Sam, I’m not a Howie Dean afficianado, but I’m not finding anything on HD’s web site that says anything close to your assertion. Can you point me at some specific proposal or set of proposals that Dean has made that are equivalent to what you say above? Thank you.
Squeegiee: Here are some relevant quotes from USA Today:
Here’s another: Dean Calls For Reversal of Deregulation
Sounds like a New Industrial Policy to me.
In reading the rest of the article, it appears that Dean is also a protectionist:
Isn’t that rather, unilateralist of him? Withdrawing from NAFTA would be an economic disaster. How can anyone take this guy seriously?
Sam, it’s late and I’ll have to research your quotes a bit tomorrow. But I’m a bit disappointed, especially in your second post – your cite mostly isn’t HD’s words, it’s somebody’s spun summary of some comments he made. I’ll try to find some cites to things HD actually proposed and comments he really said and try to make up my own mind. Maybe you should as well.
Well, you just have to go to Dean’s Web Page to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Once you get past all the huge ads asking for money, there’s a list of issues:
The list itself tells you about his priorities. Some of the more significant (in my mind) programs, ie things he says he actually is planning to do:
Interestingly, he put both of these in his “cities” section. I guess the min wage isn’t part of the economy in his view. Under “economy” he calls for a balanced budget and universal health care. The latter issue pops up in several different places.
The min wage proposal alone (increasing it 36%) would likely cost him my vote. Although I’m not exactly sure what to expect from the statement “press Congress to move towards…” Is that suppose to make me (fiscal, economic conservative) think he doesn’t really mean it?
John: sure, I’m already looking at Howie’s Web Page, but it doesn’t say anything even close to what Sam is claiming Howie Says. Instead I’m getting articles from Sam that Say what Howie Says without him Saying it.
OTOH, I agree his issues list on that site is a bit obfuscated – somewhere under Native Americans may be the “reregulate everything bwuhahaha!” section. 
All kidding aside, I just donated $25 to Howard Dean’s campaign.
Go Dean! Beat Clark! Beat Lieberman!
Well, as our Australian cousins have it: “Good at you, mutt!”
Squeegie: Here’s another article describing this: Dean Calls For New Business Controls
The reason you don’t find this on his web site is probably simple: Dean is spouting this crap on the campaign trail, to help with his nomination, but he’ll probably shut up about it after he wins the nomination and has to move back to the center, and so he’s not going to make it an ‘offical’ part of his platform or something.
At least, one can hope that he’s not really serious. Because if he is, this guy is a disaster. A comprehensive ‘re-regulation’ of business, coupled with his desire to raise business taxes and repeal all the Bush tax cuts, would to tremendous harm to the American economy. And if you think outsourcing jobs is a problem now, wait 'till Dean starts enacting all these regulations. Oh, wait: He’s going to end free trade, too, and slap tariffs on companies that outsource jobs. So that means capital flight from the U.S. Smooth moves, Howie.
Beat Bush! Beat Bush! Pleeeeeasassseee beat Bush!
Seriously? I’d vote for Michael Jackson if he were running against Bush and looked like he had a chance.
Sam, I can’t see even in your quotes where he says this. He mentions utilities, media companies, and “companies that issue stock opions”.
Now if you take the latter to mean wholesale regulation of all companies that issue stock options, then yes that’s a good deal of businesses and a frighteningly vague amount of re-regulation.
If you take it to mean what it likely does, that he intends to tighten the regulations surrounding the issuing, exchange, and tax treatment of stock options in general, then it’s regulation that is already under high demand, already occurring, and affecting a small and only recently significant slice of the operating horizon of your average business.
Except that in the same breath he mentions telecom, media, and utilities.
Also, he says that he is against free trade and for ‘fair’ trade - he wants all trading partners to have the same environmental and labor standards as the U.S., or he’ll slap tariffs on companies that do business with them. This is breathtaking in its economic ignorance. Poor countries can not have the same environmental and labor standards as rich countries like the U.S., because these things are very expensive.
