It just might be the worst endorsement ever. Seventeen top economists were asked who would be better for the economy: Romney or Obama. It was clearly viewed as a question of the lesser of two evils by the economists. Nine out of 17 economists selected Romney but Bill Watkins, executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at Cal Lutheran University, selected Romney with the world’s best example of damning with faint praise: “Romney’s policies would likely be less bad for the economy than Obama’s.” Like five others, Gary Rosenberger of EconoPlay, simply refused to “pick your poison” between the two men.
I love “polls” with just 17 individuals with at least five refusing to give you an answer.
Of course, Obama did fare worse with the economists but the survey shows that economists, like many Americans, do not see a strong choice between the two men. The result of a monopoly is often less choice and that goes for business or for politics when only two parties control the nation.
Source: CNN
Bron,
You cannot leave the regulation of business strictly to the courts. And as I said before, you don’t understand the documents in question in context. The Commerce Clause and the attendant jurisprudence allows for the regulation of business whether you like it or not.
“I am not a libertarian, I do not think no government is a good thing. You have painted me as an anarchist, I am not.”
No, you repeatedly paint yourself as such by your pronouncements.
“I am for limited government as provided for in our founding documents.”
Which you clearly don’t properly understand.
“It is you who misunderstands the general welfare clause. If you look at it the way you do, the entire Constitution is voided. Now it could be that some slick proto-socialist slid one by Madison and the others.”
Really? Because I passed doctoral level Constitutional Law classes as part of my education. Did you? Actually, I do understand the general welfare clause, Bron. That you disagree with what I’ve tried to teach you about it is your failing, not mine, and as you demonstrate here shortly that failure is based in your Objectivism. Do I come to your job and tell you don’t understand Boyle’s Law or how materials compression works? No. Because that is your expertise. The law is mine. Next time you go to an internist’s, why don’t you tell him or her that you disagree with his suggested course of treatment and would rather do it your way instead. See how that works out for you.
“There is only one principle on which to base a moral society and that is on the principle of individual rights.”
A pronouncement of ideology, but a fact and not a fact reflected in the Constitution. It is a document of social charter, a codification of our social compact, that begins with “We the People”, Bron. The Constitution is about individual rights, but it is not just about individual rights. Your understanding of the function of government as described in the Preamble and the Articles is deeply, deeply flawed. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The very first function of government listed in the document is establishing justice. Not just criminal justice. Why? Because the very next function of government described is to insure domestic tranquility.
domestic \də-ˈmes-tik\. adj.,
2: of, relating to, or originating within a country and especially one’s own country
tranquillity \tran-ˈkwi-lə-tē, traŋ-\, n.,
: the quality or state of being tranquil
tranquil \ˈtraŋ-kwəl, ˈtran-\
1a : free from agitation of mind or spirit b : free from disturbance or turmoil
2: unvarying in aspect : steady, stable
Insure a state of the nation – our society – is free from agitation. One of the primary ways agitation in a society is brought about is by social injustice. It’s the thing revolutions are made of. It’s the thing our revolution was made of.
How do we promote justice in general (both criminal and social)? By providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare (as I’ve explained it to you a hundred times at this point, not your ideologically distorted misunderstanding of the concept) and securing the blessings of liberty (those individual rights you so myopically focus on).
The pursuit of justice requires that the greater good (the general welfare) be balanced out against the pursuit of individual liberty. This dynamic is precisely what the Founders intended. If you only see the individual liberty side of the equation you are by default an anarchist because you cannot have a social compact in a state of absolute liberty found in the state of nature. The essential element of all social compacts – of every form of government there is – is the mutual limitations of rights and contribution from individuals to be used for the mutual benefit of all of society. The Founders put the dynamic as a balance between the greater good and the rights of the individual because that dynamic was the one most likely to ensure liberty and justice for all. They wanted an equitable and egalitarian form of government. Why? They had seen enough inequity and feudalistic tyranny from King George.
“What is the greater good, you cannot maximize freedom against such a nebulous term. The greater good can mean whatever 51% of the people say it is.”
