[quote] Seven
But I believe that most of those expats who do vote voted Republican and that is what accounted for Bush’s razor thin victory. You cannot have it both ways. You just said that expats were more well educated than other Americans and so if Bush won because of the absentee voters, ergo there are more Republicans than Democrats. I believe that the difference was 80 to 20 or something like that. Anyway, please feel free to correct me on this. I think it has something to do with the fact that most Americans overseas are in the armed forces (heavily Republican) and tax paying successful American business people (heavily Republican) and the remainder would be English teachers or aid workers I suspect and they would be the ones to vote Democrat? tick tock tick tock
[quote=“fred smith”]Tick tock tick tock.
Anyway, now that I have had my fun. I don’t know, but would love some proof of how Ashcroft has abused his position to promote his Christian values and how this has made him unfit for his job. Oh I don’t know just one fact or two perhaps would do…[/quote]
[quote=“Richardm”]Let Us Pray
Attorney General John Ashcroft has led regular early-morning prayer meetings in his government office, according to the February issue of Vanity Fair. A lawyer who left the Justice Department said employees were reluctant to object for fear of retribution. Ashcroft, son of a Pentecostal preacher, also likened himself to Jesus Christ in his memoir, Lessons From a Father to His Son, referring to his political defeats and victories as “crucifixions” and “resurrections.” (Ashcroft famously lost the Missouri senatorial race to a dead man.) More disturbing to DOJ employees was their new boss’s move after he joined the office. Ashcroft excised the phrases “We are proud of the Justice Department” and “There is no higher calling than public service” from department letters. His staff explained his reason: “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins… There is a higher calling than public service, which is a service to God.”
http://www.wired.com/news/archive/0,2618,2004-01-15,00.html[/quote]
If you won’t or can’t see how Richardm’s post show’s Ashcroft is unfit, then we needn’t bother with this discussion. Mars, Venus, etc. Do you need a Venn diagram?
Employees were afraid of retribution. I am afraid of retribution from you if I respond to your email. What’s your point? Why were no charges brought? Why was he not removed from office if this was a serious breach? Just curious.
That’s nice, that’s special.
I don’t seem to fit into your categories, Fred. Do you?
OUST BUSH? LEARN HOW:
STEP BY STEP Guide to Voting by Absentee Ballot + FAQ
TICK TOCK TICK TOCK!
:mrgreen:
Just as Bush believes that the US must eliminate each and every terrorist, potential terrorist or guy who has a grudge against the US before they strike, I believe that we should root out any potential threat in our government that could cause a federal law enforcement agency to answer to a supreme being before the Constitution.
Ask DOJ, not me.
Who would remove him, fred smith? (just curious)
Alien:
Well aren’t you really pretty much an English teacher of sorts? I know that you are a step removed from the process but same difference no?
I guess if Ashcroft was seriously violating the rights of his workers, he would have been removed. Why has not law suit been brought against him. Believe me in a political town like Washington if there were substance to this I think that the Democrats would have ran with it like I don’t know the Monica Lewinsky and sexual harassment cases against say Clinton?
So here charges are being brought against a man, but no proof of his guilt has really been given. I think that in some cases that might constitute slander or libel. Lawyers? Want to take a stab at this?
From the Christian Science Monitor…
csmonitor.com/2004/0302/p09s02-cogn.html
What is the alternative lefties? What would you do instead? Try to be constructive for a change…
Commentary
from the March 02, 2004 edition
Bush-bashing: international sport?
By Brendan O’Neill
LONDON
That’s totally lame (see http://www.johnkerry.com/), but you bought yourself some time. Everybody’s got to eat, even fred smith, I guess.
Oh come on Flike:
Didn’t you at least appreciate the humor of the effort? haha
freddy
[quote=“fred smith”]Oh come on Flike:
Didn’t you at least appreciate the humor of the effort? haha
freddy[/quote]
No, I didn’t.
