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The Osawatomie Speech: A Defining Moment In History
This article originally appeared in the Daily Capitalist.
COMMENTARY
I am not a fan of Barack Obama, but I have not criticized him as harshly as many other writers do. I have a different view of him. I see him as a rather run of the mill Progressive/Liberal who firmly believes his ideology and acts somewhat consistently on those ideas. Rather than pillory him personally, my approach has been to criticize the philosophy of which he is a product. In my mind, it's all about ideas. I detest his ideas because I believe they are anti-intellectual and they don't work.
There are many like Mr. Obama out there. His admirers perceive themselves as being the "downtrodden", envious of the accomplishments and wealth of those whose abilities they cannot match. I get that: if you can't achieve it, take it from those who can. Even those limousine liberals who have wealth and accomplishment perceive themselves as either being guilty of their wealth or come from backgrounds where these ideas are passed along. Mr. Obama is no different than any other politician: he seeks power and admiration and the ability to impose his ideas on America.
We here at the Daily Capitalist try everyday to combat those ideas by demonstrating their lack of efficacy and by presenting analyses of events in a free market framework which analyses have actually been quite accurate in forecasting economic outcomes. We try to be the antidote to the Progressive juggernaut.
And then I heard President Obama's speech at Osawatomie, Kansas this week.
It perhaps wasn't surprising, but I was appalled. It was deceitful, inaccurate, revisionist, and demagogic.
Mr. Obama uses every cliché in the Progressive handbook to make his point. His direct point was that the "rich" should pay more taxes. The underlying point and theme of his speech was that individual effort, individualism, free market capitalism, and success is a gift bestowed by "society" on the successful and that what "society" grants, it can take away because "society" needs it. It is the collective versus the individual.
His speech is a recreation, a fabrication if you will, of history, economics, and philosophy into a Pandoran construct of collectivist statism whereby society can demand the individual's obedience and obeisance. In short, folks, it's a crock.
If you think I am exaggerating, I urge you to read or hear his entire speech. You may find the full text and video of the speech here.
Here is just one typical statement from his speech:
Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes — especially for the wealthy — our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.
This is the stuff that demagogues spew to the guileless. And the problem is that he believes it with all his heart. The man is not stupid nor slow on his feet, despite what his harshest critics day. He's not a mere puppet of the union bosses. He's bright, articulate, and well educated. Yet he has learned nothing despite his years of education and now he's at the vanguard of the Progessive/socialist/welfare statist/national corporatist movement in America. If he has the force of personality he could be another Franklin Roosevelt, the president who did more harm to America than any other leader in our history. Fortunately, he may not have that strength of character.
While we may criticize the Republicans for being much of the same, there is still a difference. We are, as I have noted before, at a tipping point in America where:
Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.
No wonder the audience at Osawatomie loved him.
This is what has happened to much of Europe where welfare recipients voted themselves increasing benefits and economic stagnation and eventual bankruptcy. This is exactly where we are headed politically.
And this is why this election is critical. We must turn this ship around.
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Do you really believe that productive, wealthy people have power equivalent to all the TBTF outfits and the government itself? That doesn't seem reasonable. Going Galt would be about the only option.
not enough of them care
I find that attitude rather dismissive. Perhaps they have their hands full just staying out of the crosshairs of the takers?
100% spot on
If you see a horse walking backwards toward you, and it speaks, those aren't words bouncing on the ground. Whatever you do, don't take them as pearls of wisdom. Those things are nuggets, but not gold.
http://georgesblogforum.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-daily-climb-2/
There is some kernel of truth to the idea that society helped build the wealthy; society creates laws that protect personal property, that provide means of litigating against theft, and that provides a framework for protecting investment.
Doesn't always work. Today, might not work at all. But it worked pretty well and the rich should be thankful. I think most are. Most for example are trying to maintain the status quo, so I guess that means they like things as they are.
Society also provides for an environment that fosters growth of the nation. Compulsory education, uniform labor laws, secure banking, building codes, police and fire protections, courts of law. It's not much but it means there are workers one can hire, we all have an idea what is a fair wage, and someone cannot break into your shop and help themselves to your wares except at some personal risk.
All fine and dandy.
