[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-May-14, 10:54, said:

Again, you are using a democratic model as an example when a constitutional republic is the correct model. Our present reality refutes your claims. Gambling casinos are rampant in states that have moral objections to gambling. There is a reason for this: states cannot willy-nilly create religious moral laws because of voter turnout - the law has to be constitutionally based, and that means it cannot violate the rights of the minority that is protected. Many times the commerce clause is invoked to override a simply state majority. The establishment clause prevents a government from allowing any specific religious-based voter mandates. (See Kitzmiller versus Dover Board of Education).

I understand what you are saying, but you are wrong. The gambling example is only to say that sometime you take moral decisions at the federal level. If *every* state was against gambling then it would surely be banned. You may or may not need to pass a constitutional amendment, depending on what the supreme court thought. My (sketchy) reading of supreme court history is that often they have made bizarre justifications in order to produce the judgements that the public wanted/would accept. See, for example, "Dred Scott v. Sandford" where the court ruled that "all men created equal" did not apply to black men. "Roe vs Wade" is another example where the legal justification given did not seem to make any sense, essentially the court thought legalising slavery/abortion were good things, and they did it on the flimsiest of grounds.

[Winstonm]

phil_20686, on 2011-May-14, 11:15, said:

I understand what you are saying, but you are wrong. The gambling example is only to say that sometime you take moral decisions at the federal level. If *every* state was against gambling then it would surely be banned. You may or may not need to pass a constitutional amendment, depending on what the supreme court thought. My (sketchy) reading of supreme court history is that often they have made bizarre justifications in order to produce the judgements that the public wanted/would accept. See, for example, "Dred Scott v. Sandford" where the court ruled that "all men created equal" did not apply to black men. "Roe vs Wade" is another example where the legal justification given did not seem to make any sense, essentially the court thought legalising slavery/abortion were good things, and they did it on the flimsiest of grounds.

Phil,

You keep changing your tune. When it fits your concerns, you want to argue the theoretical, unless practical applications better fit your argument.

Which is it?

Certainly, the S.C. has made so horrific decisions and will do so again. That does not mean that the theory of the rule of law and a constitutional republic is invalid.

In theory, it is the secular nature of our government that prevents you from being forced to touch your head to the floor 6 times a day. But if that were to occur, regardless of the changes made to the amendments or Supreme Court rulings, you and I would not be living in a constitutional republic but in a de facto theocracy.

Concerning this present budget battle, the odd thing to me is the combination of atheististic Randian belief in man and market efficiency, the belief that any bomb that kills a non-Christian is a righteous bomb and that there is no such thing as an unjustified war, and the totally un-Jesus-like admonission to force the poor to pay their own way like everyone else, because, after all, we all know they are just a bunch of lazy louts who live off welfare, so don't give them healthcare and make them compete with Indonesian workers for jobs because free markets are god's markets, don't you know.

Oh. I almost forgot. Drill, baby, drill. (just not in the gulf)

There, that seems to account for the entirety of right wing morality. Let's hope the rule of a man does not supercede the rule of law.

[phil_20686]

Winstonm, on 2011-May-14, 11:40, said:

Phil,

You keep changing your tune. When it fits your concerns, you want to argue the theoretical, unless practical applications better fit your argument.

Which is it?

Certainly, the S.C. has made so horrific decisions and will do so again. That does not mean that the theory of the rule of law and a constitutional republic is invalid.

In theory, it is the secular nature of our government that prevents you from being forced to touch your head to the floor 6 times a day. But if that were to occur, regardless of the changes made to the amendments or Supreme Court rulings, you and I would not be living in a constitutional republic but in a de facto theocracy.

Constitutional republics and Theocracies are not mutually exclusive. A secular state can be a de facto theocracy if the vast majority of the population belong to a given religion. Egypt and Turkey are both constitutional republics with secular constitutions.

