Raise High The Pie, Dumbos

A barefoot boy with cheek from Colorado, transplanted to Texas, John Young sees E.T. as the departing Prophet of Reagonomics. Described as "voodoo economics" by Poppy Bush, Dutch's bat guano economic theories represent the Gospel of the Right Wing. As the batshit Righties cross themselves at the mention of Saint Dutch and deregulation, the pain index — not the pie — goes higher and we are in our summer of discontent. Thank you, John Young, for explaining why we're whining. The Dumbos can't make the pie high enough. Perhaps The Dubster meant make the pile (of bat guano) higher. Because The Dubster speaks as if he had a mouthful of bat guano, perhaps he was saying pile, not pie. If this is a (fair & balanced) eulogy for E.T. (and Reaganomics), so be it.

[x Waco Fishwrap]
Gramm Said What He Meant
By John Young

I never thought I’d have to come to this, defending Phil Gramm on anything.

Phil could fend for himself — always in a position of power, always on the public payroll. And if he wasn’t, wife Wendy was, while he decried all the people on the public payroll.

But now I come to Phil’s defense for saying — what? — exactly what the leader of his party has been saying for months?

He — George W. Bush — has been saying all is well. Gramm, John McCain’s go-to guy on the economy, put it more indelicately. He said the economic hard times are “mental” and “we’ve become a nation of whiners.”

OK, that goes beyond indelicate. That’s about as diplomatic as castrating cattle.

Phil apologized. Said he didn’t mean it. McCain said “Phil Gramm doesn’t speak for me.” Aw, come on, boys. Gramm said what he meant and meant what he said.

After all, it’s basically one of the foundations of conservative fiscal philosophy: You can’t help it that some people don’t benefit from laissez faire capitalism, globalism and deregulation. The rising tide lifts all boats. Of course, some will be treading water and clinging to debris. More each day. They should get a boat. And all that requires is a credit card.

As W. famously said, we must “make the pie higher.”

Stop whining. Go shopping. Consumerism is virtue. Credit is no vice.

Bigger is better, no questions asked, when it comes to business. Multinational always trumps national. And not just in Scrabble.

I come to Phil’s defense — all he’s saying is what made Ronald Reagan an icon. But I must admit this is a bad time for him to be saying anything.

After all, he was one of the great voices on behalf of banking deregulation.

The subprime mortgage crisis and the nosedive of housing is directly related to letting lenders do their own thing.

Meanwhile soaring energy prices reflect a lost opportunity for a president to model the axiom that market forces matter.

If Americans consume less gasoline, coal and natural gas, prices will moderate.

Instead it’s been consume, consume, consume and, of course, drill. That, too, is about growing that pie higher.

The whole idea behind trickle-down economics — tax cuts for those who don’t need it — is for the wealthy to consume, or “invest,” as they say. In the process those stationed below the banquet table will get some of the drippings.

That’s not happened in an age of concentration of wealth and where jobs go global. For sure, it’s happened for Gramm’s constituency, the already wealthy.

And let’s face it: Recession is a distant concern for those whose jobs are not on the line.

Inflation driven by oil prices, driven by insatiable consumption, is a distant concern for those who can afford rising prices. After all, if a man can afford that Escalade, he can afford to fill it up.

Ever since the days of Reagan we’ve been led to believe that consumption was next to godliness, and that the size — or height? — of the pie was all that mattered. We were led to believe that deregulation would get us to greater prosperity and better services.

For a few, that was true. For the rest, well, any discomfort is mostly mental. Right, Phil?

[John Young has been editorial page editor and columnist of the Waco Tribune-Herald since 1984. A Denver native, Young was editor of the Valley Courier, a small daily in Alamosa, CO, from 1978 to 1984. His column is carried regularly on the Cox News Service and New York Times News Service. Young’s column appears Thursday and Sunday in the Waco Tribune-Herald.]

Copyright© 2008 Waco Tribune-Herald

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