Sarah Palin has an anti cap-and-trade op-ed in the Post tomorrow. It’s all pretty good stuff, but this stands out:
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
Maybe I’m dumb but it took me a while to figure out what any of this has to do with supply-side economics. In practice, supply-side economics mostly involves cutting marginal tax rates for the wealthy. I guess the idea here is that, more broadly, supply-side economics has to do with the idea of making things cheaper to produce. Is that what she’s saying?
Matt
What I want to know is who wrote this for her. It has complete sentences.
John S.
That would be you, Sarah.
unabogie
I saw her emails. I won’t believe it’s her unless it says “cap and trade is bad bc ur liberal also.”
NobodySpecial
Erm.
I was under the impression from talking with antitax Republicans that whenever costs went up, they were passed on to the consumer, so how does the farmer lose money?
burnspbesq
I used to stay up every night,
I’d feel so all alone.
In my hand, my trusty pen,
I work it to the bone …
Ghost Writer …
I kind of doubt that Garland Jeffreys had this situation in mind when he wrote that song.
CynDee
A. Did she write it herself??
B. Of course the cost of farming will increase when we quit polluting the land, quit using the wrong energy sources, and start producing REAL food instead of factory-farm sludge and GMO mutants.
It’s always about cost and never about life and health.
Decreasing costs won’t save the earth, so where we gonna live?
burnspbesq
@NobodySpecial:
Wow. I missed that one the first time around. Somebody needs to explain elasticity of demand to the poor girl.
How much would you pay to watch that?
JK
Will Sarah Palin ever shut the FUCK UP? The buzz from her performance art resignation speech still hasn’t died down and now she’s going to get another news cycle with this op-ed. What a goddamn publicity whore.
The real question is who wrote this op-ed?
Bill Kristol, Ross Douthat, Tony Blankley, Carl Cannon, or hall monitor Matthew Continetti, while taking a break from writing his magnum opus The Persecution of Sarah Palin coming soon to a bookstore near you.
grimc
I’ll go out on a limb and bet that she definitely wrote this herself. There are odd little grammatical tics throughout. Also.
General Winfield Stuck
Jesus Christ Sarah, we get it already after 40 years of Reagans trickle down nonsense. My question is, when will the wingnuts understand that our economy has two parts, with the other being demand, and if you favor one over the other long enough, you get what we now have. Dumb as Dinosaur turds.
Third Eye Open
…At which time I can ask them to explain it to me, while i’m campaigning for them. Also!
The next-to-last samurai
Let’s play Name That Ghostwriter. I pick Thomas Sowell.
TheOfficialHatOnMyCat
I don’t think so. I think she is saying that she can turn a clever sounding phrase without it having to actually mean anything.
amk
So WackoPost goes there and jumps the shark. How much did they charge sarahcuda for the “access” ? Or was it other way about ? Pathetic hackery.
Warren Terra
I suppose that “supply side economics” means that lowering taxes results in more economic activity (actually, so much more as to actually increase tax revenue, no matter where taxes start and which taxes are cut, despite all the evidence, because shut up, that’s why), so her idea is that libs will learn the corollary, that more taxes means less economic activity, or something.
I wonder if at one of her five alma maters she ever heard about pricing externalities?
Martin
No, what she’s saying is that she doesn’t like the palling around with terrorists plan whatever it is, and she can mention a Reagan policy, therefore she’s been doing her homework as requested and will be ready to be President soon.
I guess she hasn’t reached the chapter when a conservative named Bush called it ‘voodoo economics’ and that we all understand it perfectly well.
JK
Maybe Amity Shlaes wrote Palin’s op-ed for her.
Martin
She aspired to be the sportsgirl at the teevee station. What do you think?
Keith
I’m putting my money on her believing that supply-side economics has something to do with the food supply, hence the connection to farming. Lord knows what she thinks the Laffer curve is.
Josh E.
Have to agree. She wrote it herself and probably the crazy loyal aides like Stapleton vetted it.
No competent writer would let her begin a WaPo editorial like that. That’s just awful.
cliff
I’l get back to ya.
also.
ahem, within the hour I hope. *burp*
Alan
@NobodySpecial: The antitax Republicans have yet to grasp the effect of elasticity with respect to their fair tax. To them everything gets passed on unless it’s a luxury tax. But again they don’t understand why.
uila
I thought Sarah was going Galt?
UR DOIN IT RO NG!
Brachiator
@CynDee:
Not a chance in Hell. The next fun game will be to identify all her ghostwriters.
I am surprised, but should not have been, that her neocon handlers have decided to burnish Palin’s national and foreign policy credentials by using her as a ventriloquist’s dummy. Smart move, because it will allow true believers to say “I told you she was smarter than the liberal media said.”
I will bet good money that she will never submit to a live interview not on Fox News where she can be asked to elaborate on any idea that she has “written” in an op-ed piece.
Jennifer
Don’t bother asking; no one can answer that question. Least of all, Sarah Palin herself.
sfinny
She’s got good supply side economics and tax cut promotors at her side. So let’s go whole hog and assume that this is an ecomonic plan!
Sorry, this was scararsm. Should have indicated so.
Enlightened Layperson
Serious answer?
Well, basic economics is that the price and quantity of things is where the supply curve intersects with the demand curve. Macroeconomics is about the intersection of the supply curve and demand curve for the entire economy. Keynesian stimulus economics (what the Obama Administration is doing now) rests on the assumption that economic dulldrums occur when private demand falls too low and leaves excess capacity. When that happens government should step in on the demand side and fill the breach. It also assumes that there will be some tradeoff between growth and inflation.
Conservatives countered this back in the ’70’s with supply side economics. Suddenly we were having lagging growth and inflation at once (stagflation). The general consensus was that this was because the supply curve (economists think of these curves as real things, not just abstract metaphors) was lagging, probably because of rising oil prices. So we could escape the tradeoff between growth and inflation by creating growth on the supply side (specifically by cutting taxes on the rich, which would spur all sorts of supply-side growth).
So I think what she is saying is that cap-and-trade will raise oil prices, constrict the supply curve, and lead to a return of stagflation.
Ash
If I was a subscriber to the Post, that shit would be lining the puppy pen before I even opened it.
She probably thinks “stagflation” is what happens when there’s a giant puddle and mosquitoes start breeding.
Bill D.
But you have to realize that as we go through our upcoming slow and jobless recovery (thanks to the end of our debt-fueled fake prosperity), the Republicans will blame this situation on cap-and-trade. Some (perhaps a great many) people will find this charge credible. Overconfidence and derision on our part may be fun but are ill-advised at this time.