I do not limit myself either to purely theoretical or purely pragmatic arguments. I think to do either would be dangerously short-sighted. In reality, all that separates USA and Egypt is the make up of you populations. It is the widespread belief in both your nation and mine (the UK) even among religious people, that theocracies are a Bad Thing. Majority Catholic Nations are fine with freedom of religion, because that is the position of the Catholic Church. Most mainstream protestants agree. Thus a theocracy (as you envisage it) is pretty unlikely in western countries.

Christians generally do believe that they have an obligation to make sure that our Laws conform to our (absolute) standards of justice. So that does lead is unto conflict with the Libertarian secularists like yourself on occasion.

[hrothgar]

phil_20686, on 2011-May-14, 12:23, said:

Constitutional republics and Theocracies are not mutually exclusive. A secular state can be a de facto theocracy if the vast majority of the population belong to a given religion. Egypt and Turkey are both constitutional republics with secular constitutions.

Are you insinuating that Turkey is a de facto theocracy? (Or, for that matter, Egypt?)

You made some remarkably stupids posts, but this one really takes the cake.

Turkey has some of the strictest laws governing separation of church and state in the Western world.
Secularism is one of the six arrows (Altı Ok) handed down by Ataturk.

Over the past 20 years or so, religious political parties have flourished. One of them is in charge of the government right now.
However, its laughable to characterize the country as a theocracy.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Christians generally do believe that they have an obligation to make sure that our Laws conform to our (absolute) standards of justice.

It seems that it all boils down to an assumption over dualism. When we talk about words like morals, truth, justice, etc., we are talking about abstract concepts that have no meaning until these word-labels are given definition by a being.

In this sense, there could only be an eternal nature of truth, morals, justice, etc. if there were an eternal being to define these concepts. The other side of this coin is that these abstractions are the creations of sentient beings and thus are not eternal. And if they rely on definitions, they cannot be absolute in the sense that they would lack an eternal presence.

It appears to be mysticism versus pragmatism at its core.

[luke warm]

PassedOut, on 2011-May-12, 06:37, said:

Ezra Klein: Boehner's debt-limit demands would increase the deficit

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Health-care lawsuits: Delaying the inevitable

Ezra Klein (born May 9, 1984) is an American blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, a columnist for Newsweek, and a contributor to MSNBC. He was formerly an associate editor of The American Prospect political magazine and an American liberal political blogger at the same publication.

Eugene Joseph "E.J." Dionne, Jr. (pronounced /diːˈɒn/; born April 23, 1952) is an American journalist and political commentator, and a long-time op-ed columnist for The Washington Post. He is also a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, a University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a Senior Research Fellow at Saint Anselm College, and an NPR Commentator.

A frequent critic of the Bush Administration, Dionne writes from a liberal viewpoint.

i guess it depends on which bloggers you read and who you trust... bloggers from the other side have things to say about it (here's another view), but when you make statements like

Quote

These people are pitiful excuses for human beings. And so are the people who vote for them.

it's pretty obvious your mind is made up... presently, 47% of americans oppose raising the debt ceiling... of course this opposition is de facto proof they are "pitiful excuses for human beings"... the simple fact is, obama has added trillions to the deficit (oh yeah, i keep forgetting, he inherited this mess - it's not yet time to stop blaming bush)

btw, you use the phrase "free lunch crowd" quite a bit... exactly who is this? is it limited to politicians (i'd guess not from your "pitiful excuses" quote)? would you consider obama and his administration to be in "that crowd?" what do you consider to be a free lunch, from a spending standpoint?

Quote

There is nothing inconsistent between the two unless you propose a spiritual morality. My contention has always been that morality is determined by the consequences of actions, and that positive results are passed along generationally until they become ingrained.

when you make statements like "absolute morality is an illusion" and "the torture and murder of small children is immoral," then yes, there is inconsistency... i'm sure you can see this

[kenberg]

Jimmy,

First, thanks for getting back to the deficit. Now on to some points.

