[Vision2020] Dale Courtney Refuses to Publish My Response

[Ted Moffett]

Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****
----------------------------

Interesting that you were posted to Courtney's right-mind.us, while Gier
says he could not.

Note the photo of Gier with a turban.  I recall this photo or one that
looked very similar
on right-mind.us years ago.  The intent, I suspect, is to make Gier look
ridiculous or
worse to those who would view someone with a turban in a negative manner,
which likely
includes the majority of Americans.

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 6:21 PM, Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com> wrote:

I posted Nick’s response as a comment . . .
>
> http://right-mind.us/letter-national-debt-gymnastics/
>
> Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
> On Dec 14, 2017, at 6:12 PM, Ted Moffett <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
> ***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2000 through life
> plus 70 years, Ted Moffett.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce
> outside the Vision2020.Moscow.com <http://vision2020.moscow.com/> forum
> without the express written permission of the author.*****
> ----------------------------
>
> 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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