News Roundup, 3/28/08: Hey, McCain. The Economy? You're Doing It Wrong

Democrats took the opportunity yesterday to point out fundamental differences between their economic relief plans for Americans and McCain's refusal to solve the problem.

Around that time, McCain said in a statement, "There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face." Of course, that comes in the light of Republicans bailing out Bear Stearns without doing anything of more than trivial value for the average American taxpayer. Meanwhile, both Democratic presidential candidates spent yesterday getting lots of news airtime for their plans to turn around the American economy and prevent this sort of trouble that comes from Republicans' wanting to "turn a blind eye to excessive leverage and dangerous risks," as Senator Obama put it yesterday.

The take-home message here: Republicans like to talk about the evil of "big government programs" as a blanket evil, but they're more than happy to maintain certain big government programs (like defense spending) and make up others from thin air (like the unprecedented Fed bailout of financial markets), while avoiding helping the average American. Both parties are part of government, so railing against "big government" is disingenuous — a fact made obvious by the consistent, irresponsible Republican budgets we've seen over the past eight years. The distinction isn't big versus little government — it's government that works in favor of big businesses versus government that works in favor of the common man.

Yesterday's news cycle was pretty slow, so if you want more Presidential news, you have to settle for stories like conjecture about interesting, if highly unlikely, vice presidential picks for the current candidates, or perhaps how Joe Klein would be tickled if Al Gore became a consensus candidate come time for the Democratic National Convention to avoid the ugly delegate floor fight.

Talking Point Memo's TPM Muckraker blog dug up an interesting profile piece yesterday, when they took a look at defense contractor AEY, their $300 million in government contracts, and the 22-year-old who was at the time president of the now shell of a corporation, leaving it after the corporation was finally suspended from federal contracting after dealing with shady arms dealers and illegal Chinese ammunition. Boy, wouldn't congressional oversight have been handy back when Republicans were rubber-stamping huge contracts at the White House's request or what?

Texas cities are booming in population, according to Census Bureau estimates that came out yesterday, with four out of the ten fastest growing metro areas in the United States coming from Texas. Dallas/Fort Worth was in first place on the list with 162,000 new residents in the past year; Houston was fourth on the list, and Austin and San Antonio rounded it out at numbers 9 and 10, respectively. Credit for this is given to "relatively strong local economies and housing prices that are among the most affordable in the U.S.," according to the article.

And finally, Josh waxes a little poignant over the news that French president Nicolas Sarkozy paid a state visit to the United Kingdom yesterday, where he made a speech in front of a joint session of Parliament that earned him a standing ovation. I can sympathize with the wish that we didn't have to worry that our president — or, for that matter, presidential candidates; I'm looking at you, McCain — was going to stick his foot in his mouth every time we let him loose to speak on state visits.