We need to be thinking of how to address this charge, to explain to people why the economy is not going back to the way it was before no matter what we do.
mai naem
C’mon now, the ghostwriter has to be Pat Buchanan. That’s the reason he’s not been on MSNBC as much. He used to be on from Mornin Ho to Rachel. It’s because he’s been helping the woman who sends a thrill up his leg.
cliff
OK, lets see what we can do with this.
ok, so the farmer is silly and hasn’t yet leased out 1% of his land to windmills paying big monthly checks.. hmmm… oo o K..
ok.. and he isn’t growing some biofuelstock is he? (cellulose, algae, ??)
hmm.. so she must be assuming that they are stuck, and must pay for carbon credits (ignoring the freebies,10y!) and ..
aww fuk, I can’t be bothered, someone else finish it if it’s possible!
LD50
Sarah has no idea what supply-side economics are. All she knows is that as a Republican, she supports it, and that the Democrat Party must threaten it.
Remember, this is a person who supported the Bush Doctrine without being able to say what it was.
LongHairedWeirdo
That is what supply-side economics is… make stuff cheap to produce (“supply”) and all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
gwangung
Um, yeah. Hell yeah.
Next Republican administration, cap and and trade are gonna disappear if we’re not careful.
Joshua Norton
This is how I can tell we’re not really in the Matrix. If we were, the villains would be smarter.
flounder
Isn’t there a refund system in cap and trade so the poorest get a check to pay them back for their trouble? I got so annoyed with the debate I quit paying attention, but if that is the case, then you can take the editing pen to 85% of this tripe.
Phoebe
It came to me in a vision, because I’m psychic:
She wrote it herself, then someone lightly edited it. Then she and that someone had a very uncomfortable meeting over changing her words, with her ending up saying, “Fine! I don’t care!” after said someone repeated the mantra “of course you can submit the first version if you like” one too many times.
Dusty
Palin had to have some input. No one else would bother to include a completely unnecessary swipe at the media:
Fulcanelli
La Belle Palin’s mentor, perhaps??
OT, but… Seen this interview? (courtesy Gin and Tacos): Mike Wallace interviews Ayn Rand.
This is the Goddess of Galt? It gets interesting around 4:15 where she owns up to wanting to destroy the ‘murican way of life, etc, etc. I enjoyed the Boris and Natasha accent and the eastern european dental work. You go Galt, or ve khill moose and sqvirrel. Click on part 2 in the video menu at the bottom when it’s finished to learn how we’re all enslaved to each other in our welfare state paradise, bitches… Raw, undistilled narcissism.
Balconesfault
I look forward to the Katie Couric interview where she gets to ask Palin to explain what she wrote in her Op Ed piece.
“What economists have you read, Ms. Palin?”
“Um, all of them.”
FlipYrWhig
From the context, I’m relatively sure she means that the whole “all these costs just get passed on to the consumer” thing _is_ “supply-side economics.”
Because it relates to the cost of supplies. When supplies cost more, prices go up. Ergo, “supply-side economics.”
Brachiator
@Phoebe:
Fixed.
The psychic visions are working overtime.
Ripley
Does this look to anyone like her intro ploy as the fabled Leader of the GOP? Or a road test, like checking the hinges on a ventriloquist dummy’s jaws? Seriously, beyond her limp blather (using ‘cap-and-tax’ repetitively, fer fuck sake), this seems like a trial balloon for something… bigger.
In any case, it does tell us this for certain: she is not going away.
Jason Bylinowski
Hey there everybody. I’ve never posted here until now, or really anywhere for that matter, other than at my own little music blog thingy, which is neither here nor there. But I’ve been reading since the 2006 elections. So first I’d just like to say hello to John Cole, DougJ, Tim F., and Anne Laurie, and to say thanks for keep plugging away at what is far and away the best blog on the internet. I’m formerly of Morgantown myself, and my only regret is that I didn’t know about this blog back in my days there, as it might have just kept me from fleeing to my current hellhole, North Augusta, SC. Of course, silly bear that I am, I’d decide to post at 12:30 at night, but you never how or when the mood will hit ya, I guess, so I’m going with it. Alright, enough n00b rambling.
So, this Bible Spice lady: it’s a topic that just won’t go away. Everybody bitched about all the MJ coverage last week, while I’ve been quietly fuming for months and months about how Palin gets more coverage on most days than Obama, even though he was recently promoted to leader of the free world and all. You know what really gets me the most about Palin the most? To me, when she entered the stage, it was like she was a harbinger of a permanent climate change in Washington, and that, contrary to what Obama and even John McCain were saying throughout the campaign, that the days of even the most threadbare adherence to civility between the parties was OVER FOREVER. As proud as I was to see Obama get elected, it was still disheartening to see him win with only 53 percent of the vote. I know in Washington that is considered something of a coup, but the 2008 election should have been an exponentially greater disaster for the GOP than it was. I’m not so partisan as to wish for the total demise of the opposition party (in our two party system, that’s like wishing for the end of democracy), but I thought a thouroughly chastened GOP could lead to some good cultural shifting, which to me is pretty sorely needed. As I said, I live in SC now, and though I’m not quite the pariah that I used to be for leaning left, it’s still decidedly uncool for me to let the average man on the street know my positions on the issues, because chances are I’ll still get funny looks. And Sarah Palin, well, let’s face it, she’s not trying to elevate the discourse much, is she? So in a way, even though all her daily fumblings are hilarious, the greater part of me just wishes she’d get hit my a snowplow or something, because then at least we’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of having some kind of sea change in attitudes across the country. But no: every third car I pass on the way to work proudly features a McCain/Palin bumper sticker, except these days the McCain part has been sharpied out. Anybody else seen these guys? They are out there, and they are pretty effing proud of themselves. It ticks me off to no end to realize that I am sharing the road daily with pure idiots.
And isn’t all of this attention happening because she’s hot? Don’t scoff; I mean, for a politician, she is a fox. But I mean, am I the only one who thinks that, if she was just ten years older and had visible scars or something, we’d never have heard of her?
Anyway, because age is the great equalizer, I don’t really think she’s gonna be a viable candidate for national office again – whether she knows it or not is a different story – but I can just hear her on AM radio any day now, and god knows we have enough idiots without her nasally voice complaining about “Obama, also” all the damn time.
Sorry for the rant, but this stuff just kills me.
Anne Laurie
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Julian of Norwich is going to haunt your dreams with migraine-induced aural/visual hallucinations, good sir!