The greater good is no less nebulous a term than individual liberties. I wrote an entire article on how to evaluate laws to decide if they were good or not using the framework of soft rule utilitarianism that you not only failed to understand, you spent several hundred comments arguing about it and doing so quite poorly – again, primarily because you are ideologically blinded by Rand and the idea that collective society does not exist when collectivism is the very essence of society. The greater good is the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of individuals. Your complaint is addressed not at this issue, but at democracy itself. Good can be defined by consensus. Your problem is with the mathematics of majority rule in a democracy. Feel free to leave any time you like because that is your only option considering our Founders created a specifically representative democratic republican form of government in the Constitution.
“The foundation of our Constitution is individual rights, not collective rights, not civil rights. But rights which come from our nature as human beings. You cannot balance the 2, the greater “good” will always skew toward government control.”
Clearly, no, it’s not. Individual rights are a foundation of the Constitution, but it is not the only foundation of the Constitution. It is a complex document addressing many topics, from forms to individual rights, to the duties and function of government to society, to building safeguards against tyranny from both the government and from individuals. It is a living document. It is an imperfect and incomplete document. It is, however, a perfect aspirational template for building a just and equitable society, but the cost of seeking that aspiration is constant vigilance.
As to your puerile parroting at the end? “You often want the right things, Gene, except your ideas are ruinous, as we have so aptly seen in the last 100 plus years.” Actually, what you’ve seen for the last 100 plus years is the erosion of the ideas I stand for in some respects and the elevation of those ideas in some respects. Our form of governance is dynamic by design. But if you want to think that safer workplaces, the 40 hour work week, child labor laws and civil rights are a failure? Well, that says more about you than it does about anyone else. Then again, I do recall you once proclaiming that you were proud to exploit others because of your manifestly flawed Randian ideology. Most shameful and degrading. Selfish and stupid too. “Progressive ideology gained a foothold in the last decade of the 19th century and we have been paying for it ever since.” Simply your opinion with no proof at all to back up. My statements are based on the plain language and jurisprudence surrounding the Constitution. Yours are based on fatally flawed misinterpretations of the law (in your case usually cherry picked too) as distorted by your ideology that is based on the work of a demonstrable crazy person, Ayn Rand.
You are free to choose and believe what you like. As a matter of historical, legal and evidentiary fact, that does not mean what you believe is so. You chose Objectivism as the basis for your ethos. Others here have told me that they think your blindness to the flaw of your system of choice is because you are so heavily invested into the ideas that you cannot possibly consider that your “ethical” foundation such as it is might be wrong as a survival strategy when dealing with our species on a social and macroeconomic level. They may be on to something there. However, the why is not as important as the effect: ideological blindness and ideologically induced ignorance used to rationalize your bad choice(s). This is often what happens when people pick an ideology by rote rather than do the heavy intellectual lifting required to formulate their own ideology based upon accumulated knowledge and evidentiary fact.
But you also use the scientific method backwards too, so I can’t say I’m surprised you get law backwards by inserting your ideological lens between you and the facts.
You don’t understand the law, Bron. That’s the simple fact you are unwilling to accept. You aren’t even a competent let alone a gifted layman on the subject. Gyges understands the law a hundred times better than you do and he’s never taken a law school class in his life. Why? He’s simply a better reader than you and he prefers source over derivative materials so he can make up his own mind without anyone else’s filter being in the way. You half understand a few limited topics and most you simply don’t understand at all and what knowledge you have is almost exclusively from secondary sources. Mainly, you don’t understand the Constitution and the role of government in society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWcVtWennr0
“[T]he reason that I said that I think it is the most significant problem that we’ve got is that I think that some of the aspects of current American government that people on both sides find frustrating are in part a function of the inability of people to understand how government can and should function. It is a product of civic ignorance.” – Justice Souter
You are a fine example of what Justice Souter worries about. You lack knowledge, education, or awareness of which you speak yet you insist that you understand it better than trained professionals on the subject. You are exactly like a man going to build a house from the roof down: ignorant if you think the Constitution is only about individual rights. You know just enough to convince yourself you know what you are talking about but not enough to know what you don’t know. There is nothing more dangerous than ignorance except perhaps ignorance backed by distorted half-knowledge.
But on the upside, at least you’re consistent.
“Then you are for government intervention, just good and reasonable government intervention.”
Sure, through the court system to protect the rights of individuals.
