Romney vs. Obama

Would the Keystone XL pipeline cross and jeopardizes sensitive environments?

2012-03-10T05:59:00.001-08:00

We have to balance environmental needs with business needs
The oil came from the ground. It was in contact with moisture. If it spilled back on the ground or in the water it could be cleaned up. We are not creating something that is evil and never existed before, we are extracting it and moving it from one place to another. The dirt that it was in is no less sacred than the dirt that it crosses. We are just cleaning up the dirt that it came from! Think of extraction just as a large clean up and transportation project.
We already have roads, cities, houses, gas stations, factories in Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. We can't just wall of these states, and declare them national wildlife preserves.
We already have gas trucks driving across the same rivers that the XL pipeline would cross. They pose just as much a threat as the XL pipeline would.
Pipelines are safe. They are inspected, have standards, codes, inspectors, regulations, etc. They have been operating safely for many years and many miles. Pressure is monitored. Metal thickness is inspected.

Labor unions often encourage inefficiency

2012-02-15T19:31:00.001-08:00

A former running back from the University of Arkansas named Bruce Lee ran the western region for the United Auto Workers, and was in charge of the Fremont Union Local 1364. Now normally, somebody like Bruce Lee is supposed to defend his union members no matter what. But even he says they were awful.

Bruce Lee

It was considered the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States. And it was a reputation that was well earned. Everything was a fight. They spent more time on grievances and on things like that than they did on producing cars. They had strikes all the time. It was just chaos constantly.

Jeffrey Liker

The Fremont, California plant for General Motors was bad by GM standards, and GM's average was bad by Toyota standards, so this is the worst among the bad mediocre plants in GM.

Frank Langfitt

Again, that's Jeffrey Liker, who's interviewed workers and management at Fremont for his research.

Jeffrey Liker

One of the expressions was, you can buy anything you want in the GM plant in Fremont. If you want sex, if you want drugs, if you want alcohol, it's there. During breaks, during lunch time, if you want to gamble illegally-- any illegal activity was available for the asking within that plant.

Frank Langfitt

Sounds like prison.

Jeffrey Liker

Actually the analogy to prison is a good analogy. Because the workers were stuck there, because they could not find anything close to that level of job, and pay, and benefits, at their level of education and skill. So they were trapped there. And they also felt like, we have a job for life, and the union will always protect us. So we're stuck here, and it's long term, and then all these illegal things crop up so we can entertain ourselves while we're stuck here.

Rick Madrid

A lot of booze on the line. I mean, it was just amazing-- and as long as you did your job, they really didn't care.

Frank Langfitt

What kind of booze, what were people drinking?

Rick Madrid

Whiskey, gin.

Frank Langfitt

That's Rick Madrid. He began working at the plant in 1955. He mounted tires on Chevy trucks.

Rick Madrid

When I was mounting tires, we'd drink. You know, I'd bring a thermos of screwdrivers with me. But I never was into drugs.

Frank Langfitt

Sex?

Rick Madrid

Love it.

Frank Langfitt

Did you ever have sex at the plant?

Rick Madrid

Yeah.

Frank Langfitt

Frequently?

Rick Madrid

I wasn't that fortunate.

Peter Ross

There was a guy in there, he would be selling the pot.

Frank Langfitt

Peter Ross repaired machinery on the assembly line at GM.

Peter Ross

I'd be walking through the plant with my tools and my radio. You see a big cloud of smoke, you don't want to inhale it, you'd get a contact high.

Frank Langfitt

If you're wondering how people kept their jobs, well, back then the UAW was still quite powerful. Under the union contract, it was almost impossible to fire anybody, and if management ticked off the union, workers could just shut the plant down in minutes.

With that sort of leverage, absenteeism became absurd. On a normal day, one out of five workers just didn't show up. It was even worse on Mondays. Billy Haggerty worked in hood and fender assembly. He says so few workers showed up some mornings, management couldn't start the line.

Billy Haggerty

They brought a lot of people off the street to fill in when they didn't have enough people.

Frank Langfitt

Who would they find?

Billy Haggerty

Right across the street to the bar and grab people out of there and bring them in.

Frank Langfitt

Workers filed grievances-- formal complaints against management-- over all kinds of things. Someone who isn't your boss asks you to clean something up? Hit him with a grievance. A manager steps in to do a job that isn't his? Grievance. The strategy was simple. Pile up grievances real or imagined by the thousands, then use them to squeeze money or concessions out of management.

And Fremont workers struck back at their bosses in other ways. They'd intentionally screw up the vehicles. Put coke bottles or loose bolts inside the door panels so they'd rattle and annoy the customer. They'd scratch cars. Richard Aguilar inspected vehicles at the plant. He saw one guy do something even worse.

Richard Aguilar

He left some loose bolts on the front suspension. That was dangerous. I went and told the system manager right away. They went out there and they checked, and there was like 400 cars he had done that to. He was mad because they had suspended him for drinking.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/transcript

We should prohibit unions from using dues automatically deducted from paychecks for political purposes

2012-02-15T19:14:00.001-08:00

Explanation:

Prohibits Political Contributions by Payroll Deduction. Prohibitions on Contributions to Candidates. Initiative Statute. Restricts union political fundraising by prohibiting use of payroll-deducted funds for political purposes. Same use restriction would apply to payroll deductions, if any, by corporations or government contractors. Permits voluntary employee contributions to employer or union committees if authorized yearly, in writing. Prohibits unions and corporations from contributing directly or indirectly to candidates and candidate-controlled committees. Other political expenditures remain unrestricted, including corporate expenditures from available resources not limited by payroll deduction prohibition. Limits government contractor contributions to elected officers or officer-controlled committees. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Increased state implementation and enforcement costs of up to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, potentially offset in part by revenues from fines.

Reasons to agree:

Money in politics should be freely given. The current system is not fair, because unions have access to money they can steal from their workers paychecks. It is bad enough that government takes taxes from your paycheck. It is OK for the government to take money from dead-beat-dads, but unions shouldn't be able to just steal a portion of worker's paychecks. "Paycheck protection" is a good thing.

We should require all union elections to use the secret ballot

2012-02-15T18:49:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Secret ballots are good because people can't threaten you to vote a certain way. A non secret ballot means nothing, but that thugs are running things. A non secret ballot is an affront to freedom.

Images that disagree

Santorum is against contraception

2012-02-15T17:53:00.001-08:00

Check out the quote below. Even if you agree with him, please tell me
that you know this guy can't get elected, right?

One of the things I will talk about that no President has talked about
before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the
whole sexual libertine idea. Many in the Christian faith have said,
"Well, that's okay. Contraception's okay."

It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm
that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to
be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are,
yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative. That's the
perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of
that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's
not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then
you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why
can't you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it
becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And
that's certainly a part of it—and it's an important part of it, don't
get me wrong—but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this
is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Again, I know most Presidents don't talk about those things, and maybe
people don't want us to talk about those things, but I think it's
important that you are who you are. I'm not running for preacher. I'm
not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues.
These how profound impact on the health of our society.

http://swampland.time.com/2012/02/14/rick-santorum-wants-to-fight-the-dangers-of-contraception/

Obama miss managed the stimulus

2012-01-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Obama hurried the stimulus through congress to fast.
There was too much pork in the stimulus bill
If the stimulus was a jobs creation bill, it would have been more efficient to just give the money to people. One gave the Department of Homeland Security $200 million todesign and furnish its new headquarters. Smaller amounts went to everything from an “eco-passage” for helping turtles cross a Florida highway to the collection and documentation of ﬂowers and plants in Ohio.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 3

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 3

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change. Also help me brainstorm the following for each belief:

Allowing millions of people into our nation without any paperworks poses a very real security issue

2012-01-08T12:52:00.001-08:00

Reasons

To agree:

People from Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Iran can all just get 1 way flights to Mexico, and walk into our country. (Reasoning score: 1)

Tax money should not go to provocative art

2012-01-08T12:50:00.003-08:00

Reasons to agree:

It is wrong to use taxes for things that people have major moral problems with.

If people want to make statements they should get money from private donors, and not take money from people just trying to make a living, that would feel sickened to know that money they worked hard for went to something they are strongly apposed to.

Government officials should try to use tax Money on only things with broad bipartisan support.

It is wrong to use government money on embryonic stem cell research. Their are plenty of private donors.

Some people would try to use this argument to further about any cause, but that doesn't mean their are not legitimate concern.

Rich countries should relax their immigration laws

2012-01-08T12:50:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Rich countries should help poor countries.
It helps poor countries to let people leave that country, and go to richer countries.
Some poor countries don't have enough natural resources to support their population.
Libertarianism principles say that people should be able to do what they want. If someone wants to leave a poor country and go to a rich country, they should be able to.
We should do things that help the most number of people.
Freedom is good.
People should be able to vote with their feet.

Reasons to disagree:

Poor people should stay in their own country, and fix their problems, instead of going to rich countries.
We should help poor countries fix their problems, instead of just taking all their citizens.
If all the poor people were allowed to leave poor countries, they would make all the rich countries poor.
Allowing poor countries to unload all their criminals on Rich nations is unfair.
Allowing poor countries to unload all their uneducated peasants on rich countries is unfair.
We should do things that respect national boundaries.
Countries are important.
Borders are important.
Within the boarders of a country, people should be able to vote with their feet.

Random Ramblings

2012-01-08T12:49:00.001-08:00

Random Romney Ramblings

It is not true that Government money is not infinite

2012-01-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Government money sounds like a lot, because we are not used to dealing with large numbers. But you have to divide most government numbers by the number of people in our country (307,000,000).
Nothing on earth is infinite.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 1

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 1

Images That agree

Images That disagree

Videos That agree

Videos That disagree

Probable interest of those who agree:hey agree with the argument, outside of any interest or ulterior motivation (30%)Confirmation bias (you decide that you don't like Obama, and so this becomes the prism that you see him. People always root for the home team, because over time they start to show interest, and then each new story tells them they were correct. When the other team acts badly, you get mad. When your team acts badly, you feel justified. You continue to identify with Obama, because you once did).
Your a Republican. He is on the other team. He is the enemy.
Party Affiliation Group-ism (Republican).
Racism.
Political laziness and issue crossover (15%)

Probable interest of those who disagree:
They agree with the argument, outside of any interest or alterior motivation (30%)
Pro black racial preference
Liberal guilt (environment).
Liberal guilt (race).
Party Affiliation Group-ism (Democratic).
The desire to promote more positive role models for our black youth
Self Interest.
Political laziness and issue crossover (15%)5%)

Common Interest

Opposing Interest

Website that agree

Websites that disagree

Related arguments

We should reform legal liability system to prevent spurious litigation +14

2012-01-02T07:58:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Excess litigation increases the cost of doing business.
Excess litigation increases business uncertainty.
Excess litigation decreases business investment.
We should ensure that the loosing party has to pay for legal expenses. +1
We should use a no-fault insurance scheme for accident victims, similar to New Zealand. +3
The costs of litigation and compensation payouts raise the cost of insurance. For instance, the cost of malpractice insurance increases the cost of health care, by excessively taking money from doctors that didn't mean to do harm. If rewards weren't so obscene, no one would care, but people shouldn't view becoming a victim the same way they view winning a lottary.
It is estimated that in Britain 85% of the cost of litigation goes to the process and that only 15% goes to the victims ( GAO Study, Medical Malpractice, Implications of Raising Premiums on Access to Medical Care, 2003). Whatever the numbers are, anything less than 95% going to the victims is totally inefficient, unacceptable, and needing of reform. Only lawyers would see the current system as good for our future.
Because most tort claims will be paid from insurance companies, sane payouts will benefit everyone who pays for insurance. It will often victim the victim. Their is such thing as obscene amounts of spending. No one needs to spend more than a few million dollars on themselves, and their family.
Even in England, which restricts claims, the costs of litigation to the health system are steadily growing.
Saying that malpractice lawsuits don't amount to more than 2.3% of the money we spend on healthcare isn't the only measurement. Money spent on healthcare includes R&D, building hospitals. Looking at the actual dollars it cost doctors, and patients would be more important in determining if it is need of reform.
Medical malpractice isn't the only area of legal liability that should be reformed.

