{"id":3516,"date":"2009-11-30T22:43:34","date_gmt":"2009-12-01T02:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=3516"},"modified":"2009-11-30T22:43:34","modified_gmt":"2009-12-01T02:43:34","slug":"on-the-lie-that-is-fiscal-conservative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2009\/11\/30\/on-the-lie-that-is-fiscal-conservative\/","title":{"rendered":"On The Lie That Is &#8220;Fiscal Conservative&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I used to bang my head against the wall every time I heard someone say &#8220;I&#8217;m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 And then I realized I was going to need my brain for (hopefully) another 50 years.\u00c2\u00a0 But <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/blog\/200911300029\">silly shit like this<\/a> is the origin of that problem.\u00c2\u00a0 There are, in reality, *very* few &#8220;fiscal conservatives&#8221; (in a literal reading of the phrase) in elected office.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, the phrase identifies those that cite spending\/deficit\/tax concerns as a reason to oppose most any social spending.\u00c2\u00a0 If you look at the records of the vast majority of these self-proclaimed &#8220;fiscal conservatives&#8221;, you&#8217;ll see that they go in &#8211; whole hog &#8211; for defense spending, farm subsidies, and tax cuts as if they&#8217;ve never encountered the idea of responsibility for balancing the books.\u00c2\u00a0 There&#8217;s no inherent fiscal conservatism there.\u00c2\u00a0 It&#8217;s simply someone who has latched onto a popular phrase to dishonestly explain away his behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used to bang my head against the wall every time I heard someone say &#8220;I&#8217;m a social liberal and a fiscal conservative.&#8221;\u00c2\u00a0 And then I realized I was going to need my brain for (hopefully) another 50 years.\u00c2\u00a0 But silly shit like this is the origin of that problem.\u00c2\u00a0 There are, in reality, *very* [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-society"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3517,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3516\/revisions\/3517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}