PLANK AUGUST 12, 2012
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On the surface, Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate is both daring and smart. It’s daring, obviously, because Ryan’s budgetary vision of a drastically reduced federal government presents such an existential threat to liberalism that it may unite Democrats in a death-or-glory stand behind President Obama. But it’s smart because Ryan has been one of the only Republicans since Ronald Reagan capable of inspiring the right while reassuring moderates. Indeed, one of the refrains of Ryan's career has been his courtship of moderates within his party and outside of it. This is a strategy with a proud tradition in the modern Republican Party, hailing back to the landmark efforts of Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and William F. Buckley.
But if Ryan has been reasonably successful at that task until now, his effort will most likely soon come precipitously undone. Moderates around the country will be tempted to vote for the GOP this year, but as they are made to take a closer look at the radicalism of Ryan’s budget and of his intellectual influences, it's safe to say they won't like what they find. This is a reality that Ryan's affable personality simply won't be able to paper over. And so, rather than bolster the cause of conservatism, it's far more likely that Ryan’s selection will have the opposite effect—that of undermining the long-term viability of the Republican Party.
IN THE TRADITION of his mentor Jack Kemp, Ryan has long engaged in spirited dialogue with moderates, those colleagues and voters who are fiscally conservative though socially broad-minded. Unlike most of the other politicians who excite the conservative base, he comes across as modest, intelligent, thoughtful, well-informed, and temperamentally moderate. Though a religious Catholic, he has to this point shown little interest in divisive culture-war issues. Occasionally he has bucked the GOP line, as in 2007 when he was one of the few Republicans voting for a Democratic bill banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. While he is a favorite of RINO-hunting groups like the Club for Growth, he is a big-tent Republican who resists calls to purge GOP dissenters. According to Robert Draper’s recent book about the House, Do Not Ask What Good We Do, Ryan “hated squabbling amongst conservatives—the paleos versus the neos, the socials against the moderates… Ryan had long sought to be the GOP’s glue, pleading for adherence to the principles and the data.”
Like Ryan, moderates worry about unsustainable spending levels and metastasizing deficits, and agree that painful actions must be taken to reduce healthcare spending in particular. Ryan won the respect of many moderates by grappling with the numbers and producing concrete budget proposals, which passes as an act of breathtaking political courage in Washington these days. He has helped to counter the perception that Republicans are just negativists and obstructionists, bereft of ideas. Indeed, when Ryan grilled Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at a hearing in February, it was the Democrat who seemed out of ideas, admitting to Ryan that he didn’t have a “definitive solution” to the long-term problems of unfunded liabilities and rising deficits.
But the fact is that Ryan’s budgets are not moderate documents, and Ryan’s plan is not fiscally conservative but radical. Fiscal conservatism, if it means anything, requires that policymakers use both revenue increases and spending cuts to bring the budget into balance over the long term. By refusing to consider any tax increases at all, and in fact proposing to slash corporate and individual taxes by some $4 trillion above and beyond the Bush tax cuts, Ryan sides with those for whom fiscal policy is a matter of theology rather than economics. The fiscally conservative leaders from the GOP past, such as Dwight Eisenhower, would be appalled by the decades of deficits the Ryan plan envisions and puzzled by the apparent sacredness of the military budget; Ike cut military spending by 27 percent but Ryan would not reduce it by so much as a nickel.
Eisenhower also believed that lean government was compatible with government investment in sectors with a high return to society, such as science and education, while Ryan’s plan would reduce government discretionary spending in areas such as these to approximately zilch. Indeed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Ryan’s budget ultimately would shrink government spending to a lower level as a percentage of GDP than at any point during Ike’s presidency. Ryan’s scheme to turn Medicare into a capped voucher program would shift much of the burden of medical spending onto individuals but would do nothing to address the fact that the United States pays more for healthcare than any other developed country but gets worse outcomes. Contrast Ryan’s proposal with the example of Melvin Laird, another true fiscal conservative and former Republican Congressman from Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin during the 1950s and ‘60s. Laird believed that the best way to cut medical costs was to invest in medical progress and cures; the partnership of Laird and Rep. John Fogarty (D-RI) was principally responsible for the modern development of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both of which would be threatened by the Ryan budget.
