Centerfield

Good in theory but like Christianity, rarely practiced. The only healthy thing on your list I agree with is business.
We just had king george buy off Scooter Libby's silence with a commutation, definitely a gesture of self-exoneration, that doesn't even follow federal guidelines for sentence commutation -you have to be in jail first ("Requests for commutation generally are not accepted unless and until a person has begun serving that sentence. Nor are commutation requests generally accepted from persons who are presently challenging their convictions or sentences through appeal or other court proceeding.")
We also have a king who, via signing statements and practices ignores or changes the intent of laws as passed by Congress. It is an unprecedented power grab by the executive branch and you have to wonder at what point the American public will actually demand accountability. They're to busy looking at Lindsey Lohan going commando on the web. People are too distracted to throw the bums out. "Look, a chicken!" Never mind we've acted illegally on torture. Who would have thought that torture by America was acceptable? Or that the incompetent would be rewarded with promotions?
Good job Brownie.....
While Bush has been forced to concede that there are problems in Iraq he still acts with impunity.
Again, no accountability. After all, he's fired everyone who disagrees with him, generals and all.
we're building large compounds in Iraq and his goal is still permanent occupation.
What does he care?

Good birth and brown nosing - well the richest 1% of the households own one third of the total wealth in the economy and the richest 5% hold more than half of total wealth. Most wealth is still inherited. Much of the drive for inheritance tax cuts comes from very wealthy families who've marketed a fiction to the rest of America about "death taxes". Most entrepeneurs are wealthy to begin with. People like Gates and Ellison are exceptions. A history teacher I knew, Leon Litwack, talked about the myth of Horatio Alger and how much of it was an idealized mythology perpetuated by the wealthy.
The reality is that most of us small business people stay small. Start a small business with small capital and you live on the edge. Have the financial backing of existing wealth gives you tremendous flexibility. I won't even delve into the inequalities regarding minority ownership in this country.

Healthy media -ARE YOU KIDDING?
my god do you know how much media is concentrated in a few companies? What does GE own for example?
NBC Universal and Telemundo, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, 38 television stations in the U.S., and cable networks such as MSNBC, Bravo and the Sci Fi Channel. time Warner owns The WB Television Network, CNN, HBO, Cinemax, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, America Online, MapQuest, Moviefone, Netscape, Warner Bros. Pictures, Castle Rock, and New Line Cinema, over 150 magazines such as Time, Cooking Light, Marie Claire and People, (and the Atlanta Braves baseball team) There is little independence when the bottom line of your parent company takes precedence over your news story, or your radio station programming. Right wing radio is spread out so much because corporations who own the media like the message. They are loathe to advertise on the shows of liberal critics although I note that major companies are now advertising on the Stephanie Miller and Ed Schulz shows after 2 years.
For those who think liberal radio is "dead" I recall Limbaugh's salespeople in the first couple of years could barely give away time and it took him a long time to lay the basis for his media reach, which those on the right who followed built upon. It will take a similar timeline for liberal radio.
Besides you can't ignore demographics - the country is moving more left than right on major issues such as Iraq, health care, women's rights, gay rights, etc. We buy cars too.

For fun I note that the White House tends to release really bad news when the Daily Show and Colbert are on vacation.

Inre to Healthy Business and technology I note that the many successful startups start in highly regulated California and stay in California. So much for strangulating laws. Larry Ellison started Oracle with 14K(or 1,400). It's a nice campus he built at Redwood Shores (I've worked there). Veritas grew from nothing to 10 billion as did Symantec, which eventually bought Veritas. HP was started in a garage. Google on a college campus. Philo T Farnsworth started on Green street in SF and took his childhood dream into reality.
San Francisco, South San Francisco and other areas have more new biotech companies each year.

Maybe California's laws are "smarter".

BTW, things unsaid in the above post- we still have KlusterF### in Katrina land,
more than 40 million Americans lack health insurance and many more like me have to ration our care because we can only afford high deductibles and minimal coverage. We have had a major decline in domestic manufacturing and the loss of jobs that helped to create the middle class in the first place. We have companies that are allowed to hire illegal aliens with little legal consequence to force wages lower for the rest of us.

"Look! A chicken!"

> Again, no accountability.

That's why the GOP continues to hold Congress, and Bush will never leave office. Oh, wait.

> Most entrepeneurs are wealthy to begin with.

BZZT! Most businesses are small, and started with no more capital than buying a house. Two of my four cousins have their own businesses. They weren't rich to begin with, and still aren't rich but able to pay rent. They don't have to brown-nose to anybody. They do have to be nice to customers, but they don't have to accept unreasonable jobs or conditions.

> Healthy media -ARE YOU KIDDING? my god do you know how much media is concentrated ...?

Hey, howdya find out about our forthcoming merger with Instapundit? ;-)

> So much for strangulating laws.