I vote Bloody Bill Kristol as Palin’s ghostwriting “assistant” here. The silly screed combines that Kristoliffic aura of overschooled truculence and cringing resentment (Grima Wormtongue in Italian loafers) with the true Quayle/Palin bombastic serenity that strains for St. Ronnie and sags into Foghorn Leghorn. Badly chosen “technical” phrases stitched together with chunks of “folksiness”, concluding after too many paragraphs with the general impression that Palin doesn’t understand what cap & trade actually means, nor does she intend to find out, because all a Real American(tm) needs to know is that Obama’s in favor so it must be Baaaaaaaahd.
JGabriel
@Dusty:
Except for everyone in the GOP. Unnecessary swipes at the media are one of their stocks in trade.
.
scott
haven’t read the full comments yet, but i’m sure someone has already touched on this, but i’ve gotta write this for cathartic purposes…the ability of the washington post to treat the public as if it was in nursery school never ceases to amaze me…and newspapers want to charge for online content…what a fucking joke…
DonnaInMichigan
Until Babelfish comes up with a translation of Palinese to English, I will never be able to understand her “word salads”.
Elie
Y’all don’t get it.
This IS the Republican Party…
She is the bloated gas ball of nothingness floating over the country…the counterpoint to substance, competence and good governance proposed and implemented by the Obama administration. She is the distraction from that so that people forget what is important and gather round to see the next freak show exhibit that she represents…
Of course, we are making her shtick essentially replace any seriousness on the competent but boring government policy side. We wonder and amuse ourselves about her grammar and ideas and take up space on blogs and our heads with her CRAP..
Its just crap, all about crap and not worth discussing as to whether she meant this or that or the other. She means NOTHING and thinks NOTHING. She represents the alternative to competence and any government any of us wants.
I would like to flush her down the toilet but I am sure she would jam it up and break it — just like she is doing anything she is near including intelligent discussion on this site
Balconesfault
@Anne Laurie:
I think we have the obvious winner, given that Kristol was instrumental in getting McCain to pick Palin in the first place, and he’s been one of her most steadfast defenders.
Oh yeah – and the other style things you said, as well.
gnomedad
Next up: see, the libruls hate her so much they’re denying she wrote this!
Mike G
Palin reminds me of the fucktard news bimbo on CNN, who complained that if we demand China send us food and toys that aren’t contaminated with poison, these goods will cost more.
Cap and trade will impose marginal costs; the important thing is what we do with the revenues raised. If we took the money and pissed it away into a ditch, or into a pointless war GOP style, then we would be worse off in a strict GDP calculation. The point is to use those revenues for productive purposes, developing clean energy industries and reducing emissions, which have major societal benefits, a concept that grifters and self-dealing Repigs like Palin find difficult to grasp.
Wakefield Tolbert
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/supply-side-economics.html
Marginal rate tax cuts are PART of the supply-side package, yes. They are by no means “most” of what supply-side entails or uses. Notice the equal emphasis on deregulation and the overall focus on increasing production. There are many roads to this goal.
Cap-n-Trade is a tax on energy production that trickles down from any activity so hit, and thusly required to purchase these loopy “carbon credits” in order to continue business. That would be, well, quite a large share of the economy. Transportation, logisitcs, shipping, and construction, in addition to her mention of farming, are only just for starters.
Nuclear power would not exactly be a carboniferous activity, but while the administration has not specifically halted the notion, and people wail that it would be unfair to characterized Obama as being “anti-nuke”, the fact is that when we see “establishment liberals” like Slate’s Timothy Noah already doing high-fives over the probable “blessed” extinction of nuclear under Obama, and no real mention is made about nuclear from anyone (other than the negative) I’d say this is a difference without a distinction. Nuclear is fine, Obama says in a recent compromise on the Clean Energy Bill. But for all practical purposes, nuclear is all but gone. Nothing nuclear is planned to come “online” anytime soon.
So, we’ll piddle with carbon trinketing and windmills chopping raptors into meat and chicken manure and watch as things get more expensive. We’ll be like the ancient priests selling indulgences to sin. Only, this time we’ll sell the right to merely live as we have been, and flying will be about on par with whoredom–or worse. Scandals have already erupted with some companies selling these carbon indulgences, called “offsets”, to the effect that the “offset” often turns out to be along the lines of asking some Third Worlder to give up a modern convenience of one type or another.
I’m so glad out ugly condescenstion is so noble this time:
http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-was-wondering-when-id-hear-about-or.html
Who the hell needs modern sanitation and power? Just get the kids to work those fannies!
Well, back on the home front, from our learned betters of the Carbonari Elite, that’s when we see production either slows or the prices move up, or perhaps both. That’s Palin’s warning.
Palin is probably wrong on one front, however:
Liberals will never understand supply-side economics. Like capitalism itself, it is a counterintuitive concept that is as alien as ancient Sumerian in conceptualization. The reason for this is that they feel government has to make all requisite moves for things to happen. We, the consumers, are just to be poked and prodded like human cattle responding to external stimuli.
The last method known as Keynesianism.
Brachiator
@Ripley:
This is the beginning of the Sarah Palin “The Incompetent Shall Inherit the Earth National Tour.” I’m not sure what over stops have been scheduled, but I’ve read that she will be speaking to Republican women in Southern California next month.
What I am surprised by is the cynicism of her handlers. They figure that it is pointless to try to get her to actually study on national issues, so they have settled for either writing or touching up her op-ed pieces in an attempt to sell her to the American people.
No, she’s not going away. She’s just getting started.
OT, but a sad counter to Palin’s word salads: the talented blogger hilzoy is calling it quits (Bare-Faced Go-Away Bird).
Llelldorin
@Wakefield Tolbert:
As we’ve come to expect from conservatives, you’ve put up a snowstorm of condescension to hide the fact that you have no alternative proposal at all. What, exactly, do you propose to do about the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide? You don’t like cap-and-trade, fine—let’s see a concrete alternative. If you don’t have one, then go get one.
This has always been the problem with supply-side economics. It’s not some sort of revelation that products can be made more cheaply in the absence of regulation. The problem is that unless you have some alternative way to address the problems that provoked those regulations, or some new evidence that the regulations aren’t achieving their stated purpose, then you’re just arguing for reintroducing old problems. (You can see that in the financial meltdown, where the removal of old banking regulations immediately restarted the old cycle of speculative bubbles which were the defining feature of American financial markets up to the Great Depression.)
Cap and trade was originally meant to be a more market-friendly approach to handling the problem than the old straightforward energy taxes that were originally proposed. Predictably enough, you’re against cap and trade as well.
Nikki
There is NO FUCKING WAY the Empress from Alaska wrote this. Those Maureen Dowd columns about her illiteracy must have really bugged her, as the NYT article on her obsession with criticism would indicate.
.
I suspect Fred Hiatt commissioned one of his hack-neo-con-lovers to write it.
