“Maybe I Am A Welfare Queens” Wonders Cliven Bundy (by Sam Seder) Sam Seder comments on CNN interview with Cliven Bundy and points out that he actually more of a thief then a welfare queen. The ranchers that get subsidized grazing are the welfare queens. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Category: politics
Is David Brooks an idiot?
If you are a young professional in a major city, you experience inequality firsthand. But the inequality you experience most acutely is not inequality down, toward the poor; it’s inequality up, toward the rich.
You go to fund-raisers or school functions and there are always hedge fund managers and private equity people around.
Is Mr. Brooks an idiot? Does he realize that for 98% of the population, this is simply not true.
The inequality problem is not between the 90->99% and the 1%. To think that is to basically discount 90% of the population. The 90% plus of the population that simply doesn’t see the inequality first hand and his eyes, isn’t even worth bringing into the discussion.
emphasize that the historically proven way to reduce inequality is lifting people from the bottom with human capital reform, not pushing down the top. In short, counter angry progressivism with unifying uplift.
Piketty argues that r > g, that return from financial capital is greater than overall economic growth. Brooks totally ignores this point in his criticism of Piketty.
He argues for unifying uplift; a phrase that sounds like it comes from an American Apparel bra ad. What exactly is unifying uplift? If he is talking about increasing social spending, why not actually say that? Is he really just saying we can stop the formation of vast oligarchies if we come up with the right platitudes?
Welfare Queens in Cowboy Hats
Let’s dispense with niceties: Bundy is a freeloading scofflaw, a welfare queen in a Stetson who claimed what wasn’t his. He took subsidies from U.S. taxpayers and refused to pay the $1.2 million he owed for using federal – make that our – land.
Nice to see someone say the obvious.
Ha-Joon Chang: Economics Is A Political Argument
Ha-Joon Chang: Economics Is A Political Argument
I am seeking to debunk this widespread view, propagated by the current generation of economists, that somehow you can neatly separate economics from politics.
I don’t agree with everything he says, but he makes some amazing points. I agree with his main point. Worth a read.
Politics by Subpoena: How Darrell Issa Abuses His Power, and Why
Politics by Subpoena: How Darrell Issa Abuses His Power, and Why
Issa has been engaged in nonstop investigations since taking power after the 2010 election, drilling into everything from the Fast and Furious operation to Benghazi to Solyndra to Freddie and Fannie to the alleged politicization of the IRS to the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov. He’s talked of finding “Obama’s Watergate,” but that’s never happened and his investigations come up empty handed again and again.
What is so frustrating is that rather than investigate clear and admitted lies by NSA and CIA spokespeople, Issa is spending time and tax payer money on nonsense issues he imagines will look good on fox news.
A Nation of Takers?
I worry about those tycoons sponging off government. Won’t our pampering damage their character? Won’t they become addicted to the entitlement culture, demanding subsidies even for their yachts?
The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity
The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity
One problem with the conservative vision of charity is that it assumes the government hasn’t been playing a role in the management of risk and social insurance from the beginning. It imagines that there is some golden period to return to, free from any and all government interference.
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As for social insurance specifically, the historian Michael Katz has documented that there has always been a mixed welfare state made up of private and public organizations throughout our country’s history. Outdoor relief, or cash assistance outside of institutions, was an early legal responsibility of American towns, counties, and parishes from colonial times through the early nineteenth century. During this period, these issues were usually dealt with through questions of “settlement.” A community had a responsibility to provide relief to its own needy, native members, defined as those who had a settlement there. This became increasingly difficult with an industrialized society, as people moved to and fro looking for work and were forced out of communities when they couldn’t find any.
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political scientist Theda Skocpol has documented, there were also multiple examples of state-issued social insurance programs before the New Deal. In the wake of the Civil War, Congress established an elaborate system of pensions for veterans. At its height in 1910, this de facto disability and old-age pension system delivered benefits to more than 25 percent of all American men over 65, accounting for a quarter of the federal government’s expenditures. Between 1911 and 1920, 40 states passed laws establishing “mothers’ pensions” for single women with children. These programs provided payments for needy widowed mothers in order to allow them to provide for their children.
Konczal corrects some basic misconceptions about the role of the state in social insurance prior to the new deal. Worth reading.
Tea Party and Wall Street Are Getting Along Just Fine
Tea Party and Wall Street Are Getting Along Just Fine
it’s hard to find where the Tea Party and Wall Street disagree. Tea Party senators like Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, plus conservative senators like David Vitter, have rallied around a one-line bill repealing the entirety of Dodd-Frank and replacing it with nothing. In the House, Republicans are attacking new derivatives regulations, all the activities of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the existence of the Volcker Rule, and the ability of the FDIC to wind down a major financial institution, while relentlessly attacking strong regulators and cutting regulatory funding. This is Wall Street’s wet dream of a policy agenda. Note the lack of any Republican counter-proposal or framework. The few that have been suggested, such as David Camp’s bank tax or Vitter’s higher capital requirements have gotten no additional support from the right. House Republicans attacked Camp’s plan publicly, and Vitter’s bill lost one of its only two other Republican supporters immediately after it was announced. So why is there a lack of an agenda? Because the Tea Party thinks that Wall Street has done nothing wrong.
Promoting Evolution Is ‘An Act Of Disloyalty To America’
Promoting Evolution Is ‘An Act Of Disloyalty To America’
“American political philosophy is based on the belief that the world was created by God in six days, and that this creation event occurred about 6,000 years ago,” he explains, adding that news reports describing the Earth as millions of years old were either ignorant or “anti-American.”
Where is genesis mentioned in the constitution?
Paul Ryan’s Irish Amnesia
What infuriated Mitchel was that the Irish were starving to death at the very time that rich stores of grain and fat livestock owned by absentee landlords were being shipped out of the country. The food was produced by Irish hands on Irish lands but would not go into Irish mouths, for fear that such “charity” would upset the free market, and make people lazy.
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“We have this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In other words, these people are bred poor and lazy.
Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes — 19th-century England. The Irish national character, Trevelyan confided to a fellow aristocrat, was “defective.” The hungry millions were “a selfish, perverse, and turbulent” people, said the man in charge of relieving their plight.
Worth a read. The inference to suffering on the right is amazing.