Boasters, Whiners, Cons, Libs (CLOSED) Topic

The full story beyond Lazerhawks' selected facts tells a different story; although it stands, like so many of our debates, with sufficient complexity that anyone who studies it is likely to believe what he wants to believe. One loses faith in "the facts" after a while.

Popular wisdom agrees that Kennedy won with the benefit of fixed votes in Illinois, especially Chicago. Many other elections have been stiffed or at least questioned over the years. The problems with electronic voting are well documented, as are the efforts of one electronic voting machine manufacture to cover up the problems with its product (still in use in some venues). One loses faith in the ballot box after a while.

It's not really clear what stimulated the post about fears of gas attacks in Iraq or the stuff about the elections. It smacks of reactionary, unreasoned participation in a thread that attempted here and there a reasoned debate on a couple of central issues in our society. This isn't really about Republicans and Democrats. One loses faith after a while in his ability to tell what someone else means by "liberal" or "conservative."

I just think there is a lot more ground for questioning authority and process and ruling elites now than there has been in this nation for some time. Are others really so comfortable with the political and corporate status quo as some of the posts in this thread seem to indicate?

2/13/2008 12:22 AM

MLB General Discussion
Topic: GOOD NEWS: EARTH PRODUCES OIL

yes, General Motors has done some awful things.



General Motors and the Street Car System -

General Motors stops the trollies

by Jeff Hyslop| Issue #19

If you can’t beat the competition, buy them out. That was General Motors’ post-Depression strategy for stimulating bus sales, an effort that led to the destruction of the U.S. streetcar system and, ultimately, a criminal conviction.

When General Motors’ bus and auto sales began to level off during the 1930s, the company targeted the urban transportation market, which in nearly every U.S. city was dominated by streetcars (trollies). The streetcar was not easily replaced; its tracks occupied both sides of the roadway, and it offered no additional room for buses to operate. GM’s solution was to create United Cities Motor Transit, the first of many GM holding companies. Its sole purpose was to acquire streetcar companies around the country, convert them to GM motorbus operation, and then resell the systems to local concerns that agreed to purchase only GM replacements.

When GM formed the holding company National City Lines (NCL) in 1936, Standard Oil and Firestone had already agreed privately to help fund its motorization campaign. Between 1936 and 1950, the three companies contributed $9 million to NCL, which covered the purchase, motorization, and resale of more than 100 streetcar systems in 45 cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. The number of streetcars in operation over that period fell from 73,000 to 18,000, and the removal of public trollies helped make way for the automobile and suburban explosion of the 1950s.

The federal government began investigating the scandal in 1946 and prosecuted the firms two years later. In 1949, they were found guilty of "conspiracy to monopolize the local transportation field" but were fined only $5,000 each (an amount roughly equal to GM’s profit from the sale of one bus). Seven high-ranking executives at the companies were individually found guilty and fined the prodigious sum of one dollar.
this article is from - Stay Free! is a nonprofit, Brooklyn-based magazine that explores the politics and perversions of mass media and American (consumer) culture. We've been around for over ten years, in one form or another. Stay Free! is published once or twice a year, depending on how ambitious we are feeling. The next issue (#25) will be out in February 2006. We also run a blog, Stay Free! Daily, which is similarly focused on mass media and American culture.





2/13/2008 12:52 AM
Quote: Originally Posted By doubletruck on 2/13/2008




The full story beyond Lazerhawks' selected facts tells a different story; although it stands, like so many of our debates, with sufficient complexity that anyone who studies it is likely to believe what he wants to believe. One loses faith in "the facts" after a while.

Popular wisdom agrees that Kennedy won with the benefit of fixed votes in Illinois, especially Chicago. Many other elections have been stiffed or at least questioned over the years. The problems with electronic voting are well documented, as are the efforts of one electronic voting machine manufacture to cover up the problems with its product (still in use in some venues). One loses faith in the ballot box after a while.

