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Ytlaya posted:The difference is that when myself or other leftist folks argue with mainstream liberals there's an actual explicit ideological disagreement there. Your "side" is the one that keeps bringing up how moving to the left might influence electoral results, so that's your choice of framing, not mine. I also have no more responsibility to defend bad leftist arguments (I'm making a distinction between "bad" and "potentially harmful" here, as mentioned earlier; obviously you should call out someone being bigoted or something) than you have a responsibility to call out Peter Daou or something (and usually the "bad" arguments in question aren't actually explicitly wrong about anything; they just don't prove their point). You don't have any responsibility to clean up bad leftist arguments, but you'd probably benefit from doing so. I'm not suggesting you defend them, I'm suggesting you attack them yourself so there's not a ton of low lying fruit around for your ideological opponents to squash. I'd suggest you read the arguments in this thread a bit more closely if you think nobody's arguing embracing "left populism" would be politically advantageous.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:04
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JeffersonClay posted:It's absolutely true in a spending on social services as a component of GDP sense. That is a very bad way to measure the strength of the social safety net. quote:How are you determining what components of their economic plans were popular so you can assert the "leftist populism" was the popular part? The enduring popularity of programs like Medicare and Medicaid, for starters. quote:What do you want a citation for? Johnson's anti communism? Reagan's attacks on Medicare as leading to a socialist dictatorship? The tight margins for medicare's passage? The massive democratic losses in the 1966 midterms? Your assertion that the Great Society would not have been possible without Johnson's anti-communism, his expansion of the war in Vietnam, etc. At this point, that is pure speculation on your part. If you want me to take your argument seriously, you need to back them up better.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:05
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This article uses spending to GDP comparisons throughout? And he's arguing that US welfare spending has never been sufficient. He criticizes calling the mortgage tax deduction a component of welfare spending but that's not the argument I'm making. I don't think you understand this article.quote:The enduring popularity of programs like Medicare and Medicaid, for starters. quote:Your assertion that the Great Society would not have been possible without Johnson's anti-communism, his expansion of the war in Vietnam, etc. At this point, that is pure speculation on your part. If you want me to take your argument seriously, you need to back them up better.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:15
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JeffersonClay posted:
Losses in the 1966 midterm elections would tend to undercut your argument that Vietnam in fact did serve to insulate Johnson from right-wing attacks? My goodness, between this and you being a hair away from back to the argument of "gross spending on social services indicates how liberal a president is," we're back to classic pure strain broke brained JC.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:17
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JeffersonClay posted:This article uses spending to GDP comparisons throughout? And then it does what you refuse to do and delves into what that actually means, why a huge chunk of that money doesn't go towards helping the poor, etc. You should probably read the whole thing before you comment on it. Go ahead, I'll wait. quote:Balanced budgets have also unfortunately maintained high levels of public support, as have tax cuts and ideological defenses of free enterprise. This is totally irrelevant. Your argument was that balanced budgets, imperialism, anti-communism, etc, are inextricably linked with left-populism. Back up your argument, please.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:19
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Guys, the only way we can have Medicare for All is if we also nuke Iran in order to quell any unpatriotic suspicions from the hard-right. It ended up working out great for Johnson.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:19
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MooselanderII posted:Guys, the only way we can have Medicare for All is if we also nuke Iran in order to quell any unpatriotic suspicions from the hard-right. It ended up working out great for Johnson. This is pretty similar to JC's previous execrable argument from the old Dems threads, ie: "you can't have left-populism without racism! If you like left-populism, you're racist!"
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Oct 9, 2017 19:22
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Populism is more a style of politics than it is a set of specific policies, and the Johnson administration is more of a high water mark for a sort of mid 20th century technocracy than it is an example of "left-wing populism" (there's a better case to be made for FDR being a "populist", though a lot would hinge on how we defined these vague terms). Today, in a very different political context, policies that once had a lot of technocratic support (i.e. regulated markets, an institutionally guaranteed space for unions, a fiscal policy that prioritized full employment and was more tolerant of inflation, universal social insurance programs that don't use means testing, substantial federal investments in poorer areas, etc) are now more popular with the masses than they are with policy makers (i.e. the technocrats). In fact, insofar as many of these programs directly cut against neoliberal policy prescriptions they can be understood as a direct challenge to the status quo, and which do so by drumming up much of the traditional rhetoric of populism (and wedding support for these programs with a larger critique of the role that money and lobbying plays in driving the policy process in Washington). What exactly makes something populist or technocratic is largely contextual, and individual policies can't be entirely divorced from your underlying theory of politics. Government provisioned social insurance was pioneered by a conservative German imperialist (albeit, in response to pressure from socialist parties who were gaining traction within the Second Reich) but today calling for government provisioned social insurance tends to be a challenge to the status quo because it cuts against the market driven logic that the mandarins of both political parties in the United States swear allegiance to.
