I don’t get conservatives.
News flash, I know.
So one of my conservative “fans” forwards me a link from Breitbart (this can’t end well) about a lecture by “economist” Paul Krugman (the Breitbart piece used the parenthesis because Krugman, see, has one ‘o them fancy-schmancy degrees, he doesn’t have a populist understanding economics in his gut like real ‘Murcans do).
Talking about the deficit, Krugman admits that eventually we do have a problem which will most likely require tax increases and additional attempts to control health care costs. Then Krugman attempts a funny:
So the snarky version…which I shouldn’t even say because it will get me in trouble is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.
Ah, well, you know how the winger crowd reacts to this. To quote my e-mailer:
Didn’t you ridicule Sarah Palin for mentioning death panels? I guess now that Krugman is lauding them you’ll be happy to hop on that bandwagon and do your part to promote them.
Actually, I ridiculed Sarah Palin for a lot of things.
And yes, I want to crowd Granny on the tram headed for Auschwitz.
But here’s my question for conservatives.
Conservatives are nearly unanimous in believing that government spending needs to be reined in.
Does this not include – at least eventually – Medicare spending? Health care spending?
How can a conservative (or anyone) demand that government spending be cut, but then demonize anyone who dares raise the question about end-of-life spending, when “One out of every four Medicare dollars, more than $125 billion, is spent on services for the 5% of beneficiaries in their last year of life.”
Government spending must be cut, except it’s monstrous to cut government spending?
If conservatives are going to exempt military spending from any cuts, and exempt Medicare spending (but remember, only for current beneficiaries, anyone who dare gets old later on will have only his voucher to pay for that end of life care – they can be their own death panel!) … how, exactly, does this equate to the “fiscal responsibility” they pretend to favor?
Or doesn’t consistency matter, because death panels?
