- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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Ok so some conservative blowhard posted a pro SB-5 editorial in The Plain Dealer.
It was kind of dumb, but a lot smarter than the arguments he usually makes.
quote:For political purposes, the "death of the middle class" is greatly exaggerated.
Clearly, it's a line that played well in some focus group, and Democrats and unionists have been shrieking it ever since. Ohioans have gotten an earful already, and will hear it incessantly as they approach the referendum on Senate Bill 5 this November.
But it's a lie, and whatever traction it enjoys is the result of the undeserved traction gained by another lie -- the notion that the United States is a nation of classes.
The short answer is, we don't do things that way here. Never have. A class system is one of the things this nation's founders consciously set out to avoid a couple of centuries ago when the Declaration of Independence formally broke us away from the Old World. It's one of the best decisions American leaders ever made.
So "middle class," historically, has had a different meaning here. It's a term of convenience borrowed from the Old World as shorthand to describe people who are neither filthy rich nor dirt poor. Unfortunately, in recent decades, it has been allowed to take on a measure of its Old World connotation.
In the Old World, classes meant something. A person was born into his class, and social and economic constraints made it terribly difficult for him to move from one to another.
Cracking the upper reaches of the system as an outsider was just about impossible, short of a successful revolution that replaced one ruling class with another. The older the money was, the more respectable. Upstarts were viewed with suspicion and derision because they had quite literally forgotten their place.
Americans tossed the whole hidebound structure aside when they prosecuted a successful revolution that was not only political, but also economic and philosophical in nature.
We chose freely -- and wisely -- to "classify" people according to their ability, not their ancestry.
We chose the polar opposite of the class system: individual economic freedom and mobility. We chose the uncertainties of rough-and-tumble competition and churn over the stultifying stability of the Old World.
So when people refer to the "middle class" -- or any other "class" -- in America, the understanding should be that they're talking about something fluid and flexible.
Using the American connotation, the term "middle class" truthfully can apply only as a snapshot, and even then the picture is fuzzy, because the people in it are in constant motion.
For every Bill Gates climbing toward the top of the economic heap, there's some Carnegie or Vanderbilt headed back the other way. Our system rewards industriousness, intelligence and good ideas. It doesn't give a fig for surnames.
Obviously, there's a downside to competition and churn. In competitions, not everyone comes in first. With churn, the possibility of falling exists alongside the possibility of rising.
But that's not death. That's life, adapting and evolving as better ideas come along. That's the car key putting the buggy whip on the shelf. All of society adjusts accordingly, but no one adjusts more than the person who can no longer earn a living making buggy whips.
If Ohioans are wise enough to vote "yes" on Issue 2, thereby upholding the law known as Senate Bill 5, state and local governments will be free to do some things in different ways that suit today's economic realities.
Some people now on the public payroll will have to find other uses for their talents. But none of them will be asked to do so the morning after the election.
And we'll have to come up with better ideas for running some public institutions with smaller staffs and leaner budgets. Other institutions eventually will go the way of the buggy whip. (Given the debt situation across the board, that's an inevitability, with or without Issue 2's passage.)
So, yes, significant changes lie ahead for public employees and their agencies.
But to even suggest that a "yes" vote on Issue 2 could, by itself, produce some material change in the composition of the "middle class" is to insult today's public employees by casting unfounded doubt on their ability, their industriousness and their willingness to support themselves.
The case against Issue 2 is emotional, and it cannot bear logical scrutiny.
When Ohioans vote in favor of Issue 2, they won't be voting to end fire or police protection, because they themselves will decide how best to allocate public resources. Nor will they be voting to abolish public education. And they certainly won't be voting to kill the "middle class," whatever it may be at this moment.
"everything is fine, nothing is ruined", etc.
