Got To Get This Right (The Great Tom Friedman Off On A Loopy Bender Again Alert)

New York Times ^ | 11/28/2010 | Tom Friedman

[goldstategop]

That is why I believe most Americans don’t want a plan for deficit reduction. The Tea Party’s vision is narrow and uninspired. Americans want a plan to make America great again, and at some level they know that such a plan will require a hybrid politics — one that blends elements of both party’s instincts. And they will follow a president — they would even pay more taxes and give up more services — if they think he really has a plan to make America great again, not just bring him victory in 2012 by 50.1 percent.

That hybrid politics will require hard choices: We need to raise gasoline and carbon taxes to discourage their use and drive the creation of a new clean energy industry, while we cut payroll and corporate taxes to encourage employment and domestic investment. We need to cut Medicare and Social Security entitlements at the same time as we make new investments in infrastructure, schools and government-financed research programs that will spawn the next Google and Intel. We need to finish our work in Iraq, which still has the potential to be a long-term game-changer in the Arab-Muslim world, but we need to get out of Afghanistan — even if it entails risks — because we can’t afford to spend $190 million a day to bring its corrupt warlords from the 15th to the 19th century.

[goldstategop]

That would work - if you buy the notion conservatism and liberalism are compatible. I don't. Tom Friedman's notion of "hybrid politics sounds a lot like the EU program for Ireland. High taxes coupled with big spending cuts. And just as likely to be popular. He's right about Iraq but its his fellow liberal friends who insisted Afghanistan is the real theater in the war on terrorism. Where has he been for the last decade? He has no irony at all.

[2ndDivisionVet]

So he earned his Nobel prize in economics like Mr. Obama earned his peace prize...

[csense]

Greatness can not be achieved without a dominant culture, the very thing that Friedman’s hybrid theory disallows by definition.

[eclecticEel]

I thought Afganistan was supposed to be the goor war, while Iraq was supposed to be the tragic victim of neocon agression - could these people get their story straight already?

[goldstategop]

Yup. Friedman has always disagreed with them about it but they never listened. Anyway, the truth is no one is going to transition away from our fossil fuel economy for a long time and the high taxes needed to effect that would just tank the economy. As for entitlement reform, I think its necessary but good luck selling the Democrats on the need for it when they just imposed the biggest entitlement of all, Obamacare on our economy, which doesn’t even rate a mention from Friedman. And with regards to spurring innovation and research, its not the government’s job to pick winners and losers in the market. “Hybrid politics” is the political road to nowhere.

[dennisw]

We need to raise gasoline and carbon taxes to discourage their use and drive the creation of a new clean energy industry,

Same mindless drivel from this guy. He actually gets paid for this

Here's my plan to revive America
My theme is: 
We bring back America's can do spirit. We do it and make it ourselves with a lot less imports and illegal aliens

• bring back discipline in our public schools including expulsion of the little hell raisers and deportation if they are illegal aliens
• no more free education k-12 for anchor babies or illegal aliens. At least one biological parent must prove he/she is a US citizen
• the school day starts with flag raising, then 30 minutes of morning exercises (calisthenics etc) for all students to start the day plus a group song, a prayer and the pledge of allegiance....then and only then come classes
• get rid of bullshyte PC classes in universities via taxing those that want to retain them and the homos and race agitators who teach them like Ward Churchill
• provide tax incentives for universities to lower tuition
• -
• tariffs on foreign oil/energy plus more incentives to drill here and drill now
• ramp up coal and natural gas production and provide tax incentives for fleets such as UPS to move toward natural gas powered vehicles
• ramp up our very productive agricultural sectors to export more and bring in more cash to the United States
• -
• tariffs on shyte from China and many other places
• 30% tax on the bullshyte sectors of the economy meaning the paper shufflers of Wall Street, banks, insurance, earnings of trial lawyers and a few more who make nothing useful but suck the blood out of the real economy
• take this 30% and offer a 30% tax credit/incentive to American citizens who build production and factories on US soil. 
• Some of the incentive might be to hire and employ workers
• slash the numbers of government drones state, county and Federal////Adjust their salaries pensions benefits downward in line w the private sector
• -
• pass laws that prohibit anchor babies>>>> children of illegals are no longer are automatic US citizens
• build a sensor laden fence on the Mexico border with plenty of patrol roads running parallel
• get our military, at least 20,000, down on that border
• start employment verification so workers have to prove they are here legally or were born here
• other incentives including cash payments for illegal aliens to GTFO
• -
• stop all immigration from Muslim nations
• no more foreign money allowed to build mosques on US soil plus they are not tax exempt
• stop all these insane "refugee" programs which bring in mostly (80-90%) Muslims and other crazies like the Somalis
• all legal immigrants must be educated and demonstrate English proficiency or must prove they will become English proficient
• immigration becomes skills based and not family reunification based

 

[nathanbedford]

This is a pathetic rationalization by an exalted pundit of the New York Times who was all in on Obama and his policies and is now confronted with undeniable evidence of wretched failure.

