Why Marco Rubio Reminds Me of Sarah Palin*
*This is a slightly edited version of a post I posted here yesterday afternoon and have removed. There’s also an addendum about an op-ed piece by Martin O’Malley in today’s Washington Post.
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Okay, so all you politics obsessives probably heard about a comment Martin O’Malley made to NPR’s Morning Edition host Steve Innskeep during an interview earlier this week, in response to a question about Marco Rubio’s claims about “active government.” Here’s the exchange:
Inskeep: “[Rubio] argues that an active government actually keeps people frozen at their economic status because if you are well off, if you can afford a lawyer, if you can deal with regulations, you can maneuver through government and stay prosperous. And if you are not so well off, it’s harder to work the system. Is there some truth to that? You were a big city mayor; you know how government works.”
O’Malley: “No, I don’t think there’s any truth to that. It is not true that regulation holds poor people down or regulation keeps the middle class from advancing. That’s kind of patently bulls—.”
Well, at least we know that O’Malley knows how to get news media attention, so big points for that. And we also know that he’s ready, willing and able to respond appropriately and effectively to the incessant, generic big-gummint-is-the-problem trance-inducing mantra. Even bigger points for that.
But while Innskeep wasn’t actually quoting Rubio and was instead paraphrasing, the exchange highlighted a notable, but not widely noticed, hallmark of Rubio as politician: He routinely says things that are incoherent or that are flatly false as a matter of underlying fact.
Such as that Iran, a Shiite society, and ISIS, a Sunni terrorist group, are in cahoots and Obama doesn’t want to stop Iran from developing a nuclear military capability because Obama doesn’t really want ISIS defeated. (Something like that; I can’t remember the specifics from earlier this year, but that was the gist of it.)
And such as his federal-budget proposal that will cut, but (unlike the other presidential-nomination contestants’ proposals) won’t completely gut, programs that assist low-income families and individuals; that will significantly increase defense spending; that will eliminate the estate tax; that will lower capital gains and corporate taxes; that will impose no new or higher tax rates at all; and that will balance the budget in 10 years. (President Houdini!)
And such as that an active government keeps people frozen at their economic status because if you are well off, if you can afford a lawyer, if you can deal with regulations, you can maneuver through government and stay prosperous. And if you are not so well off, it’s harder to work the system.
Yep. It’s the EPA, the SEC, and the National Labor Relations Act that are keeping all those minimum-wage workers and their families from moving up the socioeconomic ladder! Rubio, a son of blue-collar employees, succeeded despite having been forced by the federal government to go to public rather than private universities and to pay his tuition using the student loans he applied for at gunpoint. So it can be done, even in the face of active government. It’s just much harder. And more dangerous.
One thing I remember fondly about the nervous reactions of some conservative pundits during the fall 2008 campaign season when it became clear that Sarah Palin was not a wise choice as McCain’s running mate was a comment by a dismayed Peggy Noonan, a longtime Republican pundit who was George H.W. Bush’s chief speechwriter. Noonan wrote about Palin (I believe these were her exact words): “She just … says things.” (Ellipses Noonan’s.)
Rubio, too, just … says things. He sort of … babbles. He seems to have no filter—for coherence, for accuracy, for plausibility—through which he passes his thoughts before expressing them.
Yup. Be sure to click that “for coherence” link. The auto-industry bailout kept those auto-industry workers and their families from advancing because they couldn’t hire lawyers to help them navigate their continued employment in their auto-industry jobs. Got it.
When I read about O’Malley’s response to Innskeep a couple days ago, and therefore also read Innskeep’s question to O’Malley, I wondered what, specifically (assuming that Innskeep’s paraphrase or summary of Rubio’s statements were accurate reflections of those statements), Rubio was referring to. What in heaven’s name is he talking about? What federal statutes and regulations are keeping people who can’t afford fancy lawyers—or any lawyer at all—frozen at their economic status because they can’t maneuver through federal government regulations?
