Hey, remember when Paul Ryan said he was all over Ayn Rand and now he’s all Catholic and stuff? Well, it may have become the love that dare not speak its name but it’s clear that Ryan still has deep, deep feelings for the old girl:
Here, let me translate that into the original Randroid:
“The man who attempts to live for others is a dependent. He is a parasite in motive and makes parasites of those he serves. The relationship produces nothing but mutual corruption. It is impossible in concept. The nearest approach to it in reality — the man who lives to serve others — is the slave. If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit. The conquered slave has a vestige of honor. He has the merit of having resisted and of considering his condition evil. But the man who enslaves himself voluntarily in the name of love is the basest of creatures. He degrades the dignity of man, and he degrades the conception of love. But that is the essence of altruism.– Ayn Rand”
Earlier this week there was a torrent of discussion about Mitt’s remarks in Israel about the differences in “culture” between two neighboring countries making the difference in economic performance. If you would like to read a thoughtful take on the issue, I’d recommend James Fallows’ piece in The Atlantic.
There was also a lot of discussion about the US and Mexico example, but I didn’t see anyone except Blue Gal Texan at Crooks and Liars take the example of what the right wingers insist upon seeing as the “sovereign” states of America. (Many of these people including governors of big states are Tenthers, which means they see this quite literally.)
So how does Mitt explain this?
Of the top 10 states (and including DC) in per capita GDP, only two — Alaska and Wyoming — are Republican. And Alaska is heavily subsidized by the federal government.
Of the bottom 10 states in per capita GDP, only two — Michigan and New Mexico — are Blue.
So, 8 of the 10 most prosperous states are Blue, and 8 of the 10 poorest states are Red. A rather “stark difference in economic vitality,” is it not?
…why haven’t Republicans had more success rejuvenating the economies of deep red states?Why are so many deeply conservative states among the worst performers on a range of statistics, from output and income, to educational attainment, to life expectancy and literacy?
These are all good questions. If it’s all about “culture” I think we have to ask why conservative cultures are so economically backwards, don’t you?
Mitt’s point is much better made with the US example than with Israel and Palestine. After all, the blue states send a helluva lot more money and federal help to the red states than they get back and are constantly trying to even out the distribution of wealth and services a little bit to help their poorest citizens. (It’s not like private enterprise is getting the job done…)Many of these red states would rather their people die than accept it. I suppose one has to ask whether this is ideology or culture, but I think it’s pretty clear that when it comes to American conservatives that’s a distinction without a difference.
We [Sirota and radio co-host/former Bush Administration official Michael Brown] both come to the microphone with a desire to dial down the rhetorical volume and engage in an honest dialogue about the toughest issues of the day.
Do you seriously think an “honest dialogue” can take place on “the toughest issues of the day” when conservatives frame misogynists as “pro-life,” bigoted fanatics as “Christians,” and cynical paid liars as “global warming skeptics?” Do think it is possible to speak with any substance at all “at a lower rhetorical volume” when even many liberals thoughtlessly repeat these outrageously misleading frames? I don’t.
Expecting an honest dialogue with a Bush administration hack is a lot like expecting honest financial reporting from Bernie Madoff. But hey, it’s a gig.
As much as I’d like to say that I’m shocked that some self-righteous so-called liberals are joining the right in their condemnation of Harry Reid for baiting Romney but I’m not. It’s just how they roll. The wingnuts are kicking up a lot of dust in the hope that this might shut down the tax issue. If they can get Reid to apologize for “crossing the line” I suppose it might even be possible. And yes, they will be able to find even more timorous Villagers and others who vaguely position themselves on the left side of the dial to wring their hands and clutch their pearls over Harry Reid’s alleged ethical downfall.
But I don’t know that it will work this time. Romney is out there saying “put up or shut up” and it makes people laugh when they hear it. After all, it’s Romney who refuses to put up his tax returns to make Reid eat crow, which is the first thing people think when they hear this. Reid is baiting him to release the returns and the best Romney can do is demand that Reid … release Romney’s tax returns. It just doesn’t scan.
