Whenever “progressives” start trying to argue “logic”, my ears perk up. Because it’s virtually inevitable that no logic will ensue.
Myles Spicer- blurbed as a “retired ad agency executive” – proves that advertising is about emotions, not logic:
Clearly, the greatest threat to the reelection of Barack Obama is the economy — the struggle to create more jobs.
Polls confirm that only 37 percent of Americans believe Obama is improving the economy. Fueling those doubts is the conservative rant about job creation.
Now, I’m no retired executive, but I’m going to guesss that “fuelling those doubts” is the fact that 9% of us are out of work, as many more are underemployed or checked out completely, we’re paying $4 a gallon for gas and more for heat and food prices are zooming and our mortgages are underwater and used car prices, or used parts to fix our beaters are out of sight due to “cash for clunkers” and our retirement accounts are shrinking and taxes are rising and those of us who have jobs are being told our companies may drop our health insurance and our local governments are jacking up property taxes to buy electric cars and artistic water fountains even as food prices zoom upward thanks.
Just saying.
Trouble is, this rant is inconsistent with their other rants — like the one that holds “government doesn’t create jobs, only the private sector can.” And there’s also their contention that jobs are created by the wealthy, who must be stimulated and rewarded to do so.
Spicer is, himself, inconsistent with the liberal rant that “laws are for peasants”.
Wait – that’s not a standard rant?
Either are “government doesn’t create jobs” and “only the wealthy create jobs”. Conservatives know government can create jobs; they’re just not sustainable, except via ratcheting up taxes.
Entrepreneurs? They create sustainable jobs. Entrepreneurs don’t have to be wealthy – they’re frequently not – but then, what’s the point of doing all that work without the chance of becoming wealthy?
Anyway – whenever “progressives” think they’ve found they found a hole in the logic of the free market, it’s hard to stop yourself from going “oh, that’s so cute and precocious”:
This leaves a gaping hole in conservative logic when they blame Obama for the weakness in our economy.
The mantra of Republicans and conservatives has always been to bless the private sector and urge government to “get out of the way, and let capitalism work.” Great! Then where are the jobs?
It has been the private sector (not government or Obama) that has brought us to this malaise, if not crisis, and it is the private sector that is not helping us out of it.
In Mr.Spicer’s special little world, the government never inflated the mortgage bubble by socializing the risk, forcing Fanny and Freddie to underwrite most of this nation’s mortgage market, to “promote home ownership”.
Never happened, Winston.
Conservatives claim that government interference, especially taxation, is impeding our recovery; they just have no basis in fact. There is nothing at all that is preventing, obstructing, retarding or impeding American business from creating jobs … except American business itself.
Taxes have been lower than ever. Interest rates are low. Regulation is generally lax.
Three statements so vague as to be meaningless. Some taxes are low,and many others are not. Interest rates are low, but paradoxically credit is difficult to get. Regulations are lax, unless they aren’t.
Republican administrations ran the government for eight of the past 10 years. Major American corporations are loaded with cash, but they have learned that they can scrape along with higher productivity by stressing their existing staff rather than adding jobs.
One wonders how Mr. Spicer ran his “advertising agency”. “Sure, things are slow – let’s hire lots of designers, so we’ll be ready when the work picks up!”
Conservatives and the business community claim that “uncertainty” is harming job creation. Give me a break.
If you think today’s environment is “uncertain,” you did not live in the Depression. You missed World War II. You forgot about the times when mortgage rates got up to 20 percent. You skipped the turmoil and discontent of the Vietnam War.
In fact, in the context of history, today’s times are more tranquil and predictable than most. “Uncertainty” is a cop-out.
What a boss Mr. Spicer must have been. “You think shaving the 401K contribution is bad? No,the Donner party was bad! The sinking of the Titanic was bad! Oh, Auschwitz! That was bad!
One needn’t “forget” bad times to observe that times are bad.
What, then, about the claim that taxes are job-destroyers? We have, in fact, been operating under all the previous Bush tax cuts for 10 years now (the lowest in decades), and look where that has taken us.
I’m predicting “to gusts of non-sequitur”…
Deficits have soared, no new taxes have been imposed, yet the wealthy among us seem not to be creating the promised jobs.
Ah. Because times are fantastic!
Rubbish. As peoples’ personal finances are dragged down by their plummeting home values and skyrocketing cost of living, consumer spending is in the tank.
Who – besides Mr. Spicer, apparently – would break the bank hiring right now?
No, I’m not putting words in his mouth:
However, there is one area where government actually can create jobs: within the government itself. But here again, conservative policies have actually created unemployment.
Mr. Spicer seems unable to recognize the difference between a horse that pulls the cart and a horse that sits on the wagon, depending on another horse to pull the cart.
