Good reads: Foser on Fineman, Chait on Shlaes

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I don't have time to comment extensively on either of these two pieces, but they're well worth taking the time to read:

1) Jamison Foser, Media Matters: "Howard Fineman, the Establishment, and Barack Obama," a biting critique of the Establishmentarian Fineman's efforts on behalf of the Establishment to take down Obama. Fineman is the consummate insider, a member of the Beltway club. He's been wrong about so much, just as he is wrong about Obama now.

2) Jonathan Chait, The New Republic: "Wasting Away in Hooverville," a fantastic dismantling of the right-wing nonsense of Amity Shlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, a baldly revisionist history that has been received with cheerleading enthusiasm by conservatives. It's a long review, and an important response, a necessary correction, to current right-wing propaganda. The New Deal wasn't perfect, and neither was FDR, but it worked, for the most part, proving Keynes right. Now, as then, conservatives, who "have embraced the pre-Keynesian nostrums," just don't get it.