1603 True News: The 'Economist' Defends the US Government
The free market of legal bribery meets with the moral approval of the magazine the 'Economist'.
March 4, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
05:08
| 
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyne from Free Domain Radio. | |
| So this is a little article from The Economist. | |
| I think it's important to, you know, dip your toe into the mainstream media from time to time. | |
| I guess the closest analogy would be like being a pearl diver. | |
| You can go in, but you can't stay there down underwater where you're gathering up. | |
| The shit opals of mainstream media. | |
| So I'm just going to read a little bit from this article and hopefully you can see just how completely insane it is. | |
| So this is from page 11. | |
| This is 30 to 20, 2010. | |
| What's wrong in Washington, they say? | |
| American politics seem unusually bogged down at the present. | |
| Blame Barack Obama more than the system. | |
| So they say that the system looks dysfunctional. | |
| Although a Democratic president is in the White House and Democrats control both House and Senate, Mr. | |
| Obama has been able to enact health care reform, a Democratic goal for many decades. | |
| And they go on to all these, they can't fix the federal deficit, even though the baby boomers are about to retire and all these kinds of things. | |
| And they say, this IQ of the critics is what happens when a mere 41 senators in a 100-strong chamber can filibuster a bill to death when states like Wyoming, population half a million, have the same cloud in the Senate as California, population 37 million. | |
| So that senators representing less than 11% of the U.S. population can block bills when, thanks to gerrymandering, which is, you know, when they redraw the congressional districts to make sure that they get as much of a uniform Republican or Democratic majority as possible, Thanks to gerrymandering, many congressional seats are immune from competitive elections. | |
| When hateful bloggers and talk show hosts shoot down any hint of compromise. | |
| When a tide of lobbying cash corrupts everything. | |
| So they say, we disagree that there's anything fundamentally wrong with the American system. | |
| Washington has its faults, say these nameless ass-clown cowards at The Economist. | |
| Some of which could be easily fixed, but much of the current fuss forgets the purpose of American government, and it lets current politicians, Mr. | |
| Obama in particular, off the hook. | |
| To begin with, the critics exaggerate the case. | |
| It is simply not true to say that nothing can get through Congress. | |
| Sorry, you all understand why I find this so funny in a sec. | |
| Look at the current financial crisis. | |
| The huge TARP bill, which set up a fund to save America's banks, passed, even though it came at the end of George Bush's presidency. | |
| The stimulus bill, a $787 billion two-year package, made it through within a month of Mr. | |
| Obama taking office. | |
| The Democrats have also passed a long list of lesser bills, from investments in green technology to making it easier for women to sue for sex discrimination. | |
| A criticism with more weight is the American government is good at solving acute problems, like averting a depression, but less good at confronting chronic ones like the burden of entitlements. | |
| Yet even this can be overstated. | |
| Mr. Bush failed to reform pensions, but he did push through the no-child-left-behind The biggest change to schools for a generation, Bill Clinton, reformed welfare. | |
| This all a lie. Welfare spending continued to go up under Clinton. | |
| The system, in other words, can work even when it does not always do so. | |
| So, anyway, why is this so funny? | |
| Well... They're saying that the American system is not fundamentally broken, despite its inability to deal with the deficit and reform pensions and welfare and so on. | |
| The American system is fundamentally not broken because, you see, it gets lots of things done. | |
| You know, sometimes it is just like a big ball-bearing face cannon of blind asshole stupidity looking at the mainstream media. | |
| You have to just kind of... | |
| Brace yourself, grit your teeth, and hope that you come through in one piece. | |
| So the argument, fundamentally, you see, is that the American system does work despite its inability to rein in spending because bills that require a lot of spending get passed. | |
| Oh my god! | |
| It hurts. It literally gives me the indignation aneurysm. | |
| What do you really need to say? | |
| America can't deal with reducing government in any way, shape or form. | |
| But it's not broken, you see, because the American government really likes to spend money on stuff. | |
| You see, the system is not broken. | |
| Because bribery is in full swing. | |
| Because every single piece of legislation that they talk about in this article involves favors and massive spending to special interest groups, from satisfying women about sex discrimination, lawsuits, to investments in green technology, which green technology companies are more than happy to lap up like these state-sucking hyenas that they are. | |
| They're talking about the TARP bill, almost a trillion dollars or more in bailout money for banks. | |
| Gosh, do you think it's really hard to magic money out of your thin-air statist ass and then spread it around to people who really want it? | |
| Is that what they call working? |
Export Selection