Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
President Obama isn't in trouble because he's wasted too much taxpayer money. He's in trouble because he hasn't wasted enough.
Or so goes the logic of Doris Kearns Goodwin, who appeared on Meet the Press this morning to represent the ossified, paleo-Democratic cocoon (hat tip to the indispensable Washington Free Beacon):
It may be that [the stimulus bill] didn’t produce the jobs that we wanted but it did invest in education, it did invest in energy, and a lot of those projects worked. All we know about (is) Solyndra. Mr. Obama has not made a good apology–not an apology, a defense of what he actually did. What the health care bill did, what the Dodd-Frank has done, and he has to come out full throttle. If he doesn’t believe in the government investment–he has to defend government and defend investment as a down payment for the future and say, “If I’m elected it will go much more forward in this direction.”
Yes, please. Promise more, Mr. President. Let Doris Kearns Goodwin be your guide to a second term.
Please. Pretty please.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
The problem is those new low-flow toilets. You can't flush the money down the sewer fast enough to boost the economy. That's the problem.
Jul '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
I am reading Black April. One of the fascinating items there is that Le Duan lied to his own people in order to get the result that he wanted. Seems lying is the mainstay of leftie politics. Just keep trying to rename the idiocy so no one will notice.
May '11
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
One thing the Obama administration likes to trumpet is how they "saved the auto industry". I imagine it will be mentioned frequently this week at the convention.
The Romney campaign will need to find a way to counter this claim without hurting their chances in Michigan.
Apr '12
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
The next time she plagiarizes, she can use Biden himself with the famous "What are you talking about Joe? You're telling we have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes."
Jun '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
I think it will probably be a mainstay this week. Paired with "...and we're going to get the money by raising taxes on those parasitic super-rich people who are keeping all of our money to themselves."
Jan '11
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
"For socialists, the main requirement for a sound social policy is expenditure, not wise implementation. Results are of secondary importance....and the important thing is that the rich pay up, even if the poor get hardly anything out of it."
Jean-Francois Revel, Last Exit to Utopia
Aug '12
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
Let us assume for the sake of argument that government education spending has not reached such a point of diminishing returns that additional "investment" can benefit education.
Let us further assume that government "investment" in the form of subsidies for existing inefficient solar-energy products and suchlike is a legitimate use of tax money AND can bring about the invention of new technology from which Pres. Obama promises not to "walk away."
My question: How much of these "investments" were actually applied to those purposes, and how much wound up expanding civil servants' little bureaucratic empires and/or in the pockets of Solyndra-style administration cronies?
Drafting a bill to spend a large amount of money in the name of a vague concept like "clean energy" does nothing to ensure even that that money is applied to that purpose.
We have to be careful even about to which private charities we donate to prevent our gifts from being eaten up by a the overhead of a large, sclerotic, organization. I doubt the federal government is better than the Red Cross in the regard.
Jul '11
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
Something economics. Anyone? Anyone? Krugman economics.
Oct '11
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
I've heard the same opinion expressed by many of my liberal friends. "The reason Japan didn't boom after huge "stimulus" spending is they didn't spent enough." They truly believe this, like the leftists who believe comunisism can work if only the right leaders come to the fore. Its a mater of ideological faith. No materhow many times their ideas fail to deliver on the promises, they find a reason to excuse the failure and shift the blame. Some very bright people follow this pattern. It's almost like they have a limited form of insanity.
Nov '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
I can't tell you how many times a liberal friend or colleague has said exactly this to me. They actually believe it. Extreme deficit spending today which creates economic activity tomorrow that pays for the deficit spending the day after that. It makes sense, sort of the way an Escher drawing makes sense. Look at just one part of it, and things seem ok. Take it as a whole and you realize it's a paradox. It's the perpetual motion machine. It's like plugging an extension cord into itself and expecting something to happen.
Jun '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
Doris had it right the first time. Obama has not made a good apology. Perhaps after he's drummed out of office he will apologize for attempting to destroy the American idea. Not going to hold my breath though.
