Tag Archives: tea party

More on Taxes & Government Services

Posted on July 20, 2010 | 1 comment

In a timely follow up to my piece this week on the inherent relationship between taxes and government services provided, Anne Applebaum wrote a great article in Slate about the general hypocrisy of Americans who demand smaller government while castigating their government for not preventing or solving problems like the underwear bomber or the financial meltdown or the BP oil disaster. Ms. Applebaum doesn’t put it this way, but I will: if you want your government to do things, you can’t continually agitate for, and only fund, a small government. Doing things requires resources.

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Posted in Business, Philosophy, Politics

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No Taxes = No Government Services

Posted on July 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday about cash-strapped counties letting their rural roads decay from pavement to gravel, since gravel is much cheaper to maintain. It seems telling and appropriate that we are going back to 1940’s road conditions, since we’ve spent the six decades since then overspending, undersaving and generally acting like idiots.

Several of the counties mentioned in the article have put the gravel decision up for a vote, with ballot measures that give citizens the opportunity to choose higher taxes and pavement or lower taxes and gravel. I dig that: let the people decide. But of course, this being America, some people want it both ways.

“Judy Graves of Ypsilanti, N.D., voted against the measure to raise taxes for roads. But she says she and others nonetheless wrote to Gov. John Hoeven and asked him to stop Old 10 from being ground up because it still carries traffic to a Cargill Inc. malting plant.”

So Judy doesn’t want to pay taxes to cover the cost of the road, but she wants the road paved anyway. OK people, let me explain some basic math to you. If you don’t pay taxes, you don’t get services. It’s that simple. If you don’t pay the cashier at Safeway, you don’t get to take your groceries. If you don’t pay at Home Depot, you’re not able to walk out with paint and brushes. Why should government be any different? If you don’t pay for it, you’re not going to get it.

Serious libertarians know this. Their approach is that government shouldn’t provide most services. Cool. I don’t agree, but I get it. Unfortunately, the common approach in our society is more Judy Graves and less libertarian, calling for lower taxes but more services. Less money in, more money out. This is unsustainable, and it’s why Judy and her Ypsilanti neighbors are going to be driving on gravel instead of asphalt.

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Posted in Business, Politics

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GOP vs. Democratic Messaging

Posted on June 4, 2010 | 2 comments

E.J. Dionne recently wrote a piece about the open Supreme Court seat covering some of the same issues of Republican vs. Democratic messaging that I covered here and here. And a few weeks ago he wrote another article even more explicitly criticizing Democrats for continually losing the war of messages. Why are Democrats so terrible at this game? How is it possible for Frank Luntz to single-handedly kick Democratic ass time and again? I’d be willing to bet that the majority of folks at ad agencies are Democrats….so get them on the team.

You might think, and certainly we would all like to think, that policies and results are more important than messaging. Oh, how sweetly naive! If you lose the messaging battle, you never get to implement the policy and see the results. Messaging is how you get the support of the public, and since most people have very little time and/or attention for politics, your message has to be short and sweet.

Since Democrats can’t seem to get it together to develop appropriate messaging, I thought that I would take a crack at some of the key issues of the day. I don’t claim genius for any of these efforts – I’m a blogger, not a fighter – but maybe they will spark a little conversation and get some more talented folks to chip in.

Judges respecting individual rights
GOP

  • Judicial activism
  • Non-elected officials creating laws

Thoughtbasket

  • Understanding the meaning of the Constitution
  • Following in the Founding Fathers’ footsteps
  • Looking at the spirit of the law if the language is unclear