He also wants to ‘close business tax loopholes’, and stop companies from outsourcing labor. That requires yet more regulation.
He also wants to raise the minimum wage to $7/hr.
And he wants a $100 billion ‘job creation’ fund, which necessarily requires the government to start picking companies and selectively subsidizing them (or setting up government-run businesses, I guess).
Also, he wants universal health care insurance, forcing all companies to provide health insurance to their employees (or, I suppose, directly paying for everyone’s health coverage).
Oh yeah, and he’s going to balance the budget, too. He’s a miracle worker.
Let’s face it - the guy’s a meddler. He wants government to micro-manage business. He wants reams of new regulations. He wants to tell businesses who they can trade with, who they can hire and for how much. He wants the government to roll back the deregulation of the Clinton era, and re-regulate energy, media, and telecom. He wants the U.S. to move to a more European model of industrial and economic policy. What a great idea - you too can have even bigger deficits, 11% unemployment, and 1% economic growth!
Sam, it’s amazing that you get all of that from the dribs and drabs of quotes in that interview. It’s impossible to say exactly what Dean means, if anything, from what was presented in that article. And here you are coming to these amazing conclusions out of thin air. Applause – I wish I could read sheep entrails so well!
Shit, that’s sleazy.
It’s almost like someone mentioning Iraq, Al Queda, and 9/11 in the same breath, and then claiming that a connection between the three was never intended.
Remember, when your guy does it, there’s nothing wrong with it. But when mine does it, it’s totally unacceptable.
-Joe, who just summarized politics in the good old USA
Okay, raising the minimum wage is silly. And the “job creation fund” sounds very hazy in my limited poking around. The fair trade seems like pure spin, would never get passed. That doesn’t help my opinion of Dean, but it is an example of politics as usual.
I do happen to believe that media and untilities require some meddling to work in a geographically-distributed economy. And that the tax code requires simplification. Reducing the complexity of the tax code would bring in new revenues and reduce expenses at the same time.
In short, I want whoever is elected to meddle some. Can I assume that Bush’s plan is “more of the same?”.
What?!?!
Do you actually live in the us? Do you watch TV? Do you read the papers? The conservative talking heads quote each other in their rants daily. Often they even cite one another. That is the most inbred, self-referencial group going. None of them say anything without checking the transcripts to see what all the others have said in the last 24 hours.
In fact it is a misnomer to call them conservative. I don’t think you could name one who is a true conservative. They are all George Bush Republicans and they all spout the party line 24-7.
Sam:
To be fair, it’s hard to nail Dean with every fuzzy promise he makes. Kind of like a typical president in his State of the Union speech-- promise a bunch of crap that sounds nice, but he knows will never get off the ground.
The $100B jobs fund and $7/hr min wage are things I posted because they are concrete proposals that I think it is fair to nail him on. But if he talks about the need to “reign in big business”, it’s really hard to figure out what that really means. Makes it tough to wade thru all the BS, and I have to believe (hope) that Dean (or whoever) puts more flesh on their proposals as the election draws nearer.
His plan for Iraq stands in stark contradistinction to what the adminstration is planning to do, and his pledge to erase the recent tax cuts is also key. But while he might, if he wins, be able to execute on the former, he’d never get the latter thru congress, even if the Dems picked up a majority. And it looks much more likely that the Pubs will increase their majority in both houses. Of course just because he can’t actually do something is no reason not to vote against him if you think the policy is the wrong way to go. Can anyone remember when the last time a candidate got elected on the promise to raise* taxes?
*And don’t give me the BS that it’s not a tax increase, just eliminating a cut. By that logic, the current cut is not a “cut”, but simply an elimination of a tax increase. I can easily go back in time (not even that far) and find a period when taxes were lower than they are right now.
This is probably another tread, but that’s pretty cool.
Even if that happened, my guess is that most G.W.Bush-supporters still would not abandon supporting him.
He was probing for weapons of mass destruction in Uranus?