Gothamist: More Brooklyn McCain Supporters Speak Out

cucarachita

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:36:29 -0500

Now I know why I always hated Park Slope.

Joclyn

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:21:32 -0500

#39 I love when people cite random websites as some sort of source of "information" where they learned these "facts." A random blog is the same, evidence-wise, as a sandwich board on a maniac. Just because something has been typed does not make it true.

Bottomless Chips

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:46:32 -0500

references to mass suicide are a bit over the top. It was grape Flavor-Aid, too, not Kool-Aid.

PnonG

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:54:52 -0500

ok so hate is everywhere but can we stop with the kool-aid thing already, references to mass suicide are a bit over the top. Obama will turn out to be way more conservative then you think btw.

Amanda Harlech

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:50:55 -0500

How many Warren Buffets or CEOs have come to the rescue of wall street? In fact the japanese have! there you have for the national supremacist! How can you leave the lords of the market rule with their only principle: greedy gain, if they can not even be responsible for their bad decisions? republicans believe in a corporate feudalistic society where some divine rule of invisible hand gives power to a few, and where the government is the only obstacle to bring the divine power into the soul of non deserving mortals. All men created equal is not a principle, but a difficult not even feasible status where government is the biggest obstacle? That's the reason the republican party will die soon: economical darwinism is the furthest construct from civility.

Bottomless Chips

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:34:21 -0500

Faack. Just wrote a huge response and it said "registration required." Basically, it's laughable that you think Amanda has said facts. She cited quotes and injected her opinions; it's all opinions. To bring econometrics into this debate is irrelevant, zodak. So you can say you agree with her, but it's subjective. Anyway, Amanda did not care to address why HUD, CRA, Fannie, Freddie, and printing money is not regulation. She also has not justified why Greenspan's irresponsible monetary policy is not to blame. Free-market capitalism is based on the markets allocating capital through price mechanisms. A centrally planning market is when the capital is not fixed and you set price floors and ceilings, as well as inject other regulation. Clearly, we're not a free-market and you're just advocated for more planning and more control when that's what got us into the mess in the first place.

Think twice

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:12:21 -0500

Can't we all just agree to disagree. Take the moral high ground people.

Rolltide23

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:07:31 -0500

Here's an idea..black and hispanics shouldnt take out loans they cant pay.

zodak

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:07:11 -0500

damn, amanda won this thread early on with her facts & links to even more facts & yet somehow people still think they can argue with her. amazing. seriously, chips, you lost.

nycnewsjunkie

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 10:07:07 -0500

"we just know to keep our opinions to ourselves around Park Slope and NYC in general." I keep my mouth closed about politics at work. Outside of work...forget it...I'll argue and debate anyone, especially those around my age, college students who aren't using their brains and are blindly voting for Sen. Obama.

MonkSalve

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:49:24 -0500

Amanda! No feeding the animals!!

Bottomless Chips

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:03:57 -0500

Yup, so did monopolies, child-labor, insider trading, unsafe conditions at a workplace, securities fraud. Sorry to burst your romantic-past bubble. Those are all boogeymans. Monopolies are not inherently bad; many economists agree on this. What's always bad is the regulation to try and prevent or break up monopolies. Child labor is also not necessarily bad. So kids used to work in the fields in this country? Gasp! They should've been sitting in a inner city classroom doing nothing and then dropping out at 16 and being jobless. The notion that everyone in this country has to go to college and graduate with a white collar job in hand is a romanticized view, yg. As for unsafe working conditions and safety regulation, google: George McGovern hotel regulation. Having politicians try and figure out what the safest environment is in a workplace is futile. Every environment is different; a car plant differs from a sewing mill that differs from a floor of cubicles. Also, when people complain about the outsourcing of jobs, look no further than the high costs of running a business in this country. How many permits do you need to build a building then have workers? How much money do you have to pay for their payroll taxes? Why do I have to pay them $6.75/hour--or whatever the federal min wage is--when the job isn't worth that? Insider trading and fraud are crimes no matter how you spin it. When libertarians say "no regulation" it still makes defrauding people, murder, stealing, and rape crimes. But you make my point: Insider trading and fraud still exist in 2008 and is probably even worse. When you create all these rules, you also create all of these loopholes. When you create bureaucracy, you also create more people to have the wool potentially pulled over their eyes.

