What The Founding Fathers Really Believed

July 4, 2011 — Ron Chusid

I’ve frequently pointed out that the right wing, including Ron Paul and the Tea Party supporters, promote a version of the Constitution which exists in their heads but which has little to do with the actual document. Independence Day is a good time to point out that the American Revolution had little to do with the themes promoted by the right wing. E. J. Dionne used his column today to explain What Our Declaration Really Said.

We need to recognize the deep flaws in this vision of our present and our past. A reading of the Declaration of Independence makes clear that our forebears were not revolting against taxes as such — and most certainly not against government as such.

In the long list of “abuses and usurpations” the Declaration documents, taxes don’t come up until the 17th item, and that item is neither a complaint about tax rates nor an objection to the idea of taxation. Our Founders remonstrated against the British crown “for imposing taxes on us without our consent.” They were concerned about “consent,” i.e. popular rule, not taxes.

Dionne also discussed the misconceptions about the Constitution and the formation of a government to promote the common good:

This misunderstanding of our founding document is paralleled by a misunderstanding of our Constitution. “The federal government was created by the states to be an agent for the states, not the other way around,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said recently.

No, our Constitution begins with the words “We the People” not “We the States.” The Constitution’s Preamble speaks of promoting “a more perfect Union,” “Justice,” “the common defense,” “the general Welfare” and “the Blessings of Liberty.” These were national goals.

I know states’ rights advocates revere the 10th Amendment. But when the word “states” appears in the Constitution, it typically is part of a compound word, “United States,” or refers to how the states and their people will be represented in the national government. We learned it in elementary school: The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation to create a stronger federal government, not a weak confederate government. Perry’s view was rejected in 1787 and again in 1865.

We praise our Founders annually for revolting against royal rule and for creating an exceptionally durable system of self-government. We can wreck that system if we forget our Founders’ purpose of creating a representative form of national authority robust enough to secure the public good. It is still perfectly capable of doing that. But if we pretend we are living in Boston in 1773, we will draw all the wrong conclusions and make some remarkably foolish choices.

Posted in Op-eds, Ron Paul. Tags: , , . 4 Comments »

Conservative Publication Claims Obama Supporters Don’t Pay Taxes

April 18, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Most absurd thing I’ve read so far today:

“The Obama coalition is made up of rich liberals who don’t pay taxes and the poor who also don’t pay taxes.”– Tony Lee, in email from Human Events

As is so often the case in reading such nonsense from right wing sources, I can’t decide if they are so out of touch with reality that they believe this, or if they are knowingly making this up.

Update: Best response so far on Facebook: “I paid a helluva lot more than GE”

Update II: Ross Douthat is also confused about taxes.  Steve Benen and Scott Lemieux set him straight.

Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, Op-eds. Tags: . 2 Comments »

Conservatives Cannot Handle The Economic Truth From Obama

April 17, 2011 — Ron Chusid

If you look at conservative reaction, Barack Obama is sure a mean sob for telling the truth about about conservative economic policies. There has been a considerable amount of whining on conservative sites since Barack Obama said in private (with a live mic he was unaware of) the same thing he says in public. For example, here’s an account from an editorial in The Washington Examiner which isn’t entirely honest and places the episode in as bad a light as conservatives can. First they whined about his budget speech on Wednesday and then moved on to Thursday:

Obama then spent Thursday evening regaling an audience of Democratic donors with what he thought were off-the-record insider jabs about his recent budget negotiations with House Republicans, including this cheap shot at Ryan: “When Paul Ryan says his priority is to make sure he’s just being America’s accountant, that he’s being responsible, I mean this is the same guy that voted for two wars that were unpaid for, voted for the Bush tax cuts that were unpaid for, voted for the prescription drug bill that cost as much as my health care bill — but wasn’t paid for. So it’s not on the level.” The reality is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under President Bush were regularly funded by Congress, claiming tax cuts must be “paid for” is a hoary piece of Democratic class-warfare demagoguery, and the prescription drug plan Ryan supported cost half as much as the Democratic alternative then on the table. Such fact-free commentary is to be expected from blind partisans, but not the president of the United States.