Well, I now have my answer, albeit not from Rubio. By chance, I happened upon a three-day-old commentary this morning in the Los Angeles by winger columnist Jonah Goldberg, written in reaction to O’Malley’s comments to Innskeep, in which Goldberg purports to speak for Rubio. The column is titled “Martin O’Malley’s modern-day know-nothingness,” and its first several paragraphs recite the history of President Millard Fillmore’s party, the Know-Nothings.” (Goldberg doesn’t mention Fillmore, but I happen to know that his party was the Know-Nothing Party.) He throws in some stuff about the history of the original federal minimum-wage law, which he thinks kept people frozen at their economic status because they couldn’t afford lawyers to help them navigate the intricacies of that statute. (Something like that.)
But then he gets down to brass tacks. The tacks being that O’Malley is too ignorant to know that some professional and trade licensure education requirements unjustly and unjustifiably keep lower-income people from entering those professions and trades and that even the application forms are obnoxiously long, complex and burdensome. And that O’Malley is blind to the fact that small banks, which are the traditional lenders to small local businesses, are disappearing en masse, and that this is because of … huge Dodd-Frank compliance costs.
Well, at least the second of the two—the banking one—involves federal laws. Of course, the real reason that small banks no longer are competitive with, say, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo is the deregulation of the finance industry, mainly the repeal in the 1990s of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1934 that prohibited commercial, federally insured banks from engaging in investment banking and other securities trading—including in derivatives. Goldberg and Rubio may not have noticed, but the en masse demise of so much of the community banking industry began back then and continued as a result of the financial collapse of 2008-10.* Y’know, the financial collapse precipitated by financial-industry deregulation and, regarding derivatives, no-regulation. The financial collapse that caused the economy and, consequently, many, many, many small businesses to collapse.
Yeah, that one. Some people who lost their jobs and therefore no longer could pay their non–subprime mortgages (including to community banks), and many small-business owners whose businesses failed because of the crash of the economy no longer could repay their business loans. To community banks.
As for the first of Goldberg’s two big-gummint complaints—that some professional and trade licensure education requirements unjustly and unjustifiably keep lower-income people from entering those professions and trades and that even the application forms are obnoxiously long, complex and burdensome—he’s spot-on that it’s an outrage. He just needs to explain why, since these are state and local licensure requirements and applications, and are unrelated in any respect to federal regulation—and Rubio’s running for president, not state or local office—he thinks it’s O’Malley rather than, say, he who is a Know-Nothing. Here’s betting that O’Malley, unlike Goldberg, does know that professional and trade licensure education requirements and applications are determined and administered not by the federal government but by state and local ones.
And here’s also betting that O’Malley knows that since the very purpose of these inappropriate bars to jump over and hoops to jump through is to keep competition in these professions to a minimum. And that he knows that the obvious agitators for these mandated regulatory hoops are the beneficiaries of minimal competition—i.e., those already in these professions or trades or in ones that compete with the unduly restricted ones—and that Democratic officeholders are no more likely that Republican ones to push for these laws and regulations. He might have suggested to Goldberg that, before Goldberg demonstrated his ignorance, he check out who’s giving campaign contributions to whom.
But it’s Rubio, not Goldberg, who’s running for president. So the next time that Rubio argues that an active government actually keeps people frozen at their economic status because if you are well off, if you can afford a lawyer, if you can deal with regulations, you can maneuver through government and stay prosperous–and if you are not so well off, it’s harder to work the system—he’s asked for, say, specifics. As in: What in heaven’s name is he talking about? Maybe he’ll just refer the questioner to Sarah Palin for details. Or to Mitt Romney.
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NOTE: O’Malley has a terrific op-ed piece in today’s Washington Post about the student-loan issue, in which he discusses the broader effects of the current situation on the economy and on American society and advocates for the solutions that Elizabeth Warren has been proposing. He also details his own actions as Maryland government regarding that state’s public university and community college costs.
Look, I don’t like Rubio any more than you do
and I believe government regulations and taxes are necessary
but you are simply wrong as well as feeding the enemy when you insist that it is ludicrous to believe that there may be government regulations that defeat the ability of people of modest means to make improvements in their own lives. or that government officials are not at least sometimes bordering on evil in the way they implement those regulations.
it would be smarter politics, at least, if not actual kindness to “the poor” to recognize from time to time that “the government” is not “all good” or at least that some of the poorish sometimes have trouble understanding just what the good is.