It’s possible that the budget plan is just Ryan’s extremely, extremely aggressive negotiation opener, and that at a moment of crisis in some smoke-filled room (or its healthful present-day equivalent; Ryan after all is a physical fitness fiend) he would be capable of finding compromise with Democrats. But the evidence strongly suggests that he believes what he says, and his emergence as a Tea Party hero means that he would have great difficulty modifying his positions even if he wanted to. The problem with Romney’s selection of Ryan is not only that it commits the GOP to the budget’s radicalism; it’s also a symbol that both the GOP and the conservative movement are coming unmoored from their traditional beliefs and restraints.
Consider Ryan in view of the legacy of William F. Buckley, who is generally considered the founder of the modern conservative movement. Buckley felt that perhaps his greatest achievement was to have repulsed the two principal extremist threats to the movement in the 1960s: the John Birch Society and the “Objectivists” centered around the writer Ayn Rand. As various commentators have pointed out, the Tea Party has revived and re-popularized the Birch Society’s outlandish views, and no Republican leader has attempted to refute them. Now that the party's vice-presidential candidate is the most prominent Rand-influenced politician in the land—Ryan said in 2005 that Rand was “the reason I got involved in public service”—the other half of Buckley’s achievement has come undone.
It’s true that in the past few years, Ryan has distanced himself from Rand’s philosophy and particularly her atheism, which was Buckley’s principal objection to Objectivism. But Buckley also criticized the materialism, elitism, and scorn for altruism that were essential components of Rand’s philosophy. Rand’s belief that self-interest is the paramount aspect of capitalism, according to Buckley, risked “giving capitalism that bad name its enemies have done so well in giving it.” Ryan, on the other hand, said as recently as 2009 that “Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism.”
Whatever Ryan’s true beliefs, his budget is strikingly compatible with the Randian view that government should do little besides keep the peace and give capitalism a free hand. In a sense, it represents the end point of a process in which Republican and conservative leaders have been reduced to increasingly feeble defenses of government’s purpose in response to ever more radical critiques from the right-wing media and grassroots. The Ryan budget is a repudiation of Hamiltonian conservatism, Eisenhower-style fiscal conservatism, George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” and even Ronald Reagan’s conviction that “Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”
The only argument that the GOP establishment can muster against the Ryan budget is that if it were perchance to be implemented, and the American people suddenly realized what its cutbacks in government would mean for them personally, the backlash against the Republicans would be so cataclysmic that the GOP’s 1964 election wipeout under Barry Goldwater would seem a mere hiccup. Such pragmatic calculations seem small-minded and contemptible to Tea Partiers, who have in effect adopted the 1960s left-wing radical slogan: “Dare to struggle, dare to win.”
It would probably be in Paul Ryan’s best long-term political interests, however, if his budget remains a standard for conservatives to rally around rather than becoming actual policy. For their part, moderates will be firm in their belief, however much Ryan tries to convince them otherwise, that such an outcome would also be in the long-term interests of the country.
31 comments
The logic is clear. A Romney/Ryan win in 2012 would be a gift to Dems... who would otherwise continue prez and Senate leadership with no plan, fortitude or hope to end the Great Recession.
- drofnats1
August 12, 2012 at 11:33pm
You see, dro, the problem with your crabbed reading of the race/politics is it's too extremist. We need the most liberal electoral slate and party platform that can win. Paradoxically, the benefit of Romney-Ryan is that it's so conservative and Obama-Biden are so much more assured of a win that they can go somewhat more liberal. Your reasoning justifies Angle and O'Donnell winning in 2010 because two wackos would have put fear into the hearts of Democrats to be more liberal. In reality, it would have thrown Senate leadership into flux and weakened the Democrats even more. If you have to kill the American economy again to enact your priorities, you need a better theory of politics.
