disagree about what is a Good Outcome™, but the impulses of any two folks, selected randomly, are generally very similar in their origin. There should be middle ground. It begins with a discussion of what partial legalization means, and why the money spent in the War on Drugs seems to go to waste. A Republican will stand there and argue about principles; they will rarely say, "I think we need to be throwing good money after the bad!" unless they're convinced you're lying through your teeth about how effective the program is or could be.

I'd like to see hard evidence of this Calvinist undercurrent. My suspicion is that you're confusing lack of sympathy for people who are perceived as "loafers" with a judgment passed randomly on "some people."

Weekly Standard editor and Fox News pundit Bill Kristol got booed heavily on The Daily Show Monday night when he said that ordinary Americans don’t “deserve” the same standard of health care that soldiers receive.

But the show’s truly revealing moment came when host Jon Stewart caught Kristol — long an opponent of public health care — admitting that government-run health care for soldiers is superior to private health plans.

On Monday night’s show, Kristol worked to explain why he didn’t support a public health option, arguing in essence that the existence of Medicare and Medicaid provided health coverage to those most in need.

“So no public option, even though that’s good enough for the military — not good enough for the people of America?” Stewart asked.

“They do not deserve the same quality of health care the soldiers fighting deserve, and they [the soldiers] need all kinds of things we don’t need,” Kristol said.

“Are you saying that the American public shouldn’t have access to the same quality of health care that we give to our better citizens?” Stewart asked.

“To our soldiers? Yes, absolutely,” Kristol responded, to a chorus of boos from the audience.

An incredulous Stewart asked: “Really?”

Moments later, Kristol added that “one of the ways we make it up” to soldiers that they receive relatively low pay is by “giving them first class health care. The rest of us can go out and buy insurance.”

That’s when Stewart struck.

“Bill Kristol just said … that the government can run a first-class health care system and a government-run health care system is better than the private health care system.”

“You trapped me somehow,” a visibly uncomfortable Kristol responded.

Republicans have forged a broad coalition of two of the three tendencies that involves moderately conservative Protestants who nonetheless hold some traditional Calvinist ideas; Free Market advocates ranging from multinational executives to economic conservatives to libertarian ideologues; and conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists with a core mission of converting people to their particular brand of Christianity. This is a coalition with many fracture points and disagreements. The Calvinist/Free Market sector is already a coalition based on shared ideas about individual responsibility and successes in Free Market or Laissez Faire capitalism- sometimes called neoliberalism to trace it back to an earlier use of the term "liberal" by philosophers who opposed stringent government regulation of the economy.

Libertarians are against government economic regulations and believe in a Free Market, but libertarians generally also oppose government regulation of social matters such as gay marriage and abortion. These and other social issues, however, are central to the conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists in the Republican coalition. This can get complicated. For example the evangelical idea that it is personal conversion and salvation that will make for a more perfect society, not government programs and policies, sometimes ends up supporting (in a complementary and parallel way) the goal of libertarians and economic conservatives to reduce the size of government.

As the Bush Administration has shifted government social welfare toward "Faith-Based" programs, it has diverted government funding into privatized religious organizations (which raises serious separation of Church and State issues), but the amount of funding applied to "Faith Based" projects is small compared to the large budget cuts in previously governmentfunded government-run social welfare programs. Libertarians approve of the overall budget cuts, but would prefer cutting out the government funding of "Faith Based" projects.

Not all evangelicals and fundamentalists are political conservatives, although most are. The Christian Right is that group of politically conservative Christians - primarily evangelicals and fundamentalists- who have been mobilized into a social movement around social issues and traditional moral values; and who have sought political power through elections and legislation. The Christian Right became a political force in the Republican Party in the 1980s as part of a strategy of right-wing political strategists to enlist evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, especially television evangelists, in building a voter base.

The Christian Right has used populist rhetoric to build a mass base for elitist conservative politics.3 This process leads many people to vote against their economic self-interest, as Thomas Frank observes in his book What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.4 The Christian Right and their allies in the Republican Party have used fear, demonization, and scapegoating as part of a strategy for "Mobilizing Resentment," the title of a book by PRA founder Jean Hardisty.5 While much of this resentment openly targets women's rights and gay rights, it is also a reaction against the Civil Rights movement and changing racial demographics in the United States, which has created a backlash that author Roberto Lovato calls "White Fear."6 (See Box on White Fear).

