TDM - Steven E. Landsburg
D | Thursday, September 22, 2005

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I think I am going to start another posting category similar to my QOTD (Quote of the Day). This would be called the TDM, or The Daily Moe (moe, short for moron). The Daily Moe would allow me to A. publicly ridicule this particular person and B. if I so choose, present my opposing view on a current issue. And so I present...

Steven E. Landsburg, congratulations you are today's Daily Moe.

As per this article on Slate.com, Mr. Landsburg advocates just giving each American citizen affected by hurricane Katrina a check for their share of the money we have allocated for hurricane relief; by his math this comes out to be $200k per person.

While we're at it, can we take the amount we spend on national defense and just divide that by 280 million citizens? That way we can all go out, buy our own individual guns, and defend ourselves against China, North Korea, and Iraq.

Am I the only one who sees how retarded you are? Am I showing my Democratic tendencies when I say that we need a central government to help orchestrate a monumental rebuilding project like we now face in New Orleans? Lets imagine for one moment, the government adopted this Moe's plan. Your family of 4 receives a check for $800k. The first thing you have to do is get the water out of your house. But that requires a pump (expensive, I hear). And you can't pump water out of your house if the levies aren't fixed. Don't forget the pump is gonna require electricity which means you might need to fork over some cash to fix the powerlines, boxes, generates, etc. And by the way, having just discovered the nature of water, you can't pump water out of just ONE HOUSE, you have to pump it out of the ENTIRE CITY. And that means someone else is getting the benefit of my $800k I used to buy a pump. Well damn it - that is not fair!

Landsburg, you are a Moe. I say we adopt a new plan. Put Landsburg on a plane to NO and when he gets there let him fix all their problems with the $200k he personally asked for. Good luck, Moe.

A political post on derekwalden.com wouldn't be complete without a West Wing quote so here you go:

BARTLET: Well, first of all, let's clear up a couple of things. "Unfunded mandate" is two words, not one "big word." (cheers) There are times when we're fifty states and there are times when we're one country, and have national needs. And the way I know this is that Florida didn't fight Germany in World War II or establish civil rights. You think states should do the governing wall-to-wall. That's a perfectly valid opinion. But your state of Florida got $12.6 billion in federal money last year-- from Nebraskans, and Virginians, and New Yorkers, and Alaskans, with their Eskimo poetry. 12.6 out of a state budget of $50 billion, and I'm supposed to be using this time for a question, so here it is: Can we have it back, please?

D | 9/22/2005 02:43:00 PM |   Post your comment

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Comments:

First things first. The Daily Moe? Hahahaha. I will take that as a shoutout to my family.

I agree with you that there needs to be a central government to deal with certain things, i.e. pumping out the water and cleaning up the streets. But I am not entirely against handing these people money to rebuild in the way they want to. Leave a fraction of the relief fund for the government work and pass out the rest.

Furthermore, he was saying people would take the 200K and move somewhere else, not go back to buy a pump. I know, I for one would rather take the money and move somewhere else then have the government rebuilding my city in a way I don't want it. And for those that didn't take the money and leave, there would be enough of a tax base to fund the government sanctioned rebuilding. The money from disaster relief wouldn't need to pay for it.

I agree his premise is slightly flawed, but I don't think it's the far-right retardedness you're making it out to be. Go back and re-read his article.
Ashley | September 22, 2005 5:12 PM | permalink
 

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For starters, I don't think it has anything to do with being a Republican or Democrat. Republicans believe in government, just scaled down government. Inevitably, it's just ridiculous to say that Republicans wanna hand out money rather than use it in a concerted effort to fix things. I'm not saying that you said that, just if someone was to say that, it would be ridiculous.

I think Ari spoke on this point in his response to something I wrote, but I had the notion of a handout, and I hate to think people would just take the money and leave town. I hear all these people saying how much they love New Orleans and want to rebuild it, so taking the dough and heading elsewhere is very defeatist. Perhaps it makes the most sense, but defeatist nevertheless.

Overall, the idea of just handing out checks to people is crazy. Even if there's a lot of government waste, I don't wanna think that some shmo is getting my tax dollars to do what he pleases with. The saddest part is that all the money comes streaming in after the fact. Why didn't they invest these billions to make sure this would never happen? Ah the shortsightendess of the American system; gotta love it. To use a relationship analogy, sometimes we need a girl to knee us in the balls to realize we've been dicks all along.
Ruvym | September 22, 2005 11:24 PM | permalink
 

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