Krugman: All the President’s Zombies

[depakid]

The debate over the “public option” in health care has been dismaying in many ways. Perhaps the most depressing aspect for progressives, however, has been the extent to which opponents of greater choice in health care have gained traction — in Congress, if not with the broader public — simply by repeating, over and over again, that the public option would be, horrors, a government program.

Washington, it seems, is still ruled by Reaganism — by an ideology that says government intervention is always bad, and leaving the private sector to its own devices is always good. Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it. It turns out, however, to be a zombie doctrine: even though it should be dead, it keeps on coming.

Let’s talk for a moment about why the age of Reagan should be over.

First of all, even before the current crisis Reaganomics had failed to deliver what it promised. Remember how lower taxes on high incomes and deregulation that unleashed the “magic of the marketplace” were supposed to lead to dramatically better outcomes for everyone? Well, it didn’t happen.

<snip>

There’s a lot to be said about the financial disaster of the last two years, but the short version is simple: politicians in the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century, believing that financial markets could take care of themselves. The effect was to make the financial system vulnerable to a 1930s-style crisis — and the crisis came.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937. “We know now that it is bad economics.” And last year we learned that lesson all over again. Or did we? The astonishing thing about the current political scene is the extent to which nothing has changed.

The debate over the public option has, as I said, been depressing in its inanity. Opponents of the option — not just Republicans, but Democrats like Senator Kent Conrad and Senator Ben Nelson — have offered no coherent arguments against it. Mr. Nelson has warned ominously that if the option were available, Americans would choose it over private insurance — which he treats as a self-evidently bad thing, rather than as what should happen if the government plan was, in fact, better than what private insurers offer.

But it’s much the same on other fronts. Efforts to strengthen bank regulation appear to be losing steam, as opponents of reform declare that more regulation would lead to less financial innovation — this just months after the wonders of innovation brought our financial system to the edge of collapse, a collapse that was averted only with huge infusions of taxpayer funds.

So why won’t these zombie ideas die?

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1

[FrenchieCat]

1. So why won’t these zombie ideas die?

Because the media has turned Reagan into one of the best President in American History, and that is a lie. When lies won't die, and there is a media that refuses to kill it, and in fact promotes the lies, there is little that can be done in reference to the Zombies that crawl out of the cemetery.

[Lorien]

6. Reagan in effect deregulated the media by killing the Fairness Doctrine

and they will forever repay him with their gratitude.

[quantass]

9. America is both FASCINATING and a DISTURBING place to live.

More interesting read for me....What a crazy society to allow such a thing to happen.

[LittleBlue]

12. Exactly.

Just like a religious figure, Reagan has been deified, therefore his principles must also be deified.

It will take, at the earliest, the death of the Baby Boomers before this myth can be laid to rest. The majority of them are too heavily indoctrinated to believe anything else, no matter the evidence or number of catastrophic events caused by it.

[Usrename]

2. We need a wooden stake.

Where can we get one of those?

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. C'mon Krugs? You and millions of Americans know the answer to your question!

The reason for most all of this is the fact that there exists in America a gargantuan propaganda machine that serves the interests of the corporate elite and radical right wing. The reason that these outrageously false talking points can frame the debate is because Rush Limbaugh, corporate media and FOX News make sure of it.

[Lorien]

8. And Dems make sure of it by opposing the Fairness Doctrine

Reagan killed it to ensure that logical opposition to failed and unpopular policies would be muzzled, and Dems raised on reaganism think that reinstating the Fairness Doctrine would somehow quell free speech? We really have forgotten history.

[polichick]

14. +1

[jimlup]

4. Simple Answer Paul

Class Warfare

[BlueMTexpat]

5. In part because we have a MSM that keeps perpetuating them, in spite of

excellent op-ed writers like Krugman.
In part because we sent too many DINOs to Congress.
In part because total POS like Rove, Bolton, Lieberman et al still get media time and space.
In part because the Administration's team often muddles the message, with one spokesman saying one thing and another one saying another, with deliberate gleeful misinterpretation by the MSM.
In part because there are too many holdovers from *Co that are seeded throughout the civil service, in high positions and low.
And the list goes on and on ...

:banghead: :argh:

[Gregorian]

7. It just donned on me that the ultimate goal of that Norquist philosophy is anarchy.

Isn't it? If government is to be drowned, then it wouldn't exist. And that would be anarchy.

So Reaganism is anarchy?

Somebody tell me where I've gone wrong. It can't be that simple. And I'm not knocking anarchy. I happen to think the world could be a great place. But since people aren't all nice, we need governments. Well it's not that simple. But I have an espresso that is waiting for me, and I'm not writing a book. :)

[Jakes Progress]

10. The ultimate goal of the neocon is a corporate state.

Giant corporations, unfettered by any government regulations, controlling the economy and society. Profit and control for he corporate elite.

That's what puts a zip in gomer's step. So you have to destroy the government that we have in order to put corporations in its place.

[Gregorian]

13. Absolutely. I was thinking a good argument to combat that would be the all scary anarchy term.

Oh there is no doubt that big corporations running us is exactly where they're taking this. And sadly, that's what we're buying into, lock, stock, and barrel. It's the warm water that is boiling us frogs.

It's why the media isn't real. It's why there are wars. It's why we don't have health care. It's why there's a drug war. Argh, don't let me continue.

I've got a septic system to build today. Time to get on the tractor...

Call them anarchists. It may just work.

[paulk]

11. I used to use that argument on the anarchists I knew

they would get mad at me.

I've always thought that anarchy was a right wing philosophy, and that Reagan was a good example of it at work...

[depakid]

16. Anarachy- or more likely neo-feudalism, as we saw in the Gilded Age

[leftofthedial]

15. "...why won’t these zombie ideas die?"

because capitalism exists to serve the parochial interests of a very few ultra-wealthy families, who have now decided to cash out of America.