Bitching about the cost of welfare or regulations or whatnot kinda misses the entire forest for the single tree. Sure there are a few things we might do without, but overall nobody is raging unhappy.
Nobody seems really completely unhappy. The rich, least of all. I mean seriously. Indignant maybe, the rich usually are to some degree, but not unhappy. Not as such.
From what I can see, the system is utterly broken. I'm not happy with nearly any of it. There are so many glaring problems I don't see how it can ever be fixed. It will simply have to be destroyed entirely and rebuilt. But it's not the welfare cheats nor the rich cheating on taxes that bother me. I won't go into what bothers me. It doesn't matter. It was created to fall apart. The schools, the businesses, the fake heros, the re-written histories, the bought/paid for elected representatives, the strange laws, the even stranger societal expectations. It's like someone put something in the water. And no it wasn't the NaF, and it wasn't exactly in the water, but it seems like it.
Something in the air. Something in the soil. Something strange.
We are done for. Mostly. Our legacy is already consumed in the legating.
None of this is going to last.
Society and it's gifts, least of all.
You are conflating society with government. Society is the free action of millions of people. Government is the monopoly of force to be used by the few against the many. Government produces nothing and fosters nothing but destruction.
"Government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way...Trade and commerce, if they were not made of india-rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievious persons who put obstructions on the railroads." --Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience
the 1% see it as the burden of society. society exists for the 99%, who have had the misfortune to put the 1% in charge of their currency.
i like this analogy to regulation. in the beginning there was no regulation and no economy. as economies grew so did regulation. the two operate together.
The market regulates and always has. Transactions can only take place when two or more individuals strike a deal with each other which satisfies all parties to the deal. Why should people who are not a part of the deal have any say in how the deal will go down?
without rules, there is no way to cheat.
The beauty of the system,
establish rules
make the normals obey the rules
allow the superior to cheat by gaming the normals and breaking the rules.
MF Global comes to mind. Goldman Sachs need I say more?
The system is simple and devious, once you understand that laws are only suggestion if you have sufficient money or power, the whole world changes.
Psychopaths on Parade. The world laid bare and it ain't pretty.
It sort of works all around though. The high lord up in the castle cannot work the fields himself and needs the serfs down in the valley to do the job. The serfs, they cannot defend themselves from robbers and calamity and feel like they need that high lord up on the hill to manage external affairs, and provide a buffer agains hard times.
What has happened more recently though is that the high lord has decided that actually he doesn't need the serfs. He'll take all the grain now, and all the seed grain. And he'll take all the pigs and all the cows and their milk too. He'll take the run-down hovels (oh go ahead) just to make the point that he can, because that's the game he's playing now. He's taking it all, thank you for your efforts, it was great working with you well not really, and have a nice death.
Like that.
He's going to eat the grain and the seed and let the fields rot. He'll slaughter all the animals and have no new litters nor any calves. He's just going to eat it all, and wine and dine, and laugh while the serfs cry for food and drop away like insects at his door until there is nothing outside but wreckage and ruin.
And then the high lord is going to die too, not even understanding what he did wrong.
Because in actuality he was just a really, really stupid fuck.
A lot of people are going to die.
Mostly on account of some really, really stupid fucks.
"What has happened more recently though is that the high lord has decided that actually he doesn't need the serfs. He'll take all the grain now, and all the seed grain. And he'll take all the pigs and all the cows and their milk too. He'll take the run-down hovels (oh go ahead) just to make the point that he can, because that's the game he's playing now."
Another old dictum of mine.
They need us. We do not need them.
(Taping up my fists)...I've beat this until my knuckles are bloody. They will take whatever we let them take. They survive by theft & graft. Somehow, the population likes it and always votes for the most telegenic, who is always revealed as this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aVuS7cOIQ
The rich only shit in the well when they have somewhere else to drink.
If they are destroying this system, they already have plan b up and functioning and you and I are not a part of it.
They might be rich, but they are not all stupid. Psychopaths yeah, but not stupid psychopaths.
We are flies in their world and their are too many flies, too many flies.
Obama is articulate when he can read from the TOTUS. He is in fact, not very intelligent but he has always been given a pass because of his race. Those passes have allowed him to percolate to the point where there is no one left to give him a pass ( except the MSM) and now his idiocy is exposed for the world to see.