Rather than engage in any form of honest discussion of the issues, conservative prefer to pretend they are victims. Of course the editorial cherry picks statements out of context and fails to report the full argument in order to falsely claim Obama was giving “fact-free commentary.” Obviously the wars were paid for. That is not the issue. The problem is that Bush paid for two wars without  raising money to offset the costs, and ran much of them off the books to make it appear he did not run up the deficit as much as he did.

Similarly George Bush passed a prescription drug bill without consideration of where the money would be taken from, and even threatened to fire the chief Medicare actuary if he testified before Congress about the true cost of the plan. On top of this, the plan was structured to primarily provide corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, costing taxpayers far more than the actual benefits to Medicare beneficiaries would cost.

The concept here is simple. Democrats such as Obama practice real world economics where you can spend money on needed programs, but you must also account for where the money is coming from. Republicans practice Voodoo Economics based upon the borrow and spend principle. To them deficits do not matter when they are spending the money, but the deficit is suddenly the number one issue when a Democrat is in office and trying to fix the damage they caused.

Once you consider real world economics, you realize that saying tax cuts must be “paid for” is hardly an example of class  warfare. It is just common sense. You cannot simultaneously cut taxes and increase spending as the Republicans did.

There is nothing wrong with Obama saying all of this in private. He should be saying it even more often in public.

Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, George Bush, Health Care, Op-eds, Republicans. Tags: , , . 15 Comments »

Charles Koch Complaining About Crony Capitalism Is Like Osama bin Laden Complaining About Mixing Violence With Religion

March 1, 2011 — Ron Chusid

The old definition of chutzpah was to murder your parents and then beg the court for mercy because of being an orphan.

The new definition of chutzpah should  be for Charles Koch to justify his actions  based upon opposing crony capitalism.

Charles Koch has probably done more than anyone else to try to murder capitalism and democracy and replace it with plutocracy, along with making his fortune off of practicing crony capitalism. He shows tremendous chutzpah in writing an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal pretending to justify his career trying to subvert American capitalism by claiming he is doing so to fight crony capitalism. Well, I guess that isn’t any more chutzpah than the Republican Party claiming to support capitalism, small government, and freedom when they actively oppose all three. I might include the Tea Party supporters claiming to represent the views of the Founding Fathers, but in this case I think it is more often ignorance than chutzpah as they actually believe the misinformation they pick up from the right wing noise machine (which receives much of its funding from Koch).

Think Progress has posted just Part I of their demonstration of how Koch is the biggest crony capitalist of them all. Here is a portion:

– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally-planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.

– As Yasha Levine has reported, Koch exploits a number of government programs for profit. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a timber company subsidiary of Koch Industries, uses taxpayer money provided by the U.S. Forestry Service to provide their loggers with taxpayer-funded roads and access to virgin growth forests. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public,” according to the Institute for Public Accuracy. Levine also notes that Koch’s cattle ranching company, Matador Cattle Company, uses a New Deal program to profit off federal land for free.

– Koch Industries won massive government contracts using their close relationship with the Bush administration. The Bush administration, in a deal even conservatives alleged was a quid pro quo because of Koch’s campaign donations, handed Koch Industries a lucrative contract to supply the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve with 8 million barrels of crude oil. The SPR deal, done initially in 2002, was renewed in 2004 by Bush administration officials. During the occupation of Iraq, Koch won significant contracts to buy Iraqi crude oil.

– Although Koch campaigned vigorously against health reform — running attack ads, sponsoring anti-health reform Tea Parties, and comparing health reform to the Holocaust — Koch Industries applied for health reform subsidies made possible by the Obama administration.

– The Koch brothers have claimed that they oppose government intervention in the market, but Koch Industries lobbies aggressively for taxpayer handouts. In Alaska, blogger Andrew Halcro reported that a Koch subsidiary in Fairbanks asked Gov. Sarah Palin’s administration to use taxpayer money to bail out one of their failing refinery.

– SolveClimate recently reported that Koch Industries will reap huge profits from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs from Koch-owned tar sands mining centers in Canada to Koch-owned refineries in Texas. To build the pipeline, politicians throughout the Midwest, many of whom have received large Koch campaign donations, have used eminant domain — government seizures of private land. In Kansas, where Koch-funded officials advise Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and the Republican legislature, the Keystone XL Pipeline is likely to receive a property tax exemption of ten years, a special loophole that will cost Kansas taxpayers about $50 million.

