I’m less reflexively anti-Bush than many of my friends and family members,<\/p>\n
and I didn’t hate the State of the Union<\/b>. But the "compassionate"<\/p>\n
parts are disturbing—as a reflection of our political culture, if<\/p>\n
not of George W. personally. The two new domestic programs (addiction<\/p>\n
treatment and mentoring) combined will cost about one third of $1 billion<\/p>\n
a year. That’s one six hundredth of the average annual cost of the proposed<\/p>\n
tax cuts (if one assumes that the alternative minimum tax will be reduced,<\/p>\n
as everyone expects). Since we are running huge deficits, this $1 billion<\/p>\n
of new compassion is not actually spending; it’s borrowing against future<\/p>\n
generations. I don’t necessarily think that these particular programs<\/p>\n
should be larger than Bush has suggested; it’s just that a president should<\/p>\n
not be able to distract attention from major issues by proposing such<\/p>\n
tiny initiatives. (Clinton, of course, mastered this art under the tutelage<\/p>\n
of Dick Morris). As for the AIDS funding for Africa—it’s welcome.<\/p>\n
But we have a clear and unavoidable moral obligation to spend modest amounts<\/p>\n
of money to lengthen millions of human lives, so the self-congratulation<\/p>\n
that accompanied this announcement is annoying. Apparently, there was<\/p>\n
no prior consultation with African governments, so this was effectively<\/p>\n
manna from heaven. And there was no hint that maybe the high cost of drug<\/p>\n
cocktails results from patent laws in rich countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m less reflexively anti-Bush than many of my friends and family members, and I didn’t hate the State of the Union. But the "compassionate" parts are disturbing—as a reflection of our political culture, if not of George W. personally. The two new domestic programs (addiction treatment and mentoring) combined will cost about one third of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revitalizing-the-left"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4132\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}