Dr Mario KartGames DealerAustin, TXRegistered Userregular
edited March 2011
That may be, but this particular battle in the long war is going to have to be resolved in a few months or whenever it is that the place shuts down if the budget isnt passed.
They have to come back eventually, even if its a trap and they know it is. They already know that there is the possibility that a compromise will be lied their direction just to get them into the building.
But at some point dudes gotta be taken for their word.
No, they really don't have to come back, and no, they don't have to take Walker or the Republican legislature at their word.
A) They can say that they won't return until the legislation is scrapped and a bill that is not an abomination is passed through the Assembly.
According to a judge, since Walker has made their staying out-of-state using campaign funds a political issue, they can use campaign funds to stay out-of-state.
C) I think it was determined that the Wisconsin 14 can assign power of attorney to their aides to go collect their paychecks.
D) You don't walk into a trap if you know it's a trap unless you're a non-Wisconsin Democrat.
That may be, but this particular battle in the long war is going to have to be resolved in a few months or whenever it is that the place shuts down if the budget isnt passed.
That sounds more like it's on the Republicans than the Democrats. Who loses if the government shuts down? The people in power who allowed it to happen. Walker could pass a budget bill today if he was willing to compromise by removing one really unpopular thing.
I'd say it would look bad on the Dems if this was actually a budget dispute. But the provision they're doing this over costs $0.00 in immediate budgetary concerns. The Unions have stated they're happy to take pay cuts, just leave the collective bargaining in. So in effect, the collective bargaining clause costs absolutely nothing to leave in.
Also I'm so sick of people using things Hitler said to compare them to others. Honestly, if its not about fucking Eugenics or anything else related to the monstrous things he did, I don't fucking care. Hilter was a man and politician who had a myriad of different views that changed over time and were partially pandering to whatever group he wanted to convince. This isn't useful.
But on the other side, we now have people on the right denying that Hitler acted like Hitler, by pretending that Hitler never did Hitler's actions.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
It's like what Pawlenty did in Minneapolis during the bus strike about 9 years ago. The bus drivers went on strike, Pawlenty could not care less, since mostly lower income people ride the bus. He was happy that there was less traffic when there were no busses on the road. The bus drivers caved after a few weeks. Were people pissed? Sure, even a few professionals who live in the city and don't have cars due to parking or environmental reasons. It may have even contributed to Minneapolis being a big bicycle town later. But Pawlenty still got re-elected.
Fortunately, all we need now is for the democratic senators to keep striking. The teachers can go back to work for the children, while the senators stay out of state.
How long? Given that Walker isn't budging, I would say long enough for the democrats to gain all the signatures they need for their recall effort. Once those signatures are in place, the republicans who want to maintain their seats are going to be feeling a lot more political pressure to appease their constituents. And as the signatures reach the halfway mark, they're going to have to dance that fine line between appease moderates and independents without alienating the tea baggers. Good luck on that.
But on the other side, we now have people on the right denying that Hitler acted like Hitler, by pretending that Hitler never did Hitler's actions.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
Early and mid-20th century politics in general are becoming more relevant these days. Those battles - including the four-way battles between fascists, conservatives, liberals and leftists that defined politics in those days - were all about bread and butter economics in times of scarcity.
We thought we'd eliminated scarcity in the last half of the 20th, so we'd forgotten the battles. Now, all those unsolved issues are coming back full-force.
Which makes honest discussion about how we handled those issues the first time a lot more important.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
I think that the point of Godwin's Law is that it's never helpful to start comparing stuff to Hitler or Nazis. We lose the historical perspective on what they actually did because everybody stops listening after that... which is pretty much what the right wingers want. It's always the last word.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
I think that the point of Godwin's Law is that it's never helpful to start comparing stuff to Hitler or Nazis. We lose the historical perspective on what they actually did because everybody stops listening after that... which is pretty much what the right wingers want. It's always the last word.
Can you compare Hitler to Hitler?
Because conservatives are telling me that I can't.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
I think that the point of Godwin's Law is that it's never helpful to start comparing stuff to Hitler or Nazis. We lose the historical perspective on what they actually did because everybody stops listening after that... which is pretty much what the right wingers want. It's always the last word.
Can you compare Hitler to Hitler?
