Tag: David Brooks

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Blame the Kids?

National Service, David Brooks , Mayor Rahm Emanuel , illustration, children, brick wall, illustration

Why is it when some politicians or pundits get a brilliant idea about how to make the country better, involving (of course) making people do as the government dictates, it only applies to other people?

Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist and Times-styled conservative David Brooks bemoaned the electorate’s disunity due to the unprecedented unpopularity of Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton: “We could have a winner at 42 percent. Look at those poll numbers.… And so, that’s almost like a minority government. I think we’ve just got to do something about it.”

Do something? What?

Brooks explained, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has an idea that every kid who graduates from high school spends the next three months in some sort of national service. So a kid from Martha’s Vineyard or Marin County is with a kid from Mobile, Alabama, and just three months, it would make a difference.”

Chicagoans will warn against emulating Mayor Emanuel.*

“I thought national service was going to be a given,” host Chuck Todd then offered. “I mean, my God, we’ve been talking about national service my whole adult life and I can’t believe we’re not there.”

News Flash: The problem with our politics is not the fault of teenagers. Nor would forcing young people to put their dreams on hold the better to toil in some social engineering scheme solve anything.

Want national service? Begin with politicians and TV talking heads.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A whopping 62 percent of Chicagoans disapprove of their mayor and fully 40 percent want ole Rahm Never-​Let-​a-​Crisis-​Go-​to-​Waste Emanuel to immediately resign. The mayor’s delay in releasing an incriminating police video, until after his re-​election, has been the most incendiary issue. But also consider some ugly facts about systemic breakdown in city governance: the number of murders this year is already higher than last year, four out of ten freshman in Chicago high schools fail to graduate and 91 percent of graduates going on to college require remedial courses.

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National Service, David Brooks , Mayor Rahm Emanuel , illustration, children, brick wall, illustration

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Story, Story, Story

David Brooks, dichotomy, dualism, false, minimum wage, crime, illustration

David Brooks has a story to tell you.

His New York Times op-​ed, yesterday, “The Danger of Single Story,” builds on a good premise: “each individual life contains a heterogeneous compilation of stories. If you reduce people to one, you’re taking away their humanity.”

Brooks puts a political edge on what otherwise might sound like a lesson in manners with his next sentence: “American politics has always been prone to single storyism — candidates reducing complex issues to simple fables. This year the problem is acute because Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are the giants of Single Storyism.”

Brooks then asserts that Trump and Sanders share a similar story that they beat to death, “the alien invader story.”

You can see how it applies to Trump, a staunch opponent of illegal immigration. Aliens invade!

But Brooks recognizes that Sanders’s story is about “the evil entity called ‘the banks.’” Not exactly alien. This menace is home-​grown.

Then our pundit moves on to issues not in the single-​story vein of Trump and Sanders, and how what seem to be opposite stories (incarceration prevents crime; too much incarceration is a moral horror) can both be true.

Crime is low right now, but Brooks devotes most of this putative paean to multiple crime stories. The third Bernie story he takes a bite of, the $15 minimum wage, belies the Single Storyism charge. That is, the point of his essay.

Way to go, sophisticate.

He also draws a complete non sequitur: “Raising the minimum wage to $15 may make sense in rich areas.” Nothing he wrote gives any credibility to that. At best the hike would do nothing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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David Brooks, dichotomy, dualism, false, minimum wage, crime, illustration

 

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media and media people national politics & policies too much government

What a Deal!

David Brooks, writing in the New York Times on Independence Day, cajoles Republicans to accept the deal that allegedly now faces them: Raise a few taxes (just a few!) in exchange for the Democrats going along with “a debt reduction measure of $3 trillion or even $4 trillion.” After all, he writes,

If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of revenue increases.

And then Brooks goes off on how unreasonable the Republicans have become, how abnormal.

Well, we can only hope.

There’s good reason for recalcitrance in the Republican party. Our beloved congressfolk do not have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. They keep increasing spending, year by year, no matter what the revenue actually is.

Increasing revenue — which is still not certain even if marginal tax rates get upped or “loopholes” get closed — does not solve the base problem, which is spendaholic politicians. 

Besides, the “trillions” in cuts are in the future, while the taxes would be immediate. We’ve been burned on such deals before, like Lucy and Charlie Brown’s football.

There was a reason the New York Times chose Brooks for its “conservative.” He can always be counted to chatter “kick the ball.” 

Don’t fall for it, Charlie Brown.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.