McCain said
"We must also prepare, far better than we have, to respond quickly and effectively to a natural calamity. When Americans confront a catastrophe they have a right to expect basic competence from their government. Firemen and policemen should be able to communicate with each other in an emergency. We should be able to deliver bottled water to
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The Mississippi Gulf Coast, which took the burnt of Katrina, responded well (or at least much much better) than the complete ineptitude shown by the City of New Orleans and State of Louisiana.
Apples and oranges. Much smaller population base affected (ie no big cities) and a different kind of damage (as in mostly wind, not flood).
Ultimiately, the question is of government efficacy, not necessarily political philosophy
Precisely. But which party's political philosophy, since the start of the first Reagan administration, has been that government is by it's very nature the enemy? It's the perfect Gingrichian strategy, insist that government is innefficient then, when elected, cut programs and appoint clueless bumblers to positions of authority until this becomes a self-fullfilling proficy.
Sorry, I ain't buying it. I'm old enough to remember when American government worked and our taxes actually bought something. I've also lived in countries with 'socialized' healthcare systems that I'd take in a heartbeat over the sick farce that we have here, and government services delivered in a timely and efficient manner. We can do this too, unless 28 years of rule by 'small government' theocrats has made us too stupid and indifferent to pull it off.
Precisely
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Interesting. When I moved from British Columbia to Ontario in Canada in 1988, replacing my B.C. licence with an Ontario one required one trip the the DMV involving standing in line for 20 minutes and a fee of $30 dollars.
Secondly, the big government, welfare state approach has worked so well in Europe that both France and Germany now possess center-right governments committed to reforming and partially dismantling it. Gordon Brown is still hanging on, but by his fingernails, and "New Labor" isn't exactly Harold Wilson, if you know that I mean.
Sure. Governments that are so 'center-right' that all three countries continue to provide state-subsidized, universal healthcare, massively subsidized, universally available daycare, and affordible public housing options that make what's left of our 'projects' look like what they are, disgracefull, third-world shitholes.
I'm not particularly concerned with ideolgy, more quality of life which, at least compared to my lived experience in other nations, kind of sucks in America. My Canadian friends are always shocked when I tell them what my tax bite is. They're laboring under the delusion that America is some kind of low-tax paradise when in fact, after you taking out the state and federal tax bite and the usurious deductions for 'health insurance' of a kind so shabby and rife with co-pays and denial of service clauses that it would get any Canadian politician who tried to introduce something like it run out of office on a rail, actually leaves me with less money than I had up there.
I don't know if I'm 'close minded' so much as just not willing to accept neocon-libertarian talking points at face value. It really is a negative, poor me philosophy when you get down to it. It's like saying that Americans are too lazy and stupid to deliver government services at the level other western nations do.
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I'm not an advocate for 'big government.' I'm an advocate for government that works. And I'm not willing to buy into catch-phrases like 'government isn't the solution, it's the problem,' or the idea that less government is always better unless I can see some kind of evidence they're not just empty slogans peddled by people who want to hand out tax cuts to their pals.
Certainly there are plenty of examples of bureaucracies, both public and private, that don't work. But there are also ones that do. I'm interested in finding out why that is and exploiting it, rather than engaging in the typical American passtime of repeating groundless platitudes and maintaining that there is nothing, ever, to be gained from looking into why some of these things work better in other countries than they do here. If that makes me 'close minded' then I plead guilty.
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