Singularity
Phoebe wins.
Indylib
@Brachiator:
t
Well, hell! That sucks.
Wakefield Tolbert
Llelldorin,
I’ll ignore the usual slights about all this condescension charge when in fact that is actually becoming painfully obvious on some other fronts.
I posted a link for that one, in fact. You might find it an interesting peek into real condescension from the Progressive mind’s eye.
I’d say that even IF you think there is going to be something more than some Laodicean Hellfire out of global warming, or “climate change”, or whatever the current fallback position is to make sure we have the verbal bases covered if it turns out to be colder than a brass tit next winter, we can all still win:
Serendipity is a grand thing. Since about 75 percent of all emissions, carbon and otherwise, come from ENERGY production, that means that the world can take a large bite out of this effluence from moving to a non-carbon power source. Like the one Tim Noah has pre-emptively struck to hell with quite some glee since it can’t be perfect and no one can guarantee no waste issues and no accidents for the next 5 billion years. Perfection being a hard mode to find, it’s history for the time being. Yet we should begin somewhere–right? Wrong, say the do-gooders. At least not with nuclear you won’t, damn you.
The government rightly has some areas that it needs to respond to. I’d agree in a general sense with that. The real question is, is “energy” on that menu in a serious way, or are we just going to piddle around the edges and make things more expensive WITHOUT an end result? Cap-n-Trade is being sold as some kind of “free-market” solution, but the problem is the constraints are artificial.
I realize that it’s possible there is no alternative that’s El Cheapo, when it comes to the difficult task of transitioning from one form of energy to another. Granted.
But the problem here is that you’re using the threat of force–and calling it “market incentives”–when in fact no other option exists under the Obama plan, other than to continually pay your way to salvation: Expense increases without results just to maintain production. True market incentives would have as a given a response to some other resource available, and the prices would fluctuate accordingly, as they have in other scenarios when the threat of resource depletion loomed. Since nuclear power is “natural” only in the sense of uranium that is in the ground, this is one area where government can step in and provide incentives for a transition to its use as a power, rather than popping the end consumer (after the long chain of taxes reaches down to our pocketbooks) for something that has no backup plan other than rising prices on oil. I’m not necessarily under the impression this would be cheap, but at least the incentive money would flow to energy producers in the form of tax incentives, and the like, rather than the pockets of government oversight agencies that have no other plans on the table. And no, windmills and biofuels won’t fill the bill. Not for a large and complex civilization such as ours. Not a chance.
Now: We’ve been cooling for a decade now, and carbon rich air is just what plants need and some evidence suggests that in this balance we’ll actually have a greener world due to this natural plant fertilizer. A warmer world is a wetter and more productive one, with longer growing seasons and higher plant yields. And the geologic record is not what most have heard, in that lower CO2 levels are now associated with the Viking Age, when it was warmer than it is today. How much carbon were those sails putting out, I wonder? The Co2 level was down to about 180 ppm, whereas at about 100 ppm most plants don’t metabolize well. Today we are at almost 389. Yet we’re cooler than that age.
But, let’s just assume those facts are just anomalies against the horrid backdrop some larger, darker record, right? Let’s also cast aside the fact that even the most stringent restrictions on fossil fuels, and merely using conservation methods/punishmets/blandishments/shaming, does the most optimistic deed we can imagine–and by the year 2050 we manage to merely slash the global temps by, oh, at most, about .01 degree F.
Let’s also assume that’s just THRILLING to all involved and every day begins with a parade and Obama’s mug is chiseled into Mount Rushmore. The problem we’re still left with, by the time the sands of Arabia dry up, the terror lords get more payola, and windmills across America are producing a max output enough to power a small town in Delaware, is that we STILL don’t have a backup source for power. Or, not a meaningful one.
So, given that everyone who is impressed enough with the latest scaremongering is yelling these days and likely will continue to do so regardless and we need to shut them up, just like they USED to do in the days of “crack babies” filling up maternity wards up to the top maintenance floor, then let’s kill two bird-brained conditions with one policy stone toss.
First, even if no climate damage is eminent, let’s play that game and shut people’s mouths without raising taxes on energy production. We’ll move the grid, a la France to nuclear power. This won’t get rid of all oil or coal uses, but would certainly put a dent in it. Second, we can slay the other perennial dragon that foreign policy wonks jabber about regarding Americans fighting ourselves in regards to the War on Terror and the financing of the House of Saud.
hamletta
I know I’m supposed to have lost faith in the WaPo by now, but I grew up in DC, and even back when The Tennessean didn’t suck, going home and reading the WaPo was like, “Ooh! Newspaper for smart people!”
It still is, to a certain extent, only because big papers have so much stuff that some of it is still good. But damn.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that proto–Villager Dem asshole, famously said, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”
Labeling a column “Opinion” isn’t carte blanche for outright fiction. I can understand why they wouldn’t fact-check George Will, but Sarah Palin?
Bish, plz.
Wakefield Tolbert
Llelldorin,
I also take it as read that we’re not exactly in economic shape right about now to start all this talk about yet MORE kinds of taxes.
I think good and right-thinking people should have a sense of noblesse-oblige about such matters, yes.
But we’re moving into some dark ground here, and I think incentives for production is key. The situation so far has been, like I said on the other thread, a sop to 40-year punchlists of liberals.
I’m not completely opposed to federal money flowing to some projects. All in the campaign 08′ mode we heard from both candidates about infrastrucute and bridges and roads and other things. Fine. Time for that to happen, and yet most of the Porkulus bill involves glop and slush to pet projects.
The GAO has figured this out, and this would be the case even IF, as some have protested, the money is “being spent wrong” by the governors of some states.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123310466514522309.html
No doubt it is. But that’s not the full story. And we both know it. The same will hold true for this new pirate called Capn Trade.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1723.cfm
See also the studies on those…greenie jobs, so to speak.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0
http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2009/03/17/study_disputes_job_creation_figures_for_green_industry
Llelldorin
@Wakefield Tolbert:
So, to summarize, you don’t believe the problem exists, but if you’re wrong, you’d switch to nuclear.
How? France was able to do that because they have a fairly centralized economy, with much greater government control than we have. How exactly would you enforce an abrupt switch of our entire power infrastructure from coal and natural gas to nuclear, under a supply-side scheme? If you’re planning to use breeder reactors, remember to account for the extra costs of safeguarding the requisite plutonium (which would immediately become a prime target for terrorists–plutonium is spectacularly poisonous).
Once again, you’re attacking a flawed scheme, without any realistic counterproposal except to hope that the problem doesn’t exist.
Zuzu's Petals
Hmm, the cap and trade bill has been “foremost on her mind,” eh?
