We have sufficient foreknowledge of what the Most Equal Comrade will propose in his prattle tomorrow evening to reject it out of hand as garbage. Socialism. A sly attempt to increase FHers' power disguised as constructive solutions to our economic crisis.
For one thing, this attempt to reassure us that the spending will be "offset" is nothing but more seizure of our assets at gunpoint, or, as Al Hunt puts it in the Bloomberg article to which I've linked, it will "offset the cost of the short-term jobs measures by raising revenues in later years."
There's the continuation of the payroll-tax holiday, which is nice, but in the way that a sip of water when you're digging ditches on a sweltering afternoon and about to collapse is nice.
Of course, there's "infrastructure spending." There may not be a market for working on the "infrastructure," but there sure is a lot of union gravy to be ladled out.
There's "direct aid to local governments." Also known as moving the same stinking money around. If Locale A needs more money to fund whatever it thinks it needs to fund, let it "enhance" its own stinking "revenue" and if I live there and don't like it, I'll move. But having me send it in to the federal leviathan and then sending it back to my state or city is a blatant cheap trick.
There's subsidized job-training.
Fortunately, the Pub prez candidates have tonight to not only offer their own proposals but to expose this for the dog vomit that it is. It's the best slate we've had in years, so I'm fairly confident that most if not all of them will attack it with sufficient clarity and passion to make some good headlines for tomorrow morning.
While Republicans have pushed to cast the sputtering economy as Obama’s fault, Americans place their blame elsewhere. Fifty-one percent say George W. Bush deserves “almost all,” or “a lot but not all” of the blame, while 31 percent said the same of Obama.
ReplyDeleteOn a similar note, 44 percent of those polled said that “almost all” or “a lot but not all” of the blame should be put on the shoulders of congressional Republicans, while 36 percent responded that way about congressional Democrats.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62038.html#ixzz1XHDSr4is
Gotta admit, though, that Jimmy Hoffa Jr. (and I don't give a damn that he prefers to not be referred to as that) and his ilk are more than part of the problem, not the solution and I certainly decline to join his rank. His "warm up" speech the other day in the Motor City was a huge embarrassment. Didja hear that the new workers at the new Chevy plant in Lordstown, OH, will be making $16.00/hr? Projected-out annually, without overtime, that is about what those lard-ass retirees make annually walking to the mailbox to collect their checks.
ReplyDeleteRe: those poll numbers: that's why the pro-freedom-and-prosperity-and-common-sense crowd has its work cut out for it.
ReplyDeleteThat's why blogs like LITD are so important.
I'm reaching someone. A letter to the editor in the Republic this morning about how most of its op-ed content is milquetoast concluded with this paragraph: "Where is Barney Quick? He of all your staff writers has his finger on the nation's pulse."
Congratulations. I read the letter. I had some post-posting guilt for being unkind, but count me amongst those that view this economy as something that was caused by Obama, though I did not and will not vote for the man. I am losing faith, if not interest, in politics. The Democratic party has left me and I will never join the Republican party. I guess I have to count myself among the growing number of Independents. We've seen better days for sure.
ReplyDeleteHenry James
by June Robertson Beisch
"Poor Mr. James," Virginia Woolf once said:
"He never quite met the right people."
Poor James. He never quite met the
children of light and so he had to invent them.
Then, when people said: No one is like that.
Your books are not reality, he replied:
So much the worse for reality.
He described himself as "slow to conclude,
orotund, a slow-moving creature, circling his rooms
slowly masticating his food."
Once, when a nephew asked his advice
on how to live, he searched his mind.
Number One, be kind, he said.
Number Two, be kind and
Number Three, be kind.
"Henry James" by June Beisch, from Fatherless Woman. © Cape Cod
I mean not being something that was caused by Obama. What a difference a word makes.
ReplyDeleteI should proofread before posting and not after. I meant to post "not" caused by Obama. Therefore your incessant bellyaching that it is being intentionally caused by Obama falls on deaf ears and to me, the only voter I can speak for, it reeks of slander and untruth, not to mention unkindness.
ReplyDeleteYou need to know too that my wife mentioned that she agreed with one of your columns a few months ago as we spoke on the phone and I of course jumped her ass.
ReplyDeleteYour metamorphosis is not yet complete but your disillusionment with FHer-ism is a good sign.
ReplyDeleteYou might think freedom haters is a cute or even apt term but it really turns people off and you know it.
ReplyDeleteIt clearly turns some people off, but it's important to be accurate.
ReplyDeleteIt is not accurate, it means a certain kind of freedom, supposed economic freedom to you. Those not with you are against you and therefore freedom haters.
ReplyDeleteThis just out in today's Columbus Wusuplic, who at least one person in town (who does not write very well) thinks we need more of the likes of you contained therein, reprinted in its entirety:
ReplyDeleteAmerican civics crisis due to loss of empathy
POLITICS is making Americans dumb and mean. It’s turning a generous, forward-thinking people into glib, defensive, narrow-minded bores.
Pundits tell us that the answer to all this nastiness — from the disgusting comments on message boards to the smarmy lies of TV political hacks — is to get more people civically engaged. By their logic, the moderation of crowds will temper the zealotry of activists. But I don’t buy it.
The solution to the corrosive spirit of U.S. politics is not more politics. With eight in 10 Americans saying the lack of civility is a serious problem, we should consider that the answer isn’t in the system but in ourselves.
continued from above since there is evidently a limit on the number of characters that can be placed here:
ReplyDeleteFour weeks ago, I attended a daylong meeting at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hosted by former Clinton White House domestic policy adviser Eric Liu. A small group, including former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Bill Gates Sr., discussed how to “revive and reinvent civics” in the United States. Our intentions were good, but, frankly, by midday, we had still failed to agree on the definition — or ultimate purpose — of civics.
