FINALLY someone with balls

[Casper]

Arnold for GOVERNOR !!!

Too bad I can't vote for him.

[Captain Kirk]

"If da californeeeaa senate doesn't reduce da budget I will make them do 500 pushups every day till day do."

[Cloud Nine]

I'd rather vote for Larry Flint

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by Cloud Nine
I'd rather vote for Larry Flint

That would be more entertaining.

[Cookyman]

I like the look of that porn star whose running

[Waterclone]

Technically, I am not sure he has functional balls anymore. All the steroids, you know.

[sininnyc]

Do you remember what Reagan did to this country

[Cloud Nine]

Yes, and we can be thankful Arnie won't be able to do the same thing.

(he is an immigrant and cannot run for president)

[eros701]

I guess Ahnold got tired of doing honest work for a living.

[Wwanderer]

If he were to win, the most impressive thing to me would be the degree of success he would have achieved in three rather different and all quite competitive fields of endeavor. He was not only a very successful body builder but is considered one of the all time greats (I think...not really something I follow). When he went into acting, most critics and pros scoffed at the idea and thought that at the very most he might be suitable for a few "made to fit" roles like Conan the Barbarian. However, he ended up having a lot of hits, including both action movies and comedies; he probably cannot be considered one of the all time great actors of course, but his career in Hollywood has certainly been vastly more successful than most who try it. If he becomes governor of the largest state (bigger, in many ways, than most of the world's countries), it will be a truly incredible 3-pronged career (of course it hasn't happened yet and may well not, I know).

-Ww

PS - And for a personal life, he married into the Kennedy family!

[Cloud Nine]

ww- I would think that a republican bagging a Kennedy would be the hardest of all the things you listed...

[justlooking]

I don't see why anyone would vote for Arnold if they can vote for Gary Coleman instead.

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by Wwanderer
PS - And for a personal life, he married into the Kennedy family!

Okay, that would be three wins and one loss. 750 is a pretty good batting average.

[pjorourke]

BTW, as a Florida voter, I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying watching this train wreck in California. The only thing that would be more fun would be if the recall was for NY's junior senator.

[Cloud Nine]

Originally posted by justlooking
I don't see why anyone would vote for Arnold if they can vote for Gary Coleman instead.

Whatchoo talkin about JL?

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by pjorourke
BTW, as a Florida voter, I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying watching this train wreck in California.

When Floridians start laughing at your state's politics I guess you know that it is in deep shit for sure.

-Ww

[justlooking]

Originally posted by Cloud Nine
Whatchoo talkin about JL?

http://www.yahoo.com/s/102601

[Cloud Nine]

I take it you havent seen Diff'rent Strokes to know I was joking...

[Casper]

Originally posted by justlooking
I don't see why anyone would vote for Arnold if they can vote for Gary Coleman instead.

It takes 4 Coleman's to make 1 Schwartzenegger.

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by Casper
It takes 4 Coleman's to make 1 Schwartzenegger.

Make that 4,000 Coleman's if you are talking bankroll.

[occasionalhobbyist]

How many Gallaghers is that?

[Duckman]

Originally posted by sininnyc
Do you remember what Reagan did to this country
Pulled us out of the Jimmy Carter slump with 21% interest rates?!

[Wwanderer]

Don't forget winning the cold war.

-Ww

[eros701]

Let's also not forget Iran Contra, bank deregulation, plundering Social Security, lying to congress and nearly bankrupting the country.

Worst president EVER.










Until George W, that is.

[justme]

Originally posted by justlooking
I don't see why anyone would vote for Arnold if they can vote for Gary Coleman instead.

What might be right for you, may not be right for some.

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by eros701
and nearly bankrupting the country.

During the Reagan years nearly everyone felt that there was way too much borrowing, by government, businesses and individual consumers. Debt was soaring out of control. Many predicted a collapse of the US economy by the end of the century under an unsupportable load of debt; such views were pretty much the conventional wisdom among both professional economists and many educated and informed people in all sorts of other fields. The situation in the US was routinely contrasted with that in Japan which had extraordinarily high rates of savings and long term strategic investment, again both in the public and the private sectors of their economy. Sober and serious people, famously Herman Kahn, predicted that the Japanese economy would soar in the 90s and quite possibly surpass that of the US in GDP and so forth. This basic analysis was perhaps as close to a general consensus on a major economic question as we have seen in modern times.

