just to hold all the Republicans.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202204_pf.html

Quote :

"Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general. Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm initially boasted that Abramoff could help Tyco fend off a special liability tax because he "had good relationships with members of Congress," including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.)."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/opinion/23fri2.html

Quote :

"It's long been known that the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, a man deeply involved in rewriting the nation's health-care and medical-malpractice laws, derived most of his wealth from HCA, the hospital company his father and brother helped found. [...] HCA stock, which had plunged below $20 a share back in 1999 because of a federal fraud investigation, had been climbing steadily, reaching a high of $58.22 on June 22, nine days after Mr. Frist told his managers to start selling. By July 8, all the shares of HCA held by Mr. Frist, his wife and his children had been sold. Five days later, a bad earnings report drove the price down 9 percent in a single day. Since then it has dropped even further. Mr. Frist's office claims that the sale was intended to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest as he pursued his legislative agenda. But the emergence of this concern seems strangely convenient for a man who's been pursuing the same agenda throughout his Senate career. The Securities and Exchange Commission should look into this sale."

9/23/2005 10:10:07 AM

EVERYTHING'S FOR SALE MOTHERFUCKER

9/23/2005 10:41:43 AM

It'd be funny to see Frist in jail.

An inmate might breath aids on him.

9/23/2005 11:41:05 AM

OMG THIS NATION IS RUN BY CROOKS?!!

WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?!!!

9/23/2005 3:03:53 PM

1932.

9/23/2005 3:05:15 PM

Nah, it's always been at least slightly crooked, with huge, multi-order of magnitude jumps in 1860, 1912 and 1932

9/23/2005 3:15:37 PM

TEAPOT DOME 2005 TO INFINIT'

9/23/2005 4:33:12 PM

^^^yeah, Hoover was sure doing a bang-up job, wasnt he?

your anti-anti-capitalist sentiments make you less credible

9/23/2005 11:25:15 PM

CORRUPTION AND HURRICANE CYCLES COINCIDE!!!!!!1111

9/23/2005 11:55:33 PM

^^ Who said anything about Hoover?

Hating on FDR does not imply support for his predecessor.

[Edited on September 24, 2005 at 12:07 AM. Reason : ']

9/24/2005 12:05:55 AM

Quote :

"It'd be funny to see Frist in jail. An inmate might breath aids on him"

He better not cry.

9/24/2005 12:38:20 AM

^^i just think this whole attitude of "well, FDR did some socialist things, and even if they did help, it went against the constitution and i have a boner for capitalism even if it wasnt going to save us at the time (and may have caused problems *shock!*) so im going to liken him to a crook" is shortsighted.

9/24/2005 1:35:55 AM

^^you can only get aids from sweat and tears

not from breathing

9/24/2005 2:29:42 AM

I don't know about LoneSnark's position on this, but you obviousely don't know mine.

FDR's socialism didn't help anything. In fact, he made the depression worse and managed to prolong it throughout his entire administration. And for the record, Hoover was hardly any more capitalist than Roosevelt. It was his decidedly un-laissez-faire reaction to the crash of '29 that first caused the depression to be anything more than a painful, but short-lived, market readjustment.

To quote Murray Rothbard, in his acclaimed analysis of the era, America's Great Depression:

Quote :

"Yet, government depression policy has always (and would have even more today) aggravated the very evils it has loudly tried to cure. If, in fact, we list logically the various ways that government could hamper market adjustment, we will find that we have precisely listed the favorite “anti-depression” arsenal of government policy. Thus, here are the ways the adjustment process can be hobbled: (1) Prevent or delay liquidation. Lend money to shaky businesses,call on banks to lend further, etc. (2) Inflate further. Further inflation blocks the necessary fall in prices, thus delaying adjustment and prolonging depression. Further credit expansion creates more malinvestments, which, in their turn, will have to be liquidated in some later depression. A government “easy money” policy prevents the market’s return to the necessary higher interest rates. (3) Keep wage rates up. Artificial maintenance of wage rates in a depression insures permanent mass unemployment. Furthermore, in a deflation, when prices are falling, keeping the same rate of money wages means that real wage rates have been pushed higher. In the face of falling business demand, this greatly aggravates the unemployment problem. (4) Keep prices up. Keeping prices above their free-market levels will create unsalable surpluses, and prevent a return to prosperity. (5) Stimulate consumption and discourage saving. We have seen that more saving and less consumption would speed recovery; more consumption and less saving aggravate the shortage of saved capital even further. Government can encourage consumption by “food stamp plans” and relief payments. It can discourage savings and investment by higher taxes, particularly on the wealthy and on corporations and estates. As a matter of fact, any increase oftaxes and government spending will discourage saving and investment and stimulate consumption, since government spending is all consumption. Some of the private funds would have been saved and invested; all of the government funds are consumed. Any increase in the relative size of government in the economy, therefore, shifts the societal consumption–investment ratio in favor of consumption, and prolongs the depression. (6) Subsidize unemployment. Any subsidization of unemployment (via unemployment “insurance,” relief, etc.) will prolong unemployment indefinitely, and delay the shift of workers to the fields where jobs are available. These, then, are the measures which will delay the recovery process and aggravate the depression. Yet, they are the time-honored favorites of government policy, and, as we shall see, they were the policies adopted in the 1929–1933 depression, by a government known to many historians as a “laissez-faire” administration."

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

9/24/2005 6:51:49 AM

Well, Megalo, I prefer Milton Friedman's take on the Great Depression. It wasn't all FDRs fault, the Federal Reserve Bank deserves a large share of the blame.

You don't seem to list any of the real killers of the Great Depression as I understand them:

#1 Failure to issue currency inline with gold reserves (The US gold reserve grew dramatically, but the number of dollars in circulation fell).
#2 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

9/24/2005 9:44:38 AM

You're right. Discouraging trade is hardly any way to encourage the economy. I'm surprised Rothbard left the tariff off the list. As for monetary policy, I didn't want to quote the whole book, but that's largely what it's about.

9/24/2005 11:22:43 AM

Frist is holding a press conference.

lol- "after years of holding my family's private health care co.'s stock in the senate, I suddenly decided to sell it to avoid a conflict of interest... one that had existed for eight years... two weeks before the stock tumbled... why do you all think this is fishy?"

[Edited on September 26, 2005 at 5:15 PM. Reason : .]

9/26/2005 5:11:56 PM

^^something new was needed

we recovered (w/ help from gov. regulations put in place with the war industries)

i fail to see how leaving things in the full capitalist state would have solved things, but econ majors (and fans) have such a boner for the stuff that theyll never admit the gov. has ever helped anyone, even those who procured jobs from nothing thanks to WPA.

youre only as successful as your lower classes.

[Edited on September 26, 2005 at 5:27 PM. Reason : .]

9/26/2005 5:25:57 PM