And which helmsman, pray tell, will "turn this ship around"? Not Mitt the Mormon Moron, and certainly not the slimey salamander. Ron Paul has no realistic chance to win a nomination, much less an election. Nigel Farage is ineligible (and a Tory twat, whatever good he may do as a MEP). So what are our choices?
Out of this bunch, RP is about it. I suggest you either stop conceding defeat or get to making contingencies.
choice: systemic, epic failure.
There are way too many hands on the wheel to steer it and no captain courageous enough to evict them from the wheelhouse.
Failure is the ONLY option.
And this is where all the Ron Paul education effort will help. Only by exhausting our ideas now and getting people to "Tweet less and think more," will we get enough people to construct a decent re-build after the failure.
Take 2008. Most folks thought bailing out the banks was not a good idea. But the people lacked the power and the will to oppose the bailout enough.... In the future fail the people will have a great deal more power. We just don't want some Hitleresque nut taking control...
but, WTFDIK
Is Obama playing the populist card? Of course. We are in the midst of a depression due to economic mismanagement by business friendly presidents from Ronald Reagan onward, abetted by lax standards, spectacularly poor judgement with regards to investment and outright fraud and theft by a concentrated core of extraordinarily wealthy individuals. Will bringing down these individuals change the world? You know, it just might, if only because it reintroduces moral hazard into investing, something that's been missing for the better part of forty years.
I would ask here if you are angry here, or rather, perhaps, if you are frightened by what President Obama has to say here? For the last several decades, the oligarchy have been waging class warfare against the middle class: the destruction of unions, shipping of jobs overseas, the dismantling of the welfare infrastructure, the privatization of public resources and socialization of risk and post-processing, the pillaging of pension funds and the increasing corporate stranglehold on the media ... the list gets quite extensive. The middle class has largely taken it in stride, perhaps because with this stick there was the carrot that "you too could be part of the elite". Now that illusion has been thoroughly debunked, and the middle class is finally beginning to come to terms with the realization that if it does not fight back, it will be destroyed.
Not surprisingly, when they do so, the first thing that the oligarchy does is to feign outrage - how dare they wage class warfare? Oddly, this is now ringing hollow. The reality is in fact that the middle class is waking up to what has happened, is contemplating an existential crisis, and not surprisingly, is now beginning to fight back - and Obama is taking advantage of this. The oligarchy is not going to vote for him. He was a necessary evil in 2008, only because their own experiment in taking over the reigns of power was going badly and they needed a fall guy for it. Yet I suspect that as much as those of us on the progressive side still see him as a centrist, the realization is dawning that the alternatives for everyone but those making in excess of $10 million a year are far, far worse.
Your comment on moral hazard makes no sense. Do you know what the term means?
...We are in the midst of a depression due to economic mismanagement by business friendly presidents from Ronald Reagan onward...
Chum, slapping one shedload after another of regulatory burdens onto our backs has not been 'friendly' to my business. Taxing the life out of the economy to pay for guns and butter has not been 'friendly' to my business. Constantly inflating and destroying the buying power of our currency has not been 'friendly' to my business.
These assholes were not 'business friendly' - they were bankster friendly. Learn the fucking difference.
Plus 700 Trillion ^^^^^^
Cost of regulation...the figure I keep seeing is 1.7 trillion per year.
And its not just O'Bama ringing in at 38 billion. Bush added 60 billion in annual regulatory costs in his tenure.
Its just too damned bloated. At this rate, we'll have regulators competing against each other to overlord the last remaining business...lol.
Maybe its time we #Re-Occupied America ;-)
Bush may have had more cronies hired in regulatory agencies, but there was definitely LESS regulation, whatever the size of the government. This has been happening since Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, up to the present time.
LK,
Even if accepted on its face as a truism...it means we had people on our payroll who didn't do the job they were hired to do. Meaning dead weight. Meaning larger than needed. If we're not getting a "productive activity" (whatever that winds up meaning for a bureaucrat) from the regulator, they shouldn't be on our payroll.
There can be little doubt, even to the seriously ill informed, that government at all levels is too large. The mere fact that the Department of Agriculture has more employees than there are farmers shows this to be true.
