TheAgitator.com
You know…
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009….if Walmart had given, say, the Cato Institute somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million, after which Cato issued a joint letter with Walmart executives calling for the federal government to pass new policies that would hurt Walmart’s competitors, I’m pretty sure people like Matthew Yglesias would be calling Cato a bunch of corporate whores.
But this isn’t the Cato Institute we’re talking about. It’s Yglesias’ employer, the left-wing Center for the American Progress.
So you see, that means it’s all okay.
I do not think that it is “all okay.” I think this is an example of hypocrisy.
That’s sooo the American way of doing things now. I am a commercial fisherman, a shrimper specifically, and a few years ago in Texas an anti-commercial fishing lobbying group gave money to the state agency regulating fisheries and suddenly that agency passed laws that forced shrimpers out of business. One of their officials put it this way “We can socially engineer them out of the bays.”
In America you can buy legislators and regulators to take away the freedom of people you don’t like if you have enough money.
Once in a while, Yglesias makes me think about something. Most of the time he tends toward what people used to call a useful idiot. He rambles on about the Chamber of Commerce’s class- and ideology-driven opposition to further nationalization of health care and, frankly, comes off as a lackey by so quickly embracing any company that doesn’t oppose it.
Ultimately, my problem with him in this instance is that he isn’t honest enough to apply his own critical perspective to what’s going on here. In any other circumstance, he would immediate ask what Wal-Mart was up to and quickly conclude that it was trying to grow its corporate empire by gaining an advantage over the competition. I very sincerely doubt Yglesias would show any enthusiasm at that prospect.
But, here, he is just happy that Wal-Mart is on his “side” of the issue, so he doesn’t even bother pointing out their motives. When Wal-Mart is opposing Card Check, they are the evil corporate empire. When their corporate interests happen to align with his statist interests on socialized medicine, then they are angels.
Philip Morris backing the FDA purview of tobacco is no different. It amazes me that people can’t see why these mega companies back such legislation. It is for advantage, people. It is for driving out their competitors by legislating them out of competition.
As for Yglesias, freedom fan said it well.
I think the problem here is the “too important” issue. For things like healthcare, certain people on the left are convinced they are so important that they have to be dealt with immediately. This rather quickly morphs into “my specific solution to these important issues” is very important, and if you oppose it, you’re denying the problem exists.
Look at it from their perspective: if you believed that the only alternative to your solution were millions of people dying from lack of healthcare while greedy fatcats count their ill-gotten gains, you’d relax your standards of objectivity too — it’s too important not to.
I think Radley just PWND Yglesias.
Yglesias is a good writer and he is clearly well read and smart. The problem, from my POV, is that he led an extremely sheltered bougeouis existence: intellectual family, going to the most exclusive private schools in Manhatten, then Harvard, then wonkery in Washington. Suburban life? Life in a poor, violent urban neighborhood? Working on a farm? Military? Crime victim? Working for a private company? Working for the government? Even: married with kids? Where are those other experiences?
It’s like John Kerry without service in Vietnam or the Senate.
If you read Megan McArdle, you can see both her elite Manhatten and Ivy League education, but also what it is like to be laid off and scraping around for money, and to be afflicted with a chronic illness (asthma). Andrew Sullivan: Ivy League, but also AIDS and being gay and Catholic.
Maybe Yglesias should go serve as a reporter in Afghanistan for a few years, or start a bike shop, or something. Something.
Bravo SJE — I’d also add, perhaps get off the east coast for a bit. Perhaps he should have done a study abroad in Indiana.
Brian,
I think you’ve got it exactly. The biggest problem with the Dem’s base right now is that caring matters more than thinking.
Good point Mojopin: not just the East Coast, three or the four largest, wealthiest cities on the East Coast. Philly is too “gritty”
I think a year in Indiana, working in a grocery store. Geez, anywhere more than 20 miles West of I-95.
SJE,
Exactly. I’ve been saying the same thing about Matt Y less eloquently for a while now. What unique knowledge/experience does he have that make him worth reading to me? It also should be pointed out that Sullivan and McArdle have a phD and an MBA respectively from pretty elite institutions. While MY’s Harvard undergrad degree deserves respect, it doesn’t confer on him the kind of subject mastery that advanced degrees do. Education per se is really not my issue though – he seems to often be shown NOT to have fully thought things through and to have much less knowledge about subjects he posts on compared to his readers than McArdle/Sullivan.
One a side note: I would absolutely read a blog by a working shrimper/fisherman about their daily work and interactions with gov before clogging my neurons with Matt Y’s thoughts again.
What’s particularly frustrating about Yglesias’ silence on the Wal-Mart regulatory capture issue is that he is acutely aware of the phenomenon and regularly rails against the draconian licensing requirements for bars and restaurants in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood of Washington D.C.
See here: http://tinyurl.com/lvvyk6
I agree with SJE that Radley just gave Yglesias a virtual kick in the nuts. And I’d also add the Yglesias doesn’t have the guts to admit that he is either a corporate whore or quit and display principles.
I’ve also found that while Yglesias writes well, is fairly intelligent he lacks depth in certain areas such as economics. He has a very cursory knowledge and does not let that get in the way of his spouting off nonsense.
ChrisD – close, but it’s not “caring, it’s “the illusion of caring while figuring out ways to shovel loads of money to campaign contributors.”
“I’m pretty sure people like Matthew Yglesias would be calling Cato a bunch of corporate whores. But this isn’t the Cato Institute we’re talking about. It’s Yglesias’ employer, the left-wing Center for the American Progress. So you see, that means it’s all okay.”
Butler Shaffer has some wonderful observations on the nature of institutions and how they seek to preserve their own power and existence first and foremost. Yglesias is bound to the institutions he serves.
Institutions are the prime threat to individuality. This is what anarchy seeks to alleviate.
I’ve found Yglesias utterly revolting for virtually as long as I’ve been aware of his existence. Most liberals strike me as people who are basically decent, and who would recoil if they fully grasped the consequences and implications of their own ideology, whereas Yglesias has the malevolent self-awareness of an Ayn Rand villain.
[...] is the same lesson Yglesias and Ezra Klein failed to learn from Walmart signing on to the employer health care mandate. The [...]