Rand Paul defends tea party but fails...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sen. Rand Paul today issued a statement regarding the current mud-slinging and finger-pointing toward the Tea Party for the U.S. credit downgrade.
"Blaming the Tea Party for America's debt crisis and downgrade is like blaming the fireman for fires.
"The Tea Party has been fighting for a serious solution that would rescue our finances through immediate spending cuts, spending caps and most importantly, a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. With the support of the Tea Party, I offered the only solution that could have prevented our downgrade with our Cut, Cap and Balance plan.
"While Democrats would like to lay blame on the Tea Party for the current economic failure, it is their President who has failed in leadership, failed to lower unemployment, failed to rescue our economy, failed to prevent a downgrade of our debt, and failed to control spending."
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This is a statement Rand Paul put out and it enforces what I've always said about him. He doesn't get it. He is wearing his dad's shoes but they don't fit. I do like Ron Paul and voted for him in the 2008 primaries.
I actually agree not to blame the tea party. I blame the politicians trying to placate them while also trying to placate the lobbyist that donate to their campaigns. Rand Paul would have been right to say "Don't blame the Tea Party, Blame the hawks who are pretending military spending isn't part of the budget." instead of blaming the Democrats.
The reason I like Ron Paul is he is an honest critic of both sides of the aisle. Ron Paul actually thinks about the issues. Rand Paul seems to just say what he thinks people who like his father want to hear. Rand doesn't think who/what is actually to blame. Rand starts this press release with criticizing finger pointing then ends it with pointing his own finger at the Democrats.
Now there is something I disagree with both Ron and Rand about: how we define limited. The easiest way to condense it is that they would say "the government should do as little as possible" while I would add the word probably in there. The manifestation of that difference is that I don't believe in the market as dogmatically as they do.
I bring this up with the statement above is that Rand uses a sort of embarrassing example

"Blaming the Tea Party for America's debt crisis and downgrade

is like blaming the fireman for fires."

I point this out because the firefighters in this country were not always government run- they used to be privatized. The business model for these free market fire brigades is that the brigade that actually puts out the fire is the one that would be paid. The result was sometimes that two brigades would show up at the same time and get in a brawl with each other while the building continued to burn.

Now it wasn't the fault of the firefighters that the fire was started but it was their fault that the building burned down. Firefighters are actually the perfect example of the divide between the left and right.

If you live in California today, you can buy private fire protection, and your house will not burn down in wildfires. The private company will cover your house in retardant foam and be completely safe while all of your neighbors without the service have all their houses burn down.

Someone right leaning hears this story as a testament to the free market. Fire departments run by the government can not protect someone's house like that. And once someone is paying for such a service they start to wonder why the government is taking their money to pay for crappy government run fire protection.

The progressive left hears about private protection and  might think "Well that's nice for the people who can afford it but what about the rest of us?"

I haven't heard Rand Paul say it but the only right-leaning rebuttal to that question I have ever heard is that they believe in the generosity of Americans. That seems to be too easy an answer after the government has been taking care of a social need that generosity never seemed to handle right before.

Default musings

I've been trying to make sense of this whole debt ceiling deal, but I'm failing too. I've tried to figure out what to say about it but nothing comprehensive strikes me. So I think I'll just make some bullet point style commentary:

*Republicans wanting to cut spending during a recession to balance the budget is like a family wanting to pay off the credit card by not feeding the kids. I understand that they think that the it is mostly the undeserving who are collecting from social programs but they themselves admit that there are no jobs. So why cut now?

*China has been making little pokes to undermine our currency for the last year (read previous posts). Threatening to default only helps that strategy. If international trade stop using the dollar we will be flooded with redundant currency.

*Creating a group of "super congress" with special budgetary powers is a dangerous precedent. I'm sure it will bite the Democrats in the ass.

*What leverage did the Republicans have? Their leader in the Senate said they wouldn't allow a default. There is a constitutional argument that they would have to raise the debt ceiling. We are effectively the only country in the world with a debt ceiling. What exactly was the threat?

*Why did Boehner declare vacation? You really think you deserve a break after the FUBAR you created?

I'm glad that it appears the public isn't falling for the gamesmanship. If this was just a philosophic difference the Republicans would have made their move when Bush was still in and they controlled the Senate in addition to the house. I know they are running scared of Tea Party challengers but they should have enough confidence in the fact that they made it this far not to worry about that.