The Right’s ‘Limited Government’ Scam

December 18, 2012

 

Exclusive: Libertarians and Tea Partiers pretend they are the only Americans who believe in “limited government” as envisioned by the Framers, but that is a false conceit. The real history is that Madison and Washington devised a Constitution with broad powers to promote the “general Welfare,” says Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

A favorite line from the American Right – both well-educated libertarians and know-nothing Tea Partiers – is that the Founders believed in “limited government” and the United States must return to that constitutional principle. But the argument is both nonsensical and insulting.

Everyone believes in “limited government” – unless you’re a totalitarian or a fan of absolute monarchies. Liberals, conservatives, socialists, free-market ideologues and pretty much everyone in between believe in limitations of government power. The point of having a constitution is to set the limits and rules for a government.

Paul Krugman: An Appreciated, and Rare, Reversal of Economic Doctrine

Tuesday, 18 December 2012 12:55  
By Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed 

Bruce Bartlett is a mensch.

A mensch, at least as I was taught the term, is someone who takes responsibility for his actions, including his mistakes. Alas, "menschlichkeit" is a rare virtue in modern America, certainly in the political sphere, where nobody ever admits to being wrong about anything.

So all hail Mr. Bartlett, who has written movingly in The American Conservative magazine's December issue about how he came to realize that conservatism and its economic doctrine weren't what he imagined them to be, and in particular how he came to realize that Keynesian analysis had a point. Mr. Bartlett's essay only drives home, of course, how very few economists — whether in the policy/think tank world or in academia — have been willing to do the same. You have to wonder in particular about the prominent economists who threw their support behind Mitt Romney in his late, unlamented campaign.
 

Frank Rich: America’s Other Original Sin

New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with editor-in-chief Adam Moss about the Newtown tragedy, its political fallout, and our centuries-long worship of the gun.

Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy, was among the 45 percent (!) of Americans that have guns in their homes. So I'm not going to ask you about gun control here; obviously you're for much stricter regulation, as most of your readers are. I want to know your thoughts about the culture of guns in America, and particularly in the last decade, during which public support for gun control has tumbled even as the incidence of mass rampages like Newtown increases, and the American people just get more enamored of their guns. Please try to help me understand why.

The first step on the long path to curing a deep illness in a society is to diagnose it properly and own up to it. We must acknowledge that guns and violence are not some new “modern” problem subject to a quick fix. We must recognize that they have always been intrinsic to the very idea of America and “freedom” — enshrined in our Constitution’s Second Amendment (however one chooses to read it), romanticized in our glorification of both our revolutionary and frontier past, and a staple of our popular culture not just in this era but every era: from James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows through The Birth of a Nation, Zane Grey, Stagecoach and The Wild Bunch, gangster movies and gangsta rap, Bonnie and Clyde and Zero Dark Thirty, The Untouchables and The Sopranos. As Garry Wills wrote over the weekend, in America, the gun is a god, and like most gods, it “cannot be questioned.” And it has rarely been questioned over the course of our history except by the outnumbered and outgunned gun-control advocates who remain largely on the margins of American political power.
 

Wealthiest Kissed, Weakest Kicked: Obama's Ugly 'New Deal' Offers to Cut Social Security

President gives away the store in fiscal negotiations

- Jon Queally, staff writer 

 

Reports indicate that Obama has willingly affronted public opinion, sound economics, and his political base of supporters by agreeing to make significant cuts to Social Security, health programs, education, and other programs while at the same time making some of the most odious benefits for the nation's financial elite permanent.

In a new deal—though certainly out of step with "the New Deal"—offered by the White House late Monday, President Obama showed that he'd rather cut health and social service programs for the nation's poor and elderly than allow tax rates for some of the nation's wealthiest individuals to go up.
 

Kochs, ALEC Top Conservative Forces Behind Right-to-Work in Michigan

Tuesday, 18 December 2012 10:17  
By John Logan, Truthout | Op-Ed 

On Tuesday, Michigan became the nation's 24th state, and the most unionized state, to enact right-to-work legislation. Thousand of protesters failed to dissuade Republican governor Rick Snyder from signing a law that will likely weaken unions and lower wages, but do nothing to help the state's economy. Along with anti-union legislation in other Midwestern States, however, it could transform the national political landscape.

For the past two years, the Governor had publicly stated that "divisive" right-to-work legislation was "not on his agenda." Then, at the last minute, he endorsed the bill because it would protect "worker choice" on union membership and help to grow the Michigan economy - both highly questionable claims.  First, under federal law, neither unions nor employers can require employees to join unions in either the public or private sectors, so Snyder is professing to give employees a right that they already enjoy. The legal question here is whether nonmember employees in unionized workplaces should be required to pay an "agency fee" to the unions that are legally required to cover the cost of negotiating for them. Equally dubious are Snyder's claims that right-to-work will boost the Michigan economy, as research indicates lower wages and poorer labor standards, not greater economic development, are the most likely results of the anti-union legislation.

This Is Not America’s Deal

 By Richard Eskow | December 18, 2012
 
Our leaders in Washington heard from the voters last month. They may need to hear from them again.

According to news reports a budget deal is coalescing around some very unattractive and unwise ideas. The deal’s centerpiece is reportedly the “chained CPI,” a back-door tool for gutting Social Security benefits that also raises taxes on all levels of income – all levels, that is, except the highest.

Monsanto Gets Its Way in Ag Bill

By Jim Goodman, December 13, 2012

“The Farmers Assurance Provision” is the title of a rider, Section 733, inserted into the House of Representatives 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill. Somehow, as a farmer, I don't feel the least bit assured.

The only assurance it provides is that Monsanto and the rest of the agriculture biotech industry will have carte blanche to force the government to allow the planting of their biotech seeds.

Why You Can Kiss Public Education (and the Middle Class) Goodbye

By Thom Hartmann, Sam Sacks

December 14, 2012  |  Quick - when you hear "public housing," what picture jumps into your mind?  Or "public hospital"? 

All around us, our public institutions are disintegrating, and the most important public institution of all – our public education system – is the next to be ghettoized.

Despite several progressive victories this Election Day, there was one significant defeat in Georgia, as voters approved of Constitutional Amendment 1 [3], which changes Georgia’s Constitution to give Republicans in that state the power to create charter schools as part of Georgia’s public education system. The result will be crucial taxpayer dollars being funneled away from free public schools and directed toward brand new, sometimes for-profit, privately-run charter schools.

Even though studies show [4] that costly private schools don’t produce any better educational results than free public schools, for-profit schools have popped up all around the nation in recent years because of how valuable they are to corporate America. In fact, the historic Chicago Teachers Union strike earlier this year was largely in response to the city’s push to open up more charter schools to replace traditional public schools.

Dean Baker: Serious People Could be Seriously Embarrassed: Why It's Important that We Not Go Off the "Fiscal Cliff"

Friday, 14 December 2012 09:51

Much of the media has spent the last month and a half hyping the impact of the "fiscal cliff," the tax increases and spending cuts that are scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. They have been warning of a recession and other dire consequences if a deal is not struck by December 31st. As we are now getting down to the final two weeks and the prospect that there will not be a deal becomes more likely, many in the media are getting more frantic.

What they fear is yet another huge embarrassment, if people see the deadline come and go and the economy doesn't crash and the world doesn't end. The reality, as all budget analysts know, is that no one will see more taxes coming out of their paychecks until they actually get paid later in the month. If a deal is imminent or actually struck in the first weeks of January then most workers will never be taxed at the higher Clinton era rate. They will be taxed in accordance with the deal that President Obama reaches with the Republicans.