Re: How many trolls are on this site at any given time?
Date: July 17, 2009 08:58AM
Thurston Moore Wrote:
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>
> Which two presidents are responsible for the two
> largest entitlements program expansions in the
> last 40 years? Bush and Nixon. Bush signed the
> Presciption bill handed to him by a republican
> majority Senate and Congress. Nixon permanently
> increased Social Security Benefits by 20%.
>
> Oh yeah, and Bush created one of the largest
> government bureaucracies, as well. DHS.
>
> It's really hard to take the "small government"
> mantra seriously. I know it sells well in the
> heartland, but it doesn't measure up to reality.
> Wasn't it Clinton who reduced the size of
> government and turned deficit into surplus, only
> to have that reversed when Junior took office?
Kind of twist on what really happened. Clinton did not reduce the size of government. They reduced spending on defense which was a significant savings for the government (not reducing the size, just reducing spending on contracted defense systems) at the same time tax revenues were increasing due to the dot.com bubble. While it was nice for Clinton, he had little to do with it. All of which was eventually rolled into a recession with the increase in energy prices, over-investment in the tech sector, and the end of Y2K spending.
DHS was a direct result of 9-11 so it would have happened in some way regardless of who was in office with attacks of that magnitude. Bush pushed for these increases in medicare spending as an attempt to deal with healthcare issues without going to a more structure government run healthcare. Again, if you look closely it appears that in the spirit of "compromise" the government is forced to spend more and more to get anything passed - one of the reasons why, when the Republicans only held a slim majority in the Senate, they had to agree to increase spending in massive amounts to get any legislation through.
> However, if you get beyond partisan politics --
> which would be easy if you just looked at where
> both parties have brought us in the last 25 years
> -- you'd realize that both parties create larger
> government, more rules and further intrusions on
> our civil liberties. Because they don't represent
> the people, they represent the people with the
> biggest checkbooks.
>
> Unless you are a large multi-national corporation,
> neither party is going to defend your interests.
True, but you forgot to add in anyone with a large checkbook. Large trade Unions (AFL-CIO), Trial Lawyers (legalized extortion with the allowance of massive rewards), etc. I can't remember the last time Congress took the time to pass a bill that actually was to the benefit of anyone but the Federal Government, and the lobbyists that work there.