Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

GasBandit

Staff member
He does, insult aside, get to what I feel is the heart of the matter - part of the reason private industry can outperform government bureaucracy in many areas is because it has the option to say "no". It can decide "we won't service this area" or "we'll set admission standard X".
That may help, but I really think what makes private industry outperform is competition. If the government doesn't perform well, it just shrugs and spends more money inefficiently because it has a legally mandated monopoly. Yes, there are some things that should remain a monopoly of the government even though it means accepting the inherent inefficiency. However, those things should be very limited, and mostly related to dispensation of justice, defense, or enforcement of competition. The FDA is about ensuring fair (and safe) competition between private food producers. The SEC is about ensuring fair and safe trade practices between private investors. A government SHOULD be an umpire. It should NOT be a player.



Oh motherfuck you Gas. Fuckin' hell man.
My day is not complete until somebody says this.
 
The Wisconsin state Senate essentially closed debate on the Budget Repair Bill, but they cannot vote on it and send it to Walker, because of the 20-senators-for-a-quorum rule.

To clarify: the Senate has a rule that 20 of its 33 members must be present to vote yea/nay on any bill or other measure that would spend the state's money. This is why the Senate enacted Voter ID (although in reality they can't completely enact it, since it would require spending money to implement) but not the budget bill.

As long as the 14 Democratic Senators remain outside of Wisconsin, the bill cannot be voted on and sent to Walker to be signed into law. It is, essentially, no different than a filibuster - except that it involves people fleeing to other states.

From what I understand, if the bill is not signed by sometime in mid-March, its provisions (other than the "union contract termination" language) would be made moot because the state would not be able to issue the bonds needed to "recoup" the difference between the budget shortfall and expenses in time for them to make a difference. This is why the layoff notices are being floated around.

An interesting sidebar about the layoffs: the numbers Walker is throwing out isn't direct layoffs of state employees, but is due to drastic reduction of funding from the state to local municipalities (county/city/town/village governments).

Walker is scheduled to give his 2011-2013 budget proposal on the 1st. At least one of the the Democratic Senators has suggested they may need to remain outside of the state until July 1st (the first day of the new budget), so the terms of the budget repair bill never make it to Walker's desk. However, Walker can just as easily put the same terms for terminating union contracts in his budget for the next biennium. And, even given the amount of protesting that has happened at the Capitol over the last three weeks, it's almost certain that he will put the same provision in his budget.

SIGH

The problem with me talking about this subject is that I am way, way, WAY too close to the situation. Even looking things up to verify the situation is getting me way too angry. So angry in fact that, when I had a doctor's appointment on Monday for a physical, I came in after reading the latest from Madison - and had a BP reading of 170/90.

TL;DR - This whole thing sucks, and I'm one of those getting inhaled voluminously upon.
 
Interestingly, Governor Walker was asked to leave The Merchant (a local tavern) because the excessive booing from neighboring tables was causing a disturbance.
 
The problem with me talking about this subject is that I am way, way, WAY too close to the situation. Even looking things up to verify the situation is getting me way too angry. So angry in fact that, when I had a doctor's appointment on Monday for a physical, I came in after reading the latest from Madison - and had a BP reading of 170/90.

TL;DR - This whole thing sucks, and I'm one of those getting inhaled voluminously upon.
Sorry to hear it's upsetting you so much, do you mind if I ask why you are so "close" to it? Sorry if I missed where you already explained it.
 
Governor Walker was NOT, I repeat, NOT booed out of a restaurant in Madison. The story is a hoax, and I apologize for carrying it on.
 
T

TheBrew

Yeah, I gotta agree with Norris there Gas. We may all disagree on politics, but we ARE all still friends here and we do our damnedest to keep it civil. That's why Brew got called out for his comment and if it hadn't been Krisken, it would have been me doing it. Don't act like your better than us or that a single instance of name calling validates your position.
Sorry, didn't mean to paint everyone else in a poor light, but it is indicative that Gas was able to dismiss everyone else because of what one person said. I apologize for the insult, but I get very frustrated with libertarians thinking that the government can't do anything right or that the private industry does everything better. Norris is right in that the extremes on both sides make some huge assumptions about human behavior that is simply not true.

I would also like for Gas to explain how private corporations can provide mail service to all citizens better than the U.S. Government.
 
Round two will begin tomorrow night when Walker reveals his "real" 2011-13 budget. And I suspect it will have a lot of layoffs in it.

By the way, in case you're interested: the "reasonable proposals" would mean a hit of $300 a month to my salary. That's about 8.5% of my current monthly pay.
 
