Clueless Liberal Assclown of the Week : William Greider

The Nation's William Greider pens perhaps one of the more idiotic screed's coming from the fiscally-reckless left, at least this week.

Greider not only advocates MORE MORE MORE spending from the porcine Democrat gluttons running the national government, flying headlong into the historic face of failure after dismal failure of Keynesian voodoo, but he also demands wilful ignorance of the fact that incomprehensible mountains of this disgusting national spending orgy are all BORROWED BORROWED BORROWED.

October 28, 2009

The deficit hawks are flapping their wings and making a
terrible squawk about the government's gusher of red ink. Good grief, a federal deficit of $1.4 trillion! What will become of us?

The gloom chorus includes GOP heavies and right-wing frothers, the editors of the Washington Post and other pinch-penny establishment journals, Blue Dog Democrats and even some of Barack Obama's own advisers.

[Keep going, Billy boy. It's the whoooole world that's all wrong....not you. Also, how convenient he only mentions just this year's federal budget deficit, as if this mind-boggling number exists as the only symptom of criminally-stratosopheric levels of national debt.]

Never mind the bloody mess we're in, they insist. People should hunker down and accept their pain. Suffering is good for the soul.

[A flip straw man statement, exposing typical 1960's-type self-serving, self-indulgent piggery, i.e. ME. NOW. NO LIMITS. NO END. ALL GAIN. NO PAIN.]

This nonsense, grounded in ignorance and discredited nineteenth-century bromides, is a recipe for continuing the economy's downward spiral and could prove poisonous for the country.

[Oh how very clever! Those who choose not to ignore the fiscal insanity Greider advocates are the ignorant ones, uttering "discredited...bromides", of course none as true and noble as the absurd leftist bromides with which Greider's article is utterly suffused.]

The hawks claim self-righteous rectitude in their warnings, but their real intent is to stymie the very spending programs that can deliver economic recovery and relief to battered citizens.

[Goddamn right on the former intent to stymie this lunacy. Full of shit as to the latter proclamation about "spending programs". That's exactly and only what they are : programs to SPEND SPEND SPEND, with almost no coherent objective other than to flood borrowed money into the economy. We should all just conveniently disregard the inherent contradiction and ostensible failure of "stimulus", whereby new employment would supposedly come from taxing existing employment now ... and well into the far far far distance future (if the likes of Greider cling to even just the pretense that their deficits will, or should ever, be repaid).

In an October 21 editorial arguing against just such additional spending, the Post warned citizens to disregard progressive commentators (like myself) who offer the example of World War II, when the government ran deficits many times larger than the current one. "In the deficit debates to come," the Post insisted, "Mr. Obama should heed the hawks."

Wrong. The mobilization for World War II produced one of the most remarkable success stories in US economic history. War production not only overcame lingering weaknesses from the Great Depression but transformed the economic system into the modern powerhouse that became the platform for our long-running postwar prosperity. All this was achieved by the government, largely with borrowed money. By war's end Washington had piled up federal debt totaling around 120 percent of annual GDP (nearly double today's debt level).

During the wartime emergency the government took charge of the economy and rapidly shifted the industrial system to armaments while suppressing domestic consumption. Deficit spending force-fed the rapid development of new technologies and new basic industries. In a few short years, economic output expanded by about 75 percent. Despite rationing and wage and price controls, Americans at large were replenished: per capita income rose by almost 70 percent (with industrial jobs opened to women and blacks), and since people could not consume much, the savings rate reached extraordinary levels--23 percent of incomes. The government borrowed these savings and spent them in the national interest. The store of personal savings fueled the pent-up consumer demand driving postwar prosperity.

[Jesus, what a bunch of cobbled together revisionist nonsense, comparing apples to bowling balls. Like all good progressive statists, Greider sees achieving the totality of government control over all aspects of human life and activity as a "war", morally and practically analagous to the 20th century's epic worldwide struggle against the very people who are Greider's ideological predecessors (albeit with genocidal proclivities). It's as though he's saying "But on the flip side of the millions of deaths and mass destruction, the massive government spending it necessitated was just ducky, and we should learn from its benefits."]

The United States needs something similar today--a jump-shift in economic strategy that redirects private capital and incomes into public investment for industrial renewal and for greater social protections, while households are allowed to dig out of their debts and restore personal savings.

In economic terms, the nation is much weaker today than it was in the 1940s--indebted and dependent on foreign creditors. We will not in any case return to the "happy days" prosperity that followed World War II. But the nation needs another dramatic jolt--a strategy that addresses the depth of our predicament and gets serious about the solutions.

[50+ years of welfare statism and national corporatism, now on steroids with the corporate leftists running the show in DC, and Greider wants to answer their imploding failure with an escalation of the same corrosive, destructive policies that led us into this disease of accelerating stagnation inherent when the parasite becomes more robust and voracious than the host on which it feeds.]

To ensure recovery, the Obama administration may need to launch public employment programs--directly creating jobs when the private economy can't seem to. It can beef up environmental construction and jobs like weatherizing buildings for greater energy efficiency. It can pour bigger bucks into building high-speed rail systems. It can finance smaller firms that are innovating with green technologies and create market demand by purchasing their products.

[Totally speculative nonsense. Greider's half-assed wish list for his own utopian ga-ga world, in which economic realities must give way to lefty fantasies, paid for by coercing more and more resources from those of us who must operate in the real world.]

Far from proposing deep restructuring, Obama and his lieutenants are instead predicting prosperity right around the corner. They are going to be disappointed. As the severity of our condition becomes clearer to people, events may drag the president toward considering more drastic actions. Certainly, public support will build for more fundamental solutions. The usual influential voices will insist there's nothing Americans can do but accept our fate. People and politicians must have the nerve to ignore them.

Let's hope President Obama and the political community brush aside the deficit hysteria and do what they need to do to restore the economy: that is, spend more money--a lot more money--and run up even larger deficits for some years to come. The time to pay down the deficit will come only after the economy recovers. If politicians surrender to the budget scolds, the nation will be stuck in this ditch for a long, long time.

Ah yes, Greider. To hell with accountability, responsibility, or even sanity...let's keep digging harder...we'll get out of this ditch your ilk put us in.

I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode when Homer runs for garbage commissioner on the slogan "Let someone else do it!!".

The ignorant, reckless left never ever bothers to answer for their pillaging on the backs of generations to come, and they never will. There is no defense. Just their disgusting, self-righteous will to power and quasi-religious authoritarian hubris.

At least Greider is honest about his and the American left's disregard for anything beyond the short-term satiety of their utopian pipe dreams and bloated special interest constituencies.

These people are utterly nauseating beyond belief.