It may well be true that 47% of the population is opposed to raising the debt ceiling. Certainly going further into debt sounds like a bad thing to do. Often it depends on the exact question. If you asked "Do you believe that the United States should default on its financial obligations" the percentage of yes votes might change.


Not being an expert on global economics, i like to keep matters fairly simple: If Mr. Boehner , or some other national leader, thinks that it is actually a good idea to not raise the debt ceiling I think he should argue that point. I seriously doubt he has any such belief. Rather, he is playing a very dangerous game of chicken. When, in my youth, I played actual chicken with cars I might have killed myself. A limited loss, actually. If no one veers in the current version, we will, or so I am told, have a very substantial national calamity.

I think quite a bit of damage has been done already. Much of our financial strength is based on other nations trusting us to not act like complete fools. They may not think America is the great place we think it is, but they trust us not to destroy the economy through ideological posturing. Or they did trust us, but maybe not so much anymore.

Someone always calls the bluff of a bully, sooner or later. I blame Obama some for this, he has presented himself as a guy who will back down. The result is that the demands get more unreasonable, the threats get more irresponsible, and when the showdown comes, the crash is worse.

As mentioned earlier, this is not cool.

[hrothgar]

luke warm, on 2011-May-15, 13:34, said:

it's pretty obvious your mind is made up... presently, 47% of americans oppose raising the debt ceiling... of course this opposition is de facto proof they are "pitiful excuses for human beings"... the simple fact is, obama has added trillions to the deficit (oh yeah, i keep forgetting, he inherited this mess - it's not yet time to stop blaming bush)

If you look at the cross tabs, most of those are Southerners...
Why should anyone give a ***** what they - or for that matter what you - think.

Most of you idiot crackers think that Obama was born in Kenya and that mixing between the races should be banned.

You're too stupid for your opinions to matter.

So go off, pray to Jesus,
fondle your guns
***** your cousins
crawl into a bottle
or do whatever else it is gets you through another night...

I hope that your city doesn't flood again.

[Winstonm]

Quote

when you make statements like "absolute morality is an illusion" and "the torture and murder of small children is immoral," then yes, there is inconsistency... i'm sure you can see this

I can see how you would think that from your persepective.

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on 2011-May-15, 13:34, said:

btw, you use the phrase "free lunch crowd" quite a bit... exactly who is this? is it limited to politicians (i'd guess not from your "pitiful excuses" quote)? would you consider obama and his administration to be in "that crowd?" what do you consider to be a free lunch, from a spending standpoint?

The free lunch crowd comprises those who do not themselves want to pay for what they get. Folks who do not want to pay for health insurance, for example. People who do not want to pay enough taxes to cover the spending authorized by their representatives in congress, for example.

Obama does pander to the free lunch crowd by continuing the irresponsible Bush tax cuts for those making less than 250K.

But he's not nearly so bad in that respect as are the droolers who oppose him. His health care reform, for example, is an important step toward restoring the fiscal responsibility that the US lost with the Bush administration. True to their principles, the free lunchers are attacking those reforms in court on the precise ground that it takes away a free lunch.

[Winstonm]

I'm uncertain about how we can get out of this mess, but I am confident that this expalins how we got into it:

[luke warm]

hrothgar, on 2011-May-15, 14:22, said:

I hope that your city doesn't flood again.

my cousins and i thank you

kenberg, on 2011-May-15, 14:13, said:

Much of our financial strength is based on other nations trusting us to not act like complete fools.

i agree with you, and it's impossible not to raise the ceiling (as has been done in the past)... but we've already acted like fools by spending ourselves into this mess

[kenberg]

luke warm, on 2011-May-16, 03:57, said:

my cousins and i thank you


i agree with you, and it's impossible not to raise the ceiling (as has been done in the past)... but we've already acted like fools by spending ourselves into this mess

You live on the Mississippi? It's quite a river. As a child in St. Paul there were springs when I could ride my bike down to the water blocks away from where the river was supposed to be. Good luck.