Churchill once said that the Hun is either at your feet or at your throat; one might say that the American liberal is either at your throat or begging for bipartisanship:

The Tea Party’s vision is narrow and uninspired. Americans want a plan to make America great again, and at some level they know that such a plan will require a hybrid politics — one that blends elements of both party’s instincts. And they will follow a president — they would even pay more taxes and give up more services

But like the Hun of Churchill's conception, the American liberal, with Thomas Friedman leading the charge, will once again someday be back at our throats. He does not believe in bipartisanship anymore than he believes in fossil fuels. Hamlet said, the problem Horatio is not in the stars but in ourselves, but Friedman says that the problem is not in the elitist statism of the Obama administration but it is that his phalanx of elitists have not offered the right plan:

It’s because the 40 percent of Americans in the middle who have determined our last two elections don’t see an integrated plan for nation-building at home that includes not only more spending but hard choices.

The Hun comes out inadvertently because the hard choices that Friedman would impose on Americans are hard only to principled conservatives not to elitist liberals:

We need to raise gasoline and carbon taxes to discourage their use and drive the creation of a new clean energy industry, while we cut payroll and corporate taxes to encourage employment and domestic investment.

How can one take this nostrum seriously? He wants to cut payroll and corporate taxes to encourage employment and investment and in the same breath he is willing to raise gasoline and carbon taxes which somehow will not damage employment and investment! The elitist is fundamentally a Hun and he will hold out the olive branch of conciliation only until he can turn it into the birch of taxes.

So Friedman is trying to get Obama to triangulate and save his administration. Friedman fears Obama will be Jimmy Carter rather than Bill Clinton. There is nothing nation saving in Friedman's advice, it is frankly elitist and certainly not bipartisan.

There is nothing that can save the Obama administration from the verdict of history except liberal historians. There is nothing that redeems this pathetic attempt by Thomas Friedman.

[truthguy]

It actually causes me physical pain to read anything by Tom Friedman of the NY Times. The guy is simply wrong about everything. I don't think he gets anything right. They say a blind pig will occasionally find an acorn. I've yet to see Tom Friedman find his acorn. He's simply stuck on stupid-particulary when it comes to energy. There he is stuck on madness.

[Cincinatus]

So he earned his Nobel prize in economics like Mr. Obama earned his peace prize...

That was Paul Krugman. The only prize Thomas Friedman ever won was the booby prize.

[screaminsunshine]

Why do we need a new ‘clean’ energy industry?

[9YearLurker]

As if a carbon tax wouldn’t hit businesses just as hard as a reduction in payroll and corporate taxes would help!

[goldstategop]

It may be a worthy goal. But its one that doesn’t have to involve the government rearranging the economy to its liking.

[PowderMonkey]

Hybrid politics. Neither fish nor fowl. The infamous “Third Way” advocated by Clinton and Blair, now repackaged as a middle of the road “can't we all get along?” poultice for what ails us. Feed the insatiable beast that is government. Accept fewer services and greater tyranny in return. Ignore the stench of that dead skunk in the middle of the road.

[goldstategop]

If you have to raise the same amount of carbon taxes that you do in payroll and corporate taxes, you’re basically rearranging the furniture on the decks of the Titanic. And nowhere does Friedman make it clear how much he thinks carbon taxes need to be raised. I think he’s out of touch with the national mood: Americans don’t want higher taxes, period. Politicians who don’t listen to that message are going to be the ones looking for another job after the next election.

[goldstategop]

Yup. We don’t want any part of it and the Left likes it even less. I think Friedman’s viewpoint is a minority one even on his side of the political aisle.

[SampleMan]

Capitalism is ice cream. Socialism is dog crap. Friedman’s proposing that the perfect desert can be devised by finding the correct mix of the two.

[goldstategop]

That’s exactly the problem. There is no such political animal. If there was a Third Way, centrists would be ruling America today. They aren’t.

[9YearLurker]

Oh, and some more gems of particular idiocy:

“...make new investments in infrastructure, schools and government-financed research programs that will spawn the next Google and Intel.”

Wasn’t porkulus all about infrastructure spending? Don’t we already lead the world in money wasted on school spending? Since when do the Googles of the world come from government-financed research?

[avital2]

you’re right on Krugman, but Friedman did get a Pulitzer — which tells one all that is needed about their judgment.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

“Capitalism is ice cream. Socialism is dog crap. Friedman’s proposing that the perfect desert can be devised by finding the correct mix of the two.”

This is a great analogy. Perfectly descriptive.