I hope at some point that America get’s to the point where the War on Drugs looks so stupid. That Americans are thinking what the hell was the Nixon Administration thinking about when they. Launched this bogus war that was designed to fail from the beginning in 1971. Because it’s designed to protect Americans from themselves with this paternalistic approach that we meaning. Uncle Sam know what is best for you rather than the individuals themselves. Its kinda like a parent telling their daughter not to see that boy again knowing she probably will anyway. If the parent knows their daughter and knows what they were doing from their experience as an adolescent them self. How would you enforce that especially if they go to school together or they both drive or at least one. Them drives well that’s similar to what the War on Drugs is punishing people with laws that can’t be enforced. At least to the point that it discourages people from breaking them and when they are caught. Now what is government doing but prosecuting people for what they do to themselves. Knowing that they’ll probably just break the law in again as it relates to drugs either in jail or prison. As well as once they are back on the street and this is what the War on Drugs is.
What Bill Buckley and Dick Nixon were talking about in this interview were the 1966 mid-term Congressional elections. Where Congressional Democrats had 290 seats in the House and 67 in the Senate but where Congressional Republicans picked up around forty seats in the House. Still making then the minority but with the Southern Caucus in the House now a major player there and where they picked up. Three seats in the Senate again to go with the Southern Caucus in the Senate. When just two years earlier Republicans looked dead at the national-level and in Congress but now thanks to the. Unpopularity of the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson and with the country moving Right and the South becoming Republican. The Republican Party was back as a major player in American-politics and becoming big enough to compete with Democrats all over the country. Which they weren’t in 1964 thanks to the Southern Caucus in the Democratic Party.
Before I write a blog about greed and arguing what it’s good we should first know what greed is. The inordinate desire to obtain wants for oneself in other words the desire to obtain things just for. Ourselves for us to have for ourselves which covers everyone in every country in the world. The most Socialist countries in the world from Social-Democracies like Sweden to the. State-owned Communist-Republics like North Korea all run on a certain level of greed. I write this blog for myself and for others to see and so I can obtain things for myself. I do not do it for the hell of it or just to provide information and opinions to people who read it. The fact is we are all greedy and are all motivated by greed at least to a certain level for us to function in life. We all want our own home, our own cars, our own clothes, own food, we all want to go on vacation for ourselves and whoever we. May vacation with rather than stay home so we can go to work for the betterment of whatever company we happen to work for. The ability to obtain greed or be greedy is things we are able to do as we become more successful in life.
So the question is not whether people are greedy or not and even religious-leaders and Saints run on some level of greed. Including people who serve in the military or armed forces, teachers, doctors you name the profession and it has at least a certain level of greed in it. And this is important because we tend to use the word greed like it’s an insult or call someone greedy like we would call. Them a bastard or jerk or something when the fact is we are all greedy. So the questions is not whether we have greed or we are greedy but what happens when greed goes uncheck and we have too. Much greed in society because that’s when greed becomes a problem. Somebody who runs a company whose company provides better products than their competition and is rewarded for that financially and. Everything else, that’s a good form of greed beating the competition. Greed is a problem when companies literally try to destroy the competition so they no longer have competition like lobbying. For laws that benefit them over their competitors or pay their employees slave-wages so the executives can profit more. It’s when greed goes uncheck that it becomes a problem.
Which is what I believe Milton Friedman was trying to explain in this video. That greed is used to put the other guy down but we as individuals are never greedy is just those people who do better. Then everyone else that are greedy when the fact we are all greedy as individuals. It’s just a matter of how greedy that we are and when it goes uncheck it’s then when greed is bad and not good. Which is why we have regulations over the economy including taxes so we all pay for the services that we consume.