Reasons to disagree:

"Texas enacted some of the most extensive malpractice reforms in the nation in 2003. The number of lawsuits in the state has fallen by half since then, and malpractice premiums are down 30%. But health-care costs in Texas are still among the highest in the nation and are growing at a faster rate than in most other states."

Conclusion!

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, "Study after study shows that costs associated with malpractice lawsuits make up 1% to 2% of the nation's $2.5 trillion annual health-care bill and that tort reform would barely make a dent in the total." (Catherine Arnst (2009-09-16). "The Truth About Malpractice Lawsuits". Business Week.) I find this very hard to believe. I hear of countless doctors here in Illinois that can't afford the liability insurance... I need help!

Bureaucrats hold too much power

2012-01-01T19:11:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Bureaucrats control millions or billions of dollars, and they have not been elected. Some bureaucrats are the experts in their fields, however usually those who rise to the top of bureaucracy do not have desirable skills. They kiss up, and kick down.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 1

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 1

Unaccountable bureaucrats hold too much power

2012-01-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Bureaucrats hold too much power. +1
Bureaucrats are more unaccountable than elected officials.
may know than professional baby kissers (politicians) about a very narrow field, but because politicians are elected they are accountable to more than just narrow perspectives.
The decisions of nameless bureaucrats may affect millions or billions of dollars worth of government spending.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 4

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 1

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Total Idea Score: 5

We should require congressional approval of all new “major” regulations

2012-01-01T13:36:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Nameless, unaccountable, un-elected bureaucrats hold too much power in our country.
Congress should have greater control over the agency rulemaking process.
Our Constitution calls for our Congress to make laws and for the democratically elected president to approve them.
Federal agencies are supposed to implement the laws established by the people’s representatives
Congress has found it easier to make broad pronouncements and allow bureaucrats to figure out the actual rules
In some instances regulatory agencies have gone off the rails of law altogether and veered in unexpected and unproductive directions.
Rules with an economic impact greater than $100 million should be approved by both houses of Congress before taking effect.
If congress doesn't pass the REINS act, the president should issue an executive order instructing all agencies that they must invite Congress to vote up or down on their major regulations and forbidding them from putting those regulations into effect without congressional approval.
Nothing would ever get done if congress had to approve ever little regulation. We should start congregational oversight of regulations with the biggest regulations.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 9

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 9

We should balance environmental needs with business needs

2012-01-01T10:49:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Some ideas might help the environment only just a little bit, but hurt our economy a lot.
American bankruptcy would be bad for the environment. +4
If we don't care about how much our environmental programs cost, we will go bankrupt. +2
We should first focus our money on environmental solutions that don't cost very much. +23
We should do a cost-benefit analysis for all expensive government programs. +2
Each large government program should receive a score for how cost efficient it is. We could then sort the programs, and prioritize which ones we should proceed with. There is a very algorithm, wiki based way of running a government. We could use online debate forums that generate arguments in a structured way that allows algorithms to promote better ideas
One EPA ozone regulation has been estimated to cost over 90 billion in new cost, and the loss of 7 million jobs.
There are actual laws that forbid cost assessment with respect to environmental laws. This is anti science, ant-logic, and insanity. Cost should always be considered. Nothing is free. We could spend billions of dollars saving one peanut plant, sounds good if it is a great plant, but even Homer Simpson realizes that money can buy more peanut plants. The clean air and clean water act should be modified so that each stage of the regulatory process involves cost accounting, to see if we can help the environment in better ways.
A strong America can prevent wars. Wars are bad for the environment. If American businesses are unsuccessful, american power will diminish, and the world will be less stable, and more likely to go to war.
We should care more about the environment when our economy is healthy. Because the sun will burn out destroying all life on earth, we should ensure that the long term survival of our species is more important than the long term survival of plants or other animals, as we are the only life form that can take other life forms off the planet. We should seek for environmental balance, but not before we have vanquished those who would deny human rights. We can't spend 100% of our money on the environment, and 100% of our money on other priorities. We have to choose.
There is no reason to assume that if temperatures changed they would be worse. It is a religious belief to assume that temperature change caused by man would be bad, just because man caused them. If ocean levels rise, poor people can move their homes just as well as rich people right? Their homes are much smaller. Often they don't even have homes. Only the stupidest moronic movies show ocean levels changing fast. No reputable scientist is talking about more than 1 or 2 inches in hundreds of years. Gravity at that rate is a greater threat to homes than ocean levels rising. Why would you assume that temperature change would cause massive droughts? Flip a coin. You got 50% chance, right? Why not assume that mankind is helping by preventing the next ice-age? You say that some place is going to be too hot. What about Canada? What about Siberia? Are they going to get too hot also? Poor people are unable to gradually move North 1 or 2 feet a year? For each drop in the GDP more poor people die: there is less money for charity, government programs, etc. You could spend billions of dollars moving turtles across the road, resulting in less money for the poor. Every dollar government spends on solar panels is a portion of a dollar that they can not spend on poor people. Poor people, except in New Orleans, do not generally live behind inferior levies, while rich people have gold plated levies. You are just saying some of the stupidest stuff. People who live in Chicago, New York, and Tokyo all face the same natural disasters as each other, to a large degree. It sounds like you have a psychological need to write compassionate sounding things, instead of actually following logic to advocate the most obvious policy. Obviously we want to raise the standard of living of all people The only thing we disagree about is methods, perhaps, and motivation. But the whole question is environment of business? Obviously we need a balanced approach that is pretty meaningless unless we get into specifics. I don't think I understand you points at the end. You think the industrial revolution started capitalism? What are the important aspects of capitalism, to you? To me the important aspects of capitalism is freedom to sell your goods and services. This existed with cave men who were able to trade spears for meat. But I'm not sure what any of this has to do with anything, from your perspective.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 10

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 31

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 41

We should ensure that environmental laws properly account for cost in regulatory process

2011-12-31T15:52:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

We don't have to spend a lot of money or force businesses to spend lots of money to help the environment, .+22
Some environmental regulations are not worth the cost that we pay for them. +1
Some ideas might help the environment only just a little bit, but hurt our economy a lot. Poverty is bad for the environment. American bankruptcy would be bad for the environment.
If we don't care about how much our environmental programs cost, we will go bankrupt.
We should first focus our money on environmental solutions that don't cost very much for the amount of benefit they produce. We should do a cost-benefit analysis for expensive government programs. Each large government program should receive a score for how cost efficient it is. We could then sort the programs, and prioritize which ones we should proceed with. There is a very algorithm, wiki based way of running a government. We could use online debate forums that generate arguments in a structured way that allows algorithms to promote better ideas
There are actual laws that forbid cost assessment with respect to environmental laws. This is anti science, ant-logic, and insanity. Cost should always be considered. Nothing is free. We could spend billions of dollars saving one peanut plant, sounds good if it is a great plant, but even Homer Simpson realizes that money can buy more peanut plants. The clean air and clean water act should be modified so that each stage of the regulatory process involves cost accounting, to see if we can help the environment in better ways.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 6

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 23

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 29

Score

2011-12-31T11:44:00.001-08:00

We could use online debate forums that generate arguments in a structured way that allows algorithms to promote better ideas.

For each reason we should track the number of reasons to agree and disagree with it. This will result in a conclusion at the top of a page, with columns for reasons to agree and reasons to disagree, as shown below:

Conclusion #1
Reasons to agree Reasons to disagree
RTA#1 | RTD#1RTA#2 | RTD#2

However reason to agree (RTA) and disagre (RTD) will also have reasons to agree and disagree with them. Using this format RTA#1, as shown above, is used to support Conclusion #1. If you clicked on RTA#1, you would have a new page with reasons to agree and disagree with it. In this situation a reason to agree with RTA#1 would also Conclusion #1. Also a reason to disagree with RTA#1 would weaken conclusion #1. Obviously a reason to agree with RTD#1 would weaken Conclusion #1, and a reason to disagree with RTD#1 would strengthen #1.

For simple math I suggest we just count all the reasons to agree that tree out beneath a belief. However in the future, when we have computers to do our math for us, an argument that is once removed could have 1 point, and an argument that is twice removed could have 1/2 a point and so on.

So what do we do with the scores? How do we know that the ideas with better scores are really better ideas? We don't, but what you don't measure you can't improve. Mankind may never be able to come up with a forum that uses an algorithm to promote better ideas, but I would like to try.

At some level we all know that if we don't promote good arguments and demote bad arguments we will have a less useful website. The problem becomes how do you define a good argument and how do you define bad one. Obviously a good argument uses good data and good logic. At some point if someone uses bad logic, or bad facts, people should post reasons to disagree with their argument. I believe that if we create a forum that allows people to post reasons to disagree and agree with arguments, arguments that are based on sound logic, and good facts will have more reasons to agree with them and fewer reasons to disagree with them.

So what do we do with arguments that have high scores? We move them to the top of the page? Do we delete arguments with low scores? Of course not, we just move them to the bottom of the lists of reasons to agree and disagree. This is like evolution, in that the best arguments get access to better real-estate.

We should ensure that environmental laws properly account for cost in regulatory process

2011-12-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Some ideas might help the environment only just a little bit, but hurt our economy a lot. Poverty is bad for the environment. American bankruptcy would be bad for the environment.
If we don't care about how much our environmental programs cost, we will go bankrupt.
We should first focus our money on environmental solutions that don't cost very much for the amount of benefit they produce. We should do a cost-benefit analysis for expensive government programs. Each large government program should receive a score for how cost efficient it is. We could then sort the programs, and prioritize which ones we should proceed with. There is a very algorithm, wiki based way of running a government. We could use online debate forums that generate arguments in a structured way that allows algorithms to promote better ideas
One EPA ozone regulation has been estimated to cost over 90 billion in new cost, and the loss of 7 million jobs.
There are actual laws that forbid cost assessment with respect to environmental laws. This is anti science, ant-logic, and insanity. Cost should always be considered. Nothing is free. We could spend billions of dollars saving one peanut plant, sounds good if it is a great plant, but even Homer Simpson realizes that money can buy more peanut plants. The clean air and clean water act should be modified so that each stage of the regulatory process involves cost accounting, to see if we can help the environment in better ways.

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 5

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 1

Because environmental sectors are not labor intensive, green jobs never made economic sense

2011-12-30T12:33:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

There is a relatively low baseline of employment in the green jobs sector, so even if you doubled it, there would not be very many jobs. It is very difficult and impractical to think that you can double an industry, without doing basic research. Federal spending on green jobs could only have the most marginal impact on employment. The clean-energy industry, like the semiconductor industry, is notlabor-intensive. Quite the contrary, it is capital-intensive. Green-tech workers, i.e.,the highly skilled personnel who design and build heavy capital equipment such as wind turbines and solar panels, comprise only a minuscule fraction of the U.S.labor force. Even if the sector were to grow rapidly, it would not make much of a dent in the overall employment picture. “The bottom line,” says James Manyika, adirector at the McKinsey Global Institute, “is that these ‘clean’ industries are too small to create the millions of jobs that are needed right away.”

