Feed on
Posts
Comments

I know more good thinking Marxists than either of the two bozos debating tonight. Here is Coyote:

Is this really what passes for political discourse in this country?  I was particularly struck by the appeals to unnamed authorities — both candidates said something like “I saw a study the other day [unnamed] that said my plan was great” or “your plan was bad.”  Seriously pathetic.

And, after the corporatism and cronyism of the last 8+ years, the fact that Romney could not explain why it made sense to cut tax rates but eliminate deductions just convinced me he deserves to lose.  He was losing to class warfare rhetoric on tax cuts, when he should have been taking the high ground, even with the occupy wall street folks, saying that it was time to stop tilting the tax code towards special interests and populist fads at least one of which — the tilting of the tax code to home ownership — helped drive the recent economic downturn.

I blog and don’t tend to debate in real time, because I always think of great quips hours later, but even I had the perfect rejoinder for Obama in real time when he said, “I think we should return to Clinton era tax rates, when the economy was great and growing.”  Romney should have said, “If I am President, I will happily work with Democrats to do just that, as long as they agree to return to Clinton era spending levels.   After all, if government policy during that era was really so perfect for the economy, then spending levels must have been appropriate as well.”

I don’t plan to watch any more of this garbage until and unless they include someone other than the Coke and Pepsi candidates.   I’d like to see Gary Johnson but heck, even adding a Marxist would probably help.

Sorry to repost the whole thing. I should just outsource my site to his.

2 Responses to “Even Adding a Marxist Would Help”

  1. Harry says:

    We all can think of missed opportunities in these situations. I think Coyote’s take on the appeals to authority is a bit unfair, though, even had Obama cited his source, where he repeated the claim that Romney’s plan would increase taxes by $5 trillion, or was it $5.5 trillion. Obama’s numbers are based on the assumption that there is a straight line relationship with rates and revenues, which ignores reality, which not only his stupid source ignored but also is ignored by the entire Princeton economics department. Yeah, I will question a study by McKinsey, too, but Romney sounded enough like a supply-sider to satisfy me.

    The big missed opportunity to me was when Obama was talking about the Cleveland Clinic, and used the word “institutionalized” which instantly evoked the image of Red talking about prison life in The Shawshank Redemption. Unwittingly, Obama revealed his world view, where as the anti-Hayek he and the same crew that wrote Dodd-Frank would intervene everywhere with their best practices not just in medicine but also in what kind of cars to make, how many acres to plant in corn, etc.

    In this same vein, I did like Romney’s dig about picking winners and losers, as in the government being good in picking losers.

  2. Harry says:

    My apologies to Coyote for not commenting on his own blog directly. I will have to get my expert daughter to show me how to do it.

    I appreciate Coyote’s affinity to other libertarians.

    For years, perhaps unwisely, I held my nose and voted for Arlen Specter. But I circulated petitions for Pat Toomey who now is my senator. I would have gotten behind him had he run in the primaries, but now was not his time, and that time may never come.

    I read a comment on Coyote that supported Obama’s election because everything is going down the chute and we might as well pin the debacle on Obama as architect. Now maybe I am setting up a straw man, and I do not mean to diminish Coyote’s views by attacking commentators to his blog, but that is nihilism. Mitt Romney may not be a Platonic philosopher king, but that is Plato’s problem, and maybe Obama’s problem, not Mitt’s problem. Romney wants to cut taxes and regulation to promote growth, right?

Leave a Reply to Harry