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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Sanders and Franken School Randroid Paul



Penny wise, pound foolish (as Steve Benen summarizes the point) isn't exactly a hard concept to grasp, but nobody ever accused Republicans of being the brightest bulbs.

My favorite part from the clip occurs when Paul smugly fancies he's drawing out his ultimate weapon and asks how just many added billions of dollars government would have to spend before the spending doesn't look like saving anymore but just like more spending.

Of course, what Sanders and Franken see is a public problem that needs solving and they assume spending will happen to address the problem and so they seek simply to find the way to solve this problem adequately while spending least.

The actual anti-libertopian ultimate weapon is revealed straitforwardly enough by simply inverting the terms of Randroid Paul's rhetorical question a bit: Just how low does the funding of government go, just how far does the resulting dismantlement of government go, just how far does the anti-tax anti-government libertopian Movement Republican line go before the resulting incapacity to solve actually existing public problems becomes a bigger problem than the unhappiness of a few rich assholes?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Spot on, Dale. What Paul considers a "philosophical question" is a question of life-and-death for millions. The GOP created the economic situation we're in with their absurd and dangerous tactics, and I'd definitely agree that it's time to stop philosophizing on the problem and get very practical indeed at attacking the source of the problem.

I'll disagree with the idead that the GOP has "economic thought". Like any reptile, it has nothing going on in that department but a dangerous, destructive reflex.