Good News - a new post! Bad News - it's politics...as usual

Sorry dear readers, for, well, the past, present and future. The Past, because I haven’t posted here in weeks and weeks, and The Present and Future, because I am going to start doing again the thing that a few of you requested that I stop doing: Posting too many politically-themed entries.

But with it, I’ll make a promise to get back on track posting some of the more non-political items of interest as well, more frequently. I’ll also reference something else one of you, OK, it was Laurie, requested, which is that I post some of my past Brushes With Greatness, as David Letterman used to call them. Times I ran into someone, incredible though it may seem, even more famous than me!

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So here’s my first post of any kind for awhile, but skip over it if politics don’t interest thee:

From today’s WaPo (Washington Post):

Quote of the day: "Our leaders put us at a disadvantage by taxing, borrowing and regulating like it’s 1999." -- Sen. Rubio, in announcing his candidacy for President.

CHAIT: Actually, the government was running a surplus in 1999. "In 1999, the economy was booming, yielding wage gains up and down the income spectrum that the subsequent Bush recovery never produced. The government was not, in fact, borrowing at all, but instead running a large surplus. The best criticism of that era’s economic policies is that both parties giddily acquiesced to deregulation of the financial industry that played a role in the crash eight years later. But that criticism represents the opposite of Rubio’s charge that government engaged in excessive regulation. The line is perfectly emblematic of Rubio’s worldview, which axiomatically associates prosperity with a reduction in taxes and borrowing and regulation, with no need to reconcile its assumptions with real-world results."

And as I’ve pointed out in comments below, although there are those who still are doing contortions trying to blame Dems for the housing crash, it is widely acknowledged that President Bush could have changed the policies that led to them with the stoke of a pen, or a simple change of philosophy communicated to his HUD Secretary, who championed the approaches along with members of both parties right up until the crash.

But more importantly, it wasn’t even the loose mortgage policies that primarily caused the crash. It was, as noted above, the deregulation of the financial industry, and the associated excesses of Wall Street greed, but most of all, Bush and Cheney cutting billions in revenue through tax breaks to the wealthy, while spending trillions on unnecessary wars.