hblask

The D's thought it was a huge deal for the national race until they fell behind; then they decided it's just one governor in one state.Someone has compiled a hilarious serious of clips of this progression on YouTube, but I'm too lazy to find it right now. Even going into the night of the election MSNBC was calling it a mandate on November and a test for the mood of the country. Just a few hours later they were busily explaining why it was not an important election.

Those things are evil. One accidentally got locked in my garage last year and totally destroyed it and crapped gigantic monstrous piles of crap all over the place.

I notice the Unions are conveniently left out of the NY Times totals. How convenient.

The highest estimate I've seen for combined spending for Walker was $31M. The unions alone spent almost $18M (and raised $21M. That doesn't count Barret's spending and all the other spending on the Dem side from out of state. Walker's total does.

I don't see how a bill that treats women as children and assumes that wise bureaucrats should stand between women and their voluntary consensual dealings with others can possibly be considered "pro-women".

Yep. The losers always like being put into the same boat as the winners. I'm guessing Germany isn't so thrilled about Spain's idea.

If the government was good at that, that would be a valid point. They build the freeway system 40 years ago, and since then it's just been flushing money down the toilet on pork projects. So is the NET gain measured over 50 years still positive?Most of what the government calls "stimulus" is just pure, wasteful pork, the equivalent of digging holes with teaspoons.

The topic is public sector unions -- that is all Walker has been dealing with. So no, the private sector will not take advantage of it, unless you mean "will have more money to invest in real economic growth." The problem is the public sector unions are rigging the game. Just as corporations own Washington DC and rig the rules in their own favor, the unions own the state govts. This was the first warning that those days are ending.

So moving money from one pocket to another stimulates demand? There really is no logical explanation for that; the only attempts I heard are just hocus-pocus that counts the easily seen and ignores the unseen. "Oh look, we spent a billion dollars on the Digging Holes With Spoons Initiative, look at all the jobs!". No mention is made of the 5000 businesses that didn't hire because their taxes went up, or had to lay people off.Moving money from the productive economy to the political economy can never have a net positive effect on growth.But I don't mean to take away from Canada's success

Real world effects of "austerity".Some highlights:

The actual numbers are hard to come by, but if you count union spending, is no more than 3:1. At any rate, something like 87% of voters had made up their mind back before the ads started.

I love how, when Walker was behind, this recall election was a mandate on how horrible Walker is; once the polls turned the message became "oh, it's just because people don't like recalls." Over half of my Facebook feed is from WI; there is no ambiguity about what this election was about.The 9-1 spending thing is a myth; the unions spent tens of millions just by themselves.

It appears Walker is going to win by more than he did the first time.I guess it would be too much to expect the Democrats to get that message that wasting money on BS and giving the keys to the bank to unions is a bad idea.....

And I should add, this is why it is relevant which economic systems have produced frequent famines and which have not. A robust economy that provides plentitude for all has only occurred under one type of system.

So what, you wanted me to answer your final sentence again? I already replied to Scram about it, but here it goes in more detail: Your ability to find mushrooms has a neglible effect on the food supply. The problem in our food chain is not getting one person through one day, it is getting the millions of people in our metropolitan areas enough food 365 days per year, every year. This doesn't happen because Joe Jersey grows tomatoes in his windowbox in NYC. it happens because someone found out they could make a profit by creating a worldwide distribution network that can bring fresh ban

Over the last 100 years or so, which types of economic systems have produced massive food shortages, and which kind has adapted to rare catastrophic events?

OK, so they agree.... This is pure speculation, based on nothing whatsoever. The index has no assumption built into in regarding what people should care about. It is merely meant as a predictive tool. So the argument is that if you misundertand the Index and pull "facts" out of your ass, then the Index is no good? Uh....OK.... If they have an actual objection, they should create a non-subjective version. Or perhaps they could provide the criteria and the actual data to 20 people and combine the scores (something Heritage already does). Or, they could just snipe and say "whaa whaa I do

I provided you with a page of real world results, broken into system vs anecdotal evidence. You danced and hemmed and hawed and basically ignored the reality.But I guess you feel if you throw enough insults you can ignore stuff? Sorry, doesn't work that way. And yet, I've asked again and again for a list of 300 people -- one one-millionth of the US population -- that meets 4 conditions for inadequate care. I'd accept (documented) anecdotes. Care to guess what the count is up to? Their standard of living was still below ours when their economic crisis hit. And yet, I'm still waiting fo

It wasn't a rhetorical question, it was an important fundament question about markets. Over any given 3 month or six month or 12 month period, food is more important to 99% of the population than health care. Yet the claims of why health care markets don't work is because they are a matter of life and death. Yet clearly that is less the case for the vast majority of the population than it is for food.So why don't food producers charge $1000 for a box of rice? Why don't they gouge people, knowing their life is on the line.If you cannot provide a clear answer to such a fundamental questio

I think most of our roads could be privatized or a private-public partnership. And yes, a free market that includes congestion-level pricing is certainly scalable. The gas tax is a completely inadequate means of funding roads, and a toll system, whether private, private-public, or public, would solve most of the issues of gridlock that exist in every major city.

Can real spending per capita go down when actual spending goes up? If the population goes up and inflation is high, I guess it could.... I think what that graph is really showing is that the Bush/Obama spending binge of 2008/2009 was so insanely high that even they couldn't sustain it.What is his net change from his first stimulus dollar til now?

I disagree with the Heritage Foundation quite frequently, just as I disagree wtih HuffPo sometimes. But I'm not so ideologically blind that I just say "I disagree with them sometime therefore I get to ignore them whenever I feel like it." That seems to be your position.The point remains: if you have an actual scientific objection to their Index, or know of what that is a more accurate predictor of economic growth, provide it. This blind ideolgoue thing you are doing is way beneath you.

So you are sticking by your "I have no actual information about the Index being wrong, I just don't like the results so I will ignore them."That should make you go far in life.

You mean economically stagnant Japan that has had basically zero growth for 15 years and where pregnant women die in the street after being turned away from seven hospitals?Seriously, that's your example? LOL

If if if... if the world weren't anything like it is, then it would not be anything like it is.The existence of our current population without starvation is directly tied to the existence of major corporations doing things that you claim in the healthcare marekt they will not. The problems you discuss in medicine exist BECAUSE OF regulatory intervention in free markets. I am continuously amused by people who point to the most regulated industries -- cable, electric, education, and medicine -- as examples of why free markets don't work, while ignoring the fact that the exact same hurdles and