And Reid may not be making this up. Who knows? Reid is a Mormon and Bain had some very big Mormons in high places. And Reid is a very important guy who could have contacts in Bain just because. In any case, it’s very easy to prove Reid wrong. Harry said that someone told him Mitt didn’t pay any taxes for ten years. All Mitt has to do is release his taxes to prove otherwise and I think most people instinctively get that.
*I’m not going to talk about Jon Stewart. It isn’t the first time that his self-righteous definition of “civility” has taken him down the wrong path. Nobody’s perfect, although I have to say that I’ve never seen Colbert fail to see the forest for the trees.
Through Hayes’ lens, liberalism for much of the last half century has been about opening the meritocracy up to all segments of the population without discrimination based on intrinsic ephemera such as race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. This has meant a full embrace of the same pseudo-meritocratic impulse that has led to the renaissance of Objectivism on the right and the dominance of neoliberalism on the left.
If Hayes is right, what has been missing from much of leftist discourse isn’t just economic inequality or the struggles of working families. What’s missing is discussion of luck.
After all, what could be more iconoclastic to the edifice of the neoliberal and conservative systems? Declaring the Masters of the Universe incompetent is a given. Calling them evil is commonplace and mostly worth a chuckle. Using words such as heartless, bumbling, uncaring, greedy, inept, callous, and self-serving barely makes a dent.
But to call Lloyd Blankfein “lucky”, or to say that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg were simply “fortunate”–that’s something altogether different. That’s revolutionary. It cuts against the dominant discourse of the institutional left and right to reorient the entire social contract. It challenges not only the ethic of equality of opportunity, but also the legitimacy of much of the inequality of outcomes.
Hard work is still a key to success, of course. But what has been lost in modern culture is that many fail to achieve traditional measures of success despite high intelligence and hard work, while many “succeed” despite constant failure. Social connections are a huge factor. Most of our governing elites come from Ivy League universities, despite the fact that a huge number of very bright and highly competent people never attended an Ivy League institution. And then there’s just being in the right place at the right time: how many Internet millionaires would have succeeded just as well had they been born in a pre-Internet world? How successful would Michael Jordan have been, had he been born in a country where soccer was the dominant sport?
Hard work is one factor in success, but it pales in comparison to good connections, family privilege, and dumb luck.
That idea is extremely threatening to the meritocratic status quo.
And again, here’s David Frum on what he calls with admiration the destabilizing idea in Barack Obama’s much discussed “you didn’t build that” speech:
Obama’s second idea is that success is to a great extent random, a matter of luck. You think you succeeded because you were smart or hard-working? Listen—a lot of smart and hard-working people don’t succeed.
This second idea is not original to the president, obviously. In fact, Friedrich Hayek often made a similar point, suggesting that a big part of capitalism’s PR problems originated in the fact that markets did not distribute their rewards according to ordinary ideas of moral deservingness. Yet it’s also true that we badly want to believe that success is earned and is deserved. A universe that distributes its rewards randomly is a frightening place—and even worse is the suspicion that success is often seized precisely by the undeserving…
President Obama’s stray sentences however point to a bolder conclusion. If it’s not brains or work that account for success, what is it? The answer must be … luck. Not maybe entirely luck, but luck to a great degree. By definition, however, luck is amoral. Nobody can deserve luck, otherwise he wouldn’t be lucky. To the extent success is due to luck, success is undeserved—and to the extend that success is undeserved, the successful have no very strong claim to the proceeds of their success. Whereas Warren suggests that the wealthy should be taxed to repay tangible benefits they have personally received, Obama is indicating a possibility that the wealthy should be taxed … because their wealth is to a great extent an accident of fate.
Indeed. While some will shudder that the Republicans have managed to call into question the very idea of the social contract, I think it’s a wonderful thing that the Left is no longer simply arguing for equitable access to the meritocracy. Many of our leaders have begun questioning the very premise of the system that has given such outsized rewards to the lucky, lucky few.
