biggovernment.com/2010/01/29/judging-alito-obamas-ultimate-arrogance/
#IDComment54370142 - Garfunkel said:

"The right-wing "red states" lead the country in almost every negative statistic from crime to illegitimacy to poor schools"

#IDComment54377647 - AMG said:

Interesting. Can you provide a link to that data?
Also, what is your theory about causation? What part of having Republican voters leads to social collapse?

#IDComment54379525 - Garfunkel said:

I posted the reply - it is documented, and You and I will have to wait for the webmaster to approve!

#IDComment54389976 - (Two hours later) AMG said:

Where did you post the reply? Why didn't you include the link in the reply saying that you posted the reply? That is strange.

Current comment - AMG says:
To Garfunkel,
It has been a while, and you haven't posted a link to your data.

The $2 trillion in sub-prime financing in the last four years delivered dollars to the people who spent it immediately on all types of stuff. That is a $2 trillion stimulus.

We are living now in the "post stimulus" economy produced by that giant stimulus. How do we like it?

That was the result when people promised to pay it back. What will happen now when more money is being handed out, with no hope of repayment? We have only the prospect of higher taxes on productive people, or high inflation, and probably both. Tax the rich, tax the middle class, and tax the poor.


A Tested Stimulus Plan
We just did a massive stimulus through housing policy.

Business owners are being rational. It is better to miss some business by expanding later, or shrinking, than to expand early and risk bigger losses if sales drop. Ironically, stimulus interferes with the sales signals and market stability that would encourage businesses to expand. This slows expansion and reduces employment.

The current stimulus is being distributed over a period of years, so it will interfere with business decisions and employment for years. Promises of higher taxes are also increasing risk and decreasing employment.

We have recently emerged from a four year experiment in giant stimulus. The housing bubble WAS a stimulus bubble. The government borrowed through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to loan to people to buy houses (construction, consumer goods, appliances) and to re-finance housing to buy everything.
(continued)

What does it mean to focus on Stimulus? We have had giant stimulus plans, starting with government sponsored lending to build houses, then Bush's $150 billion stimulus, the current $787 - $1,000 billion "Stimulus Plan", and now $200 billion in more stimulus plans.

Here is the laugh. What was being stimulated? Jobs, of course. Will people really buy the change in words? "Before, we concentrated on stimulus, but now we are concentrating on jobs". Stimulus has been a massive failure, and more government spending to create jobs will fail also.

After the government defaults on the US debt, or inflates the currency, or raises taxes to cover the immense debt, where will the market settle for goods and services? No one knows. But, there aren't enough resources in existence to bail everyone out at that time. Business owners who expand now are betting into the unknown.
(continued)

One reform would be to expect that journals list the papers that they reject for publication, as a matter of scientific integrity. This would hold the journals reponsible for their editorial opinion and their assumed gatekeeper role. They would be more careful and show less bias, with the journal's reputation on the line.

It would be fine to go further and give the reviewer's opinions. This would encourage publishing pro and con views for rejected papers, and posibly for accepted ones also.

Peer Review Is Not What You Think
Shannon Love says this nicely [edited]

"Peer Review" says nothing about conclusions. It is the fate of most scientific papers to be proven completely wrong.

Peer review protects a journal’s reputation. The journal hires experts to check for basic errors in math or methodology, along with grammar and spelling. It offloads responsibility for publishing bad papers onto anonymous scientists. It is a form of blame-passing that everyone would like to use. It does not confirm or refute experimental or theoretical conclusions.

Some people will say that a scientific result is true because it appears in a peer reviewed journal. That is the weakest defense possible. It means only that some editor and his reviewers found it to meet their minimum quality standards for publishing. It meets no standards if the editors and peer reviewers are corrupt.

(continued)
Supposedly private businesses like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowed as much money as the entire national debt at the time, $5.4 trillion ($5,400 billion). The politicians crying the loudest about free market failure and lack of regulation were the ones who directed this disaster, blocked regulation in place, and refused restraints. The guarantees go on today.

EasyOpinions.blogspot.com

Our current financial crisis is the result of government control and management of the mortgage lending industry. Only the government could be so stupid and blind as to lose $2 trillion outright ($2,000 billion) lending money to build houses, the safest and most analyzed type of asset existing.

They set standards for the industry to follow, lowered those standards to follow socialist ideology, bought the bad loans that resulted, guaranteed repayment to the institutional lenders if anything went wrong, and pressured ratings agencies to stamp AAA on new and poorly understood mortgage securities.

We Guarantee It

This is a review of public sources of information about what went wrong.

The government is guaranteeing us into poverty. Politicians discovered a loophole in government finances. They could borrow as much as they wanted, off budget and without debate, by granting guarantees.
. . .

To Titov,
The far left and far right both want power over the average citizen, for supposedly different reasons. They explain that powerful government is not bad just because a Hitler could use that government in bad ways.

They often go further to soften the image of Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and Putin, to claim that EVEN IN THAT CASE, only a bit went wrong. So, (sarcasm) don't fear a strong government, because it is the way to a glorious future.

What could the motivation be for showing the "more complex" Hitler, the Hitler that reacted to historical imperatives, the Hitler who wasn't completely bad?

Collectivist: Hitler had the strength and vision to reorganize German society in a coordinated, comprehensive, scientific way. He saw the state as the only power that could tame the unruly masses and produce a glorious future for Germany and all of the territories that would come under Germany's influence.

Collectivist: Unfortunately, divisions in German society and some defects in Hitler's world vision caused more human suffering than was necessary to that cause. His goals and methods were rational and effective, but some of his results were regrettable.

Collectivist: We should not tar Hitler's methods and major visions with those few unfortunate results. We have the capability today, as then, to use organized government to accomplish greater goals for society. We are wiser now, and we will do it better.

(Just to be clear, I hate the Collectivist -AMG)
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