BWHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHHA!!!
MAN OVERBOARD!!!
Surrender Dorothy!!!
First the in-fighting; then the pie fights between Mittens and Palin, Steele and Rush, and Dick and Powell; then incompetence: Teabagg'n, (listen tours); and now, further defections and resignations.
Long time conservative icon, Richard Posner is waving the white flag of defeat and cutting and running from Palin and Joe the Plumber.
And for desert, he depressingly questions his life's work in service of unfettered capitalism.
Hahahahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahahah!
Oh, the Schadenfreude!
Richard A Posner has been a long time federal judge – in fact the first judge appointed to the bench by Saint Ronnie in 1981. Even before Robert Bork and Scalia.
He made his bones providing legal arguments to supporty the "maximize shareholder price" crowd led by Milton Freidman and FA Hayack.
So naturally he supported any corporate merger because the economic efficiency would reduced consumer costs, never mind those anti-trust laws and regulations designed increase competition, innovation, and prevent companies from becoming TOO BIG to fail.
Similarly, he opposed discrimination laws as being too costly.
No. Really.
Employment discrimination--discrimination on racial grounds, of course, but also on grounds of ethnicity, religion, sex, disability, and age. We also had a caste system in the South until relatively recently.
So do we need discrimination laws, or can competition be relied on to eliminate discrimination?
The answer I would give is that competition cannot be relied upon to eliminate discrimination, but that, even so, laws against discrimination may not be desirable on balance, at least from the standpoint of economic efficiency, as distinct from making a political or moral statement.
Source
This is particularly disheartening, considering that Posner is Jewish. As Al Franken wrote in Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, his family was solid Republican, even voting for Hoover over FDR, but they switched to the Democratic in 1964 over Goldwater’s opposition to Civil Rights, quoting his father, "we’re Jews, son, and Jews can’t be against Civil Rights."
Alas, while puke-worthy, he was the perfect Reaganite.
But on Sunday the free-market casino manager cashed-in his chips.
First, the he decries the take over by the religious right:
My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising.
Then he hammers the Bush/Cheney regime and in particular calls out Palin and Mr. Plumber by name:
The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold:
- the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives;
- the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming;
- the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government;
- a continued preoccupation with abortion;
- and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.
By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.
Woo Hoo Hooo!
Lastly, he ends by expressing doubts in his GOD, namely the Invisible Hand of market efficiency.
And then came the financial crash last September and the ensuing depression. These unanticipated and shocking events have exposed significant analytical weaknesses in core beliefs of conservative economists concerning:
- the business cycle;
- macroeconomy generally;
- Friedmanite monetarism;
- and the efficient-market theory of finance have taken some sharp hits.
Source
Now how ya like them economic apples?
Well, nothing like a landslide to shock a person into deeply needed self examination.
Watching the wingnuts eat their own -- Priceless.
Dosvedonya, Comrade Posner.