I commonly ask the following question, online and IRL...
Can you name any legislation...
1) Either proposed or supported by the GOP,
2) For the purpose of assisting working-class, middle Americans,
3) Anytime in the past 75 years?
No one can (with one exception), but MAGA simple does not care, as long as Black and brown people are being brutalized. And they make that clear.
(The two I'm aware of are the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), which the GOP clearly could not possibly be less concerned about now, and Earned Income Tax Credit. (EITC). And this ignores the reality that DEMS have pages of such legislation, and the GOP actively fought against almost every single one including electrical power for rural Americans, and mail delivery for the same huge GOP demographic.)
This is American history. Since political parties and their positions change let us use conservative and liberal. Conservatives were Tories supporting King George, they supported slavery and Jim Crow. They were against the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. The were against women's suffrage and equal rights. They opposed worker rights, a minimum wage, an end to child labor, social security, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and Medicare. The supported the KKK. Most of the wealthy conservatives and business associations supported Hitler and Mussolini, but most had to shut up after Pearl Harbor. This is not a complete list. The things conservatives may have been right about is very short or does not exist.
I liked the first half of the article, but the second half was too focused on debt and deficit, using the lowering of these as an axiomatic virtue. Treasury securities, although commonly referred to as "debt", are not debt in any precise use of the term. A good source for this perspective, commonly referred to as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), is the excellent and accessible book by Stephanie Kelton, "The Deficit Myth."
Even mainstream sources support this idea although they do not embrace the term MMT.
Greenspan in 1997:
"Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit.
...
"That all of these claims on government are readily accepted reflects the fact that a government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. A fiat money system, like the ones we have today, can produce such claims without limit."
And the St. Louis Fed:
"As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills.[6] In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational."
As a progressive, I do not want to see badly needed reforms -- think Medicare For All, forgiveness of student debt, free public post-secondary education -- stalled by the dreaded "How do you pay for that?" question.
Republicans are on the wrong side of history because they cling to a world in which wealthy, white men were in control, thinking no one could run things better even though there is evidence to the contrary. Suppressing that contrary evidence was the purpose of the Republican attacks on CRT and DEI.
We have the policies, but Republicans control the levers of power. One problem on the "left," such as it is, is an inability to tie these successful programs to people's lives. They have to be reminded constantly, otherwise the right fills the space with lies.
I agree about Reagan’s policies of 1983 being a downfall. I’m not sure I agree that the current cuts are comparable to Reagan’s dreadful policies. In fact, I think it’s a way to undo all of Reagan’s mistakes.
I appreciate the thought provoking piece though. And I’ll have to read more elsewhere.
Reagan famously emptied the hospitals providing long-term mental care (asylums), leaving some of America's most vulnerable to wander the streets homeless for years.
I can see Miller drawing on that for "inspiration"...
Reagan didn't have policies. He had a script, starting with his political rise in California. He followed what the god-fearing, rich (ergo God's chosen) men directed him to do. He absolutely Loved the Heritage Foundation's first "Mandate for Leadership." It was not written for him to play; any Republican figure head would have sufficed as long as he was sufficiently trained and chained by the Oiligarchs and War Barons and got elected.
I can accept that. But whether it was his policies or a script he followed what he did during his presidency is disastrous. And I can very much believe it was a script.
How do we talk to our friends who vote and volunteer for the GOP party about these things? They think that the GOP is more fiscally responsible and consider themselves the same. They believe all of their wealth and success comes from this fiscal responsibility, intelligence and hard work and not luck, inheritance or the color of their skin,
correction: from the failed 1933 Wall St. Putsch to the present, Republicans have Always been run by Fashy Banksters (esp JP Morgan and the Prescott Bush managed Nazzy Thiessen's Union Bank) and Oil & War Barons.
Less affluent WASP Male Americans didn't want to be bothered by politics (unless unionized), and women and minorities have been marginalized since Abraham.
Everything we see now are the desperate, comic-book-level villainous attempts of these most privileged men to maintain total control. Hopefully, their entitled holier-than-thou-by-divine-right-energy will hoist them on them own puny petards before they completely destroy the mother ship.
