Thank You Bush Supporters

The object of government is not to transfer resources from the private sector to the public sector, and many economists would consider the reverse to be a positive development. You make it sound as if this is a bad thing.

Furthermore, if this is so damaging to the US and World economy, why is the US the fastest growing major economy in the world? It grew faster than Europe and Japan in 2004, and is expected to grow faster than both in 2005 and 2006 too. Doesn't sound so bad to me.

Also, Cheney in no way benefits from the financial performance of Halliburton, you are repeating an allegation which is widespread but false.

 

pointbreak: how the hell would you know if these allegations are false or not? and why should we believe you and fox?


happy fourth of july. woohoo!

 

who said it isn't? some 25 year old MBA wanker from harvard repeats it like a sacrament, so, OMG it must be true. the object of governments all over europe and in america after the war was exactly that to transfer money from the private sector to the public sector through progressive taxation for example: consider your country's own marshall plan which was wildly successful and led to the economic prosperity of the golden age, or japan's strategy for overcoming recession today, or the plan of any government, that isn't run by monetarist fundamentalists, to deal with unemployment by running deficits. all these are examples of the government actively intervening in the economy to engineer desired social and economic outcomes.

oh medusa! that scandal's old hat...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,912515,00.html

anyway, i'm not arguing with u. i wanna know what slutter thinks.

 

Pointbreak wrote:
":Furthermore, if this is so damaging to the US and World economy, why is the US the fastest growing major economy in the world? It grew faster than Europe and Japan in 2004, and is expected to grow faster than both in 2005 and 2006 too. Doesn't sound so bad to me."

it's no good because it's money that is being transferred from one sector to another: it's not new wealth that's been generated by the manufacture of goods and services by risk taking capalists in an open market (in fact the manufacturing strength of the us economy is declining because globalised capital is fleeing to places where the cost of labour is a dollar a day). it's assured profits that are stolen from the public trough, guaranteed by cronyism, and driven entirely by the logic of war. it's kind of like a reverse of old fashioned state socialism but instead the transfer is going in the other direction. and it's worth remembering that this money is tax payers' money. your money. thats y u have no universal health cover although ur a rich country and canade, uk, all of the eu, australia & nz do. such economic growth figures as u cite above tells us nothing about how this growth was achieved and to what ends, which is what this argument is all about:it's artificially created growth that benefits only the super rich and the war mongers.

 

Pointbreak wrote:
"Also, Cheney in no way benefits from the financial performance of Halliburton, you are repeating an allegation which is widespread but false."

oh medusa! that scandal's old hat...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Stor...,912515,00.html

 

No, OMG, it is a matter of opinion. But so is your version - it is not a "fact" nor is it universally agreed among economists that the object of government is to increasingly encroach upon the private sector. So pointing out that there has been a retreat of the public sector under Bush doesn't prove anything.

Japan's recession lasted about a decade. Our recent slowdown lasted about nine months. So you are saying this validates the Japanese approach?

Unemployment in Germany and France is more than double the US level, and has been for some time. Is this the desired social outcome?

Sure is. But if you read your own links, you'd see why I said Cheney in no way benefits from the financial performance of Halliburton. This is what happens when you are conditioned (I'm not going to say brainwashed) - you hear something you like, accept it without really looking into it, and then whenever anyone questions it, you simple google-cut-paste without putting any thought into it. All you had to do was read your own story.

Here's an excerpt:

That means that Cheney is totally insulated from the financial performance of Halliburton - good or bad, he receives the same money.

 

This makes no sense. Transferring money from public to private has no impact on GDP. This cannot explain the US economy's outperformance in recent years not can it explain the stronger projected growth.

So what. There is nothing magical about manufacturing. The objective of an economy is to produce goods and services and sell them. We do that (more services than goods these days) and our economy is growing faster than most other rich countries.

Rhetoric.

What does this mean?

That's right, you pay more taxes and get more services. So? You also have less after tax income. Its a tradeoff, feel free to vote for a party that picks the tradeoff you want.

This is so cliche. The story that only the "super rich" are doing OK is getting a bit tired. America has a huge middle class. Stop falling for cartoon stereotypes.

 

blah blah blah i can see we have entirely different ideas about this. no point engaging with u. where's slutter?

oh, ur making a song and dance about nothing. i said he owns a financial interest in halliburton which he does (a pension or a superannuation payment is a financial interest,no?) all this other bullshit about "Cheney in no way benefits from the financial performance of Halliburton" is your own tortured verbal formulation. the troublesome point is, and which u can't seem to get: someone with a financial association with a company shouldn't be making public policy decisions that hugely benefit that company, never mind that these r decisons about war and peace, because, my dear, that is called conflict of interest. a quaint old fashioned notion that no longer applies in the world of george and dick.

 

Sorry to be a bit of a bore about this, i think i understand why Pointbreak is making a 'song and dance' .

If you think:

Mr Cheney knew in advance of the Iraq war joined Haliburton 'in wait' now because of that pesky 'conflict of intrest' decieded to begrudgly leave Haliburton before 9/11 before any 'attack' and now benefits from a carefuly executed plan were he now gets money from Haliburton, because he planned for this.

Then thats a bit bonkers.

If you think:

A company who benefit from contracts from 'The Bush administartion' wich they do not benefit from themselves, Mr Cheney has no direct connection to the bidding process and both have cut direct ties with.

An aide to the vice president said yesterday: "This is money that Mr Cheney was owed by the corporation as part of his salary for the time he was employed by Halliburton and which was a fixed amount paid to him over time."