Reasons to disagree:

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 1

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 1

We should amend Sarbanes-Oxley to relieve mid-size companies from onerous requirements

2011-12-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree

Many of its requirements were designed for large companies but impose onerous burdens when applied to mid-size ﬁrms
Smaller companies are penalized for growing larger, and those attempting to make the leap are discouraged from seeking out the investment capital with which to expand

Reasons to disagree

Score

Number of reasons to:

Agree: 1

Disagree: -0

Agree with reasons to agree: 0

Disagree with reasons to agree: -0

Agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Disagree with reasons to disagree: +0

Total Idea Score: 1

Images That agree Images That disagree

Videos That agree Videos That disagree

Probable interest of those who agree: Probable interest of those who disagree:

Common Interest Opposing Interest

Website that agree Websites that disagree

Related arguments:

The CFPB will be one of the least accountable entities in the U.S. government (+2)

2011-12-27T17:58:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

The CFPB will be headed by a single administrator rather than a balanced, expert board.
Because it is funded directly by the Federal Reserve rather than by Congress, it is not subject to the standard congressional appropriations process and accompanying oversight.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 2

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 2

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that Dodd-Frank sets up is too powerful (+8)

2011-12-27T17:56:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

The CFPB will have almost unlimited authority to regulate almost every sort of consumer ﬁnancial transaction.
The CFPB will also wield inﬂuence over the allocation of credit to consumers.
The CFPB will also wield inﬂuence over the allocation of credit to small business owners.
The CFPB has been granted far-reaching powers.
The CFPB does not have narrowly defined roles.
The CFPB will be one of the least accountable entities in the U.S. government (+2). Government programs with little oversight, are by definition, too powerful. We should try to maximize the amount of transparency, congressional, and professional oversight.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 6

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 2

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 8

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

Dodd Frank is not predictable (+1)

2011-12-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Senator Christopher Dodd, remarked: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” This unpredictability harms businesses, that have to plan ahead.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 1

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

Dodd-Frank did a lot of things that democrats like, that had nothing to do with preventing banks from being too big to fail (+1)

2011-12-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

The act requires reporting by all public companies on CEO to median employee pay ratios and other compensation data. This is just useless paperwork. Big deal we all know that CEOs make a lot of money, but if it wasn't worth it, they wouldn't do it. Companies that pay their CEOs too much will not be able to compete as well against other companies. We could all calculate this data previously.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 1

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

Romney would have done a better job on Dodd Frank than Obama (+12)

2011-12-26T19:38:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Dodd-Frank created the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Romney is right that the CFPB has too much power (+6). Romney has spent his life organizing complex systems, and making sure that they work the way they are intended. He could have designed a financial reform program that wouldn't have gone overboard. Romney is also right that the (CFPB) will be one of the least accountable entities in the U.S. government (+2). Again, Romney's experience in finance and business would have resulted in a system that has better incentives.
Romney complains that Dodd Frank creates an economic environment for businesses that is less predictable (+1).
Dodd-Frank did a lot of things that democrats like, that had nothing to do with preventing banks from being too big to fail (+1).
Dodd-Frank provides incentives to promote banking among low- and medium-income residents. This is one of the causes of the economic crisis. You can't force people with no money to be able to take out loans that they can't afford. Just because democrats with that poor people had lots of money, doesn't mean that they should force banks to give it to them. Until they get a bigger income, they should not get bigger loans.
Romney points out that Dodd-Frank did not address bank or housing over-leveraging.
Dodd-Frank is too confusing. Senator Christopher Dodd, remarked: “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”
Dodd Frank rules are unclear, and open to interpretation. Romney would have ensured that it was more clear. Romney should be more specific about the exact changes he would make to Dodd-Frank (Reasons to disagree: it is thousands of pages... He doesn't have enough time to summarize other people's criticisms).

Reasons to disagree:

Some of the concepts in Dodd-Frank have a place.

Greater transparency for inter-bank relationships,
enhanced capital requirements, and
provisions to address new forms of complex ﬁnancial transactions are all necessary elements of eﬀective ﬁnancial reform. But these concepts must be translated into law in a way that creates a simple, predictable, and eﬃcient regulatory system appropriate for our dynamic economy.

People who were not involved in the Dodd-Frank negotiations don't understand all the reasons that each aspect of it was implemented.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 7

# of reasons to disagree: -2

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 10

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -3

Total Idea Score: 12

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

We should promote the individual ownership of health insurance

2011-12-26T19:01:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

You shouldn't loose your health insurance just because you loose your job.
There is no logical reason to provide health insurance through your employer. It was just done as a loophole to get around rules during WWII that stooped increases in salary.
Healthcare as an employment benefit keeps you from comparing apples to apples when you compare jobs. Some companies don't make you pay very much for health insurance. Other make you pay a lot.
Health insurance as an employment benefit keeps people from going into different jobs because they are afraid of loosing insurance.
When healthcare is connected to employment, employers only want to employ young healthy employees, because they end up footing the bill of the health insurance. If you had insurance as an individual, and tax incentives were restructured so it was just as cheap to get it as an individual, you would already have your insurance, and their would be one less reason to not hire an older individual.
It encourages employers to push their married employees onto their spouse's heal insurance. Workers in low paying jobs have no health insurance.
Workers in high paying jobs of super expensive health insurance. So most of the pre-tax benefit goes to the wealthy. This could be restructured in a way so that instead of benefiting people proportionally to how expensive the insurance is, and tying it to your income, the insurance benefit could come to individuals separate from their employer.

Images That agree

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 7

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

Reasons

2011-12-26T18:21:00.001-08:00

We should create a forum that allows people to brainstorms reasons to agree and disagree with important conclusions

Reasons to agree:

It would be cool to have reasons to agree and disagree on the same page.
Why not? It hasn't been done before. No one has created a forum that has one page per thesis, and allows users to submit reasons to agree and disagree in a structured format.
It couldn't be worse than current online discussion boards.

We should create algorithms that promotes good reasons

People evaluating each reason

I imagine people would want to rate an idea, on a scale from 1 to 10, on the following criteria: # Are statistics sited to a verifiable source? # Does the Reason support the conclusion? # Is the reasons clearly stated? # Is the reason stated briefly? # On a scale from 1 to 10 how much do you believe that the argument uses the following logical fallacy:

But you say, "people are biased, we can't trust them to evaluate the logic of an argument when they might have a vested interests". I would concede your point, and walk away from this whole thing, if perfection is the standard by which we measure this sites success. However I am going to evaluate this site, by weather or not it will be better than any other site, and I believe it will be. Also we can encourage people to try to set aside their biases.

Some ways we can encourage people to set aside their bias is to weaken the strength of people's votes who always use a 1 or 10 to evaluate someone else's logic. We should also let people vote if they agree or disagree with an argument or not. If you disagree with a conclusion, and also consistently give low scores to every reason to support the conclusion, then you are not thinking, because every controversial topic has at least some valid reasons to agree and disagree with it.

So if you disagree with a conclusion, you will be asked to evaluate the top reasons to support the conclusion. If you do this in a way that indicates that you are actually considering each reason, then you will be rewarded.

SCORING AND EVALUATING REASONS TO AGREE AND DISAGREE

A major feature of this project is to design algorithms that give scores to reasons to agree and disagree with a thesis. Once these reasons have a score, they can lend their support to support or oppose many different conclusions.

Homer Simpson said; "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true. Facts Schmacts".

However facts are not meaningless. Facts are Facts. We don't believe conclusions can be proven, because no one has ever gathered all the reasons to agree and disagree with a particular conclusion and investigated them all. We also don't believe truth can be evaluated because so many people who claim to have truth contradict each other, and seem so stupid. Vilhjalmur Stefansson said, "The most striking contradiction of our civilization is the fundamental reverence for truth which we profess and the thorough-going disregard for it which we practice."

I'm not saying we can find truth, but we can find that some things are more likely to be true than others, based on an investigation of the evidence that people are able to present as reasons to believe that something is true or not.

And so what I am proposing is that we gather all the reasons to agree and disagree with a conclusion, and then set it up so that you click on any of those reasons, and you can see reasons to agree and disagree with it. And this keeps going until you have given each reason a score, and you add up all the scores for the top conclusion.

We all assume that we can all walk around believing contradictory things, and that that s just the way things have to be. It doesn't have to be that way.

How it would work

It will work a lot like the BCS algorithm in that it will use votes from real people and will also take into account data from comparing how ideas perform against each other in a competitive environment.

REASONS TO AGREE AND DISAGREE WITH REASONS TO AGREE AND DISAGREE(WHAT?)

Much of the score assigned from the algorithm is dependent on how the webpage is laid out, so hang with me:

Every page will have a layout similar to this one:

Many reasons to agree with an conclusion are in and of themselves a new conclusion that needs to be debated. For instance "Obama is a socialist" might be Thesis#1. A reason to support this conclusion (RTA#1) might be "Obama supported the purchase of GM, which is a socialist act".

With this website, you will be able to click on RTA#1, and it will become its own thesis at the top of a page with its own list of reasons to agree and disagree with it.

With this setup you can see that a reason to agree with RTA#1 will ultimately lend support to Thesis#1.

With this format an algorithm could be set up very easily that counts the total number of reasons to agree with it, including reasons to agree with reasons to agree with it, and so on.

You say that this system could be "gamed". I honestly don't think so. Because if you put a bad reason to support an idea, thinking that you are helping by adding the number of reasons to agree, then that idea should have lots of reasons to DISAGREE with it, and those reason should have lots of reasons to agree with them, and so on.

I don't think I can explain it very well, but I have been thinking about this for about 10 years now, and I know it would work great.

Example

"The United States should not engage in Nation Building" is a conclusions, with many reasons to agree and disagree. However it can also be used as an argument that both Bush and Clinton used the military incorrectly. The belief will have a strength when it stands by itself. But it will have a different strength when used as an argument to support another conclusion. For instance in this case, perhaps the score given to the belief that we should not be involved in nation building gets a 79 out of 100. This score would then be multiplied by the score assigned to the belief that this is a valid reason to agree that Bush or Clinton misused the military. Obviously over time the percentage of people who believed that this applied to Clinton and Bush would very. Formal logicians have a specific format for this type of argument. They say there is one premise: we should not participate in nation building. The other premise is George Bush participated in nation building. If you participate in nation-building, you are misusing the military. Therefore George Bush misused the military.

Formal logic is required to make this site work, however I am not going to present the forum so as to say to our users that they have to use formal logic. The purpose of this website is to take the way that people argue naturally, organize it, quantify it, and evaluate it.

We should use the internet to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree with important conclusions

Reasons to agree:

The search for truth involves a lot of information. If computers have good algorithms they can be very good at processing information. Putting data into columns as reasons to agree or disagree with a conclusion takes a very important step in processing data.
Truth is important enough that we should work very hard to try and find it.
It is important that citizens come to informed conclusions.

Thesis #1

Reasons to AGREE with Thesis #1 (RTAW#1)	Reasons to DISAGREE with Thesis #1(RTDW#1)

We need to have reasons to agree and disagree with Obama on the same page. We also need to have a post for each issue (that doesn't change topics), and then brainstorms all the reasons to agree and disagree with Obama, with the best reasons at the top of their respective list. Steven Write said; "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking .” And it is true. People make decisions becaus they only heard part of the story, and they never examined all the reasons to agree and disagree. That is why I want to use the power of the internet to brainstorm all the reasons to agree and disagree with Obama. If we separate our reasons to agree and disagree, and classify the reasons we could do some pretty cool stuff with computer software. For instance we could create a computer algorithm that gives points to Obama's belief based on the number or reasons to agree with him. Then each reason can become its own post, with reasons to agree and disagree with it. Every issue should have it's own comprehensive list of reasons to agree or disagree. This would allow us to perform a Google duel between all the items that agree and disagree, which could represent the overall strength of the idea. We could let people rate the reasons to agree or disagree, were the overall score of the reasons that agree contribute to the idea, and the overall score of the reasons that disagree take away from the score of the main idea. We could assign a score to each reason based on the number of reasons that agree with it. The overall score of the reasons in the "reasons to agree" category would contribute to the overall score of the main idea. This will allow us to talk to our ancestors, and include all the smart things that they said, about issues that we still face today. As we start thinking about this, we can see why a web site like the history channel may want to adopt it. What does Abraham Lincoln have to say about issues we are facing today? Like Abraham Lincoln said, it is not so important that we pray that God is on ourside, but that we are on God's side. The same thing about the truth. We shoudn't work to try to prove that the truth is on our side, but that we are on the truth's side. If we have a truth promoting forum, then it is safe to investigate both sides of an issue. We have nothing to fear from those who would disagree with us, as long as we are on the side of truth, and we have a format that alows for rational debate. Using lists of reasons to agree or disagree is a very good way of thouroughly investigating an issue, without letting either side hi-jack the discusion, by changing the topic, talking too long. Each side should bring their best arguments, and list them on a page. If we are not in a shouting mach, or competing for a limited amount of time, why not thoroughly investigate an idea? We don't need to silence the other side, we just need to prove that they are wrong. Usually, one point won't convince someone they are wrong. Everyone needs to feel that they got all of their reasons out on the table. We are not discounting people's beliefs, we are responding to them.

