Brooks' Delusion on the Lost Decade
Mort Zuckerman
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Subject: Brooks' Delusion on the Lost Decade
Date: Mar 23, 2010 6:42 PM
BROOKS' ARTICLE BELOW on HOW THE
DEMS RUINED THE COUNTRY WITH THEIR
LACK OF FORESIGHT:
"We will have to invest more in
innovation and human capital."
ROTFLMAO
Funny how we forget our own
failures (October, 2000):
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.med.diseases.lyme/browse_thread/thread/6940a8d9e0024621/8591b95e0ece47f7?q=Bush%2FGore+ENERGY+&rnum=1#8591b95e0ece47f7
"I shall make it simple. If we stay with
oil as a primary means of energy, and do
not aggressively invest in energy alternatives,
we will have another recession and postpone
the inevitable: investing in alternative
forms of energy. Postponing it now while
times are good for us economically will make
it all the harder.
"A recession means everything, including
healthcare, will become even more expensive
and less accessible.
"Our economy must move away from oil
as a means of energy and we can thereby
cease to support Arab terrorism.
"This has to do with Bush, because he owns
an oil company and has personal financial
interest in keeping that industry alive,
which he will bring to White House energy policy.
"Clear? We get Bush, we get more oil and
lack of investment in energy alternatives,
***more terrorism, more pollution, a recession...***
"We get Gore, we get an investment in energy
independence. They will be somewhat tough
economic times, but that's exactly the
nature of "investment": put off spending
what you have today so you will have even more
tomorrow.
"Nobody can argue with that.
"Kathleen"
=================================
OCTOBER, 2000
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.med.diseases.lyme/browse_frm/thread/e4359868117b8d81/e066f6566802741e?q=lehrer+bush+gore+bombs+bursting+in+air&rnum=1#e066f6566802741e
"I can see it now,
"Oh so proudly we hailed the bombs
"La, la la..."
====================================
The real deal on healthcare reform
is still criminal prosecutions.
We did not need healthcare legislation
because the RICO and scientific FRAUD
(Qui Tam) laws already exist:
http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/spring98pj/strategy.html
Kaiser-Permanente ^^^ training MDs
at New York Medical College and
providing the New York Medical
Board with their "experts"
http://www.actionlyme.org/OPMC_CORRUPTION.htm
That worked out well, didn't it?
KMDickson
http://www.actionlyme.org
===================================
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/opinion/23brooks1.html?ref=opinion
The Democrats Rejoice
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 22, 2010
Parties come to embody causes. For the past 90 years or so, the
Republican Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of
personal freedom and economic dynamism. For a similar period, the
Democratic Party has, at its best, come to embody the cause of
fairness and family security. Over the past century, they have built a
welfare system, brick by brick, to guard against the injuries of fate.
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If you grew up, as I did, with a Hubert Humphrey poster on your wall
and a tradition of Democratic Party activism in your family, you
recognize the Democratic DNA in the content of this bill and in the
way it was passed. There was the inevitable fractiousness, the
neuroticism, the petty logrolling, but also the basic concern for the
vulnerable and the high idealism.
And there was also the faith in the grand liberal project. Democrats
protected the unemployed starting with the New Deal, then the old,
then the poor. Now, thanks to health care reform, millions of working
families will go to bed at night knowing that they are not an illness
away from financial ruin.
For apostates like me, watching this bill go through the meat grinder
was like watching an old family reunion. One glimpse and you got the
whole panoply of what you loved and found annoying about these people.
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi were fit to play the leading roles. They
both embody the two great wings of the party, the high-minded
aspirations of the educated class and the machinelike toughness of the
party apparatus. Obama and Pelosi both possess the political
tenaciousness that you only get if you live for government and believe
ruthlessly in its possibilities. They could have scaled back their
aspirations at any time but they hung tough.
Members of the Obama-Pelosi team have spent the past year on a
wandering, tortuous quest — enduring the exasperating pettiness of
small-minded members, hostile public opinion, just criticism and gross
misinformation, a swarm of cockeyed ideas and the erroneous
predictions of people like me who thought the odds were against them.
For sheer resilience, they deserve the honor of posterity.
Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I’m no longer
spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America
is energy — the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and
the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up
accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material
abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our
founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the
ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by
19th-century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant
colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured
by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.
Today, America’s vigor is challenged on two fronts. First, the country
is becoming geriatric. Other nations spend 10 percent or so of their
G.D.P. on health care. We spend 17 percent and are predicted to soon
spend 20 percent and then 25 percent. This legislation was supposed to
end that asphyxiating growth, which will crowd out investments in
innovation, education and everything else. It will not.
With the word security engraved on its heart, the Democratic Party is
just not structured to cut spending that would enhance health and
safety. The party nurtures; it does not say, “No more.”
The second biggest threat to America’s vibrancy is the exploding
federal debt. Again, Democrats can utter the words of fiscal
restraint, but they don’t feel the passion. This bill is full of
gimmicks designed to get a good score from the Congressional Budget
Office but not to really balance the budget. Democrats did enough to
solve their political problem (not looking fiscally reckless) but not
enough to solve the genuine problem.
Nobody knows how this bill will work out. It is an undertaking
exponentially more complex than the Iraq war, for example. But to me,
it feels like the end of something, not the beginning of something. It
feels like the noble completion of the great liberal project to build
a comprehensive welfare system.
The task ahead is to save this country from stagnation and fiscal
ruin. We know what it will take. We will have to raise a consumption
tax. We will have to preserve benefits for the poor and cut them for
the middle and upper classes. We will have to invest more in
innovation and human capital.
The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year,
does not seem to be up to that coming challenge (neither is the
Republican Party). This country is in the position of a free-spending
family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced
that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act
of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay
for it.
"[Real] scientists are *fiercely* independent. That's the good
news."-- NIH's Top Fool, Anthony Fauci