Elm Street

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:42:09 -0500

bottomless,you are saying that the Federal reserve as institution should disappear and give total control to wall street? So why do wall street should receive ANY money from the government AT ALL? Why were the republicans IN THE GOVERNMENT throwing a life saver to wall-street if they believe in free-market? All for wall-street none for anybody else? Power for the sake of power only for those in the wall street wagon?

Amanda Harlech

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:31:20 -0500

So basically you are saying that Greenspan believed and practiced heavy regulatory policies like nobody else(?)...because in fact (mmmm here is where things don't go your way) he believed and practiced free market to the extreme of not forseeing or regulating the creation of bubbles ...So you say we has a moderate while being the most free market advocate in the Fed Reserve...? Subversion seems to rule your equations.

ericf

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:31:19 -0500

I just can't believe a "New Yorker" said Y'all...

Felix Hoenikker

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:24:14 -0500

Great, another Turd Sandwich vs. Giant Douche election.

jpeditor

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:04:44 -0500

"A vote for McCain is a vote for George W. Bush" A vote for Obama is a vote for Osama bringing back the draft and having the Govt confiscate your 401K money...

chris lee

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:32:29 -0500

People are fightin' over which hand puppet Punch (Dem) or Judy (Repub) they want to appear to lead them to the slaughter.

soopaman

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:40:18 -0500

fucking liberals!!!!!!!!!!

emilydickinson

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:39:21 -0500

@YG Unless you are part of the wealthiest 1%, you are basically a serf, and we've just experienced the largest securities fraud in recorded history, so that argument doesn't work so well. We don't have child labor in the US, but it's pervasive in China, India and Africa and if Google, the oil industry and the largest banks in the world absorbing each other isn't a monopoly, maybe we should get in touch with Parker Brothers and re-write the rules to the game.

JacqueMehoff

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:32:38 -0500

sorry to break to you park slopers, you're still dickheads. both sides, though I have a feeling the mccain supporters are much more dicky. we'll find out when the results come out showing turnout. second in dickheaddom, ft. greene. sorry I's calls it as I's sees it. Brooklyn heighters were cool with me when Club Wildfyre was still around on clark street.

yg

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:26:42 -0500

Believe it or not, a world existed before 1913. Yup, so did monopolies, child-labor, insider trading, unsafe conditions at a workplace, securities fraud. Sorry to burst your romantic-past bubble.

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:30:57 -0500

Printing money is a HUGE piece of legislation regulation

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:30:27 -0500

Basically he is arguing that the whole banking system is regulation. Believe it or not, a world existed before 1913. And, yes, printing money is regulation. Only Congress is Constitutionally allowed to coin money. They have outsourced it to the Fed, which is illegal. Printing money is a HUGE piece of legislation, though. Every time they monetize debt, we're all made poorer. And as wages can't keep up with wages, it affects the poor greatly. Then we tack on more regulation to help the poor, which costs us a bunch. Then we have deficits and monetize some more. The only system I believe to be free, MFer, is when a fixed amount capital is allocated through price mechanisms---not a limitless supply allocated by price floors, ceilings, and such.

MFer

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:08:55 -0500

I like Bottomless. Basically he is arguing that the whole banking system is regulation. That printing money is regulation. The entire economic system is regulation. In other words, Bottomless believes in the only economic system that can be said to be truly free -- the swap meets and bartering. I love that sort of pitch to the good old days. Send out the clowns and cue the music, Chips.

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:53:43 -0500

If you tell me that when Greenspan and Stiglitz point at "free market" (THE FREE MEANS NO REGULATION) just not working, is the same that saying is all that regulation (the lack of), then you are missing something. Amanda: The Fed is regulation.

fakenewyorker

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:42:16 -0500

gothamist really knows how to bait for comment traffic: watch out for posts involving race, politics, or hipsters. can you get one with all three?