I insist that it is ludicrous to believe that there may be government regulations that defeat the ability of people of modest means to make improvements in their own lives. or that government officials are not at least sometimes bordering on evil in the way they implement those regulations?
Wow. Who knew? I sure didn’t. And I’m the one who wrote the post.
I think you’re confusing Rubio with me. It’s Rubio who makes blanket, categorical statements about “active government”—granted, a phrase Innskeep used in paraphrasing Rubio, but a pretty accurate paraphrase, best as I can tell. My post was, precisely, about that, Dale, and what a ridiculous proposition that is.
Not sure why you thought I was saying something that I wasn’t saying.
well, i could insist that i didn’t say any such thing.
you certainly ridiculed the idea that poorish people might find {some) government regulations interfering with their efforts to improve their own situation… or at least led an arguably intelligent reader to consclude that was what you were doing.
as for the unintelligent readers, they will have no doubt that that is the positioin of “the left.”
that’s why i was suggesting that you recognize from time to time that there might be “some” times that regulations appear counterproductive to even the poor person, and that some time the “bureaucrats” seem sadistic.
it’s the difference between making blanket statements, like you and Rubio, and trying to make nuanced statements…. don’t keep the nuances to yourself and expect to win any converts.
but if all you want is to keep the true believers on your side on your side you are doing all that is required.
as i said somewhere else today, even I haven’t learned how to talk to the ignorant.
Elizabeth Warren has done a very good job of explaining this. The problem is not, especially at the Federal level, regulation per se. The problem is capture, corporate America has captured much of the regulatory process. Legislation gets far more complicated than it has to be because corporate America and the plutocrats want an edge. Dodd Frank became a mess because the idea of restoring sane regulation to the financial industry became perverted by interest.
This is one of the great hypocrisies of the Right, they argue for small government but they want directed and captured government.
The other aspect to this is the conflation of Federal government with state and local government as Beverly alludes to in the post. Of course it’s much easier to fan the flames of grievance if you just point the finger at universally evil gummint, especially when you maintain a “never mind the man behind the curtain” stance while buying favor (and certain kinds of regulation) through a perverted political process steeped in money.
If Rubio’s or any other politician’s or pundit’s actual concern about Dodd-Frank is the cost to small banks rather than its limitations on huge ones, why not propose changes just for those banks–for banks with assets below a certain level, one that would truly include only community banks, and that do only retail banking, not investment banking and the like? Maybe it’s because their real interest is not community banks but national and, especially, multinational ones?
Bev:
Community banks do not typically deal on Wall Street although as Calculated Risk showed many of them paid a price. Why would that be?
Mark,
once again, thanks.
i have no doubts about the right fanning the flames of resentment of gummint interference while being themselves the authors of the more perverted forms of interference. anymore the Right IS the gummint.
moreover, while i believe the “evil gummint” meme stems from those damned Yankees innerferin with out proppity since 1861… the new federalism includes the Patriot Act.
it’s not safe to rely on what you always knew.
Beverly
I think you know the answer to your question. But let me point out that Rubio and his ilk are FEDERAL government.
btw, was john walker lindh tried under federal law or state?
Coberly:
non sequitur
Run
i am sure there is a circle in the Inferno where the shades of bloggers stand around croaking latin terms they don’t understand at each other.
Coberly:
Stick to the topic coberly. Simple and still a somewhat difficult goal for you to achieve.
I am sure there are federal gummint regulations and forms that are at least Limbo-level torture to the average bloke – god knows I had enough trouble with the state documents moving my mother into extended care.
But, whose fault is that? With many programs, the repetitious, paper-devouring forms are a result of obsessive design intended to prevent moochers, double voters, and other small time or even nonexistent miscreants from getting a nickel they don’t deserve. And who is most likely to design or demand this kind of scrutiny? Overwhelmingly the political right wing.
The result is that many stressed and needy people don’t have the energy or bloodyminded stubbornness to jump those hoops. But this isn’t some inherent quality of “gummint.” They can create easy systems and plainly worded forms if they want to. It’s the Scrooge mindset that makes it as hard as possible for people, whether at federal or local levels. Get the influence of the greedy misers out of the equations and things would be very different.
Noni
“Give a man a fish … it’s easier.”
Beverly, the answer to your question is contained in one term – cognitive dissonance.