- chaitless
August 12, 2012 at 11:43pm
"It would probably be in Paul Ryan’s best long-term political interests, however, if his budget remains a standard for conservatives to rally around rather than becoming actual policy. As far as real moderates will also be firm in their belief, however much Ryan tries to convince them otherwise, that such an eventuality would also be in the long-term interests of the country." Good observation. Ryan and the GOP would never be able to implement his Draconian budget. As soon as some of its major policies began to take effect, the people, including many Republicans who are sucking up free taxpayer dollars, would revolt. Like it or not, the government has become a vital crutch in the modern world, even in so-called free-enterprise societies. Without that crutch, America would die. And Ryan's budget, if implemented fully, would eventually lead to anarchy in the streets. And then his fully-funded military would be there to wipe up. If I were a conspiracy nut, like many of those who support Ryan are, I'd say we have a plan here. I do know that the GOP, which wants to dominate the political scene in America indefinitely, would be happy to wipe up in case things got out of control in the streets.
- magboy47.
August 13, 2012 at 12:12am
I think, magboy47, even if (G*d willing) we don't see an actual army in the streets the R&R plan reflects the fact that instead of a civil society, We the People may be confronting the raw use of power and its very real threats. Too much money in too few hands, leading to too much power in too few hands - how often in history has this led to catastrophe? One had hoped and prayed that Americans would be spared this naked abuse. But look what it's wrought already, in lands to the south, in the East. Incidentally, to those Democrats and "moderate" Republicans who attack the Soptik ad - give me a break. This is the way it is and it will get worse if the GOP wins in November.
- Sophia
August 13, 2012 at 3:17am
Drof. I was wondering when you'd show up. The White House and Congress between them can't end the recession by themselves. The overstuffed private sector, ie corporations which are hanging on to trillions, banks which won't pay decent interest rates to depositors OR pay back the TARP money and which continue to gamble recklessly - obscenely wealthy people who pay next to no taxes - corporations, ditto - if they don't help out even assuming Congress would agree to a decent stimulus/jobs package - you're blaming the Democrats for something which isn't within their power to control.
- Sophia
August 13, 2012 at 3:20am
Drof, you're like an autistic savant when it comes to your understanding of American politics: in some ways you're spot on, while in other ways you're so far off it's like you're from Mars. Your theory, endlessly repeated, goes like this: A. A president Romney working the Ryan game plan would wreck the economy, bankrupt the federal govt and generally make life a living Hell for your average voting slob. B. Such disastrous leadership would once and for all for discredit Republicanism the eyes of the majority. C. Moderate Democrats, whose ranks would've been decimated by the Romney/Ryan route would be nowhere to be found. D. The only people left to take advantage of the political vacuum left by the above failures would be so-called "progressives", thereby ushering in a thousand-year, liberal Democratic reich and endless milk and honey for the masses. Ergo, lose to win and if you love progressive taxation, Keynesian stimulus spending, universal health care and free love, and vote for Romney! Thing is, drof, who's to say the economy will tank on the Romney? Who's to say that even if it does tank the voters will blame Romney for it? Who's to say that even if it tanks and they do blame Romney for it, they'll blame his reactionary ideology and not just him personally? Who's to say that even if people blame right-wing ideology and reject it they'll turn to progressivism as the alternative? You're guilty of a version of the historical fallacy, with the main variation being that the events to which you're falsely assigning causes haven't happened yet. IF Romney got elected and IF he pooped all over himself and the economy and IF in subsequent elections voters elevated liberal Democrats, your little story might have some explanatory valididy, but as a prediction it's worthless. Suppose I predict that if Romney wins he'll set about creating structural barriers to democratic participation in government so effective that it will hardly matter whether liberal Democrats' popularity ticks up a notch or two. How you gonna prove me wrong? You think politics is like Newtonian physics when really its like the weather. We understand,you can't stand Obama. So don't vote for him. Just stop stop trying to justify your lack of support as striking a blow for liberalism. It isn't.
- AaronW
August 13, 2012 at 8:59am
rout, not route
- AaronW
August 13, 2012 at 9:00am
AaronW, what a great post.
- gwhitaker
August 13, 2012 at 9:51am
I think the chances are boiling down to R/R ability to avoid having to answer the tough questions. Even if they lie, the lie can be debunked and the truth divined. But avoiding the topic all together allows people to assume (or hope for) the best.
