Blueskye2

Why not? Regarding alcohol, A Methodist named Welch invented pasteurized grape juice for one reason: to provide non-alcoholic "wine" for Methodist's communion.

Could be it comes across as "guys who feel threatened by women, and why".

You are acclimatized to the heat. Someone who lives in the shelter of air conditioned structures every day all day, risks heatstroke by doing what you do, without acclimatizing first.

Most of the world, is.

*shrug* My understanding is that this would be a question to take to your Bishop. The random strangers here have no authority over you.

I get the sentiment, but it is unrealistic. Heavy regulation occurring in response to an economic crisis, or heavy regulation to avert an economic crisis. That's really the choice. Allowing "market force" to dictate ultimately benefits a few, and ultimately leads to economic crisis. For myself, deregulation is a myth. There is only changing regulatiion, and it is built into the Constitution via federal taxes and the once, long ago, controversial federal banking system. If taxes are levied or removed, with no thought or planning for economic impact, then economic crisis will eventually reveal itself. Purposefully taxing and managing public resources, via regulation, with the goal of a successful economy, really must take place, and is the fiscally responsible course.

I dunno Neuro, I thought you were being facetious. On a national level, Congress and the Executive branch work on a budget. The budget reflects a lot of "stuff", one being, the economic priorities of the nation. What are they, what funds are needed? Congressional committees address what projects, what laws, what regulations, what taxes, and legislation then gives priority to economic activities. They can be in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, changing regulations, etc. I.e, it is a big part of what our reps in DC do. Local governments, at state, county, city, municipality levels, are doing the same for the areas/regions they have jurisdiction over. Economic priority is seen in food production, via tax breaks for farming and fishing, regulations to support food production, subsidies when required. It is a human effort, and works well, as evidenced by the fact that we haven't had a large regional famine since the Great Depression. Human efforts can have flaws, such as wrong projections of production yields. Sometimes the result is a shortage and prices go sky high and other times it is oversupply and you have "government cheese". The overall goal is to keep our food supply and those who produce it, as successful as possible. As this is a benefit for the US public as a whole. BTW, I remember the cheese surplus. A neighbor, who was on hard times, out of work, went door to door selling government cheese in an effort to make a few dollars. Also, my own grandfather practically lived on cheese for a year. Lol. He had little in his old age retirement and every little free thing he was on it. It helped his budget. He really liked Cadillacs but was more of a Ford pickup kind of guy. But using an example of a poor projection and poor regulation of a single instant over a 80 yr span of success, is I think you know, hyperbole. No?

Really, the fake news bit is old. Trump's budget describes a public-private partnership. These have not been shown to run more efficiently. Quite the contrary, they have a history of costing us taxpayers more than the traditional design build model. People think private means more efficient. No, in public-private partnerships, the private part is focused on profit. Any efficiencies are designed to benefit the private half. The private half desires inefficiencies on the public side, as they profit from them. Otherwise, your point is the same old same old, people want public projects such as highways, complain about paying for them, but of course don't stop using them. The obvious solution is to drive less and decrease suburban sprawl. That isn't going to happen, so we build more roads, which then must be maintained which requires funding. Public-private partnerships do not require less funding. They require more funding. Public-private partnerships is a fleecing of the American public. I recommend this read. http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/1112bondgraham.html Tolls have multiple uses. 1) Public-private agreements is one use. 2) State governments are always trying out ways in which to pay for the building of highways, their maintenance and expansions. Toll roads is one solution. 3) States also look for ways to defer highways projects. Toll roads is one solution. States have their major highway projects planned out for the next fifty years (not exaggerating). The roads you're paying tolls on, with the intent to reduce traffic, most likely are on the 50 year plan somewhere, sometime, to expand or add new highways as the bigger solution. In the meantime, the traffic control side of engineering takes over and places a toll to mediate what they have projected is going to happen, traffic-wise, until expansion takes place. In addition! States have in the past relied on gasoline taxes to help fund highway projects. Higher fuel efficiency vehicles, electric and hybrid vehicles and lower fuel prices, have reduced very significantly the fuel taxes collected, that are earmarked for highway projects. So in reality, the public is paying less fuel tax and the states will make the loss up. One way to do this is by charging a toll. They may also ask for a bond, that increases a tax elsewhere temporarily. Toll roads as a means to privatizing highways has a high risk to the private consortiums that design and build them. These groups have moved away from the risk of toll roads and now go for leasing a highway back to the state, which is, of course paid for from public funds (taxes). My husband is a highway engineer, and has decades of experience designing and building federal highways. He knows all the angles and of course we talk. State transportation projects are not turned over in whole to private companies or consortiums of companies. States negotiate a partnership, and sadly, they are not equipped with the funding to match the private side's army of financiers and lawyers, who have well honed skills at getting as much out of public funding as they possibly can. While putting as much of the financial risk as possible on the State, which ultimately, is us. Anyway, people have this very wrong idea that privatization of public projects equals an inoculation against socialism. Yet don't stop to think about how they are lobbying against their own interests.

