Tag: Republicans

Just the Facts, Ma’am

On April 13, 2009

Dave Johnson’s got an excellent piece up in which he points out that laughing at the right is stupid. They’re doing now exactly what they did to Clinton in the 90’s, and it worked then.

In fact they’re back to being as crazy and paranoid as they were when Clinton was President. Remember the accusations that Clinton and Hillary were murderers, that Hillary personally killed Vince Foster, that Clinton ran a drug-smuggling operation out of an airstrip, that he was looking through FBI files, that he fired the travel office to put a cousin in, that he “sold” plots in Arlington cemetery, that he held up runway traffic to get a $500 haircut, that he used cocaine in the White House, that he hung obscene ornaments on the White House Christmas tree and the other fabrications that came daily?

We laughed then, too, and how did that work out? They took over the Presidency, the House and the Senate. Then they started wars. They tortured people. They appointed corporate lobbyists to run every agency. They filled the courts with Federalist Society judges that rule for the corporations and religious right every time. They stole billions…

Let me add two more facts:

For ordinary people, the economy is never going to fully recover, ever (well, not in the next 4 years anyway). The administration’s own numbers show this, with an overoptimistic model that assumes tax cuts will have the average effect of the last thirty years, rather than the effect they had when Bush did them (a big fat flop). But even if you don’t think they’re overoptimistic, it doesn’t matter. Again, their own numbers show employment will not recover before the next recession.
Obama and co. are doing a huge giveaway to the richest people in America. By the time they’re done it will probably be as large or larger than anything Bush did. Since it will not work in the sense of helping ordinary people enough, it will be used by Republicans to fuel populist rage. Sure, that’s hypocritical, but does that matter? We all know it doesn’t.

So I’m with Dave. Enjoy mocking Republicans all you want, but in your cold hard calculating heart, take them very very seriously.

Virginia Republicans Reject Stimulus UI Money

By Ian Welsh

On April 9, 2009

Comments

Image by Ookami Dou

The poor will always be with us, or at least as long as Republicans are also with us:

Virginia’s Republican-run House of Delegates rejected a proposed expansion of unemployment benefits Wednesday, along with $125 million in federal stimulus cash to pay for it.

On a mostly party-line 46-53 vote, the House turned down amendments by Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that were necessary to make Virginia eligible for the federal aid.

Modern Republicanism laid bare: never help anyone who really needs help. But that’s not the worst of it, the abysmal economic illiteracy is:

“It is not stimulus. Paying workers not to work does not promote economic growth,“ Byron said.

Actually, Delegate Kathy Byron, paying workers not to work does promote economic growth. This is economics 101, people who have money (unless they’re useless rich) spend that money. When they spend that money they spend it on products and services made by people who work. The more of those products and services which are bought, the more economic growth there is, since you can’t have economic growth if there’s no demand for products and services.

In times when there is insufficient demand, like in a massive recession or depression, the best thing to do is for the government to spend. And since there are people losing their houses, who are going without food, clothes and medical services, the best way to spend is to give those people money so you kill two birds with one stone: you get demand through spending, and you help people who need it so they don’t wind up starving or on the street.

But let’s extend this even further—when you have a demand problem and you also have very high income inequality (money pooling with the rich, who tend not to spend it) an even better way to increase demand is to increase tax rates on the rich, and then spend that money. You could even give it to the poor and middle class, who haven’t had a raise in 30 years.

And yes, Byron, that would create economic growth, though I’m sure you aren’t capable of understanding that. But it worked for FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and so on, and it would work now, while the Reaganesque policies of the last thirty years haven’t worked and have led to this disaster.

So, if you actually care about economic growth (we won’t pretend you care about unemployed people) you should both accept the UI money and push for highly progressive taxation.

I won’t be holding my breath for you to understand any of this, Byron, but I will hope that eventually enough politicians will decide to stop trying the same failed Reaganite policies over and over again, and do something that works.

Eventually, after most of the current crop of legislators are unemployed themselves.

(h/t Not Larry Sabato)