Today, the Christian Right is the single largest organized voting block in the Republican Party. These are predominantly White evangelical voters. Most Black Christian evangelicals overwhelmingly vote Democratic. The voting power of White Christian evangelicals has meant they are now political players on the national scene. For example President George W. Bush's first term selection as Attorney General of the United States of John Ashcroft, a hero to the Christian Right and himself a member of the ultra-conservative evangelical denomination Assemblies of God, was a political reward to White evangelical voters.

Some of the goals of manyWhite evangelical conservatives are shared by another group of people who call themselves the Neoconservatives. These are former liberals and leftists who rejected the social, cultural, and political liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Neoconservative social and cultural politics echo many Calvinist themes such as the need to defend traditional morality and the patriarchal family; the special role for America in world affairs, and the righteousness of economic capitalism.

Neoconservatives defend this combination as necessary not only to preserve American civil society, but also for the extension of true democracy worldwide. As elitists, they see themselves as a secular "Elect" who must defend society against the ignorant or radical rabble. And they describe this as the natural culmination of Judeo-Christian Western thought, which allows conservative Jews and Catholics to join the team.

This conservative political coalition has shaped Republican Party policies and transformed American society for over two decades. As the New Right gained power, Republicans- and Democrats- began to support repressive and punitive criminal justice policies that were shaped by one of the historic legacies of Calvinism: the idea that people arrested for breaking laws require punishment, shame, and discipline.

While most mainline Protestant denominations and evangelical churches have jettisoned some of the core tenets of Calvinism, ideas about punishment and retribution brought to our shores by early Calvinist settlers are so rooted in the American cultural experience and social traditions that many people ranging from religious to secular view them as simply "common sense." What Lakoff calls the "Strict Father" model gains its power among conservatives because it dovetails with their ideas of what is a common sense approach to morality, public policy, and crime.

...

Calvinists also believe that "God's divine providence [has] selected, elected, and predestined certain people to restore humanity and reconcile it with its Creator."7 These "Elect" were originally thought to be the only people going to Heaven. To the Calvinists, material success and wealth was a sign that you were one of the Elect, and thus were favored by God. Who better to shepherd a society populated by God's wayward children? The poor, the weak, the infirm? God was punishing them for their sins. This theology was spreading at a time when the rise of industrial capitalism tore the fabric of European society, shifting the nature of work and the patterns of family life of large numbers of people. There were large numbers of angry, alienated people who the new elites needed to keep in line to avoid labor unrest and to protect production and profits.

Max Weber, an early sociologist who saw culture as a powerful force that shaped both individuals and society, argued that Calvinism grew in a symbiotic relationship with the rise of industrial capitalism.8 As Sara Diamond explains:

Calvinism arose in Europe centuries ago in part as a reaction to Roman Catholicism's heavy emphasis on priestly authority and on salvation through acts of penance. One of the classic works of sociology, Max Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, links the rise of Calvinism to the needs of budding capitalists to judge their own economic success as a sign of their preordained salvation. The rising popularity of Calvinism coincided with the consolidation of the capitalist economic system. Calvinists justified their accumulation of wealth, even at the expense of others, on the grounds that they were somehow destined to prosper. It is no surprise that such notions still find resonance within the Christian Right which champions capitalism and all its attendant inequalities.

What Calvinism accomplished was to fulfill the psychic needs of both upwardly mobile middle class entrepreneurs and alienated workers. Middle class businessmen (and they were men) could ascribe their economic success to their spiritual superiority. These businessmen and others who were predestined to be the Elect of God could turn to alienated workers, and explain to them that their impoverished economic condition was the result of a spiritual failure ordained by God. Their place in the spiritual (and economic) system was predestined. This refocused anger away from material demands in the here and now. Because of their evil and weak nature, those that sinned or committed crimes had to be taught how to change their behavior through punishment, shame, and discipline.

...

Since the 1980s and the rise of the Christian Right, public policy regarding the treatment of criminals has echoed the patriarchal and punitive child-rearing practices favored by many Protestant fundamentalists. Most readers will recognize the phrase: "Spare the rod and spoil the child." This idea comes from a particular authoritarian version of fundamentalist belief. According to Philip Greven:

"The authoritarian Christian family is dependent on coercion and pain to obtain obedience to authority within and beyond the family, in the church, the community, and the polity. Modern forms of Christian fundamentalism share the same obsessions with obedience to authority characteristic of earlier modes of evangelical Protestantism, and the same authoritarian streak evident among seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury Anglo-American evangelicals is discernible today, for precisely the same reasons: the coercion of children through painful punishments in order to teach obedience to divine and parental authority."21

The belief in the awful and eternal punishment of a literal Hell justifies the punishment, shame, and discipline of children by parents who want their offspring to escape a far worse fate. This includes physical or "corporal" forms of punishment. "Many advocates of corporal punishment are convinced that such punishment and pain are necessary to prevent the ultimate destruction and damnation of their children's souls."22 This is often accompanied by the idea that a firm male hand rightfully dominates the family and the society.23 The system of authoritarian and patriarchal control used in some families is easily transposed into a framework for conservative public policy, especially in the criminal justice system.

