The Red Menace

Robert Reich: The Decline of the Public Good

There’s a lot here, but one thing that he describes is the downward spiral of public institutions as the wealthy cut support of them.  My experience is that as this man-made, institutional decline starts (be it schools, roads, Social Security and Medicare finances ..), these same wealthy people condemn the institution as misguided and unsound, *because* of the declines that they intentionally created!  Case in point: I have a wealthy reactionary friend who, after voting time and time again for tax-cutting Republicans, delights in harangues about how Social Security and Medicare are “unsustainable”.  He’s implying that they are both foolish, deeply-flawed ideas because they’re consuming a larger share of tax dollars every year.  But unstated, and, he would hope, un-realized, is the fact that Republicans, his allies in DC, are shrinking the tax pie and therefore these earned benefits programs necessarily claim a greater percentage of tax revenue.  

The same people who invented this gambit also invented the Myth of the Job Creator.  

I guess if i had a kid I could refuse to get him to school half the time because I was too greedy to pay for any gas that I was not going to personally benefit from.  Then as he failed course after course I could tell everyone how dim-witted and ignorant he was.  On the other hand, I don’t think I’d want to be around that kid after he grows up.  Ignorance and anger are a very volatile mix.

robertreich:

Meryl Streep’s eery reincarnation of Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” brings to mind Thatcher’s most famous quip, “there is no such thing as ‘society.’” None of the dwindling herd of Republican candidates has quoted her yet but they might as well considering their unremitting bashing of…

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    A nice little overview...Good. Also check out...article that...

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