Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 8:42 pm
Notice it's about EX presidents, not ALL presidents..... but I digress.
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Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
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Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 9:47 pm
Living ex-presidents.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 12:00 am
I didn't look, but my first inclination was Jimmy Carter. It must have been him, since it was my first inclination.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:02 am
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:11 am
But in the US.....
The Private Sector is doing fine!!!!
The Private Sector is doing fine!!!!
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:10 am
Subprime college educations
By George F. Will, Published: June 8
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... print.html
Many parents and the children they send to college are paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality. This is because “quality” is not synonymous with “value.”
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, believes that college has become, for many, merely a “status marker,” signaling membership in the educated caste, and a place to meet spouses of similar status — “associative mating.” Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 — enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions). Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a “disparate impact” on this or that racial or ethnic group.
In his “The Higher Education Bubble,” Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices — and lowered standards — to siphon up federal money. A recent Wall Street Journal headline: “Student Debt Rises by 8% as College Tuitions Climb.”
Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that as many people — perhaps more — have student loan debts as have college degrees. Have you seen those T-shirts that proclaim “College: The Best Seven Years of My Life”? Twenty-nine percent of borrowers never graduate, and many who do graduate take decades to repay their loans.
In 2010, the New York Times reported on Cortney Munna, then 26, a New York University graduate with almost $100,000 in debt. If her repayments were not then being deferred because she was enrolled in night school, she would have been paying $700 monthly from her $2,300 monthly after-tax income as a photographer’s assistant. She says she is toiling “to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back.” Her degree is in religious and women’s studies.
The budgets of California’s universities are being cut, so recently Cal State Northridge students conducted an almost-hunger strike (sustained by a blend of kale, apple and celery juices) to protest, as usual, tuition increases and, unusually and properly, administrators’ salaries. For example, in 2009 the base salary of UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion was $194,000, almost four times that of starting assistant professors. And by 2006, academic administrators outnumbered faculty.
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia’s diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate “a student’s understanding of her or his identity.” So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities — themselves. Says Mac Donald, “ ‘Diversity,’ it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.”
She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an administrator of diversity education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a diversity program coordinator; an early resolution discrimination coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in “Unpacking Oppression”; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in “Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.” California’s budget crisis has not prevented UC San Francisco from creating a new vice chancellor for diversity and outreach to supplement its Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Learning Center (which teaches how to become “a Diversity Change Agent”), and the Center for LGBT Health and Equity, and the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committees on Diversity, and on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and on the Status of Women.
So taxpayers should pay more and parents and students should borrow more to fund administrative sprawl in the service of stale political agendas? Perhaps they will, until “pop!” goes the bubble.
By George F. Will, Published: June 8
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... print.html
Many parents and the children they send to college are paying rapidly rising prices for something of declining quality. This is because “quality” is not synonymous with “value.”
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, believes that college has become, for many, merely a “status marker,” signaling membership in the educated caste, and a place to meet spouses of similar status — “associative mating.” Since 1961, the time students spend reading, writing and otherwise studying has fallen from 24 hours a week to about 15 — enough for a degree often desired only as an expensive signifier of rudimentary qualities (e.g., the ability to follow instructions). Employers value this signifier as an alternative to aptitude tests when evaluating potential employees because such tests can provoke lawsuits by having a “disparate impact” on this or that racial or ethnic group.
In his “The Higher Education Bubble,” Reynolds writes that this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices — and lowered standards — to siphon up federal money. A recent Wall Street Journal headline: “Student Debt Rises by 8% as College Tuitions Climb.”
Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education that as many people — perhaps more — have student loan debts as have college degrees. Have you seen those T-shirts that proclaim “College: The Best Seven Years of My Life”? Twenty-nine percent of borrowers never graduate, and many who do graduate take decades to repay their loans.
In 2010, the New York Times reported on Cortney Munna, then 26, a New York University graduate with almost $100,000 in debt. If her repayments were not then being deferred because she was enrolled in night school, she would have been paying $700 monthly from her $2,300 monthly after-tax income as a photographer’s assistant. She says she is toiling “to pay for an education I got for four years and would happily give back.” Her degree is in religious and women’s studies.