Lakoff explains that on a societal level, according to conservative "Strict Father morality, harsh prison terms for criminals and life imprisonment for repeat offenders are the only moral options." The arguments by conservatives are "moral arguments, not practical arguments. Statistics about which policies do or do not actually reduce crime rates do not count in a morally-based discourse." These "traditional moral values" conservatives tend not to use explanations based on the concepts of class and social causes, nor do they recommend policy based on those notions."24 According to Lakoff:

For liberals the essence of America is nurturance, part of which is helping those who need help. People who are "trapped" by social and economic forces need help to "escape." The metaphorical Nurturant Parent - the government- has a duty to help change the social and economic system that traps people. By this logic, the problem is in the society, not in the people innocently "trapped." If social and economic forces are responsible, then other social and economic forces must be brought to bear to break the "trap."

This whole picture is simply inconsistent with Strict Father morality and the conservative worldview it defines. In that worldview, the class hierarchy is simply a ladder, there to be climbed by anybody with the talent and self-discipline to climb it. Whether or not you climb the ladder of wealth and privilege is only a matter of whether you have the moral strength, character, and inherent talent to do so.25

To conservatives, the liberal arguments about class and impoverishment, and institutionalized social forces such as racism and sexism, are irrelevant. They appear to be "excuses for lack of talent, laziness, or some other form of moral weakness."26 Much of this worldview traces to the lingering backbeat of Calvinist theology that infuses "common sense" for many conservatives.

All these also apply to every other field that the government intervenes in. Conservatives have blinders when it comes to those fields so the question becomes, why don't they apply these standards to things like the military or police (where d is so prevelant we can measure it), social security and medicare, etc?

Which is the problem- they uphold principles more than actual people. And the principles aren't open to question...

The problem is that, rather than those assumptions actually being tested, they're just taken a priori or even on blind faith. This is doctrinal, not empirical, thinking at work here.

And while "there's no reason for somebody not to have a job" does not in and of itself imply "I think some people ought to suffer", the rhetoric about "welfare queens", "welfare bums" or "people who made bad choices in life that I shouldn't have to pay for" is a decided value-judgement on who "deserves" to get help and who doesn't.

While the above is true to a degree in every political party, the situation with the GOP has gotten to the point where anybody who simply does not hold to a tribalist loyalty to that party is driven out one way or the other, and that tribalist loyalty involves either blind fealty to right wing doctrine or a willingness to not challenge it by word, deed, or implication.

Funny, you essentially make my argument with a lot more unnecessary wordage attached to it. Comes down to the same thing: conservatives do not think in terms of empiricism but "deeply held convictions". Or rather, gut-feelings. These sort of people are not interested in any sort of middle-ground, which they see as compromise with evil. And yes, when you talk about the possible benefits of even partial legalisation, they do assume you're lying through your teeth or, at best, are horribly misguided.

And the essential difference is... what, exactly? Their lack of sympathy still translates into any and all resistance to any form of aid for people they consider unworthy of it. That is Calvinist.

That's exactly what I ask them when we debate. We often get somewhere.

Of course the principles are open to question. The problem is that many critiques of the Republican Party are either hyperbole or more principle. Because it won't fit in a quick clip for CNN, nobody pitches hard questions about principles as they translate to outcomes.

It's strange how I identify as Republican and don't feel that way. It's Democrats and liberals who tell me how "closed" is the conservative circle.

Then the answer is to make a better pitch, since you can't reform the batter. Tee it up for them.

There's nothing Calvinist in Kristol's quote; he's simply trying to avoid supporting free health care.

“They do not deserve the same quality of health care the soldiers fighting deserve, and they [the soldiers] need all kinds of things we don’t need,” Kristol said.

Why have I never heard any of these arguments about who and who is not "deserving"?

Why do so many Christians give so much to charity privately?

Republicans usually believe they can adduce examples to support their conclusions. Those examples can often be discounted or disconfirmed. It happens too seldom. I read this, and I wonder if you're proposing that liberals disengage because it's hopeless. Yet conservatives obviously tie their assumptions to a series of outcomes that can be challenged.