We should reform the tax code to promote the individual ownership of health insurance

2011-12-26T18:18:00.000-08:00

Background:

The tax code offers open-ended subsidies for the purchase of insurance through employers. We would give individuals a choice between the current system and a tax deduction to buy insurance on their own.

Reasons to agree:

This subsidy is unfair — as it doesn't apply to insurance purchased on one's own. A fair system would not discriminate against self insured people. There is no reason for the government to prefer companies to only have tax free insurance.
This simple change creates the best of both worlds. Absolutely nothing will change for those who like their current coverage. And individuals who don't get coverage through their employers will have portable, lower-cost options.

Reasons to disagree:

Images That agree

Images That disagree

Videos That agree

Videos That disagree

Probable interest of those who agree:

They agree with the argument, outside of any interest or alterior motivation (30%)
Confirmation bias (you decide that you don't like Obama, and so this becomes the prism that you see him. People always root for the home team, because over time they start to show interest, and then each new story tells them they were correct. When the other team acts badly, you get mad. When your team acts badly, you feel justified. You continue to identify with Obama, because you once did).
Your a Republican. He is on the other team. He is the enemy.
Party Affiliation Group-ism (Republican).
Racism.
Political laziness and issue crossover (15%)

Probable interest of those who disagree:

They agree with the argument, outside of any interest or alterior motivation (30%)
Pro black racial preference
Liberal guilt (environment).
Liberal guilt (race).
Party Affiliation Group-ism (Democratic).
The desire to promote more positive role models for our black youth
Self Interest.
Political laziness and issue crossover (15%)

Common Interest

Opposing Interest

Website that agree

Websites that disagree

Related arguments:

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 1

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

Obamacare is bad

2011-12-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

ObamaCare is bad because it increases taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars.
ObamaCare is bad because it vastly expands federal control over our lives.
ObamaCare will lead to more spending.
Obamacare removes state flexibility. States should have their own health insurance and health care laws.
Obamacare does not promote better consumer choice.
Obamacare increases bureaucracy.
Different states will experiment with and settle on the solutions that suit their residents best

Reasons to disagree:

The bill known as ObamaCare is thousands of pages in it... they can't all be bad.

Reasons to disagree:

Videos That agree

Videos That disagree

Probable interest of those who agree:

Hatred of anything that has Obama's name on it.
Desire to support candidates who propose this, whom they already like.
They agree with the argument, outside of any interest or alterior motivation (30%)
Confirmation bias (you decide that you don't like Obama, and so this becomes the prism that you see him. People always root for the home team, because over time they start to show interest, and then each new story tells them they were correct. When the other team acts badly, you get mad. When your team acts badly, you feel justified. You continue to identify with Obama, because you once did).
Your a Republican. He is on the other team. He is the enemy.
Party Affiliation Group-ism (Republican).
Racism.
Political laziness and issue crossover (15%)

Probable interest of those who disagree:

Fear of change.
Desire to support candidates who oppose this, whom they already like.
They agree with the argument, outside of any interest or alterior motivation (30%)
Pro black racial preference
Liberal guilt (environment).
Liberal guilt (race).
Party Affiliation Group-ism (Democratic).
The desire to promote more positive role models for our black youth
Self Interest.
Political laziness and issue crossover (15%)

Common Interest

Opposing Interest

Website that agree

Websites that disagree

Related arguments:

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 7

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 1

Don't like the score? It is easy to change the score. Just post a reason to agree or disagree with the overall idea, or any of the reasons and the score will change

The worldwide tax code that we currently have is bad

2011-12-25T21:50:00.001-08:00

Background:

I know some people would rather talk about who is up this week, and who is down this week. Or how someone did on David Letterman, and all the other mindless horse-and pony show that is politics these days. But if we make this about important issues, we shouldn't hate ourselves at the end of the day, and if our candidate doesn't win, then our time won't have been wasted, because we were fighting for issues, not just one candidate.

The United States currently operates under what is known as a “worldwide” tax system, meaning that business income is taxed at the U.S. rate regardless of whether the income is earned within American borders or overseas.

Under this collection method, American companies pay the corporate tax in the host country, and when proﬁts are repatriated back to the United States, the company pays the diﬀerence between what was paid to the host country and what would have been owed under the U.S. rate.

Mitt Romney's website says: A Romney administration will begin work on the transition to a territorial system on day one".

Romney's advocacy for this issue is a reason to vote for him.

Reasons to agree:

The worldwide tax code encourage American multinational companies to park their proﬁts permanently overseas.
The United States should transition to a “territorial” tax system.
The United States requires its corporations to pay a higher percentage of their earnings than all other countries except Japan. The combination of our high tax rates and the worldwide tax code penalizes those U.S. corporations that bring their foreign proﬁts home to invest in the United States.
It is a deeply irrational system that beneﬁts the rest of the world at our expense.
Other nations have noted the competitive disadvantage inherent in a worldwide tax system, resulting in a gradual movement of countries converting from a worldwide to a “territorial” system, in which income is taxed only in the country where it is earned.
Of the 34 OECD member nations, 26 have either a full territorial system or something very close to it.
Alone at the top, the United States is now the only country in the OECD that adheres to the worldwide system while imposing a corporate tax rate above 30 percent
The Bowles-Simpson Commission recommended that we switch to a territorial system. The Bowles-Simpson Commission was bi-partial, and represents common sense reforms that can be supported by both sides.
This would enhance the ability of our corporations to compete around the world and would end the perverse incentives that keep companies from repatriating proﬁts to the United States.
Domestic companies that can compete vigorously abroad are in a better position to grow and create jobs at home.
With proper draftsmanship, these potential hazards can be overcome. Romney can be trusted to get this delicate procedure crafted. Other presidential candidates who have jumped on the Romney band wagon, can not be trusted to do a good job at this.
A territorial system must be designed to encourage the creation of jobs in the United States, not to outsource them.
As much as $1 trillion, that could be invested in the United States, is at stake.
It is past time to eliminate tax laws that place American ﬁrms at a competitive disadvantage, decrease revenue, and diminish corporate investment in America.
Notwithstanding President Obama’s counterproductive meddling in the tax code, there are some short-term measures that—far from increasing uncertainty and discouraging job creators—can serve as powerful incentives for investment and hiring. These short-term measures are very much the subject of current discussion and debate in Washington. Some of them may even be proposed by President Obama in the coming days.
Government should move from an adversarial posture to one that fosters an environment in which the private sector can ﬂourish.
Fixing the tax code is an important ﬁrst step, but much more is required.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 17

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 17

The current price to buy stock in this belief is $0.95 per share

The Idea Stock Exchange score for this idea is: +3-1=2

The percent that agree is: 92%

I am trying to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree. Please help me!

Join the debate! Just leave a comment, and I’ll add it to the correct location. Once I get some programmers to help me, this will be automatic.

Evaluate the above conclusion (also known as a belief or thesis).

The wealthy are doing just fine (+8)

2011-12-25T20:47:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

“The people who have been hurt in the Obama economy are not the wealthy, the wealthy are doing just fine. The people that have been hurt are people in the middle class.” ~ Mitt Romney
Income inequality in America is a problem. We used to have lots of economic mobility.
"Upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise, and the stagnation of the middle class is in fact becoming a problem, on any fair reading of the facts." ~ Mitch Daniels
"Income mobility from the bottom two quintiles up into the middle income is actually greater in Europe than it is in America today." ~ Rick Santorum
The USA worse upward mobility from the bottom relative to other industrialized nations.
Limited upward mobility is incongruent United State's most deeply held values.
Public policy often does more harm than good. Do good-ers have not done a very good job of promoting mobility. But Rick Perry's plan to directly take more money from the middle class, and Michele Bachman's plans to tax the poor will directly make this problem worse.
Rich People are getting richer, and poor people are getting poorer. Perhaps there is nothing we can do to stop this, but a flat tax will make it much worse. Sure, democrats are socialist pigs to try to force the world into making us all be equal, but we are selfish heartless bastards, if we listen to Rick Perry and Michele Bachman and throw gas on the fire, get rid of our progressive tax code. That is crazy un-american extremest talk. People say they are afraid of Ron Paul becoming president. I am afraid of John Huntsman, who is pushing one of the most extreme ant-middle class flat tax policies on the planet.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 8

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 8

The current price to buy stock in this belief is $0.95 per share

The Idea Stock Exchange score for this idea is: +3-1=2

The percent that agree is: 92%

I am trying to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree. Please help me!

Join the debate! Just leave a comment, and I’ll add it to the correct location. Once I get some programmers to help me, this will be automatic.

Evaluate the above conclusion (also known as a belief or thesis).

We should focus tax breaks on the middle class (+10)

2011-12-25T20:16:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

The wealthy are doing just fine (+8)
The poor have a sufficient safety net.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 2

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 8

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 0

The current price to buy stock in this belief is $0.95 per share

The Idea Stock Exchange score for this idea is: +3-1=2

The percent that agree is: 92%

I am trying to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree. Please help me!

Join the debate! Just leave a comment, and I’ll add it to the correct location. Once I get some programmers to help me, this will be automatic.

Evaluate the above conclusion (also known as a belief or thesis).

We should eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains (+13)

2011-12-25T20:15:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

We should focus tax breaks on the middle class (+10).
As with the marginal income tax rates, Mitt Romney will seek to makepermanent the lower tax rates for investment income put in place by President Bush. Another step in the right direction would be a Middle-Class Tax SavingsPlan that would enable most Americans to save more for retirement. As president, Romney will seek to eliminate taxation on capital gains, dividends, and interestfor any taxpayer with an adjusted gross income of under $200,000, helpingAmericans to prepare for retirement and enjoy the freedom that accompaniesfinancial security. This would encourage more Americans to save and to invest forthe long-term, which would in turn free up capital for investment flowing backinto the economy and helping to facilitate economic growth.
We we remove taxes from money that people save, then they will save more. We need people to save more. Not enough people have enough money in savings, to even make it a few months if they were to get laid off.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 3

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 10

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 13

The current price to buy stock in this belief is $0.95 per share

The Idea Stock Exchange score for this idea is: +3-1=2

The percent that agree is: 92%

I am trying to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree. Please help me!

Join the debate! Just leave a comment, and I’ll add it to the correct location. Once I get some programmers to help me, this will be automatic.

Evaluate the above conclusion (also known as a belief or thesis).

We should maintain current tax rates on personal income

2011-12-25T14:28:00.001-08:00

The entire tax code is in dire need of a fundamental overhaul.
We should hold the line against increases in marginal tax rates.
We should try to avoid raising taxes during a recession.
With our giant federal deficit we shouldn't lower taxes.
Some republicans are reckless the way they say we should lower taxes, without caring about what happens to our deficit. We are going to pass all this deficit onto our children. We don't want to be the most selfish nation in our history. We have a moral responsibility to spend less than we take in, and to take in what we spend. Republicans can be mad that democrats want to spend so much money, but if we shouldn't hold our nation, or our children ransom, if we are unable to convince the American people to reduce our spending. At some point we need to pay our debt. We can all agree that we don't want to pay any taxes. Romney is not proposing tax increases, but a lot of smart republicans are, and Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are out of touch with reality when they call for massive tax decreases for the extremely wealthy with their flat tax plans.

If trade laws are burdensome and antiquated, enterprise will stall

2011-12-24T20:23:00.000-08:00

This is obvious, but easier to say than do. Romney, as a businessman with 25 years in business consulting, and almost that means years leading organizations as their CEO. Romney knows better than any other candidate how to keep our trade laws from becoming burdensome and antiquated. He is not just a social crusader responding to popular culture, but understands all the little boring details of making our economy successful. They are not very sexy issues, but these boring issues are what can keep Americans working in productive jobs.

