Robert Reich: Hey, that last shot of smack didn't kill us. How 'bout we reload the syringe for another round of love in vein?

by Smitty (PuffHo)

Right now, there is only one buyer left: the government. The only way to get jobs back right now is for the federal government to spend even more on the roads and bridges and schools and parks and public transport and everything else we need. Make up for the cutbacks at the state level. And in this way put Americans to work. We did it during the Depression. It was called the WPA. Now yes, I know. Our government is already deep in debt. But let me tell you something. When 1 in 6 Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt. When I was a small boy, my father told me that I and my kids and their grandkids would be paying down the debt created by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression and WWII. I didn't even know what a debt was. That kept me up at night. My father was right about a lot of things, but he was wrong about this. America paid down FDR's debt in the 1950s, when American's went back to work. When the economy was growing again. When our incomes grew, too. We paid taxes, and in a few years that debt had shrunk to almost nothing, as a proportion of the economy.

Let's ref the National Debt Road trip, Mr. Reich:

WWII kicks in around 0:46, and Truman is done around 1:00. Hell breaks loose under Reagan, as this fiction that "debt is OK as long as it's small, proportional to the economy" really took on popularity.

Now, if we want to equate Reagan with FDR in terms of WWII/Cold War deficit spending, then, after perestroika/glastnost under Bush41, Bill Clinton (and that Newt dude?) should have been in Truman mode.

Ah, but we continued to party like rock stars. Mr. Reich, the time to establish your credentials for financial responsibility and paying down the debt would have been when you were a member of Clinton's cabinet. So now you just sound like another spinner, beavering away on the emperor's new clothes. You go, dude. Make the cloth nice and thick; he's been looking rather un-insulated of late.

Meanwhile, sober members of the crowd who understand that Bernie Madoff was hors d'œuvre for the real theft occurring on this Administration and Congress's watch have had enough. The Constitutional power to manage inter-State commerce is not a mandate to run the entire economy. Precedent over last century be damned: the States need to elect governors who can:

• encourage free enterprise, and
• hoist the international gesture for collectivist nitwits like you, Mr. Reich.

Suggested soundtrack for Mr. Reich's ideas is Alice in Chains, "Would?"