Honestly, Who Wants to Listen to Jon Huntsman and Joe Lieberman?

[n2doc]

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE


It's 2016, so we were overdue for another epistle from the No Labels grifters, the vagabond Bedouin merchants who ply The Empty Quarter of American politics. Led by badly beaten footnote also-rans Jon Huntsman and Weepin' Joe Lieberman, they've released their new policy playbook for whoever gets elected president in November. All of their proposals allegedly are based on polling done by the group and, coincidentally, I'm sure, they all are steeped in the group's fundamental belief that the problem with American politics is, well, politics. To make sure they reached the widest and most diverse audience as possible, they hooked up with that well-known populist pamphlet, Fortune magazine. It's pretty much what you might expect.

A bone gets tossed to the plain folks on capital gains, but you can say farewell to the mortgage interest deduction, the deduction of local and property taxes, and charitable donations. Also, the corporate tax deduction drops 14 points to 25 percent. And the ultimate goal, of course, is to "reduce the federal deficit" because a balanced budget is the Grail legend of this particular desert cult. They do not recognize the immutability of Blog's First Law of Economics: Fck the deficit. People got no jobs. People got no money.

There's a lot of technobabble stuff in the section about education and entrepreneurship that's worth skipping, although these folks seem to be the only people in the country who still believe in the golden dream of the online university. They want to tighten further the work requirements for people on public assistance, which is certainly an innovative idea that nobody ever thought of before. They also see the basic problem with the country's public infrastructure as the process' being over-regulated and not, as should be obvious to anyone not sleeping through the past 20 years, the refusal of conservative politicians to spend any money on the problem. And speaking of regulations, they'd like to "streamline" them and they suggest that some of them might be better handled at the state level. I don't know if they polled anyone in West, Texas. As for health care, they're also enthusiastic for the Republican idea of allowing people to buy health-insurance "across state lines," so we can all live in Mississippi. And there's a little bit of tort reform in sheep's clothing.

Institute reforms to reduce defensive medicine, with policy options including placing caps on non-economic and punitive damages; establishing risk-sharing between parties responsible for injury in place of the normal practice of joint and several liability; and imposing limits on contingency fees charged by lawyers.

As for their fiscal ideas, which is pretty much the only reason that No Labels exists, they'd like a Fiscal Responsibility Act that would "Prohibit Congress from passing budgets that would increase the national debt as a share of the overall economy, except in cases of war, disaster or recession," and they've bought into a gimmicky no-budget-no-pay scheme for Congress that's straight out of drive-time talk-radio. And the whole program can be summed up by the project's stated and ultimate goal:

Balance the federal budget by 2030.

Damn, I'm on fire now.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a44229/no-labels-2016-report/

[hatrack]

1. Two points: 1). Charlie Pierce Is God; 2). No Labels Still Exists?

nt

[Hoppy]

2. ---- especially, Lieberman's whiny voice.

[hatrack]

5. Or, as David Rees noted in Get Your War On, "Learn to fucking TALK, Frog-voice!"

.

[BlueMTexpat]

3. I can at least stomach Huntsman personally.

Turncoat LIEberman never.

Their ideas? Not so much.

[mrdmk]

4. Just in time for the change of the guard in the White House staring

Jon "there isn't an austerity measure i could not support" Huntsman and Joe "is there a war to support out there for me" Lieberman in the front row telling everyone what to do.

The first post said it well, "No Labels, does it still exist?"

[HughBeaumont]

6. "They want to tighten further the work requirements for people on public assistance"

Which likely means, as far as public assistance recipients go, "The Kochs of the world get the gold mine, the poor people get the shaft".

Lieberturd lost us 2000, that's bad enough.

What's really reprehensible about him is that the King of Connecticut denied America a much-needed public option to please his Beeg Insurance constituents. That move earned a permanent place on my shitlist. Denial of due human rights is not something I take kindly to, especially when a personal stake is involved.

[LongTomH]

7. I see dead people....and they don't realize they're dead!!!

[lagomorph777]

8. I think LIEberman would be a perfect VP for Hillary.

They share the same views.