Yes Ted I agree it is our duty to nudge people towards the deeper reality, Tho not an easy thing to do we must try, There is nothing to hold us back but fear. Once they become open to it, its up to them to choose there path. All we can do is put it in there awareness and let them choose. Also I find taking up for people in a creative way to be very effective, A lot of people are just afraid, Once they see that fear is the problem, And that's how they are being controlled, They are well on there way. And of course physical interaction is appropriate from time to time and creative measures apply there too. Fred searching for truth

yes, now you have it. You start with top level data then you pull it apart, challenge the methodology.

Your posting here is at the level of a seasoned policy veteran

I did a little bit of drilling down, looking at a different source, and I think it suggested that most of the government (federal, state, local) spending increase as a percent of GDP is at the state and local level, which is an interesting and surprising result...and supports Ted's hypothesis that the federal budget crisis may indeed be manufactured, if the data holds up

most of the time one is facing an apples and oranges comparison, stale data, biased sources

Often, it is the balance of power in congress that drives spending, more than the presidency, as congress originates money bills, the president can only veto.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

That web site, USGovernmentSpending.com, has been the source of other charts that I have posted here. I invited, but you never responded with comments, on those previous charts discussing the deficit and debt of the Federal government. Here is another chart from that same site which I invite you to compare with the one above. The chart above just refers to government spending which would imply to many that it referred to just the federal spending. It does however include the spending of state and local governments and here is a chart describing that spending. It becomes clear that the chart that you posted, Randy, does include all cumulative government spending and not just Federal Spending.Clearly, combined state and local spending amounts to roughly what is spent at the Federal level but I am not clear on how the transfer payments from federal to local and state spending enters into this. It is not entirely clear from that site and at this time of night, is not clear to me as to how to interpret that.

In any case, it is clear that this is not entirely a clear cut case of federal government spending run amok. Obviously we do get something from this in terms of infrastructure and government services. On that same page as this graph came from are also breakdowns of spending for education, health care and also the Defense(War) Department (surprisingly small in comparison) which clearly make up a large part of this total government spending. Here is that source page for these graphs: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_brief.php I wish there was a chart showing these as percentages of the total spending charts. No doubt there is waste and also corruption as elements in the totals. As our 'semi-official resident economist' Randy, what would you comment on this new chart compared to the old. Should I reinsert those previous charts referring to deficits for your comments now? My take on the previous chart on federal deficits was that it was not really the horror story that it was made out to be if looked at in terms of percent of GDP. Something that we should fix, but not unfixable, unless the right wins out in never taxing the 'rich' at what were previous rates when we actually had budget surpluses. This being why I have been stating that the hand wringing on the right and willingness to shut down the government on the basis of rising debt was a manufactured, fictitious in fact, crisis. A crisis created by their adamant refusal to raise taxes on the rich, particularly the über rich as multi billionaires. A matter of our government being bought out, lock, stock, barrel: heart and soul, by those same über rich and the global corporations that they own.

I await your comments eagerly. By the way, how did you get that chart to insert without putting in a band all the way across the page? Is there some mechanism of insertion other than the one at the bottom of the posting page? On that basis, you could perhaps post graphics side by side for comparison more easily.

Ted

Just for information, I went to the opening of President Obama's Campaign Headquarters last night. They located it 3 blocks from the central bus station for city buses in Jacksonville and I was able to reach it in one bus trip and walking 3 blocks. They may have deliberately located it there as being reachable by many of their constituents and supporters who may not have access to personal transportation. I took my walker and was able to make it without much trouble. I talked to an organizer for the campaign above local level and an organizer for moveon.org who were there and gave them printed linkages to my IndictUSCongress.org web site: http://www.indict-us-congress.org/ They did not have time to talk long but did hear my quick description of the site, its purpose and that it might possibly, in the form of the original e-mailing of the Indictment write up itself, have had something to do with the signing of the letter rejecting their pledges to Grover Norquist to not raise taxes in favor of their oaths of office to support the Constitution by 100+ members of Congress. Getting that information to someone up as far as possible in the campaign organization was my whole purpose for going.

Then I left as I could not take the noise level. I didn't get to eat the food mentioned in the invitation and didn't even get to see more than a small part of the place or talk to anyone besides what I specifically came for. That being to try to meet just the persons that I did meet. It was jam packed and I was there with a walker taking up space and trying to get through a hallway that was solid full of people.

If I hear anything useful or interesting back, I will report.

Ted

You can use the tag. There's a button to insert the tag automatically in your writing. It's above the text box where you write your message, next to where you can bold, italicize, underline, quote, etc. Note that to use this method the image has to be uploaded and publicly available on some sort of web server. There are many free services on the web that provide this (imageshack is one).

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Mike

This is a bit long but it is the most interesting interview about the schism of Democrats and Republicans I have ever heard. I watched it on PBS but I found this link to a written transcript of it. It may explain the dichotomy of opinions on this thread.

http://www.truth-out.org/jonathan-haidt ... 1328368654

Here is Jonathan Haidt on TED.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt ... _mind.html

yes, that particular image was on the web as a png as a pop up when I clicked on it, I control-c 'd the www path, and then control-v 'd it between the img tags

I added a space to the code so that it can be viewed
[ img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Us_gov_spending_history_1902_2010.png[/img]

another more generic approach would be to do a Fn-PrtSc (printscreen, then import it to windows paint, capture the part you want, then save as a jpg, then upload.

there is freeware you can install to make the screen capture direct on the web image, saving a few steps, but you still have to save it and upload it

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I would say this sets a great example regarding getting involved.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

its early days...we have to initially learn how to talk to each other professionally if we are going to give birth to TOEist political economics. (TOE-PE)

the problem we all face is a choice between two ideologies (as far as actual voting), but several serious problems

entirely focusing on one issue masks the complexity of the decision space

I will try to come back to your data a bit later - this is the chart I saw which opened my eyes to the Federal, State vs Local peeling of the onion.

