NP: Afro-cubism, Afro-cubism

Ezra Klein does a nice job of breaking down exactly why all the GOP budget plans involve painful cuts for the poor and the social safety net. Simply put, every other piece of the budget is sacrosanct, so there's no choice.

I'm curious, though, if there's any chance of a rational discussion of why help for the poor is not held in higher esteem by the party that purports to be on the same side as Jesus. If you saw Real Time with Bill Maher over the weekend, you may get a big clue -- the narrative of "the welfare state" is a big part of the Republican brand, particularly for people who don't look like you do. The actual debate, though, is why simply cutting funding is preferable to trying to fix something they see as broken.

Of course, that may go back to the founding GOP principle that government simply can't do that, or any, job properly in any formulation, but man, I'd love to see a serious debate over that. With regard to welfare, what are the alternatives? And not "oh, the market will decide," because that's shorthand for "fuck if I know," and is another one of those areas where a for-profit model risks sacrificing service for cost savings.

Yeah, I know, I'm being all idealistic about politics again. It'll pass.