FWIW, I pass a Jewish temple everyday. It is a Reform congregation. I read up on it once out of curiosity and discovered Reform Judaism calls their churches Temples, because they believe each Reform church replaces The Temple, in Jerusalem.

Of course he is privatizing the highway system. Right now taxes fund most of the federal highway system, which includes design, build, and maintenance. Trump proposes that corporations build the highways and we pay tolls to use them. With the money collected going to the corporations. Besides the fact that privatized roads cost more to design, build and maintain. There is the fact that paying a toll to drive a often travelled stretch of highway will cost taxpayers more than what we pay in taxes. And third, corporations will prioritize based on profit not on need. Profitable areas are urban centers, rural areas will be neglected, as the profit/loss analysis would dictate where a corporation focuses its resources rather than the needs of the people. You better believe economic priority should be given to food production. It doesn't take much research to see why.

They certainly are economic enterprises, and all of them could be privatized. Trump has mentioned privatizing new projects for the federal highway system. (Which would be disastrous.) Really, you believe that economic priority given to the production of food is a swamp activity? Okee dokee. How do you think infrastructure is managed and funded without managing the economic activity of related markets?

The Constitution provides for areas where Government promotes the general welfare. Government controlled and owned enterprises in the US includes highways, research, law enforcement, military...just to name a few. The Government also has a monopoly on some markets There is a Federal Budget to prioritize and fund Government enterprises. This takes the place of a "central plan" as found in non-mixed command economies. Congress determines the allocation of resources. This includes taxes, fees or fines that discourage some market activities. Congress also determines subsidies that encourage some markets. Congress regulates economic priorities such as fishing and agriculture. Etc.

The US has a mixed market/command economy already. It is built into the Constituution.

I agree on your point regarding cultural changes that gave impacted government involvement.

If you have a smartphone I recommend an app called Lose It. It is aimed at people who want to lose weight. But what is super useful about the app is that it lists the calories, fat, carb and protein levels of foods. You enter in the food you have eaten, or are thinking about eating, and it shows those four things, in total, for you. It has in its food library almost everything I've come across, including specific dishes from specific restaurants. At home, you scan the barcode on a food label, the same barcode that is scanned when you checkout at the store, and voila, what you need to know and track is easily done. Most restaurants around here are super high in fat content. Salads, with the dressing on the side, really being the only option.

I went to RS once, a coupe of months ago. Was invited for a special occasion. They fed us all dinner which I wasn't expecting, and it was really quite healthy. My sister went with me, and she does in fact have celiacs. I eat low fat low cal, because otherwise I gain 20 pounds in two days. (Slight, but only slight, exaggeration ) My sister could not eat the delicious meatbal, because she wasn't sure if it was made with flour. We both skipped the dizzying array of yummy looking desserts. They all were made with flour and I would gain five pounds with one bite. They sure looked good. As for celiacs, my sister brings a gluten free dessert to every potluck, that way she and any other gluten free folk can enjoy a dessert. But yeah, often at potlucks she can only eat from the veggie or fruit tray. She's extremely sensitive to gluten and will be sick for days if she has just a spec of wheat flour. Which indicates more damage is being done to her small intestine. It just isn't worth it to risk eating something without knowing what is in it. At my work, we have gluten free, dairy free, vegetarians. Not joking. Pretty much all they eat is salad.

