This is from Nicholas Eberstadt at the American Enterprise Institute, who thinks America is doomed and bemoans conservatives’ apparent inability to save it:
“Of the many factors accountable for the political failure of the conservative tendency since Reagan, one of the most striking is a curious incuriosity about matters empirical: a peculiar inattentiveness to the way the world really works…There seems to be a tremendous temptation nowadays for conservatives to retreat into their own alternative reality, their own preferred universe where their own preferred opinions are supported by their own preferred facts…That temptation may have consolations–but it spells the death of honest thinking. Our country confronts fearsome problems. It desperately needs a conservative tendency that can, for a start, call the animals by their proper names.”
The whole article is here:
http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/what-is-the-future-of-conservatism-eberstadt/
I don’t know much at all about Nicholas Eberstadt–I think he’s written a book called A NATION OF TAKERS, about our entitlement mentality/crisis–or where he gets off making such an accusation. But there it is, for what it’s worth.
I think Nicholas Eberstadt is mostly right.
The overwhelming bulk of Conservative ideas and idealism came from the Libertarians. Aside from the Libertarians, a large segment of today’s Conservatives are rigidly religious, socially intolerant and mindlessly reactionary – seeking validation in being the antithesis of what they define as “liberal.”
I’ve struggled with ideological identity for most of my life. I am drawn to what seems the RIGHTNESS of Libertarian thought, but I have to admit to having some very powerful and innate fascistic tendencies….one is constantly struggling against the other.
Historically fascists are innately socialistic….Hitler, Mao, Stalin, etc.
For me, seeing New York City descend into violent chaos in the early 1990s under the incompetence of David Dinkins (2500+ murders/year at its peak) and seeing Giuliani and Bratton (MAINLY Bill Bratton) turn the city around virtually overnight had me re-thinking the efficacy of Libertarianism and embracing, more and more Giuliani’s “Big Government Conservatism.”
That ideological reallignment only intensified after 9/11 (I lost 47 friends of the 343 FDNY members killed that day). But since then, I’ve found myself becoming more and more Libertarian once again, seeing the inevitable abuses of the state….stop & frisks work BUT they are police state tactics, disparities in drug crimes penalties (via thew now defunct “Rockefeller Drug Laws”) was an injustice, HOWEVER, I STILL support the NSA Surveillance Programs, the most of the Patriot Act provisions, the killing of targeted civilians who’ve given direct aid to al Qaeda without due process or habeus corpus and the use of rendition for enhanced interrogations, though I’m open to reconsideration on all those issues. It MUST BE noted that Barack Obama and the current administration support ALL of those things as well.
I’m very much at odds with “liberals” who espouse larger government and a less market-oriented approach to the economy, I am also at odds with those who reflexively oppose abortion, think gay unions are an abomination and oppose “crony Capitalism ONLY when the crony’s they like, orapprove of (for some unknown reason) are not the ones benefitting.
I don’t fit in much with either camp, but that’s OK, I never liked joining gangs anyway.
JMK: “Go your own way,” as the great philosopher Fleetwood Mac advised. I think that what Eberstadt describes–people retreating into a separate reality complete with their own set of preferred opinions and facts–is a temptation for all of us, not just conservatives by any means. I’m fairly sure that the “ideal society” (hypothetically, of course) is some combination of liberal, conservative, and libertarian ideas/policies, the kind of eclectic synthesis you’ve been working at; but each group thinks it has a monopoly on wisdom, and rarely will they agree to “come, let us reason together.” By the way–I had not known of your personal losses on 9/11: completely horrendous, and I can’t imagine what it must have been like.
Yes, it is a common problem, but one faith-based thinkers are more prone to. Unfortunately that goes for both ultra-religious people AND those who conduct research looking to match up results with their pre-conceived expectations….which is a HUGE number of those conducting research today.
I think he’s a little harsh on conservatism, but many of us non-liberals don’t care much about “traditional” conservatism. The Republican Party, since George W’s first election, has been Democrat Lite. They still can’t get it through their heads to provide a real alternative. I prefer a libertarian oriented alternative.
Same sex marriage? Why is government in the marriage approval business? Treat, tax all people equally regardless of marital status, gender, age, race, etc – and same sex marriage is a moot point. Etc, etc. One of the biggest problesm is that too many want to use governemtn to impose their own value system on everyone else.
DADvocate: I couldn’t agree with you more about getting government out of the “marriage approval business”. After that, let’s get it out of the “religion approval business”; why should particular beliefs in particular notions of “God” entitle anyone to tax breaks?
Separation of church and state and freedom of religion. Unless we get out of the not-for-profit business altogether. Then it could be discussed. But, as long as we give tax breaks to some businesses and not others, for whatever reason, i.e. not equal treatment, we need to keep our hands out of it, just like the way United Way, Planned Parenthood, Big Brothers-Big Sisters, etc are tax exempt. From your argument, any sort of tax break or tax exemption is the “approval” approval. I used taxes as an example of unequal treatment, not approval. You’re conflating the two.
That charge (the GOP as “Dem Light”) has been made post-Reagan, but even Reagan was a stop-gap measure….this country was “about to blow” and his election and more importantly the defeat of the entrenched incompetency of Jimmy Carter relieved a lot of building internal pressures.
Still, George Bush Sr., Bob Dole, G W Bush and John McCain were ALL “Moderate” (socially liberal) Country Club Republicans. The primary goal of that group was to divide America’s Conservative majority (DONE), as over 40% of Democrats self-identify as “Conservative” and to make Corporatism/Progressivism the standard of BOTH major political Parties.
