tunnelcat wrote: … so it's no surprise that the GOP and their policies of 'no regulation of the banking and securities industries that are the root cause of this mess and no one can understand the real reason for this failure.
a) Please provide any documentation that you can that it is
a Republican policy that there should be
no banking regulation
b) well, apparently
you understand the entire reason for the failure, since you’ve laid it lock, stock and barrel on the Republicans
tunnelcat wrote: Think of the 'Enron Loophole' brought to you by the Republicans.
Interestingly, the ‘Enron loophole’ was part of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000,
… signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December 2000. …
see
here and
here and
at marketswiki. Yeah, Phil Gramm was involved, and Phil Gramm is
a Republican. And then, there is that great Republican, Bill Clinton
Oh, and here’s
Alan Greenspan’s testimony on the original act.
tunnelcat wrote: This lack of government oversight directly lined the pockets of the speculators who took the money from mortgage banks that were stupid enough to loan perspective home buyers as much money as they needed to buy houses that they couldn't afford.
So just what was it that led banks to make all these bad loans to non credit worthy customers?
tunnelcat wrote: I wouldn't trust the Republicans with my spare change!
a) but you apparently trust the Dem’s with your entire wallet??
b) who says I trust them. In my opinion, we need to watch them over in DC like a hawk. I’m a conservative. If the Democrats adhered to conservative principles, I might be a Democrat – as it is, for the most part, they fawn over big government liberalism. So I tend to oppose the Democrats – especially here in Illinois.
tunnelcat wrote: Dissent, I wouldn't believe anything the National Review spouts frankly. Right-wing agitprop at it's best. Read some other points of view, from the Anchorage Daily News AND the Daily KOS.
Seriously! You criticize me for posting a link to NR as “agitprop”, and then give me a link to the Daily KOS in reply? Furthermore, except for KOS poster “crumley’s” fulminations, his (her?) post is just a cut and paste of the ADN article you also linked. So, let’s look at the ADN article you posted -
tunnelcat’s ADN article wrote: … But it is the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan that seems destined to make or break Palin's national reputation as a cost-cutting conservative.
The bridge was intended to provide access to Ketchikan's airport on lightly populated Gravina Island, opening up new territory for expansion at the same time. Alaska's congressional delegation endured withering criticism for earmarking $223 million for Ketchikan and a similar amount for a crossing of Knik Arm at Anchorage.
Congress eventually removed the earmark language but the money still went to Alaska, leaving it up to the administration of then-Gov. Frank Murkowski to decide whether to go ahead with the bridges or spend the money on something else.
In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town's prosperity.
She said she could feel the town's pain at being derided as a "nowhere" by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.
"OK, you've got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere," Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. "I think we're going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project."
One year later, Ketchikan's Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin's decision to pull the plug.
Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Saturday that as projected costs for the Ketchikan bridge rose to nearly $400 million, administration officials were telling Ketchikan that the project looked less likely. Local leaders shouldn't have been surprised when Palin announced she was turning to less-costly alternatives, Leighow said. Indeed, Leighow produced a report quoting Palin, late in the governor's race, indicating she would also consider alternatives to a bridge.
my first linked NR article wrote:While running for chief executive, Palin backed the bridge, although with little evident enthusiasm. “The money that’s been appropriated for the project,” she told Ketchikan voters in September 2006, “it should remain available for a link, an access process as we continue to evaluate the scope and just how best to just get this done.”
Palin could have fought for the bridge as governor, as did her spendthrift GOP predecessor, Frank Murkowski (whom she jettisoned in a primary). Murkowski recommended dedicating $195 million in the state budget for the bridge. Instead, Palin gave it $0.
“Palin’s budget doesn’t include money for mega projects that she supported as a candidate, such as the controversial Gravina Island bridge in Ketchikan,” Kyle Hopkins wrote in the December 16, 2006 Anchorage Daily News. “Palin said she will hash out where the bridge fits on the state’s list of priorities with the help of the Legislature and public. ‘We have a limited pot of money, of course, and we need to make wise, sensible choices,’ she said.”
In a February 2007 report on infrastructure priorities, Palin’s transition team opposed the Bridge, plus a road in Juneau. “Statewide, these two projects are seen as a severe drain on resources that would otherwise be assigned to heavily used commercial and passenger routes,” the study concluded.
Alaska’s Senate approved $1.6 billion in capital items on May 11, 2007. True to Palin’s wishes, the spending plan provided no money for the Bridge to Nowhere.
On September 21, 2007, Palin finally stated, “‘Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer.”
Palin’s early, tepid support for the bridge, followed by her open hostility to it as governor did not please the state’s GOP political establishment.
As Amy Goldstein and Michael D. Shear observed in the August 30 Washington Post, Palin “has angered two of Alaska’s leading Republicans — Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young — by refusing to support their decades-long practice of securing federal money for the state, including Young’s effort to obtain $233 million for a structure dubbed the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ by critics because it would have connected a small town with an island populated with 50 people.
So how is the NR article
substantially different from the ADN article you posted. The description and timeline of what happened seems pretty similar in both cases.
Gooberman wrote:I agree. If you are really interested in debating pro-Obama people, then you should avoid using such sites to defend your point of view. They really are a group of Michael Moore equivalents over there. They tell a story and use a lot of facts that can't be disputed hoping that that alone gives them credibility.
a) Golly, if I had facts that
couldn’t be disputed, then I’d tend to feel pretty comfortable with my argument too.
b) Michael Moore?? Get serious. Where should I go to get source material from a conservative viewpoint? CNN? The Daily KOS? The New Republic? Maybe (maybe) if I was a leftie I might try to contrast the output of Michael Moore to, oh, say, Rush Limbaugh. But National Review? Not even close. And since the links in my NR articles were generally NOT to other NR articles, but to other outside sources, I don’t see the point of the comparison. Sorry to hear you’re not interested in reading opinions that may be contrary to your own.
Heh, this post has made me thirsty – I’m off to get a tall glass of Kool-Aid.
