THIS MODERN WORLD

A little something I put together this morning. (Hat tip to Crooks & Liars for the original video).

If you haven’t signed up for Michael Moore’s newsletter, now’s the time — for the next two weeks, Michael and his web team will be giving away one signed copy of my new book each day to new people on the list.

Today’s the official pub date for Glenn Greenwald’s book, How Would a Patriot Act. Glenn was kind enough to share an advance copy of the manuscript with me, but I didn’t get a chance to read it closely until last week. Very short review: this is an important book which lays out the Administration’s crimes against the Constitution with methodical precision. Well worth reading, which should come as no surprise to anyone who reads Glenn’s blog.

Dean Baker is an economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. People who closely followed Bush’s attempts to dismantle Social Security last year know Baker may have done more than any one person to stop it.

Now Baker has written a book all progressives should read: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

For decades the media (and conservatives) have pushed a particular framing of political views on the economy: conservatives favor free market policies, while progressives want the government to intervene in the market. In fact, The Conservative Nanny State explains, this is completely untrue: conservatives are strongly anti-free market. They depend on the government to make the wealthiest people in America even more stupendously rich.

As Baker shows, this is the case essentially across the board. Conservatives push trade, monetary, tax and intellectual property policies that get the government deeply involved in the economy. The only difference between them and progressives is that conservatives want the government to help Paris Hilton, while progressives want the government to help regular people.

The Conservative Nanny State is short and easy to read, and requires no special background in economics. It’s also available for free as an e-book at its website, or for $6.91 as a paperback. (For Baker’s ideas on how copyright law can be overhauled to benefit writers, musicians, artists and everyone else in the internet age, see Chapter 4.)

What’s really amazing is that conservatives have gotten away with yelling about “free markets” for so long. Of course, they’re the same people who spent years screaming about Iraq’s terrifying WMD, and look how well that’s turned out.

Heh. The President is going to give a major primetime address on Monday to try to convince the public that, four and a half years after 9/11, he finally cares about illegal immigration. It’s sorta quaint how the White House still thinks the public likes Bush enough to sit through one of his speeches and respects him enough to believe what he’s saying. It’s been a long, long time since he was a speech away from reversing his political fortunes. Too little, too late, Junior.

The big idea that’s apparently important enough to interrupt 24 to tell us about is a plan to deploy whatever National Guard troops the President can scrape together to help secure the border. This might be a good idea if illegal immigration was a sudden crisis, but the immigration “problem” has been brewing for more than thirty years. It’s not like the President can just pretend this snuck up on him. Besides, we already have an agency that patrols the border….they’re the border patrol. If you’re responding to a semi-permanent security situation on the border, you should devote more resources to that agency, not misuse the National Guard again.

Regardless of the merits of the Presidents proposals or their popularity with the public, as someone who’s firmly opposed to this latest bit of pandering, I see very little to worry about. After all, if we learned anything during Hurricane Katrina, it’s that the President’s promises to deploy National Guardsmen are worthless. Just like his pre-hurricane assurances to Louisiana state and local officials, George Bush just wants to give everyone the impression that he’s on top of things, but he doesn’t want to bother with paying attention to a crisis or taking any responsibility whatsoever. The only “crisis” the President is concerned about is the likelihood of Republicans losing the House. So on Monday night, he might give a cute little speech, but we all know it’s not going to mean a damn thing.