photo: smugpuppies via Flickr
Corporatist Democrats employ a very different strategy to justify schemes that rip off the public, using their own emotional buzzwords and talking points.
Here’s how corporatist Democrats justify the fight for corporate welfare:
Progressives: We think it is important the everyone has access to X (where X could be education, basic health care, clean water, etc…). We should find the best, most cost effective way for the government to assure people have access to X.
Corporatist Democrats: We agree. We have come up with a plan.
We will provide massive tax cuts to companies that make X. We will have another set of companies get subsidies to buy X and serve as X holding companies. In turn they trade X on government exchanges to local region middlemen that get exclusive no-bid long-term government contracts. These companies will then sell X to the local private X distributors that in turn receive huge infusions of cash through public-private partnerships. The local X distributors will receive subsidy money for every individual they serve. The government will also insure every company against 95% of any loses they may experience.
By giving companies a mere $10 billion through these public-private partnerships we can make sure people in need get $2 billion of X!
Progressives: This a horrible idea and we oppose it! Why would we give so much government money to so many private corporate middlemen? Why do we need this inefficient Rube Goldberg system?
Corporatist Democrats: Our plan is great. It follows the models based on the best free market economic science, based on studies that just so happen to be paid for by the companies that will benefit from our plan.
Progressives: We already have this working government program in this country where the government simply provide X directly to the people who need it; we can point to similar working programs in other countries. We know from real world examples it could do the whole thing at half the cost and help many more people.
Corporatist Democrats: People need X, our plan will get people some of what they need; if you’re against this you must hate poor people. Why do you hate the working class?
Progressives: We don’t hate poor people. We want to help people but this scheme you’ve proposed to support X would waste 80% of government expenditures on corporate welfare.
Corporatist Democrats: So you oppose the government spending $10 billion to help people? You must want poor people to die. That’s it, you want people to die. We bet you never really cared because you already have access to X.
Progressives: We just oppose the incredibly corrupt nature of this plan.
Corporatist Democrats: Some members from some minority communities will technically benefit from this plan. Since you oppose this plan that probably means you hate those minorities.
Progressives: We having been working for years to make sure people get help; we just don’t believe help for regular people should require big corporations to be allowed to skim billions off the top.
Look, there are literally dozens of alternative proposals we support that would ensure nearly 100% of what the government spends actually goes to help those in need. We just oppose massive ineffective government waste.
Corporatist Democrats: There can be no alternative. If we don’t adopt this exact plan we promise to give up on trying to help people get X for a generation. This will be a great progressive victory or a massive defeat! Do you hate victory, progressivism or poor people?
Progressives: There are always other options. There is nothing progressive about corporate welfare. There is no victory in giving a huge amount of government money to the wealthy so working class people get a fraction of help they need.
Corporatist Democrats: You just don’t understand the complexity of political realities. Stakeholders, filibuster, center right nation, starter home to be build on latter, median voters, electability, big tent, blah blah blah.
Progressives: We understand the political realities. The filibuster is not written in stone it can be eliminated by a simple majority of senators. More importantly we designed our alternatives so that they would poll better with the voting public than your plan.
You just want this plan because it will enrich companies that will give you large campaign donations and lucrative private sector jobs after you retire from politics.
Corporatist Democrats: We previously thought you were some naive lefty purists but now we see you are probably a poor people-hating secret Republican.
It’s always us versus Republicans. It is blue team against red team. Since you are not with us you must in reality be secret conservatives who all along trying to undermine our great liberal victory to help poor people.
No comments:
Post a Comment