It's not really clear what stimulated the post about fears of gas attacks in Iraq or the stuff about the elections. It smacks of reactionary, unreasoned participation in a thread that attempted here and there a reasoned debate on a couple of central issues in our society. This isn't really about Republicans and Democrats. One loses faith after a while in his ability to tell what someone else means by "liberal" or "conservative."

I just think there is a lot more ground for questioning authority and process and ruling elites now than there has been in this nation for some time.

Are others really so comfortable with the political and corporate status quo as some of the posts in this thread seem to indicate?







doubletruck what is your take on the National Education Association.
I would say the educators have looked out for their interests at the expense of students, families, communities and our country.


2/13/2008 12:53 AM
C'mon, man. NEA is a union. It's their job to look out for the interests of their members.

Has this been done "at the expense of students, families, communities and our country"? The answer is Yes and No. Union negotiations and actions are local, for the most part. Some locals do better than others, in the sense you mean and in the different sense that some of their members might mean.

The corollary question: Has the country treated its educators fairly considering the important role they play in society?

Disclosure time: I'm a retired professor and my wife is a member of NEA.

Here's an example for you to chew on: In Washington state about six years ago, the voters voted a raise (3% as I recall) for the state's teachers. It was the only raise that most of them had received in several years. A year (or was it two?) later, the Legislature rescinded the raise at the same time most of the educational jurisdictions were increasing employee health insurance costs.

Does that tell the educators that society values their work; or does it encourage them to look out for their self-interest?

When I taught at Eastern Illinois University in the early '90s, I knew local elementary school teachers who worked second jobs, such as selling furniture or real estate, because they couldn't live a middle-class lifestyle on their teaching pay.

If you worked for an employer who rarely gave you a raise, let alone taking a raise back, would you stick with it the way so many teachers do?

I didn't always teach. I've lived on both sides of this issue. A lot of the public perception of teachers allegedly harming education comes from voter-pandering politicians who berate the educators in public while shafting them in private. I am amazed at how few of the educators I know have grown cynical.

I've known quite a few bad apples in the teaching ranks, but they're a distinct minority. By and large teachers are eager, bright people who go to school everyday to try to do the best job they can of teaching children, many of whom come from homes where the parents are not responsible and fail to provide any guidance for homework or any meaningful discipline. To millions of parents, school is only a babysitter, yet many of them have the gall to complain about the work of the teachers.

If you want to cure the problems with education in this country, I'd suggest you start in the homes. My reform agenda would be 1. family life; 2. administrators and school boards; 3. teachers.

BTW, did you know that public-school teachers in many jurisdictions
are required to take college classes or equivalent course work and to pay for it themselves during the summer -- when most of the public just thinks that they're on vacation?
2/13/2008 1:37 AM
I'll take two Unions and one lib, please.
2/13/2008 2:01 AM
"Liberal" and "conservative" are simplified labels usually applied by the speaker/writer to denote his/her politics in relation to his perception of the masses. However, even with broad parameters of those terms, it is used to synthesize the process of debate.
True, sometimes facts do not tell the whole story, but anyone with a thread of objectivity knows the difference between the "fraudulent" elections of 2000 and 1960. One "fraud" was perceived and made up (2000) by people with an agenda, the other was real and decisive (1960) and changed the country, even though most would say "for the better".
Another topic...Do you want to hear the "truth" about Valery Plame, Katrina or the 8 fired Federal prosecutors? Which one first?
2/13/2008 10:36 AM
The perception of fraud in 2000 is based largely on the bureaucratic disenfranchisement of thousands of voters -- not on the actual vote count.

Do you dispute that Katherine Harris oversaw the systematic purification of the Florida voter rosters? (Not to mention the butterfly ballots, which resulted, as Bob Klein once sardonically noted, in several hundred Jewish women voting for Pat Buchanan.)

Do you believe it was an accident that most of the affected voters appeared to be Democrats?

