W21st NYC's List: Ideology

• Judges are, of course, almost  without exception lawyers. If judges reflected the pool from which they were  selected based on politically neutral grounds like technical skill and  temperament, the bench might be expected to tilt left.

   

  But something else is going on.

• In the mature democracies of the West, there’s no longer any need for purges or  fatwas or book-burnings. Why waste bullets shooting artists when you can just  not pay them? Why bother banning books when nobody reads anyway, and the  national literature is so provincial, insular and narcissistic it poses no  troublesome questions?
• The only “free speech” that has any effect in a stable, well-run plutocracy is  the kind protected by Buckley vs. Valeo in the form of campaign contributions.

• But with the rise of birth control, household technology and women in the work  force, marriage became less about economics and more about love, as the  historian Stephanie Coontz said in her book, “Marriage, a History: From  Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.”

• Taken together, the Clean Air Act regulations issued during the Obama  administration have led to the creation of America’s first national policy for  combating global  warming and a fundamental reshaping of major sectors of the economy,  specifically auto manufacturing and electric utilities. The regulations could  ultimately shut down existing coal-fired power plants, freeze construction of  new coal plants and end demand for the nation’s most polluting fuel.

• But nowadays we simply won’t invest, even when the need is obvious and the  timing couldn’t be better. And don’t tell me that the problem is “political  dysfunction” or some other weasel phrase that diffuses the blame. Our inability  to invest doesn’t reflect something wrong with “Washington”; it reflects the  destructive ideology that has taken over the Republican Party.
• Corporations are earning huge profits, but are reluctant to invest in the face  of weak consumer demand, so they’re accumulating cash or buying back their own  stock. Banks are holding almost $2.7 trillion in excess  reserves — funds they could lend out, but choose instead to leave idle.
• And the mismatch between desired saving and the willingness to invest has kept  the economy depressed. Remember, your spending is my income and my spending is  your income, so if everyone tries to spend less at the same time, everyone’s  income falls.
• There’s an obvious policy response to this situation: public investment. We have  huge infrastructure needs, especially in water and transportation, and the  federal government can borrow incredibly cheaply
• But once the G.O.P. took control of the House, any chance of more money for  infrastructure vanished.
• And it’s all about ideology, an overwhelming hostility to government spending of  any kind. This hostility began as an attack on social programs, especially those  that aid the poor, but over time it has broadened into opposition to any kind of  spending, no matter how necessary and no matter what the state of the economy.
• And the result, as I said, is that America has turned its back on its own  history. We need public investment; at a time of very low interest rates, we  could easily afford it. But build we won’t.

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