Michael Kinsley Mike Murphy in Time, on the concept of "shared sacrifice":
The sacred cows that voted Democratic last November are mooing more happily than ever. Big Labor is making no sacrifices. Nuclear power plants spew no CO[subscript 2] into the air and consume no foreign oil, yet a serious effort to build new ones is missing from the Obama energy plan because it offends the environmental left. Health-care reform will be massively expensive, yet the trial lawyers' lobby is not being asked to endure the cost savings that tort reform would bring to health insurance. The teachers' unions are unscathed as billions in new spending is poured into public education. Costly--and popular--farm subsidies are untouched (except for those painlessly targeted at "rich" farmers).
Obama's defenders will point to the concessions the Administration forced Detroit's autoworkers to make in the arranged-bankruptcy negotiations with Chrysler. It is true that the United Auto Workers (UAW) got less than it asked for. But without Obama's billions in auto subsidies, it would have gotten far less from insolvency. The children of nonunionized American autoworkers in Kentucky and Alabama who build cars that succeed in the marketplace made the largest concessions. They will endure a larger national debt so that billions of federal dollars can be used to prop up the UAW jobs of far less successful autoworkers in Michigan, Ohio and Ontario.
Now, Mr. Kinsley Murphy uses that premise to argue that Mr. Obama should pursue Large Tax Increases on everyone - a huge gas tax and higher taxes on the middle class - which he hasn't (yet). That argument has serious flaws, which I'm not prepared to address right now. But Mr. Kinsley Murphy is clearly well aware that the moves so far have largely paid off and/or protected supporting groups.
Oh, by the way, hi again.
5/15/09 1730: Weak goof on the name. Hey, I'm starting slow, okay. Gimme a break.
