Who shall bear us forward?

[a_new_machine]

A few weeks back, This American Life had an episode that actually asked a question that I don't think gets addressed all that often: what kind of country do we want? In typical public-radio fashion, it skewed liberal, but it's an interesting story nonetheless (the parts where Norquist explains how screwed up the pension system is for states are

Comments

[a_new_machine]

So what and where do you cut, then, to stop government doing "too much too often"? That is one point from the TAL story that I found interesting - Norquist refused to commit to saying "X program needs to be cut by Y%," preferring to talk about reforms that would take pensions from, well, pensions and turn them into 401(k)s and the like. Obamacare is, what, $1.5 trillion over 10 years? Besides that being cuts on those least able to bear it (Ryan's budget totally cuts out subsidies to allow the poor to buy insurance), that's a drop in the bucket of total ten-year deficits. What else do you cut?

[a_new_machine]

This is always going to be the argument from the left. The government overgives, and then say "well, we can't take it back now. This was the argument against welfare reform, and, you'll recall, the doomsday prophecies for the poor never came to fruition.

This presumes that we're overgiving, of course. Having spent the last six months working directly with the very poor, I can't say that's the case.

Would we be so bad off to simply say "we're going back to FY08 spending levels?

Probably. Remember that population has grown, real value of money has dropped due to inflation, and in particular, people relying on entitlements is starting to grow very rapidly as boomers retire. Not only that, we're now in a slump, where spending should rise anyway (a point I know you'll disagree with). Higher unemployment, lower overall wages... the fact is that we're worse off now than we were in '08, and something should fill the gap.

[underlankers]

Ah, the old Republican fixation on people tarred with scandals that were quite arguably treasonous. The problem with Norquist is he should have been tried for treason, not treated as some intellectual wellspring by the Republican Party, but that would mean accountability and responsibility on the part of a party that screams conspiracy theory at every available opportunity.

[meus_ovatio]

None of it actually serious yanno. People can float all the perfect pie-in-the-sky plans they want in order to garner votes. That's why these things never actually get brought up in Congress when it matters. It's all just a bunch of hand-waving campaigning and tom-foolery. Entire swaths of conservatism have simply stopped being principled conservatives, and entirely anti-liberal, who "vote Newt to piss off a liberal". None of this has anything to do with governance. It's just identity politics and pissing off the other side because dang-nabbit, ooooh I hates dem libruls!

[a_new_machine]

I don't know that this is true. Look at the Republican reaction to the across-the-board cuts contained in the debt ceiling deal. The whole goal, right now, is to extend the Bush tax cuts and undo the military cuts. They really do act, in large part, in accordance with their stated goals.

[meus_ovatio]

Yes, they actually act to maintain the status-quo, no matter how many feverish budget dreams they offer in irrelevent news conferences.

[sophia_sadek]

Jon Stewart had Norquist on his show last week. I was unable to sit through the whole interview. The guy makes me sick.

People who stand up for military spending need to account for military contract fraud and abuse. It has been said that contractors squandered what little "good will" capital the US had in Iraq with their cowboy attitude.

[a_new_machine]

How much waste occurred as a result of contract fraud/abuse?

[sophia_sadek]

That is very difficult to measure. Some of the descriptions of contract fraud in Iraq are pretty severe. Loss of "good will" capital costs more in lives and money than possibly be fathomed. One of the costliest cases of contract fraud is the one with Chalabi's organization. They perpetrated extensive intelligence fraud with threat inflation. The entire cost of the war could be chalked up to that one contract.

[il_mio_gufo]

They perpetrated extensive intelligence fraud with threat inflation

dang, is that true? that is so bad

[musicpsych]

This was an interesting show. I just listened to it last night.

It was funny how the guy at the end didn't want to pay the $200 tax for general services, but gladly paid the $300 neighborhood light fee. That made me wonder - how transparent is our government in how tax dollars are spent? I honestly don't know, I've never looked into it. I'm talking about some document that would give the money received, and break it down into how the money was spent, special projects it funded, etc.

I think it's a dumb statement that's easy to agree with to simply say "government should be smaller" without say how to get there. If Norquist has the power he claims to have, I wish he would focus more on educating people about what reforms should be made, instead of just repeating the "lower taxes" mantra.

[il_mio_gufo]

yeah - i always thought on how neat it'd be to have a pie-chart available online per county. such pie-chart (or any type grid) would show what percentage of the total taxes collected went to thea) cost of lobor associated with government workers, b) local schools, c) parks/recreation d) roads maintenance, e) other structural city planning tasks f) etc.

it's 2012, technology is everyyyywhere so why not?

[musicpsych]

Knowing the government, they'd probably say, "In these tough economic times, we simply don't have the money to put that information online."

[il_mio_gufo]

ha, they could get university students to build the site and maintain it h e l l o it would not be an internship but rather the student would get credits for his/her work