- GSpinks
August 13, 2012 at 10:36am
Geoffrey: You have left out a lot of facts. First, at the time of Eisenhower and Melvin Laird, the Democrat Party did not have people like Nancy Pelosi leading it. Conservative Democrats existed. Nancy Pelosi is a clown. Second, the US debt at the time of Eisenhower was relatively minimal. Third, the entitlement web was in its infancy. Fourth, in 2012, there is a much more comprehensive safety net than in the 1950s and 1960s. Fifth, the Ryan plan reduces the increase in the rate of government spending. Furthermore, the availability of Social Security and Medicare should be later in life, because life expectancy is much longer. Sixth, the federal government has interjected itself much further into American life -- light bulbs and ethanol are examples -- than it did in the 1950s. Seventh, Paul Ryan believes that individuals, not government, create wealth. So, did Dwight Eisenhower, Melvin Laird, William F. Buckley Jr., and John F. Kennedy. Consequently, your conclusion about Paul Ryan is flawed, and is so flawed it may be palpably false. I hope that you are more than a Republican hater. Hating Republicans as an avocation accomplishes nothing.
- john336
August 13, 2012 at 10:59am
I saw a video clip of Ryan campaigning for the first time as a VP candidate this morning. He has a distasteful, jutting-jaw, in-your-face style, which, of course, is perfect for the GOP base. You haven't seen FU smug until you've seen this guy campaign. Ryan was G.W. Bush's point man during the latter's pathetic attempt to privatize Social Security early in 2005. Obviously, neither of these clowns knew that Wall Street criminals routinely steal retirement money, including "protected" pension funds. They also feel free to make disastrous bets with other people's money, confident that the taxpayers will bail them out. Who knew that an extreme Ayn Randian like Ryan would try to sell something that could end up with the government as the only option to save America and the world from Great Depression II?
- magboy47.
August 13, 2012 at 11:59am
"Nancy Pelosi is a clown." I'm pretty sure that's not a fact. Do the Koch brothers pay you by the post john336 or is it a flat rate?
- Pnaut
August 13, 2012 at 12:24pm
Magboy, how about a specific cite on the claim that wallstreet steals retirement money?
- seattleeng
August 13, 2012 at 12:44pm
Oh wonderful, we have a Ryan apologist on board. OK, calling Nancy Pelosi a "clown" is not an argument. Actually she's anything but so you can start, John, by dropping the gratuitous insults. Secondly, the government is interested in lightbulbs because We The People and our entire planet are now confronting a potentially catastrophic environment situation, which was brought about largely by the fact that nobody paid attention to pollution back in The Good Old Days. So your arguments for Paul Ryan are essentially that a) Pelosi is a clown and b) we should ignore the environment? And that individuals, without a safe and healthy environment and without infrastructure, like the FEDERAL HIGHWAY SYSTEM, and all the other works of government local, state and national, like fire departments, the air traffic system, satellite technology that enables our modern connectivity, create wealth ALL BY THEMSELVES? Please, do go on. I'm all ears.
- Sophia
August 13, 2012 at 3:06pm
I'm pretty sure Nancy Pelosi once went to the circus. Ergo, it's a fact that she is a clown. I'm pretty sure john336 saw here there himself, so this is a verifiable fact.
- wildboy
August 13, 2012 at 4:00pm
john336 has it exactly right except for the Pelosi comment. Clowns are cute, loveable and funny. Pelosi is very scary.
- rvogel
August 13, 2012 at 4:12pm
I'm sure john336 is one of those conservatives who always take surface streets because they can't bear to drive on the federal interstate system -- too much big government, don't you know! He probably also supports cutting funding for the CDC because the Founding Fathers never mentioned all those viruses.
