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KScurmudgeon

Listed below are comments made by KScurmudgeon between Thursday, 29th October 2009 and Saturday, 31st October 2009.

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When hope is all that's left 3:32pm on 31 Oct 2009 142. At 2:33pm on 31 Oct 2009, amerika_first wrote:
131. At 05:24am on 31 Oct 2009, KScurmudgeon wrote:
How would you give that hand up? How would you put the country back to productive work?

First of all make all states Right to Work states and second of all make any income over minimum wage to 75K per year tax exempt, reduce the payroll tax to start. Cancel all bailouts to banks and industry. Federalize their assests and sell them off to the highest bidder. They are living high off the hog at the expense of taxpayers...."
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Amerika -

I am surprised to see that we are coming from the same place - I call it populist conservatism. The little guy (under $75K per year) produces the bread and butter of the economy, and should be given every encouragement. Unless I am mistaken, the majority of taxes come from the majority of taxpayers - not the per capita majority, but the dollar majority. And the big guy should be restrained and held accountable for the way he or she wields the influence due his/her position. And I hate no longer having a usable pronoun for all of humanity.

yours,

KScurmudgeon
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When hope is all that's left 05:24am on 31 Oct 2009 Amerika First -

How would you give that hand up? How would you put the country back to productive work?

KScurmudgeon
When hope is all that's left 04:57am on 31 Oct 2009 I was told last night that in each of the six precincts in my city, there are about 25 officers available at any one time. I was told that neighbors need to look out for each other, and that to be effective at least half of the households in a block need to be actively concerned, looking, and ready to call for help for each other.

The reason is simple - if only one or two are looking, they cannot see it when it happens. When half or more are alert, someone will see it, call it in, and the bad guys will move somewhere else. The police may drive down our block once a day, and it maybe they will not.

The most effective solutions are local, and this is the simple reason. A national police force? And how many hours of each officer's day will be spent on paperwork? How many officers do nothing but push paper? How many really are not motivated to care about this block? We live here, and we must care.

The same principle applies to every need, to every opportunity, I think. Health care, homelessness, quality products of every sort depend on finding people close to the job to do the job, people who care about the outcome on the ground.

KScurmudgeon
When hope is all that's left 04:41am on 31 Oct 2009 Thank you Mark, for a great piece of journalism, and for stimulating one of the best discussions I have seen on the 'net.

Watch, now. The people are beginning to speak out about the health care reform they need to see, more and more clearly. Everywhere I look the discussion is getting more clear. It is very hard to declare that drug pricing is justifiable, that medical insurance is fair or competitive, that we as a nation have the medical care we are paying for - after all, we are told it is the best in the world but what good is that when so many of us know we don't have access and can't afford it, or could loose it next Friday when we loose our job?

The outrage has not died down over the hundred million dollar bonuses that continue to be paid to financiers by crooked institutions using our money, while we are still loosing our jobs, houses, and insurance, and no none has bailed out our losses.

It's on every analysts lips - the recession will not really end until the American consumer opens his and her wallet and buys a big Christmas, a bigger house, and a new car. Our jobs will not come back until we get out there and spend. Employers are doing all they can to avoid hiring new permanent employees (my employer is putting on temps right and left) until they feel confident that the consumer market is strong again. But we need those good jobs to feel we can again risk buying on credit provided by an different band of rapacious predators. But what is not on anyone's lips is any idea how to stimulate real jobs for Americans. We may not be the masters of the financial markets, at least not any more, but we are the key to everyone's present and future success. What gives?

Local action is the most effective and the most efficient. People helping their neighbors, as your blog so eloquently showed. Small businesses that make the jobs appear, and sustain local retailers, customers, and yes, bankers. Local retail purchases are suddenly the stuff that makes the world go around. They cut down the transportation cost to a minimum. Cut out the overwhelming burden of corporate bureaucracies. Keep the profit in the community, city, state, or at least in the country.

The federal government really is the least efficient, slowest, and most likely to become corrupted of all systems to deploy when a problem appears. Corporate solutions always have another motive, and so many have demonstrated that improving conditions on the ground for the consumer or the victim or the citizen rarely or never rank high on that list.