The budgets of California’s universities are being cut, so recently Cal State Northridge students conducted an almost-hunger strike (sustained by a blend of kale, apple and celery juices) to protest, as usual, tuition increases and, unusually and properly, administrators’ salaries. For example, in 2009 the base salary of UC Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion was $194,000, almost four times that of starting assistant professors. And by 2006, academic administrators outnumbered faculty.
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia’s diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego (UCSD), while eliminating master’s programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate “a student’s understanding of her or his identity.” So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities — themselves. Says Mac Donald, “ ‘Diversity,’ it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism.”
She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a vice chancellorship for equity, diversity and inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an administrator of diversity education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a diversity program coordinator; an early resolution discrimination coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in “Unpacking Oppression”; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in “Understanding Diversity and Social Justice.” California’s budget crisis has not prevented UC San Francisco from creating a new vice chancellor for diversity and outreach to supplement its Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Learning Center (which teaches how to become “a Diversity Change Agent”), and the Center for LGBT Health and Equity, and the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committees on Diversity, and on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and on the Status of Women.
So taxpayers should pay more and parents and students should borrow more to fund administrative sprawl in the service of stale political agendas? Perhaps they will, until “pop!” goes the bubble.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 11:15 am
Slow Learner
Fred Barnes
June 18, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 38
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/art ... 46841.html
President Obama has been touted by friends and family as the smartest man ever to sit in the White House. Perhaps. Yet he surely is the slowest learner to gain the presidency and probably the most intellectually inflexible. Obama is not only presiding over the most sluggish economic recovery in 80 years, but the economic future looks even worse. In May, a woefully small number of jobs were created, the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent, and the rate of growth in the first quarter of 2012 was shaved from 2.2 percent to 1.9 percent. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office warned that if Obama leaves his economic program in place, a recession in 2013 is all but certain.
His response? Let’s do more of the same. This means a tidal wave of tax increases would hit the economy. The Bush era tax cuts for incomes over $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) would expire, boosting the top rate to 42 percent, when deduction phaseouts are included. And two Obama-care increases would take effect, a 0.9 percent hike in the Medicare tax and a 2.9 percent surcharge on investment income.
That’s not all. Obama is bristling with plans for “some things we do better together,” his euphemism for jacking up spending on anything he can think of except defense. Government programs, he suggested last week in Chicago, are “what has made this country great.” His 10-year budget would increase the national debt by $6 trillion.
True, the president routinely feigns love for free markets. “We believe in the marketplace,” he declared at a fundraiser with Bill Clinton last week. “We believe in entrepreneurship and rewarding risk-taking.” This was followed, as always, by a “but” and the claim that government is at the core of what made America “an economic superpower.”
No doubt Obama believes that. Having never been an entrepreneur or risk-taker, he hasn’t a clue about what prompts them to invest their time and money in ways that produce growth and jobs. And he’s too ideologically committed to government programs to find out how the private economy works.
Which leads us to President Reagan, the record of economic recoveries around the world, and suggested reading over the summer to broaden Obama’s economic understanding.
As Obama must know, the Reagan recovery was a stunning success. And it wasn’t spurred by government spending. It was based on a 25 percent cut in individual income tax rates, phased in over three years, and initial spending cuts followed by efforts to curb spending growth.
Five months before Reagan was reelected, the jobless rate had fallen from a high of 10.8 percent and was heading to 7.2 percent on Election Day. Reagan was talking about “morning in America.” Five months before the 2012 election, Obama is reduced to concocting misleading economic claims to justify his reelection—or changing the subject.
Reagan’s economic record is not unique. Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna studied policies aimed at stimulating the economy in 21 countries between 1970 and 2007. Their conclusions were unequivocal. “Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based on spending increases,” they wrote. “We would argue that the current stimulus package in the United States is too much tilted in the direction of [federal] spending rather than tax cuts.” They added that spending cuts are “much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing debt and avoiding economic downturns.”