DADvocate: Point taken. I haven’t thought about tax breaks/exemptions for other non-profits, but my instinct is to say, away with them all–however, my instincts are often wrong, and obviously non-profits (like churches) serve important social purposes. I just don’t like the government deciding what qualifies as a “legitimate” religion and what doesn’t, but I do get your point. Maybe I should just go ahead with my plan to open my brand-new “First Montana Church of the Holy Rodeo” and see what the IRS has to say.
I have mixed feelings about non-profits. Some do good, some just make the operators rich. I agree with your point about “legitimate religion” and I don’t have an answer. If I were to start a charitable organization, I’d make it a for-profit so I wouldn’t have to follow all the non-profit rules and regulations. I think the freedom would be worth paying the taxes.
Speaking of legitimate religions and honest thinking, they had a court case in the neighboring county involving the 10 Commandments being on public school property and a fellow claiming to be the interim director of the Center for Phallic Worship.
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1999/02/16/loc_adams_co_ponders.html
The whole thing was stupid but humorous.
Eberstadt is just one of many to comment on the bubble in which conservatives have chosen to live. A number of conservative writers have been covering this topic. They have rewritten Reagan’s record into something much different than it really was. They have either ignored W or else treat his foreign policy as a great victory. I think most of it is a failure of the GOP elites and its media. The underlying message/beliefs of conservatism as articulated by writers from Burke to Kirk to Buckley remain important and valid. I assume this is just a temporary aberration.
Steve
I don’t get the bubbles that people BOTH Left & Right insist on living in, right now…though they tend to do so for very different reasons.
Those on the Right who call Barack Obama a socialist are dead wrong….he’s no more “socialist” than G W Bush.
In fact he IS exactly what I’ve said he is for years now…”G W Bush the 3rd”. He’s gone to court at least 3X to maintrain those NSA Surveillance Programs liberals hated and has also successfully fought to have them kept secret. He’s extended the provisions of the Patriot Act that liberals hated, he’s also sent more detainees for rendition (sending prisoners to foreign portals for enhanced interrogations/”torture”) and he’s used drone attacks far more frequently in his first 4 years then his predecessor had in 8! Oh yeah, and he also supports killing “targeted American citizens” (anyone BELIEVED to have provided direct material aid to al Qaeda without due process or habeus corpus)….like I’ve said, I’m 100% OK with all but the last one….and the refusal to act or even come clean on Benghazi.
He’s also FOLLOWED the G W Bush, or more aptly “the Bush-Pelosi-Reid” economic plan of NON-Stimulating stimulus spending AND huge Corporate bailouts. In fact, he’s DOUBLED DOWN on those failed Keynesian policies.
Even the charges of “Crony Capitalism” are WRONG! Those charges seem more rooted in “sour grapes” than anything else. For the most part it comes down to their not liking whose ox is being gored – Exxon-Mobil, RJ Reynolds and BoA OUT, BP, ADM and Goldman Sachs IN.
Basically, “crony Capitalism” is merely Corporatism (the partnership between business and government) and we’ve had that for nearly 100 years now (since December, 1913 to be exact.).
I’ve (correctly) noted that among Barack Obama’s closest friends is Bob Wolf (former UBS Chief) I wasn’t merely “right,” nor was I noting that they became friends conveniently AFTER B.O. won the Presidency, not at all. Bob Wolf had mentored Obama since his days as a Community Organizing Housing “activist.”
What the followers/”sheep” don’t know and aren’t supposed to know is that such movements are Corporate-owned subsidiaries…they are, in effect, “street lobbying groups,” geared to expanding Corporate profits. The Environmental movement has successfully lobbied for LESS oil & gas exploration, LESS U.S. energy independence and thus HIGHER profits for Big Energy Conglomerates….the “housing activists” fill the SAME nitch for the banking industry, which is not only the most rgulated industry in the USA, but a full partner with the U.S. government for decades now. SEE Tim Carney’s excellent book The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money (http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Ripoff-Business-Government/dp/0471789070/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360943865&sr=8-1&keywords=Tim+Carney)
I get the team-sports mentailty of some on the Right AND the utter cultural frustration of the “Todd Akins” set of “religious Conservatives” (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one) and I think, given the explosive way that Akins and Mourdoch shat the proverbial bed last November, “legitimate rape” was pretty much their swan song, BUT what I DON’T get is the Left embracing the very things it went apopleptic over a few short years ago – the NSA Surveillance Programs (defended by the Obama administration IN COURT at least 3X), the Patriot Act extended, Gitmo still open, drone attacks way up, the use of rendition up AND OK’ing the targeting of specific American citizens (those BELIEVED/suspected of providing direct aid to al Qaeda) for death WITHOUT due process or habeus corpus…not to mention the complete reversal on our anti-drilling policies. America is (rightly…and for me, THANKFULLY) headed to complete energy independence due entirely to domestic energy production!
Quietly, the Left has been inveigled to surrender on every one of the so-called “Civil Liberties” violations they howled about earlier. The Bush Doctrine is now “America’s Doctrine” and Barack Obama has become G W Bush III.
No wonder so many on both sides are living in bubbles…the Obama administration’s following the G W Bush administration’s policies virtually to the letter makes it impossible for team-sports partisans to make much sense of things as they are.
JMK: Many good points as usual; I’ll check out the Tim Carney book and the Bob Wolf connection. Meantime, I can’t speak for anyone “on the left” (or anywhere else) but myself, and I have NOT embraced the policies you mentioned (drones, Gitmo, NSA surveillance, etc.). I voted for Obama in spite of those, not because of them; that may have been an ill-considered move on my part, but it wasn’t an embrace of such policies. And, with all due respect, I know people on both sides of the political/ideological divide; some are better informed than others, and I disagree with them on all sorts of things, but none of them are “sheep”. The only sheep I’ve encountered lately have been on the slopes of Mt. Jumbo at the east end of Missoula, plus some up on Waterworks Hill to the north; to be honest, they didn’t seem all that interested in politics.
