Sometimes, it can be heartwarming to listen to the radio and hear the sound of the Seventies. That's not true for the Thom Hartmann radio show. On Friday, Hartmann parlayed some classic 1971 socialist economics about who should get credit for the economic recovery:
The job creators are the people on welfare. The job creators are the people who are on unemployment. They’re the people who are working. Because what creates jobs is when people take money out of their pocket and buy something. And when enough people buy enough things that creates demand in the economy and somebody’s got to make the stuff that’s being bought and in order to make that stuff they have to hire people who can make it for less than it costs to sell it so that they can make a profit on that. It’s a very very simple concept.
It's not so nice to hear a scratchy little record from John Maynard Keynes and the Pump-Primers. Hartmann chided a liberal caller on Friday who complained about partisanship and lack of compromise in the nation's capital. He questioned why should there be compromise when the "insane" GOP wants to take food out of the mouths of infants:
There are baseline things in this country you know that the Republicans want to take away. They want to take away food for women and infants, women and infant children who are in poverty. They want to take away basic funding for people in poverty. They want, I mean right across the board. They were only willing to extend unemployment benefits for a year even though they wanted to extend tax cuts for two years. I mean it’s just insane. I don’t think that compromise is where we need to go.
Currently, the Hartmann website also features a poll that equates “American exceptionalism” with capitalist meanness, featuring the somewhat mangled tale of James Verone:
Can the US be exceptional if James Verone robbed a bank for $1 to receive healthcare in prison after being denied healthcare?
– No! The US needs to join every other industrialized nation with "socialized medicine." (85 percent)
– Yes! Apparently Conservatives thinks [sic] it's exceptional for someone to have no other option but prison.
