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After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a congressional action that I've witnessed in my life is anyone surprised? The Congress care ab

After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a congressional action that I've witnessed in my life is anyone surprised? The Congress care about increasing the power of the government and doing whatever it is they want to do when they're in power. They like the new powers when they are in power and criticize them when they are out of power. Though the Neocons just criticize how much they are used rather than their existence so I guess they're more consistent. I wonder when the small government conservatives will leave the Republican party and when the anti-war, pro civil liberties liberals will leave the Democratic party? I think Barack Obama did a masterful job of pacifying the anti-war left by annoying his intention to withdraw from Iraq after a certain period of time. I don't know that it will actually happen but it was a pretty smart move to get it off of people's minds for the most part. We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition. I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this.

lucifer 17y ago
> "I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this." It is not in the interest of the ruling elite for this fact to become apparent. They control education and media, and have mastered the art of dividing society along various (ultimately facile and irrelevant) fault lines. (Do you remember when Blue and Red state meme suddenly appeared out of nowhere like a cheap ready-made knockoff hanging in every one of our various media outlets? Is it a surprise that every time the country finally starts focusing on a substantial issue some completely random troll topic is pushed on queue; is the biggest problem facing USA the decision to allow gay marriage or to rescue this sinking ship of a state?) "We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition." You take that sentence and run it by a random sampling of 18 year olds in America. A certain proportion may be able to parse it; a subset of that may actually understand what is said; an even smaller subset would be able to reason about the proposition. Am I being completely pessimistic for thinking that the percentage that can even understand that as English is in single digit percentile?
- lallysingh 17y ago
  Remember this? http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo... How so many people in the comments thought that it was the actual Facebook login page, as it was (temporarily) Google's #1 hit for "Facebook login?" Well, have a look at their english. The grammar, the underlying argument structure, the confused-awkward lololols, the lot of it. That's the majority of people in the US. Most adults stopped during or after high school. Remember high school? Remember the attitudes of students going through history & government courses? That's where they stopped, that was their final set of saved data on the matter. And worse, they're still much better off -- even intellectually -- than many times their numbers across the planet: sustenance farmers, laborers, tribespeople, etc. (I'm speaking as someone born on the same land that my family spent centuries sustenance farming). A good portion of the human population's still living in the mode Ghandi called "more like animals than people." (rough quote from memory, sorry).
  - lucifer 17y ago
    We're in agreement. However I'm not sure if you see this as an 'organic' phenomena (i.e. most people prefer to be mindless cattle that is educated only to the minimal extent necessary to be functional production units) or (as I do) as a systemic policy driven elite project to shape the human society. They haven't exactly been quiet or secretive about it. The current elite clearly think that a systemic leveling across the board (aka domesticating the people identified by Ghandi) and homogenization is the only way to address the inherent contingent (your context) and intrinsic (your genetics) differences between humans. My experience (obviously a tiny sample) is that the distribution is not smooth and quite lumpy, actually. I am not yet convinced that people generally prefer to be misinformed and deceived, and live lives of animals as opposed to a beings primarily distinguishing themselves by their possession of minds. I