Muda69

Reddit Has 'Quarantined' Popular Pro-Trump Forum Over Violent Threats: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/26/736351237/reddit-has-quarantined-popular-pro-trump-thread-over-violent-threats Being a private entity Reddit can do whatever it wants. I do find the timing of the "quarantine" interesting however.

Yes, it does. You automatically discount it because it doesn't reflect your worldview regarding education. And I don't recall taxpayer funded education being a part of the U.S. Constitution. However it is part of the Indiana State Constitution (Article 8, sections 1-8). Nice try though.

Not if you truly believe the tax money goes with the child and not to some geographic entity like a "school district". And you truly believe in the parent being able to choose where their child goes to school, and where their tax money is getting spent.

Yes, the progressive belief in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) aka "Just Print As Much Much Money As You Want, Everything Will Be Fine" will save us all.

Reparations for Everyone, Apparently: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/elizabeth-warrens-tax-plan-reparations-for-everyone/ *sigh*. So the slippery slope begins. Where does do reparations end? Say my sister was called "fat" by a couple of middle school gym teachers back in the 1970's and now claims government agents caused her irreparable emotional harm that seriously hinders her ability to hold a job. She should demand, and receive, reparations from the government. So why don't the prior slave holding states pass and fund their own slavery reparations programs, similar to what other states have done for these groups you describe?

The Wrenching Reparations Question: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/slavery-reparations-debate-democratic-candidates/ Mr. Tanner brings up some of the difficult, if not impossible, implementation problems that a true reparations program would bring. Is this country truly wealthy enough to correctly implement such a program, but from a monetary and social standpoint? I don't believe that it is.

Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez Plan to Cap Credit Card Interest Rates Will Backfire on Consumers: https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/sanders-ocasio-cortez-plan-cap-credit-card-interest-rates-will-backfire Agreed. The federal government needs to keeps it's long nose out of this.

https://reason.com/2019/06/25/man-this-cbo-report-about-unprecedented-debt-levels-is-a-bummer/ And nobody in the federal government seems to care. All they care about is getting re-elected and accumulating power. Again, just look at the future we are setting up for our children and grandchildren. Is this what we want, here in 2019?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/05/case-against-reparations-kevin-d-williamson/

To address your responses should reparations every become passed into law: 1) With "free money" on the line those folks will be coming out of the woodwork. Expect the federal courts to be tied up even more than they already are and the federal bureaucracy to grow even larger in response to whatever proof the federal government requires to prove an individual is an ancestor of slaves. And BTW the term "ancestor of slaves" is somewhat ambiguous. Expect court challenges on that one as well. 2) And exactly where will the U.S. government get this money? 3) Again, expect legal challenges to whatever figure the federal government comes up with, dragging the actual disbursement of payments out years, maybe decades. 4) Nice, feel good words. And as Mr. Coleman Hughes stated in his address to Congress: "Reparations by definition are only given to victims, so the moment you give me reparations, you’ve made me into a victim without my consent. Not just that, you’ve made 1/3 of black Americans who poll against reparations into victims without their consent, and black Americans have fought too long for the right to define themselves to be spoken for in such a condescending manner." 5) Yes, much like the ultimately ill-fated "individual mandate" of Obamacare. I have to pay just because I exist in the United States of America. That isn't freedom, it is yet another form of bondage.

