Eye on the Right: Policy Arguments to Watch in 2009
At the Drum Major Institute we've been keeping an Eye on the Right. Here are the most memorable arguments (if you want to call them that) we heard conservative think tanks peddle in 2008--arguments likely to be repackaged and regifted as the Obama administration and new Congress enter in 2009.
The Cato Institute: Zoning Ordinances Are More Harmful Than Deregulation
It isn't lax regulation of irresponsible lenders that brought down the economy, but "planners trying to socially engineer our cities." That's right: zoning ordinances caused the financial crisis. In an essay called "Why Government Planning Always Fails," Cato's Senior Fellow Randal O'Toole makes the case that government efforts to protect open space and fund mass transit systems are the real causes of the housing bubble because these government interventions can increase home values.
The American Enterprise Institute: Poor People Lie, So Don't Give Them Lawyers
Legal aid programs are too under-funded to meet the need for lawyers. So every day, Americans with important claims related to their health, housing, sustenance, child custody, and safety are forced to go to court without legal counsel; frequently, they lose their case. Don't worry, says the American Enterprise Institute, those people are probably liars who are unworthy of representation anyway. AEI Resident Fellow Ted Frank argues that providing access to a lawyer to low-income people in important legal matters is a "socially wasteful proposal" that would make it difficult for judges to determine who "is not one of the liars" (apparently, he means those rich enough to pay a lawyer).
The Heritage Foundation: Women Need to Relearn Motherly and Wifely Duties
While it's easy for young women to become rocket scientists, according to Jennifer A. Marshall, Heritage Foundation's Director of Domestic Policy Studies, girls need to understand more about how to become good wives and mothers. While ostensibly talking about issues of work-life balance and how "some [career] dreams come with conditions," in the form of delayed marriage and parenthood, Marshall shows no interest in extending these lessons to young men. Instead, "girls need more encouragement to develop this character of self-sacrifice..." Forget public policies like paid family leave and universal preschool that the rest of the world uses to make it easier for parents to balance work and family. Young women need to stay at home in the kitchen; otherwise they are too selfish.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute: Anti-Energy Jihadists Do More Damage Than Global Warming
Your electricity is in danger, says Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow Steven J. Milloy, because environmentalists want to conserve energy before building more coal-fired power plants. "Environmental zealots," he explains, want to "continue their anti-energy jihad against essentially defenseless coal-based electricity producers." Of course, there's no evidence that anyone has actually faced a blackout caused by environmental activism. What's more, coal-fired power plants present human health risks beyond the carbon emissions that contribute to global warming; its toxic mercury emissions can lead to brain damage and nervous system disabilities among adults, children, and developing fetuses. But Milloy comes to the rescue of the poor vulnerable coal industry by suggesting that they deny the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming all together. With his organization relying on support from the oil industry, what else can he do?
The Hoover Institution: Bush's Tax Cuts Are the Road to Economic Recovery
The ideas of Herbert Hoover never go out of fashion at his think tank. Hoover Institution fellow John F. Cogan teamed up with American Enterprise Institute fellow R. Glenn Hubbard to insist that the nation must balance the budget and retain the Bush tax cuts even in the face of economic crisis. "Taxes would choke off the [economic] recovery," they insisted without evidence in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. If tax cuts expire, "the promise of higher revenues would encourage Congress to continue its profligate spending." Retaining the tax cuts while balancing the budget would require the nation to "change entitlements to slow their cost growth" - a slick way of advocating cuts in Social Security benefits - but "increasing the size of the Defense Department's procurement budget by 25 percent" is somehow to them the farthest thing from excessive.
The Manhattan Institute: Poor People Don't Work, and Behave Badly
According to Manhattan Institute Fellow Steven Malanga, "In America, the poor don't work." Call the Census Bureau! Someone has lost track of more than 9 million working poor Americans - and the families they're trying to raise. Malanga and his colleagues are more concerned about "poor girls without a high school education... having children by a man who won't marry and support them." There's no point in improving their access to childcare or education and job training because "beating poverty in America nowadays is largely a matter of personal behavior." So we need movies that teach the value of staying in school and getting married. Bring your own popcorn.
The Center for Immigration Studies: Immigration Makes America Incoherent
This anti-immigrant organization uses less hateful and inflammatory rhetoric than many of its conservative counterparts, but the overall goal remains the same: terminating virtually all immigration, legal or otherwise, to the United States. Scratch the surface of their work and some familiar right-wing preoccupations with race and culture turn up quickly. In an essay in the National Review online, CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian argued that McCain has not flip-flopped convincingly enough. Because McCain opposed English-only ballot initiatives, supported bilingual education programs for students learning English, and has not taken a hard line against affirmative action in Arizona he "strike[s] at the coherence of the American nation." What's more, McCain dares to have more evolved views on American identity than Theodore Roosevelt expressed in 1918. The Center for Immigration Studies boasts being "the nation's only think tank devoted exclusively" to immigration, but aggressive attacks on McCain's "liberal stances" on global warming and judges suggest a far broader right-wing agenda.
