The Theory Theory

The Betrayal That the Centrists Have Wrought: "This is really, really bad." - Paul Krugman, NYT

I’m with Krugman on this one. Cutting funds to the states is a fatal flaw of the Senate bill. Moving funds to the state level provides demonstrably faster and well-focused ways to provide relief. And most of the infrastructure already exists to implement the benefits.

For the GOP, to protect its grand old theories of government, to deliberately deny the American people a powerful strategy with a good chance of success, infuriates me to no end.

The GOP version of Capitalism – with its Weegee Board, “invisible hand” fantasies, looks ugly as sin when the curtain is pulled back to reveal a bazaar of criminal corporations run by value-proof amoral nerds and made legitimate by lawyers fully able to loot anything of everything.

So here we all are, stripped and abandoned – truly looted, hiding our nuts and buying very little; our banks hiding their nuts and lending very little. An unprecedentedly huge population of the mega-wealthy waits uninvolved in another landscape, while the rest of us find American life suddenly out of focus, recognizing in our bones that everything we counted on may be in play and at stake.

It is that serious, but even as we are pulled into the center of the misery itself, the GOP and its bile-filled air bullies will still sell us all out for a theory.

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Update: Here’s what I think people expect of their government right now: provide big amounts of money to the states and let their channels of distribution get needed assistance to out-of-work citizens. Remove the catastrophic inability of financial institutions to evaluate the quality of their assets, or others’ assets, by carving out the toxic debt and placing it in Federal Government ownership and control for further disposition. Then when you have an extra moment, incarcerate the Wall Street Bugsies and seize their assets. Then stand by for further instructions.