And the "welfare bum" story is always about somebody who knowingly chose the wrong path. You seem to believe that Republicans are talking about unlucky people. Republicans think they are talking about scammers and cheats, criminals and people who have "given up" and will not work. If they do complain, "I won't pay for others!" that is a very broad argument about social responsibility, and actually covers different ground.

It's strange how I identify as Republican and don't feel that way. It's Democrats and liberals who tell me how "closed" is the conservative circle.

There's nothing Calvinist in Kristol's quote; he's simply trying to avoid supporting free health care.

Your article on Calvinism is an opinion piece. Given your opinions on organized religion, I'm extraordinarily skeptical. Why have I never heard any of these arguments about who and who is not "deserving"? Why do so many Christians give so much to charity privately?

Economic Paul Krugman, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and The Heritage Foundation(The home of the whacko right) agree the cost of the Bush Tax Cuts cost around 1.8 trillion dollars. Heritage claims this doesn't account for increased taxes from increased economic activity, but given the economy collapsed completely, I would guess that's not a positive number.

Or one could go look to an ACTUAL source instead of Romney in the Value Voter's Summit, and see the CBO pegs the cost at less than a postage stamp a day in new taxes. Goddamn, Chocula, do you deep-throat every right-wing lie that comes by?

What would you have done in his place? Let the entire financial system collapse, and take everyone on a fixed income with it? How are your parents doing?

How about the deficit? Would you have slashed hundreds of billions of dollars of Bush-era spending and raised taxes in order to reduce the deficit, in the midst of an economic crisis, thus massively deepening that crisis?

And you're not worried about the implications of doing nothing about the underlying problem that this policy is intended to deal with? Or are you saying that whatever solution he proposes should be some sort of magic-based system that operates at zero cost?

Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable. The U.S. should wait until there is a global agreement on CO2 that includes China and India before committing to costly reductions in the United States.

I was and am opposed to TARP. The need for TARP should never have even existed, and would not if the FDIC and SEC had done their jobs. Had I been Bush, I would have looked Paulson in the eye and said "Fuck you, the Fed exists only because Congress has delegated part of its powers under Section Eight of the Constitution to your group of banks, and if you keep trying to extort me I'll throw you in Leavenworth and Resolution Trust Corp your ass." Internet tough guy mode off. I'd rather have insolvent banks go into receivership when they're bankrupt than have them propped up by federal taxes. I have a BofA mortgage and a Wells Fargo credit card, and guess what...if both companies went tits up and were taken over by the FDIC for liquidation it wouldn't have any impact on the payments I've contracted. I'd still owe them to the assignee. If Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo et al had gone into bankruptcy overnight, there would still have been hundreds of domestic banks and credit unions, investment funds, sovereign trusts, and foreign banks with the resources to take over the failed institutions' assets and debts. The stock and bond holders of the failed banks would take it in the ass, sure, but it would also be their risk to assume and their penalty for not keeping the banks' boards in line. Sometimes you wind up on the bottom of the risk/reward line; better a few thousand stockholders lose their asses than 300 million Americans paper over their negligence.

Fixed income implies annuities, Social Security, union pensions, etc. If the insurance companies (annuities) or unions invested in banks that failed and went bankrupt, THEY are the ones who have failed in their fiduciary duty and are at fault. What's the worst case for them? Drawdowns of reserves to meet contractual obligations or reductions in pension payouts, which are inconvenient, especially to policyholders, but do not affect the nation as a whole. Social Security would be unaffected as far as I know. BofA could crater tomorrow, but the SSA in DC will keep those checks a'comin'.

I'm not debate-worthy on global warming, or climate change,

so I'll look at the predicted benefits of cap and trade:

In other words, I fail to understand why America should reduce its CO2 emissions and lower its GDP for a negligible beneficial result on the quanitity of CO2 put into the air. As to your second point: I never said that ANY solution would have zero cost. Lightning rods cost money. Power plant smokestack spark arresters cost money. 24/7 telemetry readings from power plants to the EPA cost money. TANSTTAAFL. It's possible some very bright American engineers and scientists will develop CO2 scrubbers or other technology to reduce emissions; we are a very inventive people, after all. However, assuming we do come up with a way to provide sufficient power (barring nuclear plants, which are not being approved) while still meeting new cap and trade mandates, it will not come without a cost. A cost which will necessarily be passed on to us. All for a negligible effect on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, since other countries who use coal or natural gas are not bound by the same constraints Congress seeks to put on American businesses and homes.

Was that first post of yours in the thread a test? WTF? Your second post was on point and factual, but damn that first one was a knee-jerk pile of shit.

