cab drollery: For those naive enough to be laboring under the delusion that the Obama administration's Department of Justice is any different than the Bush administration's, allow me to disabuse you of that misconception.
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Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman weigh in on Sarah Palin’s misguided talking points in her recent speech to financial executives in Hong Kong. Palin apparently thinks that the solution to our economic mess in the United States is less government regulation rather than more to rein the bankers and Wall Street in for their bad behavior.
As Krugman notes we need more regulation and consumer protections and if we can’t even fix the simple things that should be a no brainer like consumer protections, how are we going to fix the bigger problems?
Sarah Palin made her international debut today in a closed-door speech at the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong. AFP reports that Palin’s speech, which touched on issues like international terrorism and the U.S. debt, “divided” the audience and even prompted a few delegates to leave in disgust:
Former US vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin divided an international audience of financial big-hitters at her first speech outside North America on Wednesday with some leaving in disgust. [...]
Some listeners praised her forthright views on government social and economic intervention but others walked out early citing boredom or disgust. [...]
A US delegate leaving early with a colleague said: “it was awful, we couldn’t stand it any longer.”
As Krugman noted during this interview unfortunately Sarah Palin is not that far out of the mainstream of the Republican Party with her views on regulation.
Placebo, one of the only alternative rock bands providing a consistently compelling and unique perspective. Most of their songs pack a sonic mass of swirling guitars, but the simple drum/baritone guitar/vocal of 'Commercial For Levi' is a lesson in musical economics that their over-the-top compatriots in Muse could learn a thing or two from.
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Sarah Palin is on a new jag or an old one actually. She's ranting about some New World Order nonsense and while introducing wingnut radio host Michael Regan in Alaska, told the audience that the government wants to control the lives of "the people."
Via CNN: Alaska governor Sarah Palin let loose Wednesday on the Obama administration for enacting fiscal policies that "fly in the face of principles" and "defy Economics 101."
Palin: We need to be aware of the creation of a fearful population, and fearful lawmakers, being led to believe that big government is the answer, to bail out the private sector, because then government gets to get in there and control it," she said. "And mark my words, this is going to be next, I fear, bail out next debt-ridden states. Then government gets to get in there and control the people.
There's something pretty weird hearing the term "Economics 101," being uttered by Sarah because she showed little knowledge of economics on the campaign trail, but that being said...the right wing constantly is reaching out to the far depths of the conservative movement and are trying to instill more and more fear into that base which will only increase the violence that comes out of those merky depths. "People control," really Sarah? She should stop hanging out with nutty talk show hosts.
Just to help her out a little bit, it was under George Bush and conservative---neocon warhawks that the global financial markets melted down and led us down the path of being "afraid." And wasn't it under her governance that she took money from the oil companies and handed it out to her people?
It should just sit back and let the free market do its thing and, um, dispense the lucre…
In Alaska, where Palin is governor, natural resources are state-owned, and Alaska residents receive yearly dividend checks from a $30 billion state account built largely from oil royalties….
When home fuel and gas costs soared this year, Palin raised taxes on oil companies and used some of the money to boost residents' checks by $1,200. Every eligible man, woman and child got a record $3,269 this fall.
Even the grammar-challenged Governor knows there's word for that kind of redistributive policy. Starts with S.
Oh, to live in that happy place where Fox News resides: where the sun shone out of Ronald Reagan's behind, and FDR, not Hitler, was the real villain of his time...
After Wise Men Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes pull their chin hairs and speak in somber tones about how Obama's economic stimulus package will actually hurt the economy - just like FDR's New Deal did - they wax rhapsodic over Reaganomics. (After tsk-tsking about unions quite possibly wrecking the economy under Obama, of course.)
I, too, have fond memories of Reaganomics. Why, until Reagan waved his magic wand, our unemployment checks weren't even taxed! I was absolutely thrilled to be able to make that sacrifice to fund tax cuts for the wealthy:
Another Reagan proposal that came in for criticism was the plan to tax all unemployment compensation.
[...] "What he's doing is taxing something to a person who is under a rough time to begin with," noted Herbert Paul, a New York tax lawyer. "But you don't seem to have a strong lobby group to push to eliminate that, so I think it may well stick."
And stick it did. Why, thanks to Reagan's Tax Reform Act of 1986, I only recently finished paying the taxes (and interest) due on unemployment income from 2001 - and here I am, unemployed again, thanks to yet another Republican-sponsored economic crash.
But I digress. The fact is, facts simply aren't relevant to Republicans, since their economic views and objects of veneration are more appropriate to a religious cult than intellectual rigor. (You might want to get Will Bunch's new book for a look at this phenomena - and why it's so important.)
I'm not going to pick apart the specifics of everything Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes said, because they're only interchangeable players in the larger conservative game plan. We've seen just about every possible Republican bobblehead spouting this same nonsense in the past few weeks, fresh off the RNC talking-points fax machine.
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - U.S. economist Paul Krugman, a fierce critic of the Bush administration for policies that he argues led to the current financial crisis, won the 2008 Nobel prize for economics on Monday.
The Nobel committee said the award was for Krugman's work that helps explain why some countries dominate international trade, starting with research published nearly 30 years ago.