Jack, I DO support most of the policies that were part and parcel of the “Bush Doctrine,” although I am wary of the directive allowing hits on U.S. citizens under suspicion of aiding al Qaeda….could cover a LOT of ground.
I SHOULD BE much more wary of all of it…but I’m not.
You don’t sound like one of those folks who thought Bush’s “War-on-Terror” was “the end of America,” or even “destroying our freedoms,” BUT most liberal Democrats seemed to AND a fair number of anti-welfare/anti-warfare state Libertarians did too.
I have a rougher time embracing the anti-warfare state deal. I see the welfare state as undermining individual initiative and making us all “slaves of the state,” and yes, wars have been used to greatly expand government and rein in personal freedoms and all…but, I just have a rougher time getting worked up over that. part of the equation. Again, I probably SHOULD get more worked up over that, but I see conflict as the nature of man and so, “the way of the world.”
As far as the “sheep” remark went, that was about those of us conned into believing that environmental groups are really aligned against “Big Oil,” or that “housing activists” are really looking to rein in the Big banks and make them lend to poorer people too…when such groups really are, in fact, wholly owned subsidiaries, lobbying organizations for those very industries.
Foe eons traditional lending criteria mandated “sound banking” and straight-jacketed banks from making bad loans at taxpayer expense, and just as oil executives could NEVER directly lobby against domestic oil and gas production, as it would be too obvious that they were lobbying to create an artificial shortage to increase their own profits, neither could bankers lobby to loosen lending criteria to churn up more business….bad form.
Better to have a bunch of “environmental activists” lobby for policies that would create that artificial shortage AND generate those increased profits, just as for the banks, it’s better to have a bunch of “housing activists” (poor people generally have little to no interest in home-ownership and even LESS interest in the responsibilities that go with it) to lobby for “easier lending standards.” The courts used “disparate impact” to mandate mortgages for “subprime borrowers” (“creative financing”) despite the fact that all that did very little to increase the number of mortgages written to poor people…the vast majority of subprime mortgages went to real estate speculators. Turns out that bankers and politicians revile poor people as much as Steve and I do (neither of us believe poor people should be over-burdened with the heavy responsibilities of home-ownership),some people NEED assistance in living even the most basic of lives.
STILL, the thing donors and volunteers aren’t supposed to know is the very real connection between such groups and the businesses they play their bit of kabuki theater with.
It wouldn’t sit well with real earth-lovers to know that many of the organizations they support are actually lobbying for energy policies designed to maximize Big Energy’s profits. Fact is, most of those naive folks don’t think much about the real issue at the heart of the conundrum – human population.
The ONLY way to reduce energy needs going forward would be some sort of plague…one that’d take out one-third to one-half of the world’s current human population. Otherwise, even if the world’s current population numbers were kept constant, with India, China and Brazil all steadily industrializing, mankind’s energy needs will quintuple (perhaps increase by even 10-fold) by 2050! Of course, a plague like that would have to be designed (man-made) and targeted, and few of the “socially conscious” earth-lovers would be down for supporting something as unsavory as that.
It’s the same with the poor. Have you ever seen REAL poor people lobby for MORE responsibility? I haven’t and I worked in shit-hole areas (like the South Bronx) for decades. The vast majority of poor people are poor because they’re dysfunctional (prone to substance abuse, reckless, irresponsible and unable to delay gratification or plan ahead), the LAST thing most poor people want is the responsibilities of home-ownership…OK, maybe it’s the 2nd to last thing, as the very last thing most want is an actual JOB.
I know, I know….I’m not a very nice guy and I should phrase these issues somewhat more delicately, but I’m just being honest.
The sad truth is that BOTH Country Club Republicans and “liberal” Democrats LOVE illegal immigration…the truly rich (those who DON’T rely on income for the bulk of their wealth) LIKE cheap labor. You don’t think that Democratic operatives know that Mexicans who become U.S. citizens are MORE religious and MORE socially Conservative two and three generations down the pike? They do…they don’t care. That’s why “immigration reform” never leads to any real long-term solutions…making migrant workers citizens would merely create a slew of MORE “lazy Americans” who’d choose MORE free money over short money, long hours in brutal migrant-worker jobs.
They BOTH love poor people too! Poor people commit more crimes, generate more mayhem and thus generate tens of thousands of cop, corrections, lawyers, judge, court officer jobs, not to mention Emergency Room jobs, Emergency Responder jobs (EMS, Firefighting, etc). That’s why poverty has only increased since LBJ’s failed “War on Poverty” began.
As for Bob Wolf and Obama (SEE: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304072004577327853694265034.html) . Barack Obama didn’t just look Robert Wolf up in the phone book back in 2007 to head his Chief Wall St Fund Raiser…their ties went back to the 1990s and Barack Obama’s days as a housing activist litigator.
JMK: First, thanks for taking the time to reply so thoughtfully. I’ll do my best to return the favor. You covered a lot, but I’ll try to make my reply coherent (not my strong suit).
