[Vision2020] Dale Courtney Refuses to Publish My Response

[Ted Moffett]

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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The Moscow/Pullman Daily News would print a letter or maybe a His View
op-ed you wrote in response.
I looked for a response from you to Courtney's Dec. 11 letter on the Daily
News website, but did not see one.
Sometimes it seems the comments section on the Dnews website does not work
correctly.

I don't think it is likely he forgot your previous response to a Lewiston
Tribune letter.  He may not have read
it, or a confirmation bias filter may have simply blocked-out your
arguments.

I have attempted to comment on right-mind.us with no response.  I no longer
bother to try.

I suspect this website receives very limited traffic recently, given the
limited comments from the public.
Or perhaps most comments are simply not posted?

I responded twice to Mr. Courtney's negative public responses to my
statements in the past 4 months:
on Vision2020 to one of my Vision2020 posts that he quoted on his
right-mind.us, and on the Moscow/Pullman
Daily News website comments section, responding to my recent His View
column Why Global Warming is a
Nightmare for Libertarians that Courtney slammed, oddly without making a
single specific reference to the
arguments in my column.

In neither case did Courtney respond to these two recent replies, anywhere
that I know of.

Below is the Dec. 11, 2017 letter to the Daily News from Courtney that
mentions Gier:
Letter: National debt gymnastics

   - Dec 11, 2017 Updated Dec 11, 2017

As a political independent who did not vote for either Donald Trump or
Hillary Clinton, I find the intellectual gymnastics partisans use hilarious
and disgusting. Daily News columnist Nick Gier trumpets the wonderful job
Democrats did lowering the deficit under President Barack Obama (His View,
Dec. 7). The retired logician masterfully performs a sleight of hand,
shifting the conversation from the national debt to the deficit.

The U.S. debt doubled in eight years under the Democrats. On Jan. 20, 2009,
when Obama was sworn in, the debt was $10.626 trillion. On Jan. 20, 2017,
when he left, it was $19.947 trillion. We added over $9 trillion to the
debt, more than any other administration in history.

The numbers are astronomical. But remove eight zeroes and pretend it's a
household budget (source: usdebtclock.org):

   - Annual family income: $33,561
   - Money the family spent: $40,244
   - New debt on the credit card: $6,683
   - Outstanding balance on the credit card: $205,961
   - Family budget cuts last year: $441

Democrats made family budget cuts of $441 while running the credit card up
from $100,000 to $200,000, and bought new toys with payments starting in
2017.

I understand this is macroeconomics versus microeconomics, but these
numbers are unsustainable regardless.

And now a Republican is in office, Gier and the Democrats suddenly get
religion about the debt? And simultaneously the Republicans do not care
about the debt? A pox on both their houses.

These bills will come due on the shoulders of our children and
grandchildren. The national debt per taxpayer is currently $170,000, and
the U.S. total debt per family is $820,000. I do not know who we think is
going to pay this off. If you confiscated 100 percent of the wealth from
everyone in the U.S., it still wouldn't cover the debt.

Dale Courtney

Moscow
On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 10:17 AM, Nicholas Gier <ngier006 at gmail.com> wrote:

Good Morning Visionaries:
>
> Dale Courtney, moderator of the site right-mind.us, has refused to
> publish this reply to his recent letter to the Daily News.
>
> Hi Dale:
>
> You seemed to have forgotten that I responded to you on this question
> earlier on a letter you wrote to the Lewiston Tribune on exactly the same
> topic. You posted the letter on your site and I responded with what I've
> posted below.
>
> If you did not forget about this exchange, then you are just being
> intellectually dishonest. Doug Wilson did this after our abortion debate in
> 1993, and that is when I began to lose respect for him. When anyone refuses
> to respond to points already made and pretends that they have not been
> made, then he has not only lost the debate but also his virtue.
>
> Now to the point: Obama inherited on-going debt from Bush, namely, huge
> amounts due to his tax cuts and unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This
> is in stark contrast to the relatively small debt that Obama incurred because
> of the ACA and the stimulus, which nearly all economists say was a success.
>
> Using figures from the Congressional Budget Office, the Center for Budget
> and Policy Priorities has calculated the long-term effects of various
> elements of the national debt, assuming that the Bush tax cuts are still in
> place. (This was before the current tax bill.) By 2019 those cuts will
> amount to $600 billion of the debt burden as opposed to $75 billion for
> Obama’s programs. We will still be paying $320 billion for the Great
> Recession (due to a drop in tax revenues) and $150 billion for the wars in
> Iraq and Afghanistan.
>
> And once again, since you don't understand the connection, when a
> government runs deficits, it adds to its debt. Clinton reduced the annual
> deficit until there was a surplus. That, dear sir, reduced the national
> debt. Bush turned around and added to it. When Obama reduced the annual
> deficit from 10% to 3.2%, he was reducing the national debt.
>
> After nearly a year of Trump it is back up to 3.5% and it will go much
> higher with the new tax bill. The result will be an increase in the
> national debt. This is what happened with the Reagan tax cuts, and he then
> had to raise taxes seven times, but that did not, primarily because of
> excessive defense spending, prevent the tripling of the national debt.
>
> By the way, the deficit for the Eurozone is now 1.3%, and their debt is
> now easing because of this. Greece is almost running a surplus with a
> deficit of only .8%. Socialist Sweden is running a 1% surplus.
>
> Yours for honest debate (hopefully one that does not needed to be
> repeated),
>
> Nick
>
> --
>
> A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
> shall never sit in.
>
> -Greek proverb
>
> “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
> Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
> from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
> lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
> guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
> understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.
>
> --Immanuel Kant
>
>
>
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