Planning And Progress

by digby

According to the Republicans pandemic preparedness has absolutely nothing to do with economics:

Here’s the problem with that kind of silly, cretinous nonsense:

“We think that what we’re doing now at the land ports and the airports makes sense,” she said on NBC’s “Today Show.” Asked whether border closure is under review, she added: “That’s something that can be considered, but you have to look at what the costs are. We literally have thousands of trucks and commerce that cross that border…. That would be a very, very heavy cost for what epidemiologists tell us would be marginal” benefit in containing the virus.

Anyone who thinks that a pandemic in the middle of a global financial crisis isn’t something to worry about is crazy. We have known for years that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened and everyone knew that public health and research into the problem had been neglected for years in order to spend lots of money of Dick Cheney’s wet dreams. When the economy went into a tailspin, Democrats thought that it would be a good stimulus (scientists, public health and homeland security agencies spend money too…) but that it was also necessary to plan for what might happen in this fragile economy if a pandemic hit. The GOP made fun of it and knocked it out of the bill for no reason other than the fact that Susan Collins had decided that pandemic funding wasn’t important.

The Republicans thought it was cute to label spending on things like this and honey be research and volcano monitoring as superfluous and silly. But these are exactly the things that Americans think their government is supposed to do, once they think about it. (Who else will do it?) What they aren’t so keen on is kick-backs to wealthy Republican contributors and endless military adventures for no good reason.

Having said that, let’s not forget that our newest ‘lil Democrat was right there braying about the stimulus and cutting deals with Collins and I wouldn’t expect that to change. Standing in the way of planning and progress is the “moderates'” raison d’etre. Regardless of party, that always serves conservatism.

As Ed Rollins commented on CNN earlier, “the Democrats will ‘enjoy’ every day they have to keep Arlen happy.”