Anybody know of any public statement she’s EVER made on the topic? That actually came out of her mouth and not a speechwriter’s pen?
Anybody know of any public statement she’s made in the days since she quit indicating that cap and trade was “foremost” on her mind? Besides her bit about “energy independence” in that word salad of a resignation speech?
Wakefield Tolbert
(You can see that in the financial meltdown, where the removal of old banking regulations immediately restarted the old cycle of speculative bubbles which were the defining feature of American financial markets up to the Great Depression.)
http://www.nypost.com/seven/02052008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_real_scandal_243911.htm
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=306370789279709
This was all warned against:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/09/flashback-to-1999-origins-of-credit.html
..and so some guesses were accurate:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/09/blame-fannie-mae-and-congress-for.html
Granted, you’ll find as many opinions on this charge of “deregulation led to the current banking mess” as their are pundits, but I think it’s clear by now that the government insistence that economics be voided by the sheer fiat of “helpful hints” to banks about making creative ways to offer wacko mortgages is the larger problem here.
In terms of “you’ll do this, or else”, with the “or else” understood in that industry as deep poop.
Wakefield Tolbert
Llelldorin,
Oh–there IS a problem. But to me it’s called The House of Saud. The other is that like it or not, oil is a really good fuel and more energy packed than the alternatives per unit.
But, we are NOT going to be able to do anything abruptly. That is sheer fantasy. And forgive me if you think I meant such.
And as China and India are exempt from these cap n trade regulations, their position will be the catbird seat. Now that the Yen is making a pitch for the new world currency, not the best time to have US industry crunched.
I cry foul.
I could always ask what in tarnation will cap-in-trade do in our current situation? Is THAT going to abruptly change us to trillions of spinning windmills or some such?
No. It’s merely going to raise the cost of things. It is NOT going be, as someone claimed, a MARGINAL cost. Taxes are like the aforementioned plutonium. They are ETERNAL. And while a few percentage points here and yonder don’t sound like much, they add up in the checkbook.
If we know that raising the cost of, say, a pack of cigarettes by mere pennies stops some people from smoking, and studies can even quantify this effect from taxes alone with no other entreaties to quit (and those studies are out there), then are we really under the impression that cap in trade taxes are not going to slow production or raise prices and that this will have no effect on the end consumer?
So while we are in the business of making things more expensive, let’s work toward something productive more than an indulgence-guilt settlement in the mind. Right?
I think this is going to be over a long period of time, and I think that during that time we’ll be dealing with whatever real and probably imagined carbon issues that come about if for no other reason being that even IF the US went out of EXISTENCE completely, we still have the third world pitching for a lifetyle similar to ours, and they’re not going to be deterred by warmer air either from politicians or from the weather outside.
I said it above, obviously there will be costs involved.
The trick is to make those costs work without having Farmer Joe and Sissy Sue pick up the plupart of the tab when they go buy something at the dime store. Like the legendary VAT taxes (on which some of these notions are modeled) these things can pick up steam fast. Else we’ll be enacting government programs to cover the “in kind” costs of what middle and poor America can no longer afford. We already do that with AFDC and farm credits and other mysterious plans that long ago turned into a bewildering and befuddling labyrinth of plans and payouts for not doing much.
I said, however, that government might have to take a part in this. The difference is rather than plunk the whole economy with a musical chairs regimen of paying carbon taxes, perhaps incentives are in order for utilities that move from fossil fuels to nuclear.
Government has almost always been part of energy issues in the modern times that electricity had to be grided and divied up and utilities had to have both some regulation and leeway as a compromise for almost monopolistic power.
Having a sound energy policy would not necessitate (I hope) some gargatuan government control. Just encouragement via tax incentives. Who says we need to copy everthing others do?
As far as your techincal insight on plutonium and breeder reactors: I freely admit I don’t have those answers. Better men than myself, however, realize we can’t thumbtwaddle on this forever. My understanding is that breeder reactors are more efficient than the water type, but that yes, plutonium being the by-product means more security concerns. However, I’ll remind you and the dear readers that that day is already here, and has been for some time. We are far more vulnerable than is generally acknowledged.
How are missle silos and the accompanying computer mainframes being guarded? Same problem. The current oil rigs and coal plants and other infrastructure related to energy production have all been scoped out by terrorists.
And?
*************************************
As to banking again, guess who tried to stop some of this mess:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:SN00190:@@@P
Not my favorite, but some people had the good sense not to lay this at the feet of what is supposedly the ravages of naked capitalism. Hardly the case.
Martin
Jesus will take care of it, naturally.
wonkie
To me the real outrage is that the Post gave her an op ed. It really is a worthless paper.
harlana pepper
Okay, I’ve shown remarkable restraint with regard to Sarah Palin but she really needs to STFU, now. I guess that’s the whole point of her resignation, so she can go around subjecting us to her nuggets of wisdom. If I want one of her nuggets of wisdom, I’d buy her frickin $7 Mil book. Bristol’s Baby Daddy may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he’s got her number.
Balconesfault
@Wakefield Tolbert:
A plea to not be taken seriously.
Batocchio
You got me. She generally just assembles sound bites. And I’m sure it’s ghost-written. Supply-side economics have been widely debunked – it’s just that conservatives like their crackpot “theories” to justify giving more money to the rich. The most recent example came under Bush – he gave huge tax cuts to the richest Americans, yet unemployment increased. Shocking!
I grew up in the DC area, and it really pains me to see the WaPo continue to decline. Seriously, Murdoch wasn’t available? Did Kristol pressure Hiatt to do this? I mean, she is newsworthy, and will give them web hits, but she’s a laughingstock.
harlana pepper
I guess this is just her way of “progressing the country.” ((sigh))
rachel
Has anyone else had a look at the latest issue of Scientific American? It has two articles relevant to this post in it that you all might find interesting: Grassoline: Biofuels beyond Corn and The Science of Economic Bubbles and Busts.
HeartlandLiberal
Let’s just say, if you believe Sarah Palin wrote that op-ed, please contact me soonest.
I have fine Dog-Trot mansion down in central Alabama out in the country I will be glad to sell you for a handsome sum.
It was originally packaged up in a mortgage that got repackaged multiple times until some sucker bought into the package containing it as part of a derivatives deal that said it was worth a million dollars.
I would be glad to sacrifice it to you for half that.
Give me a call. Operators are standing by.
Michael
The piece is stupid enough to be written by him, but it is missing some of the spittle-flecked CCC string pulling invective that I’ve come to note from his scribblings.