Character, more particularly the lack thereof. This over a wide spectrum ranging from the wearing of a tan suit to anything goes when it comes to the monetising of elected office. Drawing of course on the proclivity to lie outrageously while in a Southern drawl lubricating embarrassingly fulsome praise (as mutual inclusives) of the Good Lord and King Donald Dump. It's terminal.
In Vanessa Williamson’s Power of Taxation in American History(https://bit.ly/44Hswxp) she makes the point that cuts through the myths surrounding taxation and democracy, spotlighting how fiscal choices reveal who a country is actually built to serve Does it serve WE the People or does it serve the wealthy?
What becomes unavoidable is the way taxation functions not as an accounting exercise but as an architecture of democracy—one that is deliberately weakened when authoritarian movements want to keep public institutions too poor to challenge private dominance
The history she interrogates shows that when opponents of democracy fear the public’s voice, they don’t just suppress votes; they drain the revenue that makes self-government real This is at the heart of Project 2025 Render the federal government nonfunctional so that the wealthy class can rule through a dictatorship This has always been the Republican Nazi playbook since Reagan in the 1980’s Get the wealthy to replace the "social safety net" BUT by their rules
One such example is Michael Dell of Dell Computers is making a “donation” to kids of low income families to the tune of $6B (yes that’s with a “B”) to fund what will be called “Trump accounts” Of course this is not out of the generous heart of Dell He’s been cajoled to make a Republican Nazi “business deal” donation for Cheeto so he can make good with his “Trump accounts” or baby accounts(https://bit.ly/4oDh2T1)
It is now clear how the Nazi party wants to implement Project 2025 Create programs that businesses will support but can pull at any time at their own discretion leaving WE the People holding nothing Classic counterparty risk and no accountability
Think that the financial policies of the Reagan years of 1983 are on steroids. With a number of additional policies that would turn Reagan on his head for good measure.
Such as Reagan's viewpoint on immigration was broadly pro-immigration. He viewed newcomers (immigrants) as a vital source of American strength and exceptionalism. He did balance his rhetoric with a belief in the necessity of a controlled and orderly legal immigration system and secure borders. Which at that point was an acceptable compromise for the GOP.
Now that GOP is full blown MAGA, GOP of even the Bush years has been torched. As we have seen that many people at one time who were immigrants and now after going through the process of even becoming an American citizen well that’s just negated. This regime is sending you back where you belong to whatever “shit-hole” country that the PedoFührer deems on that growing list of his. Would bet Stephen Miller is always updating the list like some “lurch” in the background.
Just to point out the new named “Operation Catahoula Crunch” in Louisiana. Who by the way comes up with these names. Because it sounds like some really low grade porn movie title. Of course Bovino is on the prowl on foot patrol in New Orleans to grab as many as possible in his net of scooping anybody walking around the French Quarter.
We’ve already seen the destruction of so many financial safety nets destroyed and now defunct and closed due to Musk chainsaw approach. Vought well whatever may be left he’s sticking a knife in it and saying it’s done. Time for the garbage dump.
Republicans, GOP for years walked a thin tight rope of their conservative rhetoric and appeasing the American people of their financial and social safety net needs from the federal government. Those days have been struck by a match, gas thrown on it to ensure those ideologies or thoughts could never arise again. It’s MAGA, not making us great again as a whole but just some individuals who can suck up as much as possible, doing anything as illegal yet getting away with it. One can thank SCOTUS for that. And finally as so many have leaned on for years that anyone’s issue with “affordability” across the board is some kind of “hoax”. Way so many “hoaxes” and “witch-hunts” in the 21st century USA.
I commonly ask the following question, online and IRL...
Can you name any legislation...
1) Either proposed or supported by the GOP,
2) For the purpose of assisting working-class, middle Americans,
3) Anytime in the past 75 years?
No one can (with one exception), but MAGA simple does not care, as long as Black and brown people are being brutalized. And they make that clear.
(The two I'm aware of are the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), which the GOP clearly could not possibly be less concerned about now, and Earned Income Tax Credit. (EITC). And this ignores the reality that DEMS have pages of such legislation, and the GOP actively fought against almost every single one including electrical power for rural Americans, and mail delivery for the same huge GOP demographic.)