So, yea, this isn't the worst editorial in the world. However, I'm posting this because this one dude's response is awesome:
quote:In over 20 years of reading PD editorials, I have rarely seen such a poorly written argument for a plea to vote against a statewide issue (in this case, Issue 2). While there are certain aspects of Kevin OBrien's argument about classes in the US that hold some credibility, he appears to completely miss the point. The reality is that our country has become the most economically stratified it has been since the days of "robber barons" (back to the 1920s) Let me illustrate what this means for the majority of Ohioans. David Schweikart (an author skeptical of some of the present trends in capitalism) has stated:
"If we divided the income of the US into thirds, we find that the top ten percent of the population gets a third, the next thirty percent gets another third, and the bottom sixty percent get the last third. If we divide the wealth of the US into thirds, we find that the top one percent own a third, the next nine percent own another third, and the bottom ninety percent claim the rest. (Actually, these percentages, true a decade ago, are now out of date. The top one percent are now estimated to own between forty and fifty percent of the nation's wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 95%.)" (beyond capitalism)
Notice that wealth startification is much worse than income stratification according to these numbers (and this is inconsistent Kevin's assertion that people earn their wealth on their own independent of inheritance). Also, the strtatification in 1970 was much less skewed. Again, according to these numbers, the top 1% wealthest Americans account for 40-50% of total US wealth. In fact the 5% wealthest Americans now have more wealth then the rest of America. Surely Mr. OBrien is aware of these results and knows that when wealth is so stratified, too many people cannot afford to buy the products that are produced-and this is precisely what is happening in our country right now. This is what has to be of great concern to real Capitalists (not silly journalists that are ruining the PD's long history of caring about the "common man").
Now let us return to why one should consider voting against Issue 2 if one is a true capitalist. Namely, allowing collective bargaining to work more efficiently will lessen this over-stratification of wealth to the point that more people will be able to afford more products (the majority of respected economists openly question whether "trickle-down" economics worked). Certainly unions have not always acted like model citizens. However, they, more than any other group, led the transition from the 1920's to the 1970's toward greater wealth for those "middle class" (or less wealthy) individuals. Quite simply, does anyone other than our Govenor's rich buddies really want to depend on this guy (Kasich) for ensuring that we get paid a reasonable amount? Instead, US history has suggested in no uncertain terms that the only way to ensure that a chunk of the lower-income 70-90% of our country gets reasonable compensation is through something like collective bargaining.
One last point to document how capitalism really works. According to the tour directors at Greenfield Village (Ford's place in Michigan), Ford did not come up with the idea of using an assembly line. Instead, it was one of his engineers that did not appreciably share in the gains from this valuable intellectual property. Another more modern example is that of Bill Gates. He did not develop the dos operating system that resulted in him personally becoming the wealthiest person on earth (it was a rather minor variation on the CPM operating system that was in the public domain--apparently Zerox did the original work). Both of these examples illustrate how Capitalism is frequently not rational or fair. One can work very hard and come up with clever ideas and another person (or company) can reap the financial benefits unless one protects these benefits. As Mr. OBrien should know, most individuals do not have the resources to adequately represent themselves. Unions have been a valuable tool for protecting the income of large groups of people that would otherwise not have this protection. Therefore, I recommend that all PD readers vote NO against Issue 2.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/09/the_middle_class_will_be_fine/4702/comments-9.html
Really gets to the heart of the matter, from the capitalist perspective.
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Sep 9, 2011 15:03
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Apr 26, 2024 20:47
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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HIS tower did not fall down.
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Sep 12, 2011 18:45
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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quote:Revolution in the October air: Kevin O'Brien
Re-enactors have their place.
The ones who cart their horses and cannons off to Civil War battlefields a couple of times a year, don blue or gray and charge one another amid the rattle of musket fire do so to develop a deeper appreciation of a momentous period in this nation's history.
Participants and spectators alike know that it's not the 1860s and that a sprained ankle is about the gravest wound anyone is likely to suffer, but the re-enactors remind us of history worth remembering.
We've got another re-enactment going on right now, in the streets of cities all across the United States.
