Franklin County Democrats

Bruce Bartlett, former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary under the first George Bush and a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, was on Chris Mathews to discuss the radicalization of the Republican Party and the moderation of the Democratic Party, saying among other things …

I think the dirty secret is that Obama is a moderate conservative. If I were a liberal Democrat, I’d be very upset.

Yeah, I’ll vouch for that. And this …

I think a good chunk of the Republican caucus is either stupid, crazy, ignorant or craven cowards, who are desperately afraid of the tea party people, and rightly so.

I imagine Dr. Frankenstein had a similar ah, ha moment upon realizing the monster he had created was beyond his control. In the ’80s Bartlett and his ilk helped to turn “anti-tax” into a national obsession (even though Reagan and Bush ultimately raised them). Now their trickle-down creation has gotten away from them and some very unstable people are poised to destroy the village with it.

If the attack on American’s wages was the goal of the Tea Party they are succeeding.   Wisconsin Tea Party Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich turn down millions to build high-speed rail and create jobs in their states. then attack Public Workers Collective Bargaining rights on the pretense of budget deficits created by tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.  Now Tea Party Congressman are demanding more Free Trade!  I guess that makes it official, the Tea Party is now another subsidiary of the Corporate Republican Party.

Maybe they should review the writing of founding father and first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufatures.  continue reading…

Ayn Rand, heroine of the Tea Party set for her writings on rugged individualism, personal responsibility, and her fierce belief in self-reliance over government aid programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, was, as it turns out, a bit of a “welfare queen” too.

… it was revealed in the recent “Oral History of Ayn Rand” by Scott McConnell (founder of the media department at the Ayn Rand Institute) that in the end Ayn was a vip-dipper [Venerated in Public, Disdained in Private] as well. An interview with Evva Pryror, a social worker and consultant to Miss Rand’s law firm of Ernst, Cane, Gitlin and Winick verified that on Miss Rand’s behalf she secured Rand’s Social Security and Medicare payments which Ayn received under the name of Ann O’Connor (husband Frank O’Connor).

As Pryor said, “Doctors cost a lot more money than books earn and she could be totally wiped out” without the aid of these two government programs. Ayn took the bail out even though Ayn “despised government interference and felt that people should and could live independently… She didn’t feel that an individual should take help.”

But alas she did and said it was wrong for everyone else to do so. Apart from the strong implication that those who take the help are morally weak, it is also a philosophic point that such help dulls the will to work, to save and government assistance is said to dull the entrepreneurial spirit.

In the end, Miss Rand was a hypocrite but she could never be faulted for failing to act in her own self-interest.

I’ve always found it curious how teabaggers could embrace Rand so fully for her belief in laissez faire self-interests while simultaneously ignoring the fact that she was an atheist who saw religious faith as “extremely detrimental to human life” and “the negation of reason.” That’s always struck me as problematic for conservatives. But now we find that the part of Rand’s philosophy the right did adopt, Rand herself did not have the conviction to practice in her own life.

All hat and no cattle. Typical Republican.

Ezra Klein:

[...] What’s been uncommon about the past two years is that the Democrats in Congress managed to do more than argue: they legislated. They took the agenda they’d run on and made much of it law. This was no do-nothing Congress. This Congress did lots.

Polls have found that the public doesn’t realize how extraordinary this was. Most voters—and that holds for Democrats, too—don’t think the 111th got more accomplished than most Congresses. But they’re wrong. The 111th came to Washington promising to get things done on behalf of the American people. More than any other Congress in decades, it did.

This is the single most frustrating thing for me. We elect politicians expecting them to get things done. And that’s what the 111th Congress did. And as reward voters effectively dismantled a working Congress without understanding how extraordinary the last two years have been legislatively, and put back in charge the very same people who caused most of our problems in the first place, the very same people who are likely to get very little done in the next two years (save playing political games to gain more power in 2012).

People may disagree with some of the legislation that was passed but no one can argue that Democrats did not accomplish most of what they campaigned on in 2008 and were ultimately elected to do — and they somehow managed to do it with relentless opposition from the right.

According to Randy Downs, Treasurer for Citizens to Elect Teresa Connelly (for County Clerk), libertarian activist, BJ Lawrence, published a website that makes it appear as though Connelly is endorsing the candidacy of Republican Paul Curtman in the 105th. Curtman is challenging the Democratic incumbent Mike Frame. I grabbed the screen shot on the left for posterity.

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For the policy wonks among us this video of Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway analyzing Republican Senatorial Candidate Rand Paul and his positions on “the Constitution” reveal the harshness of Paul’s worldview.

Jack Conway traces the legal framework for programs like Social Security, Worker Safety, and the Minimum Wage and why Rand Paul views them as unconstitutional.

This video is fifteen minutes long but a great review of how we got from the brutal days of the Robber Barons to the protections in place today and why we should not go back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzl2Qp7YS00

Conservatives elected both a Hollywood B-movie actor and a recovering drunk and cocaine abuser to the presidency, not once, but twice, so I guess it should come as no big surprise that their new spiritual mentor and political Caliph is none other than Glenn Beck, former morning zoo radio shock jock from the 80s and 90s, whose many shows include at least one rented monkey named Zippy the Chimp.

We have devolved into a low-info, entertainment culture, and there’s no better proof of that than seeing a clownish entertainer, such as Beck, elevated to the spiritual equivalent of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King by the thousands who made pilgrimage to the National Mall on Aug. 28 to hear him speak.

These are strange times.