Oh No You Didn't
Did Brooks really tag the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations as anti-Semitic in today's column?
I think he did!
"Take the Occupy Wall Street movement. This uprising was sparked by the magazine Adbusters, previously best known for the 2004 essay, Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish? — an investigative report that identified some of the most influential Jews in America and their nefarious grip on policy."
What a putz.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Brooks laments what he declares to be the lack of innovation in America today, variously the "innovation slowdown" and "innovation stagnation."
Well, Dave, it certainly doesn’t help that our political leaders don’t believe in science, anthropology or climate change; that they put more faith in faith than in ideas; and that they block public investment in science, research and things like, oh, alternative energy. Like the Green Economy Brooks slammed a couple of weeks ago for not having created 300 million new jobs in two years.
Well, Dave, it certainly doesn’t help that our political leaders don’t believe in science, anthropology or climate change; that they put more faith in faith than in ideas; and that they block public investment in science, research and things like, oh, alternative energy. Like the Green Economy Brooks slammed a couple of weeks ago for not having created 300 million new jobs in two years.
Best Unsupported, Ideological Swipe
“... the environmentalist ethos has undermined the faith in gee-whiz technological wizardry.” So it’s all the fault of environmentalism?
Gratuitous References to Obscure Writers
• Michael Mandel
• Tyler Cowen
• Neal Stephenson
• Peter Thiel
Unnecessary Reference to Overused Thinker
- Einstein
Boy, Gomer! That Brooks feller sure is smart!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
It’s impossible to take David Brooks seriously. It seems as if he’s not even trying to be intellectually honest. Here, he blames the imminent collapse of the U.S. economy on:
- consumers
- the credit crunch
- housing prices
- the freeze in business investment
- skills mismatch
- regulatory burdens
- the business class’s utter lack of confidence in the White House
- the looming explosion of entitlement costs
- the public’s lack of confidence in institutions across the board
And of Course ...
Obama’s failure to seize that seminal moment in history, the Simpson-Bowles report.
But not a word about the banks, insurance companies and financial institutions that hollowed out the economy in order to enrich themselves.
No Countrywide, no Goldman Sachs, no AIG, no Bank of America. Don’t they at least get a mention alongside regulatory burdens and business executives’ lack of confidence in Obama? No GOP obstructionism?
Oh, if only we had seized Simpson-Bowles! And fully funded the McKinney Act! If only those greedy old pensioners would stop insisting on getting a return on their Social Security and Medicare payments, and if the poor would just shut up, go to college and get jobs, we’d be great again!
Hell No, You Won't!
As for politicians’ sclerotic thinking about public policy, Obama has proposed investment on a green economy and at least offered the public option as a way to restructure the health insurance market. What bold approaches have Republicans offered other than lockstep opposition to the colored guy in the White House and support for tax cuts for the rich?
Dave's Best Joke
Simplify the tax code. End corporate taxes and create a consumption tax. Reshape the European Union to make it either more unified or less (?!) Reduce the barriers to business formation. Reform Medicare so it is fiscally sustainable. Break up the banks and increase capital requirements. Lighten debt burdens even if it means hitting the institutional creditors.
Dave, the Republicans won’t even keep the FAA afloat for a week without turning it into a crisis. You really think they’ll go along with breaking up the banks and “hitting” institutional creditors?
Down With the EU!
Of course, your suggestion for reforming the EU, we're all with you on that one. Just as soon as we figure out what you're talking about.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
There He Goes Again
"[A]t least Republicans respect Americans enough to tell us what they really think."
That's not worth dignifying with an insult. But I'll try.
Republicans say that the deficit and debt are existential threats. But if they honestly believed that, they'd support SOME tax increases if only to save the country from ruin. What they really believe is that the social safety net -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- should be dismantled and capitalism left to work its magic unregulated, and the rabble left unprotected.