Socialism isn't entirely off the mark. I'm no Marxist, but I do like the mixed forms off capitism/socialism, such as Norway and other countries use. If I were younger and all that I'd seriously consider moving to Stockholm, if even for a few years then come back to the States, because this is where my family are. Admittedly capitalists have me jaded. I worked in business for 27 years and saw and experienced some pretty rotten people and practices, all acceptable to my capitalist colleagues, as long profit was the justification. There was a straw that broke the camels back, and I left for the nonprofit world. Indeed, rather ironically, nonprofits rely heavily on capitalist wealth. Not a perfect world and I know people who left the nonprofit world because of the hypocracy in it, and a heavy dose of self importance too. Seen plenty of that, but I gotta pay the bills, so I go to work and count the days to retirement where my pension from the capitalists is waiting for me! i have a friend, who takes the Catholic teaching on poverty very literally, like our dear St. Francis. He has given away every thing he has ever earned, spent most of his adult life working and spending all he made on housing for the extremely poor, and now is retired in poverty and reliant on the State (Italy) for a meager means of living. And still he gives away any "extra" to those he calls "street people". I'm hyper capitalist compared to him. Anyway, this is why I have no solution up my sleeve...there isn't one that I know of that would be a swap out capitalism for whatever. Therefore, it is my opinion that capitalism must be improved, with the center moved away from money to people Sure, make a profit, but not at the expense of the long list of negative impacts to people and environment. But that seems too much to ask of capitalists. Making people and environment a central concern is labeled socialist, as a means to keeping the status quo.

https://blog.google/topics/families/be-internet-awesome-helping-kids-make-smart-decisions-online/ "...for kids to really make the most of the web, we need more than just helpful products: We need to provide guidance as they learn to make their own smart decisions online. This is one of the most significant issues that we all face as a new generation grows up with the Internet at their fingertips. It’s critical that the most influential people in our kids’ lives—parents and teachers, especially—help kids learn how to be smart, positive and kind online, just like we teach them to be offline. It's something we all need to reinforce together. With school out and summer break giving kids more time to spend on the Internet, it’s a great time to introduce Be Internet Awesome: a new way to encourage digital safety and citizenship."

The thing with sacred cows, is that it's taboo to discuss shortcomings of the sacred, which means shortcomings are never addressed. Like the boy/girlfriend who beats on ya once in a while but we should all be grateful, because life could be worse...and only discuss how good a person they are.

Critiquing capitalism does not imply I have a PhD in economics with a neat-o new kind of economy in my back pocket. Geez, people are invested in the sacred cow of capitalism on this board.

Some sort of rant diversional personal attack that has nothing to do with trickle down economics , going on here. I'm talking about Reaganomics, that is, the theory that government regulations that enable the rich to get richer is of benefit to all of society but in particular, boosting those in the middle class. The theory, put into practice, never intended to reduce taxes of employees. It raised income tax, social security tax and Medicare tax. The largest tax increase put on the American worker since the the 1930s. Simultaneously the tax on businesses was substantially reduced. The theory being, that unemployment would go down and wages would go up. Both happened, for the middle class, but the effect for the poor, those below the poverty line, was higher taxes without the benefit of higher wages, placing a larger burden on the poor. Which goes to the original point made, that increasing business wealth benefits the poor, when the case is, that has never been proven to occur..

? I never said anything about socialism. My point has been and is, capitalism does not exist, and never has existed, to help anyone but businesses. It has side effects, some good some bad. Trickle down economics is touted as a good side effect, which has never been proven.

Anyone can be charitable. Its altruism not capitalism.

Jesus also provided instructions for helping the poor, and explained the consequences for not doing so. Capitalism wasn't on the list.

My statement still applies!