Good job.

TFJ.

FDR was So Wrong. Landslide after Landslide proves that Republicans were right about FDR. He helps working people. That’s BAD!!!

btw, Milton Friedman co-wrote a ‘classic’ book about how lack of money supply caused the Great Depression which also ignored the real causes like extreme income inequality resulting a hard pressed working class and farmers working longer for less (remembrer they were dumping milk before Wall Street’s fall, a greedy upper class betting on greater credit being imposed upon working people, with unsustainable leverage. Sounds like today. Milton Friedman said that just allowing more ‘credit’ and more money supply would have prevented the Depression. Unfortunately, it’s ignoring the underlying dishonesty of extreme bets on credit (aka “Leverage”) which is also the cause of today’s economic crisis. Friedman’s ‘classic’ is a fiction. Keynes had a more fundamental critique of Depression economics…that Demand needs to be stoked in order for a return to growth. Without income and demand the majority of people will not buy and all the supply in the world won’t help if income isn’t there to allow people to buy.

Indeed FDR’s attack on the Constitution was thwarted. The Constitution was an inconvenie ncethat stood in the way of creating an even bigger federal government.

Could you speak in terms of history instead of bizarre generalities? How was FDR ultimately “thwarted” by either the Constitution or the Court in “creating an even bigger federal government”? I pointed out that the majority of the Supreme Court came around to FDR’s and Congress’s view of the commerce clause. (See Wickard v. Filburn, the high-water mark of the Court’s acceptance of what constitutes “commerce.”) A conservative view of the Constitution temporarily obstructed both state and federal regulation, which is not precisely the same thing as a “bigger” government, as “bigger” generally is measured in budgetary and manpower terms — “more intrusive” is the term favored by literate conservatives when speaking of regulation. But the Constitution, despite what you may have been told, is not necessarily contiguous with “what Amused Observer thinks the Constitution says.”

Who do I believe would make the most competent decision regarding the rational use of money, he who created it or a government employee who has no stake in aquiring the money and whose personal welfare won’t be impacted by the wise or unwise use of it.

And your “beliefs” are very important for religion, but they aren’t very important in a discussion of economic history and policy. What is your empirical evidence that government cannot spur a recessionary economy more effectively than “the person who created” the wealth? And in the absence of empirical evidence, why do you think anyone should care what your “beliefs” are?

I mentioned Japanese internment because it is an instance where *I* believe FDR did not act constitutionally, even though the Supreme Court at the time agreed (subsequent decisions indicate that they wouldn’t allow it to happen today). I thought I would offer it as an alternative to your discredited claim that FDR’s court-packing plan was a) unconstitutional (nothing in the Constitution constrains the Court to 9 members); or b) actually had an effect on anything at all.

Surely you can’t be defending Chavez!
After all, this is a man who was elected and then re-elected, fair and square, with large majorities, a man who was brought back into power after a coup by popular demand, a man who gracefully accepted the failure of a referendum that would have expanded his power.
Surely you can see he is obviously the new Hitler! Or is it Mao? Or maybe Castro?
Anyway, he’s dangerous. I know this because FOX “News” told me, and Amused Observer, that he is.

If not, it is here.

On April 30, 2007 Chávez announced that Venezuela would be formally pulling out of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, having paid off its debts five years ahead of schedule and so saving US $8 million.[100] The debt was US $3 billion in 1999.

But we’re not talking about personal welfare here. We’re talking about the welfare of the society as a whole.

In your example, I would certainly hope that the government employee actually knows how to do his job, and not simply be loyal. In that case, the employee would have a personal stake in the outcome as he/she is also a member of society as a whole.

We are all part of a larger structure and, as some radical leftist commie hippie said some 2,000 years ago, we work better as a team.

By the end of the first three years of his presidency, Chávez had initiated a land transfer program and had introduced several reforms aimed at improving the social welfare of the population. These reforms entailed the lowering of infant mortality rates; the implementation of a free, government-funded health care system; and free education up to the university level. By December 2001, inflation fell to 12.3%, the lowest since 1986,[37] while economic growth was steady at four percent.[38] Chávez’s administration also reported an increase in primary school enrollment of one million students.[38]

Perhaps you might describe your views of just what Milton Friedman’s principles were?

AO, Honestly, I don’t know much about him, but the evidence I have so far seems to be that his guiding principles were Fuck the poor and the middle-class and stomp on them if they get out of line.

Free-market economies are not free. Someone has to pay the cost. And it ain’t the upper class.

Why shouldn’t I?

Domestically, Chávez has maintained nation wide Bolivarian Missions, whose goals are to combat disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other social ills. Abroad, Chávez has acted against the Washington Consensus by supporting alternative models of economic development, and has advocated cooperation among the world’s poor nations, especially those in Latin America.

That monster!

Indeed FDR’s attack on the Constitution was thwarted. The Constitution was an inconvenie ncethat stood in the way of creating an even bigger federal government.

My second point regarding government vs private money is not one of morality rather competence. Who do I believe would make the most competent decision regarding the rational use of money, he who created it or a government employee who has no stake in aquiring the money and whose personal welfare won’t be impacted by the wise or unwise use of it.

I don’t believe I mentioned Japnese internment. It would however make sense to place a much higher security priority on Islamic nationals rather than obvious American grandmothers.