And unionized to boot. It literally will take an act of Congress to get rid of them.
What do these people do all day? I mean we know the SEC surfs the web for porn all day...but what does the Ag Department do?
Here's some of what they do...
"The Climate Change Program Office (CCPO) operates within the Office of the Chief Economist and functions as the Department-wide coordinator of agriculture, rural and forestry-related global change program and policy issues facing USDA. The Office ensures that USDA is a source of objective, analytical assessments of the effects of climate change and proposed response strategies.
The Office also serves as USDA's focal point for climate change issues and is responsible for coordinating activities with other Federal agencies, interacting with the legislative branch on climate change issues affecting agriculture and forestry, and representing USDA on U.S. delegations to international climate change discussions."
http://www.usda.gov/oce/climate_change/
I take this to mean flying all over the world attending "climate conferences" having already used their "objective analytical assessments" skill set to discern what the issue is.
Us & them exhaling apparently.
We're all in the very best of hands, power to the state!...lol.
The progressive view is finished unless it is accompanied by bullets and mass graves. Promising the moon to _perfectly healthy and capable people_ is what allowed FIAT to really roar. The 100 million+ utterly dependent people in this country enable the welfare/warfare/fiat state to thrive: they are the army of either compliant voters or potential angry rioters that insures the rape goes on and on. The dependency could have been avoided for all but the true charity cases, but _progressives_ wanted everyone on the hook, so that the plug could never be pulled. Now we're broke and owe the fiat masters the world. The dependent will slobber all over demagogues like Obama, giving them the license to do whatever they want with our rights and our actual blood and treasure.
After the fall, any politician who promises any citizen money from the pockets of taxpayers for whatever reason should be summarily executed. In the early days of the republic, a relief package for disaster victims came to the congress. It was shot down because it was specific welfare, not general welfare, and not constitutionally acceptable. They had the right idea, but they forgot to back it up with the laws making redistributionist rhetoric exactly what it is: a criminal conspiracy.
The point is not to ignore or be cruel to the poor: there are more than enough charitable hearts in America to take care of the actual charity cases. The point is that you and your 'progressive' (how Orwellian!) friends do society no favors by telling people the POS government is going to take care of them. You diminish them, cripple them, and cripple society. And you are totalitarian, you have to be: From a constitutional perspective, a state could go fully socialist if it chose, so long as it respected the commercial code for business with other states. But that would never work. The same productive people who will open their hearts and billfolds for the truly suffering will not abide your teeming army of fat-assed control freaks, who level threats and guns to extort labor and resources. They will move. So your POS system has to be total, affecting every state from coast to coast. Everyone has to be a prisoner in your gulag of compassion, where some are trained to be self-loathing and self-justifying dependent slaves, and others are taught to be compliant worker slaves. I don't care for modern-day 'progressives'.
The Do Gooder Busy Bodies of the pretentious Progressivism have absolutely no problem with bullets. They only advocate gun control for the law abiding who can be charged if defending themselves from the lawless. The lawless have a right to predate especially if they are of the approved groups. Chicago, Illinois is a fine example where those who defend themselves from perennial felons with an illegal gun wait to see if they will be charged.
The Progressive is the most approved group on earth. When the goal gets so close they can feel the keys to our chains in hand, then they will use violence. See Occupy, Bill Ayres, et al and Europe for the primer, read "The Coming Insurrection". Even Lenin and his band of merry totalitarians took power at the point of a gun when they saw their arguments were not carrying the day. The 2nd Amendment was designed to provide some relief from the arrogance of the intellectual elite.
Regrettably, I don't have the time now, but hope someone will respond to your many absurd characterizations and conclusions.
Why not take on the part about 'progressivism' requiring a captive population in order to function? That alone tells you everything you need to know about its totalitarian nature. Or you can concede that, and whether or not anything else I said was valid becomes pretty irrelevant - you're already a confessed tyrant.
Emperor Obamao's speech was amazing in its delusion and hubris! Obama has now seen and projected himself as Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lincoln, Reagan, Kennedy, and probably various others. Now I get it! He suffers from multiple personalities and delusions of grandeur!