Because conservatives are telling me that I can't.
Historical revisionism is awesome.
You can do it, it's just that nobody will listen to you by that point.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
I think that the point of Godwin's Law is that it's never helpful to start comparing stuff to Hitler or Nazis. We lose the historical perspective on what they actually did because everybody stops listening after that... which is pretty much what the right wingers want. It's always the last word.
Godwin's Law actually doesn't make a judgment on the use of Hitler in an argument one way or another. It's not even about comparing your opponent to Hitler, it's just about the likelihood of bringing him up in an argument increasing as that argument continues.
One argument I heard is that Hitler double downed on the union by nationalizing them and making it one big state run entity.
Which is about as honest claiming that Hitler showed his support to the Jews by providing them with state funded food and board.
There's a strong body of research supporting the idea that Hitler rushed the war, especially attacking the Soviet Union, because he needed the threat of national emergency to head off major conflicts with unionized workers.
General prosperity for middle class Germans was the highest in the world between about 1935 and 1940. Workers were not sharing in this because - surprise! - life for the working class in a fascist dictatorship isn't that great. Right wing capitalists with a secret police force behind them don't share the wealth.
Hitler's German Labor Front essentially outlawed strikes and kept wages at the same levels for the entirety of the Third Reich, despite a 25 percent increase in the cost of living. This was all breaking down before Hitler invaded the Soviets, which worked right up until the Soviets and the rest of the world invaded Germany right back.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
I think that the point of Godwin's Law is that it's never helpful to start comparing stuff to Hitler or Nazis. We lose the historical perspective on what they actually did because everybody stops listening after that... which is pretty much what the right wingers want. It's always the last word.
Godwin's Law actually doesn't make a judgment on the use of Hitler in an argument one way or another. It's not even about comparing your opponent to Hitler, it's just about the likelihood of bringing him up in an argument increasing as that argument continues.
Usually gets overlooked, since people aren't as interested in the potential direction of a conversation so much as the subject matter. Also, in a basic sense, Godwin's Law is true about everything--if conversation A is not talking about subject B, the longer conversation A goes on, its naturally more likely to mention subject B, whether it be Hitler or radishes or Mongolian horses.
And given that many conservative personalities are on the fence about some of Hitler's most dramatic actions--say, enabling the killing of more than 20 million citizens of a nearby communist state--I think they'll continue to waver on other things like unions and the like. Every time I hear "It's like Hitler's invasion of Russia [sic]--it was bad, but it would have been bad if it didn't happen." I want to kick someone in the kidneys.
Yeah unless you're talking about a massive genocidal attempt at world power its probably a good idea to leave the Hitler comparisons at home.
On an Internet message board maybe.
Real, serious historians talk about this stuff all the time. Nazi Germany isn't some scary Lovecraftian anomaly there. It's just another data point about how human societies react to stress, and it's a particularly useful one because of its modernity, educational level and general close resemblance to modern economies.
Spain, Italy* and the Asian and South American fascist dictatorships were all products of largely rural, agrarian or otherwise economically undeveloped peripheries going south. Germany's really the only example we have of a core modern democracy going insane.
* 1930s Italy and Spain were backwaters. They were more like Mexico going bad.
Germany's really the only example we have of a core modern democracy going insane.
To be fair, and I am not denying the increasing insanity of the right, Germany was in a situation very much unlike our own due to the Treaty of Versailles.
Yes. In the 1930s, Italy was a peasant society with a few rotting cities. It's still the Mexico of Europe, but it's come a long way since the first half of the 20th century.
To be fair, and I am not denying the increasing insanity of the right, Germany was in a situation very much unlike our own due to the Treaty of Versailles.
Yes, it was. Germany was a supposedly strong country that could neither control its borders or provide jobs and a stable income for citizens. When the democracy could not find a way to solve these problems, a strong minority turned their backs on democracy and bullied their neighbors into letting them set up a dictatorship.
Germany had a population of more than 90 million pre-WWII. Nazi Party membership never rose above 8 million. Even with supporters who never fully embraced Nazism, I think its safe to say that "pro-Nazi" Germany was never bigger than the crazification factor, say 25 to 30 percent.