- ironyroad
August 13, 2012 at 4:18pm
Well Seattle, some journalist hack over at the Wall St. Journal, named Ellen Schultz wrote a book about Wall Street stealing retirement money. http://www.amazon.com/Retirement-Heist-Companies-Plunder-American/dp/1591843332 I guess some people other than wildboy have bought into that conspiracy theory about corporations raiding employees' retirements. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/10/19/retirement-heist-how-firms-plunder-workers-nest-eggs/
- singlspeed
August 13, 2012 at 4:53pm
(1) Aaron W. gets gold stars. (2) Sophia gets gold stars. (3) John 336, debt fell from an all-time high right after WWII during the Eisenhower administration, but Eisenhower was attacked consistently from his Right as being soft on everything from communism to public spending. Yes, it's different now, but if (and it's a big "if) the economy picks up, debt as a percentage of GNP will drop. Let's not forget that the 1950s were a heyday for public infrastructure spending. Great discussion. I never thought I'd use "gutsy" and "Romney" in the same sentence and maybe the gutsiness of this move is being a little overblown, but Romney (and his minions) probably rightfully recognize that as it stands right now, the election isn't going to hinge on the undecideds, because there really aren't enough of them and those that do exist are probably unreachable through the choice of a running-mate. Ryan is little more than a polemical pissant, but in an election that is turning into a national debate, regional differences can get washed out. I just wonder how Ryan will explain his votes for Medicare expansion in 2003 and the Wall Street bailout in 2008. Perhaps he can borrow a line from Romney's late father and say he was brainwashed. Seriously, great discussion to which I hope I have added something of value.
- Lundell
August 13, 2012 at 6:38pm
Stealing implies laws were broken and people went to jail. I'm more interested in a cite of the various cases in which wall street types went to jail over illegal pension activities When you claim something was stolen, and then cite an article in which two sides disagreed on how to fund something and parted ways, that isn't stealing. That's just a difference of opinion. I don't doubt pensions have been mismanaged. But from news articles I've read the mismanagement more often comes from city government managers and union leaders than wall street. Any city that is declaring bankruptcy these days is doing so partially to get out from under pension obligations.
- seattleeng
August 13, 2012 at 6:52pm
Sophia writes: "And that individuals, without a safe and healthy environment and without infrastructure, like the FEDERAL HIGHWAY SYSTEM, and all the other works of government local, state and national, like fire departments, the air traffic system, satellite technology that enables our modern connectivity, create wealth ALL BY THEMSELVES?" If the size of government is what enabled this, then doesn't that mean modern countries with governments larger than the US would have even more innovation? And yet they don't. And it sounds like you are making a case for military spending, since a majority of your cites are the result of military spending, not social spending and not infrastructure spending. Is that case? Are you arguing for massive military to fuel more of this wealth creation?
- seattleeng
August 13, 2012 at 6:57pm
seattle, you have a weird capacity to misread what someone said and then sound all-so-reasonable answering an argument that wasn't made. You have been doing this for, what, 2-3 years now here and you seem to imagine that nobody notices. Sophia did not assert that the size of government enabled the infrastructural and institutional frames in which entrepreneurship and commerce can happen in the modern world, but rather that the involvement of government is required to set those frames in place in order that wealth can be created. The reason is that the private sector is, mostly justifiably, either unable or unwilling to fund and take the lead on that work. But without it, no healthy private sector and no real economy. Check out Somalia -- it's a small-government paradise!
- ironyroad
August 13, 2012 at 8:38pm
Sophia argued that government is a key enabler, meaning more is better. Less is worse. I don't think she was arguing for the exact size we have to day, but maybe she chime in. However, there are plenty of places that have schools and roads and infrastructure without any innovation. Government building those things alone is not sufficient for innovation. Otherwise, Europe and Asia would be brimming with innovation. They are not. Ergo, if other places with the same things have NOT seen innovation, then it's easy to argue these things (roads, schools, etc) aren't a key to innovation. Why has the US experienced so much innovation? Now, we can say that our military has fueled many innovations, can we not? They fuel them by telling private industry they need X to kill more efficiently. And magically private industry arrives a solution and sells it to the government. Be it CDMA, GPS, internet, faster microprocessors, better photography sensors, better stoneware tools, etc. The military has needed all of this long before the consumer needed it. And our US military spending IS unique in this world. Since our innovation has so many ties back to the military, and since our military spending is so high, and since our innovation is so high, I think a very plausible argument could be made that our obscene military spending is responsible for much of our innovation. Could it not?
- seattleeng
August 13, 2012 at 9:13pm
"key enabler" does not mean "more is better" (at least, in English). I'd advise you to check Europe and Asia more close, seattle, they don't seem to be doing so badly on the innovation front. Yes, I agree that military spending can have a lot to do with innovation -- what of it? That was true of Britain, France and Germany too. But there needs to be a way to broaden the application to civilian needs. On the other hand, a heck of a lot of American innovation -- e.g. in aviation -- took place in the 1920s and 1030s before there was substantial military spending post-WW2 Your point being?