– Koch Industries has been the recipient of about $85 million in federal government contracts mostly from the Department of Defense. Koch also benefits directly from billions in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies and ethanol production.

Koch is also able to make his fortunes by pumping pollutants into the air and acting as if the environment is his own personal property, using his political clout to oppose any efforts which would force him to pay for his actions:

The American public want clean air, safe water, and a healthy planet. If Charles Koch actually believed in the “open market” and raising our “standard of living,” he would allow our democratically elected government to take action to protect Americans from global warming pollution.

The virulence of the Koch brothers’ opposition to climate policy — to anything that would make polluters instead of society pay for the cost of their pollution — is purely a matter of self-interest. The immense profitability of their carbon holdings depends on their freedom to pollute without consequence.

If their pollution was fairly priced in a free-market system such as the cap-and-trade markets the Koch successfully demonized in Washington, the Kochs would be facing costs of anywhere from $1 billion to $40 billion a year. Spending well less than $1 billion a year on their political and philanthropic activities, the Kochs have made a brilliant investment to defend their killer business model.

 

Posted in Economy, Environment, Op-eds. Tags: , . 1 Comment »

The Failure Of The Individual Market For Health Insurance

February 21, 2011 — Ron Chusid

A major reason why health care reform is needed is the failure of the free market to provide reasonably priced health care to those on the individual market. An op-ed in The New York Times describes the problems faced by one affluent family when their company was bought out and they attempted to purchase insurance on the individual market:

The truth is that individual health insurance is not easy to get.

I found this out the hard way. Six years ago, my company was acquired. Since my husband had retired a few years earlier, we found ourselves without an employer and thus without health insurance.

My husband, teenage daughter and I were all active and healthy, and I naïvely thought getting health insurance would be simple.

Why did we even need insurance? First, we wanted to know that, if we had a medical catastrophe, we would not exhaust our savings. Second, uninsured patients are billed more than the rates that insurers negotiate with doctors and hospitals, and we wanted to pay those lower rates. The difference is significant: my recent M.R.I. cost $1,300 at the “retail” rate, while the rate negotiated by the insurance company was $700.

An insurance broker helped me sort through the options. I settled on a high-deductible plan, and filled out the long application. I diligently listed the various minor complaints for which we had been seen over the years, knowing that these might turn up later and be a basis for revoking coverage if they were not disclosed.

Then the first letter arrived — denied. It never occurred to me that we would be denied! Yes, we had listed a bunch of minor ailments, but nothing serious. No cancer, no chronic diseases like asthma or diabetes, no hospital stays.

Why were we denied? What were these pre-existing conditions that put us into high-risk categories? For me, it was a corn on my toe for which my podiatrist had recommended an in-office procedure. My daughter was denied because she takes regular medication for a common teenage issue. My husband was denied because his ophthalmologist had identified a slow-growing cataract. Basically, if there is any possible procedure in your future, insurers will deny you.

The broker then proposed that the three of us make individual applications. Perhaps one or two of us might be accepted, rather than the family as a group.

As I filled out more applications, I discovered a critical error in my strategy. The first question was “Have you ever been denied health insurance”? Now my answer was yes, giving the new companies reason to be wary of my application. I learned too late that the best tactic is to apply simultaneously to as many companies as possible, so that you don’t have to admit to a denial.

When faced with situations such as this, many go without insurance while others wind up with expensive, high deductible policies which often provide limited coverage. While one of the more worst examples, earlier this month I had a patient come in with a newly purchased health insurance policy which had an annual limit of $150 in coverage. Health care reform is not a “government take-over of health care” as conservatives claim. It is a reasonable act of government stepping into an area to provide necessary regulation when the market has failed.

Posted in Health Care, Op-eds. Tags: . 1 Comment »

The Tea Party Is Not Winning As Americans Reject Both Extremes

February 21, 2011 — Ron Chusid

A reader of The New York Times and Washington Post might become quite confused as to who is winning. Today E. J. Dionne tells us the Tea Party is winning. However, yesterday Frank Rich pointed out that things are not going well for the far right:

Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.

Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.

Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.