Luckily, the U.S. does not have a statistically large party full of people frustrated about the ability of the government to bring back jobs, control the borders or fight against unseen foreign enemies. Even if it did, we surely don't have a falling standard of living and a growing belief that evil "elites" are stealing the profits owed to the common man.
The U.S. also doesn't owe reparations totaling 385 billion dollars to the countries that kicked its ass, lost California and the southwest to Mexico, Washington and Oregon to Canada, and had President George W. Bush tried as a war criminal.
Spain's fascist system also rose as the consequence of a civil war. And not a botched "fighting in the streets" one like Germany. German communists and militarists, and later, fascists, fought with clubs and knives outside (and inside) bars during happy hour. Spanish communists and fascists fought with planes and tanks.
Spain's fascist system also rose as the consequence of a civil war. And not a botched "fighting in the streets" one like Germany. German communists and militarists, and later, fascists, fought with clubs and knives outside (and inside) bars during happy hour. Spanish communists and fascists fought with planes and tanks.
Spain had the luck to be the puddle where everyone elses pissing match landed
The U.S. also doesn't owe reparations totaling 385 billion dollars to the countries that kicked its ass, lost California and the southwest to Mexico, Washington and Oregon to Canada, and had President George W. Bush tried as a war criminal.
We do have a bit of a debt problem, though.
My point is less to play mix and match between the U.S. and 1930s Germany. That's pointless. History does not repeat, even if it sometimes rhymes.
It's just to say that we have a long track record of how not to lead a democracy through tough times. When a leader decides to, even unknowingly, start pulling from the fascist bag of tricks, they need to be called on it.
As a society, we need to be talking about the fact that politicians can do quite well for themselves by polarizing the population and building angry coalitions aimed at their fellow citizens. And because these tactics have a track record of their long-term performance, we need to looking back at examples of why it is not a good idea to do this.
Yes. In the 1930s, Italy was a peasant society with a few rotting cities. It's still the Mexico of Europe, but it's come a long way since the first half of the 20th century.
The U.S. also doesn't owe reparations totaling 385 billion dollars to the countries that kicked its ass, lost California and the southwest to Mexico, Washington and Oregon to Canada, and had President George W. Bush tried as a war criminal.
We do have a bit of a debt problem, though.
No, we don't. Everyone knows we're good for it, eventually. There is no worry in any non-insane circle that the debt will not be paid back, and it presents no obstacle to obtaining further credit.
The U.S. also doesn't owe reparations totaling 385 billion dollars to the countries that kicked its ass, lost California and the southwest to Mexico, Washington and Oregon to Canada, and had President George W. Bush tried as a war criminal.
We do have a bit of a debt problem, though.
No, we don't. Everyone knows we're good for it, eventually. There is no worry in any non-insane circle that the debt will not be paid back, and it presents no obstacle to obtaining further credit.
Yeah, unlike some other examples (say, Greece) investing in the U.S. eventually paying you back is a really good idea.
So I saw it addressed up-thread a bit, but the WSJ/NYT pieces saying the senators will be returning to Wisconsin are basically out-of-context bullshit, right?
The U.S. also doesn't owe reparations totaling 385 billion dollars to the countries that kicked its ass, lost California and the southwest to Mexico, Washington and Oregon to Canada, and had President George W. Bush tried as a war criminal.
We do have a bit of a debt problem, though.
No, we don't. Everyone knows we're good for it, eventually. There is no worry in any non-insane circle that the debt will not be paid back, and it presents no obstacle to obtaining further credit.
Would it be inaccurate to say the US Debt being repaid to those it's in debt to is along the lines of being in a queue to be repaid?
I think Rome is more analogous to our continuous situation than 1930s Germany however.
hmm, not really. Rome had tons of problems that the US doesn't really face (restive populations, massive barbarian invasions). Also Rome, like many empires, was in the position where it had to keep expanding in order to survive. Once it stopped expanding, it couldn't afford its massive military, leading to a century of instability. By the time it had managed the transition into a feudal economy, the barbarians were at the gates. Literally, not just figuratively like Microsoft.
Would it be inaccurate to say the US Debt being repaid to those it's in debt to is along the lines of being in a queue to be repaid?
my syntax is shite there but oh well
Pretty much. It doesn't hurt that a lot of the debt holders are U.S. and foreign citizens who like the idea of sitting on that debt for decades. Savings bonds are still the go-to savings instrument for uncertain times.
