Five Aspects of the Conservative State
Everyone's a change-bringer this year. Everyone's a reformer. Even the improbable Sarah Palin tells us she intends to clean up not only Washington but to "stop the greed and corruption on Wall Street" itself. What's more, she wants to do it on behalf of--her own term--the "working class."
There are several reasons to cheer for this development. With the Republican standard-bearers now tacitly acknowledging that the Bush administration and the Republican congress were episodes of unexampled misgovernment, much of the right's exculpatory rhetoric can now be dispensed with. The verdict has hereby been reached on Bush, DeLay, Gingrich, and maybe even on Ronald Reagan himself. The case is closed. All that remains is to understand the causes of the catastrophe.
Even more amazing are the Republicans' attacks on Wall Street, one of their traditional constituents. Whether their campaign rhetoric is merely oppportunism (and I think it is), it still constitutes an official acknowledgement that our traditional economic rulers--the industry that has for years effectively set priorities for every other industry in the land--has utterly failed to serve the public good.
This is an astonishing reversal. It was just ten years ago that CNBC used to run a "CEO wealth-meter" feature so that viewers could track the daily ups and downs of their favorite mogul; today, faced with a $700 billion Wall Street bailout, the public screams for the billionaires' heads. It was just two months ago that, in a review of the book we are preparing to discuss, the New Yorker magazine suggested that to criticize capitalism was the act of a "neo-Marxist"; today, even Republicans are doing it. Things are changing fast.
* * * *
We won't get far curing the symptoms of corruption, however, if we can't bring ourselves to understand the disease itself. And this is my aim in The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule.
Now, we already have a corruption theory about the liberal state. Everyone knows it. Thanks to infinite repetition by voices ranging from Rush Limbaugh to Reader's Digest, we all know how the liberal state supposedly coddles the undeserving, extorts the entrepreneur, buys the votes of the poor with the tax money of the rich, and et cetera ad infinitum. We are all familiar with this critique, and we all faintly suspect that it ceased to describe reality (if in fact it ever did describe reality) at some point in the 1980s.
What we don't have, and what I set out to supply in The Wrecking Crew, is a corruption theory about the conservative state. That it is corrupt is obvious; it is patent; it is not really even denied by the Republican Party's own champions anymore. From Baghdad to New Orleans and from K Street to Wall Street, the passage of the conservative era has been marked by epic waste and fraud; by deregulation, privatization, and profit at the public's expense.
So far have things gone that, when you raise these issues, most conservatives' only defense is to claim that the personalities or administrations in question "weren't real conservatives"; that Washington is directed by some occult hand of liberalism despite all the fire-breathing hard-right types who are still demonstrably in charge of the executive branch, the Supreme Court, and, until last year, in charge of Congress too. Conservatism's only failing, its defenders moan, is that it has never been tried. All corruption is hence traceable to some residual liberalism; conservative doctrines remain utterly pure and innocent. The conservative state? There is no such thing.
Since this is so obviously self-serving I don't intend to bother with it here. (I have written about it in The Wall Street Journal. You can read that column as well as all my other efforts via tcfrank.com.)
Instead, I want to suggest that we discuss five aspects of the conservative state.
1. The nature of government. Corruption of the kind all our candidates so deplore is not an accident, and it's not the result of a few sneaky liberals who somehow got past the White House screening process. Rather, it proceeds directly from the conservative conception of government--government as an illegitimate if not a criminal institution, stealing from you via taxation and interfering with your business via regulation. The civil service, meanwhile, is inherently liberal and must be beaten down, transformed into an undesirable career choice. These ideas are not incidental to conservatism; they are of the movement's very essence. And they are the wellspring of everything that has gone wrong in recent years.
2. The nature of the private sector. The conservative response to this understanding of the state is now and has always been to turn it over to the private sector. "Government should be market-based," George W. Bush once said, and from this supremely bad idea has flowed everything from the lobbyist orgy of the last thirteen years to the outsourcing and privatizing of federal operations to the industry-friendly regulatory agencies that let the current financial crisis happen. The error, obviously, is that markets are not democracies; private businesses answer to those with the most shares--the most money--not to we the people.