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Oct 9, 2017 19:34
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MooselanderII posted:Losses in the 1966 midterm elections would tend to undercut your argument that Vietnam in fact did serve to insulate Johnson from right-wing attacks? Not really? Johnson wasn't on the ballot in 1966. The people who voted for Medicare were. quote:My goodness, between this and you being a hair away from back to the argument of "gross spending on social services indicates how liberal a president is," we're back to classic pure strain broke brained JC. If you've got a better way to compare the size and scope welfare systems other than spending by GDP, by all means articulate it. If the welfare state has been expanding, and Republicans have been dedicated to destroying it, then democrats must have been stopping them, right? Majorian posted:And then it does what you refuse to do and delves into what that actually means, why a huge chunk of that money doesn't go towards helping the poor, etc. You should probably read the whole thing before you comment on it. Go ahead, I'll wait. Yes, like I said, he criticizes estimates that count things like the mortgage tax deduction as welfare. He never says spending by GDP is a bad way to make comparisons, which makes sense because he uses spending/GDP comparisons throughout the piece. quote:This is totally irrelevant. Your argument was that balanced budgets, imperialism, anti-communism, etc, are inextricably linked with left-populism. Back up your argument, please. No, my argument is these were inextricably linked with FDR and LBJ's economic policies, and you can't just pretend they didnt exist when you suggest LBJ and FDR were popular due to left populism. Majorian posted:This is pretty similar to JC's previous execrable argument from the old Dems threads, ie: "you can't have left-populism without racism! If you like left-populism, you're racist!" These are not arguments I've made but maybe you should tempt fate and keep relitigating posts from outside this thread?
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Oct 9, 2017 19:47
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JeffersonClay posted:Yes, like I said, he criticizes estimates that count things like the mortgage tax deduction as welfare. He never says spending by GDP is a bad way to make comparisons, which makes sense because he uses spending/GDP comparisons throughout the piece. He points out pretty clearly why it's a terrible way to make comparisons, actually: quote:But this type of "spending" doesn't tend to go where it needs to. One of the main reasons people are poor is because society makes it harder for them to access work. So aid that's tied to employment tends to get captured by the middle and upper classes. In this limited sense, the U.S. safety net isn't "too small," it's just really horribly designed and really poorly positioned. quote:The old and new poverty rates used by the U.S. government are based on an absolute level. So if you're looking for an apples-to-apples comparison by that standard, researchers have also surveyed people in both the U.S. and other Western countries about their levels of material deprivation. Do they get enough food and clothing, can they afford rent or insurance, how is their financial situation, etc. As MooselanderII correctly pointed out, you are operating off of the flawed assumption that gross spending on social services is an accurate gauge of how robust the social safety net is. Just saying "We spend a poo poo ton of money on it!  " isn't a convincing argument that the social safety net has been strengthened - just that we spend a poo poo ton of money on it.quote:No, my argument is these were inextricably linked with FDR and LBJ's economic policies You haven't demonstrated that they were inextricably linked. You haven't shown us why the features you mentioned were either necessary by-products of, or quid pro quos for, major expansions to the welfare state. Majorian fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Oct 9, 2017 |
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Oct 9, 2017 19:55
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Majorian posted:He points out pretty clearly why it's a terrible way to make comparisons, actually: quote:Now, the U.S. does direct an enormous amount of help to people through the job market, and especially through the tax code. We may not have much housing assistance, but we have the mortgage interest deduction; we may not have single-payer health care, but we make health benefits on the job tax-free. When you include this "spending" along with more traditional safety net programs, America leaps from one of the lowest providers of aid to one of the highest. He says including the mortgage tax deduction or healthcare tax exemptions in the spending/GDP calculation is misleading, not that the comparison itself is misleading. He's happy to use the spending/GDP comparison without this spurious spending--and I'm not pointing to the mortgage tax deduction either . You're really misconstruing his argument here. quote:As MooselanderII correctly pointed out, you are operating off of the flawed assumption that gross spending on social services is an accurate gauge of how robust the social safety net is. Just saying "We spend a poo poo ton of money on it! quote:You haven't demonstrated that they were inextricably linked. You haven't shown us why the features you mentioned were either necessary by-products of, or quid pro quos for, major expansions to the welfare state. If you're making an argument about popularity--the things Johnson did that made him popular--you can't just pretend the things that are inconvenient for your narrative didn't happen.