One thing that got me about the This American Life exposes on the meltdown was how much of the meltdown was due to trillions of dollars of private/government capital that needed safe investment harbors. Private business simply did not have enough places to invest, so the market decided to start parking the money in real estate.
It really seems like a smart, non-ideological captured, U.S. government could take great advantage of this. Maybe do something like create a massive stimulus package to invest in infrastructure?
hmm, not really. Rome had tons of problems that the US doesn't really face (restive populations, massive barbarian invasions). Also Rome, like many empires, was in the position where it had to keep expanding in order to survive. Once it stopped expanding, it couldn't afford its massive military, leading to a century of instability. By the time it had managed the transition into a feudal economy, the barbarians were at the gates. Literally, not just figuratively like Microsoft.
Rome was a case of a society whose ability to expand swamped its ability to govern. That's not a problem we have.
They did not have the technology, society or political theory necessary to keep a world-wide empire going and, since their elites essentially drained up any money before it could be reinvested in society, they did not have the ability to build the middle class, intellectuals and universities needed to invent themselves out of the problem. They also lacked neighbors with working models, so they couldn't even steal ideas to keep things working.
Would it be inaccurate to say the US Debt being repaid to those it's in debt to is along the lines of being in a queue to be repaid?
my syntax is shite there but oh well
Pretty much. It doesn't hurt that a lot of the debt holders are U.S. and foreign citizens who like the idea of sitting on that debt for decades. Savings bonds are still the go-to savings instrument for uncertain times.
One thing that got me about the This American Life exposes on the meltdown was how much of the meltdown was due to trillions of dollars of private/government capital that needed safe investment harbors. Private business simply did not have enough places to invest, so the market decided to start parking the money in real estate.
It really seems like a smart, non-ideological captured, U.S. government could take great advantage of this. Maybe do something like create a massive stimulus package to invest in infrastructure?
The US was that harbour before. The problem was Greenspan, who tanked interest rates to encourage investment in something other then the US government. (I believe this was to get the US out of it's post-Dot-Com-Bust slump).
Of course, combine this with the like years and years of deregulation corporations had already been pushing and you had a recipe for disaster.
The US was that harbour before. The problem was Greenspan, who tanked interest rates to encourage investment in something other then the US government. (I believe this was to get the US out of it's post-Dot-Com-Bust slump).
Of course, combine this with the like years and years of deregulation corporations had already been pushing and you had a recipe for disaster.
We're still that harbor. At the moment, we can sell as many U.S. Savings Bonds as we want. Investors still snap them up, to the tune of whatever our national debt is rising.
The current debate in America is about what point this will cease to be the case. Conservatives think that the bond market will turn on the U.S. any day now, and we should enter panic mode to slash costs before that happens. Or buy lots of gold. They aren't so much wrong, as premature on their panic by an order of magnitude.
Liberals believe that we still have the time to borrow and invest wisely. So long as America does not degrade on a massive scale, those investments will pay off and allow us to honor bonds. They don't deny that the debt is a problem, just that is far less of a problem than widespread societal decay due to insufficient spending to maintain and grow.
And the Tea Party/libertarian types believe that we should default on our bonds and return to the gold standard. These people are just crazy.
unless I'm mistaken our total foreign debt is only like a third of our GDP or something
Edit: You should make a distinction between what conservatives say they believe and what they actually believe. They don't care about the debt or deficit one bit, or the military and subsidies to big oil and agribusiness wouldn't be exempt
Posts
No, they really don't have to come back, and no, they don't have to take Walker or the Republican legislature at their word.
A) They can say that they won't return until the legislation is scrapped and a bill that is not an abomination is passed through the Assembly.
C) I think it was determined that the Wisconsin 14 can assign power of attorney to their aides to go collect their paychecks.
D) You don't walk into a trap if you know it's a trap unless you're a non-Wisconsin Democrat.
That sounds more like it's on the Republicans than the Democrats. Who loses if the government shuts down? The people in power who allowed it to happen. Walker could pass a budget bill today if he was willing to compromise by removing one really unpopular thing.
But on the other side, we now have people on the right denying that Hitler acted like Hitler, by pretending that Hitler never did Hitler's actions.