Small banks were dying long before Dodd Frank or the financial meltdown, that was more a consequence of the repeal of Glass Stegall and deregulation generally. Still that doesn’t mean that D-F is a good law. Better than nothing, yes. But still full of avenues of abuse and misuse.
Rubio and the Right generally stopped making sense a long time ago. They live in an alternate universe where facts are subject to ideological purity tests, ironic since one of their primary cultural complaints is about situational or relative truth.
Rubio and the Right are detestable but, in different ways and perhaps to a lesser degree, so is the Clinton/Rubin wing of the Democratic Party. I don’t want to get anywhere near a Naderite argument that “they’re all the same” – that’s insanely naive. However, detesting the disingenuousness and duplicity of the Right shouldn’t blind us to the problems inherent in complex bureaucracies and in what has necessarily become big government.
We are now a nation of 320 million, spanning a continent, and living in a complex world. The mythologies, let alone the realities, that were inherent in a nation of 4 million spread along the eastern seaboard are no longer valid. We have big government because we have a big society, complexity is endemic. What is important is that we separate the problems inherent in our present reality from ideological potshots.
Beverly, it can be hard for the average citizen to get government services. Try interacting with the Postal Regulatory Commission without knowing complex legal process. Try winding your way through social security disability without some bureaucratic or legal know how. I just spent a month and about 100 hours getting Medicare to pay for my 94 year old mother’s treatment for hepatitis c. As postmaster in a rural community people often came to me for help in dealing with government bureaucracies in getting Medicaid or similar services.
Rubio is an idiot but in dismissing his misdirection and stupidity let’s not defend or deny the often unnecessary complexity embedded in a complex state with complex bureaucracies. Too much of our regulatory infrastructure is designed to create capture and advantage. Silencing Rubio includes insuring that an equitable state acts equitably, both sides of that equation are essential.
Mark:
As watched by Calculate Risk (Bill), the numbers of small and medium size banks in trouble grew to well over 1000 in the nation due to their extending themselves in the arena of mortgages typically which were Liar Loans, Alt-Bs, etc. What changed? Certainly it was not the lack of knowledge of what constituted a good loan. Regardless of the change in the National Bank Act and the demise of Glass – Steagall, the mentality of making secure loans changed as banks could dispense with them in less than 6 months by selling them off, having them tranched, insured by CDS, and rated high. In that they no longer had exposure and walked away with the profits.
The history of 2008 was too much money chasing to few investments. Greenspan had already warned foreign investors not to expect an increase in Fed Rates so they went to the next safe investment – mortgages. $billions from overseas emerged on the mortgage market looking for safe haven and with no other place to go. Banks worked hard to fill the gap and then they got creative with the help of the Fed in NY (Geithner), safe ratings by Moodys, S&P, etc., and tranching.
So small and medium size met the demand of the market also and failed. They were over extended beyond reserves. Did the managers, vps, and president know? Sure they did; but, the bonuses were good, hundreds went out of business. Did the banksters know what they were doing? Before Glass – Steagall they sure as hell did as they were trained in it. They chose not to do it as the money was good. 2008, the market collapsed and the banksters did a collective, oh crap! Main Street (your neighbors) bailed TBTF out and were repaid with lost jobs, lower incomes,
Run
i try to be kind, even more than polite. But there is a style of idiocy that infuriates me whether it comes from Right or Left, Krasting or my former friends.
You have chosen to be an idiot for reasons I never understood.
I doubt you would recognize that “the point” has been picked up by others here who are perhaps less on your radar than I am.
The point, my point, was that Beverly ought to be more careful about dismissing the concerns of “ordinary people” in her partisan zeal.
Even though I share her zeal about the bad guys on the Right, I hate losing elections because the good guys on the Left are so stupid they throw away votes … and friends.
coberly:
Lets’ understand something here, you are not kind to others and neither are you polite in many cases. Maybe in your own mind you have determined a modicum of kindness and politeness you wish to achieve: but, it falls far short of reasonable. Quite frankly, I do not care if you see me as an idiot as your determination as such causes me to smile coming from you.
