Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
That pretty much sums up the way the New York Times believes officeholders ought to comport themselves. From “Though Leery of Washington, Alaska Feasts on Its Dollars:”
The one congressman from Alaska, the Republican Don Young, denounced the stimulus as appalling, done under the cover of night and without full disclosure. He also promised Alaskans that “if there are earmarks, we will have our fingerprints on them.”
(Curiously, that pattern also plays out in Louisiana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, states relatively low in unemployment but high in per capita stimulus, federal aid and growling antigovernment animus.)
Curiously? Why, yes, curiously. Because now that the liberals have established the rules of the game, conservatives ought to play by them, taking what the government gives them, then tugging their forelocks with thanks in the direction of the President and Speaker Pelosi, then falling silent. What? Conservatives object to the rules? Then surely they ought to do so, the Times believes, in a way that would render them instantly irrelevant, promising their constituents to bring home no federal funding whatsover.
"Curiously." That word says it all. In its arch, smug, pompous, self-satisified way, the Times wants us all to understand, without its ever having to be quite so crude as actually to say so, that conservatives are little better than hypocrites. Nonsense. Accepting political reality while at the same time attempting to change it? That represents a perfectly coherent political and intellectual approach. Milton Friedman decried Social Security—but insisted on cashing his Social Security check.
The Times hasn’t even discovered any gap between the way conservative legislators talk to their constituents and the way they vote in Washington. Consider Representative Don Young once again. He calls the stimulus “appalling.” B now that stimulus money is flowing, he insists that he’s going to do his best to bring a lot of it home to Alaska. These are statements he has made in public. To the Times’s own reporter. Unlike Harry Reid, who talks like a conservative in Nevada but votes like a liberal in Washington, Don Young demonstrates consistency.
What have here, in other words, isn’t a news story. It can’t be. It contains no news. What we have here is the staff of the Times giving us its political views in the guise of news.
Who are the hypocrites?
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
From that excerpt you posted, Mr. Robinson, I'd say the NYT has a genuine intellectual dilemma. The article at least suggests strongly that states like Alaska, Louisiana, et. al., are wrong for taking so much tax and stimulus money from other, richer, states.
Is the NYT recanting it's "the rich still aren't paying their fair share" stance? Is redistribution of wealth now a dead letter at the venerable GRey Lady? Or did some folks at the Times get so excited about the chance to slap around a few Republicans that they failed to realize how big a hole in their beliefs their own article created?
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
Man, Jimmie, do I ever enjoy your comments. You're a swift and devastating practitioner of...logic.
May '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
Peter Robinson:
What have here, in other words, isn’t a news story. It can’t be. It contains no news. What we have here is the staff of the Times giving us its political views in the guise of news.
While I agree on that point, I'm skeptical of the claim that Republicans' pursuit of earmarks constitutes "a perfectly coherent political and intellectual approach" or that it's analogous to cashing a Social Security check. That check represents the return of money forcibly taken from a citizen. An earmark is essentially a bribe by request -- a payment for voting on an unrelated measure, funded by national taxes (and a national I.O.U.). Even if it fair game in current politics, it is a form of corruption that we should not dismiss as acceptable on the basis that everyone's doing it.
Am I wrong?
Jul '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
The only notable thing about that Times article is that they anchored it with a quote from Don Young. Most Republicans would be a tad more circumspect, but those Alaska boys are steeped in the "Look what daddy brought home" style of pork politics.
Oh, sure, lots of other Republicans do it, but the Alaska guys positively whoop it up, as though they were dragging a steaming walrus carcass home to the igloo.
Yet another of the endless arguments for term limits: "I sure wanted to get ya that shiny new gay/lesbian/transgendered youth center, but with only four years in office, I just couldn't get 'er done".
May '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
I don't know Peter. Don't you perceive just a little hypocrisy here? Shouldn't a conservative advocate only taking back for Alaska its fair share? Shouldn't conservative politicians have some principals about feeding at the trough? I guess you can give him points for being up front about it but it hardly seems like the conservative ideal. How does his quote represent anything but vacuous political expediency in both the condemnation of the Stimulus and then the promise to win at the Stimulus game. I get your point about the Times clucking its tongue, but honestly that's the least offensive part of the article.
May '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
Also remember that Republicans dominate the large (land) yet small (population) states, which necessarily use more fed dollars per capita for infrastructure, access to the resources on which the whole country depends, national parks, etc. The stats deceive. And I bet Alaska, for example, would gladly give up some of that dependence for a little more freedom of action vis-a-vis their resources. Let them be more independent, and they would be.
That being said, if a politician can pull it off, the no-earmark McCain model is pretty darn refreshing.
May '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
Goodness, thank you! Though that ellipsis disturbs me. ;)
Aug '10
Re: Take the Money, Sit Down, and Shut Up
The "look I brought home the big $$ for my constituents" is one of the biggest contributing factors to the growth of the bureaucratic state in the American political process.
To quote Aristotle on one of the principle dangers of Democracy (Jowett Translation) -- "For sometimes the demagogues, in order to curry favor with the people, wrong the notables and so force them to combine; either they make a division of their property, or diminish their incomes by the imposition of public services, and sometimes they bring accusations against the rich that they may have their wealth to confiscate." (Emphasis mine).
We can see that even the Ancients were well aware that government imposition of public services, at the expense of the more affluent, is one of the potential causes of destruction in a Democratic regime.
It is for this reason, among many others, that the Founding Fathers sought to emulate Aristotle's mixed regime. Sadly, even that is subject to the folly of demagoguery.
States like Alaska, with their confiscation of other state's wealth and bridges to nowhere, are just as guilty as the progressives in endangering our Republic.