There’s no doubt that “corporatism” and “crony capitalism” exist, and I’ve read plenty of books and articles documenting and critiquing those phenomena from a left-wing perspective. Businesses and industry lobbying groups rig the system, when they can, for their own benefit; they write tax rules and regulations, and even entire pieces of legislation. They engage in “regulatory capture” so they can tilt the playing field and hamstring their competitors with red tape. They buy politicians with campaign donations, gifts, travel–the usual gamut of legalized bribes. And yet I refuse to believe that the entire game is rigged. Wall Street interests certainly watered down the Dodd-Frank bill, but the fact that it passed at all suggests that someone in government wanted to rein in abuses on Wall Street. Obamacare contains far more sops to insurance companies and other vested interests than I was happy with, but I honestly believe it was an effort to achieve necessary reforms. It seems that you’re either more cynical than I am, or more realistic. I may be naive, but I continue to believe that there are people–some in elected office, some in various NGO’s–who actually want to solve problems and make the world better. Of course, I have no foolproof way to determine just who those people are, or to distinguish them from the self-serving types that unquestionably abound.
I should read the Tim Carney book, I guess, before I say anything about grassroots groups being in on the “kabuki theater,” though there’s plenty of evidence that the biggest Tea Party groups (Freedom Works and ?) fall into that category. I know there are some “environmental” groups bought and paid for by Big Oil, but those are the “sound science” (aka climate change denial) groups, not the leftist “earth lovers”. And as far as immigration is concerned: it’s true that the rich like cheap labor, but the President just proposed raising the minimum wage, so apparently he didn’t get the “cheap labor is good” memo. I’m going to persist in believing that at least some politicians on both sides of the aisle believe that their policies are good for the country; if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t bother voting, much less writing and commenting on blogs.
You’re right that I didn’t believe Bush/Cheney were destroying our freedom; I did think that the Patriot Act and the NSA surveillance program were ill advised and set a terrible precedent, and I believe that to this day about Obama’s continuation of the Bush “national security” policies. Overall, I think our freedom in this country is pretty robust, and so are the American people–again, maybe I’m naive. Most of my left-wing friends believed that Bush was Cheney’s puppet and that the entire “War on Terror” was just a cover story to make money for Haliburton and for the administration’s friends in Big Oil; I chose to believe that Bush and Cheney were ideologues who believed (most of) what they said, though they weren’t above stretching the truth to get their way on things like invading Iraq (and they certainly didn’t mind if their buddies got rich in the process, either). Because I wouldn’t demonize Bush and Cheney in the proper way, my friends said I was–you guessed it, “naive”. So maybe I am. You’re also correct that I’m more concerned about the warfare state than about the welfare state–welfare may sap “individual initiative” (though it sounds like you believe poor people mostly don’t have much initiative to begin with) but war kills people, which renders their individual initiative somewhat moot.
It’s interesting that conservatives and liberals (if we have to use labels) both have cause to mistrust the government; but it’s frustrating that, rather than uniting, they end up battling over which aspect of government to mistrust the most. Which is the opening for adept politicians to exploit, of course, navigating between right-wing fear of Big Brother and left-wing fear of the military-industrial complex. The important thing, I guess, is to keep people afraid. I don’t know if you’ve read any of Bill Kauffman’s work; he describes himself as “the love child of Henry Thoreau and Dorothy Day,” and he’s supported, at various times, George Mc Govern, Pat Buchanan, and Ralph Nader. If you haven’t read any of his stuff, you might look him up–he blogs at http://www.frontporchrepublic.com (and he’s got a bunch of books out, though they’re hard to find).
Finally: I did read that Wall Street Journal article you linked me to. What I found was
“Mr. Wolf met Mr. Obama in 2006, when billionaire investor George Soros invited Mr. Wolf to join a handful of top Wall Streeters to meet the Illinois senator. Mr. Wolf was silent during the meeting but slipped Mr. Obama his card. The next morning, Mr. Obama called and the two men immediately hit it off.”
Did I miss something? I’m not always the most careful reader, but I just didn’t see the earlier Obama/Wolf connection and relationship you’ve mentioned…
Thanks again for your thoughts.
JMK: A quick follow-up–I can and will get the Tim Carney book at the university library here in Missoula, and will give it a read. As for Bob Wolf as Obama’s “mentor”: I don’t find any reference to that. Everything I found (including a “chronology” on a clearly anti-Obama site called “Renew America”)says that George Soros introduced Wolf to Obama in 2006. Can you tell me where to learn about Wolf’s relationship to Obama–is it in the Carney book, perhaps?
Steve2: “a temporary aberration”–we can only hope…
“I don’t know much at all about Nicholas Eberstadt–I think he’s written a book called A NATION OF TAKERS, about our entitlement mentality/crisis–or where he gets off making such an accusation. But there it is, for what it’s worth”
I think he explains very specifically why he is upset with conservatives. It’s in the same article:
“Over the past four years, for example, most self-styled conservative thinkers have betrayed no obvious interest in analyzing or understanding what went so very wrong under Bush ’43–or even in acknowledging the plain fact that things had gone wrong. Similarly, in the presidential contest just concluded, the general expectation on the right was that its nominee would win–and win big. In the event, of course, he was decisively defeated.”
Asfor hantion of takers, he also provides EMPIRICAL proof for his claim: “By spring 2011, according to the Census Bureau, just over 35 percent of Americans lived in homes receiving one or more “means tested” public benefit. Never before have so many healthy, able-bodied, and relatively well-to-do Americans plead “poverty” for the purpose of handouts from Uncle Sam.”
