{"id":19416,"date":"2016-01-25T10:26:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T18:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=19416"},"modified":"2016-01-25T10:32:04","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T18:32:04","slug":"abandoning-public-goods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/01\/25\/abandoning-public-goods\/","title":{"rendered":"Abandoning Public Goods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the Preamble to the Constitution of The Unites States includes “promote the general welfare”: as a purpose for  our government, it is clear that, at all levels, government should take on the tasks, called public goods, that do so.  On the other hand, there are two ways to describe it, when government, at any level, abandons public goods to the detriment of its citizens: criminal and Republican.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0125flint\"<\/p>\n

In the 1850s, London, the world’s largest city, still didn’t have a sewer system. Waste simply flowed into the Thames, which was as disgusting as you might imagine. But conservatives, including the magazine The Economist and the prime minister, opposed any effort<\/a> to remedy the situation. After all, such an effort would involve increased government spending and, they insisted, infringe on personal liberty and local control<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It took the Great Stink of 1858, when the stench made the Houses of Parliament unusable, to produce action.<\/p>\n

But that’s all ancient history. Modern politicians, no matter how conservative, understand that public health is an essential government role. Right? No, wrong<\/strong> — as illustrated by the disaster in Flint, Mich.<\/a><\/p>\n

What we know so far is that in 2014 the city’s emergency manager — appointed by Rick Snyder, the state’s Republican governor — decided to switch to an unsafe water source, with lead contamination and more, in order to save money. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that state officials knew that they were damaging public health, putting children in particular at risk, even as they stonewalled both residents and health experts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This story — America in the 21st century, and you can trust neither the water nor what officials say about it — would be a horrifying outrage even if it were an accident or an isolated instance of bad policy. But it isn’t. On the contrary, the nightmare in Flint reflects the resurgence in American politics of exactly the same attitudes that led to London’s Great Stink more than a century and a half ago<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Let’s back up a bit, and talk about the role of government in an advanced society…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

Click through.  In this fine editorial, Paul Krugman goes on to explain how the Flint catastrophe is not the exception, but the norm of how Republicans govern.  We can expect more disasters, short and long term, anywhere Republicans have sufficient power to eliminate public goods,<\/font><\/p>\n

Every Republican in office is one Republican too many!<\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the Preamble to the Constitution of The Unites States includes “promote the general welfare”: as a purpose for  our government, it is clear that, at all levels, government should take on the tasks, called public goods, that do so.  On the other hand, there are two ways to describe it, when government, at any […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}