For weeks now, a handful of Americans has been re-enacting the late 1960s -- beating drums, waving placards, chanting slogans and otherwise making minor nuisances of themselves in U.S. cities. Their claim is that people who have money aren't forking it over fast enough to people who don't.
They want things like health care and college degrees for free, and they say "the rich" -- "the 1 percent" -- should be forced to provide them.
But freebies for me via taxes for thee isn't really the point, just as ending the war in Vietnam wasn't really the ultimate goal in the 1960s. Those are just tools employed to recruit enough sign-carrying dupes to garner media coverage.
(If you wonder what is meant by the well-worn term "useful idiots," Google "YouTube, Occupy Atlanta, John Lewis" to see them in hilariously ironic action.)
The real goal of Occupy Wall Street, etc., is the destruction of constitutional government and capitalism. Where we'd go from there varies according to whichever true believer is on camera or holding the bullhorn. Pure democracy? Anarchy? Socialism? Communism? They're all on the menu.
In New York, where it began, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proclaimed that Wall Street's occupiers can stay as long as they like, providing they beat, wave and chant within the law. He knows the first cold wind to whistle through Manhattan's concrete valleys will blow away his troubles.
But the protests will continue in warmer climes and it will be a surprise if they don't turn violent -- a perfectly natural course for a movement that springs from a destructive impulse.
Until that happens, the rest of us should keep score, taking careful note of which politicians support these people who despise our Constitution and preach revolution. Democratic Reps. Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur, Tim Ryan and Betty Sutton have all disqualified themselves from a return to Congress on that score. They should be judged by the company they keep.
Whatever complaints Americans have about Wall Street -- and there are legitimate complaints -- should be based on cold, hard logic, not dewy-eyed emotion.
The problem isn't "unbridled capitalism." This country has never had any such thing. The problem is government's perversion of capitalism.
The problem isn't that Congress is in Wall Street's pocket. The problem is that Wall Street is tucked away in a fortress called Congress, which works overtime writing laws to protect the favored from competition and that discourage innovation and entrepreneurship. From bailed-out banks to "green energy" pipe dreamers, they all ought to rise or fall on their merits.
The problem isn't that "the rich" are sitting on their money out of some weird malice toward 99 percent of the country. No one knows better than a person with money that active money grows, while idle money shrinks. The problem is a presidential administration with an insatiable appetite for confiscation and redistribution.
And if we have a greed problem, it's more than counterbalanced by an envy problem embodied by the people occupying this, that and the other thing, and claiming a right to the fruits of someone else's labor.
Encouraging that attitude has long been a pillar of Democratic Party politics, but Democrats who care about this country must repudiate this pernicious movement while it's still just an irritating re-enactment of the 1960s. Because the radical trade unionists, socialists and communists pulling the strings want to replay something even more evil.
It happened 94 years ago this month, in Russia.
I loving hate this guy.
He name drops communism/socialism. Gets everything wrong. Assumes that all democrats are behind this, and all democrats are socialists.
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Oct 13, 2011 21:59
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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edit: quote wierdness. Redacting because it makes no sense.
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Jan 27, 2012 20:53
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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quote:See the health care takeover now? Kevin O'Brien
Kevin OBrien, The Plain Dealer
The Obama administration says it's willing to work with the U.S. Catholic bishops so we can all get past this unfortunate dust-up over the federal government forcing church institutions to buy contraceptives.
Asked this week what "work with" might mean, White House spokesman Jay Carney said,"I'm not going to predict, because I don't know, all the various possibilities those discussions will entertain."
But later in the same news conference, he said, "The president's interest, at a policy level, is making sure that this coverage is extended to all women."
That narrows the various possibilities those discussions will entertain to a single topic: The federal government will force church institutions to buy contraceptives.
Presumably, the bishops will get some helpful counseling along the way from the federal Bureau of Theology to help them see where they went wrong with church doctrine.
Much has been written about the constitutional problem inherent in a direct federal assault on the church's freedom to act according to its beliefs.