HA: I certainly didn’t mean to question Eberstadt’s credentials or suggest that he didn’t articulate his discontents quite well; rather, I was acknowledging my own limited familiarity with his work, and my comment about “where he gets off” was tongue-in-cheek. I agree with you that Eberstadt explains “very specifically why he’s upset with conservatives”: in fact, that was the relevance of the excerpt I posted. My point in doing so was simply to see if folks agreed with him or not, and why. I haven’t read his book, and I made no comment about its thesis or about any evidence for it. My apologies if I seemed to be criticizing Eberstadt, his article or his book. I will add, and again “for what it’s worth,” that the fact that 35% (or any other percent) of Americans qualify for and receive some sort of handout from Uncle Sam in no way proves or justifies the pejorative label “takers”; we all, in my experience, give and take in different ways in our lives. That doesn’t mean I’m defending or commending the level or type of public benefits being dispensed; I just think that calling people “takers” is reductive and unkind, especially when/if you don’t even know the people personally.
“There’s no doubt that “corporatism” and “crony capitalism” exist, and I’ve read plenty of books and articles documenting and critiquing those phenomena from a left-wing perspective. Businesses and industry lobbying groups rig the system, when they can, for their own benefit …It seems that you’re either more cynical than I am, or more realistic. I may be naive, but I continue to believe that there are people–some in elected office, some in various NGO’s–who actually want to solve problems and make the world better.” (JS)
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I don’t think I’m overly cynical, Jack. I DO agree with Clarence Darrow who rightly said, that “Government is the tool by which the strong (rich and well-connected) despoil the weak (poor and unconnected).”
Moreover, I’m NOT condemning that, as to do so would be to condemn human nature itself. Moreover, I DO believe there are people, BOTH in the private and public sector who WANT “to make the world a better place”….after their own fashion, of course and THAT is the problem. We ALL tend to see what benefits us as what’s “good” for the world. As the old saying goes, “When all you have is a hammer, everything begins looking like a nail.”
What I condemn is the sanctimonious faux piety of those who believe either government or human nature to be otherwise than what they are. Most of those SEEM to lie on the Left side, though there are many faux moralists on the Christian-Right side of things, as well.
I had a roommate in College who became a major officer in an Environmental group. He was even less of a “tree hugger” than I am…at least I’ve hunted and been out in the woods. He was also every bit as mercantile a mercenary as I was. I got my Series 3 after College and began trading commodities, he went that other direction…and did very well for himself. It was he who explained to me how Dow Chemical used “enviro lobbies” in the 1980s to employ the “hole in the ozone layer” campaign against traditional refrigerants, in favor of Dow’s new “CFC-Free refrigerants.” As he wryly noted, “Dow spent millions to make BILLIONS…and very few were the wiser.” It’s a brilliant strategy and what’s the harm in letting the “true believers” believe “they made a difference” even if they were merely part of a corporate ruse, a sham to fleece a few more shekels from their fellow rubes?
Dodd-Frank immortalized “Too Big to fail,” many erroneously believed it did the reverse! IF this administration (which had a Democratic House & Senate) its first two years cared at all about reversing the abuses that led up to the implosion of ’08 they’d have, at THAT time, re-instated Glass Steagall, mandated a return to traditional lending criteria (abolishing “creative financing”) and broke up the Financial Services Groups (like CitiGroup) back into their component parts (banking, brokerages, insurance, etc.)…needless to say, they did not do anything like that, DESPITE having full federal control to do so..
As for the ACA/”Obama-Care”, the Health Insurance industry practically WROTE the entire Senate Bill.
“The compromise health care reform proposal introduced by Sen. Max Baucus on Monday appears to have been literally written by a former health insurance company vice president…
“…The proposal, which does not provide a public option but compels individuals to purchase health insurance, was written by Liz Fowler, a former vice president of WellPoint and currently the senior counsel to Baucus.”
(The PDF can be found (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/BaucusFramework.pdf)
I don’t know where you stood on the Patriot Act under Bush, the NSA Surveillance Programs started by the same administration, but I do know where Steve and others here DID….they stood squarely against them then and are now enthusiastic supporters of those policies today, apparently along with the targeting of specified American citizens for death (those suspected of giving material aid to al Qaeda) without due process or habeus corpus.
As I’ve said, I have little objection to any of that, myself, but I NEVER did! I will have violent objection to Leftists who’ll suddenly re-oppose them should somewhat they dislike (a “Conservative” perhaps) come into office.
IF there is a danger to such directives being expanded, then let us await that expansion and abuse and ONLY then act upon sound moral principles, for if it’s OK now, it’s OK forever more UNTIL or UNLESS some egregious abuse come from a later administration. It will be as outrageous and uproarious for ANY of us to react previous to such abuse later, as it would be for us to overreact against the current policy in that regard.
I should also note that I’ve never really opposed Corporatism…I’ve merely been honest about its deep seated flaws. It is “the way of the world” now. Socialism’s “Command Economy” has failed everywhere and under every circumstance it’s been tried and the free market has proven far too volatile…BUT Corporatism makes government a partner with industry and rewards those in favor with the government and crushes those out of favor.
Corporatism stifles innovation, just not as much as the Command Economy. It suppresses prosperity, but again, not as much as the Command Economy, but it is every bit as corrupt as any man-made system that ever existed.
Under Corporatism it behooves the prudent citizen to curry favor with government and secure the best position/he/she can with an approved entity. It is not courageous to fight “city hall” (when city hall is a mammoth Corporate/Governmental alliance) it’s fool-hardy.
Have you been reading Steve’s posts and comments lately? He doesn’t seem “enthusiastic” about the USA Patriot Act or any of Bush’s other infringements on personal liberty, he just doesn’t believe voting for Romney would have gotten them repealed. Do you?
I’ve supported those things all along, so I’ve been very pleasantly surprised.
