What the PBS executive meant to say is, "Fire your partners, they are too grounded in reality."

Refunds! Hooray! I want my money back for the Iraq war. I also want a refund on any of my tax dollars that went to pay the salaries of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzalez.

wow... all this time I thought PBS was funded by "viewers like me"... according to their stupid ads...

Wikipedia and Karol both say that its funded by federal subsidies... (2 separate sources means its true!)

Why can't one day go by without me finding out about another wasted use of gov't tax dollars?

I want my tax dollars back too. But we had a Republican president, a Republican Senate and a Republican House for the better part of the last six years. They still funded PBS. Too many activists love government as long as the Republicans are in charge. Change is never going to come if conservatives keep on putting the party over principles.

We need to apply the "Fairness Doctrine" to PBS !

we need to apply the "takings clause" to PBS...

The country never would have stood for this in 1894.

That's the year that the gov't tried to pass a measly 2% income tax on all income over $4,000 - which is about $86,000 in today's dollars. The people called it "communistic". Course we ended up with an income tax a few years later, but it took a amendment.

My point isn't that income tax is unconstitutional or anything silly.. just that even if the founders never intended an income tax, the 16th amendment was only passed to allow a BARE MINIMUM SINGLE DIGIT tax rate... not a 39% tax rate to fund everything and anything including a tv station nobody but old ladies and little kids watch.

I've tried to research the "taxation without representation" that the founding fathers were upset about... specifically I'd like to know what ballpark we're talking... 2%? 25%?

I suspect it was similar to the 1890's... maybe even less... or if it was a large % of tea sales (and other goods) I'd still like to know what the average tax burden was for the average citizen that caused him to rebel.

My guess is that it wasn't close to 39%.

just to clarify... on re-reading my post, I realize I ended it abruptly.

my point is not about rebelling or anything silly... i'd just like to focus liberal/socialists attention on the fact that they imposing taxes on the people far in excess of what prior generations deemed unacceptable.

Course I'll listen to your "new" arguments about how "this time it's different" but am unlikely to be swayed by them... as man's natural rights to his life, liberty and property have not changed.

Nor has mans moral obligation to abide by the "non aggression principle":
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." ---Thomas Jefferson

but I digress..
(slow work day)

E2:

Are we going to roll back things that previous generations deemed unacceptable? Then I guess we need to begin with all laws that regulate the food and drug industries, all unions, all labor laws (including those involving children), and female suffrage. Oh, yeah: we also need to bring back slavery.

Woo hoo!

What did I say that made you think I'd be okay with slavery?

In fact... I'm pretty sure its a violation of the nonaggression principle.

as for the other things.... yes. I would like to see that happen.

female suffrage also with slavery as an exception.... violation of the non aggression princiole to not call a female or african american a full 100% "human being"

Why on earth would you want to roll back those other things?

Michael, just out of curiosity, how old are you ?
Are you around college age ?

If we're going to be demanding which laws of decades past we're going to repeal....the income tax and direct election of US senators (come on peeps, Dan Webster, John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay kick the crap out of John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Jim Bunning).

because they are immoral.

You're one of them libertarians, aintcha, E2? Well, you go ahead and live in your libertarian dreamland while the rest of us deal with reality.

"Immoral." Cripes...

E2, do you think the drafters of the second amendment wanted what we have today? There's an old saying: wish in one hand, crap in the other, see which one comes first...
I think this post interesting in the light of the complete lack of comment about the poor-memoried attorney general and his hiring-firing policy.

2nd amendment wasn't the only writing that the founders ever wrote about guns.

"Freemen should not be debarred the use or arms" - Thomas Jefferson

That should be more clear.

misquote in prior post. Should read:
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." ---Thomas Jefferson

also, michael... referring to the most extreme manifestation of someones arguments as "silly" or "theoretical" is not a counterpoint. Address the arguments I have laid out - somehow justify minimum wage among consenting adults, welfare, or whatever else you propose we keep. Referring to the fact that some other libertarians also want to do away with stop signs, then referring so such a position as "silly" is irrelevant to this discussion.

BadBoy:

I have college-age kids.

E2:

The ball's in your court at this point. You called child labor laws and clean food and drug laws "immoral." You need to make some case for such an absurd claim or it's not worth refuting.

And you're incorrect: some things are so theoretical that they don't warrant discussion. Take the minimum wage, for instance. The minimum wage is here to stay, my friend. You can make whatever case against it you want, but there's no way on earth that it's going to be eliminated. Arguing about that is like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Go to it, if you want, but don't expect me to take you seriously.

Such self-indulgent theorizing means that you don't need to enter into the real-world discussion of precisely how high or low the minimum wage should be set. (And saying that it should be set to zero dollars isn't participating--like I said, the minimum wage is here to stay.)

