From Pine View Farm

Political Economy category archive

Blow-Back on Brownback 0

Sam and his guest discuss what happened when Kansas tried to implement the Laughable Curve. It wasn’t pretty.

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“Words Mean What I Want Them To Mean” 0

At the Boston Review, Lawrence B. Glickman examines the evolution of the conservative political vocabulary. He points out the much of what passes for conservative discourse has its roots in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal and is as flawed and fraudulent now as it was then. A snippet:

“Free enterprise” was an ambiguous phrase that acquired meaning mainly as the opposite of the New Deal. Where the New Deal stood for public spending on infrastructure and cultural institutions, free enterprise claimed to represent “frugality and thrift—words that I doubt are in the Washington dictionary,” as the presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower said on the campaign trail in 1952. Where the New Deal established principles of business regulation, free enterprisers defined such rules as “straightjackets” that harmed economic freedom and efficiency. As Henry Hazlitt, the popular conservative economics writer, claimed in 1956, “government intervention in the market economy always finally results in a worse situation than otherwise would have existed.”

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Twits on Twitter 0

Twits who want a free ride.

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Government by Temper Tantrum 0

They can’t get their way, so they are shutting down their state governments.

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A Trap, Not a Trade 0

In The Roanoke Times, Ginger Daken reminds us that, despite what Republicans would have you believe (remember Reagan’s “welfare queen“), poverty is not a career choice.

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Ryan’s Derp 0

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Agenda 0

Thom and his guest explore the history and goals of the radical right. Listen up.

Part One:

Part Two:

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Trickle-On Trickery 0

Eugene Robinson considers cycles. A snippet (emphasis added).

The states are supposed to be laboratories for testing government policy. For five years, Kansas’ Republican governor, Sam Brownback, conducted the nation’s most radical exercise in trickle-down economics – a “real live experiment,” he called it. He and the GOP-controlled Legislature slashed the state’s already-low tax rates, eliminated state income tax for most owner-operated businesses and sharply reduced vital government services. These measures were supposed to deliver “a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy,” Brownback said.

It ended up being a shot of poison. Growth rates lagged behind those in neighboring states and the nation as a whole. Deficits mounted to unsustainable levels. Services withered. Brownback had set in motion a vicious cycle, not a virtuous one.

The assumption that underlies Republican fondness for the laughable curve is both simple and malign. It is the belief that there is no such thing as the common good.

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Dialectic 0

Badtux is not optimistic.

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How Stuff Works, Trickle-On Economics Dept. 0

Warning: Language.

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How Stuff Works, Trickle On Economics Dept. 0

Image illustrating the

Via Southern Beale, who discusses what’s the matter with Kansas.

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If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0

Warning: Language.

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The Inversion of Scarcity 0

Lee Camp explores how our contemporary robber barons create artificial scarcity so as to make themselves richer and the rest of us poorer.

Warning: Language

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Playing Catch 0

Title:  Trump Budget.  Image:  Donald Trump and two fireman hold teeny-tiny firemen's net labeled


Click for the original image.

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Do the Math 0

Mr. Mulvaney at chalkboard titled

The Portland Press Herald carries a Washington Post story that does the math and the answer to the equation ain’t pretty. A snippet:

. . . President Trump’s fiscal 2018 budget serves a valuable, if unintentional, purpose: to demonstrate how utterly irrelevant his brand of Republican ideology is to solving the problem. With Medicare and Social Security retirement benefits immune to cuts, defense guaranteed an increase and taxes slated for trillions of dollars’ worth of reductions over the next decade, Trump’s plan achieves a balanced budget in 2018 only by invoking an improbable level of economic growth – and by imposing lower levels of spending for all other purposes that would be harsh and shortsighted, in the politically unrealistic event they were ever enacted. Nondefense discretionary spending, already at a post-1962 low of 3.3 percent of economic output, would dwindle to a mere 1.4 percent of output by 2027. This is not a formula for downsizing government; it’s a formula for destroying it.

Image via Job’s Anger.

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Petition 0

Trump whispering to Pope:   . . . so what I need you to do is tell the Justice Department to halt the investigation into me and the Russians.  It's a witch hunt.  You guys know all about witch hunts, right?


Click to see the image at its original location.

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The Tipping Point 0

Image One:  Trump voter reads headline,


Click to see the image at its original location.

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Old Wine In Neo Bottles 0

Thom summarizes the history and failure of Neo-Liberalism, in particular its role in molding oligarchies.

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Puerto Ripped-Off 0

Warning: Language.

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Ryan’s Derp 0

Title:  Paul Ryan, Faith Healer.  Image One:  Ryan, holding his health care bill, places his hand on the forhead of an old man in a wheelchair with an IV bottle and says,

Via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.

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