He needs to change his name! It's now Barack INSANE Obama!
No, I disagree somewhat. The Communist always comes as the "savior" and in whatever guise people will accept him in. Its a lot like Satan. Obama comes as the "Champion of the Poor". So did Fidel, Mao, Lenin. He is Lenin in a number of useful masks and lacks the basic honesty to the theory that even Trotsky evinced.
I find it curious that Obama has not channeled James Earl Carter, the former president he most resembles in his ineptitude and anti-American attitudes.
And the answer is....that delusional, self-absorbed sociopath Newt Gingrich?
YGBSM.
...this is why this election is critical. We must turn this ship around.
This paradigm of an election fixing things is outdated. No election will fix what is wrong with our country. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and yet expecting a different result. America as a whole is clinically insane...
clearly not. ron paul '12
THEY ARE ALL LIARS AND CHEATS. Left, right, red, blue, tea, doesn't matter. Every two years, they all promise the moon, and then allow lobby groups to boot fuck all of us into the ground. There is modern democracy for ya. You think there is a difference? Bullshit. Paid schills. Whores for their pimp lobby groups of corporate "soldiers for the truth". More boot fucking to come until ASSmerica gets tired of having the toe jammed into it's collective corn hole right up to the heel.
Yeah, two weeks after the recently elected Tea Party candidates took office the big lobbyists provided them with an even bigger 'fund raising' gala. Guess what? They all showed up. That didn't take long.
It's easy to tell the few good apples from the rest. They're the ones who advocate the same rules for all, and promise to leave you alone to make your own way. That's the message that smells the least of bribery.
Jim Sinclair says we are going down. http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast/Entries/2011/12/9_Jim_S...
Speeches by US Presidents and politicians usually don't matter, part of the game.
A very old game, and Obama is just playing it in a heightened key for current circumstances.
The game is:
US Democrats: Talk leftist, act neo-fascist.
US Republicans: Talk free-market independent, act neo-fascist.
Jeff Harding (Econophile), you are naive or snookered in thinking Obama's statements mean something.
Try this for accurate perspective on Obama, from his former supporter, America's most well-known Muslim preacher, Louis Farrakhan. Amazing intensity here, when Farrakhan shouts:
« That's a MURDERER in the White House! Who will say It? I will! ... »
Louis Farrakhan on Obama: 'That's a Murderer in the White House'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCjX7KPfguI
If by "well-educated" you mean being exposed to one singular idea over and over to the exclusion of even considering other theories of economics, then yes, the Zero is well educated.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
Tytler
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."
Sounds like something de Tocqueville would say...but I'm unfamiliar with this one.
imo your analysis is correct. this econophile should listen to what many former obama zealots (i include myself) say. obama is no progressive or liberal. he is a crony of the power elite, a war criminal and a subverter of the u.s. constitution. i'm with farrakhan on this one. and whoever first said that when you call obama a monster, you insult john wayne gacy.
"obama is no progressive or liberal."
Can we talk about this without getting hysterical? I've seen a lot of "former" O'Bama voters say these things about him now.
They did not say these things when they were pushing him and his majority in the House & Senate for "mandated" health insurance provided by corporations or get fined by government for not doing so.
They didn't say "Hey, wait a minute" when on day one (practically) Rahm trotted out a continuing resolution for 400 billion debt pork projects...in the middle of a meltdown.
They also didn't say anything when they did the "shovel ready" thingy for 787 billion in debt.
With that backdrop (admittedly from someone...me...who has always been against him) what is a progressive or liberal in your mind?
I know what a classical liberal is and empowerment of the state ain't it...I'm trying to figure out what you (or others) term a progressive.
Liberal, conservative it doesn't matter. Conservatives are fascists, liberals are socialists. Bring the two together and what you get is corporatism. The whole political spectrum shit is a farce there is no left or right. Just to show you what a joke the whole term of progressive is; Stalin was a progressive and a lot of Russians still regard him as a good influence. Nazis and soviet socialists are supposed to be polar opposites with nazis on the right and soviets on the left but in reality the only difference is rhetoric. That should sum up the whole left versus right charade perfectly and they're supposed to be even further apart than republicans and democrats.