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Oct 9, 2017 20:36
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There are more people, of course spending is higher. This is a really dumb point you're making.
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Oct 9, 2017 21:05
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JeffersonClay posted:Not really? Johnson wasn't on the ballot in 1966. The people who voted for Medicare were. Are you going to pretend that the 1966 midterm results had nothing to do with Vietnam? quote:
People here already dealt with this argument pretty thoroughly the last time you made it. I'm not going to go into it again in much detail as to why it's dumb, but needless to say it was pointed out to you that this logic means that Bush was far to the left of Clinton. You bailed on the argument after someone pointed that out to to you months ago, so chew on that for a bit. Anyways, I'm much more interested to hear arguments about how we need brutal military adventurism abroad in order to politically defend social services at home. I have to hand it to you, that's a pretty novel one.
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Oct 9, 2017 21:18
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Ytlaya posted:There are more people, of course spending is higher. This is a really dumb point you're making. More people means a higher GDP. Like I guess this effect could be important if GDP per capita had been falling but the opposite is true. Welfare spending/GDP is a metric that tells you what proportion of the economy is being spent on social services. It's allows us to compare the US and, say, Denmark, or the US today and the US in 1964, despite significant differences in population and economic output. MooselanderII posted:Are you going to pretend that the 1966 midterm results had nothing to do with Vietnam? I think they had a lot more to do with the voting rights act and fear of socialism. '66 is the year Reagan won the governorship of California, and that race didn't have much to do with Vietnam. quote:People here already dealt with this argument pretty thoroughly the last time you made it. I'm not going to go into it again in much detail as to why it's dumb, but needless to say it was pointed out to you that this logic means that Bush was far to the left of Clinton. You bailed on the argument after someone pointed that out to to you months ago, so chew on that for a bit. I disagree with your recollection of my posting history and I don't think it would be a good idea to relitigate it here. I'm not arguing that bush was to the right of Clinton, or that we need to launch wars to pass m4a. If you've got a coherent argument as to why spending/GDP is a bad metric, make it.
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Oct 9, 2017 21:59
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JeffersonClay posted:
Now I'm confused. You said earlier that going into Vietnam in fact did help Johnson stave off right-wing attacks on him, and now you're basically acknowledging that it didn't matter because fears of socialism blew out his party in 1966 anyways. It is possible that your original point, that Johnson's escalation of American involvement in Vietnam in fact serving as a defense for him for right-wing attacks, was stupid! JeffersonClay posted:
I'm also not going to relitigate it because you were thoroughly ground into a fine paste the last time you made the argument. If you're claiming that you didn't make this same argument before, well then your recollection sucks and you shouldn't swear by it. I'm not really sure how to better convey to you that your metric, that a President's leftism can be measured by social spending to GDP ratio, sucks other than to once again point to the fact that it was higher under Bush than it was under Clinton. Thus, by your metric, he would be to the left of Clinton. The fact that you did not specifically argue this point does not mean it does not rebut your dumb and bad metric. The same holds true with your dumb "aggressive foreign policy is needed to shut up the dumb right wing attacks" argument. Your failure to think your argument through is your problem, not mine.
