First, Emily and I are beginning an official movement, backed by the WPPA, to have Learned Hand appointed, posthumously, to the Supreme Court. For God's sake, he should get it on the virtue of his name alone.
Second, it's really starting to tee me off when people refer to people's outrage at (a) bailouts, (b) AIG bonuses, and (c) corporate flights in private planes as "populist" outrage. As I've pointed out recently, the term "populist" is imprecise--often intentionally so--but almost always carries implications of irrationality and irresponsibility. I do not understand why it is either irrational or irresponsible to be angry that my tax payments now and for the next 75 years are being used to pay bonuses to the "top talent" at an insurance firm that appears not to be able to tell the difference between a wise investment and the the methane-producing end of a Long Island investment banker.
Furthermore, pundits and economists (unsurprisingly, usually the non-"populist" right-wing kind) keep pointing out how small the sum of 165 million dollars is, compared to the size of the bailout package.
I don't give a damn about the relative size of the bonuses vs. bailout package. $165,000,000 is a lot of money. I'm no economist, but that should be enough to feed, house, and clothe about 2,250 US families of four fairly comfortably for the likely duration of the recession, or 41,000 Peruvian families, or about 137,500 Guatemalan families. That sounds like something perfectly rational to get upset about to me.
Kapish?
Finally, allow me to express my disgust at the way my beloved GOP has fallen all over itself to cater to the whims of the extreme right, from Rush Limbaugh to the nut job at the Aurora gun show who was trading steel core 7.62Soviet rifle bullets for automatic rifles with which to fight the black helicopter troops off.
The Republican party started as the anti-slavery party and has become the party of tortue, the party which invented conservationism under T.R. and carried it into government under Richard Nixon has become the party of the oil industry, the party which fought big capital through the trust-busting and consumer protection of the early 1900s has become the party which resists regulation on industries which have no interest in self-regulation, the party which built the national highway system has become the party that resists spending which will improve the country's competitive edge and ensure our economic system's survival. And the party that invented the North American Free Trade Agreement has become the party of border fences and racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Ironically, the party of small government and mistrust in government has become the party of a dramatic expansion in government powers and the party of a bizarre trust in the ability of politicians to make decisions about the use of force and the suspension of civil rights.
Allow me to also add that I am the grandchild of an English man, an Irish woman, a couple of Germans, and lord knows what else. We are a country of immigrants, and it makes me ashamed to have to explain to the Peruvians that most of the racism in the US nowadays is anti-Latino.
None of these values are US values. And it shouldn't take a bleeding-heart to see that sleep deprivation, waterboarding, anti-immigrant racism and market fundamentalism will not help us win the hearts and minds of potential opponents, be they Russian, Venezuelan, or Afghani. Our liberal democratic ideology is far superior to anything Putin, Chavez, or the Afghani Taliban can throw at us, but human rights and tolerance are an inseparable part of those ideas.
I look forward to a time when I can vote for my party again, but they seem to be determined to turn me into a Democrat.
Indeed, every reasonable voter in the country should look forward to a time when I can vote Republican again, because it takes a competitive opposition to keep the government honest. However, party leaders are not giving me much hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment