[GeneV]

Actually I think he does like to fire people..................

full quote:


I'm not feeling the love..............
Mitt Romney: "I like being able to fire people" for bad service - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Still trying to wrap my head around this one............

The "people" he was talking about firing were insurance companies, though. The quote is used as though he meant human employees. To me, it is a bit like the distortion of the Obama speech.

[jeffkrol]

The "people" he was talking about firing were insurance companies, though. The quote is used as though he meant human employees. To me, it is a bit like the distortion of the Obama speech.

I agree about the distortion.. Just hard to get past the "little things"
I usually never talk about firing my mechanic, or plumber or anyone that does me a "service"..
Maybe an accountant or lawyer.. LOL
"Firing" is language of big people.......
Building things is universal....

[graphicgr8s]

Read the quote you just posted and watch the video. He didn't say you didn't build a business. He said you didn't build roads and bridges.

The same kind of misrepresentation is played out with the "I like to fire people" quote from Romney.

As much as I didn't want to get stuck back in the cesspool of P&R I must beg to ask the question of where exactly did the "government" get the money to build said bridges and roads? And how were businesses built when government was smaller and there were no roads or the internet?

[GeneV]

As much as I didn't want to get stuck back in the cesspool of P&R I must beg to ask the question of where exactly did the "government" get the money to build said bridges and roads? And how were businesses built when government was smaller and there were no roads or the internet?

If you don't want to be in this "cesspool" then don't post here. If you want to have a reasonable discussion, then welcome back. George?

---

Last edited by GeneV; 08-30-2012 at 05:51 PM.

[jeffkrol]

As much as I didn't want to get stuck back in the cesspool of P&R I must beg to ask the question of where exactly did the "government" get the money to build said bridges and roads?

how far back do you want to go??

Often the responsibility for building a road was passed from the state and federal government to private turnpike companies. Hence, the "turnpike" or toll road: once a company had bid for and built a road, it owned the rights of passage on it.

Sooo if you want to pay for passage on any road you take.. go backwards.......as far as you like.
Or care to go back to Rhine barons who would block passage on a river..
Robber barons of the Rhine - FT.com

Then as now, the people who lived along the river bank provided services to the users and collected revenues. Then as now, they hoped to minimise the services while maximising the revenues. Between Bingen and Koblenz, the river enters the Rhine Gorge. The narrow passage means that even in the 13th century it was easy to impede the flow of traffic. For centuries, the Holy Roman Empire derived patronage by assigning rights to a limited number of toll points. But when the Emperor Frederick III died in 1250 there was no agreed successor, and hence no regulator. This was when robber barons started to collect unauthorised taxes on the gorge.
There was a vigorous consumer response. The first Rhine League was an association of merchants given legitimacy by aristocratic participation. The League’s simple, brutal and effective strategy was to employ a militia to raid the toll gatherers’ hideouts. After attacking the notorious Werner von Bolander, they stormed and destroyed the redoubt of the resourceful Philip von Hohenfels, who built a replacement castle on a rocky outcrop. His Castle Reichenstein, reconstructed at the start of the 20th century, is today a luxury hotel.

Our sympathies now lie with the besieging militias, not the robber barons. But is there an economic or moral difference between the enterprising von Hohenfels and the complacent archbishops of Trier, whose rich ecclesiastical domains relied on the revenues they derived from authorised levies on river traffic?

Then we evolved.......

[jeffkrol]

more road history.........

The need for improving roads to better serve the social and economic life of the colony was among the matters facing members of the House of Burgesses as they met in Jamestown in September 1632.

Before adjournment, they had passed the first highway legislation in American history, an act providing, in the language of the day, that, "Highwayes shall be layd in such convenient places as are requisite accordinge as the Governor and Counsell or the commissioners for the monthlie corts shall appoynt, or accordinge as the parishioners of every parish shall agree."

The first legislation also required each man in the colony to work on the roads a given number of days each year, a custom dating at least from the feudal period of the Middle Ages in England, or to pay another to work in his place. This labor law, to remain in effect for more than 250 years, provided the main source of workers for road and bridge construction.

Twenty-five years later, probably in March 1657, the colony's basic road law was broadened to provide "that surveyors of highwaise and maintenance for bridges be yearly kept and appointed in each countie cort respectively, and that all generall wayes from county to county and all churchwaies to be laied out and cleered yearly as each countie cort shall think fitt, needful and convenient, respect being had to the course used in England to that end."

In 1661, the surveyors were empowered to select locations for roads, choosing "the most convenient wayes to Church, to the Court, to James Towne, and from County to County."

By the end of the 17th century, many miles of primitive roads threaded throughout Tidewater Virginia. The colony's population had reached 70,000. While horseback was the most frequent means of overland travel, horse-drawn carts became more numerous, and some carriages and coaches gradually appeared.

In 1705, the legislature passed a new road act providing for "making, clearing, and repairing the highways and for clearing the rivers and creeks... for the more convenient traveling and carriage, by land, of tobaccos merchandise, or other things within this dominion . . . "

The new road act provided for further extension of the road system and required that the roads "be kept well cleared from woods and bushes, and the roots well grubbed up, at least thirty feet broad." The new law also provided for skilled labor to erect bridges larger than could be built by the local surveyors, and when such a bridge was to cross a county line, its cost would be divided "proportionable to the number of tithables in each county."