“That is contrary to your past statements of Libertarian political dogma. Herein lies the contradiction in your views that you do not yourself see. ”
I am not a libertarian, I do not think no government is a good thing. You have painted me as an anarchist, I am not. I am for limited government as provided for in our founding documents. Which I believe are for the protection of individual rights. Rights I might add which do not come from government but are natural rights.
This is why you could not assimilate the information of the “Good Law/Bad Law” column into your worldview. If functionality is king then utility is his crown when evaluating whether a law is good or bad. You operate in a land where the government was never designed to operate as your ideology of choice dictates.
I fully understand utilitarianism and reject it. Pragmatism and utilitarianism are death to a culture.
“Or should we discuss your material misunderstanding of the general welfare clause again?”
It is you who misunderstands the general welfare clause. If you look at it the way you do, the entire Constitution is voided. Now it could be that some slick proto-socialist slid one by Madison and the others.
“Or what the proper role of government is in society and under the restrictions of the Constitution and the spirit of the DOI? You don’t see some of the contradictions in your own thought because in part you do not understand the Constitution in proper context but rather through filters provided by those with an ideological agenda. ”
The restrictions and the spirit are a foundation of individual rights. Nothing else can be construed from the founding documents.
“That’s not how I (or indeed most) people with law degrees studied the documents and jurisprudence in question. We tend to understand them primarily objectively (in the scientific use of the word) instead of primarily ideologically.”
How do you even know you learned them properly? You, really dont know. What you have learned is someone’s opinion of what the founders wrote, interpreted by judges who are human and in all too many instances were engaging in personal agendas.
“This is not your fault other than your poor choice in source material for learning, as Justice Souter put in recently in a clip provided by Dredd, what government can do and how it should properly work.”
In almost every instance, I have gone to source material, letters, notes, minutes, Locke, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, etc. The founders wrote plainly enough for their words to be understood by the common man.
“You cannot learn that properly when you come in through the door of ideology. Think of law like the study of metaphysics within the field of theology. You cannot properly understand the entire scope of the subject of metaphysics if you are bound by a particular religious dogma. I saw this all the time in the comparative religion courses I took. Someone would come into a metaphysics lecture or debate and simple be unable or unwilling to comprehend a metaphysical construct that was contrary to the religious tradition in which they were raised. Its the same thing for political ideology and the study of law. Your understanding of it will always be distorted unless you learn the underlying fundamentals – the “metaphysics” of law – without being constrained by previously adopted assumptions that come with ideology and its dogma.”
There is only one principle on which to base a moral society and that is on the principle of individual rights.
“You think I’m just Rand bashing when I tell you that the greatest favor your could do yourself is to abandon Objectivism as a base/touchpoint for your ideology but I’m not. I can bash her on many valid independent grounds. I tell you this because its a distortion filter preventing you from learning properly. I’d tell you the same thing if your understanding of the law was distorted by RCC dogma, or fundamentalism of any flavor, or any other factor which impairs your understanding of what governance is and how, what and why it should be done properly to ensure the balance of maximum freedoms is balanced against the necessities of the greater good (something your ideology won’t even allow you to acknowledge exists). Because that is what the promise of the Constitution is: maximum liberty balanced against the greater good. Justice for all.”
What is the greater good, you cannot maximize freedom against such a nebulous term. The greater good can mean whatever 51% of the people say it is.
“You often want the right things, Bron, but your ideas of how to get there are ruinous because of the distortions of your ideology. To put it in an analogy you might understand better, your improper basic understanding of how government should work and what it can and cannot do often leads you to a solution analogous to a builder starting a project with the roof instead of the foundation.”
The foundation of our Constitution is individual rights, not collective rights, not civil rights. But rights which come from our nature as human beings. You cannot balance the 2, the greater “good” will always skew toward government control.
You often want the right things, Gene, except your ideas are ruinous, as we have so aptly seen in the last 100 plus years. Progressive ideology gained a foothold in the last decade of the 19th century and we have been paying for it ever since.
