I didn’t vote for Bush or Dole or that weird gnome from Texas either, so you figure it out.
It’s twisting my soul but I am starting to regret not voting for Mr. Bill. At the time, I was much more ideologically inclined and couldn’t bring myself to vote for such a political animal. The final straw was when he made it well known he would not commute the death penalty of a mentally retarded man. It was cold, calculated political move. Not a moral one and it turned my stomach.
Now, I look back at welfare reform, NAFTA and many other issues of his watch and realize more and more I agree with his moves during those eight years.
As I look back at events of the past 6 years, particularly Katrina, I keep asking myself, WWBD? What would Bill do?
Sure, a lot of what he would have done would have been through the prism of cold political calculus. But given today’s climate, I think I could forgive even the most political beast.
I miss the Clinton years.
I sort of agree with you, sort of. I voted for Bill without reservation because I hated the Texas oil millionaire and the vindictive SOB some called a moderate. However, I’m not sure what you mean with the Nafta and Wellfare reform statement. The budget was ballanced, a good thing, on the backs of the working and non working poor, not a good thing. Not the ideal way to go about it, but probably the only viable political solution at the time. Now, however, I think we can do better, especially with the new tool, the progressive manual from the Rockridge Institute, that’s comming in the fall. It’s a tool the other side doesn’t have. Dems would be wise to use it.
Brian, I don’t think we will agree on this but let me try to explain my take on those two issues since I think I come at them from a very different angle.
Welfare as we knew it had become a cage that trapped families for generations. Yes, they subsisted but never more.
Certain industries such as the textile industry subsisted but stagnated on protectionist government policies. Women with 3rd grade educations (that’s not an exaggeration, I met them) subsisted as seamstresses but never more.
In both cases, the whole had to move forward. Stagnant policies were creating subsistence but nothing more.
And yes there was pain. A great deal of pain. I saw the fear in the faces of those seamstresses as I signed them up for re-training programs. It was never easy but from my perspective, it had to be done.
I’m not sure I’m hearing you correctly, but it sounds like you’re viewing this through the eyes of a Market Fundamentalist, a quazi religious faith in the power of the financial marketplace to solve all of society’s ills. It’s based on a faulty assumption that markets are natural and that government regulations are artificial. I say it is a faulty assumption because the U.S. economic marketplace is not an abstract entity, it is specifically designed, by those who have the means to control its design, to achieve specific outcomes, with winners and losers. The U.S. economy as it exists today requires substantial poverty. It requires certain jobs, cooking, cleaning, heavy labor, washing cars, etc., to work at wages below what should be the fair market value for that labor in order to support the lifestyles to which the other three quarters of the population has become accustomed. However, that same substantial segment of the population sacrificed even more durring the Clinton presidency to help shoulder more than their fair share of the nation’s yearly budget and total national debt. This has been compounded by the Bush administration who has increased America’s national debt load while at the same time slashing social services, the nonexistant “safety net.”
Also, “Free” trade agreements, NAFTA and CAFTA, have been a disaster, both for Mexico and the United States economy. This is evidenced by the explosion in migration from economically devestated areas in Mexico of economic refugees from Mexico and other Latin American countries flooding across the U.S. border mostly because they can’t compete with the price of labor in China. As cheap as Mexico is, China is much, much worse. The U.S. economy is on a dangerous track and the wrong people are in control, but it’s anything goes in China. Those trade agreements need to be revisited, I like the concept, but not the current agreements.
Also, poverty has a way of humiliating people, they become essentially invisible. That’s why the pictures of hurricane ravaged New Orleans were so shocking. The poor that have been swept under the rug in America were suddenly out in the open. The poor in America need assistance, they don’t need a spanking from eletists on easy street in Washington, contrary to popular opinion.
I do want to commend you for signing up displaced textile workers for retraining. That’s part of the answer. Also, the welfare program sucked, good idea - bad design.
As I said, Brian, I didn’t think we would agree.
But I will disagree with you that I am a market fundamentalist. Although David Sirota and I disagree on many things, I do agree with him that business has a responsibility to the social contract.
And thanks. Working om the areas unemployment insurance, JTPA and Welfare to Work opened my eyes to many things.
I will tell you that I agree with you that the AFTAs should be revisited. Regularly. The fact is the economic world is becoming global and with increasing speed. We should revisit all trade agreements often for both their viability and their fairness. And nations that do not meet us somewhere near the middle of free market and human rights should never get a free ride.
I meant to include a link in that last post.
