"In Defense of Government"

We have to do this, because Obama won't.

Kai Wright at The Nation:

... the debate on Capitol Hill this week is about something more—a larger fight to which Republicans eagerly rise, and from which the president continues to shrink. It’s a fight over whether government is a force for good or evil in America. That’s a strange debate for a republic, but it’s one that has defined ours since slavery. And it’s one that those of us who have benefited from government’s role as the great equalizer have been losing badly since around about 1980.

SNIP

As Paul Krugman wrote this weekend, if Republicans get the permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts they’re playing for—whether it comes now or in two years—the only way our government will be able to make up the cost is to mutilate Social Security and Medicare. The GOP leadership knows this. Its goal isn’t just to give money to rich people; it’s to kill government’s role as an economic safety net and equalizer. The Reagan revolution is reaching its grim climax.

At the same time, the antigovernment crowd’s political hand—if forced—has never been weaker (as John Nichols persuasively wrote this morning). A depressingly large number of middle-class and working-class Americans now know all too well what economists have long understood: you get a great deal more economic bang out of keeping lots of people from becoming destitute than you do by helping a few people horde wealth. People remain enraged about the no-strings-attached bank bailout, for instance, because they intuitively understand its ramifications. Wall Street is now enjoying a narrow, taxpayer-financed recovery while unemployment, hunger and poverty all continue climbing through the former middle class.

Read the whole thing.

Tax cuts and social security are just stepping stones on the path to the holy grail of the GOP: eliminating all federal government regulation. Zandar explains:

But in the end the Supreme Court will decide what it wants to, and it could very well eliminate just about every standing federal regulation on the book governing just about every industry out there: the ultimate and permanent deregulation of the country's businesses from any and all oversight.

It would be chaos. States could simply do what they wanted to, and the federal government would basically have no power over things. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage act, fair housing act, equal employment opportunity act, civil rights act, all of those would be toast overnight if there were no state laws on those. Kiss abortion and education laws goodbye too.

Red states could then be as backward, bigoted, and ignorant as they wanted to be. Don't like it? Move to another state where somebody gives a damn about evolution or civil rights or women.

Pretty scary endgame if you ask me.

Read the whole thing.

Have you talked to your Democratic neighbors today?