But to be fair, a good deal of the other party’s opposition to our agenda has also been rooted in their sincere and fundamental belief about the role of government. It’s a belief that government has little or no role to play in helping this nation meet our collective challenges. It’s an agenda that basically offers two answers to every problem we face: more tax breaks for the wealthy and fewer rules for corporations.
The last administration called this recycled idea “the Ownership Society.â€Â But what it essentially means is that everyone is on their own. No matter how hard you work, if your paycheck isn’t enough to pay for college or health care or childcare, well, you’re on your own. If misfortune causes you to lose your job or your home, you’re on your own. And if you’re a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules, regardless of the consequences for everybody else.
Powerful stuff. (emphasis mine)
Total horse hockey, but great for the kabuki theater crowd.
The last administration and the GOP from 2000-2006 grew government spending and government regulation by more than any administration since Nixon, it turns out.
And while we watch BP and Obama scramble to get one up on each other over the continued oil spill, let’s just remember that a $75 million maximum liability that BP faces for the oil spill is a product of regulation, not the free market.
(h/t Hit n Run)
Where do see the word “libertarian” anywhere in Obama’s speech? He’s ragging on the GOP, not libertarians. Not that there’s much difference.
Oh good lord.
Have a drink. You’ll think of reply sooner or later.
It doesn’t matter. He did what he loves to do. He strikes out at a position that no one is taking. In doing so, he purposely distorts a reasonable objection to his policies. It’s his favored tactic.
The oil spill was caused by regulation not the free market? What kind cow droppings is that? What caused the oil spill was poor risk analysis, and shitty engineering.
As something as complicated as offshore drilling, you are not going to have a “free market.” It is not like opening a restaurant. The barriers of entry are really fucking high. It is easier to start an IT startup than a offshore drilling one. So you are going to have few players. Where there are few players, yeah, regulation is good.
The spill was caused by gross human error in a situation where the margin for error was very slim. That margin narrowed when companies were forced to go farther offshore into deeper waters to drill. I doubt that even the regulators could have foreseen what has happened in its totality. While it is true that this disaster is monstrous, the record of rigs in shallower waters is very good, not perfect, but very good.