Solutions are complex, but doable. But demonizing government and blaming President Obama, as conservatives are doing (especially the early Republican presidential candidates), is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst, and destructive.
Well, he got the “solutions are complex” bit right.
The rest? “Shut up, peasants! The State is your mother!”
Thanks, but no.
William F. Buckley, Jr., the sainted Godfather of the modern Conservative movement, often employed reductio ad absurdum to counter this sort of illogic. If raising the minimum wage to $7.00/hour is not only good but cost-free to society, why not make it $100 and we’ll all be rich?
Taxes don’t affect businesses decision to hire? Great, let’s raise the income tax to 105%. For every dollar you earn, you owe us the entire dollar plus a nickel for the privilige of engaging in your hobby. Now, will that tax scheme make people more or less likely to start a business?
Regulations don’t affect people? Great, let’s adopt a rule that every employee hired after 1-1-12 must be given 26 weeks of paid vacation per year at times chosen by the employee. Now, will that regulatory scheme make businesses more or less likely to hire new people?
Once we get people to concede that taxes and regulations do, indeed, affect businesses and thereby employment, we can talk about whether the present level of taxation and regulation are too little, too much, or just right to create the optimum conditions for business success and employment gains. That decision has nothing to do with the actions of past administrations, racism, ego, political party identification. Unless we make it so.
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Being on the left means living in a storybook, fantasy world. I used to be on the Left until a realized that their world view is based on lies and Utopianism. Mich takes his Ginsu knife to Myles Spicer’s rediculously…well…Utopian narrative and shreds it pretty well. It’s not that we are right, it’s that no one hears our side of the argument thanks to the power monopoly of the MSM. The conservative movement needs a serious media strategy.
Mitch Berg Fox News contributor!!! Ya, baby!!!
When I read this piece in the Strib, I just assumed they got punked into carrying an Onion parody.
Would that be the same Fox news that misrepresented the studies on felons voting, got the snow plow slowdown wrong, reported the ice cream bribing of high school students…oh, yeah, wrong, and lets not forget them being stung by James O’Keefe on the ACORN story, or too many others to list here.
The right wing goes in for wacky conspiracy theories, not a fact based world view. My best laugh yesterday was this one:
http://uncommonsqualor.blogspot.com/2011/06/thuggery-from-dept-of-education.html
which got everything wrong. It was a case of the IG going after wire fraud and other crimes.
But heck, if Mitch is such an excellent factual reporter…….why no story here about Chris Pettengill, sponsor of David Strom’s show making a plea bargain for 10 years in jail for defrauding investors?
I can’t wait for the next two (alleged) co-conspirators to be indicted, including for crimes during the period of time that Pettengill and Durand were using funds that appear to have come in part from the scam to fund the Strom show, and the investment seminars in which Strom participated.
Because you are all such GREAT investigators on the Right, and such Clear Thinkers….yeah….right…not.
What nitwits like Mr. Spicer don’t ever, ever seem to understand is that yes, government can create jobs, but it must do so at the expense of someone else. The government is tearing up my street right now. Jobs! But they aren’t selling anything, and the street was already there.
Shorter Dog Gone: Squirrel!
tl;dr
When government grows to the point of taking up all resources and sucking the oxygen out of the economy, Mr. Spicer will breathe easy. When the Huns come and take his property for the betterment of the state, he will come over to our side.
Until then, he – like so many committed to government solutions – is a lost cause. Let him speak. His dimwittedness is a beacon to cockroaches everywhere and a validation that truth can be ignored, but never denied.
“Diagnosis: Incoherence”
Dog Gone Says:
June 14th, 2011 at 7:46 am
Some things speak for themselves.
“Incoherence” was the perfect title for both this post and DG’s comment.
My eyes are still smarting from the smoke generated by the strawmen Spicer set on fire. We can all smell those. What is more egregious are the factual misstatements. If I were vindictive, I’d call them lies.
Here’s one: “On the federal level, civilian employment is actually several hundred thousand less than it was 20 years ago in the conservative-hallowed Reagan years. [so far, true:275,000 less. But not reduced by the current administration. The reductions started during Bush I and continued during Clinton through Bush II. During that time both parties had their hands on the tiller.]
At the state and local levels, governments are seeing sizable reductions in employment. Since the beginning of 2008, some 375,000 government jobs have been eliminated, according to the Labor Department.” [Whopper of an untruth! More jobs “created” than destroyed.]
According to the US Office of Personnel Management the total number of non-military Federal Employees in 2008 was 6,962,000. In 2009 the number was 7,270,000. I make that to be an INCREASE of 308,000 jobs.