:readbetweenthelines:
[quote=“fred smith”]
So here charges are being brought against a man, but no proof of his guilt has really been given. I think that in some cases that might constitute slander or libel. Lawyers? Want to take a stab at this?[/quote]
I think Sullivan v. N.Y. Times will protect us.
The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft’s unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president.
and
In an extraordinary rebuke, a federal judge Tuesday publicly admonished Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft for violating a gag order covering a high-profile terrorism case in Detroit, prompting the attorney general to issue an unusual apology to the court for his remarks.
[quote]Let Us Pray
Attorney General John Ashcroft has led regular early-morning prayer meetings in his government office, according to the February issue of Vanity Fair. A lawyer who left the Justice Department said employees were reluctant to object for fear of retribution. Ashcroft, son of a Pentecostal preacher, also likened himself to Jesus Christ in his memoir, Lessons From a Father to His Son, referring to his political defeats and victories as “crucifixions” and “resurrections.” (Ashcroft famously lost the Missouri senatorial race to a dead man.) More disturbing to DOJ employees was their new boss’s move after he joined the office. Ashcroft excised the phrases “We are proud of the Justice Department” and “There is no higher calling than public service” from department letters. His staff explained his reason: “Pride is one of the seven deadly sins… There is a higher calling than public service, which is a service to God.”
http://www.wired.com/news/archive/0,2618,2004-01-15,00.html[/quote]
I’ve often argued here at Forumosa that the Bush Administration has mixed policy with religious belief but I don’t see how, in all fairness, any of Ashcroft’s actions above qualify as violating separation of church and state prohibitions. I do believe Ashcroft is an extremist who is capable of crossing the line at any time, but hasn’t in any of the cited examples. Holding early-morning prayer meetings in one’s office before the workday with freely participating fellow believers is merely an exercise in freedom of belief, in my opinion. ‘Fear of retribution’ is so vague as to be meaningless. Did Ashcroft say or do anything to give substance to that fear? What exactly did they fear? It could just as well been a fear of retribution if they tried to keep others from freely associating – which they should fear retribution over in my view. It’s none of their business if it’s private expressions of belief among consenting participants that merely happens on public property outside work hours.
And excising phrases from official documents? How the heck is that a violation of the prohibition against mingling church with state no matter what the motivation for removing words? Now if he had added religiously tinged statements, I could readily understand, but to remove statements from a religiously neutral document now matter how religiously motivated the act can’t possibly be anything more than bad judgement in that it may make an originally clearly written neutral document less clear – but nothing more sinister than that.
Bloody figures…
:bluemad:
[quote=“Japanese Institute of Global Communications”]…At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that “people are poor because they are lazy.” He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to “free market competition.” To him, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was “socialism.” Recently, President Bush’s Federal Appeals Court Nominee, California’s Supreme Court Justice Janice Brown, repeated the same broadside at her Senate hearing. She knew that her pronouncement would please President Bush and Karl Rove and their Senators. President Bush and his brain, Karl Rove, are leading a radical revolution of destroying all the democratic political, social, judiciary, and economic institutions that both Democrats and moderate Republicans had built together since Roosevelt’s New Deal…
glocom.org/opinions/essays/2 … president/[/quote]
An interesting article about Rove (below), old but still memorable (to me), may help shed some light for those who wonder about this guy, what he stands for, and why he works to roll the US back to time before Progressive legislation – not New Deal, but to a time pre-New Deal – was passed, and how he proposes to accomplish his goals for the US. (even FDIC insurance on individual US bank savings deposits of less than $100,000 goes away if Rove gets his way).
Rove and Bush call this vision, their vision of the US, the Ownership Society.
[quote=“The New Yorker”]THE CONTROLLER
by NICHOLAS LEMANN
Karl Rove is working to get George Bush re
Well what would be so bad about going to the situation as before the New Deal? I for one also support such moves to remove the government from economic life and make people more responsible for themselves. Better that they save money for their retirement and earn 6 percent on their investment rather than social security which generates 1 percent. PLUS that money is available (principal) for them and their children. Economic growth would be faster without so much regulation and tax and productivity would be rewarded.
