“Oil and coal? Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not . . . So, I believe that what congress is going to do, also, is not to allow export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans that get stuck to holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here.”
Sarah Palin
I don’t have time to make the point I want to make at any length, but Chris Berg reminds us that dynamic tension can be a good thing in government and is, I think absolutely necessary to really good government. He is optimistic about Clegg and Cameron in the UK and in their ability to deliver ‘liberal, conservative’ politics which is to say socially liberal, economically dry policy. Time will tell, and those guys really do have some heavy weather to get through (though five years until the next election is a long time and – perhaps – time enough to allow the members of their party to allow their leaders to get through the political fire that they’re walking into). Read more »
Readers of this blog will know that I share Paul Krugman’s view that the US Republicans are a crazy, scary bunch. And during the Howard years there were lots of people who argued that Howard was the same. Which is ridiculous. He was sympathetic to the Crazy Party of the United States, and he did steal from their playbook, but mostly in the department of the culture wars – at which he was no slouch himself.
He never trashed the budget the way the Crazies can’t help doing. And this column by Paul Krugman reminds me that there’s something else they didn’t do for which I must say I’m very grateful. They didn’t cut the top marginal rate of tax until right at the end of their term of office, when they were, in part responding (and responding in a fairly minimal fashion) to the urgings of ALP politicians. Read more »
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