We should not eliminate the estate tax

2011-12-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

The estate tax is a great way to ensure that those in the aristocracy deserve to rule over us. There is always going to be an aristocracy, but I want it to be those who really are better than us, not those who’s parents were better than our parents.
Good republicans have supported the estate tax.
Paris Hilton is a good reason to have an estate tax.
It is not healthy for a country to have a group of people that never have to work a day in their lives.
Most people would rather get taxed after they are dead.
Even with the estate tax parents can pass billions of dollars onto their children.
Even with the estate tax parents can pass the first 1.5 million dollars onto their kids tax free.
Parents can still help their children without having to let parents hand billions to their kids tax free.
Work is good.
If it was bad for welfare-moms to be idle, then it is bad for estate-kids to be idle.
Too many Americans live with a sense of entitlement because of their wealth.

Reasons to disagree:

The estate tax is unfair to the wealthy.
Government should not tax the same income over and over again. The federalestate tax, also known as the “death tax,” does exactly that by taxing the wealth that Americans have been able to accumulate after already paying taxes throughout their working lives. This tax also creates a series of perverse incentives that encourages the most complicated and convoluted tax-avoidance schemes at tremendous cost to all involved. Finally, it can have catastrophic effects when a small family-owned business, in the course of passing to the next generation, creates tax liabilities that the family cannot meet without breaking up the business itself. The federal estate tax has become a political football in recent years. The tax was temporarily eliminated in 2010, was reinstated in a last-minute deal between Congress and President Obama at a top rate of 35 percent for 2011 and 2012, and is slated to bounce up to 55 percent in 2013. As president, Mitt Romney will work to eliminate the tax permanently. All told, the negative effects on savings, investment, and job creation show how pernicious an estate tax can be. For those reasons, it should be stricken from the books as soon as possible.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 11

# of reasons to disagree: -2

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 0

The current price to buy stock in this belief is $0.95 per share

The Idea Stock Exchange score for this idea is: +3-1=2

The percent that agree is: 92%

I am trying to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree. Please help me!

Join the debate! Just leave a comment, and I’ll add it to the correct location. Once I get some programmers to help me, this will be automatic.

Evaluate the above conclusion (also known as a belief or thesis).

China shouldn't be allowed to subsidize their private businesses (+2)

2011-12-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

When a country subsidizes their private businesses, they act like a monopoly in creating an unfair competition.
Like the predatory pricing prohibited under our antitrust laws, Countries underpriced products lead to an undesirable and inefficient elimination of competing businesses, with serious long-term consequences

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 2

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 2

The current price to buy stock in this belief is $0.95 per share

The Idea Stock Exchange score for this idea is: +3-1=2

The percent that agree is: 92%

I am trying to brainstorm reasons to agree and disagree. Please help me!

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Evaluate the above conclusion (also known as a belief or thesis).

The government should not redistribute wealth (+4)

2011-12-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

People in Government are no less greedy than people in business.
People in business stay in business by making products that people want.
When government redistributes wealth, it is always to those who are politically connected. It is always a way of improving the power of the giver... it is always a way of buying friendship... It is never given to people based on their need, it is always given on the political needs of the giver.
Mitt Romney has said: "Understandably, some ask whether we should abandon the economic principles behind our historic prosperity. Should government redistribute wealth? Is free enterprise a flawed system? Should we abandon free trade? No, no and no. Redistribution is what once impoverished China and the Soviet Union. Free enterprise is the only permanent cure for poverty. Free trade has the demonstrated ability to make the people of both trading nations more prosperous."

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 4

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 0

China misappropriates intellectual property (+3)

2011-12-23T12:39:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

The first Chinese intellectual property law wasn't drafted until 1982!
The first IPR training centre wasn't established until 1996.
China is very currupt and officials are easily bought off.
Chinese government-sponsored search-engine Baidu provides links to third-party websites that offer online counterfeit products as well as access to counterfeit hardware and merchandise.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 3

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 3

There is such thing as Evil +4

2011-12-23T12:23:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

It is evil to deny the Holocaust.
To the extent that something causes an increase in suffering, it is evil.
Mitt Romney was right when he issued the following statement on the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks: "Ten years ago, we were visited by a human darkness so evil that it plotted and then rejoiced in the murder of innocent lives. We cherish the bright memories of the fallen, and keep our hearts open to the loved ones they left behind. As for those who seek to inflict more harm, understand this: you will never find rest on this earth so long as you threaten our peace and freedom. America will always be strong in defending liberty at home and around the world."
Romney said, with the WSJ editorial board of that: "I see Iran's leadership as evil. When the president stands up and says that we have shared interests with all the people in the world, I disagree. There are people who are evil. There are people who have as their intent the subjugation and repression of other people; they are evil. America is good. I mean if we go back to Truman, he was able to draw a line between Communism and freedom, and having drawn that line, America was able to define a foreign policy that has guided us well until this president. I applaud Ronald Reagan's brilliance in identifying the Soviet Union as an evil empire. I see Iran as intent on building, once again, an evil empire based upon the resources of the Middle East."

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 4

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 0

People who want to remove negative consequences from bad choices are wrong (+4)

2011-12-23T12:08:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree:

They might be motived by a sense of equality, but sometimes the law of the harvest is more important than equality, because if you let people get away with bad behavior, it encourages more bad behavior from others in the community.
They might be overly conserned with equality, and under conserned with the lessons they are setting for for others.
Romney says he supports an opportunity society, and accuses Obama of supporting an entitlement society. This gets at the hart of holding people responsible for their decisions.

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 4

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 0

The federal government should publish a balance sheet

2011-12-23T11:56:00.000-08:00

Reasons to agree: %

The federal government requires companies to publish a balance sheet.
A budget doesn't tell the whole story. A balance sheet would tell how much debt their is, undersized equity, it would show amoritized liabilities. Publishing all this information would allow us to see, talk about, and fix our real problems. We only fix the problems that we know about. As far as government is concerned, those of us who work for a living only know about problems with the government that we hear about from the media. The media reports what is in the budget, and what is in the budget does not tell the entire story.
Not publishing a balance sheet helps politicians "give big gifts to their friends, donors, or special interest groups without the public at large becoming aware."
"Many of our fellow citizens have no idea that our growing entitlement spending has created a looming crisis. This is because politicians have a habit of hiding our country’s long-term liabilities. Mitt Romney believes that the federal government should publish a balance sheet each year—just as it requires public companies to do—so that Americans can understand the burden that future entitlement spending will place on our budget and economy. Over the course of his campaign, Mitt will propose the specific steps he will take as President to ensure the long-term solvency of Medicare and Social Security. While reforms are needed, Mitt also believes that these changes should not reduce benefits for current seniors or break the promises they have relied upon for their economic security in retirement." Taken from Mitt Romney's website

Not all cultures are not equal +6

2011-12-23T11:40:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree: %

Cultures that the following items are worse than cultures that do.

Minority rights such as women, ethnic, religious or racial minorities.
The rule of law
Democracy, or representative governments

All cultures have some good, and have some bad. Also each sub-culture is changing, and so no one is saying that one culture has always been better. No race has always been better than other race. However you can say, that at the moment, certain subcultures, as a whole have adopted more good ideas, and fewer bad ideas than other cultures. It is true that each culture should learn things from other culture, but if this is true, it is also true that their are things that each culture can do to improve, if this is true, it is also true that some cultures are worse than other cultures. Usually this does not matter, and it is often counter productive to say my culture is better than your culture, but people who set government policy need to try to improve their own culture, and immigration officials need to try to import people from progressive countries, or individuals withing repressive societies that are victims, or show other signs of working will within our multicultural society. When 90% of people from a particular culture or religion view us as their enemy, perhaps we should view each immigrant from that culture on an individual basis, and not treat them as standard immigrants from cultures that the majority of their citizens do not hate us.
Every culture thinks their culture is the best. This proves that human nature is stupid, but it does not prove that none of the cultures is really the best. Cultures change, and sometimes people from different racial, religious, or ethnic groups will find themselves in the culture that is the most progressive at the time. To the extent that a culture can be defined as a group of people that has accepted certain premises, arguments, and set of goals or values, at any given moment of time, some culture is going to most accept the right mix of those values for the future of our planet.
"Yet our wealth consists not only of material things, but also our ideas and our traditions and our founding principles. These principles empower our people and have made America the strongest nation in the world." Mitt Romney, Op-Ed, USA Today

Score:

# of reasons to agree: 4

# of reasons to disagree: -0

# of reasons to agree with reasons to agree: 2

# of reasons to agree with reasons to disagree: -0

Total Idea Score: 6

Romney would be less likely to offend our allies

2011-12-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

Obama has insulted our allies. It is hard to think of a more derogatory message to send to the British people within days of taking office than to fling a bust of Winston Churchill out of the Oval Office and send it packing back to the British Embassy – not least as it was a loaned gift from Britain to the United States as a powerful display of solidarity in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Obviously, public diplomacy is not a concept that carries much weight in the current White House, and nor apparently is common sense. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/4623148/Barack-Obama-sends-bust-of-Winston-Churchill-on-its-way-back-to-Britain.html
Gordon Brown was however treated shabbily when he visited the White House in March 2009, and denied a Rose Garden press conference as well as a dinner. To cap it all, the decision to send him home with an assortment of 25 DVDs ranging from Toy Story to The Wizard of Oz – which couldn’t even be played in the UK – was a breathtaking display of diplomatic ineptitude that would have shamed the protocol office of an impoverished Third World country. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1159627/To-special-friend-Gordon-25-DVDs-Obama-gives-Brown-set-classic-movies-Lets-hope-likes-Wizard-Oz.html
The mocking views of a senior State Department official following Gordon Brown's embarrassing reception at the White House in March last year says it all: There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment. One would have thought that this kind of monumentally shallow insult would have resulted in at least a formal apology and a reprimand for the official involved, but unfortunately Obama administration apologies are strictly reserved for the French and assorted enemies of the United States.
Despite Nicolas Sarkozy’s distinctly unflattering opinion of Barack Obama, the US president has gone to great lengths to appease French interests, even going as far as apologising to the French people in Strasbourg for hurting their feelings over the war in Iraq. The Obama administration has also done its best to give Paris a lead role in the NATO alliance at Britain’s expense, granting it one of two supreme NATO command positions – Allied Command Transformation (ACT). This, despite the fact that France has for decades been ambivalent and obstructionist over NATO, and is failing to carry its weight in Afghanistan. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6106250.ece http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-President-Obama-at-Strasbourg-Town-Hall/
Nicolas Sarkozy branded Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'a liar' while Obama retorted: 'You're fed up with him - I have to deal with him every day!' Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059206/Obama-facing-Jewish-backlash-Israeli-PM-Benjamin-Netanyahu-remark-Sarkozy.html#ixzz1hDfC0n6E

Romney is more likely than Obama to prevent us from becoming like Greece or Portugal.

2011-12-23T11:18:00.000-08:00

Romney is more likely to balance the budget than Obama (+7).
Romney's experience fixing broken companies will help him fix the finances of the federal governments.
Romney's experience balancing the budget in Massachusetts without raising taxes prepared him to keep America from going bankrupt.
Romney's experience preventing the 2002 winter Olympics from going bankrupt will help him prevent America from going bankrupt.
Greece and Portugal were able to hide their debt. Romney wants to be fully transparent, and publish a balance sheet each year along with the federal budget.
Greece has problems because their public sectors unions have bankrupted the nation, demanding higher wages than the tax revenues can support. Obama is totally controlled by the unions.
Romney is not controlled by the public sector unions. Chris Christie, someone who has been very effective at confronting excesses from public sector unions, has supported Romney. Romney, as a republican from a very blue state, learned how to deal with sane policies, and will be trusted by independents to make needed reforms.
In Greece, the government increased its commitments to public workers in the form of extremely generous pay and pension benefits.
In 1992 members of the European Union signed the Maastricht Treaty, under which they pledged to limit their deficit spending and debt levels. However, a number of EU member states, including Greece and Italy, were able to circumvent these rules and mask their deficit and debt levels through the use of complex currency and credit derivatives structures.

