Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Is the prospect for social unrest heating up?



Marshall Auerbeck wrote an excellent piece that discusses the prospect or, perhaps likelihood, of rising social unrest.

Here is an excerpt:

"The disturbing thing about Obama taking the Rubinite path is that he now leaves government exposed as the lightening rod for everyone’s problems, rather than the solution. If he had taken a more populist tack, more public anger could have been directed at the right people from the start — as occurred under FDR’s administration.

Extending the Bush/Paulson bailout policies (and, indeed, expanding them) and ignoring the needs of the productive economy have largely discredited government fiscal activism. Obama no longer appears willing to let the fiscal position of the federal budget grow as needed to meet current challenges.

When one adds extreme income imbalances and a comparatively weak social safety net (in contrast to those supposedly horrible “socialists” in Europe), then one has the makings of major social unrest, manifesting itself most recently in town hall meetings across the country this August."

Read the entire article here.

3 comments:

Scott C. said...

Mike,

The corporate driven mainstream media (Rush, Dobbs & Fox News) has been bashing the stimulus & Obama's health reforms for months non-stop. The MSM has about 90% of the airtime: subtracting commercials, Limbaugh at 2hrs*20M listeners/day, simiilar wingnut radio ~8 hrs.*10M listeners/day, Fox cable around 12 hrs.*6M viewers/day etc. Pro or at least non-anti Obama outlets are about 2hrs.*1M viewers on MSNBC & 10 minutes *20M viewers/day on the 3 networks. The 10 minutes is the total political/economic news on the networks in one day after you subtract the Britanny & Octo mom updates. Let's add your appearances on Cashin In for the good side in but you get my point.

This one-sided deluge has now convinced >50% of the public that:
1) The stimulus failed, therefore national healthcare will fail.
2) Government spending appears in the GDP equation with a negative sign.
3) Obama's main interest in medicine is in promoting euthanasia.

I'm a great believer in America's form of representative government, however, and it - which represents us - will win out in September over the wingnuts, the corporate types guiding them, and the repugnitans we fired last November. Healthcare will pass. In the meantime I'll stay fully invested and watch Cavuto, Battapaglia, Dobbs, wingnut radio goldbugs etc. loose their shirts if they actually invest like they talk.

Jersey Kid

mike norman said...

Jersey kid cuts through with clarity! Well said!!

Matt Franko said...

Mike,
Marshall also writes: "Could tax non-compliance be far behind? Certainly, it is a possibility (although one we would certainly NOT advocate),..." From my ground level view, this is starting to happen, not rampant...but multiples of say 2006-2007 levels. Resp,