Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] what is "a conservative"?

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Vern Green wrote:

> I am not sure how much of the debt can be layed at Ronald Reagan's feet. 
> He had a democratically controlled congress, and in our system of 
> Government the congress has the purse strings. Most modern conservatives 
> will say the same thing. It was always Reagan's perogotive to veto 
> spending bills which he did do on occasion.

Reagan was President and as President he has a lot of control over defense 
spending.  And it was in defense spending that he blew all that money. 
Other kinds of spending were well controlled.  He was still working the 
old Cold War scare tactic about Russian supremacy in number of bombs, 
bullshit like that to take our money and give it to his rich bomb-making 
friends.  He also tried to promote insane schemes like the Strategic 
Defense Initiative, that was clearly doomed to fail, at least at that 
time.


> Everyone likes to give credit to Bill Clinton for eliminating the 
> deficit, but don't forget that he did that with a Republican congress, 
> again that stands up to the concept that a conservative wants to control 
> spending.

There is some truth in that.  Gridlock is good.


> Enter Bush, Bush has been the most fiscally liberal republican president 
> in history, additionally, he has expanded Government something most 
> conservatives do not stand for. The department of Homeland security was 
> a waste of money and resources in retrospect for instance.

The reason is, no gridlock.  Republicans controlled House, Senate and 
Executive and this allowed them to give money to their supporters at our 
expense.  They will get some of the money back in terms of campaign 
contributions.

Maybe we can define "conservative" as someone who thinks that the money of 
non-conservatives should be conserved and spent by conservatives in an 
attempt to promote conservatism.


> > My view is that doubling the national debt in 8 years is not 
> > conservative, so I don't understand the current definition.
>
> I agree, but no one has claimed that the democratically controlled 
> congress in the 80s nor the present administration is conservative.

No one has claimed that Bush is conservative?  Yes, they have, probably 
millions of times.


> I don't disagree, but there are a lot of spending bills that are passed 
> that have nothing to do with the pork to an individual congressman's 
> state. Those bills are the ones I think require more scrutiny. The 
> upcoming stimulus package is one of them. No representative wants to be 
> on the wrong side of a bill, but sometimes they should be on the wrong 
> side.

They have schemes for tacking little bits of pork onto bills. 
Apparently, when there is a big fight over a bill, they tack a little 
piece of pork onto it for everyone who dissents until the bill is 
pork-laden enough that it can pass.  In other words, votes in House and 
Senate can be bought, and are regularly bought, and this is how business 
is done.

When they refer to "laws and sausages" and "seeing how the sausage is 
made," maybe that's partly because pork is so important in both processes!

Mike

_______________________________________________
discussion mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/discussion