But what a desperate dog eat dog world. How insensitive to the poor, etc. etc.
But in the world today, there are societies that are more akin to this pre New Deal America and if you are in Taiwan, you are living in one of them. East Asia has experienced higher growth precisely for the relatively less regulation and tax while America is in the middle and Europe is at the low end of the growth spectrum. So rather than be outraged or shocked by this and rather than ruling it out, perhaps we should discuss the benefits of getting rid of the welfare state or at least partially dismantling it.
After all, at one time, privatization was unimaginable. Deregulation of airlines was unimaginable, privatizing the telecom was unimaginable. Yet all of these have been accomplished with much higher growth rates in telecoms, would the mobile phone revolution have happened or as quickly and extensively had Ma Bell not been broken up and privatized? Air travel is cheap and accessible to all which has in turn created a boom in travel, tourism and business opportunities. Think of the wealth and number of jobs generated in these areas.
It is not after all like social security (1 percent investment) Medicare/Medicaid or socialized health care in UK and Canada or public education (in the US) have been runaway successes. It is precisely because of the lack of accountability, lack of competition and poor rates of return that these issues are being discussed. Look at the investment in public education in the States and the dismal return. We can and must do better since ironically it is the inner city black students who suffer disproportionately and yet it is the Left that claims to represent best the interests of this group?! Shocking.
Against my better judgment, fred smith, ok. I’ll play. Where to begin.
I’d love to go to Mars next CNY, too, but how to get there? How do we as a nation get from SS, as we know it now, to SS as Bush and you want it?
Will President Bush’s plans SS allow beneficiaries to earn 5% above “current earnings?” (although SS is a pay as you go plan, so this is…but I’ll let you explain it, fred smith)
Can you explain the connection between SS and “regulation and tax and productivity”?
Is the differential between a third-world economy and knocking on the door of a first one (the path Taiwan has followed in the past 15 years or so) the same, or even similar enough to to allow comparison to, the maintainence of a state-of-the-art economy (the path the US has followed in the past 15 years or so)?
And I’d love to get rid of steroids in baseball, fred smith, who wouldn’t? How would your plans for SS allow for the transition from a defined-benefit plan (current) to a privatized one (your plan)?
I think SS has been an unqualified success, without question. It’s current problem, definitely a real one, imo, is that those workers who enter the American demographic python (i.e., begin paying FICA taxes) after the baby-boomer pig (likely you and I) won’t be able to pay the lawful aggregate SS benefits come 2047 or so, without either a raise in the FICA or a reduction in benefits (or both) - even if the payroll tax to fund SS benefits is dedicated to that alone. Medicare/caid is hurting now because, like public schools, it’s having to solve problems it wasn’t designed for. In the case of Medicare/caid, that’s health care in the general populace, while in the case of public education, that’s having to devote limited resources to non-parent parenting and other social spillovers.
You’re a lot of work, fred smith. In fact, too much work, imo. Please be worth it.
Quick very quick responses.
Look at Chile’s model of social-security reform. (let me know if you have trouble finding this).
Second, partial privatization of social security would see minimum returns of 5 percent over inflation in the most risk averse pension/annuity/life insurance plans. I know because I have one and that is the return I am getting. SS only generates 1 percent on average and this does not factor in inflaction. See www.heritage.org and go to social-security reform.
Most small businesses are responsible for paying ss taxes so that is an extra hurdle both tax wise and regulatory wise in addition to possible health benefits etc that they must provide. We therefore have a very strong disincentive for small companies to hire workers or expand in this regard.
Sorry believe it or not but busy today. Will try to get to your other questions later.
Also there is another thread on the public education vs. vouchers thing, please scroll down and refer to our previous discussions on the topic.
All the best,
Fred