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Shuttering most of the Federal Government has been GOP platform since 1994 Contract With America.

jacobolus 9y ago
Reagan’s whole schtick was that government is inherently useless. e.g. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I'm here to help.’” “One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.” “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.” etc., and unfortunately this rhetoric was very effective as advertising/propaganda, noticeably shifting public attitudes. His platform was largely about cutting taxes, deregulation, privatizing public institutions and infrastructure, reducing or eliminating government services, ...
- username223 9y ago
  > "Government is like a baby..." ... so let's starve it to death, because that's what you normally do with babies. I always knew that Reagan was a dementia victim, but not that he was so bad at metaphors.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    The whole “starve it until it can be drowned in a bathtub” thing is from Grover Norquist, whose anti-tax pledge has been signed by almost all Republican lawmakers for decades. Norquist was a Reaganite though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan,_Abramoff,_Norquist.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan,_Abramoff,_Norquis...
- hodgesrm 9y ago
  Not sure you can blame the rhetoric alone as such sayings have been around for a long time. viz. Mark Twain: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." p.s., As far as I can tell he actually wrote this, which is somewhat unusual for such things.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    Reagan’s policies were aligned with this rhetoric... or at least, the rhetoric was used as justification for the policies, which e.g. shifted the tax burden from the rich toward the middle class by cutting taxes on income (in particular slashing the top marginal rates) and inheritance, hiking payroll taxes, and using Social Security money to pay for general federal expenditures.
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > “One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.” This is hilarious. A rehash of Friedmans' if the state had monopoly of the sahara, it would run out of sand in 5 years. On the case in hand, equifax is a not a poster case for advocating for more regulation.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    > On the case in hand, equifax is a not a poster case for advocating for more regulation. Not following. Why not?
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Equifax is not the result of a free market or lack of regulation, its a company that subsists in an artificial high barrier to entry space, where strange things happen like equifax is not liable for the mistakes it makes (which are grotesque and frequent). Equifax receives government protection, not scrutiny, so more regulation means more protection..
      - Slansitartop 9y ago
        In what world would more competition and less regulation cause Equifax (or a company like it) to do a better job securing Americans data? Few, if any, of its important customers were harmed.
        conanbatt 9y ago
        Equifax has had a terrible rep as a service long before the hack. Even john oliver had a segment on it before the hack happened, on how an egregious number of reports are grossly innacurate (like 40%, i cant remember). That has to be bad even for the banks: bad credit reports equals bad loans. Regulation tends to decrease the number of players and increase the size of the incumbents, particularly because it puts requirements that can only be done with big bucks.
- MisterBastahrd 9y ago
  That was a man who cried incessantly about the evils of government spending while wiping his tears with the money before throwing it down a black hole. One of the greatest bullshit artists in the history of American politics.
DFHippie 9y ago
Yes, the old Contract On America is finally bearing fruit.
r00fus 9y ago
Better understood as the "Contract on America" (complete with crosshairs). What do you expect after giving the CIA decades of experience to kneecap other countries democracies and economies - they'll put that valuable knowhow to use internally eventually for their own profit.

Reagan’s whole schtick was that government is inherently useless. e.g. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I'm here to help.’” “One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.” “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.” etc., and unfortunately this rhetoric was very effective as advertising/propaganda, noticeably shifting public attitudes. His platform was largely about cutting taxes, deregulation, privatizing public institutions and infrastructure, reducing or eliminating government services, ...

username223 9y ago
> "Government is like a baby..." ... so let's starve it to death, because that's what you normally do with babies. I always knew that Reagan was a dementia victim, but not that he was so bad at metaphors.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  The whole “starve it until it can be drowned in a bathtub” thing is from Grover Norquist, whose anti-tax pledge has been signed by almost all Republican lawmakers for decades. Norquist was a Reaganite though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan,_Abramoff,_Norquist.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reagan,_Abramoff,_Norquis...
hodgesrm 9y ago
Not sure you can blame the rhetoric alone as such sayings have been around for a long time. viz. Mark Twain: "It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." p.s., As far as I can tell he actually wrote this, which is somewhat unusual for such things.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  Reagan’s policies were aligned with this rhetoric... or at least, the rhetoric was used as justification for the policies, which e.g. shifted the tax burden from the rich toward the middle class by cutting taxes on income (in particular slashing the top marginal rates) and inheritance, hiking payroll taxes, and using Social Security money to pay for general federal expenditures.
conanbatt 9y ago
> “One way to make sure crime doesn't pay would be to let the government run it.” This is hilarious. A rehash of Friedmans' if the state had monopoly of the sahara, it would run out of sand in 5 years. On the case in hand, equifax is a not a poster case for advocating for more regulation.
- r00fus 9y ago
  > On the case in hand, equifax is a not a poster case for advocating for more regulation. Not following. Why not?
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Equifax is not the result of a free market or lack of regulation, its a company that subsists in an artificial high barrier to entry space, where strange things happen like equifax is not liable for the mistakes it makes (which are grotesque and frequent). Equifax receives government protection, not scrutiny, so more regulation means more protection..
    - Slansitartop 9y ago
      In what world would more competition and less regulation cause Equifax (or a company like it) to do a better job securing Americans data? Few, if any, of its important customers were harmed.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        Equifax has had a terrible rep as a service long before the hack. Even john oliver had a segment on it before the hack happened, on how an egregious number of reports are grossly innacurate (like 40%, i cant remember). That has to be bad even for the banks: bad credit reports equals bad loans. Regulation tends to decrease the number of players and increase the size of the incumbents, particularly because it puts requirements that can only be done with big bucks.
MisterBastahrd 9y ago
That was a man who cried incessantly about the evils of government spending while wiping his tears with the money before throwing it down a black hole. One of the greatest bullshit artists in the history of American politics.

DFHippie 9y ago

Yes, the old Contract On America is finally bearing fruit.

r00fus 9y ago

Better understood as the "Contract on America" (complete with crosshairs). What do you expect after giving the CIA decades of experience to kneecap other countries democracies and economies - they'll put that valuable knowhow to use internally eventually for their own profit.