( – promoted by Colorado Pols)
U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) was a guest of mine on AM760 this week. We discussed his controversial position on health care reform and taxes. You can listen to the interview here.
I’ve written a newspaper column and few posts about Polis – and I’ve been critical of his high-profile efforts that have helped delay, and potentially derail, health care reform. I tried to pin him down on the issue, but he was fairly evasive. You’ll notice that while he claims to be concerned with protecting small business, he didn’t explain why, then, he opposes a tax that avoids hitting 96 percent of all small businesses.
Listen in and decide for yourself whether you believe he’s being forthright or not.
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I am in Representative Polis’ district, so i’m particularly interested in his views. Representative Polis stated that he really supports single payer, and is supporting a public option as “an enormous step in the right direction.”
My question: if single payer is “where we should be in health care,” then why isn’t Representative Polis more vocal about that solution? I’ve been paying attention to this issue for two decades, since Colorado State Representative Don Mares sponsored a bill for state-based single payer Universal Health Insurance for Colorado (U.H.I.C.O.) at the state legislature. I don’t see a public (non-corporate) constituency for any health care reform solution other than single payer. How can so many politicians pay lip service to what so many of us believe is the best solution, but not be willing to carry the ball?
“I, me, my, mine” = 5 times in the title and first two paragraphs.
Not counting the link to his interview.
I’ll agree with you that sometimes Sirota can be a big of an egoist, but this seems pretty legit to me. It doesn’t seem any different than one of DavidThi or BobMoore’s post that include a link to their page.
I’m glad someone like Sirota tried to pin Polis down on this one, and we should give credit where it’s due.
Speaking as an unbiased observer – I think those links are quite appropiate 🙂
This is an audio so all he has to add here are the links. That does make it link heavy.
I listened to your interview with Jared Polis and I am grateful to you for getting this out in the open.
I don’t believe a word he is saying and I think he is pandering to his pay masters or serving his own interests. Whatever the reason, whether you are Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative we WILL not recover from this depression until we restore the middle class to prosperity. This is economic fact for without a strong middle class the filthy rich have no one to buy their products and services and it with eventually take their wealth away. Single payer or a strong public option would go along way to restoring the middle class in this country. Are you listening Jared Polis? Read your history books and stop listening to right wing propaganda.
We came out of the Great Depression because of the Great Compression that followed and FDR was right he saved capitalism by redistributing wealth. It worked then and it will work again but if you don’t heed the signs of the times you WILL be blamed by angry constituents who will hold YOU responsible for the demise of healthcare reform. Remember the filthy rich are rich because they bought off politicians like Jared Polis who then made laws enhancing their wealth while impoverishing the middle class.
…on exactly how you see FDR as having ‘saved’ capitalism?
I think the idea that FDR saved capitalism is not uncommon in some circles, including among some who lament that he succeeded.
that given what was happening in the rest of the world in the 20s and 30s, America could easily have switched into Communism or Fascism when things went to hell. FDR prevented that by introducing (relatively) mild reforms to stave off revolution, and therefore he saved capitalism.
Don’t know whether that’s true (it may be impossible to know), but I think it’s a fairly common speculation.
is trying to do his best Krugman impression. Not bad, next time he might do better to give credit or at least a shout out before he posts sections of “Conscience of a Liberal” as original thought.
And yes I have read two or three of his books but I also have a background in economics.
In addition PBS ran a special on FDR where I believe FDR was quoted as saying that he was saving capitalism. But the point is he did save capitalism because he returned banks to solvency and recovered the economy. As sxp151 argues, quite accurately I might add; if FDR didn’t restore our economy there is no telling what we would look like today. Reality is reality and logic tells us that we can’t sustain on smoke and mirror financial transactions as we have in the past. It’s time to wake up and realize that unless we start paying livable wages and producing goods we are not going to recover. The reason I say it in such simple terms is because even those without an economic background get that if you take out the middle class your economy is not going to recover. It’s very simple, logical and easy to understand.
By the way I’m a woman.
and I agree that Krugman’s book is worth reading. I also agree that there is a point to be made that maybe FDR did “save capitalism.” All I meant was that your 3rd paragraph, which I think I saw almost verbatim in another thread too, sounds almost like it was lifted straight from “Conscience of a Liberal” and I am perfectly willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t intentional, but I do think that in this case you should have either credited Krugman or changed the wording of the idea so it was in your words, not his.
If I quoted Paul Krugman’s work it was by accident. I did read the book The Conscience of a Liberal. I doubt it’s a direct quote because I have short-term memory problems and couldn’t quote something verbatim if my life depended on it.
I post on Paul Krugman’s blog and like his work. If it was an accidental quote I give him credit here. Surprisingly I went to a college that had mostly liberal economists so it was refreshing to find Paul Krugman’s work. It fit right in with my background and of course he makes a lot of sense.
it’s nice to see that his ideas have become mainstream enough that people can virtually quote him without realizing it or meaning to!
I went to a college that was not very heavy in traditional liberal economists, so I tend to be somewhat suspicious of Krugman since I wonder what he’s leaving out in terms of the classical or neo-classical argument (like my professors tended to do). But in the end, generally it seems like the answer to my suspicion is “not much.”
Thanks for indulging my nit-picking!
But you are right his ideas are becoming mainstream not because he is a liberal economist but because he is right. There has been a swing of the pendulum if you will to the left because Americans realize they have been duped into believing the rich must have all these profits to create jobs all the while shipping jobs overseas, laying off high paying jobs in the US and lining their pockets on the backs of the middle class by privatizing profits and socializing losses.
We live in an unsustainable consumerism economy no matter who opines about it. Think of all the products we buy because they are made cheaply in the first place so that we will have to buy the same products again and again. And the pharmaceutical / healthcare industrial complex is a comical joke that would be funny if people weren’t dying every day from their toxic drugs that give you new symptoms that require you to buy more drugs and receive more useless treatments.
The business school I attended was not liberal just the economics professors and we did have to study other theories but to me they didn’t hold water. For thirty years I have watched in horror as the American people have marched down the neo-con path. But now it is gratifying to watch as Americans become more aware. Not because Americans read Paul Krugman but because when a country like ours hits bottom it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. And woe is the politician who ignores this trend by believing the right wing propaganda that has taken us into the abyss.
Here’s what I immediately found when I ran a search on Google on “FDR + saving capitalism,” this presentation from the Hoover Institute:
http://www.hoover.org/publicat…
Then there’s this Christian Science Monitor op-ed:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/…
Then there’s this Slate article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2187039/
Thanks for elaborating and providing quotes as well.
….pro-Fascists were marching in the streets, there almost was a coup to take over the White House, the public distrusted the plutocrats and capitalism generally.
By doing radical things like Social Security, giving labor the right to organize, increased regulation that had started with TR, and increasing direct and indirect payments to Americans, he took the edge off of the anger, the desire to change our economic system.
And that’s how FDR saved capitalism. Good night!
Do you have a transcript???
thanks – dave
Will try…
I won’t comment on Rep. Polis’s position other than to say it lack internal consistency or was poorly communicated to his constituents.