3. Permanence, a word which is often tossed around in conservative circles. I mean by this not merely Karl Rove's idea of a "permanent majority," but the various mechanisms by which conservatives have sought to make their policies irreversible--to remove liberal options from the table forever.
4. Washington, DC as one of the wealthiest metro areas in America. This is a change that undeniably came about during the conservative era, thanks mainly to the rise of lobbying and the handing over of public operations to contractors. The irony, of course, is that conservatives have always railed so righteously against the federal city, flaunting their outsider credentials, promising to take those liberal elitists down a peg--and instead they have made the capital richer than almost anywhere else in the country.
5. The ongoing self-destruction of this entire philosophy of government.
I lived in Washington from 1951 until 1981. Returning regularly for family I have watched it explode. I remember the empty lots filing up in the 1980s, which saw lobby lunches averaging $500/person. The smelly Georgetown canal waterfront became a mouuntain range of glass and steel apartments. Corporations learned, in the 80s, that they could make more profit through regulatory changes than by competing, so they all established headquarters in D.C.
As an indicator of how clueless the incompetent wreckers are, their own finances are suffering. My oldest friend does remodeling and additions in Chevy Chase. He has not had a job since April.
Senators are noticing, as we have noticed, and are seriously scared.
October 6, 2008 4:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you, Tom.
Let's demolish the Pentagon, and then, we'll all go have tea with Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge at Haines Point.
And I ain't joking!
October 6, 2008 9:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
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December 22, 2010 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the record, Thomas Frank f'ing rules. Truly.
Republicans = Wrecking Crew.
October 6, 2008 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is the part of this that really gets me. Because this is where they really reveal how much they hate democracy. We've had one Republican president say openly that he'd like to be dictator and now we've heard the same thing from John McCain in the interview with the Des Moines Register. I think we should take them very seriously - they obviously mean it.
How did it get to the point where Republicans hate America this much?
October 6, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
And let us put this into an historical context:
Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, there has been a permanent American political class which has pined for a king/dictator and the demise of "we the people." The Framers of our constitution were dedicated to preventing just that. Hence, it is no surpise what the Repugs have been doing, vis-a-vis the courts, and in their many other efforts to weaken and, yes, even destroy that document.
I would posit this thought: using current usage of conservative & liberal, conservative government is a "we know best" government run by a small, privileged few, the fuehrerprinzip at its best; and liberal government is a "we know best" government run by the many, the promise of "messy" democracy at its best.
So the question becomes: do we want a fuehrer or the people to be sovereign? History suggests a fuehrer is a recipe for disaster.
October 6, 2008 7:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes I realize what the framers had in mind.
The entire constitution is framed not as an empowering document so much as a limiting document. It seems to limit government power in our favor.
The founders basically believed that it didn't matter who was in power, the government is basically the enemy of the people because it has power and will always want more.
Con Law was my best subject, ever. Both semesters.
What I don't understand is why it is the Democrats don't seem to be motivated by that same kind of madness for power or else they just hide it better. But at least the Democrats pay lip service to democracy. The Republicans no longer do that, really.
October 6, 2008 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
not seems to, it seeks to
October 6, 2008 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
They had nothing against government, as such. They viewed it as entirely proper and necessary. They just wanted to avoid kings
October 6, 2008 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah it is true, in a very basic sense.
Because the constitution doesn't just divide power up for no reason.
The entire idea is to limit government power.
You're parsing words with me.
October 6, 2008 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
You do not get what I'm saying - I'm not talking about the role of government - I"m talking about the very basis of the government and how the constitution was framed. They weren't terribly concerned with what government could do - it was a lot simpler then. That's an idea that the constitution gave us room to develop.
It is a very flexible document in a lot of ways. Except for the empowerment clauses - they aren't flexible.
October 6, 2008 9:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
The separation of powers was a way to limit government, by splitting it up among competing interests that would hopefully cancel each other out and allow government to function within limits prescribed for it.
Competition was encouraged among the branches (in a Darwinian sense, though maybe Hobbesian is more historically accurate). It was assumed Congress would fight tooth and nail for its preogatives (hence the prominence of impeachment in the document). This would prevent the President, who always had an edge in terms of operating as a unit, from doing so at the expense of the diversity of other interests.