I think Bron is closer to the intention of the constitution than Mr. Gene is. The general welfare clause is not an excuse to write any legislation the govt deems good for the general welfare. Like the commerce clause & the necessary & proper cause, liberals & conservatives justify govt intervention anyway possible. There is nothing wrong with states individually doing the things the liberals argue for on this site quite often. The constitution was written to strictly limit the federal govt, protect liberty & promote free trade among the states. 98% of what it’s doing now isn’t constitutional. States should be left to things like health care, social security, etc. That way people could say I don’t like living under this nanny state and choose one that was more free or vice versa. I’ve read Gene’s comments many times, you seem to view the constitution as some fluid document and could justify any law which is absurd.
That quickly becomes the domain of tyrants, like forcing people to buy health care.
Why so many people here discuss Ayn Rand is also puzzling, she is one voice in the libertarian movement, and I would argue not a great one. Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Block, these are the libertarians you should be reading before you criticize libertarians.
Libertarians whole argument is that if I can’t steal, murder, or hurt others, than the govt should not be able to either. The left bent on this site is blatant all the time, half the time I read the articles just to read the comments of the bleeding hearts. Collectivism is the problem, limited govt is a blessing, free people make their on choices with their money, if people like it, it will succeed, if they don’t it won’t. Stealing from people via the govt to teach them to be reliant on govt is no answer to any social ill.
Now I’m sure I’ll hear the wrath of the lib’s on this site, but your false idealism about the role of govt is continuing to bankrupt you’r country. I think that speaks for itself. Hopefully, common sense, and reason would dictate, that strictly limited govt, and free people create the most prosperity, which is why America became great, why the so called left has turned to this socialist ideology, and the right a more facist ideology I’m not sure. But both sides endorse collectivism, which should have been completely discredited by now as an abject failure.
Professor,
There is a damn choice.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/107237/the-romney-recession?utm_source=The+New+Republic&utm_campaign=d041546aeb-TNR_Daily_100112&utm_medium=email
Only sociopaths would like the Ayn Rand policies of the GOP.
Cal Lutheran? I just don’t get the pol. Who was polled? 5 put of 17 said go away. Wow what stats.
The economic policy of Romney is an austerity plan. The economic policy of Obama is an austerity plan. Naked Capitalism does a really good job at looking into the details of all this and I recommend reading there.
My first thought is that commerce does not function without rule of law. Neither Obama or Romney represent a return to the rule of law. They represent crony capitalism. This cannot work out well in any nation people want to live in. It is not working well, right now, in ours.
These “gentlemen” represent their donors-people who thrive in a casino capitalist world. We are already in a recession, in some places it is clearly a depression. Most people who are paying attention know we are due for another crash from the investment bubbles created after 08. Romney will not stop that crash. Obama will not stop that crash. Their donors benefit from the crash and the complete chaos created by lack of rule of law.
Some of the Europeans have fought back. They have let those who gambled take their loss. It is a model that would work here but it will take the people to implement it. USGinc., no matter whose face is fronting for it, has no interest is a functioning economy.
Paul Ryan On Why He Didn’t Discuss Tax Plan Math: ‘Everyone Would Start Changing The Channel’
The Huffington Post
By Luke Johnson
Posted: 10/01/2012 12
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/01/paul-ryan-tax-plan_n_1929142.html
After a contentious back-and-forth with Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday,” GOP vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) explained the standoff on Monday by saying that he declined to discuss the math behind the Romney-Ryan tax plan because viewers would be bored by it.
“I like Chris; I didn’t want to get into all of the math on this because everyone would start changing the channel,” he told Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes.
“When you’re offering very specific, bold solutions, confusion can be your enemy’s best weapon,” he said later.
On Sunday, Wallace pointed out that the candidate hadn’t offered the specific math behind his tax plan. In response, Ryan said, “I don’t have the … It would take me too long to go through all of the math.” Ryan then explained the general outline of the tax plan, including a reduction of rates by 20 percent across the board, the end of unspecified deductions for high-income earners, and the continuation of deductions for middle-income earners.
Romney and Ryan have said that the plan will be revenue-neutral, arguing that lower tax rates will encourage economic growth and therefore increase tax receipts. They also say that closing loopholes for high-income earners will bring in revenue.
However, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center analyzed the plan and found that Romney would have no choice but to eliminate popular middle-income deductions if he wanted to cut rates and maintain revenue neutrality. The authors of the report specifically rejected that lowering tax rates would encourage economic growth, citing estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
In a story in The New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that cutting specific tax deductions that Romney mentioned during a closed-door fundraiser — including second-home mortgage interest deductions and limits on state and local property tax deductions for high-income earners — would only raise a fraction of the revenue lost in across-the-board cuts.
