Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

[raja]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Analysis of the 'solution' proposed by Numerian at agonist.org

c1ue,

I'm working on a letter to my Representatives, and I'd like to include a list of "demands". This would be things I expect them to do if they want to get my vote, and that of my family and friends. I'm trying to develop a concise, easy-to-understand list. Examples would be things such as reinstating Glass-Steagall and closing the revolving door between Wall Street and government.

Could you help by listing some of the things you would demand if you were to write such a letter?

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Democrats To Seek Stunning $1.9 Trillion Increase In Debt Ceiling To $14.3 Trillion

This means that some bean counter has determined the U.S. government will need this much more debt between now and the evening of Tuesday, November 2, 2010 (the General Election date.) They don't want to raise the ceiling again until after the election.

[MarkL]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

After reading this I would have not voter for her or the other candiadate
http://news-search.clusty.com:7205/c...ging=0&cid=364

If this guy is so obviously innocent, the right solution is for him to appeal his conviction or get a new trial due to the availability of new evidence. He has tried both and been declined. This post bleeds the assumption the man is obviously innocent while tendering minimal evidence except for "the 80's." It ignores that the now-adult victims still stand by their initial claims of abuse. It also misstates that no physical evidence was found when actually the opposite is true.

I've only spent 20 minutes digging into this on Google... and have no idea whether he is innocent or or guilty, but with just this much effort I can see that there is a lot more to this story than this biased article implies. For another perspective, go here or just Google the guy.

I certainly don't know the truth, but I wouldn't be so quick to second guess the 3 judges and 3 jurys that all convicted multiple people in this trial over a year apart, the justices of the 5 appellate courts that reviewed the cases on appeal, and more recently the prosecutor and the governor that refused to free him after reviewing the evidence of the case.

[c1ue]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

I'm working on a letter to my Representatives, and I'd like to include a list of "demands". This would be things I expect them to do if they want to get my vote, and that of my family and friends. I'm trying to develop a concise, easy-to-understand list. Examples would be things such as reinstating Glass-Steagall and closing the revolving door between Wall Street and government.

Could you help by listing some of the things you would demand if you were to write such a letter?

Raja,

As with many things, asking for too much is the same as getting nothing.

I personally believe there is simply too much that needs to be done - and which is fundamentally odious to those in power - that the normal process cannot fix.

But, in terms of the existing process, here's what I would like to see:

1) Reinstatement of Glass-Steagall - the separation between banking and investment banking operations. It worked for 5 decades post Depression but was repealed in 10 years ago.

2) A commission chartered to examine the financial meltdown and empowered to press criminal charges against and all who promulgated and illegally benefitted from the bubble(s) leading to the meltdown as well as issue a set of recommendations on how laws should be changed to prevent a repeat. In general I am against quotas, but in this case there should be a clear minimum tally.

Tax policy - such as re-examination of the mortgage interest tax deduction - is far too large a scope for any single or even group of Congress-people. This unfortunately will have to await the eruption of populist rage over declining services combined with increasing taxes.

Similarly the entire insidious campaign finance reform/revolving door/regulatory capture issue is far beyond the scope of any single or group of Congress-people.

[Rajiv]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Not to nit pick, but.......

supposed Democratic shoe-in

is not quite correct see - common errors in English - Shoe-In or Shoo-In

[jpatter666]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Raja,

As with many things, asking for too much is the same as getting nothing.

I personally believe there is simply too much that needs to be done - and which is fundamentally odious to those in power - that the normal process cannot fix.

But, in terms of the existing process, here's what I would like to see:

1) Reinstatement of Glass-Steagall - the separation between banking and investment banking operations. It worked for 5 decades post Depression but was repealed in 10 years ago.

2) A commission chartered to examine the financial meltdown and empowered to press criminal charges against and all who promulgated and illegally benefitted from the bubble(s) leading to the meltdown as well as issue a set of recommendations on how laws should be changed to prevent a repeat. In general I am against quotas, but in this case there should be a clear minimum tally.

Tax policy - such as re-examination of the mortgage interest tax deduction - is far too large a scope for any single or even group of Congress-people. This unfortunately will have to await the eruption of populist rage over declining services combined with increasing taxes.

Similarly the entire insidious campaign finance reform/revolving door/regulatory capture issue is far beyond the scope of any single or group of Congress-people.