And I agree with you (I hope there is no dispute) that we have heavily overspent. I would be very pleased if Boehner would say "Alright, the debt ceiling has to be raised. I got that. The threat is off the table. But guys, we have to get this under control and the President could help by not pretending we only have to tax the rich to solve this. The situation is past critical, let's get with it." Something like that, he can choose his own phrasing. But really this (perhaps phony perhaps real) threat to do something totally nuts unless everyone falls in line with his orders is not helping matters. I don't like being threatened with a destructive temper tantrum, I don't imagine that the President does either.

[phil_20686]

hrothgar, on 2011-May-14, 13:54, said:

Are you insinuating that Turkey is a de facto theocracy? (Or, for that matter, Egypt?)

You made some remarkably stupids posts, but this one really takes the cake.

Turkey has some of the strictest laws governing separation of church and state in the Western world.
Secularism is one of the six arrows (Altı Ok) handed down by Ataturk.

Over the past 20 years or so, religious political parties have flourished. One of them is in charge of the government right now.
However, its laughable to characterize the country as a theocracy.

My implication was not that Turkey is a Theocracy, just that it could potentially become one despite its secular constitution, and that this is evidenced by many of its religiously orientated discrimination against non-Sunni Muslims. Further, Turkey seems to becoming more Islamic rather than less in its democracy.

Turkey is a place of mixed extremes. On the one hand they have (constitutionally) banned religious symbols in public buildings, including head scarves. On the other hand Turkey provides funding for (all) Sunni Imams. All school curricula contain mandatory lessons in Sunni theology. Further Non-Sunni groups have routinely faced government restrictions on practising their faith, including having religious buildings seized. It seems to me that Turkey is a really good example of a place that is secular in theory, but not in practice. I mean, the Dianet, which is the ministry for reigious affairs, receives US$1bn of state funding and has as its mission brief "to execute the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam, enlighten the public about their religion, and administer the sacred worshipping places"*. It seems hard to claim that a state is secular (as you would understand it) when it has an official government department devoted to "enlightening" the public about its own brand of Islam. My point was that a secular state can be dominated by religious thinking, and the outlook of a particular religious group. This is exactly the case in Turkey, and turkey is rapidly becoming less secular. You can read your own state departments report here. (there might be a new report but that is the one I have a link for. Just put "religious" into find and you can get down to the good stuff)

As I understand it Egypt was in a similar position under Mubarak, it remains to be seen what it will do with its nascent democracy.

*The above quote is from article 136 of Turkey's constitution.

[phil_20686]

I had a random economics puzzle that has confused me a little to do with how one measures GDP.

Suppose I produces 10000 t-shirts at ten dollars a pop, then if I sell them all I have added $100000 dollars to GDP, suppose that the next year I get a new machine that makes them for $5 a pop, does that mean I have halved my contribution to GDP? GDP measures all the things that have been bought, at current prices. Obviously, if people spent the other half of the money on a finite (and non increasing) number of other goods then gdp should be constant. In practice though, some new economic service would spring up where I might be able to spend this extra money. Thus, the economy might in practice "grow".

So my question is this: Does change in GDP relate in any practical way to the purchasing power of the individuals? Or is it possible for GDP to stay flat while the purchasing power of individuals increases doe to lowering prices?


EDIT:
Ok, so I looked at some data sets on the internet, and according to them per capita income in the US has grown by nearly 500% since 1980, on a Purchasing power Parity measure. I.e, much more than GDP. The reason this seems to me to be important is that it means that in a funny way debt is becoming more expensive, since each dollar ends up being worth x t-shirts, and price decreases mean that x increases over time. Of course, we also increase the money supply, but the fact that PPP grows much faster than GDP seems to indicate that that is not a sufficient counterweight. I.e. If I save and buy in the future I get more bang for my buck, doe to increased efficiency of production for most items. This might make even reasonably innocuous deficit spending into a much worse strategy than it appears. OTOH, this is obviously not true for all items, like houses, where price increases outstrip inflation, and PPP increases. Trying to get my head around this is so confusing.