> I note that the many successful startups start in highly regulated California and stay in California. So much for strangulating laws.

You've ascribed to me an opinion I don't hold.

> We have had a major decline in domestic manufacturing

...and a good thing, too, since at this point most Americans hae jobs that pay better and treat them better than factory jobs. Something to think about: if you had a kid, would you advise him to try for a factory or farm job?

> BTW, things unsaid in the above post- . . .

Life does continue to suck here in the US. But my post only talks about comparisons. Feel free to name ANY real unfree country, at any time or place, where life was better for the average Joe.

What Jon said.....

Is anyone really arguing that freedom is bad!?

And, Marcus, all your points make sense, but I assume you aren't saying that the problem is freedom but that we don't practice what we preach. Well, welcome to the real world. But, in the real world, you have to say, "compared to what?" Some friends of mine just got back from a two-year stint in Moscow working at the US Embassy. I think it would be fair to say that there is a bit more freedom in the US than in Russia.

There is no such thing as utopia and the desire to create it has led to far more problems than accepting the reality of messy human existence.

Life sucks, cats and dogs are living together, it's MASS HYSTERIA! And it's all Bush's fault.

See? Not nearly so many words.

Yeah, one day we'll be lamenting our magnetic decline and the increased dangers of radical sunspot activity. There'll be only one producers of sunscreen and mind-reading machines will be denounced as imvasions of privacy. Level five Robots will petition the courts for equal protection. Typical off shore housing will run about $3500 per cubic foot including utilities. Nano pullution outbreaks will leave thouands turned into jelly while Dolphins dominate the air traffic control sector. Historians continue to attribute present global discontinuity of 2112 -2120 to the Bush administration of the previous century that traditionally marks the beginning of the Rovician Epoch which culminated in the Great Martian Migration of 2076.

John

Bush will leave office (we hope- remember the paranoid ravings on the far right about the Clinton not leaving office?) but his legacy, including a whole new GS level of political appointees, will be working at their level of incompetency long afterwards. We can pray they all die off or retire before the next hurricane hits the mainland. As for America's good name - well it was a nice run for a couple of hundred years but all good things do come to an end.

>A major decline in domestic manufacturing as we have experienced - imo - was not good for this country. For one it pressures remaining industries in both manufacturing and service to keep wages low or lower them. What was a comfortable middle class family now lives on the edge or has to financially downsize. Look around - Used to be when I was a kid that a grocery clerk(service industry) could earn enough money for a roof, food and decent health care, even support a family.
Can't do that anymore. They've had to concede to new hires starting at much lower pay. So much so that locally night shift workers at non-union Target earn more than night shift at the Safeway.
Used to be a single income could take care of the needs of large families. That's a lot harder now.
Two income families are more the rule now than in the 60's. Eventhenit's hard to keep up with huge rises in health care, housing and school/college costs.
Secondly we become more vulnerable to the vagaries of international trade and that includes serious problems in supply chains that are unregulated. Think dog food, tooth paste, tires and other defective products of late.

>Liberal states like California are often considered unfree by the right when it comes to business - they complain of over regulation, red tape, too many environmental laws. "Russia" and "socialist state" have shared the same sentence with "California" for 40 years. Still, we march on.

>better paying jobs?
most?
Which ones? retail? no, retail has dropped. Hospitality? dropped too. Airline pilot? mechanic? nope, you gave your raises and pensions away. Work at IBM? That sucking sound was your pension.
I was doing work for Levi's when they were shutting down plants all across the country. Had to make a happy face video at a meeting where the suits told the plant managers that some of them were going to be closed down. Many of their workers eventually took jobs that paid much less in wages and benefits than they had earned at the mills and clothing plants. Some of them still make half as much doing telephone banks for service centers and the like. But it's better than no work.
My car mechanic and my lawyer, on the other hand, are doing very well.

The avg american wage has remained basically stagnant despite increased productivity. Consumer debt is just plain ridiculous. An attainment to artificially high std of living as I see it.(my ex spent up to 900 a month on restaurant dining (!@#!@#!@#!@#!@!!!!!)and complained about being 50 K in debt.) She called it her "station in life". Guess what she wanted?
Manufacturing jobs btw, paid well in the past and yes it was hard work, hard labor and they had their hazards. I've done hard work in retail and construction. It was great work. I just happen to love what I'm doing more and I've done it for 30 years in all. >>>btw did you know the most hazardous job per capita used to be astronomer? (all that sleep deprivation led to lots of accidents)

If I had a kid in the 60's or early 70's I'd say that if college wasn't an option then working at GM or Lockheed or Ford or whatever would be a damn fine future. Or start a farm or a vineyard. You had good health care, pensions, benefits and good wages with the manufacturing jobs. Unfortunately you also had management that had no imagination which is why Toyota and Honda are still having Ford, GM and Chrysler for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day.