Politicians of all stripes genuflect before the Greatest Generation, as newsman Tom Brokaw dubbed the men and women who endured the Great Depression, helped win World War II, and went on create the most prosperous society the world had ever known.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., offered a less reverential footnote today, attributing the origins of today’s fiscal crisis to entitlement programs fostered by some of those same people.
“The Greatest Generation created many of what the private sector would call Ponzi schemes,” Issa said at an Association of Government Accountants conference here. “They created Social Security, they created Medicare on their watch, [they] created Medicaid.” All of that, Issa continued, ”without resources or funding.”
“A generation that was doing many things right–coming out of World War II–also planted the seeds for all the problems we have today.”
I think it’s interesting that these wingnuts don’t want to go back to the 1950s anymore, which for many decades was considered the golden era for conservatism. Apparently, they’ve realized that a lot of what made the 50s so prosperous and peaceful (for nice white people) was the New Deal. So they have no choice but to sully their reputations as con-men.
They still revere the 50s, mind you. The 1850s.
*For a nuanced look at the GG, check out this great article by Chris Hayes.
Maybe the real answer to this and all the other Tea Party-over-establishment upsets is that the traditional Republican party is just burned out, and devoid of fresh faces.
This is a common and very old fallacy: Because the Republican party has such awful people and/or such awful ideas, it is burnt out, ie, weak, powerless. But their ideas have been awful for generations, and they have consistently elected mediocrities and scoundrels that are easily comparable to the current crop. But that’s not where the fire ever burnt.
It’s all about power, not ideas or people. And the Republican’s obsession with gaining a monopoly on political and financial power is blazing brighter than ever right now, fueled by hundreds upon hundreds of millions of pieces of green paper.
There is nothing burnt out about the Republicans, nothing at all.
UPDATE: Anyone who thinks this is a reason not to worry should stand outside one of those fast food chicken joints that’s celebrating hate today. There are a lot of very angry, very sick people in this county – and they vote. So should you.
Scott Brown maintains the Big Lie–and the Big Gamble
by David Atkins
Scott Brown, slagging Elizabeth Warren and President Obama for daring to suggest that business owners actually pay taxes to pay for the society that makes their success possible, reiterates the big lie:
America’s entrepreneurs have built great things on their own. If only leftists like Warren and all Occupy protesters weren’t so wrapped up in taxing and regulating them without end or in denigrating their achievements, these men and women would do even greater things and hire even more workers.
Scott Brown is peddling full-bore Ayn Rand Objectivism: the business owner as epic hero, struggling to succeed to provide jobs to the ungrateful and parasitic masses. In reality, of course, corporations aren’t in the business of creating jobs: they’re in the business of making profits for shareholders and investors. If they can do so by hiring fewer workers and paying them less, they’ll do it in a heartbeat. The success of small business depends on the infrastructure our taxes pay for, and a healthy consumer base willing and able to purchase products. The biggest threat to small businesses is the predation of big business forcing them out of the market. The biggest destabilizing threats to general prosperity going forward are the financialized casino economy in the short term, and the effects of climate change in the long term.
Republicans like Scott Brown are staking everything on convincing the public of this Galtian Big Lie. It’s an incredibly risky gamble. If they lose this argument, the entire edifice of their economic policy crumbles along with it. As Greg Sargent at The Plum Linenotes:
This is what this whole thing has been about from the start. It’s about selling voters a bill of goods — a narrative about what ails the economy that obscures the fact that Republicans don’t have a plan to fix the short term unemployment crisis. Brown and Mitt Romney want voters to believe that the recovery is being held back by taxes, regulations, and Obama’s and Warren’s disdain for your success. If we just put people in charge who want people to succeed — who would of course promptly cut regulations, government and taxes on the rich — then the recovery will roar forward.
