Tyral the Kithless wrote:
joxur wrote:
You're not against waste. You're against waste from rich people. Talk about class warfare, heh.
Class warfare? Seriously? I'm against waste at all levels, but the waste at the upper end tends to be more harmful than at the bottom, and is easier to regulate. The cost of trying to ensure everyone on food stamps buys "nutritious" food would likely be too high to try it. So we give people who ask for it the little bit of money they need and hope for the best. If they don't feed themselves, it's their tough luck. They're only gonna get so much from us.
Conversely, if we hand a company billions of dollars to fix its problems, it's much more cost effective to keep track of how they're spending it, and it makes more sense to track those billions of dollars going to single entity than it is to track tens of hundreds of dollars going to millions of people.
You were doing well with your first paragraph. But, though it's easier to regulate the pay of corporate CEO's, the regulation is only there for CEO's we've bailed out, who have taken significant bailouts. Which is a grand total of.. 5! This issue, which is so important to so many of you, does not matter at all. It has no affect. It's meaningless.
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So those companies don't get any benefit from a bailout? They didn't ask for it, we "forced" it on them? Is that what you're trying to say? Because if they didn't ask for it, you're absolutely right, we shouldn't meddle in how they spend their money.
But wait... no, I'm pretty sure they came to us absolutely BEGGING for help. So no, your whole point is moot.
No, actually, it's not. The bailout helps them, but we did it for the economy, not to save Bank of America. We bailed out GM, Ford and the other auto companies not because of their tie to Americana, but because if we don't, the affect starts a chain reaction that affects not just those companies but their suppliers, the towns they employ people in, etc.
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As an aside, I don't really give a shit about how much the inauguration cost. You are purposefully neglecting the fact that most of those costs had to do with the fact that it was the most attended inauguration ever. 1.8 million people attended, 50% more than had attended the second largest (Lyndon Johnson's in 1965.) So while you can pretend that Obama somehow planned to spend as much money as he could on an inauguration, and you can pretend that it was a waste of money, and you can ignore the fact that the money was necessary to ensure everyone's safety, the rest of us grown ups who don't listen to Rush Limbaugh or any of these other talking heads can look shit up for ourselves and make decisions based on reality, not on partisan bullshit.
Look, we've come full circle. In addition to taxpayer funding, who helped foot the bill for the inauguration...?
Bailed-out Wall Street Execs!
http://abcnews.go.com/business/inaugura ... 946&page=2