There Will be Blood

[DeistPaladin]

"Unemployed? Fuck em. No health care coverage? Die quickly, then."

—neither of which Tea Party conservatives assert, Mr. Grayson.

What is "no unemployment extensions for those unable to find jobs in this recession and no spending on jobs programs but let's not worry about where we're going to find 700 billion for tax cuts for the rich" anything but "fuck em".

My wife would be dead now but for the fact that she's covered by my plan. She's uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions. What is the conservative plan to fix our broken health care system? Or are they living in denial that a problem exists?

The Tea Party is not an anarchist movement; i.e., they do not want the government destroyed.

Just put in its proper role of regulating my bedroom instead of the financial markets.

All other regulation is to be left to the several states. So much power being centralized to the federal government contradicts the national framework of a constitutional republic, where the states govern in themselves whatever is not delegated to the federal government (e.g., entitlement programs, insurance regulations, public education, etc.).

Letting states regulate health insurance and removing interstate purchase of health care insurance will result in all health insurance companies relocating to the state with the fewest regulations so they can screw us all more. This is what happened with the credit card industry.

Like it or not, we don't use goose quill pens and horse and buggies anymore. Federal regulation is both necessary and appropriate in the modern age.

But deregulation nearly drove us into another depression and the government saved the day.

It is almost incomprehensible that you could actually believe that. After strict government regulation caused the savings and loan crisis from the 60s through the 80s, a new and largely unregulated financial services industry emerged and performed extraordinarily well—until the Clinton administration from the mid-90s onward resulted in what we're dealing with today. We have decades upon decades of evidence that government intervention in the market wreaks havoc upon it (Utt 2008, Wallison 2008). One can debate political ideology but facts are what they are.

Wow!

You know, during my conservative, Reagan-worshiping Republican days, I don't remember being so detached from reality. I never spent so much time arguing what the facts were.

When Reagan deregulated the financial industry, that's when we started having meltdowns. First the savings and loan meltdown and now the most recent one. Government will still guarantee the stability of banks but not regulate how they invest as much. Not surprisingly, investors prefer high risk, high return investments when they can't lose. They've been playing "heads, I win, tails, you lose" with the tax payers and Republicans made that possible.

And do you remember the words "too big to fail"? Do you know WHY the banks got too big to fail? Republicans stripped away the regulations that prevented the mergers that allowed so many eggs to be put in so few baskets.

Again, I would have handled the bailout differently. But what can't be denied is that it worked to prevent total meltdown of the entire economy and the second great depression. Government intervention, decried as "socialism" by hysterical tea-partiers, saved the auto industry as well.