You have many comments to make about other posters on AB coberly; but, when was the last time you posted something either through Dan or by yourself (if you have)? January 15(?) and Dan posted it for you? Now you can either put up and post something of value (like more on SS [which is great stuff] or something you know little about) or shut-the f*ck-up as no one wants to hear your old whining a** out complaining and who also does not contribute.
You read way to much into what “others” are saying. Stand on your own coberly and quit seeking solace others.
Then there is also the other alternative, don’t comment to my posts and “whine” to Dan.
Run
thank you for the example of good manners and polite language.
the last time i posted on Social Security on AB, you took it upon yourself to change what i wrote into something satisfying your sixth-grade understanding of punctuation. then you published what you wrote under my name. you have no idea how egregiously rude and arrogant that was. i controlled my anger and only asked Dan to let me change the last sentence back to what it was originally so readers would have half a chance of knowing what it was i was talking about.
i specifically told him i didn’t want to start a fight with you.
but you have been taking cheap shots at me since then. i can only point out that they are cheap shots, and once in a while try to point out to you that it is not sufficient that YOU know what you are talking about. It is important that your words make an effort to let the reader know what you are talking about.
mostly that doesn’t really matter because readers can tell from a very few words, and the usual music, what it is you mean… same old song. some like the song and some don’t. but anyone interested in an actual intelligent discussion will have to look elsewhere.
i don’t know what happened to Dan. he used to be an intelligent editor and moderator. but since you showed up in your Omnipresence I have wondered if you haven’t got him tied to a silver chair in the basement. you have turned AB into a sixth grade hall monitors idea of good grammar and good taste.
and why?
i have always agreed with you, and beverly, in substance, only occasionally asking you what you mean (about “wages” for example), or trying to keep beverly from alienating half the American population with her prejudices and incoherent grammar… something you learn more about if you get beyond the sixth grade.
now, why don’t you examine your own sins. no need to apologize. i will notice when you have repented.
coberly:
You left an incomplete post up on AB on SS in public when you could have left it unpublished and ding with it in private. Not kool Coberly for all to see. Like I said coberly, post something (if you can) or shutup. Easy enough coberly. I didn’t publish it was already up as you left it.
You’re misconstruing two key things, Mark.
First, Rubio and others who make generic complaints that “active government” is holding people back or holding the economy back, or whatever, are not complaining that safety-net programs and student-loan programs and such are too bureaucratic and complex and should be made easy to navigate without legal assistance. They’re claiming that the goals of the programs are the problem. Medicaid is holding people back (and the states that have agreed to accept the ACA’s Medicaid expansion are holding all the more people back); student loans held people back even back in the decades in which they were provided by the federal government and interest rates were low, etc.); the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, and EPA enforcement of them, hold people back. The minimum wage holds people back. Social Security holds people back. The National Labor Relations Act holds people back. The food stamp program holds people back. The Pell Grant program, the CHIP program, and the student lunch program hold people back. So do new and expansions of old public transportation systems. And on and on.
You’re allowing these people to succeed in their bait-and-switch. Make it sound like your complaint is about some inefficient and frustratingly bureaucratic operations in federal statutory requirements, programs and agency regulations, and—voila!—you’ve succeeded in gaining support for anti-“active government.” Low taxes on the wealthy. No financial-industry regulations. No environmental laws. No ….
The Kochs are clever puppeteers.
Second, it is the Conservative Movement, and especially the Conservative Legal Movement, including ALEC, that is responsible for the ever-increasingly labyrinthine gantlet for social safety-net programs, and for the fact that virtually all federal-court lawsuits not filed by a corporation are dismissed on some court-fabricated jurisdictional/procedural/immunity ground, and that state court systems absolutely routinely violate even the most basic, clear constitutional rights of individuals, in civil as well as criminal cases.
I’d love to hear Rubio or some other Tea Party candidate, for any office, propose easier access to the courts for ordinary individuals—by which I mean, access to the courts at all—and less bureaucratic means to the ends of the programs and regulations I’ve mentioned, and that you’ve mentioned. I’m just not gonna hold my breath waiting for that.
Noni, you’re absolutely spot-on.
Run
I have no idea what you are talking about. You rewrote my post and published what you wrote over my name. That was established both by what you said at the time. What appeared. What I wrote to Dan. and the very limited fix I asked for in order NOT to provoke a fight with you.
