Big Government Built This Country

[BolshevikHunter]

If the today's GOP was in charge during the postwar years, you would never have had the Hoover Dam or the great hydroelectric power projects conducted by Tennessee Valley Authority; you would never have had the BIG GOVERNMENT Interstate Project or the BIG GOVERNMENT Space Program (which was responsible the 80s consumer electronics boom). All these things were born of Big Government; all of them required massive spending; and all of them created the foundation for a 1/2 century of economic growth.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican if the Southwest in its current form would even exist without the Hoover Dam, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican what enabled the southeastern United States to have the cheapest electricity costs in the 50s and 60s, and how postwar infrastructure projects lead to unprecedented economic growth from Tennessee to Georgia, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican who harnessed the power and water of the Colorado and what that meant for economic growth in the desert southwest and California, and they will stare at you blankly. ["Wait a minute Jethro, I thought water come from God"]

Ask a Talk Radio Republican how the Big Government interstate system enabled the trucking industry to ship goods all across the country, thus creating an explosion of economic activity that would have otherwise been impossible, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican how the Big Government Erie Canal project put cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica on the map, and they will stare at you blankly.

Ask a Talk Radio Republican how the Big Government Space Program made America the world leader in consumer electronics, and they will stare at you blankly. [Ask them who enabled the private profits of GE or Lockhead Martin, or any company that depends on roads and electrical grids and water and government research and government subsidies and military intervention RE global resource markets, and they will stare at you blankly. Corporations have been parasites on Big Government and the tax payer since the beginning. Their current war on government is based on the fact that they don't want to acknowledge their massive debt to society]

Do you know what happened once Reagan and Movement Conservatism took over the country in 1980? They said government couldn't do anything. [I'm surprised Reagan didn't doctor the history books to say the moon landing never happened because Big Government can't do anything]. Once Reagan convinced America that Government couldn't do anything, we stopped all the big projects that made this the Greatest Nation in history. No more Hoover Dams, no more grand infrastructure projects that put whole regions on the map. When Carter said we needed to build a moonshot around alternative energy to avoid getting bankrupted in the middle east -- bankrupted by the $5 gallon; bankrupted by having to stabilize places like Iraq and Afghanistan -- Reagan convinced the nation that the Government who defeated the Nazis wasn't fit to run a laundromat. Sorry Mr. Reagan, but Big Government put a man on the moon and lead the greatest manufacturing boom in history (see WWII war manufacturing, the largest government spending program in history, which laid the foundation for America's most sustained economic growth during the 50s and 60s) -- meaning: we could have gotten out of the middle east, but we chose to listen to a president who was funded by big oil, a president who chose to enrich special interests at the expense of future generations. We gave up on trying to solve big problems as a nation. Instead, we trusted the market, which chose to swindle the nation with CDOs, Swaps, and Derivatives rather than invest in the real economy. We got punk'd.

America swallowed poison in 1980 when it traded the Government who built the Hoover Dam for the government who trusted corporations to follow greed into whatever corrupt enclave yielded the highest short term profits. Who knew they would loot the treasury (by taking systemic criminal risk), and then use their loot to convince a generation of Conservatives that they stood for freedom.

Republican Voters know not what they do.

Who pushed for The Panama Canal? Teddy Roosevelt, A Republican you idiot. Yeah I know, Pre Wars, but hopefully my point is taken. Yes, Some things Government has to do, but don't act like it's only Democrats that get anything done. Do you know how stupid you look by suggesting such a thing? How about you take a look at who was in power when most of our Wars were declared? ~BH

Reality must really bite for them BH...

It's hard when they are living in a fantasy world bro. ~BH

 

[The T]

Who pushed for The Panama Canal? Teddy Roosevelt, A Republican you idiot. Yeah I know, Pre Wars, but hopefully my point is taken. Yes, Some things Government has to do, but don't act like it's only Democrats that get anything done. Do you know how stupid you look by suggesting such a thing? How about you take a look at who was in power when most of our Wars were declared? ~BH

Reality must really bite for them BH...