This is a pleasing little tale, but it’s wholly at odds with the consensus view of many mainstream economists, who think the problem lies in weak demand. Economists believe that government spending, in the form of Obama’s stimulus, did bring down the unemployment rate. Economists don’t believe that high end tax cuts will produce the runaway growth necessary to bring in the revenues to pay for them. Economists don’t believe that getting rid of Obamacare will solve the crisis. As Mark Hopkings of Moody’s Analytics has put it: “The central problem is not burdensome regulations. It’s that people can’t sell anything.” Nor do economists believe that cutting government will fix the crisis; in fact, reduced government outlays are partly responsible for slow growth, and economists say that in the short term, more fiscal austerity will slow growth further.
Neither Obama nor Warren demeaned success or individual initiative, but even if they had, the idea that those sentiments are responsible for holding back the recovery is just snake oil. From the start, this whole thing has been about selling people a storyline about the short term economic crisis that covers up the fact that Republican ideas wouldn’t do anything to solve it.
On the one hand, it’s an outrage that national Republicans are daring to make such a mendacious and immoral argument. On the other, it’s almost exhilarating that they’re staking so much on it. So much, in fact, that Democrats who have spent the past half century arguing simply for equality of basic opportunity and access to our flawed meritocracy are now being forced to actually make arguments in favor of the social contract itself.
This is a good thing, and potentially bodes well for the future.
I have often written about the taser war on the mentally ill, but I’ve never seen anything as awful as this:
Someone using a stun gun like a cattle prod assaulted a dozen patients at the Sonoma Developmental Center last fall, inflicting painful thermal burns on their buttocks, arms, legs and backs.
The center’s in-house police force, the Office of Protective Services, had a suspect from the start. An anonymous whistle-blower called a tip line in September 2011 and accused Archie Millora, a caregiver at the Sonoma center, of abusing several profoundly disabled men with high-voltage probes.
Detectives found burn injuries on the patients, according to internal records obtained by California Watch. The following morning, they discovered a Taser and a loaded handgun in Millora’s car at the Sonoma center.
The facility is one of five state-run board-and-care institutions that serve roughly 1,700 residents with cerebral palsy, mental retardation and severe autism – disabilities that make communication difficult, if not impossible.
The one victim who is able to speak named Millora and used the word “stun” when interviewed by a detective at the center, according to a state licensing record.
As part of an ongoing investigation, California Watch has detailed how the institutions’ internal police force, created by the state to protect the vulnerable residents at these state homes, often fails to conduct basic police work when patients are abused and harmed.
In case after case, detectives and officers have delayed interviews with witnesses or suspects – if they have conducted interviews at all. The force also has waited too long to collect evidence or secure crime scenes and has been accused of going easy on co-workers who care for the disabled.
Those shortfalls again were on display in the Taser case, records show.
After the assaults were discovered, the Office of Protective Services made no arrest, deciding instead to handle it as an administrative matter. Also, at least nine days after the revelations, records show, detectives still had not interviewed Millora, whose personal Facebook page includes wall photos of assault weapons and handguns.
To make matter even worse, if that’s possible, this was once a top flight facility that has been degraded over time with budget cuts, turning it into a Bedlam for the 21st century. And there is fear on the part of advocates that this will be used as an excuse to close it down and sell off the land to speculators who have been eyeing the valuable property for some time.
Obviously, this is a case of a sadistic gun-nut employee rather than your average street cop and his behavior is beyond the pale of all but the worst taser abuses. But I can’t help but think that if tasers were less generally “acceptable” this sort of thing would carry more of a risk. When they are featured as big laughs in the movies one can see how a person could get the idea they could get away with using them.
By the way, the man was fired. But click over to the whole story to see how an incompetent and corrupt police department deals with something like this. It isn’t pretty.
And the Deficit Fetish Club rolls out yet another stunt in preparation for their big Lame Duck moment:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 25, 2012
The Hon. David M. Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General, today announced a first-of-its-kind national bus tour to engage Americans about our nation’s deteriorating financial condition — and show them what they can do to help restore fiscal sanity.
