Get ready, Sports Fans! This is the shortest piece I’ll ever write, I think.
State money for private investment in Niagara Falls Hotels spells something that sounds like SOCIALISM!!!!!!
Even Senator Maziarz is pissed! Go figure. Oh, wait that does make sense. It's not his people.
So all you propagandizing capitalists out there, please don’t bullshit anymore about the virtues of the private sector. You just love the people to take the risks for you don’t you. Whether it’s money or bodies, the poor and middle class are still taking it where the sun don’t shine. And by the way, did Bush’s daughters volunteer for that patriotic war in Iraq yet. Or are they waiting for the Iran fiasco to start?
And please stop trashing public money for public education. It makes no sense. Unless of course you need more of that education money for private investments.
By the way do we get to distribute the profits from that public money invested in private ventures with the public? Or do we have to wait for trickle-down dividends?
Gee, I just realized that for the hotel investors using state money I guess it is a "free market" after all. Ain't capitalism great when your lackeys are in office.
7 comments:
You paint an awful lot of good people and good companies when you use the "you" brush, as in "You just love the people..."
A free market barely exists anymore, since the government doesn't trust it or can't stand it when a true, capitalist free market is in one of its inevitable, cyclical downturns. No, at that point, government feels that it has to meddle. Decry that all you want, professor, but be careful where you splatter the paint.
Do you suppose the folks that own and operate the capitalist, free market hotels in the area that AREN'T getting subsidies and grants are just a wee bit ticked off that the government has decided to unlevel the playing field?
If you detest the "private sector" so much, what is your alternative? Let the government run everything? Who would employ the poor and middle class that I assume you think you're protecting? And, by the way, where the fuck do you think "public money" comes from? The government money tree?
What I assume to be your primary beef -- government subsidies where they shouldn't exist and/or probably aren't warranted -- tends to get lost in your rantings. (And, by all means, let's blame the Bush daughters. Because we all know that it's the GOP's fault. God knows that a Democrat would never hand out money to the dreaded private sector.)
It is this sort of drivel that makes it easy for people to dismiss you, Larry, and dismiss what is otherwise a valid point. That's too bad.
And, in the interest of full disclosure, professor, I've worked in the dreaded private sector my entire teen and adult life, in a number of different fields. And one of the cornerstones of my opinions are based on 18 or so years of public education -- including at the institution where you work -- paid for, in part, by the private money that become public when my dad and his private sector business paid taxes. So, please, feel free to kiss my propagandizing, capitalist ass.
Pirate, Pirate, Pirate,
I think you better hang on to the Xanax yourself my dear friend. You are being just a bit erratic I think.
Ok, I admit to a bit of hyperbole, hooks and barbs, but I think you are getting a little angry because this is the truth. And you admit I have a “valid point.” A very big valid point.
But if we can calm down here just one second, firstly, I don’t know why you’re so upset when I am not attacking the validity of the private sector as such. I am not and generally don’t attack Republicans as such. At present on the national scene they just happen to stick out like a gangrenous sore thumb. (Neo-cons, yeh, I attack them, but are they really Republicans?) And if you need me to balance the scales of ‘party attacking,’ let me say that the Democratic congress is abominable, cowardly and self-contradictory.
Now if you had the will, energy and time to check some of my other rants, you will see that I have never said that Capitalism is the enemy. In fact I’ve said it’s not the enemy but that doesn’t mean its saintly. My enemy, in a very short word, is “bureaucratic centralism” the heart of our Liberal Democracy.
And if you’re still with me, here is where your argument falls apart: if I understand you,are you trying to tell me that government shoving money down capitalists’ throats is the destruction of the free market? Are you telling me that Capital is in no way responsible for penetrating government and degrading it to a legitimating arm of big business and a source of easy money when many companies fail? Surely you’re not trying to equate the cash giveaways with regulation are you? And are you trying to tell me that those other investors who didn’t get the tax handouts, (whether that money comes from the poor, middle class or your father’s business), wouldn’t take the handout if it were offered? Of course they would. But please then don’t argue that they have to because after all the guys across the street are getting handouts. That logic would be kind of circular wouldn’t it?
But the guys in Niagara Falls are probably small potatoes compared to the mega-thieves at such as BearStearns. They should not have been bailed out, sold, saved or what ever the hell they did with “Federal Reserve money." I don’t believe I’m “splashing paint” as you say just because I haven’t done a thorough history of what companies actually exemplify the hypocrisy because the principal pattern of a mask of freemarket capitalism and a core of socialistic practices holds quite firmly.