do remember High School and do remember the history and government teachers (History: leftist progressive; Government: (presumed) future Bush voter). I remember (as memorable "learning" events) the woven tie of the history teacher and his half-hearted efforts to inject a bit of reality into the official version, and, the episode where the government teacher discussed "Deep Throat"[] with a flirting jock in class. No, I did not live in the ghettos among the disadvantaged and downwardly mobile; this is somewhere in a suburb around Washington DC -- the "Empire's capital" what a joke -- circa early 80s. in a county that likes to boast of the exceptional concentration of the highly educated amongst its residents. (Boggles the mind.) [edit: The movie not the source. In any event, the film in question was actually "The opening of Misty Beethoven" ...]
cynicalkane 17y ago
This is a pretty poor comparison. You'd do better to cite a Congressional action that turned out to be a bad idea, like the Iraq War. When you cite TARP you're actually saying "the public is dumb and doesn't understand economics," which is a pretty accurate assessment, but not the one you were trying to make. TARP probably saved us from a Great Depression, and IIRC the bailouts are in the black except for the segments bailing out the government mortgage banks and the car companies. FTR, the protests against Volcker's anti-inflation measures in the 70s were bigger, with farmers eventually blockading the Fed headquarters with their tractors. The protestors were wrong then, too.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Indeed. The banks paid TARP back very quickly. I imagined it was going to be something that would take place over 30 or 50 years, but it happened in a matter of weeks. Not a bad investment on the government's part -- they might have even made some money!
  - chaostheory 17y ago
    > Indeed. The banks paid TARP back very quickly Not quite: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/10-ways-say-no-banks-have-not-paid-back-their-debt-taxpayer http://www.zerohedge.com/article/10-ways-say-no-banks-have-n...
    - jrockway 17y ago
      I think this misses a lot of points. For every person that lost money in savings accounts and smart investments (me), there is another person that got to buy their home with 4% financing instead of the 8 or 10%. So if your article wants to count losses from low interest rates, it should also offset them against gains from cheap loans. (Also, TARP probably didn't have much to do with this. It just meant that the name on your bank account stayed "Bank of America" instead of "Bank of the United States of America".)
- drunkpotato 17y ago
  It's a bit too soon to be saying TARP was a good piece of legislation. It's also a bit of fantasy to say what would have happened if TARP hadn't passed. The thing is, TARP hasn't led to any reforms in the financial sector. It simply shoveled taxpayer money at private corporations with very few strings attached, which propped up the banks long enough to say "hey, thanks, we would have been fine anyway, really, now piss off". I think we'd be a lot better off without TARP. Your smug "the protestors were wrong" is unjustified.
guelo 17y ago
After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a congressional action that I've witnessed in my life I guess you weren't alive in 2003 for the Guiness world record largest protest in human history against the Iraq war, including 400,000 in New York, 200,000 in SF, etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_prot... EDIT: took out the London and Rome references
- Eliezer 17y ago
  > including 2 million people in London, 3 million in Rome Is that outside the US? I don't recognize these cities.
  - guelo 17y ago
    > 400,000 in New York, 200,000 in SF
  - JshWright 17y ago
    Maybe guelo meant London, Arkansas and Rome, New York.
- jswinghammer 17y ago
  Those are large numbers but few people in those cities vote in U.S. elections :)
- guelo 17y ago
  Of course the difference is that tea partiers are upstanding Real Americans while the Iraq war protesters were dirty fucking hippies so they don't count.
sailormoon 17y ago
We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition. Great choice of words. I love how it applies equally well to the USA and China. I agree, of course, and think it applies to most modern democracies, in whom I have zero faith.

lucifer 17y ago

> "I wonder how long it will be before more people realize this." It is not in the interest of the ruling elite for this fact to become apparent. They control education and media, and have mastered the art of dividing society along various (ultimately facile and irrelevant) fault lines. (Do you remember when Blue and Red state meme suddenly appeared out of nowhere like a cheap ready-made knockoff hanging in every one of our various media outlets? Is it a surprise that every time the country finally starts focusing on a substantial issue some completely random troll topic is pushed on queue; is the biggest problem facing USA the decision to allow gay marriage or to rescue this sinking ship of a state?) "We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition." You take that sentence and run it by a random sampling of 18 year olds in America. A certain proportion may be able to parse it; a subset of that may actually understand what is said; an even smaller subset would be able to reason about the proposition. Am I being completely pessimistic for thinking that the percentage that can even understand that as English is in single digit percentile?

lallysingh 17y ago
Remember this? http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_wants_to_be_yo... How so many people in the comments thought that it was the actual Facebook login page, as it was (temporarily) Google's #1 hit for "Facebook login?" Well, have a look at their english. The grammar, the underlying argument structure, the confused-awkward lololols, the lot of it. That's the majority of people in the US. Most adults stopped during or after high school. Remember high school? Remember the attitudes of students going through history & government courses? That's where they stopped, that was their final set of saved data on the matter. And worse, they're still much better off -- even intellectually -- than many times their numbers across the planet: sustenance farmers, laborers, tribespeople, etc. (I'm speaking as someone born on the same land that my family spent centuries sustenance farming). A good portion of the human population's still living in the mode Ghandi called "more like animals than people." (rough quote from memory, sorry).
- lucifer 17y ago
  We're in agreement. However I'm not sure if you see this as an 'organic' phenomena (i.e. most people prefer to be mindless cattle that is educated only to the minimal extent necessary to be functional production units) or (as I do) as a systemic policy driven elite project to shape the human society. They haven't exactly been quiet or secretive about it. The current elite clearly think that a systemic leveling across the board (aka domesticating the people identified by Ghandi) and homogenization is the only way to address the inherent contingent (your context) and intrinsic (your genetics) differences between humans. My experience (obviously a tiny sample) is that the distribution is not smooth and quite lumpy, actually. I am not yet convinced that people generally prefer to be misinformed and deceived, and live lives of animals as opposed to a beings primarily distinguishing themselves by their possession of minds. I do remember High School and do remember the history and government teachers (History: leftist progressive; Government: (presumed) future Bush voter). I remember (as memorable "learning" events) the woven tie of the history teacher and his half-hearted efforts to inject a bit of reality into the official version, and, the episode where the government teacher discussed "Deep Throat"[] with a flirting jock in class. No, I did not live in the ghettos among the disadvantaged and downwardly mobile; this is somewhere in a suburb around Washington DC -- the "Empire's capital" what a joke -- circa early 80s. in a county that likes to boast of the exceptional concentration of the highly educated amongst its residents. (Boggles the mind.) [edit: The movie not the source. In any event, the film in question was actually "The opening of Misty Beethoven" ...]

cynicalkane 17y ago

This is a pretty poor comparison. You'd do better to cite a Congressional action that turned out to be a bad idea, like the Iraq War. When you cite TARP you're actually saying "the public is dumb and doesn't understand economics," which is a pretty accurate assessment, but not the one you were trying to make. TARP probably saved us from a Great Depression, and IIRC the bailouts are in the black except for the segments bailing out the government mortgage banks and the car companies. FTR, the protests against Volcker's anti-inflation measures in the 70s were bigger, with farmers eventually blockading the Fed headquarters with their tractors. The protestors were wrong then, too.

jrockway 17y ago
Indeed. The banks paid TARP back very quickly. I imagined it was going to be something that would take place over 30 or 50 years, but it happened in a matter of weeks. Not a bad investment on the government's part -- they might have even made some money!
- chaostheory 17y ago
  > Indeed. The banks paid TARP back very quickly Not quite: http://www.zerohedge.com/article/10-ways-say-no-banks-have-not-paid-back-their-debt-taxpayer http://www.zerohedge.com/article/10-ways-say-no-banks-have-n...
  - jrockway 17y ago
    I think this misses a lot of points. For every person that lost money in savings accounts and smart investments (me), there is another person that got to buy their home with 4% financing instead of the 8 or 10%. So if your article wants to count losses from low interest rates, it should also offset them against gains from cheap loans. (Also, TARP probably didn't have much to do with this. It just meant that the name on your bank account stayed "Bank of America" instead of "Bank of the United States of America".)
drunkpotato 17y ago
It's a bit too soon to be saying TARP was a good piece of legislation. It's also a bit of fantasy to say what would have happened if TARP hadn't passed. The thing is, TARP hasn't led to any reforms in the financial sector. It simply shoveled taxpayer money at private corporations with very few strings attached, which propped up the banks long enough to say "hey, thanks, we would have been fine anyway, really, now piss off". I think we'd be a lot better off without TARP. Your smug "the protestors were wrong" is unjustified.

guelo 17y ago

After TARP passed in the midst of one of the largest protests of a congressional action that I've witnessed in my life I guess you weren't alive in 2003 for the Guiness world record largest protest in human history against the Iraq war, including 400,000 in New York, 200,000 in SF, etc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_prot... EDIT: took out the London and Rome references

Eliezer 17y ago
> including 2 million people in London, 3 million in Rome Is that outside the US? I don't recognize these cities.
- guelo 17y ago
  > 400,000 in New York, 200,000 in SF
- JshWright 17y ago
  Maybe guelo meant London, Arkansas and Rome, New York.
jswinghammer 17y ago
Those are large numbers but few people in those cities vote in U.S. elections :)
guelo 17y ago
Of course the difference is that tea partiers are upstanding Real Americans while the Iraq war protesters were dirty fucking hippies so they don't count.

sailormoon 17y ago

We don't have a two party system but we have a bi-factional ruling coalition. Great choice of words. I love how it applies equally well to the USA and China. I agree, of course, and think it applies to most modern democracies, in whom I have zero faith.