'Limited government' can mean 'limited' re invasion of the people's rights, or can mean what Norquist thinks it means. The latter 'limited government' is the most invasive of all.
October 7, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
What I don't understand is why it is the Democrats don't seem to be motivated by that same kind of madness for power or else they just hide it better.
I think that, in fact, democrats are. Since the republicans have essentially controlled the government for almost all of the past almost thirty years and oversaw the K Street project their corruption is fresher in our minds. Corruption was just a prevalent amongst the democrats during the period of the democratic party's dominance.
The republicans and democrats share the same benefactors. In fact, many of the investment banks now consuming their just desserts have been just as, or more, generous to democrats.
As for the Constitutional discussion, the Constitution was crafted by the coastal dwelling aristocrats, of earlier arriving families, who had in mind their interests; and who had a great mistrust of the non-aristocratic class, thus, for example, the electoral college.
The colonial aristocrats who declared independence did so essentially because they did not wish to pay the taxes Britian demanded to support its army stationed in the colonies to protect the colonialists from the Natives and the French and to pay the British costs of the French and Indian war.
So the aristocrats declared independence, the Continental Congress borrowed $5 million from France to help finance the revolutionary war (20% of which was raked off by the folks who arranged the loan) and ultimately defeated the British colonial army. (The war profiteering of the members of the Continental Congress is a whole other matter.)
When it came time to repay the debt the coastal aristocrats, in need of repaying the French, imposed a Whiskey tax to have the poorer, primarily Scot and Irish hill framers, who found it more economical to move their corn crops to market in the form of liquor, repay the debt. And when the hill farmers told the central government to stuff their whiskey tax (the Whiskey Rebellion) Washington amassed an army larger than the revolutionary army and headed for Western PA to force payment, which of course he did.
The fact is that since hunter/gatherers settled down to the pursuit of agriculture, the more wealthy have been extracting wealth from the less wealthy and sending the less wealthy to war to enhance their wealth.
Corruption within the USA political system is not confined to the republicans, nor the democrats for that matter; but is a tradition which predates establishment of the nation.
October 6, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tom,
You were great friday night at the New Yorker Festival forum on Race & Class at Town Hall. You were the best panelist by far!
October 6, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm a freshman at the University of Nebraska and Thomas Frank came here to give a lecture just a week and a half ago. The next day my international relations class of just over 20 people got to sit down and casually talk with him. It was really cool to hear what he had to say in such a small, relaxed setting. When I saw this on the TPM front page I got excited-- I felt like I had to say something : P
October 6, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
5. The ongoing self-destruction of this entire philosophy of government.
I've been amazed at the nearly complete lack of self-reflection or self-awareness on the part of the conservative movement over the past few years. Reading the idiots at the Corner or Red State while the House was arguing over the bailout package last week was an amazing exercise. Popular sentiment: the hard-right House members were correct to propose tax cuts as a solution! Just a complete inability to wrap their minds around the nature of the problem or the fact that the bailout was initiated by the Bush administration. Same thing during the Tom DeLay years: we can't be corrupt, because only liberals are corrupt! It's like some kind of atavistic cult or tribe. They can't acknowledge the nature of their failings because doing so would force them to admit that the principles they believe in are fallible.
October 6, 2008 7:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look to 'The Architect' Karl Rove to see the strategy in action, as we speak; Besides hollowing out our regulatory agencies, and politicizing the Justice Department, Rovian proteges are as busy as they've been the past 10 years rigging the voting mechanism on the State level.
Imo, Rove and the Konservatives have studied Orwell carefully, and turned postmodernism on its ear; In other words, they have subverted and co-opted our vocabulary, and muddied up our individual and collective identities, and fouled the waters of our national conversation. Of course, Nancy Pelosi, and the 'loyal opposition' have helped. One recent example of the results is that the Republican candidates can campaign on being the Bizarro notion of being the 'reformers.'
Konservative strategies work because, as any 5 year-old knows, it's easier to destroy than build. And you can have fun playing with the wreckage...at least for the moment.
October 6, 2008 7:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
No - sorry, not Karl Rove. Lee Atwater. Rove is a cheap copy.