- ironyroad
August 13, 2012 at 10:35pm
sorry -- "more closely" in that second para.
- ironyroad
August 13, 2012 at 10:36pm
Like I said, let's wait for her to weigh in. If she says the size of government is fine as is, then I concede your point. But everything I've seen from Sophia says that she would really like to see government doing a lot more. And her post (to me) indicated that she felt the "lots more" would bring lots more innovation. There are many that think government being 2X the size it is today would be a good thing.... You asked my point...My point is that that most here would be satisfied trimming military spending mightily. And yet it's the one area of government that actually does spur private industry to do things it otherwise might not do. Again, in the name of killing more efficiently. The rest of government does not spur innovation. It merely allocates money while skimming a percentage off the top for itself. Your suggestion that innovation is alive and well in Europe and Asia is wanting. There is a reason the world clamors for US-designed operating systems, US-designed smartphones, US-designed-social networking, US-designed electric cars, US-designed telecom integrated circuits, US-designed 3D chips, US-designed drones, and on and on. There are for sure pockets of innovation elsewhere, but these pockets don't come close to matching the sheer volume of innovation that is cranked out of the united states every year.
- seattleeng
August 14, 2012 at 3:14am
I don't think most people dispute that the private sector with plenty of goading from the military, has in the last 20+ years spurred plenty of innovation, but that isn't to say that all government funded innovation should primarily come from military expenditures. Despite the U.S.'s capacity for innovative design, overall R&D investment in the U.S. has been dropping in the last 20 years. Bell Labs was one of the best, pure research labs in the U.S. and does amazing stuff and does so without much "incentive" for making it easier to kill people. At the same time, there are plenty of companies whose R&D isn't purely science & technology development but really finding minor tweaks to maintain market control and patent control for "new products" that are just repackaged versions of what came before. It's like Apple patenting "a rectangular computer with round edges" and claiming it as innovation when it's just a clever way to try and lock out competition. Sure we can spend $700B a year on the latest and greatest tanks (which even the Army says it doesn't really need) and build yet another super carrier group but that only gets the U.S. so far ahead of everyone else militarily. We talk about needing infrastructure investments, increased investment in education and R&D and yet, when anyone (like say Obama) talks about the government doing that kind of investment people seem to think it's a big waste of time and effort or government meddling or picking winners and losers. How about we just call it, America investing in America? Why is it so difficult for the Right to even consider Gov't investments in infrastructure, R&D and technology industries outside of the military? It's as if the US Gov't decided that making ourselves completely energy independent from oil by investing in clean-energy was going to make us socialist-living troglodytes. We pride ourselves on telling one another how great we were but when someone says we need to act it all falls short. The GOP's answer to energy independence is to simply drill at all costs and then let the market distribute it away on the global market. The government then clears away all reasonable regulation and lowers the royalty costs such that oil & gas literally drill on public lands for free. They talk about how much we need those 5000 jobs for the XL pipeline and spoon feed us the false assertion that it will mean less terrorists in the world but fail to mention than a vast majority of that tar-sand oil gets shipped to Asia. You can only give tax breaks and credits so long before industry moves on or simply keeps that money as profit versus seeking reinvestment opportunities. IF the Government said, we will offer incentives (loans/grants/direct investment) to the industry leader that can develop battery technology to make gas cars obsolete, I would think the GOP could get behind that. It gives us independence from every foreign nation, including allies, for our energy sources and spurs innovation in the market that can spill over into other arenas. If we actually took a huge chunk of that money spent on welfare & military spending waste and said to these folks that are unemployed or underemployed - we will pay you x and you will get a job re-building decaying bridges, repair & replacing the aging water and sewer systems, work for companies developing water technologies for agricultural industry, etc. I think most everyone would get behind that. How could you not? But there seems to be a disconnect between what we define as "investment" and others call "waste." The far Right likes to think the Government has no part to play in making the U.S. what it is, but I suspect those same people are the first to clamor for government contracts and business. So we get caught up lame debates about Solyndra and how that means all clean-technology investment is bad or wasteful but government tax credits for oil companies to lay-waste to vast tracts of public lands is good. The GOP talks about spurring job growth, etc, but the very tools and policies that could expand the work force, they won't support because it might (gasp) raise labor costs and ultimately cut into the corporate profit margins and they rhetorically label wasteful government spending and handouts. I guess giving a guy a steady job and paying him instead of welfare is wasteful but kicking a guy off welfare is...well financially and morally prudent for America to prosper. As a taxpayer I hate waste as much as the next person. I hate laziness too and I think, as a country we need to rethink what our priorities are when it comes to have a government that is supposed to be working for us and not the corporations and lobbyists that skew the system to maximize their benefits while passing the costs off on to us.
