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Posts Tagged ‘Capitalism’

The Texas Progressive Alliance is ready for the Super Bowl this Sunday as it brings you this week’s blog highlights.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme thinks that the Houston Chronicle caught the essence of the GOP with this headline ‘Many attacks, but few suggestions‘.

WhosPlayin is tired of hearing obstructionist Republicans whining about not having a seat at the table for Health Care Insurance Reform, after they make it clear they’ll vote against any attempt to harm their Pharma and Insurance benefactors.

Off the Kuff notes that the Texas ParentPAC has endorsed Thomas Ratliff in his GOP primary fight against uber-SBOE wingnut Don McLeroy.

Bay Area Houston watched as the Texas Association of Builders got kicked in the nuts at a hearing in Austin over the abuse of mandatory binding arbitration.

It’s been such an amazing news week in the Barnett Shale that it’s hard to pick one topic for the round-up. One item that should be of interest to anyone in the DFW area who drinks water: Argyle Disposal Well in Denton Creek Flood Plain. No kidding! It’s for real on Bluedaze: DRILLING REFORM FOR TEXAS.

The Texas Cloverleaf looks at the taxing TAKS becoming the pretty STAAR that school children will have to shoot past in order to graduate.

If you missed the GOP gov debate, check out McBlogger’s rather insightful analysis of the three players performances, along with a mercifully brief comment on the sexual desirability of Rep. Louie Gohmert.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts on the latest Texans for Public Justice “Watching Your Assets” report, this one about the Texas Enterprise Fund, Perry’s corporate welfare not paying off for Texas.

Over at TexasKaos, Libby Shaw puts a local spin on young James O’Keefe’s foiled attempt to tamper with Mary Landrieu’s phones. The roll call Texas Republican admirers is quite long. Of equal interest was the discussion that followed the outing of these Republicans. See it all at Texas Republican Lawmakers Honor James O’Keefe.

It’s a travesty that only Bill White and Farouk Shami are participating in the Texas Democratic gubernatorial debate on February 8 because the other five candidates don’t meet the “standards”. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs believes it’s impossible to reconcile that KERA, a public broadcasting station, together with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Univision and other corporate and media industry sponsors, would conspire to preclude candidates for the state’s highest public office.

Neil at Texas Liberal is glad that Houston City Councilmember Jarvis Johnson is talking about poverty in his 18th U.S. House District primary fight with incumbent Sheila Jackson Lee. However, it will take some solid ideas and not just talk to feel that Mr. Johnson is really serious about the issue.

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By promoting cleaner energy, cleaner government, and cleaner air for all Texans, we hope to provide for a healthy place to live and prosper. We are Public Citizen Texas.

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Here at Public Citizen I find that a lot of our detractors espouse a strong dedication to free-market ideologies. I find that this ideology is used to justify a large amount of otherwise irrational behavior, and that its adherents have an unshakable almost religious-like devotion. I find that many espouse the beliefs with a level of certainty which is typically reserved for obvious truths, despite the fact that many of their claims are unsupported as far as I can tell. I would like to look at what I see as some of the flaws in the claims of free market adherents.

Currently there are no countries in the developed world, including the United States, that use anything remotely resembling the minimalist government model these men espouse. Even our politicians who have advocated returning to a freer form of capitalism have been shown to reject this notion in practice. Ronald Reagan, who spoke of minimizing the federal government and getting off of people’s back, did the exact opposite in practice and was at the time of his presidency the most protectionist and most business beholden president we have ever had. If you doubt that, just read this piece (from an extremely free market source).

Today the world’s fastest growing developing countries, including China, India, the four Asian tigers (South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan), and much of Western Europe, all explicitly reject the tenets of minimal government intervention in their economies. The United States has maintained a substantial public sector and as well as a high level of government involvement in research and development of new technology through the military and university systems since the Great Depression. (more…)

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