October 6, 2008 8:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding the second point: For years now, hard-right politicians and theorists have acted more like late-Soviet apparatchiks than rational policy-makers. One hears echoes of the Brezhnev-era politboro clinging to the inevitable power of the Dialectic when hearing Grover Norquist or Newt Gingrich extol the supreme power of the Market. Club-For-Growth Republicans bring the same nuance to economics that Neocons bring to foreign policy. It's the triumph of ideology over experience, logic, and common sense. (This, of course, informs the Trotskyite lament that true communism/conservatism has never been given a true and fair trial.)
One quick thought on the Republican ticket's demagoguery against Wall Street: Seeing McCain take a swan dive into the gutter, we shouldn't be surprised that he would use "greed on Wall Street" as a powerful dog whistle for anti-semites.
October 6, 2008 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have long been bemused (or actually more like dismayed) that the republicans have stayed in power for as long as they have when their "ideology" about the role of government diverges 180 degrees from how they govern. Part of the reason is they are so good at 'dividing and conquering'. They can convince lower and middle class white voters that, even though there is no proof of it, that they will be better off under GOP rule by playing to that section of the electorate's racial fears and hatreds.
But now that all the republicans have to show for the time in power is corruption, their love of big government (creating the behemoth DHS), their fiscal irresponsibility (record national debt and allowing corporations to run amok and severely damage our economy) and general incompetence in governing the 'movement' is coming undone. And just like Wall Street can't be trusted to do the 'right' thing if left alone the republican's core philosophy of allowing the rich to profit obscenely because the 'invisible hand of capitalism' if left to its own devices will take care of all our societal problems can be relegated to the garbage bin of history right next to the Marx theories of government. It is just a shame that so many people have to be economically ruined to 'prove' the greedy and corrupt treachery inherent in the conservative ideology.
October 6, 2008 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok - the Republicans only held the majority for 12 years.
The Democrats held it for the previous 40. They haven't had it long at all and have totally failed.
October 6, 2008 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me just add - this is more proof in my continuing attempt to convince liberals that this idea about Americans in general being stupid is an unwarranted generality that grew from blowing up a very specific demographic- low information voters.
Americans aren't stupid - the Democrats ran the country for 40 years. The Republicans had it for 12.
October 6, 2008 8:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Totally failed? Yeah, civil rights was a failure. Consumer protection laws - failure. And America had no prosperity before the last eight years of Republican rule, which have been unparalleled in that, right? Right?
October 6, 2008 9:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
What are you talking about?
The Republicans didn't have anything to do with Civil Rights - except to fight them.
October 6, 2008 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops, you didn't mean what your words seemed to say.
Thought your implication was therefore the problems of America are mostly the Democrats' fault - that is, that the American people aren't too stupid to see whose fault it is, with your implication being it's ours as Democrats.Also, I guess by "ran the country" you don't mean presidents? Confusing. You're trying to say we're so smart we elected Democratic legislative majorities and ... Nixon? Reagan? And I'm sorry the McCain-preferring Bill Clinton? Plus the Bushes? Americans, smart? What?
October 7, 2008 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's not true. Some of the major civil rights bill would not have passed if it weren't for moderate conservatives. Remember, Johnson couldn't have gotten CR biils of 1964 & 1965 passed because of conservative southern Democrats who later became southern GOPers. Moderate Republicans have all but disappeared.
October 7, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Civil Rights Act of 1964: Senate (Democrats, 46-21; Republicans, 27-6) House (Democrats, 153-91; Republicans, 136-35)
National Voting Rights Act of 1965: Senate (Democrats, 49-17; Republicans, 30-1) House (Democrats, 217-54; Republicans, 111-20)
Enough with the polemics!
October 7, 2008 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to mention, ironicially, post WWII,
conservaties in power = high national debt, and Dems meant the opposite.
October 6, 2008 9:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well lets see Tena...