Other road laws came quickly in the early years of the 18th century. Owners of mill dams were required to provide a 10-foot passage on dams and spillways; it became mandatory for a county in which an iron furnace was operated to provide "good roads to be laid out and made from such works to the nearest place upon some navigable river or creek"; establishment of public ferries was authorized by the legislature.

In 1716, Alexander Spotswood, regarded by many as perhaps the best of the colonial governors, led his "Knights of The Golden Horseshoe" up the summits of the "Great Mountains," the Blue Ridge, and looked down in amazement at the splendor of the Shenandoah Valley. Spotswood, a former soldier, recognized that settlement of the valley could help protect eastern Virginia from hostile forces.

It was in the next quarter-century that the valley and much of the Piedmont, the rolling country between the mountains and Tidewater, were settled by pioneers moving inland and by many others who came down into the valley from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Early history of Virginia roads

[graphicgr8s]

how far back do you want to go??



Sooo if you want to pay for passage on any road you take.. go backwards.......as far as you like.
Or care to go back to Rhine barons who would block passage on a river..
Robber barons of the Rhine - FT.com






Then we evolved.......

Well for simplicities sake let's start with the road system we currently have. Where did government get the money to build the roads?.

[jeffkrol]

Well for simplicities sake let's start with the road system we currently have. Where did government get the money to build the roads?.

From "us".........next.

(note: after 1972, they no longer needed "us"...... and considering we were in debt.. "us" wasn't enough)
(technically taxes don't "buy" anything....)

Before you go anywhere I am a don't tax but spend person recognizing the REALITY of our economic system.. not the "alice in wonderland" checkbook world you are stuck in.......

the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, and the original portion was completed 35 years later.
so 1956-1981
US DEBT outstanding.......
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm
09/30/1981 * 997,855,000,000.00
09/30/1980 * 907,701,000,000.00
09/30/1979 * 826,519,000,000.00
09/30/1978 * 771,544,000,000.00
09/30/1977 * 698,840,000,000.00
06/30/1976 * 620,433,000,000.00
06/30/1975 * 533,189,000,000.00
06/30/1974 475,059,815,731.55
06/30/1973 458,141,605,312.09
06/30/1972 427,260,460,940.50
06/30/1971 398,129,744,455.54
06/30/1970 370,918,706,949.93
06/30/1969 353,720,253,841.41
06/30/1968 347,578,406,425.88
06/30/1967 326,220,937,794.54
06/30/1966 319,907,087,795.48
06/30/1965 317,273,898,983.64
06/30/1964 311,712,899,257.30
06/30/1963 305,859,632,996.41
06/30/1962 298,200,822,720.87
06/30/1961 288,970,938,610.05
06/30/1960 286,330,760,848.37
06/30/1959 284,705,907,078.22
06/30/1958 276,343,217,745.81
06/30/1957 270,527,171,896.43
06/30/1956 272,750,813,649.32

YOU could argue NOBODY paid for the roads............but they were built anyways.......w/ federal "money"...

[GeneV]

From "us".........next....

Yes. We did it together. That was the President's point.

Where did it go? To Paul Ryan's family, among others.

[larryinlc]

I'll tell you what I've seen a lot more of in the past few years. Businesses holding communities hostage for more taxpayer funded infrastructure development to expand or they'll take their business elsewhere. Roads and infrastructure were built by all of us collectively. Without US, there would be no business to claim otherwise.

I don't know why some are getting their undies all tied up in knots believing everything they've accomplished was done solely by their own hard work. Oh wait, this is politics.

[graphicgr8s]

Government couldn't have done a thing without successful businesses upon which they could collect taxes from. Our roads could have, would have been built by business out of sheer necessity to grow the businesses.
No successful business no roads. No country.
Government generally didn't print money unless it was backed.

[larryinlc]

Government couldn't have done a thing without successful businesses upon which they could collect taxes from. Our roads could have, would have been built by business out of sheer necessity to grow the businesses.
No successful business no roads. No country..

I think you might be on to something. Make business pay for their own chit then

[graphicgr8s]

I think you might be on to something. Make business pay for their own chit then

They already have. Were else did government get the money to build the roads? From P.O.O.F.O.O.S.I.E.?
Well I guess you could say they got it from the "people". Where did the "people" get it from? Yep. Successful business that hired them. Pretty impossible to get it from unsuccessful shuttered businesses that can't hire anyone. Without the successful, thriving companies you've got nothing. No roads. No bridges.

[larryinlc]

They already have. Were else did government get the money to build the roads? From P.O.O.F.O.O.S.I.E.?
Well I guess you could say they got it from the "people". Where did the "people" get it from? Yep. Successful business that hired them. Pretty impossible to get it from unsuccessful shuttered businesses that can't hire anyone. Without the successful, thriving companies you've got nothing. No roads. No bridges.

I don't disagree with you. But in this multifaceted economy, it's not a one way street. Without business, there would be no chit to buy. Without average folks to buy their chit, there would be no business. We are all in this together. Always have been. Without all of us, not one being more important than the other, we would not exist.

[graphicgr8s]

I don't disagree with you. But in this multifaceted economy, it's not a one way street. Without business, there would be no chit to buy. Without average folks to buy their chit, there would be no business. We are all in this together. Always have been. Without all of us, not one being more important than the other, we would not exist.

We don't really now do we. We need the government to organize these types of projects and underestimate costs and completion time and we need business to finance all the government overruns now don't we?