Well, didn't Nixon establish the EPA with a Republican majority in Congress? That always stood out as a strange contradiction to me.
Actually, that's the most common reply.
Nixon established the EPA by signature. The GOP had no part.
And that's not specific to the needs of middle-income, working-class Americans. (Conservatives weren't always as cruel and stupid as now.)
Repugncans consider “greed is good” an understatement. Greed is god.
Their libertarian "selfishness is a virtue" thing.
This is American history. Since political parties and their positions change let us use conservative and liberal. Conservatives were Tories supporting King George, they supported slavery and Jim Crow. They were against the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments. The were against women's suffrage and equal rights. They opposed worker rights, a minimum wage, an end to child labor, social security, the 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and Medicare. The supported the KKK. Most of the wealthy conservatives and business associations supported Hitler and Mussolini, but most had to shut up after Pearl Harbor. This is not a complete list. The things conservatives may have been right about is very short or does not exist.
"a conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop" -William F. Buckley Jr
huh. I always thought that was what Buckley was doing!
I liked the first half of the article, but the second half was too focused on debt and deficit, using the lowering of these as an axiomatic virtue. Treasury securities, although commonly referred to as "debt", are not debt in any precise use of the term. A good source for this perspective, commonly referred to as MMT (Modern Monetary Theory), is the excellent and accessible book by Stephanie Kelton, "The Deficit Myth."
Even mainstream sources support this idea although they do not embrace the term MMT.
Greenspan in 1997:
"Central banks can issue currency, a non-interest-bearing claim on the government, effectively without limit.
...
"That all of these claims on government are readily accepted reflects the fact that a government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. A fiat money system, like the ones we have today, can produce such claims without limit."
And the St. Louis Fed:
"As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills.[6] In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational."
As a progressive, I do not want to see badly needed reforms -- think Medicare For All, forgiveness of student debt, free public post-secondary education -- stalled by the dreaded "How do you pay for that?" question.
Well said. Agree 💯
Republicans are on the wrong side of history because they cling to a world in which wealthy, white men were in control, thinking no one could run things better even though there is evidence to the contrary. Suppressing that contrary evidence was the purpose of the Republican attacks on CRT and DEI.
There are no right wing intellectuals.
lauriemillerjade.com
We have the policies, but Republicans control the levers of power. One problem on the "left," such as it is, is an inability to tie these successful programs to people's lives. They have to be reminded constantly, otherwise the right fills the space with lies.
I agree about Reagan’s policies of 1983 being a downfall. I’m not sure I agree that the current cuts are comparable to Reagan’s dreadful policies. In fact, I think it’s a way to undo all of Reagan’s mistakes.
I appreciate the thought provoking piece though. And I’ll have to read more elsewhere.
Reagan famously emptied the hospitals providing long-term mental care (asylums), leaving some of America's most vulnerable to wander the streets homeless for years.
I can see Miller drawing on that for "inspiration"...
Reagan didn't have policies. He had a script, starting with his political rise in California. He followed what the god-fearing, rich (ergo God's chosen) men directed him to do. He absolutely Loved the Heritage Foundation's first "Mandate for Leadership." It was not written for him to play; any Republican figure head would have sufficed as long as he was sufficiently trained and chained by the Oiligarchs and War Barons and got elected.
I can accept that. But whether it was his policies or a script he followed what he did during his presidency is disastrous. And I can very much believe it was a script.
As a brit, i still dont understand why poor Americans would vote for the Republican Party - who make you poorer AND cut your public services....
How do we talk to our friends who vote and volunteer for the GOP party about these things? They think that the GOP is more fiscally responsible and consider themselves the same. They believe all of their wealth and success comes from this fiscal responsibility, intelligence and hard work and not luck, inheritance or the color of their skin,
correction: from the failed 1933 Wall St. Putsch to the present, Republicans have Always been run by Fashy Banksters (esp JP Morgan and the Prescott Bush managed Nazzy Thiessen's Union Bank) and Oil & War Barons.
