Sung to the tune of Jimmy Crack Corn, even by crack New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning, liberal Democrat economist, Paul Krugman
[See chart above showing rising unemployment since Krugman's Democrats aka "ruling elites" took over Congress in 2007 and signaled to investors that taxes would not only not be cut, but would be raised.]
The lyrics of the famous song refer to a slave’s faux sorry over the death of his master that may have been caused by the supposed sorrowful slave. I was reminded of the song when recently accused of harboring excessive hatred of my former Democratic Party and upon hearing Democrats attack Republicans as not caring about the poor for insisting that unemployment benefit extensions to 99 weeks be paid for out of unspent stimulus funds.
The above was also accompanied by suggestions that Republican “fiscal conservatives” (including yours truly) want to “eliminate” the safety net for the truly needy, from two Democrat readers of my recent columns about fraudulent, so-called “Blue Dog” fiscal conservative Democrats (see tax raisers to balance a federal deficit quadrupled by those very Democrats and President Barack Obama) and the liberal Georgia ‘journolist’-manufactured “split” between Karen Handel fiscal conservatives and Nathan Deal moral conservatives.
Caring means favoring Democrat bills
This was the first time in many years that I had heard the 40+ year old canard that Republicans don’t care about the poor, old, disabled weak and infirm since the Reagan days. I was a Democrat then, but always re-coiled from the claim that the GOP wanted to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Unemployment Compensation.
Hearing that same claim last week, after Republicans have alternately controlled the White House and Congress, as well as Georgia’s State House and General assembly over the past 30 years was quite shocking given that Republicans have never proposed reductions in the safety nets despite weilding the power to do so.
But the Democrats, when backed into a corner by their failed policies, still sing Jimmy Crack Corn and Republicans don’t care.
Witness for the defense
But now comes the out-of-tune-with-Democrats, Paul Krugman version substituting “ruling elites” for Democrats, so as to lessen the blow to those he voted for:
I’m starting to have a sick feeling about prospects for American workers — but not, or not entirely, for the reasons you might think.
Yes, growth is slowing, and the odds are that unemployment will rise, not fall, in the months ahead. That’s bad. But what’s worse is the growing evidence that our governing elite just doesn’t care — that a once-unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal.
And I worry that those in power, rather than taking responsibility for job creation, will soon declare that high unemployment is “structural,” a permanent part of the economic landscape — and that by condemning large numbers of Americans to long-term joblessness, they’ll turn that excuse into dismal reality.
Nobel prize winners can be quite dense, slow learners. Paul, high structural unemployment also means high structural welfare and food stamp victims dependent on Democrats for sustenance.
I realized the intent of my fellow Democrats since at least the early 90s when they opposed continuing Reagan-like tax rate cuts that triggered rising tides of federal revenue and rising tides of the formerly poor into the middle class.
Caring, for me meant leaving Dems for the GOP
I cared about the poor and middle class so much that I finally left the party of dependence (as well weakness on defense and abortion strength against the fetus) for the party that freed the slaves, opposed Jim Crow, defeated the Evil Empire, and saved the U.S. economy for Democrat misery indexes.
Unlike my Democrat friends, the GOP judge the hearts of Democrats just because they don’t favor conservative policies, but maybe we should. After all, by the Democrats own present “caring” criteria, one can’t care about the poor unless one favors at least 99 weeks of unemployment compensation. This means that Democrats that kept maximum benefits limited to 26 weeks from the 1930s through 2008 never cared!
For the record, the overwhelming majority of Republicans favor the major programs of the safety net for the truly needy and have, at least since Reagan coined the term in 1980. I favor the 99 week extension whether paid for by the stimulus funds or not.
My question for ObamaDems is why they didn’t care enough for the poor to spend all the flawed stimulus money last year, rather than save some to put up “Recovery Act” signs as part of the get out the vote drive this year while unemployment has risen? The question answers itself.
But let us be clear, even while we judge Republicans and Democrats by their actual actions over the last 40 years, rather than attempt “heart” readings:
One can care about the poor and have been opposed to the creation of the safety net, much less to its exponential expansion since the New Deal.
Heartless Eleanor, Jack and Dick?
Do Democrats know that Eleanor Roosevelt and then Sens. Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy toured the nation in the 1950s trying to get their colleagues to drastically scale back the Depression era programs given that the Great Depression had been over for nearly a decade?
Did JFK and the feminist former First Lady “care” enough?
I believe that most Democrats I know, care about the poor. I also believe most are economic illiterates, misguided in their policy prescriptions, and useful idiots to their liberal leaders. Their policies cause capital to go on strike, killing existing jobs and those that would have been created absent their assaults on business creation. The misguided policies include those of so-called conservative budget deficit-hawk Democrats that merely seek to raise taxes to support their gargantuan, oppressive government. They seek to cut nothing except job producers’ incomes.
But I also believe that many of the leaders of the ObamaDems care more for garnering power via victim-dependent voters than about actually increasing their prosperity and I agree with David Horowitz that the GOP needs to be willing to wield the moral card against Democrats.
Given Democrats’ continuing advocacy of economic policies that have been proven failures since at least the mid-60s, I consider the burden of proof to be on Democrats to prove they care about the poor and middle class.
Got any evidence Democrats?
Paul Krugman is now a witness for the GOP.
Trial Date: Election Day 2010.
Mike DeVine
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
Charlotte Observer, The Minority Report and Examiner.com archives
www.devinelawvista.com
Week Two Our annual sports weekly that runs during College Football season returned for its fourth year last Thursday when our Gamecocks half whipped Southern Mississippi as the Braves and Phillies battle for supremacy in the National League East. Cockstradamus returned from his Azores sabbatical to correctly pick 19 of...