When discussing Medicare on the radio show on Monday, Ryan dismissed swing state polls that show the Republican campaign to be losing ground on the issue with voters. “We were actually winning this Medicare debate in the beginning; after I was announced we went at this issue very hard,” he said. “The president put up ads literally telling his falsehoods about what our Medicare plan is.” Ryan continued that he hoped voters would see through the ads.
So let’s see — slightly more than 50% of these economists picked Mittens…. Hmmm
These economists — while smart guys I am sure — have never really seen what MITTENS REALLY did to these companies !!!
This is a guy who wrecked companies, not built them up. The Staples story is an aberration.
What he did do (while at Bain) was realize that wrecking companies was easier and much more lucrative than trying to build companies.
Bain would accumulate say 20 Million Dollars from the likes of CALPERS — (the big CALIF. STATE PENSION FUND), go to their buddies at CitiGroup or JP MORGAN CHASE and borrow say an additional 400 million dollars — they would then buy a controlling interest in companies like DUNKIN’ DONUTS or KB Toys (saddling the target company with the $400 million dollar loan — I mean you didn’t think MITTENS was going to hold that loan, did you?? )— they would improve the cash flow by laying off workers, chopping inventory and selling off any good assets they could. They then forced the respective companies to take out additional loans — once again from their buddies at Citi or Chase.
Citi and Chase were happy to oblige. They would take their interest cut up front — so if DUNKIN Donuts borrowed $100 Million, Citi would in reality only give them $90 Mill but DUNKIN was on the hook for $100 Mill.
Once this additional loan was in place, MITTENS and his Merry Men at BAIN — 1. BRIBED Upper Management with hefty bonuses so they would go along with the “THEFT” and 2. Siphoned off most of the remaining 90 Mill Loan.
It is estimated that DUNKIN Donuts must sell like 2 Million cups of coffee a month continuously to service the debt load that MITTENS and his Merry Men left them.
Think about that the next time you buy a cup of coffee at Dunkin’s.
Job Creator — more like JOB DESTROYER.
RE: the Dunkin’s story and KB TOYS — see Rolling Stone Magazine article by Mike Taibbi on 13 Sept 2012 if I am not mistaken.
I’m going to present a theory advanced by Andrew Gelman, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University.
He calls it his “counter-counterhistory” in answer to “Obamanomics: A Counterhistory” by David Leonhardt (Washington bureau chief of The New York Times and an experienced economics reporter).
I’ll cite the article for it was fascinating reading. A link to Mr. Leonhardt’s article is found in the opening paragraph.
From the article:
“My counter-counterhistory, though, is that the Obama team was taking out insurance against the opposite possibility—the “President Carter scenario” of a fast recovery followed by recession. The one thing they didn’t want to happen was to see the economy decline during 2011-2012. So I wonder if, amid all their disappointment about the scaling back of the stimulus package, they were somewhat relieved because they didn’t want the recovery to happen too soon.
I have no idea what was going on in the conversations of the policy team, but it seems reasonable to me that my counter-counterhistory is part of the story, given the clear parallels with the Reagan presidency.”
http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/10/01/obamanomics-a-counter-counterhistory/
Well lets see since the last three and a half years. Gas costs twice as much, Welfare recipients are up, law suits aganist the states are dramatically up, are we better off than we were? and the national debt only went up by about one third in three years. I know it’s all bush’s fault.
elaine:
I hardly call Paul Ryan a reactionary. Look at his spending cuts vs. Obama’s, hardly a difference.
I am having a hard time voting for the 2 of them. And may yet vote for Gary Johnson.
“Creating a planned economy introduces a single point of failure that affects the entire marketplace.”
I think that depends on the particular nature of the market in question and whether the benefits of central planning outweigh the costs and/or risks. As I’ve said many times before, the free market mechanism is fine for most of the stuff we sell each other. There are a few market segments though that lend themselves to the efficiencies created by centralization. Such as health care insurance. The free market creates huge amounts of waste in the form of redundancy, paperwork costs, planned profits and executive compensation in the provision of health care insurance thus wasting a lot of money that could be and should be spent on patient care. Not everything should be done on a for profit basis. That being said, the initial statement about free markets stand. Economic models are tools in a tool box. Not every tool is suitable for every job.
