In other words, we still have to manage the minds and emotions of masses who don’t think for themselves or understand basic economics and want to blame “somebody” for “something”. Glad I’m not a politician.
A must-read. Great post.
The republican party for years opposed minimum wage rates, while at the same time supporting open borders to drive down wages. While also supporting reducing taxes and saying they supported a balanced budget while spending like crazy. The truth is the republicans support whomever gives them the most money and whatever their case is and what the lobbyists with the checks wants at that moment in time. The voters be damned!.
Unfortunately, after spending Thanksgiving with my family, they are all falling in to the second half of that argument. They are culturally conservative people, but have fallen in to screw the rich people mode.
Oh yea. Earl Butz.
Lauding Earl Butz is a fast-track to losing ranchers and farmers, a reliably GOP-leaning group if ever there were one.
Any GOP pointy-head intellectual who holds out Earl Butz for praise is going to fast-track the party further into the hinterland with the label “The Stupid Party.”
Earl “Plant Fencerow to Fencerow” Butz is the reason why we have such huge ag subsidies trying to prop up commodity prices today. He encouraged vast over-production on leverage. The result was the farm economy/land price collapse of the mid-80’s, which then got yet another Congressional bail-out.
Please, in the name of all that does not suck, do not hold up Earl Butz as some example of what the GOP should do.
I agree with a lot of it. Republicans are just doing poor imitations of Reagan’s rhetoric, with an even poorer understanding of the nuts and bolts economics and politics that were behind it all.
Subsidies and regulations make food more expensive than it ought to be. That’s a winning argument I don’t see a single Republican running on.
Needless over-regulation, mandatory licensing, burdensome drug policies, etc., have all made health care costs higher than they ought to be. Why aren’t Republicans running on this message?
Corporate taxes simply pass higher hidden costs onto the consumer. They should be abolished. Why aren’t Republicans using this argument?
I’ve just about given up on all politicians. Even the most promising ones (Jindal, Palin, etc.) aren’t advocating the kinds of massive reforms and government down-sizing we NEED. I’m starting to seriously think that Sowell was right when he said almost nothing short of a military coup could do away with all of the bureaucracy and loss of economic freedoms in the government. Not that I’m hoping for such a situation.
Thank you. I’m getting more and more enamored with the post-Buckley National Review.
Personally, since we will have to hand carry the deluded public through the recession, perhaps the GOP needs to begin talking about ways to salvage what is left of the middle classes 401Ks instead of Wall Street or the Auto Industry.
Even though salvageing one will mean salvaging the other, what better way to get the publics attention than focusing on how they will salvage 401K’s?
Move school funding to the general budget or the sales tax (if so burdened).
Nothing is more sinister than taxing older people out of their houses to pay for a failed socialist utopia.
to read later
At the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, Butz made fun of Pope Paul VI's opposition to "population control" by quipping, in a mock Italian accent: "He no playa the game, he no maka the rules."[2]A spokesman for Cardinal Cooke of the New York archdiocese demanded an apology, and the White House [2] requested that he apologize.[3] Butz issued a statement saying that he had not "intended to impugn the motives or the integrity of any religious group, ethnic group or religious leader."[2]
Butz resigned his cabinet post on October 4, 1976 after a second gaffe. News outlets revealed a racist remark he made in front of entertainer Pat Boone and former White House counsel John Dean while aboard a commercial flight to California following the Republican National Convention. The October 18, 1976 issue of Time reported the comment while obscuring its vulgarity:[4]
- Butz started by telling a dirty joke involving intercourse between a dog and a skunk. When the conversation turned to politics, Boone, a right-wing Republican, asked Butz why the party of Lincoln was not able to attract more blacks. The Secretary responded with a line so obscene and insulting to blacks that it forced him out of the Cabinet last week and jolted the whole Ford campaign. Butz said that "the only thing the coloreds are looking for in life are tight p - - - - , loose shoes and a warm place to s - - -."
- After some indecision, Dean used the line in Rolling Stone, attributing it to an unnamed Cabinet officer. But New Times magazine enterprisingly sleuthed out Butz's identity by checking the itineraries of all Cabinet members.
In any case, according to the Washington Post, anyone familiar with Beltway politics could "have not the tiniest doubt in your mind as to which cabinet officer" uttered it.[3]
While the Associated Press sent the uncensored joke over the wire, Columbia Journalism Review says that only two newspapers - the Toledo, Ohio Blade and the Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times published the remark unchanged. Others bowdlerized the quote, in some cases replacing the female genital reference with "a tight [obscenity]" and the scatalogical reference with "a warm place to [vulgarism]". The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal said the original statement was available in the newspaper office; more than 200 stopped by to read it. The San Diego Evening Tribune offered to mail a copy of the whole quotation to anyone who requested it; more than 3,000 readers did.
According to Timothy Noah of Slate, this incident was "epochal" because while prior to this, politicians assumed such offensive remarks could be uttered safely in private, after Butz's resignation, politicians "could no longer assume your fellow whites would protect you for telling a joke insulting to blacks, and you could no longer assume your fellow blacks would protect you for telling a joke insulting to Jews."[5]
The infamous quote was the origin of the movie title "Loose Shoes" which includes a skit "Darktown After Dark". In it, the quote is put to music in a lavish Big Band number.
I am inclined to like what I see here:
http://www.farmland.org/programs/farm-bill/analysis/farmsubsidies.asp
One problem is that it is voluntary.
Economic liberty and limited government aren't enough? The majority of the working-class need to be wooed with something else. And many FReepers are buying into this? Is it no wonder then that we find ourselves here today?
IMHO, no alternative but the flat tax....combined with enough deregulation to shut down the K St lobbyists for a generation....at that point you’ll see America ignite like wildfire....
But that happens only when We the People decide to make it happen.
From what I can see Republican and conservative fortunes are linked to prosperity, economic security, and the promotion of stable families. Sadly, many Republican policies have undermined these.
Immigration, Legal and Illegal
Free Trade
Housing as a Social program.
Complaining about Political Correctness, but sill allowing Social Marxists to control education.
Butz slashed regulations and trade barriers while increasing subsidies. The result: Family farms closed down, huge agribusiness concerns expanded mightily, production soared, and domestic food prices fell dramatically. For Pollan, Butz's machinations lie behind the current obesity epidemic and a broader coarsening of American life. But there is a very real sense in which Butz ended the specter of hunger in the United States. Apart from the subsidies, there is much to admire in his approach: His package of reforms delivered a better quality of life to millions of Americans.No problem -- Obama will lead the fight to close down the remaining agriculture and animal husbandry in the US, in order to increase our dependence on foreign food sources, oops, I mean, because he's tryin' to fight greenhouse gas emissions from cattle asses. And, y'know, because he's secretly against illegal immigration.