Insider's perspective

This piece by a 30 year veteran of Washington political life, mostly seems to reveal what happens to an individual who makes a career out of serving politicians and in the process becomes thoroughly and justifiably cynical about the whole Washington scene. This recently retired author was a staff person for GOP committees for 18 years and his bio does not reveal for whom he worked the other 12 years.  In any event he is a GOP apostate and what's more has no great love for the Democrat Party either. While he definitely identifies many of the activities and policies of both parties that over the years have frustrated true conservatives, overall he seems personally more inclined to big government solutions than the smaller government mantra of the Tea Party and bonafide conservatives. He almost comes off as a closet liberal during all those years he worked for the Republicans.  Mostly his screed reviles corporations and their supposedly negative impact on the middle class and he assails with a vengeance the marriage of the Religious Right and the Republican Party.   His anti war position sounds a lot like Norm Chomsky or maybe even Michael Moore, especially since he seems to be against every war since WWII.  Again there is not a lot of context for these positions to judge where exactly he may be coming from. What's missing in his anti-Republican, anti establishment screed is any substantive discussion of the larger political and economic thinking that motivates either or both parties.  And, he gives no due to the rise of the Tea Party, arguably a movement that surfaced precisely because of the abuses of the system he articulates.  Maybe all the oversights are because he believes nothing other than pragmatic venality is at work in Washington, or maybe because he doesn't have an underlying economic/political philosophy, or hasn't yet heard of the Tea Party.  In any case he does not provide his readers many insights in this regard.

Overall one has to wonder how someone can spend 30 years in a career,  most of it working with Republicans, suddenly experience an epiphany and then turn completely against those with whom and for whom he presumably fought the good fight all those years.  Either the guy is bi-polar or maybe he's looking for a new post retirement gig as a turncoat spokesperson on MSNBC or Huffington Post.  One also can speculate why he waited 30 years to come out of the closet as a liberal.  Oh wait, can't come out early, he's a career Washington insider who vests after 30 years with a cushy retirement plan paid for by all those dumb taxpayers who thought he might actually be doing something useful and that he believed in for his six-figure paycheck. Can't jeopardize that cushy retirement by speaking out early. A personal takeaway:  Get rid of two thirds of the useless federal programs that cause all those oversight committees this guy worked for and he and most of the rest of those Washington insiders could go out into the private sector, get real jobs creating real wealth.  This guy is a poster child for a smaller, less intrusive, less dead weight federal government.

LATimes's Michael Hiltzik

Michael Hiltzik writes two columns on economics each week for the LATimes.  He is a liberal pretty much aligned with the Democrat Party proscriptions for curing depression and recessions.  In today's column "Obama's push for jobs conjures up FDR's approach", Hiltzik endorses the Obama plan to increase government spending on the infrastructure and raising taxes on the wealthy, two major components of FDR's New Deal plan.  He also knocks Romney's recent announced plan as a "return to the Bush era".  In extolling the New Deal proscriptions, Hiltzik seems to have forgotten this revealing 1939 quote from Henry Morgenthau, a major player in the Roosevelt Administration as Secretary of the Treasury:

"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong … somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot."^[9]


Morgenthau was clearly frustrated by the fact that deficit spending by the government did nothing to reduce enemployment during the first 8 years of the Roosevelt Administration.  And yet, here we are in another recession/depression of a similar magnitude to the Great Depression of the '30's, and Hiltzik and the democrats are calling for the same failed policies Morganthau condemned.  


Hiltzik's book, "The New Deal: A Modern History, is due out sometime this week.  Whaddaya want to bet it doesn't include this Morganthau quote?