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Oct 9, 2017 22:25
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I miss the old Dems are a waste thread. More dems being a waste, less semantic arguments where JC awards himself points for being technically correct. Edit: Ytlaya your posts are always a pleasure to read. Can we be e-friends? turtle_07 fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Oct 9, 2017 |
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Oct 9, 2017 22:32
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MooselanderII posted:Now I'm confused. You said earlier that going into Vietnam in fact did help Johnson stave off right-wing attacks on him, and now you're basically acknowledging that it didn't matter because fears of socialism blew out his party in 1966 anyways. It is possible that your original point, that Johnson's escalation of American involvement in Vietnam in fact serving as a defense for him for right-wing attacks, was stupid! quote:I'm also not going to relitigate it because you were thoroughly ground into a fine paste the last time you made the argument. If you're claiming that you didn't make this same argument before, well then your recollection sucks and you shouldn't swear by it. I'm not really sure how to better convey to you that your metric, that a President's leftism can be measured by social spending to GDP ratio, sucks other than to once again point to the fact that it was higher under Bush than it was under Clinton. Thus, by your metric, he would be to the left of Clinton. The fact that you did not specifically argue this point does not mean it does not rebut your dumb and bad metric. The same holds true with your dumb "aggressive foreign policy is needed to shut up the dumb right wing attacks" argument. Your failure to think your argument through is your problem, not mine. Im not suggesting a president's leftism can be measured by welfare spending/GDP. I'm suggesting the size of the welfare state can be described by spending/GDP. If this ratio increased during republican administrations, I think that's because democrats successfully defended the programs as enrollment increaed. I'm sorry you have such difficulty actually identifying the arguments people are making, but that's your problem, not mine.
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Oct 9, 2017 23:43
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turtle_07 posted:I miss the old Dems are a waste thread. More dems being a waste, less semantic arguments where JC awards himself points for being technically correct.
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Oct 10, 2017 00:21
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JeffersonClay posted:
And? Are you now going to pretend that the mid term election isn't a referendum on the direction of the country under the incumbent President's leadership? Is that really an argument you're willing to make? JeffersonClay posted:
This is just a bunch of pedantic nonsense without a difference and again ignores all of the points that were brought to your attention about factors that would increase the ratio and the implications it would have as to who was responsible for it. You can pretend now that you're only arguing about the size of the welfare state as some hazy means of measuring Democratic passive expansion and defense of social spending, but this is all in the context of contrasting the formation of Medicare and Medicaid, and what that meant to society as a whole in terms of the relationship people have with government services and the bold redefinition of the American welfare state to Clinton's welfare reform, which was underpinned on trying to roll back this relationship and focusing only on the deserving poor, and the ACA subsidies, which expands the safety net in the most limp and opaque ways possible. Surprise surprise, focusing on that ratio, which you hilariously simplify as only meaning "Democrats expanded social services or defended them!," paints a very incomplete picture.
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Oct 10, 2017 00:38
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Between this argument and him bringing up "the most progressive Democratic platform of all time!" again, I am wondering if JC is just nostalgic for his greatest hits.
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Oct 10, 2017 00:42
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Can someone tell me about the VA governor's race please
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Oct 10, 2017 00:51
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"We need to murder even more foreigners than Republicans do to get that sweet voter cred" shrieks JC over and over, as Republicans call his war candidate the founder of ISIS anyway and simultaneously blame Democrats for the unpopular wars because "hey they voted for it, whereas I was always secretly against it just ask Sean Hannity"
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Oct 10, 2017 00:59
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SHOAH NUFF posted:Can someone tell me about the VA governor's race please guy who voted for bush twice has stable 6-7pt lead over former rnc chair
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Oct 10, 2017 01:03
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virginia: do you seem like the type who would support a government shutdown and ruin the state's economy which is entirely built on the us government and military? no? here, have two of the three major metropolitan areas for free.
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Oct 10, 2017 11:54
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JeffersonClay posted:Im not suggesting a president's leftism can be measured by welfare spending/GDP. I'm suggesting the size of the welfare state can be described by spending/GDP. If this ratio increased during republican administrations, I think that's because democrats successfully defended the programs as enrollment increaed. I'm sorry you have such difficulty actually identifying the arguments people are making, but that's your problem, not mine. First of all, by your definition George W. Bush singing the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was one of the greatest expansions of the welfare state in decades and you should be celebrating the great work he did expanding the "welfare state". Obviously you're not going to do that because using raw spending and ignoring the actual context is incredibly stupid. But I'm honestly more interested in how you've literally changed your argument in the course of like three posts. No matter how hard you try to back track no one is going to interpret your original statement here as a narrow technical argument about the ratio of GDP to program spending: JeffersonClay posted:The social safety net is more robust today than at any other time in history. Hmmmm. Not to put too fine a point on things, but let's really drill into your choice of language here: quote:Definition of robust quote:Definition of safety net The conventional English speaking interpretation of what you said would be that the "safety net" (which isn't exactly synonymous with aggregate spending on government programs to begin with) is doing a better job than ever of keeping people out of poverty or destitution. There was absolutely noting in your original statement to suggest to the reader that you were describing program spending as a ratio of GDP - what you said was a very clear statement on how effective government actions are at shielding people from the deprivations of a market society or the vagaries of chance and circumstances.