The Alesina-Ardagna study is hardly a secret. It may not have come to the president’s attention, but his economic advisers are bound to know of it. In any event, it hasn’t had an iota of influence in the Obama White House.
But there’s still a chance Obama could learn the error of his economic ways. Every summer, he puts together a list of serious books he intends to read while on vacation. Last year, the list included books on civility, migrations, and a novel by Geraldine Brooks.
This summer, the president would benefit from including Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why Government Doesn’t Understand It. The authors are David Newton, a finance professor at Westmont College in California, and Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants.
They make two main points. One is that “private enterprise, unencumbered by excessive government intervention, will create jobs. Period!” The other: “If job creation and economic prosperity were the result of government action and stimulus, currently we should be experiencing one of the greatest economic booms in our history.”
When the freshman class of House Republicans elected in 2010 arrived in Washington, Representative Paul Ryan gave a copy of Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt to each of them. Hazlitt’s overriding lesson: There is a “persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy . . . and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be.” If Obama is as smart as he’s supposed to be, he’ll ask Ryan for a copy.
—Fred Barnes
Fred Barnes
June 18, 2012, Vol. 17, No. 38
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/art ... 46841.html
President Obama has been touted by friends and family as the smartest man ever to sit in the White House. Perhaps. Yet he surely is the slowest learner to gain the presidency and probably the most intellectually inflexible. Obama is not only presiding over the most sluggish economic recovery in 80 years, but the economic future looks even worse. In May, a woefully small number of jobs were created, the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent, and the rate of growth in the first quarter of 2012 was shaved from 2.2 percent to 1.9 percent. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office warned that if Obama leaves his economic program in place, a recession in 2013 is all but certain.
His response? Let’s do more of the same. This means a tidal wave of tax increases would hit the economy. The Bush era tax cuts for incomes over $200,000 ($250,000 for couples) would expire, boosting the top rate to 42 percent, when deduction phaseouts are included. And two Obama-care increases would take effect, a 0.9 percent hike in the Medicare tax and a 2.9 percent surcharge on investment income.
That’s not all. Obama is bristling with plans for “some things we do better together,” his euphemism for jacking up spending on anything he can think of except defense. Government programs, he suggested last week in Chicago, are “what has made this country great.” His 10-year budget would increase the national debt by $6 trillion.
True, the president routinely feigns love for free markets. “We believe in the marketplace,” he declared at a fundraiser with Bill Clinton last week. “We believe in entrepreneurship and rewarding risk-taking.” This was followed, as always, by a “but” and the claim that government is at the core of what made America “an economic superpower.”
No doubt Obama believes that. Having never been an entrepreneur or risk-taker, he hasn’t a clue about what prompts them to invest their time and money in ways that produce growth and jobs. And he’s too ideologically committed to government programs to find out how the private economy works.
Which leads us to President Reagan, the record of economic recoveries around the world, and suggested reading over the summer to broaden Obama’s economic understanding.
As Obama must know, the Reagan recovery was a stunning success. And it wasn’t spurred by government spending. It was based on a 25 percent cut in individual income tax rates, phased in over three years, and initial spending cuts followed by efforts to curb spending growth.
Five months before Reagan was reelected, the jobless rate had fallen from a high of 10.8 percent and was heading to 7.2 percent on Election Day. Reagan was talking about “morning in America.” Five months before the 2012 election, Obama is reduced to concocting misleading economic claims to justify his reelection—or changing the subject.
Reagan’s economic record is not unique. Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna studied policies aimed at stimulating the economy in 21 countries between 1970 and 2007. Their conclusions were unequivocal. “Fiscal stimuli based upon tax cuts are more likely to increase growth than those based on spending increases,” they wrote. “We would argue that the current stimulus package in the United States is too much tilted in the direction of [federal] spending rather than tax cuts.” They added that spending cuts are “much more effective than tax increases in stabilizing debt and avoiding economic downturns.”