- singlspeed
August 14, 2012 at 1:03pm
No, seattle, not simply in the name of "killing more efficiently." That's Nazi Germany, not the United States. In the name of making sure that people know we can do killing more efficiently if we need to, but as a last resort. There's a big difference and it's between authoritarian militarism and civilian democracy; it's the difference between brutality and civilization.
- ironyroad
August 14, 2012 at 2:19pm
Bravo irony, thanks to all for the great discussion. First I'd just like to add this from that great Forbes piece about the plunder of working people's pensions: Executives are viewed “as beleaguered captains valiantly trying to keep their overloaded ships from being sunk in a perfect storm. In reality, they’re the silent pirates who looted the ships and left them to sink, along with the retirees, as they sailed away safely in their lifeboats.” Enough said. And people fear the government?
- Sophia
August 14, 2012 at 4:36pm
To address seattle: you have drawn two fallacious conclusions from my comments. One is that government involvement in key industries/infrastructures necessarily means I want government x 2. I want smart government, government that spends on the right things and doesn't squander money on destructive things, like war, like clinging to the extraction industries that are poisoning the world, like an economic system that vacuums the people's resources right out of our pockets and goes straight to the pockets of the rich, and which then blames the poor and working people for not working hard enough. That's shameful. The second is that government involvement (or not) leads to innovation, and that the US leads in innovation as opposed to - what - Airbus Industries? But yes - I would argue that government involvement most certainly is a key part of innovation if only because costs are frequently very high and profits are not certain, so, many of the arts and sciences require funding from government. This has been true throughout human history, whether you're talking about the highly creative Eastern empires, about Greece and Rome, about the princes of Italian city states in the Renaissance, about the builders of the Pyramids whose work still dazzles, and baffles, modern engineers. Now, the US is a very creative society in some important ways. We are much like the Romans, I think. We've got great engineers, great innovators in computer sciences, that have many applications; but, we're not alone in that. And we've fallen way behind in other industries: cars, steel, and that's cost the American workers hugely, destroyed whole regions of America. Lack of ability at the top cost American workers. The workers didn't choose to build obsolete gas guzzlers, they didn't refuse to build electric or hybrid cars, cars for a new age - that decision was made at the top. Lack of innovative ability in steel was made at the top, not by the workers. So yes, I want "the people" represented by my government and a full accounting from people who were born into the management class, which has harmed us enormously. That's the price of oligarchy: it doesn't enable creativity, it crushes it. It's the opposite of a real meritocracy. In this case, my vision of government levels the playing field, government intervenes when people are abused by the powerful, when the economic situation gets out of whack, government ensures access to health and education. THAT leads to success, to innovation, to creativity. Now, back to America and our innovations - regardless of our successes in in technology, we're not necessarily leaders in the arts, in social sciences, in other types of creativity that make societies great. I was stunned by the British creativity on view at the Olympic ceremonies. It was wonderful - as were Beijing, Barcelona, Greece. All those countries managed to express moments of breathtaking art as well as sport, expressions of beauty that I'll never forget, which for a moment at least bound the world together in time as well as in space. Each country in her own way drew upon centuries - thousands of years - of culture and found archetypal expression unique to each nation. In Barcelona, the juxtaposition of modern art with flamenco, with that magnificent Andalusian horse carrying the dancer away, to the flaming arrow lighting the cauldron in the night sky - the combination of stunning, brilliant innovation and ancient form in China - the bedrock rhythms of Greece - and in Britain - a reminder that these very old islands can still rock the house around the world, and haven't lost their edge at all. Art, music, design, the creative use of language, light, color, myth - these are aspects of cultures that survive for long periods of time. A culture that lives only for short term profit or for only one type of innovation is not likely to be around in 1,000 years. Meanwhile, it's pretty grim without those other kinds of innovation isn't it? And, all these old, creative countries have socialist governments. Without that kind of security people can't create, at