The news section of The New York Times also points out problems faced by the Republicans:

…in the view of officials from both major political parties, Republicans may be risking the same kind of electoral backlash Democrats suffered after they were perceived as overreaching.

Public surveys suggest that most voters do not share the Republicans’ fervor for the deep cuts adopted by the House, or for drastically slashing the power of public-sector unions. And independent voters have historically been averse to displays of political partisanship that have been played out over the last week.

“If Republicans push too far and overreach their mandate, they will be punished by independent voters, just as they were in 1996,” said Mark McKinnon, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush. “Voters said they wanted bold action. They are getting bold action. But Republicans need to be constantly reminded that the last election was a referendum for change, not a referendum for the G.O.P.”

Mr. McKinnon said that although Mr. Obama had claimed a mandate after his election, it turned out to be exaggerated, The president had paid a price for it, he said, and was adjusting.

Russ Feingold, the Democratic senator from Wisconsin who was turned out of office in the Republican sweep last year, said the new crop of Republicans was drawing false conclusions from the party’s victory.

“They are taking some kind of public expression of deep concern about the economy and turning it into something entirely different,” Mr. Feingold said. “They are making a mistake. They say: ‘Well, we won the election. Elections have consequences.’ And I say, yes, and we are going to have another election next year.”

What we are really seeing here is a failure for both extremes.

When the Democrats took control of the White House and Congress I recall writing a post warning that the Democrats would again become a minority party if they were to overreach. Looking back at the 2010 election, this should be updated to add the Democrats were also at risk of losing if the Republicans could create a false perception of Democratic overreach. I am glad to see that the article describes the problem of  as “Democrats suffered after they were perceived as overreaching” as opposed to actual overreaching.

The Democrats took a centrist course but failed miserably in explaining their actions, once again allowing the Republicans to define them and create a false perception of a move to the far left and overreaching. In addition, Obama did make one serious mistake in reversing his campaign position against the individual mandate. This allowed Republicans (who initially supported the mandate) to oppose health care reform as something being imposed upon Americans by big government as opposed to a case of government stepping in to provide help to those who need it when the market has failed.

Frank Rich is right that those on the far right are losing because, fortunately, many conservatives out in the real world don’t support the extremism and know-nothing philosophy of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party. Many on the left are also making a mistake when they see any support by Barack Obama or other Democrats for fiscal responsibility as giving in to right wing frames and a victory for the Tea Party.

Cutting the deficit is important in the long run. Republicans were wrong during the Bush years when they argued that deficits don’t matter, and exploded the deficit by fighting two wars off the books while cutting taxes primarily for the ultra-wealthy. It is far better to point out how Republican policies are responsible for the deficit than to shy away from any discussion of cutting the deficit. Rather than avoid the discussion, Democrats must point out that some deficit spending is beneficial, such as Obama’s stimulus which kept us out of a depression. Democrats must also continue to point out how cutting taxes for the ultra-wealthy and spending on Bush’s wars has done far more to increase the deficit than Democratic spending.

Some on the left want to avoid any use of “conservative frames,” but in doing so they actually hurt the left. When they refuse to mention anything discussed by conservatives, they allow conservatives to take credit for positions they do not actually promote. As a result we have conservatives claiming to be champions of freedom and capitalism, despite the reality that they really support more government intrusion in the lives of individuals and confuse plutocracy for capitalism.

This mistaken view that the left must avoid any conservative frames  leads to many of the attacks on Barack Obama from the left. Obama, while certainly not always perfect, at least understands that the way to win a majority is to demonstrate to rational conservatives that the economic policies they desire can better be delivered by his administration than by the extreme right. Those who oppose Obama’s attempts to appeal to conservatives argue that this has not led to any support from Congressional Republicans. This is correct but misses the point. The real target is not Congressional Republicans, who care more about denying Democrats any victories for political reasons than they care about any specific issues, or the good of the country. The target is the more rational voters who might have voted Republican in many of the recent elections but who are not totally brainwashed by the right wing noise machine. Attracting these voters, along with independents,  explains why Obama’s popularity has consistently been higher than that of Congress, and is now moving upward. It might also explain why some are turning off Glenn Beck.

Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, Independents, Op-eds, Republicans. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Egypt, The Koch Brothers, And Democracy

February 12, 2011 — Ron Chusid

The challenge in Egypt is now to establish a democracy rather than slip back into another form of dictatorship. Since the Bush years, many Americans have feared that we are in danger of democracy slipping away here. Bob Herbert wrote about this challenge today:

In an Op-Ed article in The Times at the end of January, Senator John Kerry said that the Egyptian people “have made clear they will settle for nothing less than greater democracy and more economic opportunities.” Americans are being asked to swallow exactly the opposite. In the mad rush to privatization over the past few decades, democracy itself was put up for sale, and the rich were the only ones who could afford it.

The corporate and financial elites threw astounding sums of money into campaign contributions and high-priced lobbyists and think tanks and media buys and anything else they could think of. They wined and dined powerful leaders of both parties. They flew them on private jets and wooed them with golf outings and lavish vacations and gave them high-paying jobs as lobbyists the moment they left the government. All that money was well spent. The investments paid off big time.

As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote in their book, “Winner-Take-All Politics”: “Step by step and debate by debate, America’s public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefited the few at the expense of the many.”

As if the corporate stranglehold on American democracy were not tight enough, the Supreme Court strengthened it immeasurably with its Citizens United decision, which greatly enhanced the already overwhelming power of corporate money in politics. Ordinary Americans have no real access to the corridors of power, but you can bet your last Lotto ticket that your elected officials are listening when the corporate money speaks.

When the game is rigged in your favor, you win. So despite the worst economic downturn since the Depression, the big corporations are sitting on mountains of cash, the stock markets are up and all is well among the plutocrats. The endlessly egregious Koch brothers, David and Charles, are worth an estimated $35 billion. Yet they seem to feel as though society has treated them unfairly.

As Jane Mayer pointed out in her celebrated New Yorker article, “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation.” (A good hard look at their air-pollution record would make you sick.)

It’s a perversion of democracy, indeed, when individuals like the Kochs have so much clout while the many millions of ordinary Americans have so little. What the Kochs want is coming to pass. Extend the tax cuts for the rich? No problem. Cut services to the poor, the sick, the young and the disabled? Check. Can we get you anything else, gentlemen?

The Koch brothers have been the target of many liberal bloggers lately. I agree with criticism of them for matters such as their pollution record, criticism of the increased concentration of wealth among the ultra-wealthy, and criticism of a system which allows small numbers of wealthy people to have so much power. I do not object to the fact that they are spending money to promote their views (if you can look beyond the other areas of criticism). Personally I wouldn’t mind if we had more wealthy individuals spending money promoting democracy and true freedom. What is really amazing is the number of libertarians who see the Kochs as promoting liberty as opposed to oligarchy.

This leads to one of the reasons our democracy is in trouble–many on the right confuse limitation of government with liberty. In an era where there are many powerful forces, a liberal government is often essential to preserving liberty for the individual.  On the other hand, we must also be vigilant in preventing government from infringing upon our liberties. Here, far too many people on the right look the other way and advocate increased government action where it does not belong while complaining about legitimate actions of government.

In any discussion of the dangers to our democracy, we must include the importance of an informed electorate. The conservative dominance of the news media helps create the problem of people who see people like the Kochs as supporting rather than threatening freedom and democracy, along with the many falsehoods common on the right which I have discussed in multiple other posts. How can voters intelligently access health care reform when right wing media outlets are making false claims about death panels, job killing, and a government take-over of health care? How do voters evaluate proposals to deal with climate change when the right wing noise machine spreads the propaganda of the petroleum industry? How do individuals assess the candidates in a democracy when, hearing the false claims of the Swift Boat Liars and Birthers, along with distortions of the actual beliefs of liberal candidates?

Posted in Barack Obama, Economy, John Kerry, Op-eds. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Founding Fathers Supported Government Health Care, Including An Individual Mandate

January 24, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Conservatives frequently project their views onto the Founding Fathers, despite the fact that their views are quite contrary to the views of the Founding Fathers. They ignore restrictions on government favored by the founders they disagree with, such as separation of church and state, while imagine that the Founding Fathers agree with their rhetoric about limiting government in other areas. An example of this can be seen with government involvement in health care. The Founding Fathers were enlightened, liberal individuals but they had no reason to consider modern health care when writing the Constitution. If they were around in more recent times when the experience of every industrialized country has proven a need for government involvement in health care, it is a safe assumption that the Founding Fathers would not have left he United States as the only major country without a form of universal health care.

