\u00a062\u00a0\u00a0 bar rises 30.11\u00a0 2mph N\u00a0 dew-point 54\u00a0 sunrise 6:59\u00a0 set 7:13<\/p>\n
Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon rise 9:58\u00a0 set 1:37<\/p>\n
Starving The Beast By Jennifer Moses
\nWashington Post
\nTuesday, November 29, 2005; Page A21<\/p>\n
BATON ROUGE, La. —<\/p>\n
“A primary goal of many Republicans is to “starve the beast” of federal government, the theory being that states and private enterprise, better equipped to respond to local needs than Washington ever could be, will at the very least take up the slack.”<\/p>\n
This concept seems to have come into political parlance around the time of Ronald Reagan. Remember David Stockman?<\/p>\n
As I read a New York Times piece on the bailout engineered by former Goldman-Sachs Exec, Henry Paulson, this phrase rose to the surface.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 GW and his crowd have run up the deficit through spending on Iraq and counter-terrorism while cutting taxes for the wealthy and for corporations.\u00a0 At the same time they pursued a dogged anti-regulatory policy.\u00a0\u00a0 After having been in office for 8 years, responsibility for this current mess lands on the Bush doorstep, even if its roots are in the Reagan and George Bush the 1st eras.<\/p>\n
Here’s the connection.\u00a0 The bail-out will raise the Federal deficit somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 trillion dollars.\u00a0 Old Everett Dirksen comes to mind.\u00a0 “A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”\u00a0 That means that the next President’s capacity to enact new policy will be sharply curtailed by the extraordinary level of government financial involvement.\u00a0 This is the moral equivalent of starving the beast.<\/p>\n
It gets worse.\u00a0 Who will benefit directly from the bail-out?\u00a0 The rich white oligarchs who created it in the first place.\u00a0 This is such a stunning piece of irony it is difficult to credit outside a fictional scenario.<\/p>\n
Is the bailout necessary?\u00a0 It may well be.\u00a0 The alternative of an economy headed toward a crash would have dire consequences for everyone.\u00a0 Even so, the beneficiaries and the losers seem peculiarly weighted toward the Republican side of the aisle.<\/p>\n
As the Chinese said, “May you live in interesting times.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a062\u00a0\u00a0 bar rises 30.11\u00a0 2mph N\u00a0 dew-point 54\u00a0 sunrise 6:59\u00a0 set 7:13 Waning Gibbous Harvest Moon rise 9:58\u00a0 set 1:37 Starving The Beast By Jennifer Moses Washington Post Tuesday, November 29, 2005; Page A21 BATON ROUGE, La. — “A primary goal of many Republicans is to “starve the beast” of federal government, the theory being … Continue reading Starve the Beast<\/span>