Of course, for those of you who have not been paying attention for the last 10+ years, pretty much exactly the opposite happened in both the US and Japan.

Try to keep that in mind the next time people expound learnedly on long term economic forecasts.

(Btw, I think it is absurd to give presidents credit or blame for the country's, much less the world's, economic performance. It is like attributing the size of waves in the ocean to the surfers who happen to be riding on them.)

-Ww

[justme]

It's not at all absurd to look at the powers that be when examining things that they can control... such as budgeting, allocation of funds, and issuance of public debt.

To downplay the significance of the budget deficits run from the 70's (including, of course, the Carter administration) through the early Clinton years is to ignore a very real economic force that continues to significantly effect the American economy in ways that are very difficult to fully appreciate.

Not the least of those effects include the tremendous impact on income taxes that comes from carrying a $4 trillion debt OR the effect on capital markets when $4 trillion in liquidity is tied up in public debt (financing the inefficiencies of governments past does not, in my mind, seem like a good place to allocate investment capital in a growth oriented society).

Which isn't to say that I am against deficit spending or public debt. But the principal of debt spending relies on the repayment of that debt during prospoerous times. So we can blame Clinton and his Congresses for not doing more to bring the debt levels down through higher taxes during those administrations. I do remember being particularly irritated with all the members of the House who were screaming for tax cuts when we were running a surplus, as if they had no understandig of the differences between an income statement and a balance sheet.

The United States Government: The biggest Ponzi scheme the world has ever seen.

[justme]

Also, clearly there should be ratios establishing limits to the amount of healthy deficit spending you can do, especially given your debt. It seems that whatever those ratios might be, accumulating debt at 40% if your GDP is at best stupid.

[justme]

And as you know, Japan's problems have less to do with their extremely good attitudes regarding savings than they do with their governments refusal to liberalize the banking (and I'm largely talking about their Post Office) system and their particular attitudes regarding employment.

[Wwanderer]

jm, all your points and arguments make perfect sense to me and seem quite rational, though I don't think that they are quite as compelling or obviously correct as the lines of reasoning that predicted the tanking of the US economy and the blossoming of the Japanese in the 90s, as they were explained to me by many clever and insightful people in the the mid-1980s.

-Ww

[justme]

I tend to ignore people who are overzealous on their predictions on either side of the optimist / pessimist coin.

I'm simply making statements about the economy right now.

Projections are for suckers.

[Gill Bates]

Originally posted by Wwanderer
Don't forget winning the cold war.

-Ww

I don't think one can attribute the winning of the cold war exclusively to Reagan simply because it happened on his watch. I'm not denying that he did a great job closing out the deal, but I think his predecessors also deserve some credit. Just like a basketball game, you can't say only the 5 guys on the court at the last buzzer won/lost the game for the team.

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by Gill Bates
I don't think one can attribute the winning of the cold war exclusively to Reagan simply because it happened on his watch. I'm not denying that he did a great job closing out the deal, but I think his predecessors also deserve some credit. Just like a basketball game, you can't say only the 5 guys on the court at the last buzzer won/lost the game for the team.

I totally agree; I was just being flip.

-Ww

[Duckman]

Originally posted by eros701
Let's also not forget Iran Contra, bank deregulation, plundering Social Security,
Social Security was setup as a ponzi scheme and still is a ponzi scheme. NO PRESIDENT could plunder it as it doesn't have a separate account -- it is part of the General Fund.

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by Duckman
Social Security was setup as a ponzi scheme and still is a ponzi scheme. NO PRESIDENT could plunder it as it doesn't have a separate account -- it is part of the General Fund.

That is, but was not always, the case; in fact making it part of the General Fund was the very act of plundering it (or so some say).

-Ww

[Duckman]

Originally posted by Wwanderer
That is, but was not always, the case; in fact making it part of the General Fund was the very act of plundering it (or so some say).