“There are more than two evils”
Alice Walker
Politicians are not the answer when people seek economic improvement. The only thing they can do to benefit it is to get rid of the bad laws that have been enacted and get out of the way afterwards. There is a place for a reasonable amount of regulation to protect against fraud and abuses though.
Creating a planned economy introduces a single point of failure that affects the entire marketplace. Whereas, if numerous independent forces are at work, if one fails the rest fulfill the needs.
Romney: The Overwhelming Choice of 9 Out of 17 Economists?
***********************
Thomas Carlyle didn’t call it the “dismal science” for nothing.
Its not news, its CNN. There is no way to evaluate who these 17 were or if there were even real people. Like all news agencies CNN in heavily invested in keeping the ‘horse race’ alive as long as possible. Part of that is the myth that there really isn’t any difference between the candidates.
What Mitt Romney Really RepresentBy Robert Reich
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2012
http://robertreich.org/post/31998690766
Excerpt:
It’s not just his giant income or the low tax rates he pays on it. And it’s not just the videotape of him berating almost half of America, or his endless gaffes, or his regressive budget policies.
It’s something that unites all of this, and connects it to the biggest underlying problem America faces — the unprecedented concentration of wealth and power at the very top that’s undermining our economy and destroying our democracy.
Romney just released his 2011 tax returns, showing he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million of income last year — for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent. (He released his 2010 return in January, showing he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent.)
America has had hugely wealthy presidents before — think of Teddy Roosevelt and his distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt; or John F. Kennedy, beneficiary of father Joe’s fortune.
But here’s the difference. These men were champions of the working class and the poor, and were considered traitors to their own class. Teddy Roosevelt railed against the “malefactors of great wealth,” and he busted up the oil and railroad trusts.
FDR thundered against the “economic royalists,” raised taxes on the wealthy, and gave average working people the right to form unions — along with Social Security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, and a 40-hour workweek.
But Mitt Romney is not a traitor to his class. He is a sponsor of his class. He wants to cut their taxes by $3.7 trillion over the next decade, and hasn’t even specified what “loopholes” he’d close to make up for this gigantic giveaway.
And he wants to cut benefits that almost everyone else relies on — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and housing assistance.
He’s even a warrior for his class, telling his wealthy followers his job isn’t to worry about the “47 percent” of Americans who won’t vote for him, whom he calls “victims” and he berates for not paying federal incomes taxes and taking federal handouts.
Mitt Romney’s Real Agenda
If you want to understand Romney’s game plan, just look at what Republicans have been doing in Congress
By TIM DICKINSON
SEPTEMBER 28, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/mitt-romneys-real-agenda-20120928
Excerpt:
It was tempting to dismiss Mitt Romney’s hard-right turn during the GOP primaries as calculated pandering. In the general election – as one of his top advisers famously suggested – Romney would simply shake the old Etch A Sketch and recast himself as the centrist who governed Massachusetts. But with the selection of vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the shape-shifting Romney has locked into focus – cementing himself as the frontman for the far-right partisans responsible for Washington’s gridlock.
There is no longer any ambiguity about the path that Romney would pursue as president, because it’s the same trajectory charted by Ryan, the architect of the House GOP’s reactionary agenda since the party’s takeover in 2010. “Picking Ryan as vice president outlines the future of the next four or eight years of a Romney administration,” GOP power broker Grover Norquist exulted in August. “Ryan has outlined a plan that has support in the Republican House and Senate. You have a real sense of where Romney’s going.” In fact, Norquist told party activists back in February, the true direction of the GOP is being mapped out by congressional hardliners. All the Republicans need to realize their vision, he said, is a president “with enough working digits to handle a pen.”
The GOP legislation awaiting Romney’s signature isn’t simply a return to the era of George W. Bush. From abortion rights and gun laws to tax giveaways and energy policy, it’s far worse. Measures that have already sailed through the Republican House would roll back clean-air protections, gut both Medicare and Medicaid, lavish trillions in tax cuts on billionaires while raising taxes on the poor, and slash everything from college aid to veteran benefits. In fact, the tenets of Ryan Republicanism are so extreme that they even offend the pioneers of trickle-down economics. “Ryan takes out the ax and goes after programs for the poor – which is the last thing you ought to cut,” says David Stockman, who served as Ronald Reagan’s budget director. “It’s ideology run amok.”