Bush and Reagan ran up the debt and deficit to create a crisis -- starve the beast, they called it -- so they could dismantle the New Deal. Grover Norquist and his GOP marionettes want to "strangle government in the bathtub," or some weird construction like that.
You Lie!
But no, David, they won't tell us that. Because they don't respect us enough, and because they know they'll be pilloried at the polls.
David, you're still struggling with intellectual honesty. Try harder.
"[A]t least Republicans respect Americans enough to tell us what they really think."
That's not worth dignifying with an insult. But I'll try.
Republicans say that the deficit and debt are existential threats. But if they honestly believed that, they'd support SOME tax increases if only to save the country from ruin. What they really believe is that the social safety net -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- should be dismantled and capitalism left to work its magic unregulated, and the rabble left unprotected.
Bush and Reagan ran up the debt and deficit to create a crisis -- starve the beast, they called it -- so they could dismantle the New Deal. Grover Norquist and his GOP marionettes want to "strangle government in the bathtub," or some weird construction like that.
You Lie!
But no, David, they won't tell us that. Because they don't respect us enough, and because they know they'll be pilloried at the polls.
David, you're still struggling with intellectual honesty. Try harder.
Friday, September 16, 2011
Straw Dog
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/opinion/brooks-the-planning-fallacy.html
Brooks writes: "Over the past decades, Americans have developed an absurd view of the power of government. Many voters seem to think that government has the power to protect them from the consequences of their sins. Then they get angry and cynical when it turns out that it can’t."
Says Who?
Oldest trick in the book: Set up a straw dog, and tear it down. What evidence does he have that ANYONE feels the government should solve all their problems?
The problem is just the opposite: Over the decades, the government, a powerful referee when it wants to be, has withdrawn from the arena and let the powerful interests run amok. That's how we got this latest financial crisis, by eliminating regulations, distinctions and protections. That's not creating free markets; that's picking winners and losers.
Loser!
Ultimately, the loser is capitalism, because when the government withdraws as the ref, powerful interests combine and distort the market, and consumers get run over.
The whole argument over lots of government vs. minimal government -- Rick Perry's notion of making the FEDERAL government "inconsequential" in people's lives (never the state gov, of course) -- isn't about left or right or free markets or socialism. It's about protecting capitalism in the long term by softening its roughest edges.
Thrown Under the Wheel
Capitalism has always been recognized as a rough system; it's great if you're among its winners, but it's brutal on the losers, and there will always be losers. No one wants go get rid of it; we just want to make sure that someone is there to help those who would otherwise get crushed under its wheels.
That's what will protect capitalism in the long run by ensuring people don't turn against it.
Brooks, you fool!
Brooks writes: "Over the past decades, Americans have developed an absurd view of the power of government. Many voters seem to think that government has the power to protect them from the consequences of their sins. Then they get angry and cynical when it turns out that it can’t."
Says Who?
Oldest trick in the book: Set up a straw dog, and tear it down. What evidence does he have that ANYONE feels the government should solve all their problems?
The problem is just the opposite: Over the decades, the government, a powerful referee when it wants to be, has withdrawn from the arena and let the powerful interests run amok. That's how we got this latest financial crisis, by eliminating regulations, distinctions and protections. That's not creating free markets; that's picking winners and losers.
Loser!
Ultimately, the loser is capitalism, because when the government withdraws as the ref, powerful interests combine and distort the market, and consumers get run over.
The whole argument over lots of government vs. minimal government -- Rick Perry's notion of making the FEDERAL government "inconsequential" in people's lives (never the state gov, of course) -- isn't about left or right or free markets or socialism. It's about protecting capitalism in the long term by softening its roughest edges.
Thrown Under the Wheel
Capitalism has always been recognized as a rough system; it's great if you're among its winners, but it's brutal on the losers, and there will always be losers. No one wants go get rid of it; we just want to make sure that someone is there to help those who would otherwise get crushed under its wheels.