The aide said the payment was even insured so that it would not be affected even if Halliburton went bankrupt, to ensure there was no conflict of interest. "Also, the vice president has nothing whatsoever to do with the Pentagon bidding process," the aide added.


Should he just give up all interest in this company ? (i think that is what your saying james q) ... If you're not actualy saying Mr Cheney And Mr BUsh profit from a company they joined so as and when a 'war' started they would be finacialy set up and are gaining profits from this comapny..then fair enough.

I can see the failure for people to understand what each other mean. Or the implications they percieve.

That's nice of him .

 

??? thanks 4 clearing that up matthew

 

???????????????
syntax matthew, syntax

 

ok paddy. i'm here.

 

matthew wrote re cheney's financial links to halliburton:
"Should he just give up all interest in this company ? (i think that is what your saying james q)"

no. i'm saying he shouldn't be the vice president. he should be in jail along with all the other war criminals.

 

I apologise for 'syntax' my computer was playing up, plus i think the Hip forums was playing up also. I could not re-edit my post, in the end i just rambled on and hoped it made some sense.

Ok, but you don't say why hence my attempt to provide some 'reasons' thats why i added:

Putting Haliburton/Cheney/Bush in the same sentence and not expecting some people not to appreciate your point of view, 'make a song and dance'; just jump to conclusions or make a 'tortured verbal formulation' (and mine was ). Then you have to do a bit better than 'i'm saying he shouldn't be the vice president. 'he should be in jail along with all the other war criminals.'

james q. At this point i have to agree with him.

No problem hehehe , seriously you would be suprised (or maybe not) all of that is garnered from about 5 peoples opinions around here.

 

Let me intrude and try to explain my point again.

There is no conflict of interest if Cheney cannot benefit from the financial performance of Halliburton. Whether Halliburton goes bankrupt, stays the same, or becomes worth 10x the market capitalisation of Microsoft, Cheney makes the same amount of money, therefore he has no incentive to help out Halliburton. Therefore there is no conflict of interest.

 

Okay as easy i can explain myself.. If you say 'This war is all about oil' then you can mave a myriad of different reason why you think that 'The petrodollar' 'bush/cheney will benefit financialy from oil connections, thats why they are doing it*this being the lunatic reason*) etc etc. Just having one sentence made Pointbreak jump to conclusions and fill in his own reasoning what he thought you meant . If he read the metophorical article underneath your headline .. then he would not jump to conclusions about what you think.

So you appreciate it may 'prove his point' but 'so what' . In our country our newspapers would make any ministers life hell, even if it is bias, hidden agendas or just plain untrue even a 'technicality' rather than a 'illegality' . More dirt would be dragged up that makes whoevers political life unliveable..indeed they would resign.



My interpretation from what i have read upto now, you think he is financialy gainig from his intrests with Haliburton. Poinbreak was just saying that if you read the article you would see, it is his salary from the 5 years he was with the company that he is getting now. He no longer benefits from any ongoing business Haliburton may be involved in. He says your article supports his assertion.. personaly i think it does. Thats why i said 'at this point i have to agree him'. So you think he should give away his salary he earnt from a company he worked with ?.. Why ?. That part of his life is none of our business, if he was connected with Haliburton NOW.. i would think it was 'not on' and i would also think it was a conflict of interest. He does not 'own' anything other than a ridicuosly large past salary. That is his only financial connection with them NOW.

I don't agree with you NOW, but i did not wish to pre-judge what you were thinking (i did not gain anything from your initial point, thats all). I just wanted a explanation of why you thought the way you did.

It is your contiuation of a financial innuendo, that you know not to be completly accurate or fair. Just well it has him (heavens what connection you have for Bush) Haliburton and money .. that will do.

 

in the words of the great lebowsky "that's only like, your opinion, man".

 

here's a new angle:
the haughty and cocksure bush supporters, who try to emulate that same fey impatience with other viewpoints that richard perle loves to affect, are interesting case studies in impotence because ultimately their sense of power comes not from whether they are right or wrong, moral or immoral, or even from whether they even believe in what they are saying, nothing so gay as that: it comes from personally identifying with the group that controls the power and getting a hard on from being power's little proxy helpers in a tinny hippy forum. these are the people who become auto-functionaries of the new police state not because they have any great ideological committment to george bush or dick cheney particularly but because they have been programmed to obey while believing that they serve and enforce. obey? obey who? obey anything and anyone, actually, as long as he's the big daddy and he's in total control. alice miller, the swiss psychologist, noted this syndrome during the second world war when vast groups of people in eastern europe who had last week been fervent supporters of stalin without a second thought easily transferred their total obedience to hitler the next week, seeing nothing irrational or hypocritical about what they were doing: they had no real attachment to the ideology or the personalities of the power daddy - they just needed to be in the power group in order to feel strong and safe - whoever he was. then they could lord it over everyone else who wasn't. did u know that in nazi germany the size of the gestapo was surpisingly small? in fact, most of their work was performed by loyal german citizens who went around spying on people and betraying them to authority. this is exactly the kind of emotional and psychological payoff such a person craves 4. so next time u hear people tell u that it's okay for the vice president to rob the public treasury blind, so long as he doesn't *technically* help halliburton, just think of the peasants in eastern europe and know they don't really mean it.

 

Excellent point James! When you can't refute an argument, bring up the Nazis. Well done.

If Cheney cannot benefit personally from helping out Halliburton, he has no conflict of interest. This point is very simple, which is why you are having such a hard time evading it.