For some, it was simply about the teaching of how government works. For others, it was mainly about civility. And for a third group, into which I fell, it was about something more meaningful and demanding. Kristen Cambell of the National Council on Citizenship, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering civic engagement, was also in that last group.
“Successful civic engagement,” she told me, “is all about capturing and harnessing empathy. Ultimately, we’re talking about wanting people to care for their neighbors, communities, their country.”
At first glance, the word “empathy” evokes vaguely religious associations, something well beyond the reach of civic organizations. But strip away memories of Sunday school and you’ll find a concept that’s eminently useful in secular, public life.
In “The Science of Evil,” Cambridge University psychiatrist Simon Baron-Cohen defines empathy without a spiritual gloss. He calls it “double-mindedness,” an individual’s ability to take into account the feelings of another. Human cruelty, or simply unkindness, occurs when individuals are single-minded, too wrapped up in their own interests to identify with, let alone respond to, someone else’s thoughts or feelings.
Translated to the public square, there can be no solutions without double-mindedness, only stalemate between competing goals. Good civics cannot exist without moral engagement, activities that foster understanding and empathy.
In order to change today’s gridlocked public dialogue, then, we need to find ways to encourage empathy — double-mindedness — on a broad scale. History has shown us that a democracy with sufficient moral engagement can thrive even when political engagement is low. (Think of Switzerland, which has lower voter turnout than its neighbors yet has enjoyed decade after decade of peaceful prosperity. But a democracy without sufficient moral engagement can easily dissolve even when political engagement is high. (Think of Venezuela, where high voter turnout — as much as 75 percent — has failed to halt a steady descent toward one-man rule.)
So what can we do to morally engage? To be sure, most moral lessons are learned at home, but any mature society also has the means to help us build what the poet Matthew Arnold called our “better selves.” Arnold lived in 19th century England, an era of similarly blustering political certainties, and he preached that, to survive the cacophony, his countrymen needed to engage with culture — art, the humanities, literature — “that does not try to win them for this or that sect.”
He wanted people to play with ideas free from the persuasion of politics, “to be nourished and not bound by them.”
There’s certainly a crisis in civics today, but it’s the product of a disconnect between our political engagement and our moral engagement. Democracy is great, but citizens still need inspiration and empathy to make it flourish.
Gregory Rodriguez can be contacted at grodriguez@latimescolumnists.com.
BTW, that opinion piece is printed right below the Letters to the Editor.
ReplyDeleteNow, that is worth pursuing - this distinction between political engagement and moral engagement. That is the heart of conservatism. It's why studies have shown that conservatives hava a far higher rate of charitable giving and memebrship in civic organizations - not to mention church membership - than liberals do.
ReplyDeleteMy point here - in this post and in my polemical writing generally - is to show that the American left really and truly - well, as my controversial term successfully indicates - harbors a disdain for that kind of communal goodwill that can only arise from volition. They want the state to coerce people into acting fairly and civilly - according to the state's distorted definition of those terms - be in charge of macro-level human interaction and see people's voluntary bonds - and the traditions and institutions they are based on - wither.
The reason the letter-writer's civility conference seems to have fallen short of its goals is that it is asking freedom-cherishing citizens to rub their chins and consider proposals for the state taking their money and the left's cultural outposts to pervert the meaning of commonly understood concepts as if they were every bit as reasonable as those coming from the great swath of normal policy viewpoints.
Barney Quick for Mayor's Chief of Staff! (assuming she wins).
ReplyDeleteBottom line is, though, that the "garbage" you claim is from the Most Equal Comrad that you reject out of hand is in reality coming from the Federal Reserve Chairman who was appointed by the Repulican't Bush. And I know Newtie wants to fire him, but Presidents cannot fire him, woulda thought he would know that, as bright as he and you claim him to be.
ReplyDelete"Other than offering a bit more detail on the outlook for inflation and emphasizing that sluggish growth is not enough to satisfy the Fed, Bernanke offered few fresh insights into thinking at the central bank on measures to aid the recovery. He largely reiterated remarks he made two weeks ago, repeating that the Fed has a range of tools to provide additional stimulus and is prepared to use them. Unusually weak household spending and persistent financial strains spurred by worry over Europe's sovereign debt crisis and the loss of Washington's top-tier credit rating continue to hold back the recovery, Bernanke said.
The Fed chairman warned that overzealous belt-tightening by the U.S. government in the near term could also slow down the "erratic" recovery.
"Substantial fiscal consolidation in the shorter term could add to the headings facing economic growth and hiring," he said.
read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/08/us-usa-fed-idUSTRE7870W120110908?source=
No, it doesn't originate with Bernanke. It originates with the MEC, who has the business world spooked beyong belief with his talk of "fairness" in the tax code and his demonization of oil companies, and the people in Congress who not only spout the same thing but are in a position to craft legislation to bring it about, as well as the likes of Steven Chu and Hilda Solis and Lisa Jackson and the whole administrative-branch rule by fiat that raises smog standards for coal-fired power plants and fuel efficiency standards for large trucks, and telegraph that certain industries that can't hold their own in the market place are going to get subsidized.
ReplyDeleteNot that Bernanke isn't part of the problem. The stock market fell right after his remarks this afternoon.
And by the way, pointing out someone who was appointed by W is no argument against any particular principle.