That's my problem with libertarians.

If you take the a priori position that things that are "here to stay" aren't worth discussing at all.. say so from the beginning... save us all some time.

because its obvious what you're doing... while you cited min wage as "here to stay", you ask for my arguments about food and labor laws...

If I were to make them, you have the ultimate trump card:

If you can defeat the arguments with logic, you will do so.

If you cannot, you'll just default back and say "well you may have made good arguments about labor and food, however, you're living in la la land and they wont ever be changed anyway."

It's like gambling with a cop who will take your money if you lose, and arrest you for gambling if you win.

ie: not worth the time.

Ah, yes: reality, "the ultimate trump card."

actually your ultimate trump card is "irrationality".

For example, you could ask a woman to lay out her arguments... if you can logically counter them, you will... if not, you can just say you dont consider women your intellectual equals and refuse to discuss it any further.

(sub in woman for libertarian, or any subgroup you want to avoid talking with)

hardly shows a grasp of "reality".

see... what you doing is assuming the prior condition "libertarians are BY DEFINITION crazy and wrong"

this is a position that is untrue... if we do make crazy arguments, they are crazy based on their merits, and the burden is on you to show how.

So you attempt to hang with the big boys and debate the arguments... desperately trying not to blindly refer back to your circular reference above...

but you can't

and you get cornered...

...and you refer back to your circular dogma.

Oh, ya got me, Sheriff. Ya got me. You're just too smart for me, E2. And I'm guessing you consider yourself one of the "big boys?"

By "circular dogma" I suppose you mean my assertion that some ideas are here to stay and aren't, therefore, worth debating. I'm not exactly clear on what you want to say because you're trying to sound intelligent by dressing your sentences up to the point that they begin to lose meaning.

After we're finished debating whether or not there should be a minimum wage, let's take some time to discuss outlawing knowledge nuclear weapons. That's another genie I'd like to put back in the bottle.

There are things you can fruitfully discuss. The size of the minimum wage is one; it's existence isn't. By the same token, I could see discussing clean food regulations because Executive Branch regulations can be eradicated with a stroke of the President's pen (and often without much notice by the general public), while child labor laws or the minimum wage won't be eradicated because they are, first of all, too big to escape notice, and, second, too ingrained in society.

In my experience--note the qualifier now--Libertarians refuse to distinguish between realistic discussion and talk of Libertarian utopias.

Here's my real trump card. Every time you mention "rights of the individual," I'll respond "social contract."

ask a lawyer... contracts must be entered into voluntarily.

so then you think that "social contracts" - what the majority deems is more appropriate for the majorities well-being- trumps individual rights?

If Ron Paul were president, you would get your tax dollars back and PBS would have federal funding removed. Name another presidential candidate who would do this and return to a constitutional republic.

hahahahaha.... shameless Ron Paul plug...

Karol is gonna kill you.

so then you think that "social contracts" - what the majority deems is more appropriate for the majorities well-being- trumps individual rights?

Well, obviously, E2. Try an experiment. Wait until some kid walks on your lawn, shoot him, and hang around to see what happens. My guess is that the authorities will haul you away and toss you in the clink.

You could try explaining that you have the individual right to protect the sanctity of your property, but my guess is that you won't get too far with that one. As members of society, we've yielded some of our power to the state in return for certain benefits (like police protection when we really need it, or recourse to the courts when we catch that kid trespassing).

If the social contract didn't trump individual rights, there would be no governmental consequences for killing that little kid; you'd only have to fear retribution by his parents.

What is this, Poli Sci 101? This is self-evident stuff.

um... no. the reason you can't kill a kid for trespassing is not because of a social contract.

not everyone in favor of individual rights trumping all necessitate that if someone does violate another's rights that person has the right to respond with ANY force whatsoever.

basically, you can't kill the kid BECAUSE of individual rights... namely, he has the right to his own life. not you. and granted, he wrongly violated his property... but that doesn't change the fact that his right to his life isn't yours.

edit: he wrongly violated YOUR property. Karol... how do I edit?

That's what you don't seem to get, E2: when we live in society, we interact with people. The more people there are, the more interactions there are, and the more chances there are for those interactions to rub somebody the wrong way.

By living in society, we have forfeited the "right" to address many of those prickly interactions on our own, and have yielded that right to the state.

I'm guessing that you benefit many ways every single day from the social contract, which puts you in the comfortable position of being able to construct meaningless criticisms of it.

Again: construct mental utopias to your heart's content; you have the freedom to woolgather in whatever way you'd like. Just don't expect the real world to see things the way you do.

It's not the "social contract" that makes society livable. its the reverence for "individual rights".

I do allow room for a govt... specifically one that steps in if and when someone, through these many interactions, happens to violate the individual rights of another... then the govt steps in.

"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." ---Thomas Jefferson