Out of the last 28 years the R's have held the Executive Branch for 20 of those years. And held the Congress for the 12 years were the yeoman's share of the heavy lifting was done to fulfill their promise to render the government ineffective and sell what they could off to the highest corporate bidder. Sure they have had some complicit democrats who had sold out and helped them but where we are st now is the maturation on the neoconservative movement which was begun being put in place during the Reagan administration. And the democrats sold out thinking the liberal movement was dead and the American people had rejected it because of the republican's electoral successes in the 80's and early 90's. The republicans had those electoral successes not because the public embraced their governing ideology. They responded favorably to the republicans because the republicans played to the most powerful of human emotions of fear and hatred. So the democrats from 1980 - present have been nothing more than enablers for the conservative agenda under the guise of being 'centrists'. Bottom line though whether the democrats enabled or not it is still the conservative agenda...an agenda that has produced nothing of worth to anybody except those in the top 5%.
October 7, 2008 12:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Curiously, my name is also Thomas Frank and I live in bizarro world. I presently reside in East Chicago, Indiana, the exception that may prove your point and/or the result of the wrecking crew in a working-class community - your choice. If I did not actually live here and witness the goings-on, I too would not believe it.
This is Steel-town ruled by 19th century Steel town politics. By my estimation East Chicago is the richest falling city in America.
East Chicago is home to BP (the largest oil refinery in Midwest), Mittal Steel (largest integrated Mill in the country), U.S. Steel, and many other large legacy industries. They own much of the land and most of the value in this city.
Included under the plumb of industry are the social and environmental costs of the last hundred years. In addition to the large industries, East Chicago is also home to some of the poorest census tracts in America. Many of its census blocks have a medium household income less than $11,000. Yet, these same residents pay among the highest property taxes in the country at 8.43%. This is about the most regressive taxing structure in America. You can't make this stuff up. And yes, all this was accomplished under local Democratic leadership.
To make matters worse The Mayor and the East Chicago City Council recently provided BP with a $164 million tax abatement (with out a single public hearing) on the promise of 70 new jobs. These new jobs will require an advance education that East Chicago residents simply lack.
- This is the place where candidates, who were not on the Mayor's slate, were recently locked-out from speaking to the East Chicago Precinct Organization as they were determining who to endorse. This is the place where the Democratic Mayor and his precinct organization are not supporting Barack Obama for president or Jill Long Thompson, the Democratic candidate for Governor of Indiana.
The City of East Chicago is also the single largest employer of East Chicagoans, with 18% of the Workforce employed by the city, translating into ~28% of households receiving a paycheck from the MAYOR. Thus if you have a job you work for the city and they pay you to vote. They also pay you to put up political signs, canvass neighborhoods, show up at rallies and work the polls. And if they can feel your Love they will pay you to TAKE-CARE of political enemies - That's a lot of money and a lot of Love.
Consequently, East Chicago and its residents consistently rank at the bottom on most measures.
October 6, 2008 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for addressing the conservative rhetoric foisted so often upon people with a cool head. The more people see how far reality deviates from the ideal, the faster this country can get on the right track. Here's another analysis of conservative style politics, focused on Palin: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n19/print/raba01_.html
October 6, 2008 8:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I did not get to read your book yet, but I loved the interview you gave to NPR a few weeks back. I will get the book now.
October 6, 2008 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nothing to add here, other than to say that Thomas Frank is my hero. Your latest book is great and should be on the reading list of everyone who cares about our country. Keep up the great work.
October 6, 2008 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree with your points fully, there are a lot of GOPers claiming this entire financial meltdown is really not their fault at all. Actually it is the Dems fault going back to Carter then moving on to Clinton and then the Dems for the last 1.5 years. All other responsibility skips over all the Repugs.
While this is purely nuts, there is an extensive email campaign including video and slides with quotations and characterizations of laws that were passed and when regulations were relaxed.
They completely mischaracterize the laws and their effect but to the novice, (Think regular voter) it can bring a lot of questions. This efort really needs to be knocked down quickly and hard.
October 6, 2008 9:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I would only add, that conservatives have cleverly convinced a vast majority of the middle class that their ideals are best aligned with the Republican Party. They have done this by using issues that they claim to carry a great deal about - abortion, Marriage laws, etc...
However, when they are elected, and have complete control of the executive branch, Congress, and Senate as they did for the 6 years that proceeded the last two, both issues were dead weight. If it weren't for an economic crisis we would again be hearing from the right about how pro-life / anti -gay they are.