If the administration doesn't back down from this outlandish overreach, the courts -- or maybe even Congress (remember Congress?) -- will undo it.
But another aspect of this fight is more subtle -- and in some respects scarier, because it affects every American.
When the battle was raging in Congress over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- the abominable misnomer much better de scribed as Obamacare (well, except for the "care" part) -- its proponents assured Americans that it did not constitute a federal takeover of the health care industry.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no! Nothing of the sort!
Now, less than two years into the Obamacare era, we have the federal government ordering all health insurance companies to provide a certain kind of service to all comers and dictating who will pay for that service and how.
Since a church that opposes the entire product line on doctrinal grounds is putting up a fight, we've all been brought up to speed on how the administration's edict conflicts with religious freedom. And that's good.
But much less has been said about commercial freedom -- in this case, the freedom of an insurance buyer to shop among companies and choose products that cover things the customer finds desirable and that don't include -- or charge for -- things the customer doesn't want.
What happened to that?
Why, a federal takeover of health care, of course.
Yup. They lied. They took it over. Once they passed that bill so we could find out what was in it, darned if what was in it wasn't exactly what its opponents had predicted: a huge federal power grab that now engenders mandates not just to churches, but to private companies and to individuals.
The Catholic bishops got rolled on the deal more than most. They chose not to fight passage of the law, thinking they had arranged a deal on the side for a conscience exemption. But once the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote the rules, and we found out what was in them, it turned out the bishops have been played for suckers.
So what's a bishop -- or a rank-and-file Catholic, or any American who is concerned about liberty, religious or otherwise -- to do?
Well, the bishops suggest praying and writing one's congressman and senators -- two activities I endorse wholeheartedly. But this is one of those times when a phrase that underpins the good, old Protestant work ethic applies, too: The Lord helps those who help themselves.
Your freedom, ultimately, is your responsibility to defend.
You can't count on the federal government to do it. It's pretty clear that the current edition of the federal government doesn't even want you to have it.
So, as this year's elections roll around, use your vote, your money and your voice in the ears of friends, relatives and neighbors to defend your freedom. Or, in the case of health care, to begin the recovery of your freedom.
Obamacare's implementation is lifting the veil for all to see what the law really is -- a mechanism for dictating the behavior of individuals and institutions.
Sure, your masters in Washington will "work with" you. They might even give you an extra year to comply with something really onerous. But if you let them keep the power to compel, they'll use it. And you will do things their way.
Yep, this person is paid for his contributions to a newspaper.
I always make the mistake of trying to respond to his criticisms in the comments section, but he always gives some snarky unsubstantiated remark, or just outright deletes a comment he doesn't like.
I'm posting this because, seriously, this poo poo is just horrible.
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Feb 9, 2012 17:17
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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Yea, an abortion is like $500 while having a baby can get to $20,000+ easily.
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Jul 3, 2013 14:48
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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Get a load of this piece of poo poo:
quote:
The leader of the free world visits the Saudis, and takes President Obama along: Kevin O'Brien
The current presidential administration hasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, lived up to Barack Obama promises of the most transparency ever. Not unless we've taken to defining stone walls as transparent. But something important was uncovered this week during Obama's visit to Wahabbist, Sharia-ridden, repressive Saudi Arabia: the first lady's noggin.
The line of sight to her locks was way too transparent to suit a lot of Saudis who, according to The Telegraph of London, registered their disdain on a Twitter feed that translates roughly to "#Michelle_Obama_Immodest."
The Saudis must not get out much.
That Michelle Obama is immodest is a fact well known to anyone who has purchased a school lunch in the United States over the last couple of years — or heard the complaints of those subjected to a first lady-influenced menu. She's not afraid to tell us what's good for us. Nor is she shy about portion control.
But the immodesty that scandalized the Saudi critics had to do not with the first lady's relentless campaign against greasy tater tots, but with her flagrant lack of head covering while accompanying the president on a quick side trip to pay their respects to King Abdullah, who died Jan. 23.
