All the President's Goldman men

[sirs]

IIRC, Lord Acton's dictum was that power TENDS to corrupt, absolute power TENDS to corrupt absolutely.   The dictum at least as I've heard it quoted was not as absolutist as they like to make it. 

Nice how you skimmed right over the part of these "elected representatives" doing precisely the opposite of their constituents' bidding, with the latest incarnation of Obamacare

And I'm sure you can present that quote with Lord Acton's use of the term "tends"

[Michael Tee]

Norm Coleman is the one "conservative" you were able to name who opposed the absolute powers of a Pinochet or a Spinoza?  Do YOUR homework, that was laughable.  A quick read of the Wikipedia bio of Coleman indicates that he was one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate.  He is anything BUT your "typical conservative."

I'll stick to my original comment, thank you.  When you find one REAL conservative who was opposed to the absolute power of right-wing Latin-American dictators and torturers, let me know.  All of them together won't add up to more than a drop in the ocean anyway.  The vast majority of conservatives support absolute power, provided only that it be exercised by right-wing criminals.

[Amianthus]

Norm Coleman is the one "conservative" you were able to name who opposed the absolute powers of a Pinochet or a Spinoza?  Do YOUR homework, that was laughable.  A quick read of the Wikipedia bio of Coleman indicates that he was one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate.  He is anything BUT your "typical conservative."

From Wikipedia:

"He received a 14% progressive rating from Progressive Punch.  And he scored a 73% conservative rating by the conservative group, SBE Council."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Coleman

He is anti-abortion, pro Iraq war, pro-ANWR drilling, anti federal funding for stem cell research, anti-gay rights, anti-drug legalization, pro SSA privatization - I didn't realize that these were "most liberal" positions. Perhaps I'm a liberal and didn't realize it.

[Amianthus]

Norm Coleman's rating at "On The Issues":



http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/Norm_Coleman.htm

There's quite a bit of detail on how they arrived at their rating, based on his voting record.

[Michael Tee]

And yet the guy was rated one of the four or five most moderate Republicans in the Senate.  Go figure.  BTW, 73% conservative doesn't seem like any great hell to me.  It's meaningless of course without knowing how many higher rankings there were.

[sirs]

Meaningless to you perhaps, but certainly debunks the notion that he was "one of the most liberal Republicans in the Senate"

next

[Plane]

<< In 1836 Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, a Yale-educated attorney interested in improving agriculture, became Commissioner of Patents, a position within the Department of State. He soon began collecting and distributing new varieties of seeds and plants through members of the Congress and agricultural societies. >>

from a history of the USDA, found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold

http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/

Extention agents are very usefull and I have known them to bear a sence of mission , they promote the general welfare effeciently and use practicly no co-ercion , they are simply availible and usefull , it is a well run program.

I wonder how we got along without anything like it for seventy years.
The West was won much as the East was with the government just barely co-ordinateing a tide of humanity that rolled west blanketing all obsticles and ignoreing any rights that the aborigionals might have had.  I think it could have been done better , but not by any government policy , where the government did make a few concessions to the rights of Indians the population uniformly ignored them.

   In the time since, recognition of Native Americans as Human beings possed of inalienable rights has grown up in the population , the government is sluggishly ghangeing policys made eighty or an hundred fifty years ago to recognise this. The breau of Indian Affairs , which used to be the Governments idea of protecting the people on reservation has never been run well , has often been corrupt and coercive, haveing still a legacy of malmanagement that is comeing to light almost as slowly as it is being cleaned up.

The USDA's Extention service is an example of the government doing a job well that might be hard for a non government agency to do at all.
The interior department's BIA is an example of almost exactly the opposite.

If there is anything we in the USA lack as a people and government , it is a means to throttle the life out of looseing , corrupt , wastefull , idiotic agencys that seem immortal.

OK, but your opposition to government-orchestrated collective solutions is not sometimes on and sometimes off; seems to me you are always 100% "off," ....

This may seem like that to you because you are 100% "on" , but in actuality I am an employee of the USAF which is one of the premier military (guberment to youse) orginisations of the planet , nobody does it better.

Perhaps I don't praise the Government as often as you would , but I am also an American possessing a legacy of holding the government in a realistic suspicion , because of its potential for enforceing repression, even when it is not misbehaveing , it still has that potential.

[Plane]

Norm Coleman's rating at "On The Issues":

I would bet that the present Congress overall leaves that center square unpopulated.

[Michael Tee]

You know, plane, I mentioned the USDA only because it seemed to me that you feel the West was "won" without government intervention by a tide of settlers, which frankly I think is a gigantic crock. 

In addition to help from the USDA, the West was "won" with the help of railroads, the U.S. military, a whole flock of surveyors, land agents, county registrars, mining claims offices etc. because in reality very few people would be dumb enough to go out and start clearing and farming an unplotted lot with no idea whose land they were working on or whether they'd ever get title.  They needed protection from Indian attacks, a system for registration of mining claims and a billion other things that only a government can provide with any assurance.  The myth of the frontier is a crock a shit. 