October 6, 2008 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we want to look at "radical" (not "conservative") legislation which got us into the mess, we should be looking at the Clinton Era.
G-L-B which repealed Glass-Steagall passed in the Senate 90-8 and in the House 362-57. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which produced the current CDS/CDO crisis, was co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Harkin and Johnson and was never debated in the Senate. Clinton signed both bills.
I am so tired of these political polemics.
October 6, 2008 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ellen, nice try but a little dodgy.
US citizens have always been seduced to the idea that "free" markets and no controls are better than regulation, rules and laws. Pity that's not how societies work or function over time.
G-L-B??
Gramm R-TX
Leach R-IA
Bliley R-VA -- Republican majority and bi-partisan veto-proof vote. Clinton's problem?
Stick to the facts.
October 6, 2008 11:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
It wasn't Clinton -- although he never put up much of a struggle.
It was the Democrats in Congress who when it came down to supporting the Plutocracy, proved they weren't that much different from Republicans!
Anyone claiming to be discussing political theories (conservatism v. liberalism, for example) who turns the discussion toward identifying small, frequently inconsequential party differences is substituting polemics for analysis.
October 7, 2008 1:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
True. Clinton didn't put up much of a struggle...but it was a moot point.
Plus, Citigroup was counting on it - wonder if they put even more pressure than was public?
I think the figure was more like $300 million in lobbying...(18 tries (I think) and 25 years of trying to overturn it)
It was also undermined over the years when they allowed banks to own 10% - then 25% of their assets over in the previous 20 years. (Federal Reserve Board - is that Rupublican or Democrat?)
Bigger is better (like in the 1920's)....but this time at least we have the FDIC, so less chance of a true depression (run on banks, etc.) Just making the 401k's of the soon to be retired Baby Boomer's reduced by 30%.
October 7, 2008 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, and the repeal of Glass-Steagall was "collaterallized" to the tune of $200 million of lobbying and donations led by Citigroup for the specific ability to market and trade MBSs, CDOs and SDVs more liberally.
It just gets worse over time. There's no way that Republicans can avoid their responsibility these last 28 years any more than supplicant Democrats. But it has been part of the Republican agenda and their objective. To their shame the Democrats take the money even though they don't believe (they say) in the objective.
It's time to get ALL corporate money out of politics. They don't get to vote.
October 6, 2008 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
oh yeah, the GOP is going to bite the hand that feeds it. I'd sooner expect Catholic priests to denounce John Paul II as a pedophile-coddler, than I would expect a Republican to turn on the greedheads on Wall Street.
Ya think?
I hope the American voters are smart enough to realize that if they put Old Spice and Bible Spice in the White House, they will merely consider it a 'mandate' for more of the same. Sure they will throw a couple weak reform bones our way as window dressing. But that's it.
If the American voter hasn't picked up on the GOP's game by now, then they deserve the assraping they are going to get from a McCain administration.
Fortunately, it seems that America really has had enough of this shit.
October 7, 2008 12:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thomas nice job .
A couple of graphics for you :
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7752/3663/1600/Picture%202.4.jpg
Credit Professer Smartass
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p51/coloradobob/GoodShip_Bush.png
Credit Colorado Bob
October 7, 2008 1:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
October 7, 2008 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
So we're seeing with startling clarity the impacgt of the "government is bad" ideology at work in the financial sector. I wonder what else we will discover once Bush and his merry band of criminials are out of the White House. Clearly, with the monthly recalls of contaminated food, there are some problems at the FDA related to crappy oversight. Can we assume that pretty much all other agencies, departments and programs are in a state of equal devastation? I fear we are seeing just the tip of the iceberg on numerous fronts.
October 7, 2008 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not just devastation, the Bush/Cheney policy of partisan hires has packed our government with ideologues dedicated to thwarting democratic (and Democratic) rule. Even if Obama can weed out the worst of these (not easy), they will slow the next Administratioon during the key first years when real change is possible.
October 7, 2008 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding the Conservative's "madness for power" please consider the hypothesis @ www.democraticcritique.us.
October 7, 2008 5:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree with you completely. For the past couple decades the "invisible hand" has been nothing more than a pickpocket.
October 7, 2008 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
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