Welcome to the Constitutional Crisis.

[athelind]

Thanks cargoweasel

Over on The Daily Kos, Stirling Newberry has pulled the disparate threads of current events into a cohesive structure. I've been trying to say essentially this for a while now, but I lack the eloquence and the historical-political savvy to really make sense of it all.

This is long, but well worth the time and energy.

I should also note that the push for more expansive, more stringent, more abusive copyright law, so well documented in Cory Doctorow's postings at BoingBoing, fit perfectly into Newberry's thesis of the push toward a "top down" economy.

Comments

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

The best, choicest pull quotes from that essay:

It is in how these parts fit together to create one pervasive reactionary order. No one of them can be solved alone. One cannot fix the voting system, and not fix what people are voting for. One cannot shake up the corrupt rotten borough system of electoral districts, without changing the nature of parties. One cannot fix the jobs and debt crisis - without changing the politicians who are doing the deciding. And so on.

If people must be in line with the political ends of the Republicans to earn a good living, the nation will, because it must, become more like the Republicans. Those who do not want to play along must be poor, be careful, or be moving along to other nations.

And once an economic system is not about general activity, but about the control of some particularly scarce resource, it must become conservative, since economics is, on any given small time scale, zero sum. Economic growth can only occur at the very slow rate that resource increases, or is more efficiently used. The "neo-classical" economy is really the Friedman-Mundell economy.

yes. yes. yes. God, yes. It's fucking scary. but.. yes. it makes total sense.

[drleo.livejournal.com]

Well. Now I'm depressed.

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

THIS is what I want to see from political commentary, not this cheap recycling of pat ideas that seems to dominate so many newspapers and airtime. (still reading it actually)

I find this part interesting: "In the case of Reagan, a nation that moved from pay as you go, to a credit based nation. Once Americans were no longer willing to pay for what they wanted, the end of Liberalism - which despite its willingness to borrow, run deficits, was a system in equilibrium: the government collected as much, or more, in interest as it paid out up until Reagan's time in office."

I don't know, but a little over ten years ago there was a crisis in Canada over the budget where many were concerned about not being able to pay for the deficits. Perhaps the difference was that there seemed to be a will at that time (and now) to make the books balance, and to pay for what we want. Cuts and some tax hikes occured, but by 95 or so the books were balanced, leaving years of surplus thereafter. While the merits of tax cuts, tax burden, and program funding will always be contentious, I still get a sense of this idea where we must pay for what we want with a lot of people. Then again, personal debt is rising pretty fast here too, so maybe that's changing, but who knows. What one does in their home isn't always reflected in what they want from government.

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

Addentum:

The financial crisis in Canada however was a combined effort of Liberal and Conservative spending, lest anyone think I'm trying to pin it all on conservatives. There was a lot of blame to go around. :)

[chrissawyer.livejournal.com]

I figured that the Republicans (basically, the corporate rulers) wanted to set up an economy where they were in charge of all the money. (and thus, can make their cut.)

Top down economy, just like Mexico.