Fitzsimon File

An agenda to ignore

Raleigh's leading market fundamentalist think tank has come up with another document that policymakers ought to ignore, unless they want to read it to learn what not to do. It is the group's biennial policy agenda and virtually every section is filled with all sorts of questionable ideas.

Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch explores the ramifications of the recommendations about Medicaid in his latest Weekly Briefing.

The plan would eliminate Smart Start, the widely praised and recognized early childhood program launched by Governor Jim Hunt, as well at More at Four, Governor Mike Easley's initiative to help at-risk kids.  There's a call to sell the state ports, abandon any notion of public transit, and set up a voucher system for education, which would destroy public schools.

The "Agenda for Disaster 2008" would ignore the proposals from the state's commission on climate change because the market fundamentalists don't believe there's a problem. The agenda would stop requiring health insurance companies to cover mammograms and mental health treatment and end Health Choice, the state's program that provides health care for children in low-income families.

Other lowlights include a recommendation to resist smart growth planning initiatives because the think tankers believe they somehow increase crime, a call to abandon efforts to address the role of big money in elections, and of course shrink government and cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes, no matter the affect on people's live in North Carolina.

The anti-government and tax suggestions come despite a chart included in the report that shows that state and local taxes combined are at exactly the same level as they were in 1988 as a percentage of personal income.

It's quite a report, taken as a whole. The solution to almost every problem facing the state is to programs that help poor and working poor families, including their children, and turning virtually everything over to the perfect and holy free market, presumably to go back to the days when there was no safety net or universal education and no thought about the effect on the environment of decisions made by corporations.

The report is actually called "Agenda 2008," but that must be a typo. It was supposed to be "Agenda 1908."

Roving into hypocrisy

Finally, the most interesting quote of the week comes from the national frenzy of John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. Republican talking heads have been furiously defending her against charges that she is far too inexperienced to be vice-president as she has been governor for less than two years and before that was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of less than 10,000 people.

Karl Rove is among the defenders of Palin and repeatedly brushes off suggestions that she lacks the experience to be on the ticket. But progressive blogs and programs like the Daily Show are reminding voters what Rove said just a few weeks ago on Face the Nation  about the possibility of Barack Obama selecting Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as his running mate.

"With all due respect again to Governor Kaine, he's been a governor for three years…he was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it's smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; north Las Vegas or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town. So if he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice where he said, `You know what? I'm really not, first and foremost, concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States?"

Does that mean McCain is not concerned about Palin being capable of being president? If Richmond with a population of 200,000 people is the 105^th largest city in the country, wonder where Wasilla, Alaska ranks in population?

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 11:54 am and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.