skews13
Diamond Member
- Mar 18, 2017
- 9,364
- 11,721
- 2,265
"Republicans were racing to secure a legislative victory during Mr. Trump’s first year in office." Eh. Republicans were racing to use unified Republican government to push forward a longtime dream of the Ayn Rand wing of the party:
murder effective government through orchestrated neglect.
Rep. Paul Ryan, the House Speaker at the time, had goals taken directly from Grover Norquist and other hard-right conservatives who have for decades expressed open contempt at government doing anything for anyone that did not involve bombing them;
the explicit technique favored has been, since Reagan, to slash government revenues to unsustainable new lows, then use the resulting deficits to argue that steep, vicious cuts are required—for social services. For food aid, for Social Security, for Medicare. For infrastructure:
Why should the government build transportation networks and hubs, rather than let the "free market" decide which roads should be built and how much it could cost to drive on them? For education, and science, and moon landings and the rest of it.
This is not a hidden agenda, and the unwillingness of the press to report it as an agenda despite literal decades of Republicans eagerly explaining their intent remains baffling. It may be that today's reporters are too young to even remember its origins. It may be that the effort to avoid editorializing on a policy that, editorially speaking, would seem to rank somewhere a notch above sociopathic requires reporters to feign naiveté if the strategy's Republican advocates can give even a hint of plausible deniability.
The Republican tax law is bringing in far less money than claimed—but it's not an accident
murder effective government through orchestrated neglect.
Rep. Paul Ryan, the House Speaker at the time, had goals taken directly from Grover Norquist and other hard-right conservatives who have for decades expressed open contempt at government doing anything for anyone that did not involve bombing them;
the explicit technique favored has been, since Reagan, to slash government revenues to unsustainable new lows, then use the resulting deficits to argue that steep, vicious cuts are required—for social services. For food aid, for Social Security, for Medicare. For infrastructure:
Why should the government build transportation networks and hubs, rather than let the "free market" decide which roads should be built and how much it could cost to drive on them? For education, and science, and moon landings and the rest of it.
This is not a hidden agenda, and the unwillingness of the press to report it as an agenda despite literal decades of Republicans eagerly explaining their intent remains baffling. It may be that today's reporters are too young to even remember its origins. It may be that the effort to avoid editorializing on a policy that, editorially speaking, would seem to rank somewhere a notch above sociopathic requires reporters to feign naiveté if the strategy's Republican advocates can give even a hint of plausible deniability.
The Republican tax law is bringing in far less money than claimed—but it's not an accident