Romney knows more about the economy than Obama

2011-12-22T12:00:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Romney graduated at the top of his class with a masters degree in business administration from Harvard. Obama did only got a degree in law.
Romney worked as a strategic business consultant for for than 25 years, charging other companies money to tell them what to do. The taught him a lot about the economy.
Obama has never had a real job in the real economy. Obama's work as a "community organizer" did not help him understand how to help the economy. Obama's short time working as a law professor did not help him know how to help the economy.
Obama actually said that working in the real economy, as a summer intern, was like working behind enemy lines.

Romney is more likely to balance the budget than Obama

2011-12-21T14:29:00.001-08:00

Reasons to agree:

Romney balanced the budget in 2003, as Governor Massachusetts.
Romney balanced the budget in 2004, as Governor Massachusetts.
Romney balanced the budget in 2005, as Governor Massachusetts.
Romney balanced the budget in 2006, as Governor Massachusetts.
Romney was able to leave money in the rainy day fund, even though he faced a 3 billion dollar budget deficit when he came into office.
Romney turned around budget problems at the Winter Olympics, which was $239 million dollars short (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Winter_Olympic_bid_scandal)
Romney has promised to only spend money on things that we can justify borrowing money from China for to pay for.
Obama borrowed too much money.
Romney knows more about the economy than Obama.

Reasons to disagree:

Romney has promised to not raise taxes. In order to balance the budget, we are going to have to raise taxes.

Redstate: "Perry is studious and deliberate in making decisions"

2011-12-19T10:53:00.001-08:00

Part time congress? GIANT ADDITIONAL tax breaks for millionaires? Do
these decisions reflect a studious and deliberate decision making
process to the republican party base? I want nothing to do with this
studious part of my party.

Newt

2011-11-29T20:01:00.001-08:00

"In the past decade Newt Gingrich's "consulting" firm got $37 million in fees from pharmaceutical firms lobbying for the 2003 prescription drug benefit (Medicare Part D), from ADM and ethanol makers lobbying for subsidies, from Freddie Mac lobbying for federal support for the soon-to-be toxic sub-prime mortgage market, and from banks lobbying for the 2008 "TARP" bailout (which Gingrich endorsed). When he wasn't busy pursuing these various corruptions, Gingrich was busy promoting Al Gore's "cap and trade" legislation and global warming myths in widely-publicized TV and print ads sitting cozily on a coach with Nancy Pelosi, whose political tactics he has subsequently characterized as "despicable," "dishonest" and "vicious." Well, it takes one to know one." ~Richard M. Salsman

In medicine, as in agriculture, efficiency cannot be achieved by fiat.