Me and David Sirota
Yes Griftdrift, I agree, economics is boring. But “Wellfare to work?” feh, whatever. I tend, lately, to look at it, economics, in moral terms. Outside of economic disasters like the depression of the late 20s and early 30s, people tend to vote on the basis of values. Democrats and liberals, in the past 20 to 30 years, seem to have forgotten the moral justification part of the economic policy equasion. It’s an easy trap to fall into, I’ve fallen into it many times because it seems counter intuitive that someone would knowingly vote against their pocketbooks, wallets, or their own self iterests, but they do it all the time. At the end of a long explanation recently to a co-worker in which I pretty well explained that a single payer health care system makes the most economic sense, my friend killed it by simply stating “Yeah, but it’s not right, people should pay for their own medical care.” Damn’t, I thought, I did it again. Also, people like O’Reilly will often say something that sounds simple, “Why should the gov’t take money away from me, money I’ve earned, and give it to someone who hasn’t earned it.” It’s not an easy question to answer, it includes a lot of faulty assumptions and is an oversimplificaiton. Wellfare to Work, doesn’t that sound cynical and elitist? Anyway, my take on economic theory can be summed up like this: “The role of Gov’t. is to use the COMMON wealth to promote the common good. The concept of material ownership is out of control in the U.S., to the point where the race is on to privatize local waterworks, what’s next, the air? Also, the running opinion seems to be that material wealth is an inexhaustible resource, much the way they see land, trees, the atmosphere, etc. Truth is, there’s only so much wealth in the world, and we all have to share it. Business has a responsibility to the social contract? What a novel idea! The thinking among conservatives now seems to be that no one owes anything to anyone. You can see it in the coarsening of the culture, reality TV programs galore, tax cuts durring wartime, outrageous and opulent militiary spending. I’m quitting now, it’s early and I keep falling asleep.
You look back at NAFTA
You look back at NAFTA and that makes you wish you’d voted for Clinton?
I’d recommend you find your way down to some of the union locals and lament with them, the good old days of NAFTA. And take 2 or 3 or 10 of your pals with you, you might.
I’ve never really understood the Clinton loving crowd. His ‘right to starve’ welfare reform. His Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, NAFTA, GATT, his multi-billions giveaway to the telcos with the telecommunications act.
If a Republican had done some of the things he did, we’d probably be howling. It’s the most bizarre nostalgia I’ve ever seen.
The only thing I can chalk it up to is that liberals are existing in the same news and information echo chamber we laugh at right wingers about and thus have never gotten good information regarding Bill’s policies.
Largely misinformed or uninformed (who has read the telecommunications act?) we vaguely miss an image constructed by the corporate media, who before MonicaGate, adored the Clinton trough at which they so steadily fed.
The Telecommunications Act alone is enough to disqualify him from having liberal credentials. But NAFTA? You miss him over NAFTA? What do you think of Bush’s economic plans, then? Bush is a privatization guy. So was Clinton. I don’t think liberals know much about what Clinton actually was beyond the saxophone playing and media image gobbledygoop.
I have been to the union halls. I worked in a an outstation for state agency at a union hall. Right to starve? That’s why the TANF acts included massive federal spending for training, transportation, etc. Do you actually know how much the monthly beneifit for a family of four was in 1996 in the state of Georgia? Right to starve? That’s a good one.
Would this have been easier if I had just blasted back with “socialist” once I had been pasted with “market fundamentalist”?
If you want to accuse me of being a right winger because we disagree, fine. But please, do not accuse me of ignorance just because we disagree.
I just miss the time when the “biggest” worry this country had was the horror of a President getting a blow job. Yeah I miss the good old days.
I don’t agree w/ everything Clinton did; I don’t agree w/ everything any President did! But I cut Clinton a little slack for some of that stuff because he was working, for much of his two terms, with a Republican-controlled Congress. That meant he had to do some of what they wanted, some of the time. Better than what we’ve got now, with Republicans controlling EVERYTHING and ruling with an iron fist.
Let’s clear something up about economics right quick. Economics is not the study of markets. It’s the study of choice in an environment of limited resources and unlimited wants. A market is a tool for efficiently making these choices, though a good economist will tell you that it is not the most desirable or efficient tool all of the time. Government is another tool, although government is also not the most efficient or desirable tool.
Where economics gets to be really fun is in those gray areas where neither a completely market-based approach nor a completely government-based approach is the best approach. Healthcare, land development and transportation are three such examples.
Somehow, I don’t see this concept as boring — there’s plenty of room for creativity here.
I could agree with that. Except the boring part. Just kidding. Maybe not.