Repukes WANT Big Govenment to be a failure!

[Cassandra]

I posted this on another thread but want more attention for it. :P


If they actually had a functioning system in place to deal with this then their whole ideology is in danger. They want people to believe that government cannot help in these circumstances and you are on your own.
What we are seeing is that DELIBERATELY INCOMPETANT GOVERNMENT cannot help, but that's the fault of Bush in particular, not of government in general.

Edit: Adding this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/the-wrong-government-at-t_b_6727.html

"Now, however, when we Americans need a federal government that believes in the good the federal government can do when it dedicates itself to that purpose, we are instead left to the mercies of either corporate raptors dipping back into the public sector before they dip back out with all they can carry with them or Cato Institute laissez-fairists. This President wants to dismantle Social Security, one of the most efficient government agencies we’ve ever had because he doesn’t believe in government (except when he feels like playing army). Why then are we so surprised that he was slow to mobilize federal resources to come to the aid of citizens in need? He sees his job, as the leader of government, to destroy government so that the free-market can work its magic on all that ails us."

[FormerDittoHead]

1. reference: "Starve the Beast"

http://www.wordspy.com/words/starvethebeast.asp

...Here's how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government.

There's a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don't pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these "lucky duckies." (Yes, that's what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their "blood boiling with tax rage."
—Paul Krugman, "The Tax-Cut Con," The New York Times, September 14, 2003

PS: it was reported this week that the tax code revisions that BushCo are looking into will eliminate the deduction for employers to provide health insurance. Result: everyone will have to pay out of pocket AFTER taxes (raising taxes on the middle class)

[Cassandra]

6. Grover Norquist did say he wanted to drown gov't in a bathtub.

He just didn't specify the NO bathtub.

[kansasblue]

2. The plan: FEMA fails, investigate, then privatize. Hello Halliburton

I think the investigation, lead by the Republican Congress, will find that this could be handled better by the private sector. FEMA will be outsourced.

[Cassandra]

5. Halliburton already has a no-bid contract for the port rebuilding

Announced yesterday?

[C_U_L8R]

3. It's Bush who is Incompetent

Hopefully the rest of giovernment does it duty
and impeaches the idiot child president for
crimes against humanity.. here and abroad

[glitch]

4. Absolutely - this point needs to be made and made and made until people

finally get it. This is deliberate.

[Island Blue]

7. I totally agree with you

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few days. This is truly the Neo-Cons grand plan, and this is a perfect test case for them. FEMA fails? No problem, eliminate it. (Etc., etc., etc.) Evil bastards.

We need to band together as Democrats and shine a light on what is really going on, and show how the future will look much, much different if we don't make some changes FAST! This is not really the time for an ever popular Democratic circular firing squad. We've got a Neo-Con problem folks. They want to dismantle our entire system of government as we know it now.

[bribri16]

8. With them in charge it already has been. Good point. n/t

[bribri16]

9. Only one problem, most of government is already contracted out to the

private sector. Even a lot of our military. Tthat's the fucking problem! They have to wait for a "project officer" to give the green light for most meaningful actions.

[Cassandra]

10. Another good link

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/09/failure-by-design.html

" Failure by Design

The Republicans have managed a nifty trick over the last twenty-five years. They have worked ceaselessly to make government less effective, while at the same time deriving political benefit from inadequate government. The Republican attack on good governance involves the cutting of necessary funding, the wholesale transfer of critical government capabilities to the private sector, the stocking of government agencies with inept, corrupt, and obstructionist appointees, and the sellout of regulatory agencies to the industries they're supposed to observe.

In a fair world, all of this would result in the Republican party taking some degree of blame for bad governance. In this world, the exact opposite seems to happen. Government fails by design. Government failure feeds into an anti-statist narrative that allows the Republicans to further slash funding, to further gut federal agencies, and to further cripple the capacity of the government to do anything useful.

I think we're seeing the beginning of this with regard to Katrina. It seems readily apparent that Republican ineptitude and obstructionism at FEMA, combined with the general problems associated with tight funding, have played a significant role in slowing down relief efforts. Whether more government competence could have prevented the breaching of the levees, we'll never know. Watch for the discourse the subtly change, however. Dubya has already admitted that the relief efforts thus far have been inadequate. The trick that the Republicans (and their conservatarian allies in the blogosphere) will be trying to play over the next few weeks is to convince the world that the problem is not an inept Republican government, but is instead the abstract concept of an activist government.

It's perfect, because it lets Dubya and his cronies off the hook while at the same time making the populace that much more resistant to effective government and its necessary corollary, a reasonable level of taxation."