least not in forms of human endeavor that don't rely upon making an immediate profit for a business. Secondly, it's a huge assumption to claim that Russia, Europe, Asia, Israel, aren't innovative in the ways you respect, seattle. And they have been for a long time. And of course governments were and are involved in all these examples and in the case of the modern EU they're multinational. A bit of history: the Germans led the US and other nations by miles in rocketry and in jet engine development. These two sciences alone have enabled enormous breakthroughs in how we live and how we do business and in our ability to see the universe around us. The Soviets were also great innovators in aerospace, although Americans like to claim they simply stole our stuff - I suspect it isn't that simple. In some cases it could well have been the other way around. And, modern fly by wire technology was developed by Europeans, not Americans. The autobahn wasn't invented by us. Efficient cars were not invented by us, they were invented and mass produced by Europeans and perfected, really, in Japan - another example of an old, very creative culture. So? Innovation isn't solely an American attribute. Nor, when discussing innovation, should one limit the term to engineering and technological innovation; and, it does usually depend upon financial support from many people (ie "the people") because innovation isn't necessarily profitable in the short term. Take rocket science just for one small example. Take the arts in general, which may NEVER make money, but which are priceless, for another, and which other nations, including communist nations, and Europe, including Russia, seem to value much more highly than the US (alas). In all the cases I've cited, "the people" have all participated. None of these things were created by a top down effort, but rather drew on the resources of a nation, its history, culture, creativity. And yet, despite the screeches about the horrors of the collective - individual artistry and innovation flourishes. Americans need to address their fears about working together, and why that somehow limits the individual, when from what I can see the opposite is really true. People who share resources, information, and creative abilities flourish. In systems where only a few people prosper, the opposite is true: there are a few people who flourish and the rest are drones. Is that what we want? I'll discuss infrastructure in the next post.
- Sophia
August 14, 2012 at 5:18pm
Having addressed innovation, I will now tell seattle why infrastructure is important and why we need to fix ours. This is simple and should be obvious. We rely upon a complex network of highways, railways, dams, irrigation canals and reservoirs, the electrical grid, the airline/air cargo system, sewer systems, water purification systems, etc - much of which people never think about. We have bridges, entire highways built over water, tunnels through the mountains, and networks of people who work all day, every day, every night, to make all this stuff function together. Without it, our society comes to a screeching halt. All of this was very expensive to create and couldn't have been done without government investing our money in these vital systems. Many of these systems are old and need repairs. Others need major upgrades, like the rail systems and the computers that help air traffic controllers keep that system flowing. One could consider our satellites part of our infrastructure now. They have to be maintained, monitored. NASA and NOAA have become vital trackers and predictors of weather and solar storms. Our computer infrastructure has to be constantly updated and also protected from enemies. Our nuclear plants are vital but also, vulnerable. Now. There is no private entity in the world that can afford to create one of these systems let alone all of them, and nor should any of them be "privatized," as they belong to and help all of us. The same is true of more ephemeral but nevertheless precious infrastructure: our natural resources, our national parks, our animals, our plants, our environment. These belong to all of us and they must be protected, especially from predators who destroy environment in order to reap a short-term profit. Now: unless you think we should return to a 19th century kind of existence, or worse, this infrastructure is vital to the well-being and security of our nation. It HAS to be cared for, it belongs to the people, all of the people, and that takes money as well as intelligent choices. I suggest we invest in this, in infrastructure and in innovative energy and in environment - and reduce our investment in war, especially, the very common wars of choice in which we've been involved since Vietnam. I also suggest the rich recognize the fact that they benefit from all of this, and from all of the workers and consumers of America, and stop trying to sock it to us, steal or labor and our futures and our hope, and get to work helping us take care of our country.
- Sophia
August 14, 2012 at 5:31pm