What is so great about our bloated federal government that when a libertarian threatens to become a senator, otherwise rational and mostly liberal pundits start frothing at the mouth? What Rand Paul thinks about the Civil Rights Act, passed 46 years ago, hardly seems the most pressing issue of social justice before us. It's a done deal that he clearly accepts.
Yet Paul's questioning the wisdom of a banking bailout that rewards those who shamelessly exploited the poor and vulnerable, many of them racial minorities, is right on target. So too questioning the enormous cost of wars that as he dared point out are conducted in violation of our Constitution and that, I would add, though he doesn't, prevent us from adequately funding needed social programs.
Under the leadership of President Bill Clinton, Wall Street secured the radical deregulation of the financial industry that its lobbyists had long sought. I opposed that betrayal of the sensible policies of the last great Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I suspect that Paul applauded the move as an extension of the free market that he so uncritically celebrates.
Where I agree with him is that with freedom comes responsibility, and when the financial conglomerates abused their freedom, they, and not the victims they swindled, should have borne the consequences. Instead, they were saved by the taxpayers from their near-death experience, reaping enormous profits and bonuses while the fundamentals of the world economy they almost destroyed remain rotten, as attested by the high rates of housing foreclosures and unemployment and the tens of millions of newly poor dependent on government food handouts.
But the poor will not find much more than food crumbs from a federal government that, thanks to another one of Clinton's "reforms," ended the federal obligation to deal with the welfare of the impoverished. Yes, Clinton, not either Paul, father Ron or son. It was Clinton who campaigned to "end welfare as we know it," and as a result the federal obligation to end poverty, once fervently embraced by even Richard Nixon, was abandoned.
Concern for the poor was devolved to the state governments, and they in turn are in no mood to honor the injunction of all of the world's great religions that we be judged by how we treat the least among us. That would be poor children, and it is unconscionable that state governments across the nation are cutting programs as elemental as the child care required when you force single mothers to work.
"Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers" ran the headline in The New York Times on Sunday over a story detailing how in a dozen states there are now sharp cuts in child care for the poor who find jobs, and how there are now long lists of kids needing child care while their mothers work at low-paying jobs at places like Wal-Mart. In Arizona, there is a waiting list of 11,000 kids eligible for child care. That is what passes for success in the welfare reform saga, with mothers forced off the rolls into a workplace bereft of promised child care that the cash-strapped states no longer wish to supply.
A couple of weeks ago came the news--reading like a page out of Dickens (or perhaps like a parody from The Onion )--that the Terminator was again in action, this time terminating California's programs for the poor. The son-in-law of Sargent Shriver, who once ran the federal war on poverty, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now seeks to eliminate the Golden State's CalWorks program. By ending the once celebrated program along with child care funding, Schwarzenegger expects to save $2.2 billion. As the Los Angeles Times reported, "Ending CalWorks, which provides recipient families with an average of $500 per month, would make California the only state not to offer a welfare program for low-income families with children."
Schwarzenegger apparently doesn't care; poor kids can't complain too loudly, and while the governor backed down in his earlier threats to cut funding for somewhat more privileged college kids who protested those cuts loudly, he found the safety net for the poor an easier target: "You cannot have a safety net if you don't have the money for that safety net."
Sure you can't, and so the safety net is being shredded in state after state, but why don't we have the money, and why was responsibility for the poor left to the tender mercy of state governments while the federal government maintains a lavish welfare system for needy bankers who treat a few billion in government bailouts as chump change?
I am not a libertarian; I proudly remain a bleeding-heart liberal, as befits one who began life in a family on the dole during the Depression. But if the federal government exists primarily to serve super-rich defense contractors and bankers while ignoring the poor, I say it is time to expose as the enemy of progress the Washington bureaucracy that tends to the greedy rich at the expense of the truly needy. That is the problem; Rand Paul is the distraction.
Our incarceration rate of African-Americans exceeds the incarcerations rate of blacks in APARTHEID South Africa. What other policy in American can be more racist than mass imprisonment resulted from disparity in criminal justice? If the trend continues, according to stats, 1/3 of African-Americans will be imprisoned at some time in the future. With felony disenfranchisement, those blacks will not be able to vote. This is the most racist policy ever after Jim Crow.
The libertarians are opposed to mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex, and the War on Drugs that causes the dispartiy in race in criminal justice. Rand Paul may or may not be a racist himself, but he supports the end of the most racist policy in the country, that's what matters
I think incarceration for drug use alone is absurd. Drug use with harm to others is a different story. But I think we also tend to give some people too much of a break and others none at all.
I also think the "war on drugs" has to stop. It's been an absurd failure. Some people are now saying no one should receive assistance because they're using. Mandatory drug testing (which is also a failure) should be the rule of the land. So, we'll punish their children (because somehow there are always children) for what the parents do. Boy, we really haven't moved forward at all have we?
Your focusing on a Senatorial CANDIDATE when the current commander in chief who has been labeled a socialist by many is presiding over a much more fascist country than under George HW Bush.
Concentration camps.
Torture
Wiretaps
Unlawful detainment of citizens
The state chairman of the Libertarians of Kentucky, Ken Moellman, said "... we're not going to let Rand determine what a Libertarian stand for. I'm here to say Rand does not have the Libertarian ideology."
A statement on their website sais "a repeal of the PATRIOT Act, closure of Guantanamo Bay, and an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" are Libertarian stances that are different from Rand Paul's.