End gerrymandering -- which IMO has greatly contributed to the polarizing political environment.

But I do love the question. If you were going to pick a Top 10 list of issues/priorities to run on for the 2010 elections, what would they be?

[c1ue]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

End gerrymandering -- which IMO has greatly contributed to the polarizing political environment.

Gerrymandering is absolutely a big problem, but

1) Way out of scope for any single or group of Congress-people
2) Impossible to legislate out of existence. Districts do need to be redrawn as populations grow/shrink/shift - to remove the political calculation from this process is like doing transplants without organs.

To be clear - the reason there are 2 political parties is actually (to me) a very simple evolution of political game theory.

If you start with the assumption that politics is an exercise in gaining power, then it stands to reason that the political equation will devolve into only 2 parties if there are outside factors in the process - beyond principle.

An examination of political parties in other nations is instructive: corporatist Germany and UK are effectively 2 party systems; other nations have more and more parties until government basically is ineffectual (Italy).

[jpatter666]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Gerrymandering is absolutely a big problem, but

1) Way out of scope for any single or group of Congress-people
2) Impossible to legislate out of existence. Districts do need to be redrawn as populations grow/shrink/shift - to remove the political calculation from this process is like doing transplants without organs.

To be clear - the reason there are 2 political parties is actually (to me) a very simple evolution of political game theory.

If you start with the assumption that politics is an exercise in gaining power, then it stands to reason that the political equation will devolve into only 2 parties if there are outside factors in the process - beyond principle.

An examination of political parties in other nations is instructive: corporatist Germany and UK are effectively 2 party systems; other nations have more and more parties until government basically is ineffectual (Italy).

Hmmm....was not aware I'd been promoted to Lord of Darkness status! :eek:

I agree that gerrymandering would be very hard to undo since it would depend on career politician essentially putting their own careers at risk! I'm not sure if there is a legal precedent that could be used (i.e. use the courts to force the change)

[c1ue]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Well, how else should jpatter...666 be taken? Is that not the number of the beast?

;)

[cjppjc]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Whatever the reasons incumbents of both parties should be afraid. That's a good thing. Maybe more to come. Alot more of this would be a great thing. Now if we could get some real third party choices......

[jpatter666]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Well, how else should jpatter...666 be taken? Is that not the number of the beast?

;)

I was always of the opinion I had minor imp status..... ;)

[dcarrigg]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Martha has NO Mass Appeal

I agree with your analysis but, you ignored one critical analysis - Martha Coakley's lack of charisma or mass appeal.

Exactly. Any red-blooded person living inside the 495 belt around Boston cannot stomach her calling Curt Schilling a Yankee's fan on WBZ.

How out of touch can you be?!?!? Didn't she wonder what the near-riot conditions in the street were about when the Red Sox won in '04?

This is akin to Brutus' speech at Caesar's funeral. It is pathetic.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

If the debate falls to a single thing that needs changing more than anything else, then the best would be to impose true, free market rules on all financial instruments. I have for some months now been able to keep this point in view, on The Times, London web site as reader comments. This was one of my first posts there, last September:

From The Times, September 11, 2009


The man who fuelled Lord Turner’s attack on the City

Patrick Hosking


Paul Woolley is an unlikely revolutionary. With sober suit, silk tie and measured, thoughtful delivery, he looks and sounds like a retired City gent. Which is exactly what he also is. He was a banker with Barings years before that bank’s implosion and then founded the London arm of GMO, the American fund management group.

Now an academic, Dr Woolley is investing £4 million of his personal fortune to bankroll a London School of Economics unit whose research questions the very purpose of the City and challenges some of its most deep-rooted beliefs.

It was Dr Woolley’s research that underpinned the explosive assertion last month by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, that some banking was “socially useless”, that the City had grown too big and needed to be cut down to size and that its profits and bonuses were excessive.

