
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
Sept. 9, 2011 / 10 Elul, 5771
Lean Forward? You First!
By
Jonah Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
During the recent GOP presidential debate, MSNBC ran self-promotional commercials for itself. That's OK; all networks do it. The Hebrew philosopher Hillel's famous line "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" applies for cable news networks, too. And given MSNBC's ratings, that wisdom is particularly poignant.
The long-running "Lean Forward" marketing campaign features different MSNBC hosts waxing poetic on the glories of government and liberalism. The ad they kept running during the debate features Rachel Maddow standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam. The spots are a widespread source of ridicule in conservative circles, mostly because they show Maddow on the precipice of the dam in an ad hectoring us all to "lean forward." You first, Ms. Maddow.
But the real joke of the commercial is the argument behind it. Maddow objects when "people tell us no, no, no we're not going to build it. No, no, no, America doesn't have any greatness in its future. America has small things in its future. Other countries have great things in their future. China can afford it. We can't." She replies to this chorus of strawmen, "You're wrong and it doesn't feel right to us and it doesn't sound right to us because that's not what America is." It's one of several ads equating American greatness with big infrastructure spending on the scale of the Hoover Dam.
The reason the ad is so funny is that nobody thinks liberals such as Maddow would support anything like the Hoover Dam today. The Hoover Dam is a marvel. But by today's green standards, it is a crime against nature. If you tried to build it, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace would be in court tomorrow blocking it, with Ms. Maddow cheering them on.
Indeed, look at all the activists attacking the proposed construction of an oil pipeline from Canada to the Texas coast. It would create thousands of construction jobs and yet liberals oppose it for the usual petrophobic reasons. Ironically, liberals love building highways and bridges, but loathe making it affordable to drive on them.
This is just a small example of the Catch-22 liberalism has found itself in. The left yearns to "go big" but it wants to do so through the extremely narrow routes it has created for itself. They say government must rush into this economic crisis like firemen into a burning building. But they also don't want to lighten the useless baggage the firemen must carry or remove the Byzantine obstacle course they've decreed the figurative firefighters must run through before getting to work.
Everyone in Washington should reread Jonathan Rauch's 1994 book "Demosclerosis," a term Rauch coined to describe "government's progressive loss of the ability to adapt." Thanks to the rise of interest-group liberalism, constituencies grow up around government programs and policies that do not benefit the general public. Obviously, these constituencies care more about their programs than the average voters do so they make up for their low numbers with high intensity. The mohair subsidy is the number one priority of only one group of Americans: recipients of mohair subsidies. More significantly, organized labor makes up a tiny fraction of the workforce, but dictates vast swaths of labor policy in this country.
As the number of interest groups claiming sovereignty over their own little slices of policy multiplies, government's maneuvering room shrinks.
Rauch compared the problem to the "hardening of the arteries, which builds up stealthily over many years." Before you know it, first responders to Hurricane Katrina have to undergo sensitivity training before they can save people from drowning and "shovel ready" green jobs require months of "prevailing wage" compliance paper-pushing and are too expensive anyway. Boston's Big Dig took two decades to build; the far more ambitious Hoover Dam, Maddow and company love, took four.
Look, I'm no Keynesian, but there should have been at least an economic sugar rush from the stimulus. There wasn't, in large part because government has lost its flexibility. We poured money down the same mostly clogged bureaucratic drain. When the last bit burbled away, we were told we must "invest" even more in infrastructure and education. We've been doing that for decades. In terms of spending, adjusted for inflation, the size of government has increased 50 percent over the last decade alone.
Who thinks we got anything like a positive return on that "investment"? Why didn't we? Because money isn't the problem, government is.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
To comment on JWR contributor Jonah Goldberg's column
click here.
include "/home/jwreview/public_html/t-ssi/jwr_squaread_300x250.php"; ?>
Jonah Goldberg Archives
© 2006 TMS
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|