2011-11-14T19:14:00.001-08:00

Cost is the spectre haunting health reform. For many decades, the
great flaw in the American health-care system was its unconscionable
gaps in coverage. Those gaps have widened to become graves—resulting
in an estimated forty-five thousand premature deaths each year—and
have forced more than a million people into bankruptcy. The emerging
health-reform package has a master plan for this problem. By
establishing insurance exchanges, mandates, and tax credits, it would
guarantee that at least ninety-four per cent of Americans had decent
medical coverage. This is historic, and it is necessary. But the
legislation has no master plan for dealing with the problem of soaring
medical costs. And this is a source of deep unease.
Health-care costs are strangling our country. Medical care now absorbs
eighteen per cent of every dollar we earn. Between 1999 and 2009, the
average annual premium for employer-sponsored family insurance
coverage rose from $5,800 to $13,400, and the average cost per
Medicare beneficiary went from $5,500 to $11,900. The costs of our
dysfunctional health-care system have already helped sink our auto
industry, are draining state and federal coffers, and could ultimately
imperil our ability to sustain universal coverage.
What have we gained by paying more than twice as much for medical care
as we did a decade ago? The health-care sector certainly employs more
people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great
strides in service. In Western Europe, most primary-care practices now
use electronic health records and offer after-hours care; in the
United States, most don't. Improvement in demonstrated medical
outcomes has been modest in most fields. The reason the system is a
money drain is not that it's so successful but that it's fragmented,
disorganized, and inconsistent; it's neglectful of low-profit services
like mental-health care, geriatrics, and primary care, and almost
giddy in its overuse of high-cost technologies such as radiology
imaging, brand-name drugs, and many elective procedures.
At the current rate of increase, the cost of family insurance will
reach twenty-seven thousand dollars or more in a decade, taking more
than a fifth of every dollar that people earn. Businesses will see
their health-coverage expenses rise from ten per cent of total labor
costs to seventeen per cent. Health-care spending will essentially
devour all our future wage increases and economic growth. State budget
costs for health care will more than double, and Medicare will run out
of money in just eight years. The cost problem, people have come to
realize, threatens not just our prosperity but our solvency.
So what does the reform package do about it? Turn to page 621 of the
Senate version, the section entitled "Transforming the Health Care
Delivery System," and start reading. Does the bill end medicine's
destructive piecemeal payment system? Does it replace paying for
quantity with paying for quality? Does it institute nationwide
structural changes that curb costs and raise quality? It does not.
Instead, what it offers is . . . pilot programs.
This has provided a soft target for critics. "Two thousand
seventy-four pages and trillions of dollars later," Mitch McConnell,
the Senate Minority Leader, said recently, "this bill doesn't even
meet the basic goal that the American people had in mind and what they
thought this debate was all about: to lower costs." According to the
Congressional Budget Office, the bill makes no significant long-term
cost reductions. Even Democrats have become nervous. For many, the
hope of reform was to re-form the health-care system. If nothing is
done, the United States is on track to spend an unimaginable ten
trillion dollars more on health care in the next decade than it
currently spends, hobbling government, growth, and employment. Where
we crave sweeping transformation, however, all the current bill offers
is those pilot programs, a battery of small-scale experiments. The
strategy seems hopelessly inadequate to solve a problem of this
magnitude. And yet—here's the interesting thing—history suggests
otherwise.
At the start of the twentieth century, another indispensable but
unmanageably costly sector was strangling the country: agriculture. In
1900, more than forty per cent of a family's income went to paying for
food. At the same time, farming was hugely labor-intensive, tying up
almost half the American workforce. We were, partly as a result, still
a poor nation. Only by improving the productivity of farming could we
raise our standard of living and emerge as an industrial power. We had
to reduce food costs, so that families could spend money on other
goods, and resources could flow to other economic sectors. And we had
to make farming less labor-dependent, so that more of the population
could enter non-farming occupations and support economic growth and
development.
America's agricultural crisis gave rise to deep national frustration.
The inefficiency of farms meant low crop yields, high prices, limited
choice, and uneven quality. The agricultural system was fragmented and
disorganized, and ignored evidence showing how things could be done
better. Shallow plowing, no crop rotation, inadequate seedbeds, and
other habits sustained by lore and tradition resulted in poor
production and soil exhaustion. And lack of coördination led to local
shortages of many crops and overproduction of others.
You might think that the invisible hand of market competition would
have solved these problems, that the prospect of higher income from
improved practices would have encouraged change. But laissez-faire had
not worked. Farmers relied so much on human muscle because it was
cheap and didn't require the long-term investment that animal power
and machinery did. The fact that land, too, was cheap encouraged
extensive, almost careless cultivation. When the soil became
exhausted, farmers simply moved; most tracts of farmland were occupied
for five years or less. Those who didn't move tended to be tenant
farmers, who paid rent to their landlords in either cash or crops,
which also discouraged long-term investment. And there was a
deep-seated fear of risk and the uncertainties of change; many farmers
dismissed new ideas as "book farming."
Things were no better elsewhere in the world. For industrializing
nations in the first half of the twentieth century, food was the
fundamental problem. The desire for a once-and-for-all fix led
Communist governments to take over and run vast "scientific" farms and
collectives. We know what that led to: widespread famines and tens of
millions of deaths.
The United States did not seek a grand solution. Private farms
remained, along with the considerable advantages of individual
initiative. Still, government was enlisted to help millions of farmers
change the way they worked. The approach succeeded almost shockingly
well. The resulting abundance of goods in our grocery stores and the
leaps in our standard of living became the greatest argument for
America around the world. And, as the agricultural historian Roy V.
Scott recounted, four decades ago, in his remarkable study "The
Reluctant Farmer," it all started with a pilot program.
In February, 1903, Seaman Knapp arrived in the East Texas town of
Terrell to talk to the local farmers. He was what we'd today deride as
a government bureaucrat; he worked for the United States Department of
Agriculture. Earlier in his life, he had been a farmer himself and a
professor of agriculture at Iowa State College. He had also been a
pastor, a bank president, and an entrepreneur, who once brought
twenty-five thousand settlers to southwest Louisiana to farm for an
English company that had bought a million and a half acres of land
there. Then he got a position at the U.S.D.A. as an "agricultural
explorer," travelling across Asia and collecting seeds for everything
from alfalfa to persimmons, not to mention a variety of rice that
proved more productive than any that we'd had. The U.S.D.A. now wanted
him to get farmers to farm differently. And he had an idea.
Knapp knew that the local farmers were not going to trust some
outsider who told them to adopt a "better" way of doing their jobs. So
he asked Terrell's leaders to find just one farmer who would be
willing to try some "scientific" methods and see what happened. The
group chose Walter C. Porter, and he volunteered seventy acres of land
where he had grown only cotton or corn for twenty-eight years, applied
no fertilizer, and almost completely depleted the humus layer. Knapp
gave him a list of simple innovations to follow—things like deeper
plowing and better soil preparation, the use of only the best seed,
the liberal application of fertilizer, and more thorough cultivation
to remove weeds and aerate the soil around the plants. The local
leaders stopped by periodically to confirm that he was able to do what
he had been asked to.
The year 1903 proved to be the most disastrous for cotton in a quarter
century, because of the spread of the boll weevil. Nonetheless, at the
end of the season Porter reported a substantial increase in profit,
clearing an extra seven hundred dollars. He announced that he would
apply the lessons he had learned to his entire, eight-hundred-acre
property, and many other farmers did the same. Knapp had discovered a
simple but critical rule for gaining coöperation: "What a man hears he
may doubt, what he sees he may possibly doubt, but what he does
himself he cannot doubt."
The following year, the U.S.D.A. got funding to ramp up his
activities. Knapp appointed thirty-three "extension agents" to set up
similar demonstration farms across Texas and into Louisiana. The
agents provided farmers with technical assistance and information,
including comparative data on what they and others were achieving. As
experience accrued, Knapp revised and refined his list of recommended
practices for an expanding range of crops and livestock. The approach
proved just as successful on a larger scale.
The program had no shortage of critics. Southern Farm Magazine
denounced it as government control of agriculture. But, in 1914, after
two years of stiff opposition, Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act,
establishing the U.S.D.A. Cooperative Extension Service. By 1920,
there were seven thousand federal extension agents, working in almost
every county in the nation, and by 1930 they had set up more than
seven hundred and fifty thousand demonstration farms.
As Daniel Carpenter, a professor of government at Harvard, points out,
the demonstration-farm program was just one of a hodgepodge of
successful U.S.D.A. initiatives that began as pilots. Another was
devoted to comparative-effectiveness research: experimental stations
were established—eventually, in every state—that set about determining
the most productive methods for growing plants and raising livestock.
There was a pilot investigation program, which, among other things,
traced a 1904 fruit-decay crisis in California to cuts in the fruit
from stem clippers and the fingernails of handlers (and, along the
way, introduced modern packing methods industry-wide). The U.S.D.A.'s
scientific capabilities grew into the world's greatest
biological-discovery machine of the time.
The department invested heavily in providing timely data to farmers,
so that they could make more rational planting decisions. It ran the
country's weather-forecasting system. And its statistics service
adopted crop-reporting systems from Europe that allowed it to provide
independent crop forecasts—forecasts that, among other things,
dramatically reduced speculation bubbles. (In 1927, Republicans,
prompted by aggrieved New York speculators, managed to prohibit the
U.S.D.A. from releasing the forecasts; the program was reinstituted
three years later, following an outcry from farmers.) The department
continuously updated its storehouse of technical assistance, so that
when new technologies arrived—new hybrid varieties, new kinds of
fertilizer, new forms of mechanization—farmers were able to make use
of them more swiftly and effectively. The U.S.D.A. established an
information-broadcasting service. A hundred and seventeen commercial
and forty-six military radio stations carried crop reports; printed
reports were distributed to fifteen million farmers a year. It also
introduced a grading system for food—meat, eggs, dairy products, and
fresh fruits and vegetables—to flag and discourage substandard
quality.
What seemed like a hodgepodge eventually cohered into a whole. The
government never took over agriculture, but the government didn't
leave it alone, either. It shaped a feedback loop of experiment and
learning and encouragement for farmers across the country. The results
were beyond what anyone could have imagined. Productivity went way up,
outpacing that of other Western countries. Prices fell by half. By
1930, food absorbed just twenty-four per cent of family spending and
twenty per cent of the workforce. Today, food accounts for just eight
per cent of household income and two per cent of the labor force. It
is produced on no more land than was devoted to it a century ago, and
with far greater variety and abundance than ever before in history.
This transformation, though critical to America's rise as a
superpower, involved some painful dislocations: farms were
consolidated; unproductive farmers were winnowed out. As the historian
Sally Clarke, of the University of Texas at Austin, has pointed out,
it's astonishing that the revolution took place without vast numbers
of farm foreclosures and social unrest. We cushioned the impact of the
transformation—with, for instance, price supports that smoothed out
the price decline and avoided wholesale bankruptcies. There were
compromises and concessions and wrong turns. But the strategy worked,
because United States agencies were allowed to proceed by trial and
error, continually adjusting their policies over time in response not
to ideology but to hard measurement of the results against societal
goals. Could something like this happen with health care?
There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are
amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal
health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one
of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some
tinkering around the edges) it will happen. Problems of the second
kind, by contrast, are never solved, exactly; they are managed.
Reforming the agricultural system so that it serves the country's
needs has been a process, involving millions of farmers pursuing their
individual interests. This could not happen by fiat. There was no
one-time fix. The same goes for reforming the health-care system so
that it serves the country's needs. No nation has escaped the cost
problem: the expenditure curves have outpaced inflation around the
world. Nobody has found a master switch that you can flip to make the
problem go away. If we want to start solving it, we first need to
recognize that there is no technical solution.
Much like farming, medicine involves hundreds of thousands of local
entities across the country—hospitals, clinics, pharmacies,
home-health agencies, drug and device suppliers. They provide complex
services for the thousands of diseases, conditions, and injuries that
afflict us. They want to provide good care, but they also measure
their success by the amount of revenue they take in, and, as each
pursues its individual interests, the net result has been disastrous.
Our fee-for-service system, doling out separate payments for
everything and everyone involved in a patient's care, has all the
wrong incentives: it rewards doing more over doing right, it increases
paperwork and the duplication of efforts, and it discourages
clinicians from working together for the best possible results.
Knowledge diffuses too slowly. Our information systems are primitive.
The malpractice system is wasteful and counterproductive. And the best
way to fix all this is—well, plenty of people have plenty of ideas.
It's just that nobody knows for sure.
The history of American agriculture suggests that you can have
transformation without a master plan, without knowing all the answers
up front. Government has a crucial role to play here—not running the
system but guiding it, by looking for the best strategies and
practices and finding ways to get them adopted, county by county.
Transforming health care everywhere starts with transforming it
somewhere. But how?
We have our models, to be sure. There are places like the Mayo Clinic,
in Minnesota; Intermountain Healthcare, in Utah; the Kaiser Permanente
health-care system in California; and Scott & White Healthcare, in
Texas, that reliably deliver higher quality for lower costs than
elsewhere. Yet they have had years to develop their organizations and
institutional cultures. We don't yet know how to replicate what they
do. Even they have difficulties. Kaiser Permanente has struggled to
bring California-calibre results to North Carolina, for instance. Each
area has its own history and traditions, its own gaps in
infrastructure, and its own distinctive patient population. To figure
out how to transform medical communities, with all their diversity and
complexity, is going to involve trial and error. And this will require
pilot programs—a lot of them.
Pick up the Senate health-care bill—yes, all 2,074 pages—and leaf
through it. Almost half of it is devoted to programs that would test
various ways to curb costs and increase quality. The bill is a
hodgepodge. And it should be.
The bill tests, for instance, a number of ways that federal insurers
could pay for care. Medicare and Medicaid currently pay clinicians the
same amount regardless of results. But there is a pilot program to
increase payments for doctors who deliver high-quality care at lower
cost, while reducing payments for those who deliver low-quality care
at higher cost. There's a program that would pay bonuses to hospitals
that improve patient results after heart failure, pneumonia, and
surgery. There's a program that would impose financial penalties on
institutions with high rates of infections transmitted by health-care
workers. Still another would test a system of penalties and rewards
scaled to the quality of home health and rehabilitation care.
Other experiments try moving medicine away from fee-for-service
payment altogether. A bundled-payment provision would pay medical
teams just one thirty-day fee for all the outpatient and inpatient
services related to, say, an operation. This would give clinicians an
incentive to work together to smooth care and reduce complications.
One pilot would go even further, encouraging clinicians to band
together into "Accountable Care Organizations" that take
responsibility for all their patients' needs, including prevention—so
that fewer patients need operations in the first place. These groups
would be permitted to keep part of the savings they generate, as long
as they meet quality and service thresholds.
The bill has ideas for changes in other parts of the system, too. Some
provisions attempt to improve efficiency through administrative
reforms, by, for example, requiring insurance companies to create a
single standardized form for insurance reimbursement, to alleviate the
clerical burden on clinicians. There are tests of various kinds of
community wellness programs. The legislation also continues a
stimulus-package program that funds comparative-effectiveness
research—testing existing treatments for a condition against one
another—because fewer treatment failures should mean lower costs.
There are hundreds of pages of these programs, almost all of which
appear in the House bill as well. But the Senate reform package goes a
few U.S.D.A.-like steps further. It creates a center to generate
innovations in paying for and organizing care. It creates an
independent Medicare advisory commission, which would sort through all
the pilot results and make recommendations that would automatically
take effect unless Congress blocks them. It also takes a decisive step
in changing how insurance companies deal with the costs of health
care. In the nineteen-eighties, H.M.O.s tried to control costs by
directly overruling doctors' recommendations (through requiring
pre-authorization and denying payment); the backlash taught them that
it was far easier to avoid sicker patients and pass along cost
increases to employers. Both the House and the Senate bills prevent
insurance companies from excluding patients. But the Senate plan also
imposes an excise tax on the most expensive, "Cadillac" insurance
plans. This pushes private insurers to make the same efforts that
public insurers will make to test incentives and programs that
encourage clinicians to keep costs down.
Which of these programs will work? We can't know. That's why the
Congressional Budget Office doesn't credit any of them with
substantial savings. The package relies on taxes and short-term
payment cuts to providers in order to pay for subsidies. But, in the
end, it contains a test of almost every approach that leading
health-care experts have suggested. (The only one missing is
malpractice reform. This is where the Republicans could be helpful.)
None of this is as satisfying as a master plan. But there can't be a
master plan. That's a crucial lesson of our agricultural experience.
And there's another: with problems that don't have technical
solutions, the struggle never ends.
Recently, I spoke with the agricultural extension agent for my home
town, Athens, Ohio. His name is Rory Lewandowski. He is fifty-one and
has been the extension agent there for nine years. He grew up on a
Minnesota dairy farm, and got a bachelor's degree in animal science
and agronomy from the University of Minnesota and a master's degree in
agronomy from the University of Wisconsin. He spent most of his career
in farm education, including eight years in Bolivia, where, as a
volunteer for the Mennonite Central Committee, he created
demonstration farms in an area where the mining economy had collapsed.
I had a vague childhood memory of the extension office, on West Union
Street, near downtown Athens; kids in my school used to go to 4-H
meetings there. But I had no idea what the agent really did. So I
asked Lewandowski. "I just try to help make farming better in Athens
County," he said.
Athens is a green, hilly county at the edge of the Appalachian
Mountains, and the farms there are small—an average of a hundred and
fifty acres, Lewandowski said. There are six hundred and sixty of
them, with, he estimated, as many as a hundred kinds of produce and
livestock. His primary task is to help farmers improve the
productivity and quality of their farms and to reduce environmental
harm. A hundred years after Seaman Knapp, the difficulties have
changed but they haven't gone away.
I'd caught Lewandowski in his office on a Saturday. He routinely puts
in sixty-five to eighty hours a week at his job. He has a five-week
small-ruminant course for sheep and goat producers; a ten-week
master-gardener course; and a grazing school. His wife, Marcia, who
has written two knitting books, handles registration at the door. He
sends out a monthly newsletter. He speaks with about half the farmers
in the county in the course of a year.
Mostly, the farmers come to him—for guidance and troubleshooting. He
told me about a desperate message that a farmer left him the other
day. The man's spinach plants had been afflicted with downy mildew and
were collapsing. "He said he was going to lose his whole crop by the
weekend and all the markets that he depended on," Lewandowski said. He
called the farmer back and explained that the disease gets started
with cooler temperatures and high humidity. Had the farmer been using
overhead watering?
Yes, he said, but he had poked around the Internet and was thinking
about switching to misting.
Not a good idea. "That still leaves too much moisture on the leaf,"
Lewandowski said. He recommended that the farmer switch to drip
irrigation, and get some fans in his greenhouse, too.
The farmer said that he'd thought about fans but worried that they
would spread the spores around.
They will, Lewandowski said. "But you need wetness on the leaves for
four to six hours to get penetration through the leaf cuticle," he
explained. If the plants were dried out, it wouldn't be a problem.
"You've got to understand the biology of this," he said to me.
He doesn't always understand the biology himself. He told me about a
beef farmer who had been offered distiller's grain from a
microbrewery, and wanted to know whether he could feed it to his cows.
Lewandowski had no idea, but he called the program's beef extension
expert and got the answer. (Yes, with some limits on how much he put
in a ration.) A large organic farm called with questions about growing
vegetables in high tunnels, a relatively new innovation that the farm
had adopted to extend its growing season. Lewandowski had no
experience with this, but an extension agent in Wooster, Ohio, was
able to supply information on what had worked best elsewhere.
"You have to be able to say, 'I don't know, but I can figure that out
for you,' " Lewandowski said.
If he could change one thing about farming in Athens, I asked, what
would it be? "Grazing management," he said. "Think about how the grass
grows in your lawn. A grass plant needs at least a few days after a
mowing to grow." If you mowed your lawn every day, the grass would
become thin and patchy. That's what happens when farmers leave their
animals out in one big pasture—which is what most small farmers do—or
rotate them too slowly. In his grazing school and in demonstrations,
he asks farmers to keep their animals in a given area for only a few
days, then move them to a section where the grass is eight inches tall
and has reached its highest nutrient value. This way, the pastures
won't erode, and the cattle will grow better, yielding higher-quality
meat and more of it. The technique requires discipline, though, and
extra work, and farmers have been slow to give it a try.
I asked him if he has had any victories. All the time, he said. But he
had no illusions: his job will never end.
Cynicism about government can seem ingrained in the American
character. It was, ironically, in a speech to the Future Farmers of
America that President Ronald Reagan said, "The ten most dangerous
words in the English language are 'Hi, I'm from the government, and
I'm here to help.' " Well, Lewandowski is from the government, and
he's here to help. And small farms in Athens County are surviving
because of him. What he does involves continual improvisation and
education; problems keep changing, and better methods of managing them
keep emerging—as in medicine.
In fact, when I spoke with Lewandowski about farming in Athens, I was
struck by how much it's like the health-care system there. Doctors
typically work in small offices, with only a few colleagues, as in
most of the country. The hospital in Athens has less than a tenth the
number of beds that my hospital in Boston has. The county's clinicians
could do much more to control costs and improve quality of care, and
they will have to. But it will be an ongoing struggle.
My parents recently retired from medical practice in Athens. My mother
was a pediatrician and my father was a urologist. I tried to imagine
what it would be like for them if they were still practicing. They
would be asked to switch from paper to electronic medical records, to
organize with other doctors to reduce medical complications and
unnecessary costs, to try to arrive at a package price for a child
with asthma or a man with kidney stones. These are the kinds of
changes that everyone in medicine has to start making. And I have no
idea how my parents would do it.
I work in an academic medical group in Boston with more than a
thousand doctors and a vastly greater infrastructure of support, and
we don't know the answers to half these questions, either. Recently, I
had a conversation with a few of my colleagues about whether we could
accept a bundled payment for patients with thyroid cancer, one of the
cancers I commonly treat in my practice as a surgeon. It seemed
feasible until we started thinking about patients who wanted to get
their imaging or radiation done elsewhere. There was also the matter
of how we'd divide the money among the surgeons, endocrinologists,
radiologists, and others involved. "Maybe we'd have to switch to
salaries," someone said. Things were getting thorny. Then I went off
to do an operation in which we opened up about a thousand dollars'
worth of disposable materials that we never used.
Surely we can solve such problems; the reform bill sets out to find
ways that we can. And, in the next several years, as the knowledge
accumulates, I suspect that we'll need our own Seaman Knapps and Rory
Lewandowskis to help spread these practices county by county.
We'll also need data, if we're going to know what is succeeding. Among
the most important, and least noticed, provisions in the reform
legislation is one in the House bill to expand our ability to collect
national health statistics. The poverty of our health-care information
is an embarrassment. At the end of each month, we have
county-by-county data on unemployment, and we have prompt and detailed
data on the price of goods and commodities; we can use these
indicators to guide our economic policies. But try to look up
information on your community's medical costs and utilization—or
simply try to find out how many people died from heart attacks or
pneumonia or surgical complications—and you will discover that the
most recent data are at least three years old, if they exist at all,
and aren't broken down to a county level that communities can learn
from. It's like driving a car with a speedometer that tells you only
how fast all cars were driving, on average, three years ago. We have
better information about crops and cows than we do about patients. If
health-care reform is to succeed, the final legislation must do
something about this.
Getting our medical communities, town by town, to improve care and
control costs isn't a task that we've asked government to take on
before. But we have no choice. At this point, we can't afford any
illusions: the system won't fix itself, and there's no piece of
legislation that will have all the answers, either. The task will
require dedicated and talented people in government agencies and in
communities who recognize that the country's future depends on their
sidestepping the ideological battles, encouraging local change, and
following the results. But if we're willing to accept an arduous,
messy, and continuous process we can come to grips with a problem even
of this immensity. We've done it before. ♦
ILLUSTRATION: FRANCESCO BONGIORNI

