The Big Picture and the Closeup

One has to ask what kind of country the Tea Partiers desire, though. Clearly it is a big step away from a commonwealth. In Tea Party Utopia, it seems, the Partiers would get maximize their personal wealth, at whatever cost to the well-being of their fellow-citizens, even, or perhaps especially the poorest. It’s a country where there would be no planning or direction of economic activity from Washington, apparently in the faith that an atomized economy could avoid obliteration by the better-organized economies of other nations. And a faith as well, in the teeth of historical evidence, that privately-funded economic forces undirected by government, would give us an adequate infrastructure. And in Tea Party Utopia, cultural elites would be denied the support and recognition that even the tiny sliver of the national budget dedicated to edifying them conveys.

Bonus Baby Befuddlement            As a number of commentators have pointed out, the $165 million in AIG retention bonuses that have so preoccupied us all in the last couple of weeks are a mere distraction.  Our economy has huge problems to solve, and the bonuses are neither at the heart of the problems nor, in […]

Anti-tax rhetoric: Another greenhouse gas Mercifully, the primary campaign has washed over the state where I live, and with the end of the inundation we no longer have to put up with the television ads arising out of a local Congressional district. You know the district I’m talking about, the place where three candidates, all current […]