And Romney has now adopted every letter of the Ryan agenda. Take it from Ed Gillespie, senior adviser to the campaign: “If the Ryan budget had come to his desk as president,” Gillespie said of Romney, “he would have signed it, of course.”
A look at the bills that Republicans have passed since they took control of the House in 2010 offers a clear blueprint of the agenda that a Romney administration would be primed to establish:
FEWER JOBS
Republicans in Congress have repeatedly put ideology before creating jobs. For more than a year, they’ve refused to put President Obama’s jobs bill up for a vote, even though projections show it would create nearly 2 million jobs without adding a penny to the deficit. The reason? The $447 billion bill would be entirely paid for through a surtax on millionaires.
In addition, the Republicans’ signature initiative last year – the debt-ceiling standoff – was a jobs-killer, applying the brakes to the economic recovery. From February through April 2011, the economy had been adding 200,000 jobs a month. But during the uncertainty created by the congressional impasse, job creation was cut in half for every month the standoff continued. And according to the Economic Policy Institute, the immediate spending cuts required by the debt-ceiling compromise are likely to shrink the economy by $43 billion this year, killing nearly 323,000 jobs.
What Ryan markets as his “Path to Prosperity” would make things even worse: The draconian cuts in his latest budget, according to the EPI, would put an additional drag on the economy, destroying another 4.1 million jobs by 2014.
Bron,
Then you are for government intervention, just good and reasonable government intervention. That is contrary to your past statements of Libertarian political dogma. Herein lies the contradiction in your views that you do not yourself see. This is why you could not assimilate the information of the “Good Law/Bad Law” column into your worldview. If functionality is king then utility is his crown when evaluating whether a law is good or bad. You operate in a land where the government was never designed to operate as your ideology of choice dictates. Or should we discuss your material misunderstanding of the general welfare clause again? Or what the proper role of government is in society and under the restrictions of the Constitution and the spirit of the DOI? You don’t see some of the contradictions in your own thought because in part you do not understand the Constitution in proper context but rather through filters provided by those with an ideological agenda. That’s not how I (or indeed most) people with law degrees studied the documents and jurisprudence in question. We tend to understand them primarily objectively (in the scientific use of the word) instead of primarily ideologically. This is not your fault other than your poor choice in source material for learning, as Justice Souter put in recently in a clip provided by Dredd, what government can do and how it should properly work. You cannot learn that properly when you come in through the door of ideology. Think of law like the study of metaphysics within the field of theology. You cannot properly understand the entire scope of the subject of metaphysics if you are bound by a particular religious dogma. I saw this all the time in the comparative religion courses I took. Someone would come into a metaphysics lecture or debate and simple be unable or unwilling to comprehend a metaphysical construct that was contrary to the religious tradition in which they were raised. Its the same thing for political ideology and the study of law. Your understanding of it will always be distorted unless you learn the underlying fundamentals – the “metaphysics” of law – without being constrained by previously adopted assumptions that come with ideology and its dogma.
You think I’m just Rand bashing when I tell you that the greatest favor your could do yourself is to abandon Objectivism as a base/touchpoint for your ideology but I’m not. I can bash her on many valid independent grounds. I tell you this because its a distortion filter preventing you from learning properly. I’d tell you the same thing if your understanding of the law was distorted by RCC dogma, or fundamentalism of any flavor, or any other factor which impairs your understanding of what governance is and how, what and why it should be done properly to ensure the balance of maximum freedoms is balanced against the necessities of the greater good (something your ideology won’t even allow you to acknowledge exists). Because that is what the promise of the Constitution is: maximum liberty balanced against the greater good. Justice for all.
You often want the right things, Bron, but your ideas of how to get there are ruinous because of the distortions of your ideology. To put it in an analogy you might understand better, your improper basic understanding of how government should work and what it can and cannot do often leads you to a solution analogous to a builder starting a project with the roof instead of the foundation.
And you know how well that turns out.