Please don’t feel attacked personally here. I’m sure you and your father are good and hard working people. I’m attacking mechanisms of hypocrisy and patterns of self-contradiction, whether I’m right or wrong.
And now I have to get over the guilt you left me with from your previous post and the great Montaigne quote, as my unread copy of the collected essays of Montaigne stare at me from the top shelf of my bookcase, dusty and neglected. ...Take care.
Pirate, Pirate, Pirate,
I think you better hang on to the Xanax yourself my dear friend. You are being just a bit erratic I think.
Ok, I admit to a bit of hyperbole, hooks and barbs, but I think you are getting a little angry because this is the truth. And you admit I have a “valid point.” A very big valid point.
But if we can calm down here just one second, firstly, I don’t know why you’re so upset when I am not attacking the validity of the private sector as such. I am not and generally don’t attack Republicans as such. At present on the national scene they just happen to stick out like a gangrenous sore thumb. (Neo-cons, yeh, I attack them, but are they really Republicans?) And if you need me to balance the scales of ‘party attacking,’ let me say that the Democratic congress is abominable, cowardly and self-contradictory.
Now if you had the will, energy and time to check some of my other rants, you will see that I have never said that Capitalism is the enemy. In fact I’ve said it’s not the enemy but that doesn’t mean its saintly. My enemy, in a very short word, is “bureaucratic centralism” the heart of our Liberal Democracy.
And if you’re still with me, here is where your argument falls apart: if I understand you,are you trying to tell me that government shoving money down capitalists’ throats is the destruction of the free market? Are you telling me that Capital is in no way responsible for penetrating government and degrading it to a legitimating arm of big business and a source of easy money when many companies fail? Surely you’re not trying to equate the cash giveaways with regulation are you? And are you trying to tell me that those other investors who didn’t get the tax handouts, (whether that money comes from the poor, middle class or your father’s business), wouldn’t take the handout if it were offered? Of course they would. But please then don’t argue that they have to because after all the guys across the street are getting handouts. That logic would be kind of circular wouldn’t it?
But the guys in Niagara Falls are probably small potatoes compared to the mega-thieves at such as BearStearns. They should not have been bailed out, sold, saved or what ever the hell they did with “Federal Reserve money." I don’t believe I’m “splashing paint” as you say just because I haven’t done a thorough history of what companies actually exemplify the hypocrisy because the principal pattern of a mask of freemarket capitalism and a core of socialistic practices holds quite firmly.
Please don’t feel attacked personally here. I’m sure you and your father are good and hard working people. I’m attacking mechanisms of hypocrisy and patterns of self-contradiction, whether I’m right or wrong.
And now I have to get over the guilt you left me with from your previous post and the great Montaigne quote, as my unread copy of the collected essays of Montaigne stare at me from the top shelf of my bookcase, dusty and neglected. ...Take care.
I liked that last post so much I had to post it twice.
Apparently your Xanax has had the desired effect and now, absent some of the hyperbole, your points become more clear and reasonable, whether or not one agrees with them.
If you happen to have any spare Xanax, leave it outside your office door because this particular day and evening, my private sector, capitalist job stretched my nerves to the end.
And now that we've both taken a breath, can you at least acknowledge that government, in providing subsidies for business (however ham-handed the application), may simply be trying to fan the embers of a dying economy? That perhaps, if successful, those hotels might employ some of our friends and neighbors?
I don't know the genesis behind this particular government largess, and I don't pose the above questions as a specific defense. But I believe it is reasonable to believe that some in government might see that as a way to help.
Unfortunately, government too often falls prey to something embodied in another of my favorite quotes, from Maslow -- "When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail." The government sees a problem in a struggling economy, and instantly thinks that throwing money around will solve it. Nail, meet hammer.
I never like anything I write well enough to post it twice.
Pirate,
That's exactly it. The government is trying to save a dying economy, not just in Niagara Falls but in America. But that's been true since the New Deal. It's just that in the 60's it reached its limits but found the military industrial complex to shore up an eroding system. I'm not against private property nor the private sector but if the government is obviously a player, then lets share the wealth a little more equitably, whether the investment or profit side. Planning an economy doesn't have to mean straitjacketing a culture, creativity nor private accumulation. But "free market" has to also mean the freedom to fail. How else do we know what success is?
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