[Upsetter]

Up:

What would you postulate was TRs position on abortion? Gay marriage? Tax cuts in general? Just because he was not a corporations guy and did big time things for the national parks/environment does not make him a progressive. (Just as being against something like gay marriage makes you a conservative. I belive our current president is not in the affirmative for gay marriage for example.) That would be remaking history.

caveat that I have not read this thread in detail. sitting in the airport wasting time before a flight. you may have adressed this already. apologies if I missed it.

no, this thread has been pretty light on particulars. i wouldnt presume to know what TR's positions would be on the social issues of our day, except to say that they would likely be informed by a morality not quite the same given a century's time difference. Regarding other positions held by TR, you tell me if they were progressive or conservative:

Roosevelt attempted to move the Republican Party in the direction of Progressivism, including trust busting and increased regulation of businesses. Roosevelt coined the phrase "Square Deal" to describe his domestic agenda, emphasizing that the average citizen would get a fair shake under his policies. As an outdoorsman and naturalist, he promoted the conservation movement.

One of his first notable acts as president was to deliver a 20,000-word address to Congress[55] asking it to curb the power of large corporations (called "trusts"). For his aggressive attacks on trusts over his two terms he has been called a "trust-buster."

Referring to the “bad trusts” and their operators as the “malefactors of great wealth,” Roosevelt instructed his Attorney General to use the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act to break up the Northern Securities Company, a conglomerate that worked to restrict trade. In Northern Securities v. United States, the government prevailed, marking the first time the Sherman Act was effectively used to “tame” the trusts.

The Elkins Act of 1903 further strengthened railroad regulation by monitoring unfair discrimination and imposing fines. The Newlands Act of 1902 provided government assistance for western irrigation projects and in early 1903 the Nelson Amendment established the Department of Commerce and Labor as well as giving the president the right to publicize corporate wrong doing. Roosevelt used the opportunity to appoint Oscar Strauss as the first Jew to serve in a presidential Cabinet.

Roosevelt dealt with union workers also. In May 1902, United Mine Workers went on strike to get higher pay wages and shorter work days. He set up a fact-finding commission which stopped the strike, and resulted in the workers getting more pay for fewer hours.

Roosevelt helped the wellbeing of people by passing laws such as The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 and The Pure Food and Drug Act. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 banned misleading labels and preservatives that contained harmful chemicals in them. The Pure Food and Drug Act banned food and drugs, that are impure or falsely labeled, from being made, sold, and shipped.

The Hepburn Act of 1905 increased the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates. The act also imposed penalties on railroads if they sought to fight the regulation in the courts. Pro railroad senators questioned this, charging that the Hepburn Act indirectly gave the federal government the power to set freight rates.

In June 1906, Congress passed the Employer Liability Act to address workplace related injuries in the railroad industry. Job related injuries were rampant in all industries and Roosevelt’s Square Deal had called for a system of workmen’s compensation. According to Page Smith, in 1904 27,000 workers died in job related accidents and in one year 50,000 job-related accidents were reported in New York factories alone. The Employer Liability Act was declared unconstitutional on the basis that the original act failed to limit the injury liability to interstate commerce in terms of railroads crossing state lines. Congress corrected the errors and a revised bill was passed in 1908.

While the laws that created the federal income tax were passed by wilson in 1913, the wheels had been in motion for a while. the USSC battle that led to the 16th amendment took place under roosevelt's watch and he was enforcing the previous set of federal tax laws that were found to be unconstitutional. Mind you that this was a much more radical stance given where the nation was on these issues only 20 years earlier. The santa clara case that created corporate personhood in a most scandalous fashion and led to so many abuses by the RR's was in 1886.

[RFA]

Dude....what a disappointment to open this thread have it only contain 1 fucking actual comic.....false advertising...just filled up with blathering rants and walls of text.

Here is my contribution.....hoping to get picked up by the Wall street Journal as their new political cartoonist:

Party.jpg (16.77 KiB) Viewed 1972 times

[SOBF]

But that wasnt my question; you posted JJ and suggested his self-sufficiency would bring a different attitude to the Fed. I agree. The reason I posted TR is he was undeniably the most self-sufficient of all our 20th century presidents, from that perspective he was a badass. However, as you point out, TR certainly was not a conservative. So why would you think that another radically independent guy like JJ wouldnt shake things up just as much as TR did a century ago? I see no reason to think he wouldnt be just as jaded about the "establishment" as TR was, if not more, and would likely use his power to right percieved wrongs. I doubt that would add up to the conservative wet dream of tax cuts for the rich, banning abortion and gay marraige, and deregulation. Ergo, prolly just another progressive with a potentially radical agenda such as destroying corporatism...kinda like TR did a century ago.

I didn't post JJ. I only commented that I would vote for him. I was being facetious . I consider myself more of a libertarian/conservative. I don't give a shit about gay marriage. I understand some regulation needs to exist,but not the extent we have now. Caveat Emptor still applies....If it seems to good be true it is.Gotta shut down.....thunder...be back Thursday.....

