Stanford said the government action to seize his assets had left him with little money and few changes of clothing. He was forced to fly on a commercial plane for the first time in almost two decades after the government seized his fleet of six private jets.
“They make you take your shoes off and everything, it’s terrible,” he complained about the airport security that apparently came as a surprise to him.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/Story?id=7270405&page=2

That has to be either outright snark, or else written by someone who has not flown coach in the past 20 years.

And now that you are not a kid, how do you feel the current effects of Gramm-Leach-Biley of 1999?

Lefties sometimes notice the effects, but they never grasp the cause

Indeed, if there is one thing lefties are noted for, it’s their inability to get to the roots of corporate lobbying. How well I remember the endless complaints that I wasn’t being cynical enough in analyzing and denouncing the corporate purchase of government.

I think you underestimate the extent to which racism underlies the modern political ‘evangelical’ movement which has nowhere near 100 million members. Not every Christian is evangelical and not every evangelical is a fan of Pat Robertson and the rest.

For years the Republican party has courted the South through coded references to racism and racist organizations. And the ‘evangelical’ political movement was founded to exploit the same resentments.

Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ was nothing more than a cynical pandering to racism to build a governing coalition. The Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition were simply more cynical attempts to build a political platform through exploiting the same prejudices, only that time round throwing religion in as well.

I consider the last part of the strategy to be particularly contemptible. You ask for supporting facts, what supporting facts does the Pope or Pat Robertson bring to the table? They rest their claim to political and moral authority on a purported role as mediator (sole mediator in the case of the Pope) to an entity the rest of us cannot see.

By their fruits shall ye know them. Those who claim political authority for a platform of bigotry and hatred may be talking to their imaginary friend or they may be talking to Satan. I do not think it very likely that any supreme deity I would be interested in a conversation with would have much time for them.

Phill

Well, they have been impacted by deregulation—and on the whole, the benefits have been huge since the time I was a kid

Well, they have been impacted by deregulation—and on the whole, the benefits have been huge since the time I was a kid—when, for example, airlines and telecommunications were heavily regulated and, as a result, greatly over-priced. And that has happened because, unlike what it is doing with GM, the government did not intervene to subsidize and prop up the many high-cost, hidebound legacy airlines that have disappeared (to no ill effect on the traveling public).

(i.e., corporatization of the society)

The truly scary combination is corporations and government in bed together—government using corporations to reward supporters (hello Freddie and Fannie) and corporations using government subsidies and regulatory power to assure profits protect themselves from competition (ADM and ethanol, for example, or the big boon that big tobacco companies derived from the tobacco settlement). The greater percentage of GDP accounted for by government and the more accepted it becomes for government to engage in hands-on management of company operations, the worse this is all going to get.

Lefties sometimes notice the effects, but they never grasp the cause:

“Two years in Washington have started to make me feel jaded. I’ve come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough.”

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/hayes

He’s right—he’s not cynical enough. The ‘nobly conceived laws’ are generally lobbied for from the beginning by interests who fully understand how exactly they will benefit and they are forwarded by legislators supported by those interests. The ‘noble conception’ is convenient to provide cover and plausible deniability of the actual motives.

I do not understand how anybody can look at Obama’s shameful history with corn ethanol and have faith that his various green energy initiatives will also not turn out to have for more political than environmental impact.

This is considered a reasoned argument? A blanket statement containing no supporting facts, that alludes to racism by approx 100 million people. Is it not more likely that Evangelical issues with Obama are that Obama has liberal political policies while Evangelicals tend to favor conservative political policies?

As a friendly amendment to Righteous Bubba, let me ask you, slocum, to please explain how “any given American” hasn’t been hugely “impacted” already by various deregulations / privatizations (i.e., corporatization of the society) done under the free-market figleaf?

in terms of impact on ordinary lives, the expansions of government power under Obama are going to have a more pervasive impact.

No, that power is to be exercised over any company that has accepted bailout funds (and recall that some banks were coerced into accepting funds to avoid stigmatizing those that really needed it). Reportedly, to avoid government control, some banks are reportedly trying to return the funds and are meeting resistance from the Obama administration. Perhaps you don’t believe that report—but it strikes me as quite plausible that the Obama administration would not want to see banks bailing out of the bailout program. And it’s consistent with Obama’s comment to the bankers that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks (which is a bit too close to a ‘nice business you got there…’ comment for my taste).

And although so far we are talking about finance and autos, would we really surprised if government bailouts and government control were extended to more industries as the downturn continued? There are already proposals for bailing out newspapers, for example. Wouldn’t it worry anybody if the government started exercising the same level of control over the NY Times or Tribune companies as it does over GM (or would most CTers welcome that?)

So it’s still sillier now to talk about a descent to fascism now than it was when Bush was president.

Chances of any given American being declared an enemy combatant and sent to Gitmo under Bush? Somewhere on the order of 1 in 100,000,000. Chance of any given American being caught up in the war on drugs? Many orders of magnitude higher than that. Chances of any given American being impacted by government control of business? ~100%.

Talking about any of this as being equivalent to Hitler or Mussolini (or, hell, even Putin) is silly—but in terms of impact on ordinary lives, the expansions of government power under Obama are going to have a more pervasive impact.

Fact is that Obama did exactly what he said he would on stem cell, and what the vast majority of the population support. Catholic bishops can fulminate all they like, the fact is that their parishioners do not follow their political directives – if they ever did. The more Catholic a state is, the more likely it is to be Democrat. At this point Specter is the only Republican I can think of offhand who represents a state or district with a large Catholic population.

On the Evangelical side, those folk were never going to vote for Obama anyway. And at the end of the day Obama will be just as black come 2010 and 2012.

On the issue of spending, Bush proved that no Conservative voter gives a damn. He spent money without thought or care. Methinks that Hoovernomics are not an election winner.

But more than that. The way the GOP field is shaping up, Sarah Palin may well be the most credible candidate. That is why they have been trying to promote Bobby ‘Volcanoe’ Jindal.