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Journal Some Woman's Journal: LexisNexis, how I love thee. 19

Journal by Some Woman

And Howard Dean, you're a dumbass who is officially off my list of acceptable candidates.

In this article Mr. Dean asserts that he would have Alan Greenspan replaced when his term as Federal Reserve Czar ends, because "If he was foolish enough to support the outrageous tax cut that George Bush put through, then he has become too political and we need a new chairman."

So here I am thinking "huh. I thought the G-Man was on my list of people in high places who were irritated with the current administration's direction." A little LexisNexis love proves me right. (For those interested, the source is a San Fransisco Chronicle article dated February 12, 2003.) The article is titled "Fed Chairman Opposes Tax Cut." It really doesn't get any more obvious than that. B'bye, Mr. Dean.

(Yes, I keep a lot of lists.)

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LexisNexis, how I love thee. More

LexisNexis, how I love thee.

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  • I am not a Dean supporter, but aren't you judging him a little too quickly for not having one fact straight? I must admit, though, that he really should know better than to attack Alan Greenspan, and he really should get his facts straight before attacking Alan Greenspan.

    Incidentally, Lexis-Nexis rocks! Of course, I never used it before I had institutional access through my university...(said the former high school debater ;-)
    • aren't you judging him a little too quickly for not having one fact straight?

      A couple of points...

      1. I am not a thorough newspaper reader. I scan headlines. If I noticed that Alan Greenspan was throwing a relative fit about the tax cuts over several weeks, then I would hope that a future president would be at least as informed.

      2. When there are this many candidates out there, I can afford to be choosy. When it comes down to one or two people, something like this may be insigificant when compared to

      • Geenspan is VERY careful about what he says, since every word, every nuance is so carefully watched all over the world. When he says something mildly critical, that's the equivalent of throwing a screaming fit.

    • Listen... one little fact straight? He's running for PRESIDENT... he should not speak if he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. This goes good for the lot of them... oh the choices we have anyway.
    • am not a Dean supporter, but aren't you judging him a little too quickly for not having one fact straight?

      Well, I'm not a Dean supporter either, but I would have expected him to get *at least* one fact straight by now. ;->

      • Has Dean figured out how many people are in the military yet? His first appearance on Meet the Press was a disaster. He is a demagogue, relying on hyperbole and emotionalism. Since many of his supporters are of like temperament he gets away with it.

        Sometime before the general election the candidates need to start talking facts and by then the Democrats may find that all of their fact-talking candidates have been eliminated. Congratulations to Michael Moore and organizations such as Moveon.org for re

    • That particular fact is one I would expect him to have straight, especially when he makes such a pointed statement. I agree with her.

  • geez (Score:2)

    by asv108 ( 141455 )
    Its pretty much common knowledge the Alan Greenspan favors deficit reduction to spur long term economic growth and stability. I would expect a presidential candidate to know that and plus it was widely reported back in the summer that Greenspan did not approve of the Bush tax cuts. Dean needs to learn to think before he speaks.
  • "Supporting tax cuts" is a vague enough notion that it can mean a lot of different things. It's a sound bite, not a policy position. I support tax cuts. I don't support tax cuts. Both of these statements are true. They're both true because each position concerns a different tax.

    If Howard Dean believes that Greenspan should be replaced and you don't, that's a perfectly valid reason to withdraw your support. Pulling your support because you can find a newspaper article that contradicts a sound bite is
  • I didn't really get half of what you were talking about first time, sorry. From reading it over a few times, my analysis seems to be: You've gone off this Dean bloke because he accused Greenspan of doing something that he didn't actually do (or having an opinion he didn't have). Fair enough, it's bad enough when ordinary people carry around false assumptions, without the people in power (or hoping to be) doing the same.

    Now, my remaining confusion is: LexisNexis, whassat? Please elucidate, it sounds sort o

    • LexisNexis is (simplified version follows) a for-pay 'Google' (both in what it does and how well it is respected) that includes a lot of newspaper/magazine/journal articles. Last time I used it was a long time ago, but my review is as follows: Very powerful, a lot of data, highly overpriced for the service, and extremely user unfriendly.
      • Aha, I see. I suppose if I was determined to always get my facts straight about things, this would be very worthwhile to me... but hey, it's never stopped me in the past ;)

        To be honest, I tend to be kind of unenthusiastic about search engines. It always seems to me that picking the appropriate set of keywords to track down what you actually want is either some sort of a "black art" or just extremely hit-and-miss. As such, I don't really use them that much. Those directory services like Open Directory (forg

        • I'm just feeling pendantic.

          To be honest, I tend to be kind of unenthusiastic about search engines.

          Lexis-Nexis has little in common with web search engines - they've been in business since before the web existed and the material that they index is articles from print publications (Nexis) and court decisions, regulations, and law review articles (Lexis).

          If you want to be really pendantic, Lexis-Nexis is an "Information Retrieval" system rather than a search engine. Its search media is different from goo
          • Thanks, interesting stuff- sounds maybe very usable, apart from the cost. OTOH, if they're charging on the time you actually use it, that might make it worth considering for those of us who wouldn't use it very often. But I get the impression that the actual rate makes that not the case.

            As for the story you pointed me to, it sounded interesting, but the actual article linked within just gave a 404. Unless the story was that they actually did anything that somehow prevented people getting the information th

            • Thanks, interesting stuff- sounds maybe very usable, apart from the cost. OTOH, if they're charging on the time you actually use it, that might make it worth considering for those of us who wouldn't use it very often. But I get the impression that the actual rate makes that not the case.

              Yep. You can buy short-term usage, but again, the prices are pretty steep: this page [lexis.com] says that you can run searches for $3 an article for news sources (what most people would use it for) or you can a daily subscription
            • To get the article mentioned go to http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/ and enter in "Melissa Bar lexis library" without the quotes. You should only get one link. That article is no longer on the InfoToday website but their search provider still has a cached copy. The article title is "Democracy in the Dark: Public Access Restrictions from Westlaw and LexisNexis" and was originally posted in January 2003.

              Please note that her employer is a public library and may have commissioned the article in question.

  • Google, how I love thee.

    Here's a quote from this CNN Money article [cnn.com], which came out on July 15th of 2003:

    Greenspan's warnings in February about the problems that tax cuts could have on the budget were seized on by opponents of the White House tax-cut proposal at that time.

    But Tuesday Greenspan said he doesn't oppose tax cuts as long as there are new limits on federal spending. He also said that tax cuts could help stimulate both the economy and employment, points that are far more in synch with White Ho
  • There have been more than one round of tax cuts (3 IIRC).

    I seem to recall that Greenspan actually supported at least one of them. But I could be wrong.

    In any case I've seen plenty of evidence (including Paul O'Neil's book) that the Fed Chairman is acting in a political manner.

    OTOH, I think Dr. Dean should probably have kept his feelings about this to himself. Threatening to replace Greenspan is not a popular position amongst most people who know who he is.

    In essence this is one of the biggest problems I
  • Do you think its unusual that Fed lending rates are lower than at any time in its history? I wonder what happens when the dollar drops in value so precipitously? Particularly, when it drops 8 months before an election. I wonder who is doing that...

    Greenspan is a Republican who was thoroughly criticized by the Bush Sr. camp. They thought he didn't cut rates quickly enough to bump the economy before Nov. 1992. He'd be pretty stupid if he repeated the same mistake.

    Gee, the gov't can spend like a drunken

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