{"id":1060,"date":"2012-02-24T18:54:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T23:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2012-02-24T18:54:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T23:54:58","slug":"whos-more-progressive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"Who’s More Progressive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nThis piece was inspired by a blog post by Owen Paine,<\/a> one of my favorite contributors to one of my favorite Leftie blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again.<\/em><\/a> He quotes some interesting passages from President Nixon’s 1971 State Of The Union<\/a> Address in which he mentions the “expansionary” budget he was about to submit to Congress, a “full employment budget”. Here’s The Tricky One’s own words from back in ’71:<\/p>\n

“By spending as if we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full employment”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, mind you, I’ve never been a Nixon revisionist, and I wasn’t one of those bonehead Liberals who spent the entirety of the Dubya Administration wishing they had Nixon back, but, still… full-employment budget? Then, I started thinking back some more… EPA? Detente with the Soviets? Healthcare program compromise with Ted Kennedy?<\/a> Christalmighty,<\/em> I thought, was Nixon, on balance, more progressive than Barack Obama?<\/em><\/p>\n

Yeah, sure, Nixon dragged out a pointless war that hardly anybody wanted, bombed civilians at the drop of a hat, surveilled and harassed dissident activists, and sponsored coups and assassinations all over the world, but hasn’t Obama also done these?<\/p>\n

Jeeeeeezus… full-employment budget.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

11×17 medium-res grayscale .jpg image,<\/a><\/strong> 616kb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This piece was inspired by a blog post by Owen Paine, one of my favorite contributors to one of my favorite Leftie blogs, Stop Me Before I Vote Again. He quotes some interesting passages from President Nixon’s 1971 State Of The Union Address in which he mentions the “expansionary” budget he was about to submit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,19,7,20,158,132],"tags":[322,415,21,414,284],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-economy","category-elections","category-health-care","category-obamarama","category-party-animals","tag-budget","tag-employment","tag-healthcare","tag-nixon","tag-progressives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1065,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sinkers.org\/stage\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}