Case in point: The current argument that Hitler was pro-union, not anti-union, because he wrote some pro-union things prior to 1933. The conservatives in question would like to pretend that Hitler did absolutely nothing of historical significance after 1933. Nothing at all.
Fortunately, all we need now is for the democratic senators to keep striking. The teachers can go back to work for the children, while the senators stay out of state.
How long? Given that Walker isn't budging, I would say long enough for the democrats to gain all the signatures they need for their recall effort. Once those signatures are in place, the republicans who want to maintain their seats are going to be feeling a lot more political pressure to appease their constituents. And as the signatures reach the halfway mark, they're going to have to dance that fine line between appease moderates and independents without alienating the tea baggers. Good luck on that.
Early and mid-20th century politics in general are becoming more relevant these days. Those battles - including the four-way battles between fascists, conservatives, liberals and leftists that defined politics in those days - were all about bread and butter economics in times of scarcity.
We thought we'd eliminated scarcity in the last half of the 20th, so we'd forgotten the battles. Now, all those unsolved issues are coming back full-force.
Which makes honest discussion about how we handled those issues the first time a lot more important.
Which is about as honest claiming that Hitler showed his support to the Jews by providing them with state funded food and board.
I think that the point of Godwin's Law is that it's never helpful to start comparing stuff to Hitler or Nazis. We lose the historical perspective on what they actually did because everybody stops listening after that... which is pretty much what the right wingers want. It's always the last word.
Can you compare Hitler to Hitler?
Because conservatives are telling me that I can't.
Historical revisionism is awesome.
You can do it, it's just that nobody will listen to you by that point.
There's a difference between saying "X is equivalent to the Holocausts" and "The Holocausts actually happened."
Godwin's Law actually doesn't make a judgment on the use of Hitler in an argument one way or another. It's not even about comparing your opponent to Hitler, it's just about the likelihood of bringing him up in an argument increasing as that argument continues.
There's a strong body of research supporting the idea that Hitler rushed the war, especially attacking the Soviet Union, because he needed the threat of national emergency to head off major conflicts with unionized workers.
General prosperity for middle class Germans was the highest in the world between about 1935 and 1940. Workers were not sharing in this because - surprise! - life for the working class in a fascist dictatorship isn't that great. Right wing capitalists with a secret police force behind them don't share the wealth.
Hitler's German Labor Front essentially outlawed strikes and kept wages at the same levels for the entirety of the Third Reich, despite a 25 percent increase in the cost of living. This was all breaking down before Hitler invaded the Soviets, which worked right up until the Soviets and the rest of the world invaded Germany right back.
Usually gets overlooked, since people aren't as interested in the potential direction of a conversation so much as the subject matter. Also, in a basic sense, Godwin's Law is true about everything--if conversation A is not talking about subject B, the longer conversation A goes on, its naturally more likely to mention subject B, whether it be Hitler or radishes or Mongolian horses.
And given that many conservative personalities are on the fence about some of Hitler's most dramatic actions--say, enabling the killing of more than 20 million citizens of a nearby communist state--I think they'll continue to waver on other things like unions and the like. Every time I hear "It's like Hitler's invasion of Russia [sic]--it was bad, but it would have been bad if it didn't happen." I want to kick someone in the kidneys.
On an Internet message board maybe.
Real, serious historians talk about this stuff all the time. Nazi Germany isn't some scary Lovecraftian anomaly there. It's just another data point about how human societies react to stress, and it's a particularly useful one because of its modernity, educational level and general close resemblance to modern economies.
Spain, Italy* and the Asian and South American fascist dictatorships were all products of largely rural, agrarian or otherwise economically undeveloped peripheries going south. Germany's really the only example we have of a core modern democracy going insane.
* 1930s Italy and Spain were backwaters. They were more like Mexico going bad.
To be fair, and I am not denying the increasing insanity of the right, Germany was in a situation very much unlike our own due to the Treaty of Versailles.
Yes. In the 1930s, Italy was a peasant society with a few rotting cities. It's still the Mexico of Europe, but it's come a long way since the first half of the 20th century.
There's a reason that Italy lost up to a third of its population to emigration in the early 20th century. The place was a hellhole.