I remain vehemently against the failed policy of treating terrorists as “criminals.” They (1) deserve the respect accorded warriors and (2) our law enforcement resources are inadequate to the task of dealing with well funded international entities. So I’ve supported the Patriot Act, the NSA Surveillance Programs, rendition, drone attacks, Gitmo, even the targeting of Americans believed/suspected of having directly aided al Qaeda.
I have SOME reservations over the targeting of American citizens absent due process or other rules of evidence, but, in my view, the dangers of terrorism outweigh the potential abuses of such a policy, at least at this juncture.
I have two cousins working in the NSA and I’m at least partly aware of how extensive the government’s snooping abilities are…they are said to be far more staggering…and probably SHOULD BE.
For better, or worse, we live in a world where “privacy” is obsolete. We are all photographed by dozens of surveillance cameras each and every day. My own home is equipped with ten CCTV cameras (4 external, 6 internal) that I can view from my mobile phone. There’ve been a number of home invasions in this area over the past two years.
I carry two mini-recorders on me at all times and often surreptitiously tape my exchanges with others (in my defense, there’ve been numerous issues with false allegations at my work place)…personally, I really don’t even miss the privacy of the “old days.” In truth, I can barely remember those days before cell phones and surveillance cameras.
So even in our homes and on our own streets, there really is no longer any realistic expectation of privacy, at least as we understood before.
I’ve seen absolutely NO/ZERO demonstrations, no massive outpouring of angst, no NY Times editorials, etc., ripping Obama for continuing G W Bush’s WoT policies…which, in my view, demonstrates that either they didn’t really object to any of those things to begin with, merely whom was using them, OR they’ve come around and now support those things they once allegedly vehemently opposed.
I firmly believe it’s the former.
I’ve seen NOTHING from Steve that would either condemn nor condone the Obama administration following the “Bush Doctrine” to the letter.
IF ANYONE were truly outraged over the “Civil Liberties abuses” under Bush (the Patriot Act, the NSA Surveillance Programs, even the creation of the Dept of Homeland Security behemoth) then they SHOULD BE doubly outraged that a man who ostensibly ran on reversing those policies, apparently had a change of heart…apparently a full reversal actually, and continued to prosecute the “Bush WoT” AND continue some of the programs so many Leftists found so egregious…before they became completely palatable, of course.
JMK: (1) I’m pretty sure I wrote that you are “either more cynical than I am, or more realistic”; I wasn’t insisting on the former and in fact I’m happy to concede you the latter and acknowledge myself as naive. (2) Wasn’t there actually a hole in the ozone layer? I don’t doubt that Dow Chemical found a way to make money off it–somebody was bound to–but my recollection is that it was there and that switching to CFC refrigerants fixed it. (3) Of course Dodd-Frank didn’t go far enough, and yes, it left “too big to fail” in place (though with “stress tests” and liquidation procedures in case of future failures). Obama could have done (or tried to do) all sorts of things, including nationalizing the banks; the various things you suggest all sound fine to me. What sort of uproar and backlash that might have caused is impossible to say (though not to imagine). Still, it’s really not accurate to say that Obama had “full federal control” at that time; Al Franken didn’t get sworn in until July 2009, and Ted Kennedy was dying and not able to cast votes. Democrats only had 60 actual votes for about 14 weeks, from late September of 2009 until Scott Brown took office early in 2010; given that, I think it’s pretty likely that Republicans would have blocked the sort of financial reforms you precribe. As it is, the GOP has hamstrung attempts to actually implement Dodd-Frank (especially the CFPB). (5) Ah yes, Max Baucus, one of my very own Senators from the great state of Montana! My friends and I here hoped for the best but feared the worst when we realized Baucus was “point man” for healthcare reform in the Senate. The only point I’ll make is that I continue to be confused about how Obamacare is simultaneously a government takeover of healthcare and also a giveaway to the insurance industry. It could simply be corporatism, as you say; it could also have been the only way to get things done (just barely, in this case) in Washington. I’d say that Dodd-Frank and Obamacare both illustrate that Obama hasn’t been the heavy-handed socialist others claim–he passed up some good socialist opportunities, at least; again, what you call “corporatism” may also be seen as necessary compromises made in an effort to get things done.
JMK: I note that I went from point (3) to point (5). I think (4) was supposed to be the bit about Democrats not actually having 60 votes for much of 2009, but in my obvious excitement, I forgot to number it.
First, I probably AM somewhat more cynical than most people and I don’t take that as an offense at all. I hope I’m not any more realistic than most people, as that would seem to imply that few people question the legitimacy of their institutions, from media to government to industry. I think Gallup’s polls show a very high level of skepticism about all such institutions from most Americans.
Second there was a hole in the Ozone layer and there IS reportedly a new one appearing now (over the Arctic this time) despite the banning of CHC-based products.
In 1987, the world adopted the Montreal Protocol to eventually eliminate the production of CFCs. “Activists often cite the Montreal Protocol as a model for a future treaty addressing man-made global warming by banning the emission of greenhouse gases. A Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded in 1995 to the three scientists who identified the ozone/CFC connection.
“This neat story of the scientific identification of a man-made cause for stratospheric ozone depletion followed by a successful international response to the threat is now being challenged by some very recent research. News@nature.com is reporting a new analysis by Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, which finds that the data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2) is almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate.
“What this could mean according to the Nature news article is that:
“This must have far-reaching consequences,” Rex says. “If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being.” What effect the results have on projections of the speed or extent of ozone depletion remains unclear.
SEE: http://reason.com/blog/2007/09/27/ozone-hole-science-revisited
Dow conveniently developed its CFC-free refrigerants in the early 1980s and had been looking for a foray into the market. Their problem was cost. It’s harder to market a product that costs more than one that already does the job cheaper.