I do not “publishing rights” on AB. Anything you see from me has gone through Dan or, apparently, you.
You have my email if you want to pursue this without being “off topic.”
Beverly
Bravo. I knew you could do it. Now take a look at what you just wrote and what you wrote originally and see if you can see the difference from the point of view of the reader who cannot see what you “mean” inside your own head.
Oh, stop, Dale. The problem isn’t with what I wrote originally, but with your preconceived presumption about what I was writing.
Funny, but it doesn’t seem that anyone else misunderstood my post.
ditto
Beverly
funny, but i could have sworn there were two comments that addressed the issue of public frustration with government that seemed to be agreeing with me. no doubt they did not misunderstand you because they always know what you think even when you don’t actually say it.
the fact is that if you, or Bill H, could respond to one of my comments without cheap personal attacks i would probably just resign myself to “oh well, I know what she means and it doesn’t matter if is only talking to her friends.”
But I think Bill has put out enough at this point that he needs to make a little clearer what “incomplete post” i put up.
even though i know better, i get a little tired of the personal attacks.
and yes, i do distinguish incoming from outgoing.
Run75441
I submitted a post on Social Security a few minutes ago. I am always glad to have an editor go over it with me. But don’t change it without my okay and don’t publish your words under my name.
Hey guys,
I’m not quite sure what the topic is anymore, so I’ll just jump off topic and say hey! maybe I know what is the matter with Kansas!
Republican voters vote Republican and they and their states get screwed. This has been ongoing for decades. This seems counterintuitive (as well as tragic) but maybe there is cause and effect happening here.
If those voters believe in weaker, smaller government, lower taxes, looser regulations and all the rest of it, maybe this is because the politicians they vote for interfere too much and too arbitrarily, don’t spend taxes on things their voters need, put in policies that make extra work while doing no good, and so on.
MAYBE these folks want weaker government because the politicians they traditionally vote for cannot be trusted with power or money.
Meanwhile, we flaming commies up here in Canada and in the more liberal parts of the US are fine with higher taxes, regulations, and so on because the politicians we elect (for the most part) use that money and power to make our lives better, and don’t spend it on trillion dollar wars and prison camps that both are and are not on home soil. The politicians we elect can be trusted. Sorta.
If the “kansans” don’t believe in their hearts that any elected officials can be trusted, yet they still have to vote for somebody, then they might well vote in the most incompetent yahoo that can still stand on his own hind legs and is reasonably housebroken.
Of course, this isn’t rational either, but at least it’s explicable.
Noni
Noni
i think you may have hit close to the nail. Still, the “kansans” i talk to sound “reasonable” to me, if ill informed. So I would take “ill informed” to be a major factor, one traceable to who owns the press in their part of the woods.
And while I live in a liberal state, there are happenings under law that make me sad. Doesn’t seem to be any escaping the human condition.
The Portland Oregonian, for example, ran a series that proved all public employees were now living in the south of France, eating foie gras on million dollar pensions and thumbing our nose at the poor taxpayers paying for it all. So when my liberal governor called for cuts in public pensions, naturally everyone thought it was a good idea.
We don’t seem to have as many police killings as i hear about in other states, but we have some, and of course they are always justified.
And if i want to build a house on my land i have to get approval of the country… which i think is reasonable, but i don’t think the process, or the cost, of getting approval is reasonable.
And so on.
one thing that occurs to me when i hear about the poor voting against their own interests is that the the poor are just not as interested in money as the liberals. they care about some things, however misguided, that “liberals” laugh at if not sneer. hard to get votes that way.
oddly enough, i thought Massachusetts was an unfriendly state to live in. it’s a funny thing about liberals: they don’t make good neighbors.
and i used to be one. still am, actually, just not one of the mindless ones. or so i hope.
Hey Dale,
Most people are reasonable, almost all, I would say. But they don’t usually do the weirdo thing that I do. They don’t apply reason to everything that would profit them to use it, and they don’t apply it to the underpinnings of their everyday concerns. It takes a lot of energy, and can be tiring and frustrating to do so. That’s what we Bears are for.
Most of what undermines the power of the average American is now structural, pervasive, and supported by the power structure that benefits in their weakness. Such influences are not only tiring to oppose, but tiring to even think about.
