Category Archives: Political Commentary

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Can A Capitalist Market Economy…?

30 Comments

…support a socialist welfare state?

Not for long.

[Update a few minutes later]

“…everyone knows that when you’re using your MasterCard to pay your Visa bill, it’s the person who doesn’t want the limit raised who’s the real source of the problem.”

Yeah, let’s blame the Tea Party.

[Update Monday morning]

Greece could have used a Tea Party, no?

Hey, they blamed the Tea Party for Jared Loughner, too. They always blame the Tea Party, because they don’t like the Tea Party, and they want Americans to dislike it, too, so they can continue with business as usual until the last possible moment. And if Greece had had a Tea Party, all the apparatchiks would have called it crazy and destructive too, because it would have threatened their short-term interests, which, as has become clear, is all apparatchiks think about…

Well, not all, but certainly it’s the highest priority. To hell with the grandkids.

Plus, “Tea Party Downgrade”? They can’t possibly sell that:

Let’s take a walk down memory lane. What did the Democrats do with respect to federal debt during the four years they controlled both Houses of Congress? Here is a summary of the deficits the Democrats racked up during that time:

FY 2008 — $460 billion
FY 2009 — $1,410 billion ($1.4 trillion)
FY 2010 — $1,300 billion ($1.3 trillion)
FY 2011 — $1,600 (estimated) ($1.6 trillion)

Of the $14.5 trillion national debt, nearly $4.8 trillion–one-third of the total – was incurred during that four-year period when the Congress was exclusively controlled by the Democrats. Moreover, and equally important, during that time the Democrats did nothing to assure the markets that they have a long-term plan to deal with the country’s burgeoning debt. On the contrary, for more than two years the Congressional Democrats have refused to adopt or even to propose a budget! If you are looking for the reason why rating agencies have lost faith in the ability of our government to get its spending and debt under control, you need look no farther.

But they will remain desperate to continue looking, or blame it on the only people who are actually interested in really reducing the deficit. Because the view in the mirror is far too ugly.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

“If the car is speeding off a cliff & you blame the passenger for wrestling with the wheel & trying to hit the brakes, #youmightbealiberal.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Creepy Quote

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…du jour:

“The public was desperate for a leader who would speak with confidence, and they were ready to follow wherever the president led.” No, that isn’t an historian explaining the rise of Mussolini. It’s the Emory psychologist Drew Westen, writing wistfully about the leader he wishes Obama would be.

Somehow, this reminds me of my visit to the Holocaust Museum.

I came across the following striking quote, by a woman in Germany who had attended one of Hitler’s rallies:

How many look up to him with touching faith! As their helper, their saviour, their deliverer from unbearable distress…

I was so relieved that I live almost eighty years later, and that our society had grown beyond that kind of primitive thinking — that the president is responsible for the personal well-being of every citizen, and every sparrow that falls in America, like a demigod. I mean, obviously, any responsible leader today, confronted with such idolatry would use it as a teachable moment about the nature of our Republic, rather than basking in the worship, as Hitler did, to gather more raw unchecked political power unto himself.

I also found interesting the description of how the Nazi authorities encouraged and organized public rituals, ceremonies, meetings and other public events. I could see how this kind of activity might solidify public support behind otherwise less politically palatable notions felt important by the state.

Of course, one of the most disturbing tactics, used not only by the National Socialists, but also the fascistic international socialists in the Soviet Union, was the continual rewriting of history to glorify the state, and make it out to be the victim of past failures and treachery, and misguided policies. Some of the examples they gave were almost as though modern leaders were continually talking, fantastically, about how we got into our current economic problems through deregulation and tax cuts, and (non-existent) laissez-faire policies, rather than overspending and overregulation, and continuing government interference in the free market, often at the behest of corporations.

Not to mention the treachery of Standard and Poors.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

The Core Of The Problem

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It is a fundamental difference over the role and purpose of government:

Somewhat surprisingly, Mr. Cantor was in fact prepared to bargain on about $20 billion in higher taxes on “the shiny balls of the millionaires, billionaires, jet owners and oil companies” that Mr. Obama so often mentioned in public. “If they wanted to be able to claim the win on that,” Mr. Cantor says, he wanted net revenue neutrality in return, by lowering the corporate income tax rate or perhaps enacting an even larger tax reform. In effect, he was calling Mr. Obama’s bluff on “cheap politics.”

In private, however, the debate always returned to the status of the top marginal rate for individuals earning over $200,000 and $250,000 for couples—aka the Bush tax cuts for people who do not own private aircraft. Mr. Cantor argued that some large portion of the income that flows through the top bracket comes from “pass-through entities”—that is, businesses—and “to me, that strikes at the core of what I believe should be the policy, and that is to provide incentives for entrepreneurs to grow.”

By contrast, he says, “Never was there ever an underlying economic argument” from Democrats. “It was all about social justice. Honestly, one of them said to me, ‘Some people just make too much money.'”

We need at least one more election to remove enough of the Marxists from government to turn things around.

[Evening update]

Obama won’t escape part of the blame for the downgrade:

Defenders of Obama will attempt to pin the blame on his predecessor, President Bush, and on intransigent Tea Party radicals in the current Congress. But that would leave out the part in between. For his first two years in office, Obama’s party controlled both chambers of Congress – for part of that period, he had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. During that time period, he and his fellow Democrats could have passed his supposedly ideal, long-term, deficit-reduction package — one that represented a “balanced approach” between spending cuts and tax increases. It also could have delayed the deficit reduction for several years, so it wouldn’t have affected the current weak economy or the “investments” he considers crucial. Forget about actually accomplishing serious deficit reduction — he didn’t even attempt it.

Of course he didn’t. Despite all his demagoguery over the last few weeks, he’s never favored a “balanced approach,” if that meant cutting anything other than defense. He, and his Marxist attitude (along with that of the rest of his party) is certainly one of the main perps.