Via the Washington Post, President Bush is considering a corporate tax cut at a time when an economic downturn appears to be underway. One reason to distrust Mr. Bush's response is that this is how he and other conservatives react to everything these days. It's that "can't do" attitude about government, the one that says the best way to use government is to get it out of the way by cutting taxes and scaling back involvement. On housing, Bush said he is concerned but believes the market will find "a soft landing" without substantial government intervention beyond enforcing existing policies on predatory lending. "Somebody said, 'Should we be using taxpayer money to bail out lenders?' And the answer is: No, we shouldn't be. The market will work." So we should all just sit on our laurels and hope that things work out. Because there's nothing we can do. Ah, but what if the mortgage meltdown has something to do with, you know, policy failures? And what if an unhinged market was the root cause of all this trouble? Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz thinks that might there might be something to that explanation, and that we actually might be able to contain the damage that's been done. But the Debbie Downer conservatives says there's just nothing we can do about it, except maybe cut unrelated businesses yet another fat tax break. It's just one more plan derived from a bankrupt and pessimistic ideology, with no basis in an analysis of the problem. Yikes.