Triumph of Reaganism

If this isn't irrefutable evidence of the success of the class warfare of the rich on the rest of us, I don't know what would be.

Note when it started.

Damn socialist

This is a sea change in American elite politics:

[O]ne of the things that we all agree to is that the touchstone for economic policy is, does it allow the average American to find good employment and see their incomes rise; that we can’t just look at things in the aggregate, we do want to grow the pie, but we want to make sure that prosperity is spread across the spectrum of regions and occupations and genders and races; and that economic policy should focus on growing the pie, but it also has to make sure that everybody has got opportunity in that system.

Success within reach of everyone!? Every Republican knows that the important numbers are the stock market indexes. Those are the numbers that reflect the proper ideological, perfervid faith that "the rich will make wise, proper investments that will grow the economy," as one particularly indiscreet conservative commenter put it.

(Note to talk radio meme-mongerers: Obama did this entire interview without a teleprompter and without aides. It's remarkably devoid of the empty and disconnected sloganeering that Duhbya used to repeat until his interviewer gave up.)

(h/t Mom for pointing the interview out to me)

In case the bullshit finds you

The Republican spin machine has been in high gear over the stimulus, alleging that it's merely pork as a reward for traditional Democratic constituencies. Of course, that's what they would do - and what they negotiated for and then spurned in the way of tax cuts.

The truth is much more positive, not perfect of course, but this stimulus is the best bill yet passed over the financial crisis. The money is strongly front-loaded, there's significant though not full reform, and most of the money is stimulative. Yes, all would be better. Conservative Martin Feldstein is right about the weakness of the Republican-demanded tax cuts, but he's just wrong about this:

A large fraction of the stimulus proposal is devoted to infrastructure projects that will spend out very slowly, not with the speed needed to help the economy in 2009 and 2010.

(Note that Paul Krugman's blog headline "Bad" is about the second half of TARP and criticizes Obama's financial policy, not his economic stimulus.)

One key question: Who will manage anti-recessionary funds better, the Obama administration or the late, unlamented Bush administration? Really, if you can spit and shit in the same day, you know that answer to that question.

Once, Republicans were good at money. Now, they're just kleptocrats. The price for their support is too high.

If I were Obama, I'd go all in on this, ask the Congressional Democrats to amend this bill to be a better, more Democratic bill, go in front of the American people to say that we Democrats will take full responsibility for fixing the problems left by the past administration, pass it without Republican votes again, and take all the credit when it works.

Smiling sweetly all the time.

Real journalism!

Imagine helping voters make rational decisions!

Well, you don't have to imagine. Here it is.