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:37:35 -0500

Mr. Greenspan, along with most other banking regulators in Washington, also resisted calls for tighter regulation of subprime mortgages and other high-risk exotic mortgages that allowed people to borrow far more than they could afford. First, Greenspan was questioned unfairly. He was the Chairman of The Fed...not ruler of the economy. Waxman acted like Congress wasn't where regulation comes from and where monies are supposed to be allocated. He's a hack. Amanda, it's really quite simple: Easy money from The Fed goes to the banks. When rates are low, capital is abundant, and there's a lot of borrowing. Coupled with HUD, CRA, and the White House encouraging home ownership, you get risky lending since the money is cheap. The Fed is the problem. You have to let the markets decide the interest rates.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:30:13 -0500

Joclyn

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:29:36 -0500

What is all the bickering about? Obama's clinched it. I don't give a shit about some assholes in Park Slope who don't like it. The rest of the world doesn't like everything else. Grow up.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:25:59 -0500

"On March 17, 2008 Alan Greenspan wrote an article for the Financial Times' Economists’ Forum entitled “We will never have a perfect model of risk“ in which he argued: “We will never be able to anticipate all discontinuities in financial markets.” He concluded: “It is important, indeed crucial, that any reforms in, and adjustments to, the structure of markets and regulation not inhibit our most reliable and effective safeguards against cumulative economic failure: market flexibility and open competition.” The article attracted a number of critical responses from forum contributors, which consists of some of the world’s leading economists (including two Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winners, Edmund Phelps and Joseph Stiglitz), who, finding causation between Greenspan's policies and the discontinuities in financial markets that followed, criticized Greenspan mainly for what many believed to be his unbalanced and immovable ideological suppositions about global capitalism and free competitive markets. For example, one forum contributor, Paul de Grauwe, wrote: “Greenspan’s article is a smokescreen to hide his own responsibility in making the financial crisis possible. Greenspan, who was at the helm of the most important monetary institution in the world, failed to take his responsibility to supervise the financial markets blinded as he, and his colleagues, were by a belief that markets and bankers know better than governments.” Other notable critics included J. Bradford DeLong, Alice Rivlin, Richard Werner, Christopher Whalen, Michael Hudson, and Willem Buiter."

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:23:59 -0500

Have you heard to the sacred cow of republicans, Mr Greenspan? He actually points to deregulation as the main cause. Or is he a democrat? Regulation was the main cause: Greenspan and The Fed were the problem. When you have an easy monetary policy in the form of artificially low federal funds rates post-9/11/NASDAQ you get these bubbles. Regulation is the problem. If we don't recognize that we'll continue to have these bubbles.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:20:15 -0500

and more of this: Greenspan Blasts GOP: Party "Deserved To Lose" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/14/greenspan-blasts-gop-par_n_64519.html?show_comment_id=9900665 In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles. In "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:16:10 -0500

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/business/economy/24panel.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&oref=slogin “You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the committee. “Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?” Mr. Greenspan conceded: “Yes, I’ve found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.” “This modern risk-management paradigm held sway for decades,” he said. “The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.” Mr. Waxman noted that the Fed chairman had been one of the nation’s leading voices for deregulation, displaying past statements in which Mr. Greenspan had argued that government regulators were no better than markets at imposing discipline. Mr. Greenspan, along with most other banking regulators in Washington, also resisted calls for tighter regulation of subprime mortgages and other high-risk exotic mortgages that allowed people to borrow far more than they could afford.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:14:01 -0500

http://au.truveo.com/Greenspan-Meets-Greed-Shows-Why-Deregulation-is-a/id/4157154356

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:12:08 -0500

"....it was all because of too much regulation. What do you think was the root problem: greedy Wall Street?" Have you heard to the sacred cow of republicans, Mr Greenspan? He actually points to deregulation as the main cause. Or is he a democrat?

nomnomnom

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:04:47 -0500

Kudos to the person that had Kang and Kodos' solution.

emilydickinson

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:03:20 -0500

Actually, the person in the article makes a great point. If you actually look at the pre Reagan Republicans, they weren't insane like the Republicans are now, they were a legitimate, intelligent party who actually believed in being fiscally and morally conservative, so in a way I understand his point of view. Reagan, and most Republicans since then have gone off the rails. I'm no big fan of Obama either, and I think while he will be better than Bush, that's akin to being the world's tallest midget. I'm voting for Nader. "Sorry to burst your defeatocratist bubble but a lot of us Republicans have been here a long time..pre-Reagan. Long before entitled liberals started showing up and buying their million dollar brownstones and whining for free health care. So if anyone should leave it's you."