Republican and Democratic leadership that gives the appearance of belonging to corporate interests is beginning to feel real heat, at last. The lie has been put to the claim that what is good for the corporations is good for the country. They had it their way, and look around you today. Until jobs come back and we feel secure again, the heat will stay on. Any leader who can make things happen that actually do help the taxpayers and working public, will have a future.

Candidate Obama promised a lot of change. The steam is beginning to build pressure in that kettle. The Democratic congress' approval ratings are the same as the Republican party's - about twenty percent, as low as they have been. They have not yet shown the public that they are listening to us at all.

Just watch.

KScurmudgeon
When hope is all that's left 03:19am on 31 Oct 2009 121. At 10:34pm on 30 Oct 2009, Gavrielle_LaPoste wrote:

83. At 09:45am on 30 Oct 2009, SONICBOOMER wrote:

Could it be that the German financial market (which is substantial), has been far more into investment than playing a giant casino?

The market is more than just a casiono. Read Matt Taibbi's excellent article on naked short selling and how the massive, illegal and un-policed virtual counterfeiting of stock, bonds and commodities has changed the nature of the markets. They are predatory asset stripping machines, rather than true gauges of actual economic activity.
________________________________

"The market is a racket. And those traders are all crooks."
- Al Capone

He should know
Why 'adolescent America' has to grow up 06:57am on 29 Oct 2009 373. At 06:16am on 29 Oct 2009, David_Cunard wrote:

#366. KScurmudgeon: "So what do you find blameworthy in US policy toward Western Europe in the 20th century, Mr Cunard? Lack of altruism? How about - I help you, and that helps me too?"

That is probably not the opinion of the poster to whom I responded. I suggest you read his post at #364; he seems to think it was a one-way street. However, you must admit that it took some time for the USA to realise it was in her own interest to join the fight in Europe. Marbles (if she were here) would tell you that it was not a popular move."

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DC,
Funny, I didn't find any real reference to altruism in his post.

Of course entering the War wasn't popular at the time, as I have said here myself. It was popular with the American industrialists who were busy long before we entered the war, and good for the employees they were able to hire. Policy is not the same thing as popular opinion, then or now, although they should generally correspond in the long run. Our discussions suffer, as you may be suggesting, from a general failure to clarify which one we are talking about, especially on this thread. So, there are also short term public opinions and long term public values, for lack of a better term. Right now we are finding that our policy makers can have short term opinions, or talking points, as well as longer term goals that seem down right incongruent.

KScurmudgeon
Why 'adolescent America' has to grow up 06:34am on 29 Oct 2009 372. At 06:08am on 29 Oct 2009, stellarBeloved wrote:

Also,
Your comments are well written, Mr. Kurmudgeon, but your last comment seemed to say we need to throw individualistic choice and individualism to the wind and join Europe (and China?) in providing dictatorial leadership and succor to our huddled masses.
Yukkkk.
I think you meant we need to take some aspects of Europe and apply them here. And maybe to abandon our need to dominate the (quite large) world....not so terrible a future, huh?
____________________________

Uh, yes, and no. I hope we can abandon the urge to 'provide' dictatorial leadership anywhere. If by 'succor our huddled masses' you are suggesting we provide European style socialism to those who do not produce or are cronically under productive - no. That is counter - productive every where, and not really within the American paradigm - not part of our genius. Getting everybody an opportunity and a reason to be joyously productive - that is a better thing from my point of view.

Individualism and individual choice are among the qualities we have cultivated and that are very much needed by much of the world today - in my 'American' opinion.

Yes we very much need to abandon our 'need' to dominate the world - but must continue to work to trade with and stimulate and be stimulated by the world - and there is nothing innately destructive with working hard to be the best, so long as it is not done by diminishing, destroying or demeaning the other players.

Perhaps you can suggest some European aspects that would improve the American experience - excepting their ages of wisdom and malaise - we will be best to develop that on our own in the course of time....

KScurmudgeon
Why 'adolescent America' has to grow up 05:38am on 29 Oct 2009 Following Mr. Kurst, America came out of WWII assured of it's strength and rightness, and ready to flex new-found muscle to fulfill its vision for the salvation of the world. We had not lost our fundamental millenialism. The Soviets served as a convenient foil - fear and hatred puffed us up and motivated whenever greed, selfishness, and good will in equal measure could not.