Estate taxes
GOP

  • Death taxes

Thoughtbasket

  • Monarchy prevention policy
  • Asset transfer payment

Regulation
GOP

  • Government control
  • Business killer
  • Job destroyer

Thoughtbasket

  • Public safety measure
  • Children’s health initiative

Aid to Poor
GOP

  • Socialism
  • Promoting dependency

Thoughtbasket

  • Safety net
  • Short-term help for the most vulnerable citizens

Economic Equality
GOP

  • Threat to liberty

Thoughtbasket

  • Promoting American capitalism

Questioning Security Policies
GOP

  • Unpatriotic

Thoughtbasket

  • Keeping America safe
  • Developing the best security system in the world

Healthcare Reform
GOP

  • Government takeover

Thoughtbasket

  • Preventing the deaths of innocent citizens

Finance Reform
GOP

  • Enabling taxpayer bailouts

Thoughtbasket

  • Stopping taxpayer bailouts

Raising Tax Rates
GOP

  • Destroying individual initiative

Thoughtbasket

  • Fiscal responsibility

Reaching Out to Non-allied States
GOP

  • Appeasement

Thoughtbasket

  • Realpolitik

Cap & Trade
GOP

  • Energy tax

Thoughtbasket

  • Grandchild Safety Act

Immigration Reform
GOP

  • Amnesty

Thoughtbasket

  • Continuing the American melting pot tradition

Nuclear Arms Treaties
GOP

  • Weakening America’s defense

Thoughtbasket

  • Making America safer by reducing nuclear proliferation

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Posted in Politics, Trends

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Great Attack on Tea Party

Posted on April 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Some dude writing for Salon has a very funny article on why he likes tax day, and it features this outstanding quote:

The Tea Partiers represent the aggrandizement of paranoia, rage and self-pity into a political agenda. It is a “movement,” created by for-profit demagogues whose sole mission is to build audience share at the expense of honest debate about our common crises of state.

I think that pretty much sums up the movement in two sentences. For another great article about Tea Party activists who are taking aid from the federal government even whilst they denounce all government aid, click here.

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Posted in Business, Politics, Pop culture, Trends

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Tea Party Goes Racist

Posted on March 21, 2010 | 2 comments

In a tea party-led protest of the health care bill outside the US Capitol yesterday, protesters started chanting the N-word at John Lewis, a black congressman from Georgia and a giant of the civil rights movement. I understand (although don’t agree with) fighting against the health care bill, but yelling racial epithets at anyone, let alone 70-year old men, is another clue that, as I’ve discussed before, parts of the tea party are crazy.

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Posted in Politics

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The Crazy Corner of the Tea Party

Posted on February 16, 2010 | 4 comments

I understand the feeling of the Tea Party that government isn’t responsive to the public, and that government is too big. I even understand, although strongly disagree with, the Tea Party view that government just transfers money from hard working Americans to lazy ones. But as this NY Times article makes clear, there are parts of the Tea Party movement that share the paranoid, New World Order fears which have populated certain right-wing movements for decades. When reading the quotes from some of these people, I find it difficult to conclude anything other than that they are unhinged from reality.

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Posted in Politics, Trends

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Politicians Should Start Their Careers Outside Politics

Posted on January 11, 2010 | 3 comments

I was reading recently about Senator Byron Dorgan’s retirement, and the article claimed that he had been in politics for 40 years. I looked up his biography on his official site and on Wikipedia, and both confirmed the 40 year figure. Dorgan worked in business for 2-3 years, and then became State Tax Commissioner at age 26, and has been an elected official ever since.

Then this weekend’s NY Times magazine had a long piece on the GOP’s moderate vs. Tea Party battle, as personified by the race in Florida between Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio. It turns out that Rubio has never done anything but hold elective office, serving as a West Miami city commissioner right out of law school.

Dorgan and Rubio might be great legislators — I don’t know enough about either of them to judge — but doesn’t it seem like we should want our politicians to have lived in the real world? Think of all the things we regular folks have to do: hunt for jobs, worry about insurance, cooperate with coworkers we hate, shop for cars, get things done at work, etc. Career politicians don’t have to do any of that stuff. They never need to execute and accomplish, and they get rewarded for being obstinate. They stop worrying about money, since they get to pay their family as “consultants” out of campaign funds. And they have staff to take care of life’s little details.

I’m not expecting our politicians to follow the lead of Cincinnatus, who left his farm to run Rome, and then returned to his farm. But maybe some experience in the real world, not the political world, would get our legislators to work — WORK — on policy, instead of spending all their time posturing and campaigning.

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Posted in Politics

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