That's what will protect capitalism in the long run by ensuring people don't turn against it.
Brooks, you fool!
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Hoax of Climate Change?
Whoever said the point of a Green economy was to create full employment? It's to ensure that there's enough energy to sustain human habitation and industry after the fossil fuel runs out.
Have Faith
The same people who believe climate change is a hoax because there's no 100 percent, definitive, scientific proof don't believe in science. But they do believe in the omnipotence of an unseen force somewhere in the heavens for which there is not a shred of empirical evidence, let alone proof.
We're Doomed
We're Doomed
And Obama is an enabler of our destruction by not standing in the way.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Nice Boy, Long Way From Home
Sometimes it’s so hard to know where to begin responding to a David Brooks column. This one's a Dusey.
Whose morality is he extolling? Is Brooks suggesting that young people look to those community oriented paragons of ethics and morality who favor torture, unprovoked war; manipulation of public opinion; aggrandizement of the wealthy; elimination of the social safety net; vilification of racial and religious minorities, the poor and the politically and economically powerless; the apotheosis of guns over public safety; and the exploitation of homeowners?
Role Models?
Whom should those young people emulate? Grover Norquist? Eric Cantor? Jamie Dimon? Newt Gingrich? If so, kudos to those immoral, empty young people for choosing a different path.
If Brooks had any sense of intellectual honesty or political courage, he’d apply his analysis to the grownups who ran this country into the ground, and who are itching for another crack at it.
As for rabid consumerism, puh-leeze. That’s the backbone of this economy. Where’ve you been? The problem we’re having is that people aren’t spending enough on stuff. After 9/11, Bush told us to go shop. I don't recall hearing any acceptance of personal accountability by anyone in the Bush administration for all their failures and missteps.
But 18 year olds are held to a higher standard? Hoo-kay, then.
He a Smart Feller!
This is a classic Brooks column in another respect: its pretentious catalog of references to (mostly) obscure academics and researchers. I counted nine:
Nice Boy, Long Way From Home
David, you’re probably a very nice person. But you’re wildly out of touch and in over your head as a social thinker.
Whose morality is he extolling? Is Brooks suggesting that young people look to those community oriented paragons of ethics and morality who favor torture, unprovoked war; manipulation of public opinion; aggrandizement of the wealthy; elimination of the social safety net; vilification of racial and religious minorities, the poor and the politically and economically powerless; the apotheosis of guns over public safety; and the exploitation of homeowners?
Role Models?
Whom should those young people emulate? Grover Norquist? Eric Cantor? Jamie Dimon? Newt Gingrich? If so, kudos to those immoral, empty young people for choosing a different path.
If Brooks had any sense of intellectual honesty or political courage, he’d apply his analysis to the grownups who ran this country into the ground, and who are itching for another crack at it.
As for rabid consumerism, puh-leeze. That’s the backbone of this economy. Where’ve you been? The problem we’re having is that people aren’t spending enough on stuff. After 9/11, Bush told us to go shop. I don't recall hearing any acceptance of personal accountability by anyone in the Bush administration for all their failures and missteps.
But 18 year olds are held to a higher standard? Hoo-kay, then.
He a Smart Feller!
This is a classic Brooks column in another respect: its pretentious catalog of references to (mostly) obscure academics and researchers. I counted nine:
- Christian Smith
- Kari Christoffersen
- Hilary Davidson
- Patricia Snell Herzog
- Allan Bloom
- Gertrude Himmelfarb
- Alasdair MacIntyre
- Charles Taylor
- James Davison Hunter
Nine citations? In a 15-paragraph column? OK, we get it: You read a lot. You're smart. You like abstruse stuff. You're recondite. But all these citations constitute the mark of a writer who develops his material by reading others’ stuff instead of doing his own living and reporting. It reads like a college term paper.
Nice Boy, Long Way From Home
David, you’re probably a very nice person. But you’re wildly out of touch and in over your head as a social thinker.
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