Chris Coles wrote:

The problem is simply we are not operating a true free market for finance. For a true free market to operate the seller of the goods must not 1. Control the purchaser and thus exert undue influence upon that purchase; the price paid at the moment of sale. 2. Retain ownership of that which was sold. 3. Be able to in any other way influence the progress of the competitive process downstream of the original purchase. Once you permit anyone else, outside of the true marketplace to come between the two parties to the trade to speculate simply for profit made in the trade itself, rather than as a primary producer or user, you open the door to the compete abuse of the free market; where a trade is not made to purchase for actual use, but simply as a way of influencing the price to the final user. If you permit perhaps millions of trades by anyone who is not either the original seller or the final user, you introduce complex distortions to the final market price; that are not predicated by the decisions of either the seller or the final user. The market is thus distorted by speculation.

A good example of where these rules must apply is to money loans termed for less than repayment, where it will take, say, 30 years to repay the loan in full, but the rate of interest paid changes downstream of the moment of the sale of the loan; after three or five years, the rate of interest changes to a higher rate; increasing the cost of the money loaned. Changing the interest rate downstream of the sale of the loan denies all the precepts of a free market by permitting the seller to change the deal to suit their market conditions downstream of the sale. Thus the seller exerts undue influence downstream of the sale to control the market against the interests of the wider society, in particular, introducing financial instability. This is not a free market. (Taken from: The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots perspective)

September 11, 2009 11:28 AM BST

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_and_finance/article6829803.ece

And this was today:


From The Times, January 21, 2010

Mortgage costs leap as Skipton Building Society lifts rate

James Charles

Tens of thousands of borrowers face a shock jump in mortgage payments after Skipton Building Society, Britain’s fifth-largest building society, confirmed plans to raise its standard variable rate from 3.5 per cent to 4.95 per cent.

The move, to take effect from March 1, will raise mortgage repayments by up to 40 per cent for some borrowers, adding almost £200 a month to repayments on a £150,000 interest-only loan.

Skipton, with 100,000 borrowers, previously had guaranteed that its variable rate would not rise while Bank of England base rate stayed at 0.5 per cent, but it has cited a clause in its loans’ small print allowing it to ignore the promise in “exceptional circumstances”.

Chris Coles wrote:

I’ve been waiting for this to restart; changing the deal, downstream of the moment of sale, to suite new market conditions. Traditionally, a sale takes place at a very specific time; at the moment the auctioneer’s hammer falls. Bang! Sold! Why is that point of sale so important? Why has it existed for so long? We see it in very ancient communities; sometimes varied. In older farming communities, even here in the UK, we see two farmers will spit on their hands and shake. Deal! Sold! More recently, a signature of the purchaser on a contract seals the deal. Sold! Write a cheque, sold! Punch in your four digit code for the purchase by your credit or debit card, Sold! What the moment of sale does is very profound; it creates a strict point of sale, the deal being finalised. That single, very simple mechanism, defines what we all call a free market. It is the free marketplace that underpins everything we believe in when we describe our free societies. Your possessions are yours simply because everyone knows and understands that very simple principle, that moment of sale. Nothing could be more profound as this simple mechanism; it underpins our entire free market civilisation.

Yet, somehow, without realising the dangers, we have allowed banks and other financial institutions to ignore the most fundamental principle of our free societies. They change the deal downstream of that moment of sale. They refuse to act within the most basic rule of a free society and expect to be able to change the deal, after that moment of sale, to suite their own market conditions.

It is time we put an absolute stop to this malpractice. It is time to take this matter into a Court of the Law to obtain an injunction against the abuse of free market principles; moreover, principles that underpin the most basic aspect of our free society. Will someone with the necessary funds step forward to set this action into motion?

January 21, 2010

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/property_and_mortgages/article6995969.ece


So, why not?

[Raz]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

Whatever the reasons incumbents of both parties should be afraid. That's a good thing. Maybe more to come. Alot more of this would be a great thing. Now if we could get some real third party choices......

I don't see any way out of this mess without a Third Party.

The Red Party/Blue Party bull#*+t is so corrupt it's like an abscessed tooth that can't be saved.

We need a national root-canal.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Why Scott Brown won - Eric Janszen

I don't see any way out of this mess without a Third Party.

The Red Party/Blue Party bull#*+t is so corrupt it's like an abscessed tooth that can't be saved.

We need a national root-canal.

If you have the money, then you organize a third party. It isn't going to happen.

What can happen is un-elect all incumbents time after time until the scroungy bastards get the message--I don't know who here is going to live long enough to see things change, but another party regardless of whatever it espouses only place another hurdles between what people want and what gets done.