More left-wing pandering

[DVaut1]

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Some on the left seem to think CAGW is just a corporate-front group.

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Kinda weak, DVautl1. I guess it's easier to descredit the source than to argue against it. You're better than that.

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Point being: the group appears to get most of their funding from large corporations, whose interests lie in decreased government regulation - and exist as a 'corporate front' so that their donors can cite CAGW statistics (as they are, at first glance, merely a 'watchdog' group) in various information venues to use against whoever opposes corporate-friendly/deregulation policies.

Politics is a dirty business. I'm sure the left has similar, echo-chamber type fronts. But I don't think it's outlandish to be concerned with the objectivity of sources.

Or, conversely : Kinda weak, BCPVP. I guess it's easier to stand by a biased source than try to find something more objective. You're better than that. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[BCPVP]

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Point being: the group appears to get most of their funding from large corporations, whose interests lie in decreased government regulation

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I think this is a good thing.

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and exist as a 'corporate front' so that their donors can cite CAGW statistics (as they are, at first glance, merely a 'watchdog' group) in various information venues to use against whoever opposes corporate-friendly/deregulation policies.

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Then please explain why the main focus of CAGW is wasteful spending and not regulation policies? If CAGW existed merely to decrease regulation, why bother with pork?

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Or, conversely : Kinda weak, BCPVP. I guess it's easier to stand by a biased source than try to find something more objective. You're better than that.

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I believe "unbiased sources" are nearly non-existent. It's up to the user to recognize bias and factor that in and get other pov's. So your argument that they're biased against big government is dumb. Of course they are! It's their raison d’être!

Is that really the best you can do, DVault1? That they're biased towards big gov't?

[frizzfreeling]

An example of why I have a problem with their info: New Jersey gets the least pork per capita of any state in the country @ $11.70. Alaska gets the most @ $808.13 per person. New Jersey's Democrat congressmen Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg get dismal ratings of 25% and 21% respectively. Alaska's Republican congresspeople Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski both got much better ratings of 56%.
Both Democrats lost points because they voted "yes" on the highway bill. But this says absolutely nothing about whether they are pork friendly. There could be a number of reasons why they voted for the bill. The pork ratings should be based on what each state gets per capita and what each congressperson tries to push for their state even if they dont get it. The arbitrary system CAGW is using to rate them isnt even close to being an accurate representation of Piggy reality.

[BCPVP]

Ok, it looks like the rating is based on how the individual votes on legislation that is either endorsed or opposed by CAGW. It's not only on how much pork that particular congressperson brings back. It sounds like you want the rating weighted for the amount of pork they get.

I understand your point. It would be nice if CAGW could list all the pork projects and their costs for each congressperson. I wonder if the problem would be digging all that info out of the budget bills and amendments. That sounds like a nightmare.

The CAGW thing is a red herring. The point is that the Republicans, who were elected in 1994 on a platform of curbing government waste, have become just as corrupt, or even more so, than the people they replaced. It took the Dems 40 years in power to get seriously corrupted, and the GOP has managed it in 10.

Seriously, who do congressional Republicans represent anymore? It seems like just about anything congress is doing is for the benefit of their biggest donors rather than the citizens.

We need to clean house. Not just replace GOP with Dems, but make congressional seats competitive again. Nearly all seats are gerrymandered to protect the incumbent, and in most districts, there's basically no way a Republican can lose to a Democrat, or vice versa. The only way for a rep to lose his seat is to be too moderate and lose the primary, which ensures that they all take as extreme positions as possible.

[whiskeytown]

fascinating -

as soon as they took control of congress, they started porking the budget -

I think your comment is full of bullshit. They're not pandering to the left wing - when they want bridges built to nowhere and million dollar projects, they're pandering to their voting base and embezelling because of greed, - it has nothing to do with the left.

So how is life in fantasyland? Glad to see you're not letting a little thing like reality interfere with your worldview.

RB

LMAO!

Whiskey, sometimes I just luv ya!

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[BCPVP]

Check your sarcasm detector, Whiskey. I think it's a quart low... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[lastchance]

We need to stop accepting pandering, which is corruption. Politicians do it because they get votes, and we don't stop them because we want to be pandered to. This sucks.

[DVaut1]

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Then please explain why the main focus of CAGW is wasteful spending and not regulation policies? If CAGW existed merely to decrease regulation, why bother with pork?


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If they're only interested in pork, please explain to me why CAGW is concerned with criticizing open-source software.

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Is that really the best you can do, DVault1? That they're biased towards big gov't?

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It's not that they're biased against big government (not my thoughts, pulled from the link above, as I certainly have not the time nor the inclination to do a comprehensive study of CAGW; then again, it seems as if you don't either, BCPVP) - CAGW's efforts seem to center not around promoting federal waste-cutting, but instead in promoting federal departmental spending cuts and specific legislative changes to weaken the US government's powers to monitor corporate abuses; in particular, by getting rid of like environmental, health, and safety regulations that current US federal law requires their US operations to comply with. And opposing efforts by the US government to punish corporate violations of federal law. At least, so goes the narrative on the left.