Joe
She talks about supply-side economics and cap-and-trade raising costs for consumers, but she pushed increased oil taxes on producers in Alaska, and then handed the money to Alaska residents. Who the hell does she think made up the difference? How can a person be so oblivious and open herself up to such an obvious contradiction?
bob h
What, was this too stupid for the Washington Times to publish?
kommrade reproductive vigor
I know I’m not the only one who’s drooling at the thought of the interview where she’s asked to explain what she wrote*.
*Where Wrote = Got someone else to write it, made some half-arsed changes and then wiped her weary brow. Also.
DBrown
@Wakefield Tolbert: You will never understand simple economics – try to understand that Obama does not own the nuclear power industry – private companies do. They and they alone decide to build or not to build. Only after they decide does the gov get into it with massive support and permits to rob the rate-payer. Wingnuts like you will never understand real policy.
kay
The GAO figures on the estimated cost of cap and trade have been out since June 23.
Celebrities on the right are going to have to acknowledge those figures, and Palin, like the rest of the unelected punditry on the right, ignores them.
Here’s the best estimate, from the GAO: 175 dollars per family yearly in increased cost. 40 dollars expected benefit to lowest income families.
If celebrity conservatives have better numbers than the GAO released, they should be forced to present them, and cite the source.
175 dollars, GAO. Where are her numbers, and where did they come from?
RSA
I think Palin wrote a lot of this; the conventionally Republican ideas are phrased just oddly enough. Here’s one example:
The “particularly in Alaska” and “consequently” sentence introductions are pure Palin. And the bonus: this is an “I can see Russia from my house” claim to expert knowledge. Who but Palin would be so unaware of the public impression she’s left that she wouldn’t think twice before recycling this gem?
montag
Jeezopete, the WaPoo will print just about any drivel a Repug can crayon-scrawl on a page.
What’s next? “The Best of Free Republic?”
Oh, wait a minute. Silly me. Fred Hiatt’s got the hots for Scary Sarah….
John Cole
The WaPO, using its op-ed page to prop up dumb right-wingers? This is a first.
I wonder who wrote this.
kay
@RSA:
It’s completely vague, so completely dishonest. There are reams of numbers available on cap and trade. She uses none of them. Instead we get phrases like “clearly increase”, which is a classic weasel statement.
This subject can’t be discussed without numbers. “Increase” can mean 1 dollar or a thousand dollars. This is a cost/benefit analysis. How can we discuss it without numbers? We can’t.
But, the Washington Post gives away prime real estate to this pundit to slap together a series of talking points.
A 7th grader with a working internet connection could write something more rigorous and fact-based, and probably has, as a homework assignment.
Joe
I like the God blessed us with this oil part. I’m pretty sure that’s how it plays out in Nigeria, Angola and Burma. Thank you for this wonderful blessing.
chopper
@Balconesfault:
yeah, i think it went like this: hey sarah, i wrote the article. now you take it and rewrite it in your own words. feel free to dig on the media, the kids love that shit.
John Cole
Also, you all are slipping.
Nice Alanis reference, DougJ.
chopper
it’s like rain on your daughter’s shotgun wedding day.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
53@
Until you at least attempt to understand the concept of negative externalities, inelastic demand, or even the distinction between weather and climate, I refuse to entertain you as anything more than a self-important, malaprops spewing troll.
Economic solutions are inevitably demand based. Also.
White House Department of Law (fmrly Jim-Bob)
82@
…which is that I increased taxes on oil production to give Alaskans a hand-out.
Crap! Joe @75 beetmetuit!
Balconesfault
@bob h:
Hey, I still credit the Washington Times for publishing an Iraq invasion editorial that was far better than anything that showed up on the OpEd pages of the WaPo at the time.
Sadly (in some ways, as evidenced by the fact that the article is no longer searchable in the WaTimes archives, and needs to be referenced to external sources) this is far more an indictment of the WaPo than any endorsement of the WaTimes.
Media Maimonides (formerly Browski)
Working under the assumption that Wakefield is this week’s spoofer, but wanted to say that everything WT said about economics amounts to “It’s opposite day! Night is day, Tunch is a dog, John Cole is Michelle Malkin!”
DBrown
@Wakefield Tolbert: You need to learn facts based on science and not wingnuts – until then, I have to believe all your points are the same nonsense as your totally wrong statements on AGW. Read the facts at Realclimate and then, try again. Until then, your lack of knowledge is staggering. Change that and learn facts not fiction.
kay
I’m going to write an editorial extolling the virtues of cap and trade relying solely on phrases like “clearly reduces global warming”, and “many green jobs”. No numbers.
Think it will be published?
Original Lee
@Brachiator: At first I read this as “The Incontinent Shall Inherit the Earth National Tour”. I’m still trying to decide which version I like better.
Da Bomb
All I know is that anytime Sarah Palin talks or “writes”, she reminds me of the adults from the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Wah-Wah…Wah-Wah-Wah.
That’s all I hear and of course I see starbursts as well. Also.
Comrade Darkness
I’m willing to believe she wrote it; it’s not written particularly well and it doesn’t seem patched to look believable–like I would expect if someone skilled at writing had actually written it on the sly and tried to dumb it down. I suspect she was given a list of talking points, took the bullets off and made sentences out of them. Hence it lacking any explanation of actual mechanisms to back up the assertions, or solid rhetorical point outside of “democrats are bad” because, based on her last point: “they insist we buy energy from the saudis because they can sell it cheaper” or something. Her last point made the least sense of all of them and that should be the closer. Perhaps some supply-sider can explain to her that the lowest cost supplier is SUPPOSED to win.
nepat
Looks like she was for cap and trade before she was against it. Oops.
Hat-tip to Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog: http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/.
matoko_chan
Conor Clarke says
Do you guys see the significance of this development?
Palin quit because the GOP told her to be quiet and read some books and come back in 2016. Her resignation was a big F.U. to the Krauthammers and Goldbergs that want to manage her “brand”. Then yesterday Beck and Rush “speculated” about a third Palin party.
She has the GOP by the shorthairs.
Sign on to Platform Sarah and endorse her as the nom for 2012, or she will take her ball (the base) and make her own party!
hahaha
chopper
@nepat:
d’oh! gotta love the intertrons.
matoko_chan
Obama! notice meeee! plzplzplz notice meeee!
I am a real candidate! really i am!
respect meh!
hahaha!
Balconesfault
@matoko_chan:
I’ve been feeling this ever since November. It’s a real minefield for all the other Republican contenders, since I really think that Sarah envisions herself a modern day “David”, the beautiful outsider annointed by God to slay the Goliath … or in this case, the Obama. She’s going to fight hard and dirty for the nomination in 2012, and if anyone on the right punches back, they lose 50% of the Republican base.
Popcorn, please!