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:44:03 -0500

...The free healthcare: Where? When? Status quo doesn't mean "future"! ...the policing of the world: Dude what do you think the hawks have been doing? School of the americas? read a little! ...the interference in the markets: yeah 'cause the shithole does have to do with the lack of regulation! 1. The number one state expenditure for NYS is...MEDICAID (and SCHIP)! 2. The Democrats, historically, are the world's police. Though I loathe McCain, he was hesitant about Bosnia and Serbia while Joe Biden was ready to send our kids to any "shithole" nation to promote democracy---LBJ, JFK, and FDR were three of the biggest domino theorists. 3. "The shithole" means our current crisis? Yes, it was all because of too much regulation. What do you think was the root problem: greedy Wall Street? Oh, yeah, you also believe in "hope" and "change."

NannyState

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:29:59 -0500

Hmmmm, most people in Ohio are republicans and here in Brooklyn, you have all these McCain supporters. What gives?

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:19:50 -0500

yeah hugo you got it: I'm jealous of how "successful" Palin is; that is at the bottom of Palin's bad rep. globally. me! I'm obsessed like she is not running for the white house...totally out of the blue... and the cool aid "argument" just killed me with its heavy weight! are you 12? The cult part: dude you are in denial if you think the unreasonable faith is on this side. supporting a crazy religious supremacist and not even realizing the same republicans have destroyed their party standing out of SOLID STUPIDITY Look how moderate her faith is: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1417423198?bctid=1827891038

HUGO_MEGO

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:06:43 -0500

Amanda, you're obsessed with Palin like most Obama cultists. Why must you fear a strong independent woman? Could it be that you're jealous of her looks? Kool-Aid is being served, line up!

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:04:58 -0500

edEx

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:57:28 -0500

A vote for McCain is a vote for George W. Bush

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:57:19 -0500

Hugo, yeah, coming from the camp that is gonna waste a vote for one part folksy, one part sassy and a little dash of high school bitchy!! MoonShine blind republicans!

Bottomless Chips

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:52:24 -0500

how static can republicans be than even if they are getting fkd by the system they want things to be the "same" for the sake of the HOLY status quo. The traditional Republicans hate the status quo, the status quo built by Democrats and progressive Republicans. The free healthcare, the policing of the world, the interference in the markets, the Department of Education, and the social welfare programs are loathsome to the Taft-wing of the GOP. And those are all part of the status quo and are pillars of the Democratic party.

HUGO_MEGO

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:45:14 -0500

Amada, get in line behind Steven, the Kool-Aid is being served.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:40:53 -0500

Take a look at this Data Base: http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=53270&type=category&category=66&go.x=15&go.y=11 McCain has been absent in all veterans bills... (strategy to don't vote when something will compromise you) You can pick by issue and see the real stuff McCain (best republican hope!?!) is made: Hypocrite!

HUGO_MEGO

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:37:51 -0500

Don't like the liberals then move to the heartland. Steven that's so nice of you. Is that the latest plan from Obama cultists? Line up for the Kool-Aid. The ONE will lead you.

teenseagull

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:29:12 -0500

that photo is from a house in the rockaways...i can tell by the addition of sullivan. gerald sullivan is running against long-time democratic incumbent audrey pheiffer (he's also a huge crazy). you think brooklyn's bad with signs, come to rockaway. they multiply overnight; some houses have more than one.

Amanda Harlech

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:10:03 -0500

how static can republicans be than even if they are getting fkd by the system they want things to be the "same" for the sake of the HOLY status quo. Even the "liberals" and they evilness of "spreading the wealth" are getting ahead of them... The good thing is that it seems all these old republican "ideology" will die with each person...I give it 12 years or take everyone to hell electing Pallin next time around. The "republican" economic system collapsed by its HUGE flaws and they keep denying it. Even Greenspan is in awe of the collapse ...the question still remains, why do republicans fear reason?

henricus

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:48:43 -0500

meh, I'll stick with y'all. Flows better.

neckbeard

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:35:24 -0500

y'all? don't you mean "yous guys"?

Steven

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:26:38 -0500

Don't like the liberals then move to the heartland.

fakenewyorker

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:14:01 -0500

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear_hear