[hrothgar]

phil_20686, on 2011-May-16, 10:57, said:

My implication was not that Turkey is a Theocracy, just that it could potentially become one despite its secular constitution, and that this is evidenced by many of its religiously orientated discrimination against non-Sunni Muslims. Further, Turkey seems to becoming more Islamic rather than less in its democracy.

Sorry, I didn't realize that when you wrote

Quote

Constitutional republics and Theocracies are not mutually exclusive. A secular state can be a de facto theocracy if the vast majority of the population belong to a given religion.

you were using "be" as a synonym for "can become"...

Hard to see how I could have made so elementary a mistake.

As for your comment about regarding mandatory lesson's in Sunni theology:

You're quite correct that Turkey has long had compulsory religious education, however, its a far leap to go from there to "theocracy". Indeed, Ataturk was a strong proponent of state lead religious instruction as a mechanism to control the clergy and limit the role of religion in the country. Unfortunately, all my Turkish history books are packed up at my folks, however, the following article is in accordance with what I learned back in the weird old days...

Quote

In fact, compulsory religious education in schools is compatible with secularist principles. In this matter Ataturk stated,
'Religion must be taken out from the hands of ignorant people, and the control should be given to the appropriate people.'
For these reasons, we will introduce compulsory religious education in our schools."

http://www.turkishre...n?newsId=222997

The article goes on to note that, in some case, goals seem to have shifted and "compulsory religious education" seemed to be drifting in a decidedly non-secular direction.
What I find interesting about this is that

Turkey was able to self correct
There is still - very much - a primacy of the court / legal system
The Turkish courts are referencing the Treaty of Lausanne as a core principal in interpreting Turkish law

Quote

This official justification of the acceptance of compulsory religious education by the military junta of the 1980s refers to the "undisputable" and "infallible" personal cult of Atatürk and tries to reconcile this policy choice with secularism and a modern idea of religious education in democratic and secular societies. Attempts at reconciling compulsory religious education in Turkey with the experience of Western democracies have not been confined to the views of the military founders of the 1982 Constitution. Referring occasionally to the wording of Article 24 of the Constitution, many supporters of compulsory religious education in Turkey argue that the courses in fact aim at providing students with knowledge about religion in general, Islam in particular and ethics.

So far as the wording of the Constitution is concerned, it is not easy to say that it is incorrect since the Constitution makes a distinction between "education and instruction in religious culture and ethics" and "other religious education." Three cases, all filed by Turkish citizens belonging to the Alevi community, one in the ECtHR (Hasan and Eylem Zengin v. Turkey, 2007) and two others in the Danıştay, however, suggest that the compulsory education in religion has been implemented as a kind of catechistic instruction of Sunni Islam and discriminates against the Alevi identity.

Deciding on a case filed by the parents of a fourth grade student in primary school, the 5th Administrative Court in Istanbul ruled that the state authorities' denial of the parents' request that their child be exempted from compulsory religious courses violates both the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Mentioning the different types of religious education stipulated in Article 24 of the Constitution, the court decided that the current practice of compulsory religious instruction is against the Constitution and also violates Article 2 of Protocol No. 1 of the ECHR, which requires government respect for parents' philosophical and religious beliefs in education, with an absolute failure of enabling the child to develop critical approaches to religious claims. This preliminary court decision of 2006 was approved by the Danıştay in 2008. In its 2008 decision, the Danıştay refers to the 2007 decision of the ECtHR. The importance of the dates is that even though the preliminary court decision had been made before the ECtHR explained its verdict on the case Hasan and Eylem Zengin vs. Turkey (the Zengin Case), the Istanbul court followed almost an identical line of reasoning.