[BigCliff]

tell him to bring it, bitch.





seriously, bring him over here and i'll tell him that and few more thoughts about where this country's going and about the googans running it and we'll see what he says. bring your dad over too. we'll videotape it so everyone can see what they say.

i'll have my father there too. the same shit happened to him...watched his net worth practically evaporate, but he ain't crying for daddy the government to come bail him out/save him. he can add his two cents about this cluster-fuck obama/pelosi/reid have gotten us into too. i had something similar happen to me (although not on such a grand scale) at the place i worked ~10 years back. i'll tell you that story when you bring them over.

fuck you and your holier-than-thou libtard mentality.


the best part about all this is you still don't comprehend the fact that the government can't cure all our problems and all the wrongs in the world, no matter how much taxpayer money they waste trying.

Wow.

I seriously underestimated your ability to be a classless jackass.

Its sad, really.



I never stated that he was looking for any sort of handout or complaining about the situation. I simply stated that he was still working in his 80's due to the fact that his retirement dried up because of Enron. Thanks for making shit up about him though.

And he watches Fox every night, so he's already heard all the bullshit you'd have to say. Then he'd just ask me why I conversate with such an angry liar with no respect for elders.

[m.b.]

i didn't make up anything about him...you're the one that's crying that the government should have been there to save him, not him.

that's the biggest insult of all.

i simply called your little bluff about him hitting me in the head with a shovel.





and if shit keeps going they way it's going, we're all gonna be working into our 80s.

[Trucha Del Mar]

You guys need to hug it out.

[Mattb]

and if shit keeps going they way it's going, we're all gonna be working into our 80s.

We actually agree here. If the economy stays in the tank, we're likely to see a bunch of republicans get into office in the fall - with the way those Republicans tend to run up deficits, we'll all be in trouble now.

Back on topic - Tom Toles is always good:

[m.b.]

so the democrats prove they can't get the job done, in fact they make the situation worse, and the other side should not get a chance to fix it? did we get that right?

[Mattb]

so the democrats prove they can't get the job doneovercome Republican obstructionism, in fact they while Republicans make the situation worse, and the other side should not get a chance to fix it? did we get that right?

FTFY

If the republicans were offering credible alternatives, or at least weren't behaving like a bunch of 3-year olds, then maybe it would make sense to give them a crack at it, but as things stand right now, their arguments don't pass the straight face test, and usually have no connection at all to reality ("There's no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue" and Boehner's idea of a 1 year moratorium on all federal regulation spring immediately to mind).

The people that exploded the deficit under Bush by passing large tax cuts and Medicare part D without even pretending to pay for them - choosing instead to change the pay-go rules and inserting a sunset clause to make them look less irresponsible than they really were are now howling about deficits and complaining that Obama is a free-spending radical leftist because the democrats passed a health care bill that's structured to actually bring down the long-term deficit. They'd be out with pitchforks & torches if he'd gone the Bush route and just done the whole thing via deficit spending.

Edit: More Tom Toles-

[DayTripper]

[BigCliff]

i didn't make up anything about him...you're the one that's crying that the government should have been there to save him, not him.

that's the biggest insult of all.

No, my point was that sufficient oversight would have prevented the now infamous meteoric rise and black hole crash of Enron from happening in the first place.

But I also realize that like the Deepwater debacle, its the kind of clusterf'k that you can't know is possible until it happens, because nothing like it has ever been done before. But the fact that such things keep happening when we assume "private corporations will do what's right" is why I think looking the other way is asking for trouble.

For example, think about the problems we would have if the FDA worked like the MMS model established in the Bush Admin. (not trying to pin it all on Bush, but its simple fact that this is a part of the government that Obama hadn't gotten around to revamping because he was focused on other things) How many people would be dead if Merck ignored safety protocols, etc like BP has been shown to have done?

I don't expect to hear it from you, but given your knowledge and experience, and honest answer would be very worthwhile.

[m.b.]

the FDA is a bureaucratic clusterfuck that is as corrupt as any government agency out there. there are several very good medications from several manufacturers that are approved in every country of the world but the US, that have done phenomenally well and helped thousands, if not millions, of people. they haven't been approved in the U.S. because the right wheels haven't been greased.

but keep showing us what you (don't) know.

if merck ignored safety protocols and a few people died they'd be out of business. a healthcare/drug company that gets the reputation of killing a few people doesn't last very long (especially in a country that's run by lawyers). that's the way the free markets work...most people don't need the government to tell them what to do. unlike big government liberals, the people that run these companies understand this.

it's funny you bring up merck for your example though... you remember a great drug called vioxx? remember what happened there? multi-billion dollar drug that was voluntarily (that means without the government even suggesting they do it) pulled from the market. merck's biggest seller ever, and they pulled it on their own. many people (myself included) believe that it should still be on the market albeit with a black box warning re: maintenance therapy.

why did merck pull it? they found out there were increased risks, and perhaps deaths, associated with it so they yanked it out of fear of what would happen - lawsuits and a bad public image that would put them out of business. they realized that if they did what the largely ignorant public thought was right, it would look better for them in the long run. pulling vioxx also killed arcoxia, the "2nd generation vioxx" that the company had spent billions developing and was about to launch.

next time try using an example that doesn't perfectly illustrate my point.


you need more examples? do some homework on PhRMA and get back to us on what purpose they serve (hint: you won't find it on their website).







and you can't pin any of the deepwater horizon shit on Bush. Obama himself admitted that he was responsible. do you need me to bump that link up again? i know upsetter dudn't want that one coming back.