Scott Walker's budget estimates a state wide cut in education in the neighborhood of 9%.

Remember, $140 million in incentives to the businesses, 2/3 of which don't pay taxes at all, but a decrease in education spending.

Wisconsin will be pretty well fucked over by this move, mark my words.
 
Unfortunately, that's pretty par for the course: let 'em all in, or let none of them in.
I understand that, but it's pretty apparent that this is some attempt to ether shame them into dropping their protest and stop trying to form the club, or to get the other clubs/sports to gang up on the members trying to form the club enough that they stop trying to form.
 
I fully expect to see a large surge in poison related deaths soon: House Republicians effectively destroy Poison Control Center networks by voting to massively underfund them.

This is just a dumb and short sighted move. Poison Control saves the tax payers millions a year by giving immediate, accurate aid to it's callers, which keeps them out of the emergency room. By underfunding them like this, not only are you forcing the government to foot the bill for more emergency visits, your condemning lots of people to a slow, painful death. How does this move benefit ANYONE?
 

GasBandit

Staff member
This quote is quickly becoming THE sentence that sums this entire debate with the government unions. This quote comes from a union protester arguing with a tea party protestor in Wisconsin, and the union protestor actually says ...... "Why do you have a right to your money?" ... /facepalm.

Since December 2007 the private sector workforce has shrunk by 6.6% while the federal government workforce has grown by 11.7%.

"A range of economists" in Washington are calling for a value-added tax. Luckily these calls seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Would Universal Health-Care Coverage Actually Improve Health?

Michael Moore, speaking about the government employee union debate, says, ""The rich have overplayed their hand."

When are the Democrat senators in Wisconsin going to return from Illinois? "Soon."

New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees' pensions than it did just a decade ago. In all, the salaries and benefits of state employees add up to $18.5 billion, or a fifth of New York's operating budget. This can't last.

Do government school teachers in Wisconsin earn more than $100,000 in annual compensation? Yup, you betcha.

The number of ObamaCare waivers issued by the Obama administration is now over 1,000. Unions get a good deal of that.

Remember that whole concept of banks being too big to fail, and that's why we needed to pass the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill? Yeah, about that ...

Why are gasoline prices rising so much? This Q&A may help explain a few things for you.

The Lockerbie bomber could finally be tried in the United States, as a tradeoff for the US backing of the new government in Libya.

Ending collective bargaining rights for teachers in Tennessee is now being described as "terrorism against our teachers" by Democrat state Rep. Mike Turner.

Former pizza chain CEO mulling presidential run. "He is someone Iowa caucus-goers are going to take very seriously."

From the Heritage Foundation: Government Union Collective Bargaining 101.

Who's to Blame for Union Woes?
Added at: 10:42
Yes, and they're on your side!
What you don't understand is that, at some point, everybody's "side" is going to be in charge of them. Then it just becomes another political spoils system. Remember what I quoted about a government big enough to give you everything is also big enough to take everything...

I do however, have to point out that "my side" would probably not have the government in a position to make such decisions in the first place.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
The Washington Times points out that "Last month's (that's JUST February alone - GB) federal deficit is nearly four times as large as the spending cuts House Republicans have passed in their spending bill, and is more than 30 times the size of Senate Democrats' opening bid of $6 billion." Isn't that amazing? All of the cuts that these politicians can muster are one-fourth the size of our federal deficit, for just one month!

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally admits that the books were cooked when it comes to ObamaCare cost estimates.

So much for that campaign promise to close down Gitmo. Trials by military commission are going to resume at Guantánamo Bay.

The Obama administration is considering tapping into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve as one way to help ease soaring oil prices.

Likely voters overwhelmingly believe (95%) that deficit reduction is crucial to America's future. Pity that the end of that sentence is "...but don't reduce it by cutting the stuff I want/use."

How can you implement a law to ban sharia law if you can't even explain what sharia law is? It's folks like this that push independents away from the GOP.
 
This makes me sick: Tennessee Cops Posed as a Defense Attorney To Get Suspect To Incriminate Himself. Not only did the cops do this, but the DA asked the judge to ignore it. The judge let it go to trial. The three cops still have their jobs as well.This is a cluster fuck of massive proportions.

Seriously, how hard is this to understand?When Justice is corrupted one, it is corrupted FOR US ALL.

EDIT: Here's the opinion from the case. These guys pretended to be federal attorneys, going so far as to make fake letterhead and delivering mail to the defendants. This is like a bad movie.
 
Interesting insight, Covar. It's like the old joke about what people want: lower taxes and more assistance programs.
 
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