It's hard when they are living in a fantasy world bro. ~BH

*Alternate Universe*

 

[Toronado3800]

Who the FUCK taught you the Constitution? Whomever they were? I hope they got fired for the injustice they perpetrated on you.

What is the anger about? The Constitution was good enough to allow unions to drag the middle class out of the horrors of the industrial revolution by the big government homestead act was drying up.

But now it's been taken too far by the extortion of members that have to PAY DUES to have a JOB... and Money Laundering that goes on between the Democrats and The Unions that uses dues to pay off politicians to get their way, and the TAXPAYER has no seat at the table.

You were saying?

What does the whistle mean?

(I mildly agree unions need to re-purpose themselves. Much of what they fought for has become law. Guess it could un-become law if we were suddenly w/o but still)

But to keep the conversation going, a pro-union fellow would argue unions better represent the common man with their donations of money to politicians than the donations of GE and Haliburton to other politicians.

 

[The T]

What is the anger about? The Constitution was good enough to allow unions to drag the middle class out of the horrors of the industrial revolution by the big government homestead act was drying up.

But now it's been taken too far by the extortion of members that have to PAY DUES to have a JOB... and Money Laundering that goes on between the Democrats and The Unions that uses dues to pay off politicians to get their way, and the TAXPAYER has no seat at the table.

You were saying?

What does the whistle mean?

(I mildly agree unions need to re-purpose themselves. Much of what they fought for has become law. Guess it could un-become law if we were suddenly w/o but still)

But to keep the conversation going, a pro-union fellow would argue unions better represent the common man with their donations of money to politicians than the donations of GE and Haliburton to other politicians.

And they have taken it beyond extremes...haven't they?

Reading is your friend...I suggest that you do so.

 

[Chris]

Reagan and Bush the Lesser did great damage to America.

Now we have to build it back up.

 

[The T]

Reagan and Bush the Lesser did great damage to America.

Now we have to build it back up.

As Obama damages it further...

 

[Sallow]

Big Government Built This Country

utter and complete Nonsense.

This country was built by the blood sweet and tears of the American people, on the backs of Farmers, and Entrepreneurs and Business people not afraid to take a risk. On the backs of the American worker, and the Innovators. That is what Built this country. Big Government has never done anything but stand in the way, and Fuck it all up.

Well..it's a good story..but it's mostly incorrect.

It was a "Big Government" funded expedition that found the country in the first place. Then it was "Big Government" that settled it. It was big government that sent the military to fight Indians and clear forests during it's expansion. It was big government that built the infrastructure that is still in use by commercial ventures. It was big government that coins and prints money, protects patents, delivers the mail, keeps the food safe and the water clean.

"Indivdualists" that tried to make a go in the American wilderness mostly died.

 

[Chris]

Reagan and Bush the Lesser did great damage to America.

Now we have to build it back up.

As Obama damages it further...

Only when he agreed to the tax cuts for the wealthy that the Republican House demanded.

Obama's biggest mistake.

 

[NYcarbineer]

The system of government we have allowed the working people of this country, over time, to hold their own against the Capitalist money interests that would have happily impoverished them in perpetuity had they been able to.

That is the ultimate greatness of America and its Constitution.

Wow. Liberalism really is about the ability to look at a fish and truly see a Cocker Spainiel, isn't it?

The Constitution no mater how you read it comrade is to protect people from government. Corporations are people as long as there is choice and only government can remove choice. You're confusing the Communist Manifesto with the Constitution again...

Really? Who 'protected' the slaves from the Capitalists?

 

[NYcarbineer]

Wow. Talk about the Heartbreak of Historical Illiteracy on Parade.

We didn't declare independence form Capitalist Moneyed Interests; we revolted against a Monarchy (a form of hereditary CRONYISM) and put in place a Rule of Law.

Do you wish to dispute that it was through our government, through legislation, through our Constitution, that the working class in this country won its rights, protections, etc.?

Start with the abolition of slavery.

carb, While on the subject (oh what a suprise), It was a Republican who abolished slavery. It was Lincoln who issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1864, an amendment abolishing slavery passed the Senate but died in the House as Democrats rallied against it. Just sayin. ~BH

Irrelevant.