Party of Selfishness and Greed

Charles Simic tears into the "soulless bastards" of those like the Koch brothers and the Republican Party.

[T]he backers of the government shut-down . . . spent more than $200 million last year to spread disinformation and delude the gullible among the populace about the supposedly catastrophic harm giving health care to the uninsured would do to the economy.

Indifference to the plight and suffering of human beings of one class or another by some segment of the population is a universal phenomenon, but spending millions of dollars to deepen the misery of one's fellow citizens and enlisting members of one political party to help you do so is downright vile. 

Update (October 20):  While the Democrats held firm against being blackmailed over the debt limit and President Obama struck back against the Reagan theme that "government is the problem", nothing has been done about the sequester and the crisis is likely to resume in just a few months.  Martin Wolf says the Democrats have really conceded the argument:

It's strange to me that a government that has obviously achieved very important things . . . should be now regarded as nothing more than a complete nuisance. . . [S]o in a way . . . the extreme conservative position has won . . . it's only a question of how much you cut . . . rather than, well, what do we want government for? . . . How do we make it effective?  And how do we ensure that it is properly financed?

Update (October 28):  E.J. Dionne reiterates the thought that national politics has been focused on the wrong problem.