[Plane]

You know, plane, I mentioned the USDA only because it seemed to me that you feel the West was "won" without government intervention by a tide of settlers, which frankly I think is a gigantic crock. 

In addition to help from the USDA, the West was "won" with the help of railroads, the U.S. military, a whole flock of surveyors, land agents, county registrars, mining claims offices etc. because in reality very few people would be dumb enough to go out and start clearing and farming an unplotted lot with no idea whose land they were working on or whether they'd ever get title.  They needed protection from Indian attacks, a system for registration of mining claims and a billion other things that only a government can provide with any assurance.  The myth of the frontier is a crock a shit. 

All of the amenitues came after there was someone there to pay for them.

The Militias amounted to more than the regular army untill after the Civil war , during the Civil war was the transition.

Did you think that there was a lot of mineing claims registered in Califoria before 1849?

I think the Cavalary comeing to the rescue in every nick of time is the Hollywood version. Half the Indian Wars were coordinated and half of them were catch as catch can in a bad neighborhood. Of course haveing an Officer present would make it a lot more likely that the battle would be recorded , and that the Army would get glowing praise in the description of the battle.

   A noteable exception to the usual battlefeild report is the record of Davy Crockett , If you ever have some time to kill you might want to read this precursor to "Catch 22". Davy Crockett understood that he had to fight , but thought of the Indians as persons anyway. Andrew Jackson wrote of the same battles , which you ought to read if you want to read something nice about Andrew Jackson.

  Washington did try now and again to impose order on the westering people , The Supreme couort even found in favor of the Cherokee staying where they were in Ga. , but the Army in that case (as in several others) went along to stand between the Indians and the local Whites just to stop the fight. It might have been a lot more proper for the Army to defend the Indian right to his land as directed by the Supreme court , but this would have been asking one white man to shoot another White man for the property rights of a non white man. Andrew Jackson was President by this time and he didn't see much point in that.

  The Government was involved in the westward migration of our people , but it is an exaggeration to say it was in controll of it.

[Christians4LessGvt]

[Plane]

because in reality very few people would be dumb enough to go out and start clearing and farming an unplotted lot with no idea whose land they were working on or whether they'd ever get title. 

As a matter of fact you are talking about Daniel Boone , who founded Boonesbourough and established a plantation for himself nearby , but lost his claim to latecomers who understood the system better.

Daniel then went to Texas to start over , where he was a successfull farmer till his death of natural causes in his eightys.

Something simular happened to Laura Engals family as recounted in "Little house on the Prairie".

  The Govenrnment did manage claims registry , but I get the impression that it was not really good at it.

[Michael Tee]

I was only guessing at how settlement proceeded, but I know from the way it went here in Ontario, the British came in first, their surveyors laid out all the roads on paper and created all the lots BEFORE the settlers were allowed in to settle on them.  The roads made 200-acre lots and anyone could apply for a Crown grant giving 25 years of possession and then if the land was cleared, fenced and farmed by the end of the 25 years, the settler got the title to the whole 200 acres.  I'm not sure if they got the mineral rights, I think it might have depended on where in the Province the land was.  

Common sense tells me that nobody would clear land and farm it only to be kicked out as some kind of squatter after years of backbreaking labour.  There'd have to be a registry and government surveys before anyone would settle on it.  The kind of cases you describe are probably the exception, not the rule.  

Some of your other points sound valid, for example that the U.S. Army would have been involved in a major way only after the end of the Civil War, but I'm sure that there was a lot more government involvement than you want to admit in the settlement of the West.

And thanks for your tips about Davy Crockett and Andrew Jackson, I put both of them on a list for reading up on after retirement.  We did study Andrew Jackson in U.S. history class in Grade 9, and he got a pretty bad rep, as I understand it not only as an Indian fighter but even more for bringing the "spoils system" into the government.  But he wasn't all bad, because he opened politics to "the common man" which meant taking it away from the elite of the Eastern seaboard.  We also learned that the Battle of New Orleans was a DRAW, not the clear-cut victory later claimed in the Johnny Horton song.

[Plane]

  We also learned that the Battle of New Orleans was a DRAW, not the clear-cut victory later claimed in the Johnny Horton song.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Of Course!
Your early years in School would have been while Canada was still British!
Probly more British than Britian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_New_Orleans
At the end of the day, the British had 2,042 casualties: 291 killed (including Generals Pakenham and Gibbs), 1,267 wounded (including General Keane) and 484 captured or missing.[2] The Americans had 71 casualties: 13 dead; 39 wounded and 19 missing.

I have some bad news for you about Crimea too.

[Amianthus]

Well, of course the British had more casualties. They started out with more than three times as many troops.