Here We Go Again
In all of the "excitement" about the Congressional Republicans' nauseating response to the stimulus package, none of the bloggers I have seen today seem to have had time to comment on the full page ad by one of our right-wing favorites, the Cato Institute, about the stimulus.
Ready for a big surprise? Their answer to our current economic problems is "Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government"!
Do the Republicans and their masters have any other answer to anything that more money and less control at the rich? Why do we have to have this garbage forced down our throats, by the same people who created all of our problems in the first place?
The article is signed by two hundred professors. I started googling their names more or less at random. Sure, I found the usual people who work for a "foundation" started by Dick Armey, people who built their careers arguing against tobacco regulation, or the occasional junior college chemistry professor, but what I found disturbing was the number of these people who seem to be legitimate economics professors at mainstream universities.
How have we reached the point in our intellectual life where so many lying, greed maddened enablers of the worst sort of corporate exploitation have managed to worm their way into a position to educate the next generation of leaders? And the wingnuts complain about liberal academia.
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By the way, a few pages later in the NYT, there is an ad for a wine auction house that just sold 3 bottles of 1990 Romanee Conti for $25,000. Eight thousand a bottle. Here is a classic example of a bubble created by letting the rich have too much money. Either this wine is nothing but an item of speculation, in which case no one will ever enjoy it, or else some crass asshole will actually pay eight thousand to drink one bottle of wine. Either way, it sort of makes you long to see the tumbrels rolling through the streets again.
Ready for a big surprise? Their answer to our current economic problems is "Lower tax rates and a reduction in the burden of government"!
Do the Republicans and their masters have any other answer to anything that more money and less control at the rich? Why do we have to have this garbage forced down our throats, by the same people who created all of our problems in the first place?
The article is signed by two hundred professors. I started googling their names more or less at random. Sure, I found the usual people who work for a "foundation" started by Dick Armey, people who built their careers arguing against tobacco regulation, or the occasional junior college chemistry professor, but what I found disturbing was the number of these people who seem to be legitimate economics professors at mainstream universities.
How have we reached the point in our intellectual life where so many lying, greed maddened enablers of the worst sort of corporate exploitation have managed to worm their way into a position to educate the next generation of leaders? And the wingnuts complain about liberal academia.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
By the way, a few pages later in the NYT, there is an ad for a wine auction house that just sold 3 bottles of 1990 Romanee Conti for $25,000. Eight thousand a bottle. Here is a classic example of a bubble created by letting the rich have too much money. Either this wine is nothing but an item of speculation, in which case no one will ever enjoy it, or else some crass asshole will actually pay eight thousand to drink one bottle of wine. Either way, it sort of makes you long to see the tumbrels rolling through the streets again.
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