Info here: http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/ky-libertarians-no-were-not-planning-to-run-a-candidate-against-rand-paul.php?ref=fpb
What Paul believes is that corporations should have full throttle to kill American citizens in the pursuit of profit, and that government should stay out of the way. His tone-deaf defense of poor little BP this week tells you all you need to know about Paul, and tells you exactly the kind of populist he his. The old Mr. Sheer would have noticed as much.
End the war on drugs and end the racket that is civil forfeiture.
Reduce incarceration and restore due process in the justice system.
Allow immigrants who dont commit any crime to contribute to the economy.
What is the common thread here folks? LESS F-ing GOVERNMENT!!!
(Anyone who reads Reason magazine would know that those issues that I mentioned are extremely important to libertarians.
And btw, Rand Paul is not really libertarian when it comes to reproductive rights, gay rights or immigration anyways)
Saying Rand Paul opposing the Civil Rights Act ...
... was the same as Obama not yet passing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".
Gays not serving open the military is JUST like segregation. Sure, that's comparable - NOT.
And Clinton ending the practice of women having babies so the government will support them.
That's EXACTLY like opposing the Civil Rights Act.
Rand Paul opposes the Civil Rights Act.
Rand Paul opposes the Civil Rights Act.
Rand Paul opposes the Civil Rights Act.
He said it. We're not going to stop pointing it out. If he's smart he'll drop out of the race.
He is against the war on drugs. Who do you think might be helped by that the most?
He is for property rights and I could see him being extremely skeptical about civil forfeiture. Who do you think might be helped by that the most?
He said that he was against Jim Crow laws and that the Civil Rights act is settled law. The drug warriors in Congress (with President Obama's complicity) are doing far more to hurt minorities than Rand Paul ever would.
Paul SUPPORTS the Civil Rights Act. Period. All he said was that HAD HE BEEN THERE when Title 2 (only one of 11 sections of the Act) was written he would have tried to discuss modifications to it.
And the knee-jerk self-styled progressives went wild. How DARE he suggest that the CRA might have over-reached somewhat in even a single specific area! He must be a racist! He's against the Act! Grab your torches and pitchforks!
His stated concerns weren't racial: they were about the complete reversal of what until then had been a RIGHT - the right to run your own business as you saw fit, even in reprehensible ways as long as they didn't threaten public safety. Very much, in fact, like the right to speak as you see fit, even if that speech is reprehensible (as long as it doesn't threaten public safety).
One needn't agree with him to be able to understand that this is about a principle, not about racism. But one does require at least a modicum of objectivity. I strongly disagree with most of his positions - and so do some real libertarians. Why not criticize him for those actual positions rather than manufacture a fake one?
Sad to say...
But it's either folly or intellectual dishonesty to purport, as many Libertarians and now, apparently, Mr. Scheer, do, that the power of the oligarchy will be reduced by reducing the power of government. In the absence of government, there would be nothing at all between us and the oligarchy. Yes, TARP allowed banks to stay in business that would otherwise have failed. Letting them fail might satisfy some sense of justice, but do you think that any of those executives would have been reduced to poverty or penitence? By what logic would the collapse of major banks have been a better outcome for the working and middle classes of America? We'd have even less available credit, more foreclosures, and a more badly cratered economy.
TARP was botched not because government is too big, but because the power of the oligarchy over it is too great. Libertarians believe that clean government is impossible. Perfectly clean government probably is impossible, but countries like New Zealand and Demnark show that it can be acceptably close.
Your argument about the government as bulwark against the oligarchy is well made. I recall a comment from another responder to another article recently, "I wake up in a democracy and go to work in a fascist state." Exactly. The government (which is all of US) is our ONLY protection from rapacious behavior by unfettered capitalism.
But, I'm curious. How was TARP "botched"? I'm sure it could have been better.
However.
What was its purpose? Did it serve its purpose? Has the world banking system collapsed?
I think it did serve its purpose. Recall that it was done in a hell of a hurry in a mad panic by people were truly scared shitless. TARP was the best they could do in that panic environment. Given the circumstances, I think it was successful. Was it perfect? No. That wasn't (and shouldn't have been) the point.
BS...OK, maybe over a few thousand years ,....MAYBE it would...
but the National gaurd wasn't babysitting southern universities in the 60's
because the "free" market ends segregation....
and nobody may more money for hotels and resorts than mo town
and people like sammie davis jr.......
but they sure as hell still couldn't stay there.....
anyone who thinks the free market was gonna end segrecation is brain dead
That's what history has shown. The free market means the government protecting the right of non-racists to open a business establishment that does not segregate. Commerce does the rest.
If the white and the black communities had equal disposable income--in Mississippi in 1964--then the market might have broken down segregation.
But they didn't and the market failed to alter the situation. Federal intervention was required.
Please cite some historical examples - one would be impressive, but wouldn't prove much - of free markets bringing about the end of racial, religious, or other discrimination.
The Two Party system has only been good to the American people for so many decades. It doesn't need a change in direction. We need the same global corporatism that the Bush and Clinton administrations relentlessly pursued. We need to invade as many sovereign countries as possible so that we can make the world 'safe for democracy'. So keep on supporting the status quo because it is good for the country.
as an internet discussion lengthens the probability of someone invoking Hitler approaches 1.