The Alesina-Ardagna study is hardly a secret. It may not have come to the president’s attention, but his economic advisers are bound to know of it. In any event, it hasn’t had an iota of influence in the Obama White House.
But there’s still a chance Obama could learn the error of his economic ways. Every summer, he puts together a list of serious books he intends to read while on vacation. Last year, the list included books on civility, migrations, and a novel by Geraldine Brooks.
This summer, the president would benefit from including Job Creation: How It Really Works and Why Government Doesn’t Understand It. The authors are David Newton, a finance professor at Westmont College in California, and Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants.
They make two main points. One is that “private enterprise, unencumbered by excessive government intervention, will create jobs. Period!” The other: “If job creation and economic prosperity were the result of government action and stimulus, currently we should be experiencing one of the greatest economic booms in our history.”
When the freshman class of House Republicans elected in 2010 arrived in Washington, Representative Paul Ryan gave a copy of Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt to each of them. Hazlitt’s overriding lesson: There is a “persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy . . . and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be.” If Obama is as smart as he’s supposed to be, he’ll ask Ryan for a copy.
—Fred Barnes
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:08 pm
Today's food for thought...
The SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)/Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is pleased
to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, warns "Please Do Not Feed The
Animals." They say that this is because the animals may grow dependent on handouts and not learn to take care of themselves.
The SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program)/Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is pleased
to be distributing the greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, warns "Please Do Not Feed The
Animals." They say that this is because the animals may grow dependent on handouts and not learn to take care of themselves.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:13 pm
How many of you are old enough to remember this? Don't you wish our current President could put a re-election campaign commercial like this together -- without everyone who sees it either puking or laughing until they pass out?
[youtube]EU-IBF8nwSY[/youtube]
[youtube]EU-IBF8nwSY[/youtube]
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:16 pm
Here's the Obama version...
[youtube]_YXqf_6ug54[/youtube]
[youtube]_YXqf_6ug54[/youtube]
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 11:34 pm
And while we're strolling down Memory Lane and feeling nostalgic about days gone by, who else misses the anti-war movement? They were always good for a laugh. Or homeless advocates? Or women's rights protesters? I mean, we're still at war and there are still homeless people (probably more now than ever). And women are still being paid less than men. But the protesters are nowhere to be seen.
That's one thing you have to admit would be pretty cool about getting a Republican back in the White House. Suddenly, they'll all come out of hiding and start entertaining us again.
That's one thing you have to admit would be pretty cool about getting a Republican back in the White House. Suddenly, they'll all come out of hiding and start entertaining us again.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 12:31 am
They asked miss Janine Garafallo why she wasn't protesting/screaming/bellyaching with a Democrat in the White House (only with Republicans.) Her response? "It wasn't hip."Hacksaw wrote:And while we're strolling down Memory Lane and feeling nostalgic about days gone by, who else misses the anti-war movement? They were always good for a laugh. Or homeless advocates? Or women's rights protesters? I mean, we're still at war and there are still homeless people (probably more now than ever). And women are still being paid less than men. But the protesters are nowhere to be seen.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2012 4:07 pm
sardis wrote:"The Dow Continues Yesterday's Rally..."
Oh sheesh, there he goes again....I guess it's time to short the market for the next week.
"The private sector is doing fine!!lll"
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 8:09 am
tick, please shut up about the market....Some of us want to retire at a decent age.
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 9:01 am
Today marks the 25th anniversary of a famous speech from the greatest President in my lifetime...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/opini ... ted=1&_r=1
“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/opini ... ted=1&_r=1
“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 9:49 am
"if you seek liberalization"
Oh my....
Oh my....
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 6:30 pm
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 12:20 am
Now Obama has stooped to encouraging more illegal immigration in order to curry favor with Latinos and improve his odds of being re-elected. Just when you start to think he can't get any worse...
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 9:17 am
I've often thought the same about you, and you've never disappointed....
Re: Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread
Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2012 9:21 am
How do you keep coming up with these witty arguments?