Two days ago Hastings voted NO on the extension of unemployment benefits. Either he lacks basic knowledge of macroeconomics or he is in lockstep with the Republican Policy Committee. The motive of the RPC is to cripple our nascent economic recovery in order to get back into the driver’s seat and return to the middle-class squashing policies of Bush.
The headline for my letter to the editor in today’s paper is “Replace Hastings with Clough”. While I am not sure that my economic views are completely in sync with those of Jay Clough, I do know that he is capable of reading a report by the Council of Economic Advisors and making something of it. That is improvement enough.
Another thing that isn’t clear in my letter is that I actually do believe in capitalism, completely. Capitalism is the most efficient known mechanism for organizing production and distributing product. But, it is not perfect. Every tax expenditure, every regulatory loophole, every special favor, every unbid contract and practically everything else a corporate lobbyist is after when meeting with a Congressman is aimed at subverting the awful power of the market system. If you want capitalism to work well, you ought to elect a representative who will guard against undue corporate influence.
Business cycles are a characteristic of unfettered capitalism. When the trough of the business cycle combines with the bursting of an investment bubble, the entire economy screeches to a halt or, as it’s been described, careens into a ditch. That is why the federal budget should act as a counter-cyclical force, protect jobs from being lost, provide incentives for hiring and buffer inevitable job losses with unemployment payments.
Amazing that he thinks his constituents don’t need unemployment…
Saw this today:
A day in the life of Joe Conservative
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal f…ought for minimum water-quality …standards. With h……is first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.
The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
I’m not sure where people like Hastings live. Well it’s Dee Cee, where he is gladly held up by lobbyists and conservo radio hosts who keep him in a vacuum as to what THEY view the ‘pulse’ of the nation which is total BS. We are still in year 3 of a GOP ignored/caused recession that need lots of money to pull out of its doldrums. They, the new GOP want the economy and the nation as a whole to fail, as they run on a platform of “see, this it what happens in a mid-term of a (democrat)-tic administration” that we caused by tax breaks to the upper 10% but move-along, nothing to see here. But to be sure, the democratic party needs to stand up for the ideals of helping the middle class by pointing out that what worked in previous economic crisis, can work again. We had a large grass-roots movement that elected President Obama, he needs to know that we can place our energy somewhere else if we are ignored.