Letters to the Editor
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I've discovered a new drug!
The new drug of choice is the sensation I get feeling the utterly grotesque amount of schadenfreude watching the Republican machine meltdown. And Mr. Krugman is one of my favorite sources for this wonderful new drug.
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Anonymous
I don't the racial separatism in California prisons can wait for campaign finance reform for a solution.
And besides -- do you really think it's campaign finance issues keeping Salon from informing its readers about this?
No, the reason why Salon won't tell people about this problem is Salon backed Gray Davis, who helped make this problem much worse.
The person trying to solve the problem is Arnold -- so if Salon covers the problem and the attempts to solve it, they end up making Gray Davis look bad and Arnold look good.
So tell me -- how can campaign finance reform do anything about THAT?
That's just basic human moral failure.
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This and That
mago60: No, we can't find 20% of our national income by cutting back on war, etc. There will always be another emergency or what-have-you.
Where we find the money is in eliminating the overhead created by the insurance industry. Something like 40% (somebody feel free to correct me, I'm groping for that number) of medical expense goes to pay for line items that have nothing to do with the delivery of healthcare. Costs like client cherry-picking, claims evasion, CEO wealth creation and, of course, maintaining an army of lobbyists to protect this gravy train.
My point: we probably already PAY FOR comprehensive national healthcare when you put together private premiums, out-of-pocket costs, employee premiums, EMPLOYER premiums (which, of course, lower our salaries), cost-shifting, etc.
The current SCHIP debacle shows the true colors of those currently in charge of the white house. SCHIP is not a program for the poor, as is commonly advertised. It's a program for the working class in order to PREVENT poverty. And we can't have that, can we?
These "creatures" (h/t Olbermann) specifically DO NOT WANT a society where the majority of people don't have to worry about healthcare. They DO NOT WANT to lose America's greatest povery-creation program: our healthcare system. The WANT poor people.
http://liberalskeptic.com
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See when I was a child
"Liberal" meant you were against racial segregation and would not tolerate it, to the point of civil disobedience.
If people now are tolerating it because it helps the overcrowded prison system run better, then those people cannot call themselves liberal.
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Ya learn something new everyday
Here I thought that the source of liberal evil in this country was George Soros and Hollywood, I now come to find out that it's actually California prison guards. Never would have guessed that in a thousand years. Thankfully I read Salon letters, or perhaps I never would have found out the truth!
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Race-Baiting Hispanics Will Ultimately Hurt GOP in Texas
The national code-word anti-immigrant campaign against Hispanics here in Texas has been somewhat slower to take off here in Texas than it has in other parts of the country, in part due to at least some GOP state and regional party chieftains pausing to think about the consequences if such a large, often-apathetic voting block rouses itself and starts voting against the Republican Party. But it has taken off, as witnessed by Texas conservatives pressing city and county governments to take steps against alleged illegal aliens, and follow-up legislation by the likes of the Farmer's Branch city council to regulate brighter-hued family residences.
What will hurt the GOP if this campaign continues this campaign much longer WILL be inter-marriage between Mexican-Americans and their "Anglo" neighbors. Intermarriage has already been taking place for over two and a half decades, with shared cultural values, the US armed forces, and the Roman Catholic Church as being leading facilitators. Unlike Florida, most Texas Hispanics are middle and working-class and lack the class snobbery found in Florida. Unlike California, Anglos and Hispanics share common passions like Football, country and western-style clothing, hunting (At least in rural areas), and in many cases the cowboy/vaquero myth, even if relatively few have ever been to a rodeo.
A Texas-based race-baiting rightist gunning for something above local elected office is going to find himself or herself facing an increasingly-hostile electorate who knows that the baiter is talking about at least SOME of their relatives.
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Gotta Take the Long View
C'mon people, PK's laid it all out for you; one must take the long view on these cycles. While it takes a generation or more to see the effect, politics matters because the changes will come. It took 25 years for the crazed racist spawn of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Pat Robertson-Falwell to nearly destroy the US. It will take nearly as long for this liberal cycle to move from the faux progressives like Hillary to a Congress full of fire-breathing communists. Along the way, we can expect to get universal health care, a return to state-owned energy, and even, say, universal free college education. Perhaps more importanly, as the present idiocracy recedes into history, we'll see less tangible but no less important progress in diplomatic relations with our present "enemies" in the middle east and asia. Likewise, general disgust of the disparity between the "got mine" and the "got screwed" will result in a lessening of the disparity of wages. The good thing about having such an extreme swing to the right in the past few years is that it requires an equally extreme swing to the left in order to restore equilibrium.
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Krugman is right
to say that politics matter in the nation's economic affairs, but that doesn't necessarily mean party politics. For over 100 years, southern racism was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, but it was a southern Democrat, Lyndon Johnson who signed two Civil Rights Acts and fair housing legislation. Likewise, graduated taxation and big-government spending policies are a fundamental part of the Democratic Party's New Deal, but Republican administrations since 1980 have overseen huge increases in the size of the federal government.
So yes, politics matter, but it's not the party that's important, it's what they do.
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Fundamentally flawed argument
I would love to agree with Paul Krugman. Unfortunately, he's wrong.
If the American public is turning progressive, if--as another letter writer suggested--Americans are much more liberal than their representatives in Washington, then why do we keep electing unliberal politicians? Why is "liberal" still a dirty word? The 2006 mid-term elections were not about a fundamental change in the political winds. They were about the deep unpopularity of the Iraq war and the incompetence of the federal government under Bush. If the elections truly signaled a change, why is the razor-thin Democratic majority in Congress built substantially on representatives and senators who are conservative Republicans in all but name?
The argument about changing attitudes towards race is a red herring. Sure, the original shift to the Republican party happened as a backlash against the civil rights movement. But, having lost on the race front, the Know-Nothings have moved on. The boogey-men today are immigrants, gays, Muslims, and--surprise--liberals.
Basically, Americans care about one thing: their own prosperity. If the stock market is doing well, if their 401(k)'s are growing nicely, if they have secure jobs, then everything else can go to hell. They want a minimally competent government that does nothing to rock the boat. Bush and his fellow Repugs are unpopular not because they are conservative but because they are radical and incompetent. In 2006 the American people did not vote for liberals. They voted for a return to minimally competent, sober conservative government, along the lines of Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, rather than Bush Jr. and Dick Cheney.