Yes, it was. Germany was a supposedly strong country that could neither control its borders or provide jobs and a stable income for citizens. When the democracy could not find a way to solve these problems, a strong minority turned their backs on democracy and bullied their neighbors into letting them set up a dictatorship.
Germany had a population of more than 90 million pre-WWII. Nazi Party membership never rose above 8 million. Even with supporters who never fully embraced Nazism, I think its safe to say that "pro-Nazi" Germany was never bigger than the crazification factor, say 25 to 30 percent.
Luckily, the U.S. does not have a statistically large party full of people frustrated about the ability of the government to bring back jobs, control the borders or fight against unseen foreign enemies. Even if it did, we surely don't have a falling standard of living and a growing belief that evil "elites" are stealing the profits owed to the common man.
Spain had the luck to be the puddle where everyone elses pissing match landed
We do have a bit of a debt problem, though.
My point is less to play mix and match between the U.S. and 1930s Germany. That's pointless. History does not repeat, even if it sometimes rhymes.
It's just to say that we have a long track record of how not to lead a democracy through tough times. When a leader decides to, even unknowingly, start pulling from the fascist bag of tricks, they need to be called on it.
As a society, we need to be talking about the fact that politicians can do quite well for themselves by polarizing the population and building angry coalitions aimed at their fellow citizens. And because these tactics have a track record of their long-term performance, we need to looking back at examples of why it is not a good idea to do this.
A lot of the south is still pretty much Mexico.
Yeah, unlike some other examples (say, Greece) investing in the U.S. eventually paying you back is a really good idea.
Would it be inaccurate to say the US Debt being repaid to those it's in debt to is along the lines of being in a queue to be repaid?
my syntax is shite there but oh well
hmm, not really. Rome had tons of problems that the US doesn't really face (restive populations, massive barbarian invasions). Also Rome, like many empires, was in the position where it had to keep expanding in order to survive. Once it stopped expanding, it couldn't afford its massive military, leading to a century of instability. By the time it had managed the transition into a feudal economy, the barbarians were at the gates. Literally, not just figuratively like Microsoft.
Pretty much. It doesn't hurt that a lot of the debt holders are U.S. and foreign citizens who like the idea of sitting on that debt for decades. Savings bonds are still the go-to savings instrument for uncertain times.
One thing that got me about the This American Life exposes on the meltdown was how much of the meltdown was due to trillions of dollars of private/government capital that needed safe investment harbors. Private business simply did not have enough places to invest, so the market decided to start parking the money in real estate.
It really seems like a smart, non-ideological captured, U.S. government could take great advantage of this. Maybe do something like create a massive stimulus package to invest in infrastructure?
Rome was a case of a society whose ability to expand swamped its ability to govern. That's not a problem we have.
They did not have the technology, society or political theory necessary to keep a world-wide empire going and, since their elites essentially drained up any money before it could be reinvested in society, they did not have the ability to build the middle class, intellectuals and universities needed to invent themselves out of the problem. They also lacked neighbors with working models, so they couldn't even steal ideas to keep things working.
The US was that harbour before. The problem was Greenspan, who tanked interest rates to encourage investment in something other then the US government. (I believe this was to get the US out of it's post-Dot-Com-Bust slump).
Of course, combine this with the like years and years of deregulation corporations had already been pushing and you had a recipe for disaster.
We just have an obstructionist political party whos relevance depends on us not solving them
We're still that harbor. At the moment, we can sell as many U.S. Savings Bonds as we want. Investors still snap them up, to the tune of whatever our national debt is rising.
The current debate in America is about what point this will cease to be the case. Conservatives think that the bond market will turn on the U.S. any day now, and we should enter panic mode to slash costs before that happens. Or buy lots of gold. They aren't so much wrong, as premature on their panic by an order of magnitude.
Liberals believe that we still have the time to borrow and invest wisely. So long as America does not degrade on a massive scale, those investments will pay off and allow us to honor bonds. They don't deny that the debt is a problem, just that is far less of a problem than widespread societal decay due to insufficient spending to maintain and grow.
And the Tea Party/libertarian types believe that we should default on our bonds and return to the gold standard. These people are just crazy.
Edit: You should make a distinction between what conservatives say they believe and what they actually believe. They don't care about the debt or deficit one bit, or the military and subsidies to big oil and agribusiness wouldn't be exempt