So any revenue raised by a cap-and-trade program amounts to a "light switch tax" on consumers, the House Republicans alleged.

To back up the claim, their staff pointed us to an M.I.T. report that says a similar a cap-and-trade proposal (the administration has not yet detailed their own version) would raise $366 billion per year. If you divide that by the 117 million households in the United States, you find it would cost each household $3,128, they said.

But is it that simple? Can you just assume consumers would be out $366 billion since that's how much the program would raise from fuel companies?

No.

"It's just wrong," said John Reilly, an energy, environmental and agricultural economist at M.I.T. and one of the authors of the report. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."

Not only is it wrong, but he told the House Republicans it was wrong when they asked him.

"Someone from the House Republicans had called me (March 20) and asked about this," Reilly said. "I had explained why the estimate they had was probably incorrect and what they should do to correct it, but I think this wrong number was already floating around by that time."

Uh, I believe those two sentances are contradictory.

You identify as Republican because the Democrats are bad at military planning... although the previous Republican administration was barely better.

If people are closeminded you aren't trying hard enough!

“They do not deserve the same quality of health care the soldiers fighting deserve, and they [the soldiers] need all kinds of things we don’t need,” Kristol said.

The conservatives you know are probably the ones who are militists.

Because they can insure that the money goes to deserving people.

Not at all. The point is not to convince the hard-core conservatives who will die before changing a single idea but to snag the fence-sitters and middle-of-the-roaders who have yet to be convinced of anything.

Republicans also talk about unlucky people who weren't rich enough to buy decent insurance or couldn't make the mortgage as those who "made bad decisions" or "didn't work hard enough" and therefore aren't worthy of help "I should have to pay for". We've seen that in spades with the mortgage assistance debate as well as the healthcare debate. They literally have developed selfishness into a multilayered philosophy centred around justification of every and any argument to abandon millions to their fates.

We're not talking about your subjective feelings. Kindly leave such irrelevancies out of this discussion.

The moment an argument is made in which people are separated out into categories of "worthy" and "unworthy" for aid based on a wholly subjective standard of worth, that is the Calvinist mechanism in operation right there. Kristol simply switches military service as the standard rather than wealth as his test for purposes of this discussion with Stewart, but he is still drawing a line between the preferred few and the unworthy many. That's exactly how John Calvin divided the world in his mind and that is the same basic ideology informing conservative thought on social questions.

Next time, try a rebuttal of substance. You do not refute any of the factual bases for the article with that little exercise in handwaving or your shabby Appeal to Motive. Nor do you refute anything with the Red Herring of Christians who give to charity —especially as the article also concedes the fact of Christians who do not subscribe to Calvinist ideology and more likely to identify as liberal or moderate.

Kast, the problem with your assertions about what conservatives supposedly mean simply does not pan out in the real world. There is a massive disconnect between that claim and the actual experience of talking to conservatives (this forum is not the only place where I engage in debates and discussions) and no matter the venue, it always boils down to the same things.

So yes, it's fine to take the approach of reasoned discourse for a few posts and when it (almost inevitably) becomes clear that there is a doctrinaire refusal to actually discuss anything, it's time to switch to ridicule and contempt because you might as well just entertain the audience and induce heightened blood pressure in the opponent for wasting your time.

One of the reasons you despair of debate is because we, as a nation, no longer entertain anything more than rhetorical questions and vicious parting shots that really don't come to grips with the issues, and are often mere ad hominem attacks, which sell well to the uninformed.

No, I don't.

The idea that all discussions of social worth stem from Calvinist doctrine has no basis in reality. Bill Kristol is furthermore a practicing Jew.

No, it's because they wrongly differentiate social welfare from private charity. While they may claim that distribution through a church or social network is somehow more accountable, it is not because churches routinely avoid needy communities of all types.

This conveniently ignores behavior such as private charity or tithing,

as well as the fact that most conservatives truly believe, even if incorrectly, that government-run programs are inefficient wastes of money that never deliver the amount of social goods promised, and are unlikely to help people achieve lifestyle reform, the presumptive requirement for lasting change.

Kristol is obviously working to avoid having to endorse the idea that anybody has a "right" to health care, or that it can be administered effectively to large populations by a government agency.

I've moved progressively south since first arriving on this board in high school.

What I want to do is prod these people to recognize chinks in their own arguments, not bring them around to my position or die trying. Refuting their examples, or questioning how they have logically come to a given point of view is often enough. Even when they dance up and down and claim I am not being "fair," I get through to them. I make them uncomfortable. It's a start. That's not what's being done on TV, or from TV, where everybody carefully avoids debate to opt for insults.