Dana calls it the return of red-baiting : USA politics is rediscovering what has occurred on the Delaware conservative blogosphere for years: viz., if you want to nuke progressives instead of dealing with their arguments, then red-bait them.... Given that the USA requires New Deal like solutions to its quasi-Great Depression like problems, it's not particularly surprising to see the use of the S-word [socialism] by contemporary Hooverites.... In short, it's an old ploy used by a party and political ideology that has even run out of new material for attacking its opponents. It's a cliché used by hackneyed thinkers. The ad hominem is what is being conserved by conservatism. Let them have at it if that is the best they can do. From long blogosphere acquaintance, I take Dana at his word that he does not equate differing on arguments and policies in and of itself as red-baiting . But, part of the problem, I think, is that (a) some thoughtful people are asking whether current p...

Here's what administration economic advisor Robert Reich thinks should and should not be done with Federal stimulus pork: The stimulus plan will create jobs repairing and upgrading the nation's roads, bridges, ports, levees, water and sewage system, public-transit systems, electricity grid, and schools. And it will kick-start alternative, non-fossil based sources of energy (wind, solar, geothermal, and so on); new health-care information systems; and universal broadband Internet access. It's a two-fer: lots of new jobs, and investments in the nation's future productivity. But if there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields. And if construction jobs go mainly to white males who already dominate the construction trades, many people who need jobs the most -- women, minorities, and th...

There is a huge, fully socialized segment of our society that works extremely well: the United States Armed Forces. Soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, and coasties inhabit a world in which the pay is lousy (mimicking an exhorbitantly high tax rate), but the benefits--aside from the risk of dying young--are great: no-cost medical care, subsidized housing, cut-rate shopping, cheap travel, free education, equal opportunity. National military organizations are inherently socialized enterprises--at least in the modern world. Once you pass the initiation rituals, you are accepted into a parallel society of entitlements and benefits of which the Swedes and Finns could be jealous. Moreover, as anyone who is well acquainted with our military will tell you, we accomplish this without killing the spirit of excellence, the concept of competition, or the eye toward innovation that so often is suggested to mark socialist societies. So why does this work? And--more to the point--why won't it...