Clueless Ezra Klein: Big Government Programs Not Progressive, Just 'Good Policy'

NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Ezra Klein has unwittingly offered a telling insight into the liberal mind. On Morning Joe today, the liberal Washington Post blogger actually argued that quintessential big government programs like massive involvement in housing finance and the imposition of a carbon tax aren't "progressive" but simply "good policy."

Joe Scarborough pushed back saying Klein's notion of "good policy" was only so for those who share his liberal mindset.

View the video here.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Can Klein really believe this? He argues things like the carbon tax aren’t controversial “progressive” policies, they’re just “good policy.” Ping to Today show list.

[Proud2BeRight]

Karl Marx: “I wish I had come up with that comment. It’s great.”

[ClearCase_guy]

Liberal Democrats believe in all of the mainstream, middle-of-the-road traditional American values -- you know:

Abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, government-run health care, high taxes, banning public displays of Christian faith, no guns, and amnesty for all illegal immigrants.

Mom and Applie Pie stuff. And who are we to disagree?

[Lazamataz]

He’s the creator of JourOlist, a group of media types who’s sole purpose was to gather together and synchronise their message, while promoting Communism and Obama.

[Lazlo in PA]

What would one expect from the 12 year old founder of Journolist? This child lives in a Liberal dreamland where reality never rears it's ugly head. I bet he still lives in his parents basement.

[LucianOfSamasota]

Klein was born and raised in Irvine, California, and went to school at University High School. He attended the University of California, Santa Cruz but later transferred to the University of California, Los Angeles, from which he graduated in 2005 with a B.A. in political science. While at UCLA, he applied to write for the Daily Bruin but was rejected.

Klein is a middle child, raised in a Jewish family. Religiously, he now identifies as an agnostic. His father is a math professor, his mother an artist. - Wikipedia

A Godless 27 year old with a BA in political science...who could argue with these credentials?

[sickoflibs]

I have to agree with Ezra here, truly ‘progressive’ policies (as libs like Ezra define them) would be more like what Mao Zedong did with the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward in China, or what the Khmer Rouge did with the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

Obama wasnt able to get those policies through the Democrat Senate but they are still on Pelosi’s list.

[Old Sarge]

Klein is a middle child, raised in a Jewish family. Religiously, he now identifies as an agnostic.

Unless of course he wants to play the race card, then watch how fast he self-identifies as a Jew.

[Liz]

THANKS FOR THE PING.

[Liz]

Libs love Big Govt b/c it makes THEM powerful..... and the citizenry subservient. Big Govt also gives libs lotsa tax money for themselves.

Candidate Barack Obama told us on the campaign trail: " The problem is, that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents, # 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome so that now we have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back, $30,000 for every man woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic."

REALITY CHECK Obama presided over the biggest political heist in US history. The Obamanations (insiders and politicians) sucked up trillions under the guise of inheriting the "Bush financial crisis."

THIS MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD Obama COS Rahm Emanuel "suddenly" discovered he wanted to be Chicago's mayor---the little turn went before the mics and announced his campaign "raised $10 million in just a few weeks." Rahm also controlled the US Treasury as COS.

================================================

What the so-called "collapse" of the banking system wrought under Obama:

FOURTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS Behind The Real Size of the Bailout; A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout of Wall Street
SOURCE motherjones.com
Mon Dec. 21, 2009 12:23 PM PST

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billion—the size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets.

To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart at web site. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle:

Treasury Department bailout programs
(Remember that Obama's Treasury Dept was controlled by his then-COS Rahm Emanuel---a G/S lobbyist in the WH)

Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].

Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokerages—as much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].

TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury has made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid.

Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury has bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets."

GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion ---SNIP---.

LONG READ---go to web site to read more and checkout the shocking financial charts.

SOURCE http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/behind-real-size-bailout

[Liz]

So how do Big Govt pols get their hands on govt money?....besides lucrative earmarks and insider trading.

=================================================

HSBC Accused of Laundering Billions of Dollars
WorldNetDaily.com / Dr. Jerome Corsi / FR Posted by Dr. Thorne

NEW YORK – A former employee of HSBC in New York has 1,000 pages of customer account records he claims are evidence of an international money-laundering scheme involving hundreds of billions of dollars by the global banking giant, which reportedly is under investigation by a U.S. Senate committee. John Cruz has delivered to WND customer account records he says he pulled from the HSBC computer system before he was fired. Cruz was terminated Feb. 17, 2010, after two years at HSBC for “poor performance,” but he contends he was let go because senior management didn’t want to him to pursue his personal investigation (Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...

==============================================

ANALYSIS The US Govt bailout of AIG angered many. AIG tried to put a positive spin on post-bailout posh parties, bonuses, more bailouts and more losses. What is HSBC’s relationship to AIG? How much did HSBC receive from AIG?

According to Business Week, HSBC received $3.5 Billion (USD) from AIG (reported in Business Week article).

HSBC USA is an AIG counter-party. While HSBC did not directly take bailout money AIG certainly did. Through insurance and reinsurance deals with AIG, HSBC USA profited nicely from the AIG bailout.

After one write-off, a second $3.5 Billion write off for HSBC would have hurt.....had AIG not received taxpayer bailouts.

It was super-easy to launder some of the bailout $$$billions for insiders.

SOURCE: hsbcwatch.com

[ryan71]

Liberals, progressives, socialists and communists don't want to be called liberals, progressives, socialists or communists.

Do you think they know they're wrong? Sure.

[vetvetdoug]

Journolist. Period. No credibility.

[rollo tomasi]

I guess the programs are good policies if snobbish elitist want to create a dependent class in order to feel perpetual orgasms at the thought of controlling people.

Klein is a wannabe plantation owner who lust at being in a position to enslave individuals. Klein is a pathetic creature.

"History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened." --Ben Franklin

[G Larry]

“good” =
- Forcing lending institutions to make bad loans to unqualified buyers?,
- Rewarding managers of Freddic Mac & Fannie Mae for bundling and pawning these fraudulant loans to unsuspecting investors?,
- Bribing scholastic and scientific institutions into manipulating data to support fraudulant claims regarding man’s impact on the environment?
Thanks Ezra, but only Satan could have a more twisted view of “good”.

[BookmanTheJanitor]

A Godless 27 year old with a BA in political science...who could argue with these credentials?

sounds like a sound economic background with a ton of real world business experience. (extreme snark filled sarcasm)

fun side story - we once rented one of our apartment units to a man who was the financial "expert" columnist at a mid size paper. We eventually has to evict him for not paying his rent due to lack of funds.

[andy58-in-nh]

As a Jewish guy with a BA in Political Science, I can relate.

Specifically, I can relate to the fact that a BA in Political Science ain't worth cab fare.

Me? I got a job, raised a family, trusted in God, and worked for twenty years in the Dreaded Private Sector before even daring to spout off about world affairs. Just like millions of other Americans who aren't snot-nosed little Brats With Blogs who think Progressivism is "good policy" because it short-circuits the necessity of hard work and achievement in favor of demands for government-sanctioned theft programs.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

SCARBOROUGH:

Ezra, you're not helping me at all here. You're making it even harder for me to defend Mitt Romney.

Translation: "It's so unfair to ask a media guy pretending to be conservative, to defend a politician pretending to be conservative."

[Ann Archy]

He’s not Clueless, he’s EVIL. My GAYDAR is off the charts.