Less affluent WASP Male Americans didn't want to be bothered by politics (unless unionized), and women and minorities have been marginalized since Abraham.
Everything we see now are the desperate, comic-book-level villainous attempts of these most privileged men to maintain total control. Hopefully, their entitled holier-than-thou-by-divine-right-energy will hoist them on them own puny petards before they completely destroy the mother ship.
Character, more particularly the lack thereof. This over a wide spectrum ranging from the wearing of a tan suit to anything goes when it comes to the monetising of elected office. Drawing of course on the proclivity to lie outrageously while in a Southern drawl lubricating embarrassingly fulsome praise (as mutual inclusives) of the Good Lord and King Donald Dump. It's terminal.
We voters are the fools.
The Repuglicans are the smart manipulative ones.
The Dems: heads up their ass
Cheeto And His Billionaire Robber Barons
In Vanessa Williamson’s Power of Taxation in American History(https://bit.ly/44Hswxp) she makes the point that cuts through the myths surrounding taxation and democracy, spotlighting how fiscal choices reveal who a country is actually built to serve Does it serve WE the People or does it serve the wealthy?
What becomes unavoidable is the way taxation functions not as an accounting exercise but as an architecture of democracy—one that is deliberately weakened when authoritarian movements want to keep public institutions too poor to challenge private dominance
The history she interrogates shows that when opponents of democracy fear the public’s voice, they don’t just suppress votes; they drain the revenue that makes self-government real This is at the heart of Project 2025 Render the federal government nonfunctional so that the wealthy class can rule through a dictatorship This has always been the Republican Nazi playbook since Reagan in the 1980’s Get the wealthy to replace the "social safety net" BUT by their rules
One such example is Michael Dell of Dell Computers is making a “donation” to kids of low income families to the tune of $6B (yes that’s with a “B”) to fund what will be called “Trump accounts” Of course this is not out of the generous heart of Dell He’s been cajoled to make a Republican Nazi “business deal” donation for Cheeto so he can make good with his “Trump accounts” or baby accounts(https://bit.ly/4oDh2T1)
It is now clear how the Nazi party wants to implement Project 2025 Create programs that businesses will support but can pull at any time at their own discretion leaving WE the People holding nothing Classic counterparty risk and no accountability
Think that the financial policies of the Reagan years of 1983 are on steroids. With a number of additional policies that would turn Reagan on his head for good measure.
Such as Reagan's viewpoint on immigration was broadly pro-immigration. He viewed newcomers (immigrants) as a vital source of American strength and exceptionalism. He did balance his rhetoric with a belief in the necessity of a controlled and orderly legal immigration system and secure borders. Which at that point was an acceptable compromise for the GOP.
Now that GOP is full blown MAGA, GOP of even the Bush years has been torched. As we have seen that many people at one time who were immigrants and now after going through the process of even becoming an American citizen well that’s just negated. This regime is sending you back where you belong to whatever “shit-hole” country that the PedoFührer deems on that growing list of his. Would bet Stephen Miller is always updating the list like some “lurch” in the background.
Just to point out the new named “Operation Catahoula Crunch” in Louisiana. Who by the way comes up with these names. Because it sounds like some really low grade porn movie title. Of course Bovino is on the prowl on foot patrol in New Orleans to grab as many as possible in his net of scooping anybody walking around the French Quarter.
We’ve already seen the destruction of so many financial safety nets destroyed and now defunct and closed due to Musk chainsaw approach. Vought well whatever may be left he’s sticking a knife in it and saying it’s done. Time for the garbage dump.
Republicans, GOP for years walked a thin tight rope of their conservative rhetoric and appeasing the American people of their financial and social safety net needs from the federal government. Those days have been struck by a match, gas thrown on it to ensure those ideologies or thoughts could never arise again. It’s MAGA, not making us great again as a whole but just some individuals who can suck up as much as possible, doing anything as illegal yet getting away with it. One can thank SCOTUS for that. And finally as so many have leaned on for years that anyone’s issue with “affordability” across the board is some kind of “hoax”. Way so many “hoaxes” and “witch-hunts” in the 21st century USA.