Dow did a good marketing job, successfully positioning its product as the savior against the hole in the Ozone layer, which of course now, 20 years later, we’re realizing may not have been caused by CFCs to begin with, what’s more, there’s a new hole opening up today, “Let’s start with the bad news: Remember that hole in the ozone layer that scientists discovered over the Antarctic in 1985? The one we worried would give us all skin cancer and cataracts with its unshielded bursts of UV rays? It’s still there.
“It gets worse. Scientists announced that a new hole opened up in early 2011 — this one over the Arctic.”
SEE: http://mentalfloss.com/article/30733/whatever-happened-hole-ozone-layer
All that any of this proves to me is that companies like Dow Chemical and BASF have a lot smarter people working for them than governments do…and that (to me) is to be expected – they pay and recruit better.
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It appears as though you presume quite a bit with your claim that, “I think it’s pretty likely that Republicans would have blocked the sort of financial reforms you prescribe.”
Thanks to his many banking contacts and his allegiance to the Financial Sector, Barack Obama has raised tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street. Robert Wolf was his Wall Street point-man for his 2008 campaign. In fact, Goldman Sachs and BP (British Petroleum) were two of his largest donors.
There really is NO “Party of Big Business” – BOTH major Parties are equally beholden to “Big Business,” they just differ in their alliances.
I’m a lifelong Democrat…a Conservative Democrat (a veritable “Dixie Democrat,” I prefer a “Zell Miller Democrat”) from New York City and I know that the most dangerous naiveté around is thinking that either Party is a friend to the working middle class. Neither one is, they can’t afford to be that.
Moreover, it wasn’t the Democrats who opposed Bush’s Big Bank bailouts, it was those pesky Tea Partiers, who lambasted McCain, among others, for going back to Washington to sign off on them. Since then, most of them (the Tea Party Republicans) have been brought into the “team sports” line that is expected of politicians in Washington. I prefer the team-sports approach and the blessed gridlock that comes with it, for as they say, ”When a politician DOES get an idea, he usually gets it wrong.”
The ACA or “Obama-Care” is still a work in progress. We don’t even know the extent of its costs (the estimates keep changing), and who will be covered and for what maladies. We DO KNOW that some 30 MILLION Americans remain and WILL remain uncovered even after the ACA is fully implemented; “Since day one, it’s been clear that Obamacare will not achieve universal coverage, and every time CBO revisits the law, the numbers show just that. In March 2010, when the law passed, CBO predicted that there would be 22 million people still without insurance in 2019. In March 2012, the estimate increased to 27 million in 2022. Now, the number has once again increased — to 30 million. So Obamacare leaves just as many people uninsured as it covers.”
SEE: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/24/cbo-obamacare-to-cover-millions-fewer-than-before-supreme-court-decision/
All I noted was that a former health insurance executive (Liz Fowler, a former vice president of WellPoint) wrote most of what became the Senate Bill.
My belief from the beginning has been rooted in practicality: (1) healthcare costs are too much, (2) we’re giving far too much free, high cost, advanced care away and (3) that must be reined in and done in a very “American way.” What works in the former USSR, or England, China, or France won’t work here.
I’ve envisioned from the start a plan that incentivizes businesses and Municipalities to put their employees on the “Public Option” (an expanded version of Medicaid) at the paltry cost of $2500/year per employee (the current “fine” the ACA imposes on employers should they refuse to offer healthcare)…a bargain when compared to $12,000 to $20,000/year per employee for the employer-directed health premiums.
Then, given the poor quality of care provided by the “public Option” an array of private sector “gap insurance” policies will be available to fit various price points.
Medicaid is already overwhelmed and rife with fraud, abuse and poor quality control for care, it won’t get better.
Eventually people will pay for what their employers now give them as “benefits.”
It’s only surprising that it’s taken so long! Big business has been lobbying for this for decades and government has only lately (since the 1990s) taken seriously the loss in revenues all this “unearned income” in the form of health benefits most Americans (over 85%) have been getting!
The issue is NOT about care…neither “insuring more people” (30 MILLION Americans wouldn’t be written off so easily if it were), NOR about improving the quality of care – our quality of care is significantly better than most other countries. It’s solely about “cost containment.”
If you want better care or advanced care in the near future, you’ll have to pay for it, in the form of private sector “gap insurance.” We’re already seeing things like joint replacements, even cataract lens replacements delivered a la carte – basic insurance covers the basic replacement monofocal lens that require reading glasses after implantation, the newer, more advanced multifocal lenses that focus vision across the depth spectrum, eliminating the need for reading specs after surgery cost as much as $2500 per lens.
Business and industry make a solid point on this; American labor is made much more costly with its benefits factored in. With some form of government-sponsored healthcare, which would rid business/labor of this ponderous expense, American labor would be extremely competitive worldwide. Moreover, working middle class people wouldn’t be hiding nearly so much income from the tax man. Today, a NYC public schools teacher earning $87,000/year with a health benefits package worth $16,000/year is really taking in $103,000/year and paying taxes on just $87,000 of it, minus any deferred compensation plans, etc that might offset that.
Again, with the forces arrayed against employer-directed healthcare, it’s only surprising that it took this long to implement it in some form.
The ONLY issue you have not addressed (and you’re not expected or required to) is the abandoning of “principle” by most on the Left. Most “liberals” vehemently opposed the Patriot Act and the NSA Surveillance Programs under Bush, but most are now enthusiastic supporters of those SAME policies today! Most apparently go along with the targeting of specified American citizens for death (those suspected of giving material aid to al Qaeda) without due process or habeus corpus, one of the very few such policies to give me some pause.
