RIP Heritage Foundation

The New Republic has an article this week describing how Michael Needham, an Upper East Side private school/Williams College/Stanford MBA, has parlayed his connections into a political activist role that has taken over the Heritage Foundation and transformed it from a respected creator of conservative policy ideas to judge and jury on whether any particular Republican is conservative enough to get the approval of Jim DeMint and Needham.  In the process, they have destroyed all respect for the ideas that will come out of this once well respected alternative to the Brookings Institute. In fact, Heritage Foundation papers are now being published by the Brookings Institute as researchers leave the Heritage Foundation to work elsewhere.

This is sad because most of the balance to a pure liberal approach to the world (think Bernie Sanders when you want to envision that) has come from ideas that were spawned by the Heritage Foundation and implemented in the Clinton/GOP Congress welfare reform.  Good stuff happens in the middle.

In describing Michael Needham, the article reminded me of some of the people I went to college and business school with.  People of privilege  who get on the gravy train of conservatism; all aimed at lowering taxes for the rich, and to keep the budget balanced by cutting the social safety net.  This is the thought process that led to Bush II and his GOP Congress believing it prudent to cut taxes and wage a War on Terror by borrowing money from the current account surplus countries.  That ultimately led to the Financial Crisis, which was this generation's version of the borrowed war in Vietnam that led to the 1970's inflation.  Deficit spending in boom times has a bad outcome.  Deficit spending should only occur in a recession.

But people of privilege who only work in politics don't understand this.  They have never worked in business where they need to compromise on any number of things and manage a workforce that demands respect and to be listened to.  These conservatives believe that trickle down economics solves everything; when education, healthcare and sufficient nutrition are needed to nurture a fair society.

Not everyone who comes from privilege falls into this catagorization.  It just seems that hardcore conservative political operatives use the protection of privilege as the raison d'être for their own economic sustenance and they tend to come from privileged backgrounds.