https://mises.org/wire/how-destroy-civilization If that isn’t a mark of a civilized society I don’t know what is. But Rome collapsed. I often wonder what would have happened if it hadn’t. Could we have avoided a thousand years of the Dark Ages. Could we have been flying airplanes and driving cars in the year 1000? What the hell happened to Rome? Dictators. After 500 years, the famous Roman Republic ended with the dictator Julius Caesar taking power. Four hundred years later his progeny and usurpers ran the Empire into the ground and Rome fell to invading barbarians. The standard explanation for Rome’s decline and fall is that they devolved into dictatorships (true, but not the cause of their fall). Or they became decadent and corrupt (true, but not the cause of their fall). They fell to barbarian invasions (true, but not the cause of their fall). Rome fell because the dictators ruined the Roman economy and the institutions that had made it prosperous. Rome was falling apart before the barbarian invasions. ... Much of Rome’s economic history is quite familiar in modern times. Even after thousands of years of evidence of repeated failure, bad ideas simply don’t die. Proponents of bad ideas are either ignorant of history or just ignorant. Or they are politicians (as Mark Twin said, “But I repeat myself.”). One bad idea with ancient precedents is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT is the New Thing among Progressives in America. Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Bernie are quite excited about MMT. They think they have discovered the Holy Grail of economics. Progressives believe that government can and should cause economic growth and prosperity. They believe government can do this by various controls, regulations, spending programs, and monetary manipulation. They believe proper government spending will stimulate demand, generate consumer spending, kick-start production, and, voila! we have full employment and prosperity. Along the way we can solve various social problems. The idea of MMT takes this one step further. They believe that the government can spend/buy whatever it wants and print pieces of greenish paper to pay for it. Government doesn’t need to tax us or borrow money to do this — it can print whatever money it needs to pay for it. Deficits don’t matter because by printing money to pay for stuff they instantly solve the deficit problem. MMTers claim, with no shortage of arrogance, that they, Oz-like, can fine-tune the mechanics of how the economy is to be run and generate prosperity, prevent inflation, end inequality, and save the planet. In other words, everything will be perfect; “just trust us” to run things. It sounds too good to be true. AOC and Bernie Sanders and their supporters heartily embrace MMT. They want to break free of old-fashioned concepts such as fiscal integrity, balanced budgets, and monetary stability because they want no limits on their utopian schemes. MMT is a crackpot idea. It is the monetary equivalent of the Perpetual Motion Machine — it ignores the laws of economics. It’s like asking third graders to invent money. (“I’m gonna print me a bunch of money and buy me a Ferrari an’ a jet an’ all the coolest video games an’ …”). Proponents confuse pieces of greenish paper with wealth and, as history has repeatedly proven, you can’t print your way to wealth and prosperity. There is nothing “modern” about Modern Monetary Theory. It has been tried many times over the centuries and it has never worked. In every case where governments have printed money to pay for things, the result has been cycles of boom and bust, inflation (and hyperinflation), economic stagnation, and social disorder. MMTers simply don’t understand what money is or the mechanics of the business cycle or the concept ofmalinvestment and the destruction of capital. Why is it not possible that we could go the way of Rome? Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal resulted in 25 years of economic stagnation. Only post-FDR deregulation, more economic freedoms, capital investment, and fiscal and monetary sanity led to economic growth. AOC’s Green New Deal plus MMT would be worse than the old New Deal in that it places no limit on government’s ability to spend which means government can command economic resources and control the direction of the economy. History has shown that governments aren’t very good at that. Absolute power in the hands of the few is a bad idea. How much destruction could MMT and utopian Progressive schemes like AOC’s utopian Green New Deal inflict on our civilization? It is hard to tell, but I hope we don’t have to look back some day and say the end started now. Agreed. One wonders if MMT will be part of the questions and answers in the first round of the Democratic candidate debates?

What IO said.

Why is the uni-party bad at governing? Because the first and highest priority of any uni-party drone is to get re-elected, actual governing and representing your constitutionency are down on the list.

Knitting Website Ravelry Bans All Pro-Trump Content: https://reason.com/2019/06/24/ravelry-knitting-trump-ban-website/ Agreed, a sad sign of the times. Does anybody here on the GID believe that support for the Trump administration is also support for white supremacy?

No, it is not a novel notion. Wealth redistribution seems to now be one of the primary functions of the federal government, something I don't recall being enumerated in the U.S. Constitution. And why is this particular case more offensive? Because it is basically yet another political stunt designed to give some class of people "free stuff" in exchange for their votes.

Bernie Sanders Wants To Cancel All Student Debt and Make College Free, at a Cost of $2.2 Trillion: https://reason.com/2019/06/24/bernie-sanders-cancel-student-debt-trillion/

And how exactly at the end of the day is the majority of U.S. federal government spending funded? I guess those receiving reparation payments would in effect getting part of their paid federal income taxes back, assuming they had taxable income. "Free" money! And why should the descendants of citizens from non-slave owning states be forced to pay for reparations via their federal income taxes? No, this whole reparations "discussion" is a ploy by democrats to ensure that African Americans keep voting Democrat. After all, African Americans are no longer the largest racial minority in the U.S.A, Hispanic/Latino Americans are.

My guess exactly.

I wonder what exactly the tears were for?

What? In this day and age?

This One New Poll of Democrats Explains Why Donald Trump Will Be Reelected: https://reason.com/2019/06/20/this-one-new-poll-of-democrats-explains-why-donald-trump-will-be-reelected/ Agreed. Unless the stable of Democratic candidates strongly moderate their message they probably won't beat Mr. Trump in 2020. Why are they listening to the minority radical progressive wing of their base and not the moderate majority? Perhaps the card carrying members of the Democratic party here at the GID can shed some light on this?

Thank you. An attempt at fake news by the reporter, possibly.

FTA: Their Christian identity? Really? So only Catholics are Christians?

Comment of the year so far.

So is Brefeuf now the logical choice for liberal Catholic families to send their children?