When I was growing up, to be elite was a good thing. My best friend and I from elementary school were focused on joining the Army’s elite; he made it to the goal when he made it to the Rangers. Americans loved the elite; athletes, warriors…winners of all stripes. We even liked elite criminals like Lex Luthor, elite monsters like Jason, and elite scoundrels like Gordon Gecko.
Read the rest of this entry »The Uncommon Sense Of Austerity
What our democracy is telling us, via historic and current reporting of financial data, is that fiscal austerity is uncommon sense. The short terms challenge to fiscal stability is the jobs deficit, not the budget deficit. The jobs deficit means consumers have less money to buy the goods and services of businesses big and small. The jobs deficit and massive top-end tax cuts are the reasons revenues have fallen.
Read the rest of this entry »Our Big, Beautiful, Bipolar Democracy
We accomplished these things because we could afford to, we could afford to accomplish these things because we paid higher taxes when we earned a greater share of the Dream. There was no smoke and mirrors, no song and dance, no magic tricks. We carried some slackers, we dealt with immigrants, we fought wars imperfectly and made foolish decisions. These are human realities in every system of government and taxation. But these are the realities that a small minority has used to great success to convince the working class that the problem is taxation, and the villains are poor, or Mexican, or the lazy, or abortionists, or Christians who don’t think it pays to advertise.
Read the rest of this entry »Handicapping The GOP
In modern American politics, the race for the President starts very early indeed. President Obama shuffled his deck of advisors and kicked off his campaign in the spring, and the Republican field is well ordered here in the early days of summer. With less than 17 months to go, the horses are already in their stalls. Handicapping the GOP horse-race is a difficult process, in large part because many conservatives are more likely to apply the alternate meaning of the verb, to handicap. With less than a year until the first primaries, not a single GOP candidate stands out as a likely conservative champion. This column takes a brief look at the field, the race, and the odds.
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