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Oct 10, 2017 17:55
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MooselanderII posted:And? Are you now going to pretend that the mid term election isn't a referendum on the direction of the country under the incumbent President's leadership? Is that really an argument you're willing to make? 1966 was the debut of the Southern strategy. It was about race, and about using race to fearmonger about expanding the welfare state. Vietnam was still largely popular in '66, the bottom didn't drop out until a year later.  Helsing posted:First of all, by your definition George W. Bush singing the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was one of the greatest expansions of the welfare state in decades and you should be celebrating the great work he did expanding the "welfare state". Obviously you're not going to do that because using raw spending and ignoring the actual context is incredibly stupid. If you don't think Medicare part D should be counted as welfare, fine. That doesn't impact my argument at all. quote:But I'm honestly more interested in how you've literally changed your argument in the course of like three posts. No matter how hard you try to back track no one is going to interpret your original statement here as a narrow technical argument about the ratio of GDP to program spending: Here's a graph from the article Majorian posted:  The supplemental poverty measure (red line) is the one his article defends. As you can see, poverty has been trending down since the great society programs were passed, and Bill Clinton didn't cause a spike in the number of people in poverty. The 2016 supplemental poverty measure was down to 14%, the lowest ever measured. But is that because of the welfare state?  Yes. The US welfare state has never been more effective at reducing poverty than it has been this decade. The kink in this graph in '09 coincides with the deepest point of the great recession when automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance were at their highest level. The US government has literally never been more effective at shielding people from the deprivations of a market society or the vagaries of chance and circumstances than it has been this decade. That doesn't mean it's sufficient.
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Oct 11, 2017 00:25
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edit: Oh, one other thing. The fact that more people who would otherwise be poor were lifted above the poverty line by the safety net just means that more people needed the help of the safety net to begin with. This is completely unrelated to progressive governance or whatever. Also it is very likely that the number of people raised above the poverty line increased simply as a result of the poverty line gradually becoming lower and lower than it should be. I.e. if a more realistic poverty line keeps increasing over the years while the current poverty line doesn't increase properly, it means that the number of people above the current poverty line is obviously going to increase.JeffersonClay posted:Here's a graph from the article Majorian posted: A couple things, one which is a definite problem with your logic and the other which is a potential large problem: - You're attributing all variation in poverty directly to efficacy of the welfare state. This is dumb. Also, people have already mentioned that there's a significant difference between being willing to expand social welfare programs and simply maintaining existing ones. Honestly, this is a really, really stupid point you're making. Like, a lot of the time I can at least sorta understand your logic even if I disagree with it, but even most self-described centrist Democrats wouldn't make the argument you're making. There is no reason to believe that the Democratic Party of the present, if sent back in time prior to the existence of programs like Medicare, would be willing to do something that ambitious. You would have to somehow make the point that there's a fundamental difference between the implementation of those programs and the implementation of possible future programs, like some sort of UHC, etc. - There are a couple problems with using poverty the way you're using it here. One is that the poverty line has been far too low for a very long time; a considerable number of people technically above the poverty line are still very poor. It would be far more useful to look at the percent of people after adjusting for a more reasonable measure of poverty. A possible situation that could make this misleading is one where the number of people experiencing economic hardship remains the same or expands while the number of people in absolutely dire poverty decreases. I doubt this is happening (as mentioned before, there are other factors that influence poverty rate and things have likely just been more or less stagnant), but it's still a reason why this data doesn't prove your point. Also, looking at just the money people make ignores the fact that necessities like housing and health insurance have increased in price at a rate far greater than income. So even if income stays stagnant, overall quality of life decreases due to increased prices (and inflation doesn't adequately account for this, because the necessities in question make up a larger portion of total expenses for the poor and increase in price at a rate greater than net inflation). The first point here is the most important and sufficient on its own to debunk your reasoning. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 03:42
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All those  are overkill Ytlaya. The "more social spending in an administration = more leftist than" standard puts George W Bush economically to the left of FDR and LBJ. That's really all you need to say about it. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Oct 11, 2017 |
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Oct 11, 2017 11:39
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Isn't a big issue that the US spends more than enough money on social programs to be basically socialist but because so much of it goes to deliberate waste, graft and corporate welfare they get even less returns?
