In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing.

At least, that’s what would happen if the Tea Party succeeds in its effort to reimagine the Constitution as an antigovernment manifesto. While the House of Representatives pushes Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out Medicare, numerous members of Congress, a least one Supreme Court justice, and the governor of America’s second-largest state now proudly declare that most of the progress of the last century violates the Constitution.

It is difficult to count how many essential laws would simply cease to exist if the Tea Party won its battle to reshape our founding document, but a short list includes:

• Social Security and Medicare
  
• Medicaid, children's health insurance, and other health care programs
  
• All federal education programs
  
• All federal antipoverty programs
  
• Federal disaster relief
  
• Federal food safety inspections and other food safety programs
  
• Child labor laws, the minimum wage, overtime, and other labor protections
  
• Federal civil rights laws
  Indeed, as this paper explains, many state lawmakers even embrace a discredited constitutional doctrine that threatens the union itself.
  

What’s at stake

The Tea Party imagines a constitution focused entirely upon the Tenth Amendment, which provides that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—which is why their narrow vision of the nation’s power is often referred to as “tentherism.” In layman’s terms, the Tenth Amendment is simply a reminder that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers—such as the power to regulate interstate commerce or establish post offices or make war on foreign nations—and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress’s authority.

Labels: Barack Obama, cluelessness, damned if you do and damned if you don't, Democratic sellouts, Rick Perry

In early 1995, after Republicans had taken control of Congress, Mr. McCain promoted a moratorium on federal regulations of all kinds. He was quoted as saying that excessive regulations were “destroying the American family, the American dream” and voters “want these regulations stopped.” The moratorium measure was unsuccessful.

“I’m always for less regulation,” he told The Wall Street Journal last March, “but I am aware of the view that there is a need for government oversight” in situations like the subprime lending crisis, the problem that has cascaded through Wall Street this year. He concluded, “but I am fundamentally a deregulator.”

Later that month, he gave a speech on the housing crisis in which he called for less regulation, saying, “Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

Labels: cluelessness, economic death watch, John McCain

Labels: cluelessness, George W. Bush, idiocy

John McCain kind of stepped in it the other day, here in California, but luckily no one noticed. He was being driven from John Wayne airport to a fundraiser, and he took a quick call from Martin Wisckol of the Orange County Register. Wisckol asked him a series of softball questions so tedious McCain's driver had to crack the window so the breeze would keep him from passing out, but then this:

WISCKOL: I'd like to ask you a couple questions suggested by voters here. They're not reporter-type questions.

McCAIN: Sure. It'd be a pleasure.

WISCKOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost? 


McCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters. I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.

Labels: cluelessness, elitism, John McCain

Labels: Air America, cluelessness, losers, utter horseshit

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.

one of the things that's going to happen with this pro-growth package is that not only is it going to affect small businesses like it's affected folks here, but 130 million families are going to get some money, their own money. And of course, the purpose of that is to help boost consumption. We're in a rough time right now; I'm confident we're going to come out of it. And when we do we're going to be a stronger -- stronger and better country.

Congress, of course, is contemplating different measures. And my only advice to them is, one, make sure you give the pro-growth package that was passed overwhelmingly a chance to work, see what the effects are. Secondly, anything they do should not hurt the economy. And thirdly, I, you know, I think we ought to, in terms of pro-growth packages, I think we ought to, again I repeat, give this one a chance to kick in. The experts tell me that this pro-growth package is going to add some -- you know, a percent, percent-and-a-half to the economy here in the latter part of this year. If that's the case, it's going to be an important part of recovering.

The government's efforts to stimulate the U.S. economy by doling out checks to workers could backfire, according to two surveys asking consumers what they will do with their checks.

Nearly three-quarters of those asked on both surveys said they will either pay down debt or save any money sent to them as part of an economic stimulus package. The remaining quarter indicated they would spend the money, which is the goal of the program.

"Don't expect a big bang from the tax rebate if only about a quarter of that gets actually spent," said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, which commissioned a survey by Opinion Research.

"That's $25 billion, not $100 billion, and it's not clear how quickly it will be spent," he said. What's more, money that is directed toward lenders, be it to pay off mortgages or credit-card bills, is money that's already been spent. In other words, it's already done its job in helping the economy.
ICSC found that 46% of respondents said they would mostly pay off debt with the checks while another 28% said they would save the money. Twenty-six percent indicated they would spend it.

A separate survey from CCH Complete Tax, an online tax-preparation service, found that 47% would pay off debt with any rebate while 32% would save it. Only 21% would spend it.

Labels: cluelessness, George W. Bush, recession

Labels: cluelessness, Mitt Romney

Labels: 2008 election, cluelessness, Democrats, outsourcing