Noni
Noni
absolutely yes to the last paragraph.
not so much to the first. everyone who claims to use “reason” is fooling themselves. Reason for the most part is “what i like the sound of,” or semi random free association. (only semi, because “reality” imposes constraints on experience, traces of which are what we free associate to.
i am willing to believe that you try to think about things. i like to think so do i. but even “the scientific method” depends upon “peer review” and replicable (by others) observations.
i think i notice that other people shut down the observations, not to say peer review, they are willing to subject their reasoning to. i try not to do that, i know i fail. my typos are witness to a not altogether reliable brain. so i make a point of accepting criticism. but even i can’t pretend that all criticism is created equal, and even I, after a while, am willing to make the call that some of it is pernicious.
just the chances we gotta take to get through life.
[for what it is worth, i think you are one of the brighter spots on AB, though of course i do not always agree with you.]
Beverly, I don’t think I’m misconstruing anything. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said as far what the problems are and I certainly agree that the Right has mastered the art of seizing language and twisting it in Orwellian ways. The political scientist Suzanne Mettler has written a great deal about the point you are trying to make, particularly in her book Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine Democracy. Michael Sandel’s Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy also speaks to these points.
However I think that for the Left to succeed in making this a more just country with a better sense of what government can and should do and also restoring some balance to the idea of the responsibilities of citizenship then there has to be an understanding of how folks on the Right perceive the world rather than simply insisting that their perceptions are all wrong.
I live in the center of Tea Party land, my Congressman is a Tea Party idiot (well actually a very astute businessman who has found that Tea Party plays quite effectively). Many of these folks are my friends and neighbors and while I profoundly disagree with their reactions I think I do understand the sources of their fears. Defeating the Rubios, Cruzes, Pauls and other sowers of discontent and Orwellian slaughterers of language has to be more than refuting their falsehoods – lots of research shows that people who are heavily polarized and partisan are almost completely immune to actual facts, I think Waldman has a subsequent post up about that sort of thing. Defeating the Right, or better, winning converts to a saner view can’t simply rely on refutation if that also ends up defending the indefensible, the Clintons, the Schumers of the world. Part of winning has to mean moving the Democratic Party to the Left and part of that story has to be an acknowledgement of the problems inherent in a large bureaucratic regulatory state.
Democrats are likely to win the presidency due to demographics but to really govern they have to start winning Congressional races and to do that they have to win state and local races. Doing that means telling better, more coherent stories not simply pointing out the outrageous hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance embodied in the Republican and Conservative (reactionary) movement – hell, Hofstadter, Bell, Talcott and others were doing that back in the 50’s and early 60’s and the Right has still been able to sell their snake oil.
I’m not disagreeing with you at all. I am suggesting that there is a step beyond pointing out the incoherence of a Rubio.
and poor john walker lindh remains a non-sequitur
in our most learned discussion of the protection of rights under federal law vs state law.
you see these non sequiturs a lot. they mean “i am tired. i don’t like where this is leading.”
so john walker lindh rots in jail after a federal trial in which all of his rights were protected.
Mark
you said better what i was trying to say.
On the subject of regulations:
Bill Coll was a great metallurgist whom I worked with in GE Power Systems. He taught me everything I know about how to weld-repair turbine parts. In his early 60’s he had stomach cancer and was on medical leave, when Jack Welch sent down another edict to layoff another 10-15% of the workforce. Over the years this had created a demographics problem of mostly younger, less-experienced, lower-paid people getting laid off, so the plan included an early-retirement option with a bonus payment. Bill could have used that money for his medical bills and to leave money to his wife, so he applied. The regulations said to be eligible he would have to come back to work for several months first. At a time when he was in a wheelchair with a colostomy bag.
Regulations are like soylent green – they’re people. People in goverment, people in corporate managment, parents raising children – they all make regulations and they all have both good and bad consequences. I think the solution is better regulations, by more responsive regulators.
Jim V
you are absolutely right about “regulations” or laws. public, private, state or federal. i don’t know if it is the inherent difficulty in writing a regulation “for all seasons,” or that the administrators are reptile hearted beings from outer space.
“laws” are necessary. the administration of them could stand a human touch, but seems rarely to get one.