7 Responses to “Don’t Just Stand There, Do Something!”

1. Adam01, on September 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 am Said:

   Just so. Even if the situation is as dire as we are being led to believe, why would anyone who has been awake during the last 7 years could support this. Two of the most egregious sections of the proposal:

   Sec. 8. Review.
   Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

   Sec. 2. Review:

   (3) designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them;

   No accountability at all, and the ability to designate any financial institution, healthy or unhealthy, not just as temporarily being in some type of receivership (which I think I could reluctantly support) while it’s assets are liquidated, but the de facto nationalization of whatever institution strikes the Secretary of the Treasury’s fancy on any given day. Even if Paulson or his successor actually had some type of God-like wisdom, this is a terrible horrible no good very bad deal.

2. "Trust me, I’m an economist" « Upturned Earth || John Schwenkler, on September 23rd, 2008 at 11:49 am Said:

   [...] non-expert dissent.] No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI Leave a comment Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTMLallowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> [...]

3. Balloon Juice, on September 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm Said:

   [...] Time to break out the pitch forks, folks. [...]

4. jetan, on September 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm Said:

   Pitchforks, hell, Gibbets. The nonreviewability provisions alone are terrifying. Did they actually believe this would pass?

5. rawshark, on September 23rd, 2008 at 3:06 pm Said:

   ‘Did they actually believe this would pass? ‘

   Why wouldn’t they? Whoever votes against it faces the wrath of right wing radio and a radical and well funded conservative primary challenger in the next election.

6. JBraunstein, on September 23rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm Said:

   “The logic is the same: unless you favor some kind of state action that will mainly benefit the state (in terms of power) and those connected to it (in terms of wealth), you want to stand by and do nothing at all.”

   Daniel is sounding a lot like Bastiat lately!

   “More to the point, there is a presumption that action, even foolish, excessive action, is preferable to inaction”

   Didn’t you know Mr. Larison, that its always ‘better to be safe than sorry’? People are always prone to overreact rather than underreact. There is no fighting this impulse–even a call for restraint must be rhetorically dressed up as proactive to be persuasive. But you lose the argument anyway unless you cause people to reexamine what they assume to be “safe”.

   “Safe” is now closely associated with government interventionism and socialism. Seizing the narrative from the establishment requires we make a convincing case that the “safe” option is actually the “sorry” option. The fact that reality is a choice between “sorry” and “sorry-er” doesn’t make our job easy.

   People tend to overlook the negative consequences of government intervention when they identify/agree with the intention and the objective. The moral degeneracy of war is overlooked in a similar way. We musn’t get boxed into the rhetorical frame of government as implied rescuer. A reframing of the issue, i.e. “the government intervention itself is a crisis more damaging to our economy and standard of living than the problem it’s trying to alleviate. etc.” Should be pushed hard by those who know this to be the truth.

   The socialists are really coming out of the woodwork (have you ever heard the government referred to as “The Sovereign” before now?), using a very effective sales technique: the Aggressive Assumption. Widely utilized by idealogues and telemarketers everywhere, it limits the parameters of “acceptable” dialogue, and guides the conversation toward a pre-conceieved conclusion. “Only a whacko would dispute the need for intervention! You’re not a whacko, are you? You’re not, you say? Well, its settled then.”

   The only effective counter is to attack the assumption directly.

   We should know by now that vindication alone doesn’t afford any consideration by an establishment hostile to anything that might upset the status quo.

   If we are right about the nature of this crisis, and about our terrifying predictions for the country should this state of affairs continue, then we’re obligated as good citizens to kick down doors and bellow from the rooftops, metaphorically speaking.

7. The Sky Is Falling! (And We Must Prop It Up!) « Upturned Earth || John Schwenkler, on September 26th, 2008 at 3:33 am Said:

   [...] Such is the desperate refrain of the consensus-enforcing ideologue, and whether it’s Hilzoy or Presiden Bush or Bill O’Reilly who sings it, the desired effect is the same: to bury honest debate beneath a paralyzing fear of impending catastrophe; to demonize those who resist the impulsive rush to immediate action; to raise false dichotomies that stand in the way of sober analysis. That such ploys were, as Glenn Greenwald and Daniel Larison have pointed out, exactly the ones used to push us into war with Iraq, has either been forgotten or is of strange unimportance: the situation is dire and will only get worse, and so we must act decisively and do it now. Do what? Why this, of course! Why this? Because we must! Now fall in line; it’s time to be bipartisan. [...]

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