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One can see from these conservative think tank ideas how out of touch and disconnected from reality are most conservatives. Their ideas almost seem to describe a parallel universe.
"Think tanks is where they pay people to think about tanks. " - N. Klein
Half of them are reverting to the conservative idealization of the 1950s. I've heard several times that conservatives want very much to turn the clock back to 1952 in this country and wipe out all the progress made since then. They think it was the ideal era of women at home and waiting on the husband and seeing him as king of the castle. Before women's rights. Before civil rights. When white men ruled the country and industry and did not have bothersome things like equal rights get in the way or watching what they said or being offensive.
Shudder.
Sure, but do they want to set the progressive tax rate where it was in 1952? Or set an inflation adjusted minimum wage to match where it was in1952? I think the number these guys have been trying to dial into the wayback machine is 1890.
Repub. think tanks = bovine fertilizer receptacles. Tony
Interesting that the only major city that has NO ZONING that I know of is Houston and when I visited there I was NOT IMPRESSED!!!!!
Another try from another open-borders advocate. If memory served Ms. Batista "right", most Americans agree with the Center For Immigration Studies. Heck, that's why the Comprehensive Amnesty Reform Legislation (supported by both the Left AND the Right) got trounced in 2008!
Ms. Batista, your prayers have been answered. With a bigger dem majority in Congress and most repubs already like-minded, chances are better than ever that the border between Mexico and the U.S. of A. will disappear. Wouldn't be surprised if it is once again disguised as something else, like "trade" or "human rights" or "economic" this or that. Too bad, because it is more palatable here in the U.S. if we just finished what Polk started back in 1848 and just annexed the remaining part of Mexico and still call it the U.S. of A. We certainly can use the extra oil, and since all Mexicans would then be U.S. citizens the illegal migration problem would be solved overnight!
Who but FOX NEWS idiots would take on such bold history revisionism that suggest FDR's programs prolonged the Great Depression?
Not since the approach of Japan in revision of the history of WW2 and its causes has there been such brazen attempts to actually change history as we have seen since the utter failure of this current administration and its apologists to "clean up" the incredible mess these right-wingers have wrought! The so-called "Bush Legacy Tour," and recent comments by Idiot Gillispie, Mary Matalin, and a handful of other GOP freaks shows their almost comical obsession with trying to undo----in the minds of Americans, the horrible disaster they have created in only 8 short years. (They do, in retrospect, seem ANYTHING but short!)
They may fool themselves, but it is difficult to believe they will convince those with brains.
Still more reason to believe----and hope---that this so-called conservatism will be in the garbage heap for at least a generation or two.
I think people need to go to the articles and read it for themselves. The person summarizing the articles seems to be taking things out of context.
I suspect there are more conservative think tanks than conservatives who are capable of thought.
Great Line! Thanks!
Is there some deficiency here in United States history? Are we arguing the same thing? Did Huff Po fall down the rabbit hole?
Hoover signed the Smoot -Hawley Act in 1930. It greatly exacerbated the 'Great Depression.' Never mind...
Pure fairy tale - there is absolutely NO evidence to suggest Smoot hawley had any affect on the depression good or bad - this is just one of the latest inn the anti FDR BS that the right has put out
The fact was that the US had a trade surplus defore and during the depression, Today we have staggering trade deficits. trade defcits equal less demand for US goods and services and therfore less demand for US workers - its that simple
Absent any getting tough against trade violators, instituting VATS and tyariffs, like nearly every other country does but us, may be the only way to get the trade defcit under control
actually, therealredstateblules, you seem to live in an alternate reality. The smmot-hawley act is generally (at least be econmists) credited with deepening and exacerbating the depression by raising tarriffs on more than 20,000 items and greatly depressing trade (and hence manufacturing).
There are times when the term, think tank, is an oxymoron.
Often the product is the same as the one I produce every morning on my own 'think tank"
Sealed to protect from open-mindedness/opposing points of view, tank and all.
Some scary stuff for sure! Thanks for sharing....
They are really out in force right now with the myths that FDR prolonged the depression and Smoot hawley caused it, Sowell and Stossel are the latest wingnuts with this tripe, Never mind that there is no evidence that smoot hawley had any effect whatsoever and that we had trade surpluses at the time, not the huge trade deficits now, and that when FDR caved to the conservatives and cut spending the unemployemnt rate rose
Thje right never lets the facts get in the way of a good narrative
Smoot-Hawley started an international trade war (i.e. raised tariffs) which shut down the global markets and contributed to the global depression. While we may have had a trade surplus, exports were down as the total volume of trade fell, thus America suffered too. Trade deficits are not necessarily a bad thing; we stopped believing in mercantilism long ago.
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