So aside from all of the things that were factually untrue that you just posted, such as the Carnegie foundation curing Polio (that was Jonas Silas), and that JP Morgan built the Golden Gate Bridge (Amado Giannini was the one that financed the bonds for the state of California). I actually agree with a some of what you said. I think there is a lot of bad governing going on with a lot of corruption, or just simply incompetence going on all over the place. But who's to blame for this? Well clearly it's us as citizens, we should get more involved in all aspects of our democratic process. There are a lot of examples of public/private partnerships that are well managed, well governed, and well executed and all parties involved benefit. But unfortunately more often than not they aren't as well published as the failures which leads to folks such as yourself being ideologically opposed to anything to do with government. Here's a very recent and interesting article on how public and private partnerships can lead to something pretty awesome actually: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/roanoke-virginia-redevelopment-what-works-214247 There are plenty of examples of this across the country, but I think the issue is that generally there aren't people that are in government, or in private sectors for that matter, that are interested in community building. Generally they are ideologues rather than trying to govern effectively, or in the case of corporate elites they are more interested in making billions, so there is an unhealthy tension going on between the two. If people on both sides actually attempted to work together, and used both of their institutions to do what was best for the community and removed the ideology out of it I think things would be far better managed and governed. But the problem is that Republicans generally don't want to use government for anything other than regulating my sexual preferences, my religious beliefs, or what drugs I can use. And on the flip side Democrats want to use government to fix all of their perceived problems whether it makes any sense for the government to do it or not. Unfortunately this has lead people to the logical extremes thinking government either is the solution, or isn't the solution, and doesn't view things generally objectively and use scientific reasoning based on actual evidence and experimentation. Instead they just craft an ideological position on what they think government should do and stick to it thick and thin, whereas clearly the private sector does some things far far better than government. But, they are also extremely bad at doing some other things too, like prisons. As to your point on the IRS and DMV's though, I think this is part of the problem too. There is an over fragmentation of laws and regulations across states that leads to massive problems, especially for private industry, if you want a monopoly on anything it IS government. The fact that there are so many regulations across so many states is actually incredibly inefficient and bad for, you guessed it, consumers, business, and the economy. You disagree fundamentally that government should be involved in any way in the economy, but this is the crux of the argument because that is where I strongly disagree. I don't not want government, I just want much more effective and efficient government, as I am not a fan of my rivers turning unnatural colors, and the air I breath toxic. I guess I am more of an old school Republican economically than I am a Libertarian, but socially I am 100% libertarian.
Without steel, the bridges and buildings wouldn't have been built. I didn't mean to suggest the companies actually built the bridges and buildings. They just made the steel, making it possible. Standard Oil built thousands and thousands of miles of pipeline (aqueduct-like). I was off by only a little regarding polio. It was funded by the Scaife foundation and march of dimes, both private sector charities. Carnegie Mellon borders University of Pittsburgh, where Salk invented the vaccine. Rockefeller foundation funded and hosted the research that proved DNA is the chemical basis for heredity. Government turns what it touches to shit. Sorry. The public schools, VA hospitals, and other large scale ongoing operations do not perform very well. Couldn't even nation build in poor countries. What government does well is write checks.
There are many instances of government being extremely successful before people who didn't/don't believe in it intentionally destroy it for ideological reasons, look at every Tea Party Republican ever for evidence of folks who go into government simply to destroy it by making it ineffective. You could list a million failures of private industry too, but what's the point, because there are also a million successes! What you're missing here Denny is that you're an ideologue that simply hates government irrationally even when the government does do some things by all objective measurements better than private industry. This is not a discussion, and with people such as yourself it never is, because you simply have this belief that government is the problem and cannot accept the FACT that it actually does do SOME things better than the private industry. Until you can accept that fact there's no point in continuing the discussion.
All of that greatness occurred before Nixon opened trade with China, before Reagan crushed the American unions by giving amnesty to 11 million illegals, before Clinton mothballed American manufacturing by forcing NAFTA on us... It occurred mostly after WWI and before Kennedy's assassination, at a time of very little "free marketing" and much government re-investment of tax revenue and oversight of the outcome. The private sector has never built an acceptable country infrastructure anywhere in the world at any time in history that I am aware of.
I look to what government does well and efficiently. I don't see much. Just writing checks. Government did fund the space program. 99% of it is looking back at earth from orbit, and much of that private. Television, weather, telecommunications... The successes of government are a shrinking middle class, shitty jobs, overpriced health care, failing roads and bridges, A retirement system that is a ponzi scheme and not a very dignified retirement, welfare trap, etc. All this in spite of record revenues and massive debts. Government is good for the suburbs around DC. 6 of the top 10 richest neighborhoods, in fact. That's where our tax dollars go. Government prevented gay marriage and gays in the military, implemented Jim Crow, throws an absurd number of people into prison (abnormal numbers of black men), drops bombs on weddings in the middle east, spies on us all, and disregards the constitution. To say it's tea party republicans is off the mark. It's all of them. I can go on, but I think the point is made. There is very little need for most of government. The private sector handles it fine.
http://www.americanmanufacturing.org/blog/entry/the-china-built-bay-bridge-has-another-problem We are soooooooo smart, even smarter when a guy who nails a troll while he is married to an attractive woman runs things.
Your definition of national infrastructure, "railroads and highways and airports and auto industry and airplane industry and electricity and skyscrapers"...well, you see the problem with your 1800's time frame. Although I realize you have a fondness for simpler times when slavery was the preferred labor force.
They were building the railroads in the 1820s. There was a rich network of railroads already built, especially in the north, by 1865. The transcontinental railroad was built between 1863 and 1869. The Wright brothers powered flight in 1903. The first airports were built before 1910. The first highway was built in 1911. The first cars were build in the 1880s by Karl Benz. The skyscraper boom begin in 1885. JP Morgan died in 1913. He formed the General Electric Company by merging Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Electric Company in 1882. The Bell Telephone Company was established in 1879. World War I started in 1914. I have a fondness for times when government wasn't so involved in the economy that it stifles industry. I would most certainly have been an abolitionist. It's funny you would choose WWI as some starting point where American industry took its turn for the worse. I would peg it with the income tax.
Discoveries and inventions that never became available to the masses until government stepped in. Railroads were a partial exception but are nearly obsolete now other than for shipping. Hospitals, schools, libraries, affordable transportation were unavailable for most urban Americans until the 1920s, the 1950s for rural Americans.
LOL There have been hospitals, libraries, affordable transportation, etc., since the colonial days. The obsolete bit is why monopolies don't matter. They only encourage new innovation to get around the monopolistic practices, if there are any.
Well, Hiliar can do both here. Import workers to build more freeways AND play on them (I mean harass truckers and throw rocks at them)
Update: It was known at the time that the Hillary Camp was pushing these rumors. On August 11, 2008, CNN wrote: Sen. Hillary Clinton's one-time chief strategist wanted to attack Sen. Barack Obama for lacking "American roots" during the Democratic primary battle, according to a magazine article set to be published online Monday evening. "All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050," Mark Penn, then Clinton's chief strategist, wrote in a March 2007 memo, according to an article to be published in the September edition of The Atlantic magazine. Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/09/hillary_falls_into_trumps_birther_trap.html August is before November, unless you're barfo.
Did you bother to read all the way to the end, Deny? "We are never going to say anything about his background". Compare and contrast that with your orange boyfriend. [I'm not saying that I approve of this memo - I don't. Happily, the campaign seems to have ignored it.] barfo
