What world are we living in? It’s a world in which we face three major challenges: responding to the merger of globalization and the information technology revolution, which is changing every job and workplace;dealing with our mounting debt and entitlement burdens, driven by steadily rising health care costs and unsustainable defined benefits; and, finally, developing energy sources that can grow the world economy without tipping it into disruptive climate change. (At one point last week, the Senate approved a $60.4 billion aid package to help New York and New Jersey recover from Hurricane Sandy. If fully implemented, that would mean we’d spend onone storm all the new tax revenue for next year that the House and Senate just agreed to in the fiscal-cliff negotiations.)
Emphasis mine, because is there anything worse than spending on such things? And “debt” by itself is defined as just terrible, regardless of what it’s for. In fact, the MOST HORRIFYING EXAMPLE OF SPENDING EVER is aid to New York and New Jersey, which is just SO MUCH MONEY. So much. It’s almost a WHOLE QUARTER of two wars we aren’t winning, the costs of which Tom Friedman could not give two shits about, because suck on this.
And why can’t we solve this horrible problem? Because Obama isn’t bold enough to boldly propose boldly slashing Social Security and Medicare, boldly:
When I heard Obama say, after the election, that this time he was going to take his plan to the country, and not make the mistake again of just negotiating with Congress, I thought, “Great, I can’t wait to hear what he says.” But all he took to the country was a plan for increasing taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” There was nothing comprehensive, nothing bold, no great journey for America and no risks for him.
If there’s one thing that carries no risk in America, it’s attacking rich people. I mean, it’s not like they then turn around and spend squillions on trying to get somebody else elected in his place, amirite?
He took to the country a plan to curb rising health care costs by trying to get everybody some health insurance and for the first time regulate an entirely unregulated industry, but that didn’t have the words BOLD AND COMPREHENSIVE in glitter puffy stickers on the cover, so Friedman just assumed it didn’t count.
Maybe Obama has a strategy: First raise taxes on the wealthy, which gives him the credibility with his base to then make big spending cuts in the next round of negotiations. Could be.But raising taxes on the wealthy is easy. Now we’re at the hard part: comprehensive tax reform, entitlement cuts, radical cost-saving approaches to health care and new investments in our growth engines.
Yeah. It was so easy the Republicans almost detonated the whole country over it.
And now Obama has to do something really hard. He has to grit his teeth and kick old poor people. That takes major courage. Not like confronting powerful people with rooms full of gold in which they dive like Scrooge McDuck. A kindergartener could fuck those people up. Radical “cost-saving” takes real balls.
I swear I don’t know what Friedman’s freebasing these days but I’d like some of it.
A.
Since he just can’t get the buzz he used to from the man-on-the-street, Friedman’s dope of choice these days is uncut Hindu Cabbie, and he always gets the best shit.
we are a RICH COUNTRY. we need to start being rational + not penny wise + dollar dumb. AND EVERYBODY NEED TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE.
Tommy’s marriage into the carriage trade class may have something to do with this uncommon disdain for the unwashed masses.
This article should remind us of how parochial and pedestrian his views are.
Little Tommy knows that when your car breaks down the obvious thing to do is quit your job, because borrowing money to repair the car would increase THE DEBT that you owe and that is always the WORST THING EVAH!!
It’s all bully, bully, We Are Amercia Together when the fodder goes to the frontlines, but when it comes to actually, like you know, doing shit like roads and making sure people don’t starve, then fuck you, Commie.
You just fucking rock in so many ways, A.
Yeah- I dig the body of A.’s evisceration and the punchline. Little Tommy makes me so furious when he writes this shit that I’d have to use many more expletives than she. Of course, A. is occasionally willing to swear and bust out the ALL CAPS while maintaining a bit more restraint than I, so my affection for her clever lines are assured.
Admittedly, I’m criticizing the reich wing’s use of easily learned and identifiable math. But we can’t let them get away with it.
Specifically, his use of $ 60 billion for the Sandy relief to inflate what is actually being paid under that libral, communist, Marxist,…
The actual bill which passed is only for 9 billion and covers only the refunding of the Flood Insurance coffers. The remaining 51 bill is to be discussed “later”.
I find it hard that he doesn’t know that. Could he be using a bigger number in order to fan the flames he is lighting? At best, he could be relying on a very thin technicality in that he said “last week” and the byline is from yesterday – As the Senate had earlier passed 60 bill. But of course the honest way of saying last week on Sunday would mean what was passed the week of Monday the 31st.
I would say honest error, except that the pattern is well established among the Faux News folk.
Along the same lines of Repub Math, a recent article where a veteran hostage negotiater tells what Obama should do with the House holding the country hostage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/01/04/a-veteran-hostage-negotiators-advice-on-handling-the-gop/
I really found it interesting that one of the things is to isolate the hostage taker and make them feel alone. It was interesting that the repubs for the last 4 years have worked hard to make the dems feel isolated. All the bravado about how you will never win (for example, all the yelling that Romney was in the polls for a landslide when the polls went the other way. Add in the claims of the Romney victory well into election night).
I don’t want to jump in and defend Tom Friedman, but I took the point from the preceeding sentence about developing energy sources that don’t tip us into disruptive climate change. Then he proceeds to point out we spent x dollars on ONE STORM.
We need to face the fact that our country cannot financially sustain itself if we’re constantly having to come up with fantastic sums of money to “fix” catastophies wrought by nature. We MUST find a way to slow/stop climate change otherwise disaster relief is going to make the debate over Medicare and Social Security look like a little league baseball game.
Maybe I’m being too generous to Mr. Friedman, but I think that is the thing we should take away from his argument more than “oh my god we had to spend money on something – not related to me”.