Call me naïve, but I actually hoped that the failure of Reaganism in practice would kill it.

That’s Krugman on the irrational fear of government programs that’s killing the public option. Read the rest here.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

18 replies on “Sentence of the Day”

  1. What I loved was a comment I found in response to that Krugman column by one Dan Bosko of New York. Excerpt:

    The best argument for the public option is that private insurers are rabidly opposed to it. What does that tell us? We can be sure that their opposition to it is not based on a love for their customers. Rather, it is that they want to maintain their monopolistic stranglehold over us.

    The corollary to this “best argument for the public option” would be: the best argument against state-level co-ops as a substitute is that the private insurers and the likes of Kent Conrad are fine with them.

    Imagine that we get everything we wanted in health insurance/health care reform minus one thing: some real competition to the insurance giants. Reform could end up being a huge bonanza for those same companies. That would be another example of how giant private corporations game the government for their gain and then have the nerve to decry the lack of a free market.

  3. Drug companies are like smash-and-grab thiefs. It’s insane to cause thousands of dollars in dammage to a car to grab stuff that might net you $20, unless you are the thief. It’s insane to destroy an economy with an unsustainable health-insurance system, unless you are a drug company.

  4. “…irrational fear of government programs…”?!?!?!

    Look two posts down to “The Core”. If the Government’s meddling with the food supply makes only the worst kind of food affordable, it hardly seems irrational to believe that the Government’s meddling with the health care supply would have similar results. In fact, it would be irrational to assume otherwise.

    Show me the Government program that wouldn’t fill a rational person with fear? Even Obama admits that the Government sucks at one of its very most basic programs: delivering mail. Where is this glowing example of a massive government program that deals with complicated issues and endless variables that is supposed to instill such confidence in the Government’s ability to run such programs?

    Hell, even the Governments administration of Cash For Clunkers was a clunker.

  6. You_Gotta_Be_Kidding_Me @4, your complaint about government meddling is very much what I described @1 when I suggested what might happen if we get health-insurance reform without real competition: Reform could end up being a huge bonanza for those same companies. That would be another example of how giant private corporations game the government for their gain and then have the nerve to decry the lack of a free market.

    In our current political climate, we have this vicious cycle going on where:
    1. A very vocal portion of the public has no faith in the government or believes government is inherently evil.
    2. Lacking the public pressure and cover to institute good government, politicians take any real reform and end up corrupting it under the influence of private corporations seeking to game the system to their benefit.
    3. The failure of such reform causes the public to have even less faith in government.
    4. Etc.

    I would tend to believe that no government is better than corrupted government. But that’s not an argument against the role of government. It’s an indication that Americans are not educated and involved enough and that special interests have too much power.

  7. @4
    “Where is this glowing example of a massive government program that deals with complicated issues and endless variables that is supposed to instill such confidence in the Government’s ability to run such programs?”

    Medicare is run with around 5% overhead, compared to about 30% overhead for private insurers. It’s more efficient and cost-effective. The vast majority of the people who use medicare love it. Medicare is many times larger than even the largest private insurance company. And of course, medicare is a massive government program dealing with complicated issues and endless variables.

  8. BITCH MADE NUTS GIT NOCKED.

    WHICH MEANZ UF KURSE, THAT IF YOU ACT LIKE YOU CAN HANG BUT CAN’T, YOU WILL GIT TOUCHED. WHY U NEED THA GOV NEWAY? WHY YOU GOTTA HAVE A STATE-BITCH REPPIN 4 U? I ROLL SELFWAYS.

  9. Neo-Reaganites are still energized by Cold War failures in practice of overdone socialism.

    They may have learned the wrong lesson, but the underlying inferential process is not that different from Krugmn’s.

    The Cold War Effect will fade in time … more rapidly if we don’t unwittingly reinforce it.

  10. For some reason the right seems to think that we all know the post office is a disaster and this somehow proves their ludicrous point so harping on the post office is a real good strategy.

    If the post office sucks so much at what it does what is stopping the glorious private sector from stepping in? Last I looked they had competition delivering packages yet that has not put them out of the business of delivering packages strangely enough even though there are no government agents forcing people to send packages via the post office.

    Want to pay like $2 to mail a simple letter? Take the post office out of the picture and let UPS or some other vastly superior private corporation do it.

  11. You’re nuts, @4. If you had actually followed the link and read the article, you would know that it was about how unsustainable agriculture was ruining the environment and making us all unhealthy. Government subsidies aren’t ruining the food system; it’s the nature of our economy, which rewards high yields and cheap prices, that is leading to destructive farming practices and unhealthy food products. To take one sentence from that story and twist it into an example of government incompetence is dishonest and pathetic.

  12. That Reagan quote of “…government isn’t the solution to the problem – government is the problem” sounded great on a 10-second soundbite, and it really struck a chord with many taxpayers, but on further analysis the statement is as simplistic and unfounded as some jingle on the radio. Who would have thought a statement so void of facts and evidence would resound almost 30 years later?

    Government doesn’t seem to be the problem when it comes to road construction, or water and food safety, or air quality, or weather prediction, or unemployment insurance. One could list hundreds of areas where government hasn’t been the problem and, in fact, where the private sector has been.

    It seems to me what progressives need to do is to un-deify Reagan – if that’s possible.

    Congratulations, Brendan.

  13. @10

    “If the post office sucks so much at what it does what is stopping the glorious private sector from stepping in?”

    Um… Article I, section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution.

    It grants the U.S. Congress the power to establish post offices and post roads and therefore grants a de facto Congressional monopoly over the delivery of mail. No other system for delivering mail – public or private – can be established absent Congress’s consent, and Congress has only consented to allow FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) to compete with USPS express mail and package delivery services. The postal monopoly does not allow FedEx or UPS to deliver non-urgent letters and they may not use U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial destinations.

  15. @ 14,

    So you can’t send mail by way of FedEx, UPS, or DHL? Funny, I thought I could for roughly 4 to 10 times what the USPS does. That doesn’t sound like the government is doing a lousy job to me.

  16. @16

    You can only send express or parcel post w/ FedEx and UPS. The Fed Gov will not allow them to compete against plain old (3rd class) letter post. Also, FedEx and UPS can not leave things in your mailbox. The mailbox you bought, paid for and own (assuming that you own your home).

    So, no. Your wrong.

  17. @17, I think you oversimplify a bit about the post office.

    It was assumed by the Founders that reliable postal service anywhere in the country is important to the functioning of a stable democracy. Hence, a monopoly is enforced to prevent cream-skimming. If there was an open market, private carriers would be all over the easy, profitable routes like Chicago-Milwaukee or NYC-Philly and the USPS would be stuck with deliveries between Maine and Montana.

    So yeah, some customers are subsidizing other customers. But anyone can send a letter to anyone else anywhere in the country for 44 cents, which is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it.

    And I think most of the USPS’s problems as of late have been because of reduced economies of scale due to the rise of e-mail, etc., not because of any inherent inefficiency due to it being a government mandated monopoly. And to throw a personal anecdote into the mix, I’ve seen more incompetence waiting in line at UPS and Fedex than I have at the post office.

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