The “$10 Million a Minute Tour” will help voters understand that we face a fiscal cliff in January 2013 and a possible U.S. debt crisis within the next two years.
No matter what progress we make to improve economic growth and generate jobs, our nation’s current fiscal path puts our collective future severely at risk: jobs, education, health care, a secure retirement, infrastructure, national security, mortgage rates, an effective social safety net to prevent more poverty, and the success or failure of thousands of businesses.
Yet every minute, our nation’s financial hole gets deeper by about $10 million.
The Comeback America Initiative (CAI) has developed a U.S. Financial Burden Barometer (Burden Barometer) to supplement the “National Debt Clock.” The Burden Barometer is a far more accurate measure of our financial situation, since it includes both total liabilities and unfunded promises (e.g., Social Security and Medicare).
“We are at a crossroads in America. Our political leaders can keep hiding their heads in the sand and continue toward economic catastrophe. Or, they can take an honest look at our situation, and lead us by pursuing nonpartisan solutions, that can address our challenges in an effective, equitable, moral and sustainable manner,” said Mr. Walker.
Mr. Walker will kick off the tour in Manchester, N.H. on Sept. 7. From there, the bus will make its way to New York City, then on to at least 16 states, including swing states and key districts.
A who’s who of national leaders support the tour, including:
• Former Senators Alan Simpson (R-WY), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) • Former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN) and Tom Coleman (R-MO) • Hon. Erskine Bowles • Former Director of the OMB and CBO Alice Rivlin • Former Chairmen of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker • Former DNC Chairs and Governors Ed Rendell and Roy Romer • Former RNC Chairs and Senators Bill Brock and Mel Martinez • Former Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, Sr. • Former AARP CEO Bill Novelli • Former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine • Former SEIU CEO Andy Stern • Former Deloitte CEO Mike Cook • Sojourners CEO Rev. Jim Wallis • Former HP CEO Carly Fiorina
One measure of the enormity of our problem is that things have actually gotten worse since H. Ross Perot Sr. spotlighted the issue during his presidential campaign. “Our nation’s debt is about four times higher than when I first ran for president in 1992. It’s time to defuse our ticking debt bomb,” said Mr. Perot.
The former Comptroller General of the United States and a former Trustee of Social Security and Medicare, Mr. Walker is currently CEO of the Comeback America Initiative. Mr. Walker will be joined by various other fiscal experts at various stops on the tour.
Please visit the bus tour’s web site at www.10MillionaMinute.com for graphics of the Burden Barometer, a full list of high-profile bus tour supporters, and the tour itinerary.
I have a feeling that nobody in the country knows who any of these people are or care. But I suspect that’s not the point. This is all about building the Village consensus.
(It’s certainly nice to see Andy Stern and the AARP working together with Pete Peterson on this. With friends like these … )
Here’s the list of cities:
Manchester, NH Friday, September 7 2012
New Haven, CT Saturday, September 8 2012
New York, NY Monday, September 10 2012
Philadelphia, PA Tuesday, September 11 2012
Pittsburgh, PA Wednesday, September 12 2012
Columbus, OH Thursday, September 13 2012
Cleveland, OH Friday, September 14 2012
Brunswick, OH Saturday, September 15 2012
Milwaukee, WI Monday, September 17 2012
St. Louis, MO Tuesday, September 18 2012
Des Moines, IA Wednesday, September 19 2012
Denver, CO Friday, September 21 2012
Las Vegas, NV Monday, September 24 2012
Phoenix, AZ Tuesday, September 25 2012
Tucson, AZ Wednesday, September 26 2012
Dallas, TX Friday, September 28 2012
Orlando, FL Tuesday, October 2 2012
Jacksonville, FL Wednesday, October 3 2012
Atlanta, GA Thursday, October 4 2012
Raleigh, NC Friday, October 5 2012
Northern VA Saturday, October 6 2012
Washington, DC Tuesday, October 9 2012
I don’t know why people think this is in any way trying to influence the election, do you?