The experience in Viet Nam, and the concurrent youthful rebelliousness of the first post-WWII generation rather broke down that naivete. The whole culture of the 50's was grown stale by the time the Beatles, Grateful Dead, and the Rolling Stones appeared. The American Way of War didn't seem to work as well as it had, as Kurst explains. Nevertheless, when the Soviet empire collapsed so spectacularly we were reassured that it was our star that was rising.

But it hasn't been. Wealth and prosperity have spread around the world, and the third world is eager to compete. And the last eighteen months have shown everyone on the planet that the most recent form of the American model has not proven to bring universal benefits - but it has fulfilled the risk universally as it producing unprecedented wealth for the tiniest of minorities.

The presumptions we held sixty years ago were adolescent - we were the adolescents of the age. Meanwhile more mature heads created today's Europe - unified, centralized, socialized, aiming toward one opinion, one solution, and perpetually struggling against stagnation, or so it appears from here. Today we have a new style of leadership here in the USA - one that recognizes a new vision of our contribution - not the beneficient megalomaniac the world saw under the Bushes and Clintons, but a contributor and collaborator, a strong competitor who sees as much or more benefit in mutual advancement as in the old-style unilateral victory.

I predict we will learn to listen more, to learn more, and to help as much as ever with our eye on building a richer, more vibrant and diverse world - and the greatest market imagineable. Would that be the next step toward an estimable maturity?

KScurmudgeon
Why 'adolescent America' has to grow up 05:03am on 29 Oct 2009 To the original question, yes, it is time America did grow up some more. But it would be best if it did not try to strictly follow the European model. The great strengths that the new world has and can contribute into the next century and beyond come largely from the ways we are different from them ( I almost said 'you' - could that be permitted here?) Growing more like late 20th - early 21st century Europeans would stifle us and our contribution.

The best trajectory for us can be discovered easily from an examination of our recent history. The promise everyone in the 17th and 18th centuries saw here was realized in the 19th and 20th centuries, where we matched and then surpassed our European forebearers, who peaked rather earlier and declined through the collapse of the colonial system in the early 20th. WWII marked the final triumph of Democracy over there, but the end of the wealth and military domination of the world that had been the European paradigm.

Americans were the youth of the tribe of Europe - faster, stronger, more adventuresome, short on experience but long on hope and idealism. Many died, but the rest came home heroes, full of plunder. But our vision was a little different. We actually lost our overseas empire, except a few quite insignificant places - some Pacific islands and Puerto Rico. And we deliberately moved to restore the sovereignty and the prosperity of Japan and Germany and the European nations prostrated by their struggle. We struck bargains with the Soviets rather than contest the East, and Harry Truman turned back our lusty General MacArthur when he wanted to engage China.

The empire envisioned by our ambitions was not dictatorial, but mercantile. The richer your market is, the greater the profits. We coveted, and still covet, rich trading partners not impoverished subjects.

As Mr. Kurth says, in the foreseeable future there will not be one superpower - there will be instead a hand full of great powers, among whom one may predominate but none will dominate.
Why 'adolescent America' has to grow up 04:22am on 29 Oct 2009 365. At 03:43am on 29 Oct 2009, David_Cunard wrote:

You really believe that joining in WWII and lend-lease was for altruistic reasons? Of course it wasn't, it was self-interest, to ensure that America was protected lest the Germans should win and then have a very good shot at the USA. The United States has never "defended" Great Britain but joined in the war to save itself. It's high time that Americans remembered the truth about their (tardy) involvement.

It's high time that the Left admitted that altruism is a rare and ultimately ineffective motive for anything. Sure, the USA rebuilt the European economy after WWII, so they would have a market to sell to, and a buffer between themselves and the Eastern threat, and a base of allies rather than an abyss of poverty and want where there had been several strong democracies.

It's called win-win. Smart, modern nations and smart, modern businesses do it all the time. It is also the best policy for the future and represents the best prospective world for the 21st century I have heard discussed since the fall of the Iron C - which was the end of the thankfully short 20th century (what a relief!). So what do you find blameworthy in US policy toward Western Europe in the 20th century, Mr Cunard? Lack of altruism? How about - I help you, and that helps me too?

Seems an odd judgment for a Darwinist - Good can only be credited if it does the agent no good at all.

KScurmudgeon - confused again

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