Where there is a paucity of data, we could look at building it from scratch.

You may also find it interesting to ask the question...just what proportion of Federal Debt is held by the Chinese, vs the total debt? the answer surprised me and I was tweeked to it by the Chief Economist of the Economist Magazine on the tele.

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?

That debt to China thing. Do you think that has any "beholden" effect and could be one reason most solar is manufactured there instead of here? China foreclosing on US...
Love
Bette

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All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I would basically agree with what they are saying in that interview. I believe however that referring to Manichaeism is a gross over simplification. The Wikepedia article seems pretty complete as an overview and to say that it is a matter of simply good versus evil is a gross over simplification as I said. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism The "Manichaen heresy" became part of Christian history as used to subdue splinter groups as it was once the main rival to developing Christianity. It is not so much a view of polarities playing out within society as that light as the good was to withdraw from this earth leaving darkness as evil in residence. It is useful as an anchor to his ideas in his book, but I do not see it as a realistic use of the term.

Over all, I would say that it is a matter of worthwhile insights as after all, what I have been saying all along, other than as necessary to deal with particular postings, is that it isn't that the conservative viewpoint is wrong but that it has been subverted. Yes you have to pay the bills and cannot borrow forever. But no, you cannot lie and create a situation which you then use for your own ends, papering over the lie with slogans. That is not acceptable. Nor do you have no responsibility for helping and protecting those less functional than yourself. We must act to optimize free will for all, not just maximize our own free will.

Under the principles from My Big TOE as I understand them, this is not a place for absolutes or a fight between the powers of light and the powers of darkness. It is a matter in which IUOCs interact in a process to modify their beings in the direction of lower entropy and greater Quality of Consciousness. That this does not occur on the basis of individual 'salvation' but rather just as it is stated and simultaneously as a service to AUM as the over riding consciousness of which we are all part as the Union of all IUOCs functions as AUM. Thus the lowering of entropy for each IUOC represents the lowering of the entropy in infinitesimal part of AUM as we are collectively, AUM. And this is expected to be an ongoing process of refinement and has no anticipated state of perfection as a goal. And this situation makes it clear that an optimum free will should be the goal rather than maximized free will for a favored few and at the expense of other IUOCs, no matter that their functionality is lower.

This as the LCS is not a hierarchy of better and worse as to quality of IUOCs but a VR in no way representative of our total existence as both a continuing existence within NPMR and as an integral part of AUM within which each IUOC has its own part to play and its own important contribution to the Whole as it is viewed by the Whole. If you remember, it has been discussed in relative detail how an IUOC that is raising its entropy, PMR experience after experience, is not just terminated as we might in PMR execute a convicted criminal if the crime is high enough. Such IUOCs are provided with extra attention and training and every effort made over an extended period to reverse their course. It is only as it becomes clear that this is a hopeless case that an IUOC is reverted to a beginning state and sent to climb the ladder of consciousness evolution again. That is considered to be an unfortunate loss of potential which might be made up for by the contributions of the new entity, but that is in no way certain. As Tom has described it, all possible contributions are valued which is the reason that interactions are not constrained to prevent negative interactions and instead, an evolutionary principle acts to sort out the negative and less fruitful behavior in favor of that which proves out as more valuable and fruitful. Potential evolution of ideas and understandings is valued as open ended and unrestricted. You never know under which rock you will find the raw diamond.

So I understand it.

Ted

Regarding placing images. I think that I will stick with my approach via the uploading of an image to the BB and then inserting it as a file. The reason being that if you insert it via the Img tag, it is linked from that web site. This means that if it is removed or the page is unavailable, you have a blank spot instead of your desired data. Another aspect of it is that it is a less desirable approach in terms of 'web courtesy'. It eats into the bandwidth available to and paid for by the donating web site without permission. It also adds to Internet traffic in that additional data fetches from an entirely different and unrelated web sites is necessary. I would rather download it, upload to the BB and then know that it is there for use as I have been doing, even if it means taking a full width strip across the window.

While I do use the snipping tool to transfer parts of screen images to the board, it has negatives as compared to copying a graphic file. If you copy the graphic file to the BB, you get all the potential quality of the image, every bit of data. If you copy from the screen of your display, you can get no more resolution than your screen and display hardware provides so you are likely to lose details of the image or depending, perhaps introduce distortion.

Perhaps what I need to investigate when I have multiple images to compare, I will investigate adding multiple files at once as I think that might be implied by the construction of the 'Upload attachment' function.

Thanks for explaining that however.

Ted

Ted I agree with your basic view of the conservatives, Although I think you are to kind. In my view the financial system is going to have to collapse, Much more than it did when Lehman Bro. went under . Greed is worse now than before there collapse, I guess the bailout left the thieves with no consequences. Whatever the reason greed is in full force. And trying to change things now, the way things are going seems to me fruitless. I think Tom touched on this and I basically agree, that real and lasting change comes from the rebuilding, from the bottom up. These are certainly! uncertain times the things you point out confirm that, And you are my horse if you never win a race. My simple view of the MBT principles, Is this is just an experience be yourself and choose wisely and don't keep sticking your hand in the fire! There are definitely consequences, And we are doing nearly all of it to ourselves. Fred searching for truth

I was startled to find that its really a non-issue - While China is the single largest debt holder, it only holds 8% of US public debt.

"As of May 2011 the largest single holder of U.S. government debt was China, with 26 percent of all foreign-held U.S. Treasury securities (8% of total US public debt)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com ... not-china/

I am also trying to figure out how much non-US debt is held by Americans

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Does this PMR make my butt look big?