-Ww
I am neither a laywer nor a SS expert. That said, I read some of the social security code. Looks like sec. 201 (http://www.ssa*****/OP_Home/ssact/title02/0201.htm) (*) created the trust fund in 1940. That would mean the same president who created it also had it altered for money to flow into the General Fund. I was unaware that SS had ever been separate from the General Fund.

(*)The **** part of the link is .|g|o|v without the | marks.

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by Wwanderer
That is, but was not always, the case; in fact making it part of the General Fund was the very act of plundering it (or so some say).

-Ww

Wrong on both counts my argumentative friend. In most pension plans the contribution level is designed so that funds accumulate to a point where benefits that have been "earned" are paid for. This was never the case with Social Security. It is and always was, an intergenerational transfer system. You pay for your parents, your kids pay for you. The original contribution level was only intended to cover short-term cash flow needs. In the early years, when there were many more paying in than receiving, there was some minor amounts accumulated in the trust fund. However, it was nowhere's near the value of the accumulated benefits like you would find in a pension plan. Anytime the plan got close to being in balance, Congress expanded benefits. After all, those old farts vote a lot. But the key point is that there was never any serious money in the trust fund to raid.

I believe the change that classified Social Security as part of the General Fund occurred after Regan's term. But in any event is irrelevant. First, the change was initiated as a score keeping technique that enabled Congress to violate its own budget scoring rules. At the time the change was made, the trust fund was showing a short-term surplus (largely because the baby boom hadn't started retiring yet.) By adding it into the General Fund, voila a consolidated surplus was shown. Secondly, by law the trust fund can only invest in government securities. So when there is an "excess" of funds in the right pocket, the left pocket borrows it. There was never really a separation between the General Fund (the left pocket) and the Trust Fund (the right pocket) from any meaningful fiduciary standpoint. This is sheer financial genius. But then again, we wouldn't want Uncle Sam (read Hillary) owning 10% of the voting stock of Microsoft or GE.

[Wwanderer]

Originally posted by pjorourke

1 - In most pension plans the contribution level is designed so that funds accumulate to a point where benefits that have been "earned" are paid for. This was never the case with Social Security. It is and always was, an intergenerational transfer system. You pay for your parents, your kids pay for you.

2 - I believe the change that classified Social Security as part of the General Fund occurred after Regan's term. But in any event is irrelevant. First, the change was initiated as a score keeping technique that enabled Congress to violate its own budget scoring rules. At the time the change was made, the trust fund was showing a short-term surplus (largely because the baby boom hadn't started retiring yet.) By adding it into the General Fund, voila a consolidated surplus was shown.

3 - There was never really a separation between the General Fund (the left pocket) and the Trust Fund (the right pocket) from any meaningful fiduciary standpoint.

1 - That I have long known that and did not say otherwise above, not intentionally anyway.

2 - This was the event I was remembering, though only vaguely, and was referring to in my reply to Dman. (In other words, I meant the "this was not always the case" to refer only to the part about the separate accounts, not the part about the ponzi scheme, although I see now how that was unclear since I quoted both.)

3 - Well, I am sure that you understand that point better than I, although I know one guy who has claim to some expertise who feels that the the change you describe under #2 in the quote was more significant than you seen to think it is. Anyway, it was at least formally a separate account for most of the history of SS if I now understand correctly, whether or not that distinction had fiduciary meaning. Right?

-Ww

[justme]

Originally posted by pjorourke
You pay for your parents, your kids pay for you.

See, you people with your 1.5 children per family just aren't cutting it.

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by justme
See, you people with your 1.5 children per family just aren't cutting it.

Could this be an argument against gay marriages?

[justme]

Nah, just exclusion of benefits.

(Or perhaps an argument for gay adoption)

[pjorourke]

Originally posted by justme
(Or perhaps an argument for gay adoption)

very good!

[eros701]

I have to admit I'm surprised at this thread. Threads on much less incendiary topics have degenerated into flame wars, but this one, with it's potential for political tub thumping and emotional character assassination, has yielded an insightful discussion. This board always surprises me.

[littleguy]

Just goes to show that women and sex tug on the emotions more than money does. :)