Big Government Welfare to Rebuild West Liberty

Hey all you rich Randian "makers:" your precious tax dollars are going to build new welfare offices for the "takers" of eastern Kentucky, and repug Hal Rogers is delivering the check. Are you going to stand for that?

Chris Kenning at the Courier:

Nearly a year after a deadly tornado destroyed the historic heart of this small eastern Kentucky town, officials announced Monday a plan to spend $29.3 million to rebuild key public buildings they hope will provide a much-needed boost to recovery.

Gov. Steve Beshear and U.S. Rep Hal Rodgers, who launched the recovery effort from a collection of state, federal and private funds, called the effort perhaps the largest recovery project of its kind in Kentucky.

No, the rubes don't seem to be buying the you're-on-your-own ethos of the austerity hysterics. They live in the reality-based world, where government jobs are valued.

Digby:

Demos has produced a very important document about our austerity crisis. I don't think its conclusions will surprise many of you, but it certainly should be eye-opening to general public. It discusses the well-known fact that austerity is counter-productive in an economic down turn and that unemployment remains our greatest barrier to a full recovery. And it lays out the time-line of the politicians' obsessive focus on deficits at exactly the wrong moment.

SNIP

 

But beyond all that, I think this is the most astonishing finding in all this:

This is a major divide and it's obviously not partisan since, for these purposes, wealthy is defined as the top 20% ---  and we know that this cohort is composed of members of both Parties.  No, what this reveals is that the GOP anti-government propaganda of the last 30 years has truly just appealed to a narrow segment of the population.  A majority of the country not only believe that the Federal Government should be active in helping people find a job, it should provide jobs if the private sector is unable to do it. 

Nobody in Washington (other than Bernie Sanders and a few members of the progressive caucus) can be said to represent the majority view. And yet Bernie and the CPC are considered extreme outliers. In fact, both political parties are answering pretty much only to the wealthy, with the Democratic administration actually being worse than the Republicans with its insistence on keeping "entitlements" on the table along with tax hikes.