An example of how the Founding Fathers supported both government involvement in health care and an individual mandate to purchase insurance was provided by Rick Ungar at Forbes:

In July of 1798, Congress passed – and President John Adams signed - “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.

Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution.

And when the Bill came to the desk of President John Adams for signature, I think it’s safe to assume that the man in that chair had a pretty good grasp on what the framers had in mind.

It might be argued that John Adams was a supporter of bigger government than many of the other Founding Fathers, but Thomas Jefferson supported the same proposal

I personally have opposed the individual mandate, preferring a system of incentives for purchasing insurance and penalties for those who try to game the system by buying insurance at a later date when they need health care coverage. (Russ Douthat proposed a Republican counter-proposal to mandates which I could support today, but ignores the fact that mandates were originally the Republican position.) Despite current opposition to mandates from many on the left and right, there is no basis for the argument that the mandate is unconstitutional or that the Founding Fathers would have opposed this.

Posted in Blogs & Social Media, Health Care, Op-eds. Tags: . 8 Comments »

What Planet Is Paul Krugman On?

January 23, 2011 — Ron Chusid

Has anyone told Paul Krugman that the 2008 primary is over? Maybe he is trying out for a job a Fox, showing he can distort Obama’s policies just as much as the Republicans do. Investing in our infrastructure to create jobs and become more competitive with other countries is hardly the evil plan that Krugman makes it out to be. This includes absurd attacks on  his blog as well as on This Week this morning. Krugman’s characterization of Obama’s position is no more about what Obama is really saying than Republican attacks on health care reform reflected Obama’s policy. It’s not like Obama is advocating anything the Republicans are actually supporting as they are vowing to oppose his economic proposals.

I am also getting rather sick of the way that Krugman (and many of his supporters) characterize any disagreement with him as moving to the right, as if this by itself is sufficient to disqualify any idea from consideration. Sure, more often than not a conservative idea these days is a bad idea, but one really must demonstrate this about a specific idea before attacking someone.

Of course Krugman is rather inconsistent in this. On the one hand he has never stopped attacking Obama for bringing up Ronald Reagan, even if it was simply in the sense of acknowledging his place in history while expressing disagreement with his policies. On the other hand, Krugman had no problem during the primary campaign when he advocated the Republican policy of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance while Obama opposed this. (At least Krugman is in no position to attack Obama for making the mistake of later accepting the old GOP position on this issue).

We can at least be confident that Barack Obama is not losing any sleep over Krugman’s ridiculous attacks as he watches his position improve in the polls.

Update: Krugman practices the same type of distortion in his New York Times column.

Posted in Barack Obama, Blogs & Social Media, Economy, Health Care, Op-eds, Ronald Reagan. Tags: , , , . 4 Comments »

White Male Conservative Christians Are Such An Oppressed Group

December 29, 2010 — Ron Chusid

We have seen for quite a while how conservatives love to act like they are victims. Gary Bauer has written the most absurd variation on this I’ve seen in quite a while entitled, If Christians Were Treated Like Muslims. My first thought was that it was a plea from one conservative to other conservatives to end their Islamophobia. No, it is actually a claim that Christians in this country receive worse treatment than Muslims.

Among his many complaints, Bauer complains of how Christmas and Easter have become secular events stripped of their theological meaning. There is some truth to this, but it was Christians who have shown their preference for Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The change in their holidays was not forced upon them by the Muslims or Jews. Besides, in the end these are all just stories to promote a lesson. The stories of Jesus may have some historical background (as may also be the case with Saint Nicholas) but any reality to these stories has been buried under layers of fiction. To me it doesn’t really matter which stories Christians prefer, but nobody is stopping people like Bauer from having a traditional religious celebration. Why are conservatives unhappy unless everyone else adopts their religious views?

It will hard to see this article beaten as an example of the absurdity of conservative thought. I imagine Bauer could top this by claiming that Southern slaves were treated better than the slave owners.

Posted in Op-eds, Religion. Tags: . No Comments »
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