Sunday, April 30, 2006

Isn't it interesting to watch the Bush administration avoid admitting where conservative policies have failed spectacularly?

Elections mean freedom, and freedom is good. Well, unless Hamas is elected. Then it's bad.

Free markets are good. Unless Exxon makes record profits. Then it's bad.

The theory goes something like this; profits for business means more capital for those business to make even more money. Business, in seeking to maximize return for investors, will use that money to make more money and this is done by building larger production facilities, purchasing more efficient technology and hiring more workers.

  supplies bought
manpower sought
+ buildings built
-----------------
more employment
So a windfall for big business MUST be a windfall for Joe Average. Right?

A conservative demanding such a tax is a repudiation of conservative policy. Big oil made trillions in record profits because conservative economic policy worked exactly like it's supposed to.

1 comment:

Denise said...

This is great thinking, Jason-- you should send it to the local paper, a My View column. I wish I could write political commentary, but I'm too self-absorbed, so I write memoir.

You might enjoy Anne Lamott's writing on Salon.com, an older column on how Democrats can't hope to win anything if we cannot learn to program our VCRs. She says somewhere in there, that if a Republican cannot program his VCR, he hires an illegal immigrant/nanny/minion/outsourced foreign employee to do it for him, leaving Democrats in the organizational dust again. Therefore, I think you are necessary to the Left, so thank you for being here.

Two other things you might like: check out Orion Magazine (.org, maybe?) and DemocracyNow.

I was catching up reading a communal knitting blog, when I noticed a comment from you tucked away in someone else's knitting report-- I'm thinking you meant to send a comment to me, vs. the Hawaiian knitter, right? Check my OTHER blog (I know, you checked it already. The knit blog chose the exact same blog "template" as I did for my personal blog, so I see the confusion. Unless you meant to comment on the Hawaiian knitter's new yarn project. Which you could have.)

Happy trails. How can I get you to meet my friend Jennie? Hmmm. I will prod her again.