As I’ve said, I have few objections to any of that, myself, but I NEVER did!
I will say this, IF I’d known that all it would take was to change the messenger, but NOT the message, I’d have supported such a change in leadership much earlier. With this current administration “The Bush Doctrine is still in full effect,” even Gitmo’s still open, we’ve embarked on Palin’s & Gingrich’s “Drill Baby Drill” campaign and are in the midst of a domestic energy boom, with Fracking going on virtually everywhere (with no discernible enviro impacts) and instead of disastrously “nationalizing” any U.S. industries (the Command/government-run Economy has NEVER worked) the bailed out Corporations have “paid back” their bail out loans in record time and are once again private entities.
Like I said, above, I have few issues with this administration’s foreign policies and no more issues with their economic policies than I had with G W Bush’s…or more aptly with “the Bush-Pelosi-Reid economic agenda.”
JMK: You’re an honest, forthright man, and you know way more about most of this stuff than I do. I note your apparent support for universal healthcare coverage of some kind, a sort of “Medicaid for all” approach, and a lifting of the insurance burden from employers–I support you on all of that, and so do most “liberals” of my acquaintance. I don’t know one person on the ideological left who likes or ever advocated for Obamacare as it is; we pretty much grudgingly accepted it as the best we could get (thanks, Senator Baucus!), while remaining hopeful it can be reformed and improved in the future. As for the hole in the ozone layer: the scientists may have been wrong–though that’s hardly proven yet–and (as we agreed) Dow Chemical may have jumped in to provide a solution based on faulty scientific data…but given that we knew what we knew at the time, I don’t see that it’s scandalous that we did what we did.
I browsed through the Tim Carney book this afternoon. I was impressed by his even-handedness about the culpability of both political parties; like you, his target was clearly the corporate/government nexus, and I’m not in disagreement with that. I acknowledge that “big government” leads, without constant independent oversight, to that sort of collusion and manipulation. I’m a believer in localism and human scale; “bigness” of any kind–other than, you know, natural phenomena like oceans, mountains, and the universe–disturbs me. I’m thinking of aligning myself with the Second Vermont Republic and its fated-to-fail advocacy of “non-violent secession” and whittling “meganations” like the U.S., China and Russia down to manageable size. I think the U.S. could easily be four (or more) contiguous republics and probably be better off for it; I’d be happy to sign a petition to that effect.
I don’t know if I know “more than most,” and I’d hope that I don’t.
I do know that Corporate America has lobbied for some form of Universal care for eons, to get employers off the hook for such benefits. The government started looking more seriously at all that “unearned/untaxed income” in the form of such benefits packages and has wanted taxes off that for at least fifteen years or so.
Remember that McCain’s idiotic idea was to simply make the value of those benefits taxable! Nothing like earning $100,000/year and getting taxed on $125,000/year (the value of your employer-generated health premiums and other benefits). Yikes!
What I worry about is a steep drop in the quality of care afforded to most people on the public option. I truly believe that the REAL savings only kicks in with the continued constrictions on the public option, virtually forcing people to buy varying levels of gap insurance.
I’ve also been somewhat surprised that the CBO has come out so quickly acknowledging that at least 30 MILLION Americans won’t be covered by the ACA.
Let me make clear that I’m NOT assailing Dow Chemical at all. They did what new age businesses ALL do – they use government, the Corporate media and Academia (via research grants) to tout “findings” that just happen to benefit their bottom-line.
The very best thing for America and AMERICANS right now would be total energy independence and the tens of millions of new jobs it will create….that’s decidedly NOT in Big Energy’s best interests. Their profits are HIGH when the supplies are LOW. In step the Gasland mythologists (SEE: http://toryaardvark.com/2011/09/23/fracking-the-lies-of-the-gasland-documentary/) AND Popular Mechanics article on the Top 10 Myths About Natural Gas Drilling (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/top-10-myths-about-natural-gas-drilling-6386593#slide-1) The smart money would seem to be on Big Energy getting their way…that means lower supply (bye-bye Keystone Pipeline) and higher prices…and profits for themselves. I hope I’m wrong on that.
Smaller and more localized is a good mantra, of course the trend is definitely the other way, which is both unwieldy and unfortunate. China has expanded into Tibet and all but annexed Mongolia, the USSR has made overtures about reconstituting and there has long been talk of a North American Super-State (the USA-Canada-Mexico). We can barely manage ourselves now. The conflict between the more rural states and the more urban industrial ones is deep as it is.
A more localized governance would almost certainly seem better for the people, BUT it’s never all that popular with the political class.
P.S. Tim Carney’s book is an interesting read and as you noted, NOT very popular with either major Party.
EDIT: “The very best thing for America and AMERICANS right now would be total energy independence and the tens of millions of new jobs it will create….that’s decidedly NOT in Big Energy’s best interests. Their profits are HIGH when the supplies are LOW. In lock-step with those Corporate/Governmental interests the media/information/entertainment industry has gotten out ahead of the curve with offering like “Gasland” which offer a variety of mythologies as fact.
“Two interesting pieces on this are; (http://toryaardvark.com/2011/09/23/fracking-the-lies-of-the-gasland-documentary/) AND the Popular Mechanics article on the Top 10 Myths About Natural Gas Drilling (http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/top-10-myths-about-natural-gas-drilling-6386593#slide-1) The smart money would seem to be on Big Energy getting their way…that means lower supply (bye-bye Keystone Pipeline) and higher prices…and profits for themselves. I hope I’m wrong on that.