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Oct 11, 2017 12:03
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Inescapable Duck posted:Isn't a big issue that the US spends more than enough money on social programs to be basically socialist but because so much of it goes to deliberate waste, graft and corporate welfare they get even less returns? Let me tell you about Managed Care. State Medicaid gives companies blocks of money to pay for patient care and they get to keep whatever is saved by denying services
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Oct 11, 2017 13:22
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Nevvy Z posted:Let me tell you about Managed Care. hey now don't forget the vital roles patient abuse and neglect play in that great cosmic dance
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Oct 11, 2017 13:51
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The Muppets On PCP posted:hey now don't forget the vital roles patient abuse and neglect play in that great cosmic dance Oh hey did this get posted here yet: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights Because this lady is a loving monster.
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Oct 11, 2017 14:41
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Nevvy Z posted:Oh hey did this get posted here yet: i don't know about here, but i did post it in uspol a week or so back.
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Oct 11, 2017 15:03
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VitalSigns posted:All those Well, in that post he seemed to be trying to make the point that efficacy of the welfare state was better, not just that there was more spending.
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Oct 11, 2017 17:03
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VitalSigns posted:All those I dunno, I always learn something from his effortposts. I say keep it up, Ytlaya! (although don't expect to convince JC, but you already know that)
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Oct 11, 2017 17:21
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LMAO Reagan winning in California in '66 had enormous amounts to do with Vietnam. What was happening in Berkeley then? Huh, not sure...
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Oct 11, 2017 21:26
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Reason #1032408143 why Joy Ann Reid (and the rest of pseudo-woke twitter) needs to be launched into the sun: https://twitter.com/joyannreid/status/911582661008904193?lang=en (yes, it's from a couple weeks ago; I just heard about it from, guess what, another podcast)
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Oct 11, 2017 22:55
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Ytlaya posted:Well, in that post he seemed to be trying to make the point that efficacy of the welfare state was better, not just that there was more spending. Don't get me wrong I quite liked your post. And the discussion of how effective our spending is at relieving poverty is a very important one to have! I'm only pointing out that he's getting you off in the weeds debating the efficacy of the EITC at resolving poverty etc in order to muddy the waters about how the modern Democratic party's legislative agenda, policy proposals, and attempted deals with Republicans differ from what the party used to stand for by saying that's all irrelevant and the only thing that really matters is what federal agencies are doing during someone's administration. If they are effectively reducing poverty then the President is a leftist regardless of whether he would support creating those agencies if they did not already exist, or if he is trying to change them or get rid of them, etc. But if this is the standard that makes Barack Obama and Bill Clinton the leftiest lefty presidents in history during their respective terms, then Ronald Reagan and George W Bush and Donald Trump are also to the left of FDR which is absurd. Well maybe not so absurd to him, since he would probably greet a theoretical George HW Bush candidacy on the Democratic ticket with a sigh of technocratic relief, finally decorum and respectability has been restored and we can start fixing the economy with targeted tax breaks for industries and business.
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Oct 12, 2017 03:24
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VitalSigns posted:Don't get me wrong I quite liked your post. And the discussion of how effective our spending is at relieving poverty is a very important one to have! Yeah; like I said it's a strange point even for self-described centrist Democrats to make. The more common argument would be something along the lines of "Democrats would do better things, but they can't due to 'political realities' or Republican obstruction."
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Oct 12, 2017 04:20
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Inescapable Duck posted:Isn't a big issue that the US spends more than enough money on social programs to be basically socialist but because so much of it goes to deliberate waste, graft and corporate welfare they get even less returns? Dude, what do you think the entirety of the military budget is? It's a jobs program for white folks and "the good ones." They call it camofare for a reason.
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Oct 13, 2017 02:06
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