PQuincy
To all those who thoughtfully tried to actually respond to Wakefield Tolbert, it’s necessary to provide a gentle warning:
Please Do Not Feed the Trolls
Responding to climate-change-deniers and Laffer-curve-enthusiasts is about as productive as talking to a septic tank: it won’t even change the smell, and if it’s clogged, it certainly won’t change the flow.
Jon H
@NobodySpecial: “I was under the impression from talking with antitax Republicans that whenever costs went up, they were passed on to the consumer, so how does the farmer lose money?”
Well, where you have a farmer selling to a powerful middleman like Wal-Mart, the middleman may have enough power to resist price increases, and the farmer eats it. Basically, the company that sells the fuel for the tractors can pass the increase on to the farmer, and the fertilizer company can pass the increase on to the farmer, but the farmer may not be able to pass the increase on to his or her customers.
This would be a bit different from a hypothetical tax on all businesses, where all businesses just pass their increased cost on to their customers. Even if Wal-Mart can make its suppliers eat the increase, it’d have its own increase to pass on to its own customers.
Langx
Suzy Kolber for President.
She’s a sexy Milf and knows more football than Palin.
Elie
I disagree completely that she is rising to some sort of challenge to get the GOP by the short hairs…
Her recent decisions, her very obvious stress demonstrate a person who is decompensating — not gaining on issues or positioning.
The progressives critique her smarts (which is valid) but I think that her “show stopping” limitation is her inability to control/manage her temperament and ability to work hard and focus to see something through to the end.
She will and has damaged the Republicans, but they could definitely mitigate her influence IF THEY HAD ANY DECENT ALTERNATIVE CANDIDATES, as Frank Rich asserted in his Sunday column. But they don’t ..
So, she will be hanging around — the loose cannon, rolling this way and that, taking out parts of the now completely battle worn and damaged Republican political infrastructure. She may run as a third party but not necessarily. Whoo Boy, that running for stuff is hard work, and she aint about that…She will want to be a “king maker” though
She LOVES celebrity but is also very anxious that she is going to mess up and do something bad to herself or her family. She knows that not everyone who praises her in the Republican Party is really her advocate and Lord knows, some of those folks are digging up all kinds of stuff behind the scenes. She is being sized up all the time and while they are letting her run with it right now, don’t think that this will be allowed to continue forever…she knows that too…
Molly
@Wakefield Tolbert:
Funny thing, maybe plenty of us comprehend supply-side economics quite well. We tried it. We decreased regulation and cut taxes, and it hasn’t worked out for this country. Wish it had; none of us wanted to see the ultimate failure of supply-side theory and what it’s done to this country. But, IT DIDN’T WORK. Even Greenspan has said this.
I, for one, in this and so many other things, wish this government was not having to take on the deep burdens it is right now. Believe it or not, plenty of us liberals are not enjoying this moment in our history. We don’t want to have to bail out GM, AIG; we don’t want to have to continue pumping money into this economy, we don’t want to continue to have to bail out the results of this failed experiment, and then get bitched at by people like you for having to go in and clean up this God-awful mess.
We are not taking this “opportunity” to carry out some nefarious agenda. This is not an opportunity for ANY of us. This is the ultimate result of failed implementation of flawed theory, from supply-side economics to the Bush Doctrine.
So, disabuse yourself that anyone here is unable to comprehend this rarified air and supposed superior awareness you have. We’ve been comprehending it for quite some time. We’ve been watching it all unfold. The issue is the lack of comprehension of supply-siders that it failed.
Any new ideas?
Molly
@PQuincy:
Thank you. I needed that reminder.
I am trying to become cynical, I really am. I need to just give up trying to talk to people who have become truly entrenched. And I am sure they would say the same about me, that I am completely wrong and illogical. Difference is, I can point to the current state of this country and say “but don’t you see it? Forget the books, the talk radio, the sermons in churches, how can you not see it all around you?”
Llelldorin
@PQuincy:
I’m confused. I could’ve sworn this was Ballon Juice, where two thirds of us force-feed the trolls as though we’re making foie gras from them, while the other third pretends to be trolls for their own twisted amusement.
Let me know if I’m on the wrong site…
chopper
@Balconesfault:
i’d be more excited to watch this unfold and wreck the GOP if i didn’t constantly remember that a similar moron (with an even worse command of the english language) got 2 terms to cock up every damn thing in this country.
Elie
Lleldorin:
“I’m confused. I could’ve sworn this was Ballon Juice, where two thirds of us force-feed the trolls as though we’re making foie gras from them, while the other third pretends to be trolls for their own twisted amusement.”
Smile…I think you are on the right site and right side.
Either way I learn something and also get amused..
Zuzu's Petals
I’d be interested to see this piece compared to a sample of Palin’s own writing. If there is such a thing.
My bet is on that Ayers guy the Repub Governor’s Assn sent up to help get her back on track. Gave her a prefab op-ed piece with instructions to start focusing on energy issues in an attempt to build credibility.
Well, at least she took him up on the prefab op-ed piece.
LD50
Andrew Sullivan says conservatism is like water.
Some heavy duty shit, dude.
LD50
Hey, check out Wakefield’s obligatory snarl about ACORN! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“So we could escape the tradeoff between growth and inflation by creating growth on the supply side (specifically by cutting taxes on the rich, which would spur all sorts of supply-side growth).”
Yes, Keynesian economics had a problem with . But so would other schools of economics: you had a supply-side shock from the rise in oil prices in the 1970s, and the result of that was either a rise in the price level or a recession. However, as inflation expections are adaptive, in the end raising the price level (by a slack monetary policy) only postponed the inevitable recession.
However, Reagan’s tax cuts were disastrously implemented. He goosed the economy at the same time as Volcker was trying to choke inflation off by increasing interest rates; the stimulus from the tax cuts got exported as the dollar rose and interest rates spiked. We had serious structural damage done because of Reagan’s economic inepitude. However, after oil prices dropped and Volcker loosened economic policy, the recovery got under way, with very good growth in 1984, just before the election, which was fortunate for Ronnie. But overall, Reagan’s record on GDP growth on average was only a 0.1-0.2% better than Carter’s, and much worse than Clinton’s.
Investment as a share of GDP didn’t increase after Reagan’s supply side dreaming: there was a temporary boost after 1981, but that started to drop off in 1984, going down to a low under Bush I, lower than it had ever been in the 1970s or 1960s. Investment as a percentage of GDP rose under Clinton. Supply-side economics didn’t create some wonder store of investment; quite the opposite, the higher deficits the tax cuts created crowded out private investment.
Comrade Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“Now: We’ve been cooling for a decade now,”
Six out of the ten hottest years globally on record have occurred in the past decade.