The Telegraph and other sources also reported that she didn't seem terribly enthralled by her treatment at the hands — or, more to the point, the hands withheld — of the Saudi dignitaries who greeted her husband in receiving lines at King Khalid International Airport and at the Erga Palace. Mrs. Obama stood a pace behind the president — probably galling in itself — as all and sundry shook his hand. Some initiated a handshake with her, too, but a good many of the sheiks wouldn't shake.
In more than one photo in the British press, which has an insatiable appetite for dramatic facial expressions, she wears a baleful Barack's-going-to-catch-it-when-we-get-home look that's chillingly similar to the one she wore during another awkward breach-of-protocol moment — that time at Nelson Mandela's funeral when Barack was cozying up to Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt for selfies.
Note to the Secret Service: It's not the drone that crashed on the White House lawn that you need to worry most about. It's the queen bee crashing around the family quarters.
Imagine the conversation as the commander in chief carefully keeps himself out of striking distance from his wife, strategically employing a loveseat from which William Howard Taft once had to be pried by a team of impeccably matched Clydesdales:
"Barack, why did you even drag me to that awful thing? None of the other guys brought their wives. And this stay-a-pace-behind nonsense ..."
"OK! OK! We know for next time. When their new king keels over, you don't have to go. You probably want to stay out of Dearborn, too."
But give credit where it's due: For a woman who wasn't proud of her country until it issued her the keys to the White House, she did the rest of us proud by keeping her head up and uncovered.
And there's growth here: She covered up when she accompanied the president to Indonesia in 2010, although she didn't look happy about it. (Then again, when does she look happy?)
Maybe this time around, she figured that since Barack doesn't have any more campaigns to run, she could play the Saudi Arabia trip her way.
If so, good for her.
She was an American visiting abroad and she acted like one. She did nothing undignified. She displayed a level of respect and solemnity befitting the occasion. She didn't stop being an American just because certain Americanisms — like being a woman out in public without a veil — might make some of the locals queasy.
She represented at least a slice of who we Americans are, and she did so very ably.
In today's world of religious and cultural warfare, we need more of that. Americans can be pleasant and respectful of other cultures without surrendering to them. The goal is to live peaceably, side by side. Failing that, the goal has to be the preservation of our own culture — by force, if necessary — especially when it conflicts with cultures based on repression.
The State Department routinely warns American women with plans to visit Saudi Arabia that failure to keep their heads covered risks "confrontation by Mutawwa and possible detention/arrest."
Mutawwa are the religious police.
"While most incidents have resulted only in inconvenience or embarrassment, the potential exists for an individual to be arrested, physically harmed, or deported," State's advisory explains.
Well, the Mutawwa weren't going to lean on Michelle Obama. Just as they looked the other way when Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton showed up unveiled.
Those women did what leaders do. They looked the repressors in the eye and said, in effect, "No. I don't have to do that."
Cities, school districts and college campuses where Islam's advance forces constantly demand special accommodations should take that same position. They need to respectfully but firmly tell the Muslims that they are welcome to live here and are cordially invited to assimilate. They should not, however, expect us to conform our culture to their preferences.
To a great extent, we can each do things our own way without any lasting ill effects. Hats off to Michelle Obama for demonstrating that.
Jesus loving Christ. Literally suffering from Obama Derangement Syndrome, can't stand to agree with anything an Obama does without paragraph after paragraph of insults.
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Jan 30, 2015 21:48
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Apr 26, 2024 20:47
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- Doctor Butts
- May 21, 2002
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So, way back in the early 2000s, I was a frequent reader of James Lileks' blog. It was mostly slice-of-life stuff with some interesting retro 40s to 60s ads and cookbooks and the like. Then 9/11 happened and he lost his mind. Not long after, I discovered Something Awful and stopped going.
Yea I loved his stuff when he started but as he went on it got less 'oh gee look at these silly things we used to like' and more 'look at all those stupid people in the past'.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:10
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Sep 9, 2011 15:03