Oct '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
Yup, that's the trick! If Obama would just do something bold like repeating the same mantra as every other Democrat since Clinton first started substituting "investment" for "spending" 20 years ago. On the other hand, Ms. Goodwin really is helpful with her trenchant Truman anecdotes.
Apparently the MSM has not figured out that wheeling in a Lefty historian doesn't add intellectual heft to its infotainment shows. Sorry, Arthur Schlesinger is dead and took with him the only lifetime achievement award for Presidential Propaganda by a Historian. You can't reinvent Barry and Michelle as Jack and Jackie no matter how many Harvard-trained plagiarists you throw at the problem.
Jun '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
It's almost like they have been presented with a very limited library, by a very limited scope of teachers their entire educational lives.
Sep '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
Krugman has been saying this for the last three years.
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
What I hear from friends on the sinestral side: if the government borrows a lot and taxes a lot and spends a lot, the economy will grow. If the government cuts taxes a lot, there will be wailing and gnashing and carts dragged through the streets by a non-union worker shouting BRING OUT YOUR DEAD.
Because, of course, the first thing we do when our taxes are cut is heap the money in a pile and burn it. Money has to be channeled through the State to find the morally correct application.
Reminds me: earnest young thing came to my house in 2004, keen to defeat Bush and his tax-cut giveaways. I pointed out that I spent my cut on the stairs she'd used to climb to my door, and I'd employed excavators, stone-cutters, AND a minority-owned business that did the railings. She found this infuriating. My example was preposterous and irrelevant.
"But it's my money," I said at the end of the argument.
"Well it SHOULDN'T BE," she barked as she turned away.
And then she had to walk down the stairs the tax cut had made possible.
Oct '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
"How much would've been enough, Doris? Give me a number, and a detailed explanation of how you came up with that number."
Substitute "Joe" and "Barry" for Doris, for Paul and Mitt, respectively.
Then when they demagogue taxes on the "rich," ask the same question. "What are the proper tax rates and brackets, and explain in detail how you arrived at your numbers?"
These seem to me to be unanswerable questions, because the premises behind the Libs' positions are so indefensible and idiotic, so making them answer them could be real, not manufactured, gotcha moments, no?
Jun '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
James Lileks:
"But it's my money," I said at the end of the argument.
"Well it SHOULDN'T BE," she barked as she turned away.
Isn't that pretty much what the next three days in Charlotte works out to be?
Jan '11
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
These were never "investments." These were projects that the liberals wanted, crisis or not (and had said so for many years). They exploited this crisis to get what they'd wanted all along.
They didn't let this crisis go to waste. Oh, sure enough, they sold the spending as a way to fix the economy. It didn't fix anything and exploded the debt, but so what? That's not why they wanted it in the first place. It didn't fix anything, but that's beside their point.
Now Doris is trying to assure us that, sure, the spending didn't fix the economy, but look at how much our schools have improved! (Why are you laughing?) And if we keep investing in alternative energy, we may one day not have to rely on foreign oil. (By the way, what does fracking mean?)
Why did they spend all that money on investments that did nothing to solve the economic catastrophe? Because it was invested in solutions that were conveniently run by Democrat friends (unions, a bloated education system, alternative energy environmental zealots, etc.).
A crisis gone to waste.
Sep '10
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
James Lileks: "But it's my money," I said at the end of the argument.
"Well it SHOULDN'T BE," she barked as she turned away.
And then she had to walk down the stairs the tax cut had made possible. · 1 hour ago
Mr. Lileks, the money you selfishly spent on a stairway for you and your billionaire friends at Jasperwood could have been spent more wisely by urban planners--on LIGHT RAIL.
Apr '11
Re: Do Not Interrupt This Train of Thought
I recall Krugman and his ilk, preceding Obama's inauguration, suggesting that the reason FDR failed to end the Great Depression was they didn't spend enough. The inference being Obama wouldn't make that mistake. Now, Doris is telling us that trillions wasn't enough.