Also, 1998, which is the hottest year on record (and an extreme ENSO year) was more than a decade ago. Download a new talking point from whatever website you’re using for your script.
“and carbon rich air is just what plants need”
I thought Brawno “the Thirst Mutilator” was just what plants need. Not water, like from the toilet.
Wakefield Tolbert
DBrown sayeth:
try to understand that Obama does not own the nuclear power industry – private companies do
Your venom hit the carpet, Chico, as does most of that from your cacaphony of ingrates in dungeons like B. Juice.
The nukes come under the same regulatory power that allows the government to intervene fairly much when it damn well pleases, if is pleases, and on the day it pleases.
Government lately has more and more meant “that which Obama takes a liking to….”
DIG?
http://www.nrc.gov/
As with telling the coal plants on what terms if and whether they will operate in X-manner, or even exist, wide girth of power is found in these sacred halls, brother.
The pragmatic tradeoff here is that by their very nature they are monopolisitc, and as you can’t generally have competing power lines on the grid, you come under the rate authority of both the feds and the local powers.
He who has pays the band gets to call the tunes, doofus.
Obama in any case has deemed that the auto industry is at his beck and call and command and that if a CEO needs to take a hike, by george that will happen too.
One assumes that in an age of the United States of Emergency and Laodicean hellfires from global warming, that power can and would be extended to “private” industry.
It’s being done to coal(heavier regulation and some stiff rules), and thusly would this carbon demon be part of the ritualistic cleansing of nukes as well.
In fact, it already has. If you can take from something, you can give to something as far as outright advocacy.
If we so choose to use nuclear. Which after the dissing of Yucca mountain, is far from likely.
Over on that monkey tap platform called Slate, Timothy Noah proudly points out that for all practical purposes and for any time in the next few years, the advocacy of more nuke power is all but dead. And for his part his says hurray and three cheers and praises the Bambi administration for the efforts–intended or not.
Not understanding indeed.
And remember that it’s probably NOT a good idea to get your handy talking points from George Soros sock puppets like RealClimate and other PC outlets. His deep pockets puts the robber barons of yesteryear to shame for his ideological and political advocacy that he calls “science.”
One might as well ask your local Department of Motor Vehicles for input on such matters.
As to Molly’s little precis on supply-side economics, it has the insight of a 6 year old wondering why mom just can’t simply write more checks from the magical paper book she saw fall out of the purse. Thanks for very little. Good golly, Molly.
As to PQuincy–yeah, actual responses would be nice, now wouldn’t they? Since, however, a troll here is defined as “that which we do not like”, it remains to be seen if any dissent if responded to.
Good show.
Wakefield Tolbert
I, for one, in this and so many other things, wish this government was not having to take on the deep burdens it is right now. Believe it or not, plenty of us liberals are not enjoying this moment in our history. We don’t want to have to bail out GM, AIG; we don’t want to have to continue pumping money into this economy, we don’t want to continue to have to bail out the results of this failed experiment, and then get bitched at by people like you for having to go in and clean up this God-awful mess.
And yes, your agenda is nefarious. What you accomplish by all this glop that is, in reality, a 50-year wish list of government and social services slop is more power to government.
Contra the Comrade, no one said suppy-side was perfect. I was merely straigtening out the very terminology.
Whatever the case, it was not necessary for all this crap. In those bad old days of deficit spending we were told the world would go to hell and things would spin out of control if we didn’t reign that in by hiking taxes.
Now that the emphasis is on glop and social services and payoffs to union thugs and busybodies and the like, it seems we can safely walk that rather risky multi-trillion yellowbrick road with absolute impunity, tell people that 95 percent of all the smiles in the audience will not see a nickel in tax increases to even cover the freight charge, and at THAT, with all this crap flowing to government, this “opportunity” (as little Timmy Geithner calls it, along with Rahm Emmanuel) will just go wasted to the efforts of making government larger than it is.
Sure thing, Molly.
The real tragedy in all this is that contra the scaremongers, they are just as wrong on this as telling us the Maldive Islands will be gone circa 2500, and in this case it seems that all economies have ups and downs. This downturn, ironically, as the links I posted show, had as its proximate cause the housing crisis made worse in no small part by busybodies and rule-benders in government.
The fix, we are told, is to add on more glob, and tell everyone that minus several trillion dollars we don’t even HAVE, the earth will spin off into the sun, or some such.
And yet, it should go noticed that spending ……is spending.
The difference that irks some of us here is that IF you TRULY wanted JOB creations and not more net GOVERMENT JOB creation (I’d say there are some long-term distinctions here, n’est pas????), and know that 70& of all new employment has less to do with unionitis and other afflictions on some corporate scale, but rather small businesses–why not boost small businesses????
If you really don’t “want” to go down certain roads–then DON’T.
Pain is part of life and generous teacher, and the government should not be in the business of making rose gardens. That path, the ugly sister ideology and opposite to Supply-Side, has as her offspring vast areas of the world, where government fairly much controls the whole ball of wax. Be it Cameroon or Ireland, and in all locales where government jobs account for about 70% of the economy and similar percentages and unemployment lingers permanently at double digits anyhow due to the crowding out of private business—that’s the legacy your non-nefarious ways will promote.
You arent’ made the more noble for your ignorance and attempting to help the commonweal, Molly.
After all, nurses who accidentally give the wrong shot and send grandpa into cardiac arrest have lost their jobs and even been sued.
Naughty naughty.
Wakefield Tolbert
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1120
There you are Comrade Jackass and little Molly.
Wakefield Tolbert
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html
I am more than aware that the experts cited by RC and some others say this is but a temporary blip and means nothing but variation within a larger trend, etc.
But if the “variation” continues, then it becomes a trend.
In any case, even the Soros site halfway asserts this is the case, as does the IPCC.
Wakefield Tolbert
As to the banks and the car company bailouts Molly says some of her kin are loathe to have to do:
Well now, that just keeps getting the chuckles.
In the case of the banks, that problem was due to government itself, sorta like the creeps who you pay protection money to in My Bodyguard.
As to the domestic auto industry?
Unionitis is one of the afflications to note here. Though not the only one. The Big Three have only themselves to blame.
Lack of innovation is a killer.
No force, in the powers of heaven and earth, could get me to purchase an American car any time soon. They proved their meddle with crumpled metal.
The Shining City on a Hill is now Fred Sanford’s Junkyard, Molly.
A new policy should be in place rather than doing what the accountants almost all say is bad form: destruction of good assets for marginally better ones.
Rather than cash for clunkers, perhaps a rebate check for all the misery liberals cause.
Cash for Flunkers..