Here’s the link for someone to read to Dog Gone: http://1.usa.gov/mm7dfh
The reality is: the number of Federal employees by itself doesn’t mean diddly squat to the overall unemployment picture. We can’t spend our way out of recession, just as the US didn’t recover from the Great Depression through Keynsian stimulation. The “uncertainty” of WWII, as Mitch points out elsewhere, created jobs because the world needed arms and supplies to defeat Hitler. No more employing 10,000 men with shovels to dig holes where ten bulldozers would have worked. But the work was done by the private sector, not regulatory drones in Washington.
DG,
Would you be the same DG that misrepresented the investigation of the snow-plow story as a conclusion, that declared victory for Kloppenberg before the recount was really started, stated “Reagan Increased Taxes” as an absolute, declared against all rational evidence that he hadn’t much to do with ending the Cold War, claimed that Glenn Beck called for the “poisoning” of Nancy Pelosi, claimed that conservatives were motivated by hate, claimed that Monty Jensen had a long history as an anti-government tax-protest advocate, blamed Wisconsin’s operating budget deficit on a GOP majority that had just taken office, called conservatives “dumb” on the basis of specious push-polling, convicted Tom Hackbarth of stalking based on innuendo and assumption, and…
It’s yet another logical fallacy, the “Tu Quoque Ad Hominem”; “If you’ve ever erred, or have been inconsistent in your argument – or any argument – then it undercuts your argument”. It’s illogical, it’s nonsense…
…and it’s a stock in trade among leftybloggers.
But heck, if Mitch is such an excellent factual reporter…….why no story here about Chris Pettengill, sponsor of David Strom’s show making a plea bargain for 10 years in jail for defrauding investors?
DG, I’ve asked you this several times, on this blog and privately; what in the living breathing hell is your fascination with the “I notice you are silent on…” something utterly unrelated to anything I’m writing about that seems to fascinate you?
It’s a form of “when did you stop beating your wife?”, only not nearly as logical or rhetorically astute. There is NOTHING about writing a blog that obliges me to cover everything, especially everything outside of my sphere of interest.
Financial crime doesn’t much interest me, especially inasmuch as I presume all financial advisors are crooks anyway (Roosh and First Ringer specifically excepted).
At any rate – flog your agenda on your own blog, please. The threadjacking
is getting oldwore thin years ago.Log on to Penigma for a Dog Gone exclusive, an exhaustive expose of the fraudulent “Flying Spaghetti Monster”, and the bloggers who perpetrate this myth.
Oh, and Mr. Spicer is still a nitwit, but don’t expect any FACT CHECK on that topic.
Why does a guy with Spicer’s profile (http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/myles-spicer) support Obama? Obama’s revolving door policy regarding Wall Street lobbyists is no better than Bush’s, and at least Bush went before congress and asked before he started a war.
Wait a second! Spicer does not support Obama! (http://www.startribune.com/opinion/otherviews/117970659.html), at least not anymore!
He was terribly wrong about Obama, but he is sure that this time he is right about those mean ol’ conservatives causing unemployment. He is absolutely positive that this is true.
Conservatives know government can create jobs; they’re just not sustainable, except via ratcheting up taxes.
Small quibble: when government does its job and creates an environment in which the market is not unfairly manipulated or monopolized (e.g. the Robber Barons, Standard Oil, and GE today) nor over-regulated with government mandates then it does create jobs and those jobs are sustainable, it’s just that most of them are not in government but rather in productive businesses participating in the market.
But the government can certainly destroy jobs, and the EPA is on a crash program to do so. Just imagine what raising the price of electricity generation 75-100% locally will do to disposable income, not to mention all the jobs lost in the coal mining and railway transportation industries when the EPA rules on coal power plants are rolled out in the next year or so.
But heck, if Mitch is such an excellent factual reporter…….why no story here about Chris Pettengill, sponsor of David Strom’s show making a plea bargain for 10 years in jail for defrauding investors?
DG, why aren’t you posting on the REALLY important topics like why the Symmetry Principle is violated in the preponderance of matter vs. anti-matter? Is it k-muon decay asymmetry or some other cause?
I guess you’re not a excellent factual reporter dealing with the big issues of the day in a balanced mater either.
Squirrel!
“. . . why the Symmetry Principle is violated in the preponderance of matter vs. anti-matter?”
Obviously the early universe was anisotropic on scales smaller than the planck distance. Duh!
The more interesting question is why the universe is homeostatic given the known matter/anti-matter asymmetry.
I blame Dark Matter. Was that racist?
Personally I would like Dog Gone to explain the biological science that supports the term “sexual orientation”. Perhaps this would clarify why it is that a heterosexual may at any time discover that they were actually born homosexual, but it is not possible for a homosexual to discover that they actually born heterosexual.
