A Great One! -- David Brooks vs. Progressives: Genteel Ignorance as Economic Warfare
on AlterNet By Richard (RJ) Eskow (Campaign for America's Future)
http://www.alternet.org/economy/david-brooks-vs-progressives-genteel-ignorance-economic-warfare?akid=10213.263688.lzudUv&rd=1&src=newsletter812204&t=5
(emphasis my own)
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March 20, 2013 |
There are jungle birds that can imitate human speech perfectly. Ever hear one sing a sad song? They can do it so beautifully that human listeners are moved to tears. The bird, on the other hand, has no idea what it's singing about.
David Brooks is like that bird. He may not understand economics or public policy, but his uninformed pronouncements have a music that moves Washington insiders. His misguided opinions are rendered in a prose voice that bespeaks mastery of a subject matter with which he is clearly unfamiliar. These uncomprehending arias may have comic-opera overtones, but they build a consensus for tragedy.
Brooks' latest column, "The Progressive Shift," which wages war on the Congressional Progressive Caucus' "Back to Work" budget -- and on mainstream economic thinking -- is a good example of the art.
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The CPC budget provides short-term stimulus spending to jump-start the economy. It also cuts the deficit more effectively than any Republican alternative (a fact which Brooks fails to mention) and it does so with real-world numbers, not Ryan hocus-pocus. The bottom line: Seven million jobs, followed by deficit reduction of $4.4 trillion.
If it seems bizarre, extreme, and unreasonable to characterize that as an attempt to massively expand government spending, that's because it is. Strip away the prose and Brooks' column is an uninformed, Fox-fueled rant with no more merit than the ravings of your blowhard uncle when he drinks too much at a holiday dinner and starts fulminating about "those damned socialists."
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