IT folks are making very good money, when they're not crowded out by H1B's. Lots of them here. Middle managers do well. CFO's do well. Film folks - feast and famine. If you're an animator in the Bay Area...FEAST!
If you were a top producer at Circuit City, you're FIRED!. Because you cost too much. We're keeping the less productive ones because they are cheaper.

My gf works in biotech. Things are good, sometimes. Problem is there are constant barrages of layoffs and hirings. Makes it hard to plan a future. Also many women still face discrimination in this industry. Both she and another female coworker haven't had a promotion in more than a decade despite being at the top of their game technically and in work ethic. I tell her it's cause for a lawsuit. She says that a lawsuit is a one way ticket to lifetime unemployment in the work she loves. So she and her coworker keep quiet.

I say to my kid, do what you love because you'll be doing it for most of your life.

As far as comparing us to unfree countries why not compare us to other free countries? It's about time. There are plenty of those around to compare us too. What are they doing to fulfill the promises of democracy where we have failed? Don't compare us to the French though.....

Instapundit merger...hmmmm ..may have to ask the FTC about that one.

sorry for the long posts...I've been having a good year except for the legal crap my ex dragged me into for the past 3 months.
blechhhhh Fortunately I won..actually my kid won.

Nice to write something that isn't a declaration.

glad to see you're all still alive and kicking.

>better paying jobs?

Engineers, lawyers, web designers, managers, salesmen, marketers, design and softwra consultants, doctors, nurses, etc.. Now, most of the best positions do have one thing in common: lots and LOTS of training. But plenty of people do have those positions. More and more people have college degrees.

And just having one of those positions is no guarantee of anything - if you work for somebody clueless, like Circuit City or Microsoft (or a GM marketer), your life could still be pretty bad.

> Manufacturing jobs btw, paid well in the past and yes it was hard work, hard labor and they had their hazards. I've done hard work in retail and construction. It was great work. I just happen to love what I'm doing more and I've done it for 30 years in all.

Cool! Glad to hear it. My cousin in construction also seems to love it. But I can see why you could be unhappy about the economy - it's my impression it pays even worse than most manufacturing. Is that right? Another thing that may've slowed your paycheck growthx is that alot of the recent rounds of economic growth went to women, because more women are better educated and earning more in consequence (e.g., to your gf and my wife).

>>>btw did you know the most hazardous job per capita used to be astronomer? (all that sleep deprivation led to lots of accidents)

Nope! I wanted to be an astronomer when I was a kid, but my math wasn't up for it (good thing, as there 2=3 openings a year), but I never ran into that stat.

> IT folks are making very good money, when they're not crowded out by H1B's.

Most programmers like me do pretty well, even with the many H1Bs and outsourcing programs concentrated on our specialty. It's because we have the potential to produce alot of value. Except that the kind of programming alot of people want to do (games) pays badly.

> My gf works in biotech. Things are good, sometimes. Problem is there are constant barrages of layoffs and hirings. Makes it hard to plan a future.

Yep. High-tech works well for me, because my I get bored after a few years, and look on a firing as an opportunity. And I'm married to somebody with a stable job. But I know not everybody likes it. And there is the extra burden and worry of squirrelling rather more away for a rainy day.

> Also many women still face discrimination in this industry. Both she and another female coworker haven't had a promotion in more than a decade despite being at the top of their game technically and in work ethic.

I dunno that that's discrimination. I think that happens to 'most any guy that doesn't change job, too. It's stupid and it sucks, but in many cases, the only reliable way for techies to get decent promotions in a decent amount of time is to go job-hunting, and either take a new job with more responsibility (shouldn't be too hard at the moment), or use the new offer to negotiate at the old place.

The problem is that many lazy bosses see people doing perfectly at a particular positions and don't think, well, can she do even more for us at a higher level? And, they also are afraid in their bellies about, if I promote her, where'll I find a replacement half as good? Now, oldstyle employment-for-life shops were a little better about getting you small automatic raises, but they weren't that big, and it wasn't much easier to get serious hops in responsibility.

I tell her it's cause for a lawsuit. She says that a lawsuit is a one way ticket to lifetime unemployment in the work she loves. So she and her coworker keep quiet.

> I say to my kid, do what you love because you'll be doing it for most of your life.

Amen!

> As far as comparing us to unfree countries why not compare us to other free countries?

Why not? It'll be my next post, I think. Sounds like fun.

> sorry for the long posts...I've been having a good year except for the legal crap my ex dragged me into for the past 3 months. blechhhhh Fortunately I won..actually my kid won.

> Nice to write something that isn't a declaration.

I bet! Sounds bad. Legal stuff is one thing I get nightmares about, because it goes ON and ON, and alot of the time only the attorneys really win.

Sorry, man. Glad you won.