My head hurts after reading such a piece and is only compounded by DG’s threadjacking. I think it would be a good thing if we ignored anything she says not related to a post (ie just about everything). Why don’t liberals understand economics. government= destroying/redistributing wealth; private sector= creating wealth that didn’t exist before. What the hell is SO F***ING hard to understand about that!?!?
Terry;
Nice! I’ll bet DG’s pea brain is rattling around in her head trying to form a rebuttal to that one!
Obviously the early universe was anisotropic on scales smaller than the planck distance.
The problem with that hypothesis is that it is about as provable as the “logic” of a liberal. In other words, having reached the Planck distance (our “logical conclusion of a liberal argument”) getting beyond that is impossible to observe since any photon of sufficient energy to resolve that distance will instantly create a black hole that would swallow the photon (in our present analogy this is trying to use logic to follow how a liberal actually came to their allegedly logical conclusion — applying logic to something essentially illogical and following no set rules leads itself to something illogical.)
I realize it’s a bit unfair to mention logical reasoning in the same breath as Dog Gone as the two have so little in common but . . .
A made certain claims.
B rebutted those claims.
C applauded B.
D (Dog Gone) objected to C’s applause.
Dog Gone has NOT rehabilitated A’s claims, hasn’t addressed them, didn’t even try. Therefore, we can conclude either (1) that Dog Gone agrees with B: A’s claims are false; or (2) that we don’t know if Dog Gone agrees with B because she completely missed the point of this column and wasted everyone’s time with senseless drivel.
I opt for (2).
Ben wrote:
“hy don’t liberals understand economics. government= destroying/redistributing wealth; private sector= creating wealth that didn’t exist before. What the hell is SO F***ING hard to understand about that!?!?”
Ben, read Spicer’s piece. The man is an idiot. He thinks that times are tranquil in the business world, and the incentive to grow your business and hire people has never been greater. Spicer also seems to believe that businesses know that Obama’s policies are goood for them, but they oppose them because they are greedy. No, wait, that doesn’t make sense. Frankly, I don’t know why Spicer thinks that businesses know that it makes economic sense for them to hire more people but they refuse to do it anyway.
FYI, as a “retired owner of an add agency” (I don’t think that construction is very clear) Spicer does not earn wages or pay income or payroll taxes.
Obama’s Energy-Efficient Buildings Initiative Will Create 114,000 Jobs, New Report Finds (http://s.tt/12EO2)
When I read bullshit like this I wonder why India and China have to export material and manpower to the US to employ their people. Surely they could create jobs by upgrading their infrastructure to make it more energy efficient, just like we do, can’t they?
This is more Keyensian “increase the aggregate demand” voodoo economics, because it worked so well in 2009.
Perhaps this would clarify why it is that a heterosexual may at any time discover that they were actually born homosexual, but it is not possible for a homosexual to discover that they actually born heterosexual.
In addition, explain to us how/why nature would create an organism that wasn’t intent on (let alone capable of) perpetuating its own species. Two men cannot procreate a child.
Dog Gone, I am glad to hear that you finally admitted that you were the fool when you voted for Obama (The. Worst. President. Ever.) I am also pleased to hear that you have finally come to your senses and started opposing abortion, gun control, and homo marriage!!!!
Obama’s Energy-Efficient Buildings Initiative Will Create 114,000 Jobs, New Report Finds
Along the similar line of thinking if the federal government orders off-duty police officers to break windows, it will “create jobs” in the sense that someone will need to be hired to fix them.
“B because she completely missed the point of this column and wasted everyone’s time with senseless drivel.”
In other words, everyone on this thread is now dumber for having read Dog’s post!
Imagine a regular reader of Penigma. They would be qualified for a position in the Obama administration.
Thorley Winston, the link to that story goes to a pro-green site, but AP carried the same story with the same notable lack of challenge. Obama’s claims were repeated without question.
Imagine the AP reporting if McCain had won in 2008, instituted tax cuts that he swore would keep unemployment no higher than 8%, and two and a half years later he had made a speech demanding more tax cuts to help solve unemployment that was stuck at over 9%.
This, of course, is the same mainstream press that spent thousands of man hours and thousands of column inches doing a deep reading of the emails of a former governor and VP candidate who is not running for office and has no scandals attached to her name.
Obama’s Energy-Efficient Buildings Initiative Will Create 114,000 Jobs, New Report Finds
Now, now, Terry, it’s true that 114K jobs will be created. But the subsidies, taxes, and artificial market manipulation necessary to support those positions will destroy 230K jobs if the Spanish experience is any guide.
If only we had followed the fine example of LearnedFoot.
The problem with that hypothesis is that it is about as provable as the “logic” of a liberal.
To be honest I think “anisotropism on scales smaller than the planck distance” is more Lewis Caroll than Albert Einstein. Still, it sounds more scientific than “God’s breath moved over the face of the waters”.
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