More left-wing pandering

[ptmusic]

As I mentioned in another thread, and several months ago, check out the About Us section of their website. BCPVP didn't like me bringing it up then, and I'm sure he doesn't like it now. But he sure likes bringing up that website!

-ptmusic

[BCPVP]

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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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I don't know or particularly care. It is definitely not the focus of CAGW. To argue otherwise is dishonest.

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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

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I think this is wrong. I don't know how you can back up this assertion when it's clear that the main focus is gov't waste cutting. Evidence of this would be, for one, the Pig Book, something CAGW is famous for. This is a list of pork earmarks in the appropriations bill. That isn't a department of government, it's a bill full of wasteful spending. Please back up your assertion that CAGW's main purpose is to defund government dept (itself not a bad idea) and reduce oversight on corporations.

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And opposing efforts by the US government to punish corporate violations of federal law. At least, so goes the narrative on the left.

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Wait, so all of the above was from left-wing sources? Have you even bothered to look around at CAGW or would that upset your delicate grasp of their "true purpose"? And you have the chutzpah to lecture me about biased sources...

[DVaut1]

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] Wait, so all of the above was from left-wing sources? Have you even bothered to look around at CAGW or would that upset your delicate grasp of their "true purpose"?

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1) No, they're not all left-wing sources. One is from a software blog.
2) Yes, I looked around at the CAGW website. But like I said, I have no inclination to study how accurate their ratings are. Do you?

I do think it's important, however, to point out that we should question where CAGW's agenda really lies - so that, whenever a discussion of pork comes up, merely citing their statistics probably should come with some serious questions about how CAGW arrives at them, and if their statistics are really a reflection of pork spending, or something else - enough so that (at least for me) seeing a CAGW statistic won't end the debate, no more than seeing one from the DNC or RNC would.


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And you have the chutzpah to lecture me about biased sources...

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Yeah, so I'm fully open that the sources I linked to are biased (although one was merely from a software programmer, whose political ideology I know nothing about) - although I invite anyone to investigate as they will.

I don't think it would be folly, though, to consider some of the information about CAGW (funded by large corporations, opposes open-source software while cashing big checks from Microsoft) and wonder if their stated purposes may be different from their true intentions.

Regardless, I think enough questions exist that I certainly don't accept their pork ratings as gospel, or indicative of anything other than what amounts to typical watchdog/lobbying groups in Washington - as many such groups exist (on both the right and the left) to serve the purposes of an echo-chamber - that is, in CAGW's case, it may be that they exist only to create statistics which brand politicians who oppose corporate-friendly policies as 'porkers', so that corporate-friendly politicians can use said statistics in campaigns, etc. to label their opponents with something negative (the 'porker' label), even if the label wasn't arrived at objectively.

So yes, like I said, some my sources are certainly biased, and I admitted as much. So what I'm asking is that, when you post a link to a CAGW, you should consider adding the caveat of: "this group takes in big donations from corporations like Microsoft and big tobacco - and coincidentally, they oppose open-source software and label taxpayer money which goes to fund anti-smoking campaigns as pork. So remember, when viewing my CAGW link, it's possible they're really just another corporate lobbying organization, and may not really be interested in pork at all."

Sound fair?

[BCPVP]

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Yes, I looked around at the CAGW website. But like I said, I have no inclination to study how accurate their ratings are. Do you?

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I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "study". I suppose I could examine each of the key votes that CAGW rates Congressmen on each year and match that with how they voted to make sure it is they way they voted.

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I do think it's important, however, to point out that we should question where CAGW's agenda really lies

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Agreed, but you need more than innuendo and weak connections to disavow such information.

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merely citing their statistics probably should come with some serious questions about how CAGW arrives at them, and if their statistics are really a reflection of pork spending, or something else

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I've already stated (either here or elsewhere) that the statistic is not a reflection of how much pork a given congressman recieves.

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Yeah, so I'm fully open that the sources I linked to are biased (although one was merely from a software programmer, whose political ideology I know nothing about)

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The link to the software programmer referred back to the Center for Media and Democracy page you cited earlier. The tone of the programmer's article seems to be left-ward leaning, but I don't particularly care about CAGW's stance on open-source software.

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I don't think it would be folly, though, to consider some of the information about CAGW (funded by large corporations, opposes open-source software while cashing big checks from Microsoft) and wonder if their stated purposes may be different from their true intentions.

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Well for starters it would be honest to acknowledge that CAGW is not mostly funded by corporations. According to their financial information page, 75% of their income comes from individual contributions while only 22% came from corporations/foundations. I suppose that that 75% could be made up of large individual contributions from the CEOs of corporations, but I'd like proof of that before jumping to that conclusion.

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So remember, when viewing my CAGW link, it's possible they're really just another corporate lobbying organization, and may not really be interested in pork at all."

Sound fair?

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I take most things with a grain of salt. That's why I like to see other sources to see if they back up such claims. So far, I haven't found a similar website that rates each member the way CAGW does, but there are plenty of pages that point out waste and fraud so I'm inclined to believe that CAGW is probably correct in its ratings.

[Jedster]

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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

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sarcasm, refers to another thread (the one about how righties think bush sucks, in which they explain they think he sucks because he panders to the left)

[whiskeytown]

sorry - not having booze anymore is throwing my sarcasm detector off... [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] - although as you can see from my OP, my sarcasm producer is still running at 110% efficency.

when I'm wrong, I admit it - whoops -

or maybe I was just exhausted - after all, I had to go to Iowa - that'll drain the life of any Minnesotan - LOL

pax
RB