I’ll give this guy credit listening to this video and every other right-wing charge against President Obama trying to make him look like President Nixon. Is funny because it’s like trying to make a Roseanne Barr look like a supermodel or a penguin look like a raccoon. Good luck it aint going to happen you are comparing an executive-administration in the Nixon Administration who had. Cabinet-officials indited and served time in prison along with White House staff. And a Vice President of the United States the second ranking officer in the United States Government. Who was force to resign over a bribery investigation that went back to his days as Governor of Maryland. How my state was ever dumb enough to elect Spiro Agnew Governor is beyond me and something that. Deserves and investigation, as well as back to his days as Executive of Baltimore County. I do not live in Baltimore so I can’t explain Spiro Agnew’s political success there. But it gets better because Vice President Agnew was also under investigation by the U.S. Government over bribery. Allegations as well.
President Nixon’s own Attorney General who happened to be the chief law enforcement officer of the United State in John Mitchell. Resigning over a Federal-investigation over his involvement into Watergate. The second ranking officer in the White House resigning over his involvement in the Watergate affair, Bob Haldeman. None of these things have happened in the Obama Administration. What we have in the Obama Administration are bad actors working on their own who are going to either get fired. Or prosecuted over it with their supervisors and even department heads like the Secretary of Treasury. Or the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service not doing their jobs and supervising their own people. And the Commissioner of the IRS has already resigned over that and the Attorney General Eric Holder has launched an investigation into it as well. At worst President Obama and Vice President Biden haven’t adequately supervised their people and making sure the. Department heads are on the ball but there’s no evidence at least so far of any wrong doing that can be associated at the top.
All these little supposed scandals involving the Obama Administration are all bad news and distracting. Because it makes them look like they aren’t on the ball and people are getting away with things especially die-hard Democratic-partisans let’s say. But to try to compare the most corrupt executive-administration in United States history the Nixon Administration. With the Obama Administration is like trying to teach a dog how to grow wings and to fly. That dog simply won’t fly and it makes for good partisan gossip and propaganda but that’s all it is.
The 1960s is a generation that I would’ve liked to experienced as an adult but I come from one generation up so that’s not possible. But it was really a revolutionary-decade both politically and culturally with all sorts of change in America. With the civil-rights movement, the Great Society, the Vietnam War, the Culture-Revolution and what I and others call the New-Left in America. Which is furthest left at least as far as numbers and members then America had ever seen at least in the. 20th Century and one of the interesting things about the 1960s was it was completely different from the. 1950s which was somewhat stagnant and where Americans were suppose to be a certain way and live their lives a certain way. Just like their parents and grandparents and that was completely. Overturn by the 1960s where people were now allowed to be free and live freely and not be looked down by society for the most part. And the Baby-Boom generation made that happen.
When I see a debate like this I first ask myself are there any other choices. Other than to cut taxes so deeply and get the government almost completely out of the economy other than to subsidize. Big business’s that not need the money or have government tax and spend so much the theory being that. This would create good jobs for everyone and everyone would benefit. Because whatever you think of either Supply Side Economics or Keynesian-Economics they are both theories of what was. Coined in the 1980s as Trickle Down Economics they just have different approaches on how the money would trickle down. Keynesians believing that put a lot of money at the top with the central government whatever the country. Have the central government collect a lot of money in taxes and then spend that money on the people’s behalf. Benefiting everyone whereas the Supply Siders theory of Trickle Down Economics is put a lot of money at the top with wealthy individuals and business’s. And they’ll invest that money in the private-sector creating jobs and so forth that would benefit everyone.
The 1970s as a decade could probably be summed up in one word, scandal from Watergate to the other issues involving President Nixon. To the pardon of Richard Nixon by President Ford in 1974. As well as other scandals not involving politics or at least Richard Nixon. But economically the one word that could be used to sum up the 1970s is energy. Or shortage or crisis, one of these three words to sum up and entire decade because this was a decade that had two recessions. One in 1974-75 and the other in 1979-80 and the energy shortage of 1973 with the Middle Eastern oil-embargo. And the energy shortage of 1978-79 and I give the three presidents that had to deal with these shortages credit. For one thing which is recognizing the problems for what they were and that we simply need to use energy better. While at the same time producing more energy in this country by producing more domestic natural resources.