The whole political spectrum is a fraud perpetuated by sophists to limit debate and not worth the effort to indulge in. If you want to get out of the fairytale of political mass delusion then view the whole thing as continual centralization regardless what the politicians like to call themselves. Centralization is the only thing that really matters and you want the least of it as possible unless you like to be ruled because progressive centralization ultimately leads to totalitarianism. Centralization and decentralization is the only thing that has any historical relevancy and if you subscribe to modern ideology well the meaning of liberal and conservative changes every 10 years or so you better stay updated or else you fall out of the loop.
When you refer to classical liberal as if it's something out of date but last I checked liber is still latin for freedom, liberty. Such a twist of the meaning of words for the word liberal to be associated with less liberty and freedom. That's how far gone we are where words no longer mean what they are supposed to.
I term a progressive as a sophist and whatever the polar opposite of a progressive is now they're sophists too. Maybe clowns might fit too considering they all belong in this circus that they like to call politics.
"If you want to get out of the fairytale of political mass delusion then view the whole thing as continual centralization regardless what the politicians like to call themselves."
I understand this as well. However there has to be some level of a societal interaction with polar opposites of thought.
This is usually expressed through the political prism. A fisherman who busts his ass to bring in a catch does not expect or appreciate his bounty/labor being confiscated at the dock and everyone given one fish...including himself. In short order, everyone fishes for themself or goes without fish at all.
"Centralization is the only thing that really matters and you want the least of it as possible unless you like to be ruled because progressive centralization ultimately leads to totalitarianism. Centralization and decentralization is the only thing that has any historical relevancy and if you subscribe to modern ideology well the meaning of liberal and conservative changes every 10 years or so you better stay updated or else you fall out of the loop."
lol...agreed.
"When you refer to classical liberal as if it's something out of date but last I checked liber is still latin for freedom, liberty."
You inferred from my comment that I consider the term classical liberal out of date. I do not. Far from it. I do believe others have lost its true meaning though.
I'm promoting its come back or I would not have used the term. To me, it means I can live as I wish as long as it does not effect you. It does not mean you can force me (personally or through an alliance with the state) to condone how you live. Its not the classical liberal, fiscal conservative or libertarian who is experiencing an identity crisis here. Its statists, socialists, progressives & elitists of all stripes who are.
"Such a twist of the meaning of words for the word liberal to be associated with less liberty and freedom. That's how far gone we are where words no longer mean what they are supposed to."
Agreed again.
Words do have meaning and always will. To anyone with a reasoned mind. One of my pet peeves is the phrase "government investment". I've always found this wording remarkably venal and its not voluntary. As any "government investment" must be taken iinvoluntarily from someone else first (because government doesn't earn anything) or miraculously appear out of the ether from debt issuance. Which the citizen is (supposedly) obliged to repay, plus interest. If the former, its theft and a lie. With the latter its fraud, theft and extortion.
The taxpaying citizen already has the money to start with "to invest" at their leisure, without any interest being charged at all.
Thanks for the reply, you're not alone here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjJL9DGU7Gg&ob=av2e
Nmewn, learn the difference between effect and affect if you want to be taken seriously.
I do it all the time just to see how it affects grammar nazis who otherwise refuse to engage in the topic at hand.
One of lifes simple pleasures ;-)
Unfortunately, you still don't know what the heck you're talking about.
Would you care to expand on that or are you just here for the free O'Bama Wi-Fi?
"Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Philip Falcone’s proposed LightSquared Inc. wireless service caused interference to 75 percent of global-positioning system receivers examined in a U.S. government test, according to a draft summary of results.
The results from testing conducted Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 show that “millions of fielded GPS units are not compatible” with the planned nationwide wholesale service, according to the draft seen by Bloomberg News.
“LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to majority of GPS receivers tested,” according to the draft prepared for a meeting next week of U.S. officials reviewing the LightSquared proposal. “No additional testing is required to confirm harmful interference exists.”
LightSquared, backed by $3 billion from Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund, faces challenges from makers of global-positioning system devices who say the service will disrupt navigation by cars, boats, tractors and planes. U.S. regulators are withholding approval as they check on claims of interference."
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-09/falcone-s-lightsquared-said-to-disrupt-75-of-gps-in-tests.html