P.S. -- And please give us the benefit of the truth about Plame, Katrina and the Fed 8...
2/13/2008 10:58 AM
Quote: Originally Posted By doubletruck on 2/13/2008The perception of fraud in 2000 is based largely on the bureaucratic disenfranchisement of thousands of voters -- not on the actual vote count. [In other words, it isn't based on the facts, it's based on the fact that the Democrats lost]

Do you dispute that Katherine Harris oversaw the systematic purification of the Florida voter rosters? (Not to mention the butterfly ballots, which resulted, as Bob Klein once sardonically noted, in several hundred Jewish women voting for Pat Buchanan.) ["Systematic purification"? Are you claiming that the butterfly ballots were specifically designed to trick blind old biddies to vote for Pat Buchanan instead of John Kerry? Tinfoil much?]

Do you believe it was an accident that most of the affected voters appeared to be Democrats? [Do you believe that Democrats are as intelligent as Republicans? Because nobody is claiming that any Republicans were confused. How do we know no Republicans accidentally voted for Pat Paulsen?]

P.S. -- And please give us the benefit of the truth about Plame, Katrina and the Fed 8..
2/13/2008 11:20 AM
This post could not be converted. To view the original post's thread, click here.
2/13/2008 11:48 AM
There were no real "disenfranchished" voters in Florida, as most of the press, who did the re-re-re count, can begrudgingly confess if one plies them with enough alcohol. Harris was responsible for verifying the vote, which she had the guts to do, despite the volumns of hate directed at her.
Some absentee votes were not counted (most were Republican) because they came in late. They were mailed on time, but did not arrive on time. These were mostly military personnel.
If people can't discern who to "punch in", it's not the fault of the Democrats who came up with the ballot in the first place. The same people who drew up and approved of the ballot were the first in line to complain that it was so complicated that voters "punched in" the wrong guy.
Voters need to prove that they can vote and they live in the ward/area in which they are casting ballots. One needs an ID in order to cash a welfare check...and should have one to do something as important as voting. The "purification" of voter roles is a myth reconstructed by the losing party in order to vilify the opposition and to dupe the gullible American public and to cast doubt, and it obviously worked.
2/13/2008 1:04 PM
OK...the truth about the "Fed 8"
Federal Prosecutors serve at the will of the President. Clinton fired over 90 of them after he took office...nobody complained because it was his right as President and the Press, knowing full well this occurred, rarely if ever mention it.
Gonzalez actually gave a reason for firing them, which he didn't have to do. Most of the 8 were instructed, among other things, to prosecute voter fraud, they refused and instead took it upon themselves to look into Republican acceptance of gifts from lobbyists, which, to some degree, is not necessarily illegal, unless you make up a law in order to prosecute Tom Delay and apply it ex-post facto, which is what happened, despite the fact that 4 of the 5 largest amounts were taken by Democrats. This partisan use of prosecutorial power angered Gonzalez, and he fired them.
2/13/2008 1:17 PM
Lazerhawks asserts: "The "purification" of voter roles is a myth reconstructed by the losing party in order to vilify the opposition and to dupe the gullible American public and to cast doubt, and it obviously worked."

Well, you're wrong. Or you misunderstand the point I'm making. Or both.

When I have the time, I'll look up the information about what Harris and her minions did before the voting that removed potential Democratic voters from eligibility, and I'll post it -- if this thread is still in business.
2/13/2008 1:23 PM
Let me clarify...the Delay abomination was not a federal prosecution. A Democratic Prosecutor from Delay's juristiction told others he was going to "take him down". They made up a law and prosecuted ex-post facto. I was just using that as an example of gross dereliction of duty among partisan prosecutors who owe their power to a political party.
2/13/2008 1:24 PM
So, uh, Delay didn't do anything wrong?

Or are you simply arguing that he didn't do anything that some others aren't also doing and, presumably, getting away with?

So, we shouldn't have taken down Al Capone, because other gangsters were doing the same things and getting away with it...
2/13/2008 1:27 PM
Whatever you post, it'll probably be from some -wing lying blog. I'm telling you the facts. If you refuse to believe, it's OK. I was a comprehensive History major who taught History and was a public school administrator for many years until I retired. I'm currently an elected official who has worked for Republicans and Democrats. I ran as an independent and won.
2/13/2008 1:28 PM
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