Digby on Tom Friedman, wanker:
Nobody but Villagers and rich people (many of whom are the same people) want this Grand Bargain bullshit. And that’s because on some level everyone else knows it’s a con of epic proportions. We don’t “need combined boldness.” We just need boldness. It’s the combined part that’s going to screw everything up.
You either believe in stimulus or you don’t. If you do, borrow the money at very cheap rates and hire a bunch of people to do something. When the economy gets going again and people are working and paying taxes, then raise taxes to pay down the cheap loans, if that’s even necessary.
This endless haranguing about deficit projections long into the future, even if it is “combined” with another inadequate stimulus, is in service of one thing and one thing only — dismantling the sad remnants of the American welfare state once and for all. We know this because the whole argument is riddled with lies and misconceptions — and fabulously wealthy celebrities like Tom Friedman are either too uninformed to understand this or are in on the con. Either way, they are accomplices to a great crime that’s being perpetrated by the American people.
So far, Americans of both the left and right, for very different reasons, have come to the common sense conclusion that none of the elites can be trusted and it’s better if these people do nothing at all than enact this plan. More power to them.
Unfunded liabilities. The Republican types keep talking about unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare. Those are not unfunded liabilities. They are fully funded by money taken out of every workers pay packet on every payday. The war in Iraq. Now that’s an unfunded liability. So was the war in Afghanistan. And the prescription drug benefit given to the elderly by Bush. Then there’s all those disabeled soldiers wounded in Bush’s unfunded wars. These are all Republican unfunded liabilities. Be a patriot and vote every Republican out of office in November.