Mother Jones: Kevin Drum: Republicans Don’t Care About the Deficit
As Drum and Krugman point out the Republicans don’t care squat about the deficit and why should they they created most of it and since it makes government look bad and they hate government why is it a bad thing!
Book 36 for the year was Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew: How Conservative Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves and Beggered the Nation kinda sum it all up doesn’t it!!The book does sum it all up and tells the tale of how the Republicans have destroyed our functioning government. It’s quotes like these that caught my eyes over the last few chapters:
the main reason that conservative administrations immediately run up as large a deficit as possible is that it defunds the left
or
with their beloved government brought to the brink of fiscal collapse by repeated doses of supply side, the liberals would either have to acquiesce in the reconfiguration of the state or see the country destroyed.
from David Stockman and the Reagen administration: Deficits were a way to smash a liberal state that voters could not be persuaded to part with otherwise
from Robert Reich: “If the public thinks government is wasteful, that’s fine. That reduces public faith in government which is precisely what the Republicans want”
It’s a win-win for the Republicans!
from Louis Brandeis (Supreme Court justice 1916-1939)
“We can have democracy in this country or we can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both”
So if you want a good primer on the Republican’s tactics for bringing down the government read this book!