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the arts: Subscribe now

Erick Erickson

2011-11-09T11:15:00.001-08:00

re: "We've seen this play out over and over. Jon Huntsman comes up with the best economic plan of all the candidates, Herman Cain follows up with 999, Perry comes out with a flat tax, and Romney refuses to do anything. Until he does something."

999 is a tax plan. It is not an economic plan. Perry had his 59 point economic plan before Cain or Huntsman. Obviously Erik can't watch the debates, because if he did, he would have remembered how they were complaining that Perry didn't have a plan yet. But only idiots like Erik think that we can just have a race to who has the first plan. The fact of the matter is that 999 wouldn't work, Perry's plan would cost another 1 trillion dollars A YEAR, and we shouldn't confuse tax policy with an economic plan.

re: "Mitt Romney is not the George W. Bush of 2012 — he is the Harriet Miers of 2012, only conservative because a few conservative grand pooh-bahs tell us Mitt Romney is conservative and for no other reason."

Romney was conservative in Massachusetts. He balanced the budget without raising taxes. He got a "B" from the NRA. Make a specific case for anything that he did that was not "Conservative" instead of just stating your conclusion.

re: "Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee. And his general election campaign will be an utter disaster for conservatives as he takes the GOP down with him and burns up what it means to be a conservative in the process."

If you don't want people who balance the budget like Romney, you can have conservatives like Rick Perry that increase spending. Conservatives should not be like Romney and support the death penalty, balance budgets, cut spending, reduce duplicate programs. We don't want any of that. Mitt Romney trained his police to investigate immigration before anyone else in the country. Back before it was popular. He opposed bilingual education before it was popular.

re: "Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is a man devoid of any principles other than getting himself elected. " This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. He is devoted to facts. |He is devoted to efficiency. He fixes problems. You can be nice to gay people and still be opposed to gay marriage. Give your argument, instead of just repeating the echo chamber.

re: "You want him to be for killing the unborn? He'll go all in on abortion rights until he wants to run for an office where it is not in his advantage." He said he was pro-choice, but he put that issue to the side when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts, because he respects the rule of law. You can be pure, because you, Erik, never have to represent people. You just get to sit on the sidelines and tell us how smart you are. But in Government you get elected to represent your voters. Should he have lost Massachusetts? You think Massachusetts would have elected a pro-life Governor? We should never elect republican governors in the North East? Its wrong to put issues on the side-line? That's your decision, but you are an idiot.

re: "Republican billionaires have a fantastic track record of getting Republican opinion leaders to support them and an even better track record at losing elections. Mitt Romney will be no different."

Romney is not a billionaire. Have we had a republican Billionaire presidential candidate?

re: "To beat Barack Obama, a candidate must paint a bold contrast with the Democrats on their policies. When Mitt Romney tries, Barack Obama will be able to show that just the other day Mitt Romney held exactly the opposite position as the one he holds today." No they won't. Give specifics. Romney has always opposed government getting bigger. Romney has always supported tax cuts. Romney has always opposed partial birth abortion. GIVE EXAMPLES!

Erick Erickson flip flops: "Why Conservatism Will Die"

Erick Erickson flip flops: "Conservatism itself will not really die."

Which is it Erick? Which is it? Why can't you stop flip-flopping?

re: "It is striking to me that in 2012 there is broad based popular angst against Wall Street and Washington and the Republican Party is on the verge of nominating a multi-millionaire scion of the Rockefeller Wing of the Republican Party whose closest encounters with the common man are accidentally touching one of the many hired hands in one of the many rooms of one of his many mansions."

So republicans hate Rich people now? Romney lived in the same house for 25 years. It wasn't a big house. He drove a Mustang. Nothing fancy.

re: "But then many of the DC-NYC Republican "conservatives" who support Romney are the same, only coming into contact with regular people when they are served their breakfast by a steward in the first class car on the Acela Express." Shut up. This is stupid.

re: "Neither Romney nor the Washington GOP crowd who loves him have very much at all in common with fly over country conservatives who see the GOP and Democrats both as out to lunch tools of K-Street and Wall Street. The party that could lead a conservative, populist campaign against Wall Street and Barack Obama, the former getting fat off the latter, will instead nominate a guy more at home on Wall Street than Main Street."

We don't want to elect people who have been Governors, because most people aren't governors, and we only want to elect blue-collar farmers to president.

re: "And enough conservatives will be cheerleaders and rally around him that by November of 2012 the ideological underpinnings of the modern American conservative movement will be coming apart." What underpinnings? WHAT? Give examples? Taxes? The size of Government? Romney wants Government to be less than 20% of GDP. Is this not conservative enough for you?

The Debate

2011-10-22T21:17:00.001-07:00

Romney: "Look, I wouldn't expect a male cheerleader to understand."
Perry: "For the last time, I was a yell leader, dammit, not a male cheer leader."

http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1110/18/se.05.html

COOPER: Governor Perry, in the last debate, Governor Romney pointed out that Texas has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the country, over one million kids. You did not get an opportunity to respond to that. What do you say? How do you explain that?

PERRY: Well, we've got one of the finest health care systems in the world in Texas. As a matter of fact, the Houston, Texas, Medical Center, there's more doctors and nurses that go to work there every morning [every morning! Wow! Even on Saturdays? WOW] than any other place in America [That is some trully great trivia, but surely you are going to answer the question, aren't you?]. But the idea that you can't have access to health care, some of the finest health care in the world [What? What?!? People in other states have access to healthcare. In Texas? Not so much] -- but we have a 1,200-mile border with Mexico, and the fact is we have a huge number of illegals that are coming into this country. [If immigration is the reason that so many of his citizens are uninsured, why doesn't he do something about immigration?]

And they're coming into this country because the federal government has failed to secure that border [And Texas]. But they're coming here because there is a magnet. And the magnet is called jobs. And those people that hire illegals ought to be penalized [So you would hire inspectors? Romney favors e-verify, but you opposed it. How are you going to enforce it?].

And Mitt, you lose all of your standing, from my perspective, because you hired illegals in your home and you knew about it for a year. And the idea that you stand here before us and talk about that you're strong on immigration is on its face the height of hypocrisy.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: Governor Romney?

ROMNEY: Rick, I don't think I've ever hired an illegal in my life. And so I'm afraid -- I'm looking forward to finding your facts on that, because that just doesn't --

PERRY: Well, I'll tell you what the facts are.

ROMNEY: Rick, again -- Rick, I'm speaking.

PERRY: You had the -- your newspaper -- the newspaper --

ROMNEY: I'm speaking. I'm speaking. I'm speaking.

(CROSSTALK)

ROMNEY: You get 30 seconds. This is the way the rules work here, is that I get 60 seconds and then you get 30 second to respond. Right?

Anderson?

PERRY: And they want to hear you say that you knew you had illegals working at your --

ROMNEY: Would you please wait? Are you just going to keep talking?

PERRY: Yes, sir.

ROMNEY: Would you let me finish with what I have to say?

(BOOING)

ROMNEY: Look, Rick --

COOPER: I thought Republicans follow the rules.

ROMNEY: This has been a tough couple of debates for Rick, and I understand that. And so you're going to get testy.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: But let's let -- I'll tell you what, let me take my time, and then you can take your time. All right?

PERRY: Great. Have at it.

ROMNEY: All right.

My time is this, which is I have in my state -- when I was governor, I took the action of empowering our state police to enforce immigration laws. When you were governor, you said, I don't want to build a fence. You put in place a magnet.

You talked about magnets. You put in place a magnet to draw illegals into the state, which was giving $100,000 of tuition credit to illegals that come into this country, and then you have states -- the big states of illegal immigrants are California and Florida. Over the last 10 years, they've had no increase in illegal immigration.

Texas has had 60 percent increase in illegal immigrants in Texas. If there's someone who has a record as governor with regards to illegal immigration that doesn't stand up to muster, it's you, not me.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Governor Perry, you have 30 seconds.

PERRY: You stood here in front of the American people and did not tell the truth that you had illegals working on your property. And the newspaper came to you and brought it to your attention, and you still, a year later, had those individuals working for you.

The idea that you can sit here and talk about any of us having an immigration issue is beyond me. I've got a strong policy. I've always been against amnesty. You, on the other hand, were for amnesty.

COOPER: I've got 30 seconds, then we've got move on to another immigration question.

ROMNEY: OK.

You wrote an op-ed in the newspaper saying you were open to amnesty. That's number one.

Number two, we hired a lawn company to mow our lawn, and they had illegal immigrants that were working there. And when that was pointed out to us, we let them go. And we went to them and said --

PERRY: A year later?

ROMNEY: You have a problem with allowing someone to finish speaking. And I suggest that if you want to become president of the United States, you have got to let both people speak. So first, let me speak.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: So we went to the company and we said, look, you can't have any illegals working on our property. I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, I can't have illegals. It turns out that once question, they hired someone who had falsified their documents, had documents, and therefore we fired them. And let me tell you, it is hard in this country as an individual homeowner to know if people who are contractors working at your home, if they have hired people that are illegal. If I'm president, we'll put in an E-Verify system, which you have opposed --

COOPER: Out of time.

ROMNEY: -- to make sure that we can find out who's here illegally and not, and crack down on people who come here illegally.

COOPER: All right. We're going to stay on the topic of immigration.

(APPLAUSE)

Images From Romney's Economic Plan

2011-10-16T11:43:00.001-07:00