The importance of the ECtHR decision in the Zengin case is that the court establishes the actual practice of compulsory religious education as violating the ECHR. According to the ECtHR:

"The right of parents to respect for their religious and philosophical convictions is grafted on to this fundamental right, and the first sentence does not distinguish, any more than the second, between State and private teaching. In short, the second sentence of Article 2 aims at safeguarding the possibility of pluralism in education, a possibility which is essential for the preservation of the 'democratic society' as conceived by the Convention. In view of the power of the modern State, it is above all through State teaching that this aim must be realized. …

[luke warm]

kenberg, on 2011-May-16, 06:26, said:

You live on the Mississippi?

i live on the north shore of the lake, far enough from the river not to have much to worry about...

Quote

And I agree with you (I hope there is no dispute) that we have heavily overspent. I would be very pleased if Boehner would say "Alright, the debt ceiling has to be raised. I got that. The threat is off the table. But guys, we have to get this under control and the President could help by not pretending we only have to tax the rich to solve this. The situation is past critical, let's get with it."

i'd actually love it if it weren't necessary to raise the ceiling, but it is... our debt is too high, and (if this is true) too much of it is owned by the chinese

Quote

Something like that, he can choose his own phrasing. But really this (perhaps phony perhaps real) threat to do something totally nuts unless everyone falls in line with his orders is not helping matters. I don't like being threatened with a destructive temper tantrum, I don't imagine that the President does either.

it's stupid for thinking people to blame any one man or political party for this mess we're in... at the same time, it's foolish to criticize obama's part as due only to his failure to do away with the bush tax cuts... anyone who does so is truly a "drooler"... his policies have helped increase the debt to astounding numbers, quite apart from those cuts

[Winstonm]

Quote

it's stupid for thinking people to blame any one man or political party for this mess we're in... at the same time, it's foolish to criticize obama's part as due only to his failure to do away with the bush tax cuts... anyone who does so is truly a "drooler"... his policies have helped increase the debt to astounding numbers, quite apart from those cuts

I am certainly not an Obama fan, but I detested Dubbya and his bunch, yet I am unwilling to blame either one exclusively for this mess - if it is a mess.

While it is true that the national debt is high, it has no real effect unless we cannot place our bonds at a miminal cost. The Chinese are as dependent upon American markets as we are on their bond-buying that we have a kind of economic detente with them.

What we run is a quasi-Ponzi scheme where the bonds and interest are refinanced with new bonds. As long as we don't actually have to pay the interest out of GNP and someone is willing to buy our bonds, everything is sustainable. Reluctance to buy bond to refinance would be a killer, though, and it is that risk that is the real national security issue we face.

We can handle a lot of debt, but it is not unlimited. What we cannot afford is a military empire that does not pillage and plunder.

[PassedOut]

luke warm, on 2011-May-16, 15:44, said:

his policies have helped increase the debt to astounding numbers, quite apart from those cuts

Although you haven't named any of those policies -- do you have some particular offenders in mind? -- you can be sure that I oppose all policies of Obama that spend money unnecessarily.

The question, though, is how one deals with the excess spending, wasteful or not. The free lunch crowd refuses to take responsibility for clearing the debt by raising taxes, even though they have proposed spending cuts that eliminate only a small fraction of the deficit.

Solving the problem requires both cutting spending and increasing tax revenues. I see Obama agreeing to spending cuts and addressing health care costs.

I don't see his opponents agreeing to let any of the irresponsible tax cuts expire -- and they continue to demand much more in government spending than the government collects in taxes. A large portion of the US debt was authorized by the very legislators who refuse now to pay for it, preferring to dump that burden onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. So typical of the free lunch philosophy...

[kenberg]

Quote

it's stupid for thinking people to blame any one man or political party for this mess we're in.

Sure, and I wouldn't do so. Mr. Boehner is not responsible for the fix we are in. I do hold him responsible for what he says. He says that Republicans will not raise the debt ceiling unless his fiscal demands are met. Sarah Palin can think this is a great idea, no one actually cares what she says or thinks. Mr. Boehner is in a serious position of leadership and everyone will take this threat to heart. Empty threats are a really bad idea, so we must assume that he means it. If he is just having his fun, now would be a good time to stop it.