Bush's New Deal

This morning we heard Garrison Keillor tell Al Franken that he was glad to see Bush transmogrifying (our word, not his)into Franklin Roosevelt.  He's not the only one that thinks so.

We find it puzzling that old-school liberals are thinking that our president has found Jesus and will address the conditions of poverty and racism in logical FDR ways.  Why the optimism?  Well, because they're old-school liberals.

The President's vow to "do what it takes" does not mean that he will do what is smart or even do what will work.  Instead, the Bush administration has already given us a taste for what they will inflict on the Gulf States.  It ain't FDR, it's fucking Murray Rothbard.

No, we've seen the results of "opportunity zones".  Anyone remember when they were called "Free Enterprise Zones"?  We heard that a lot after the 2002 Los Angeles riots--the last time the federal government was forced to confront the disparities of race and poverty in our country (and the effective last nail in the coffin of the Bush I Presidency).  Anyone remember how those Free Enterprise Zones worked out?  Well, it brought Wal-Mart to the ghetto with all the ensuing economic stagnation that it guarantees.  It benefitted corporations more than the people living there.

If anyone has an example of anything benefitting South Central Los Angeles arising from a Free Enterprise Zone, we'd love to hear it.

The Republican War on Poverty will be their usual class warfare: regressive taxation, privatization, zero regulation, and wage strangulation.  It's a war that's killing the poor, not poverty.

We can survive natural disasters, it's the human disasters that kill.

Comments

[Kevin Carson]

Unless you've got some evidence that Rothbard would support turning people away from bridges at gunpoint, shipping refugees to electric fenced concentration camps, and forcibly shutting down attempts at voluntary mutual aid among local residents, I think you owe him an apology for associating his memory with a thug like Bush. Bush is not a fucking libertarian; he's a corporate mercantilist.

[Alexander S. Peak]

I concur with Mr. Carson.