Clearly, the Earth’s tilt off axis resulting from the Chile quake is begining to produce curious results. Kevin Drum, the poster child for calm, fair-minded left-centrism, is as shrill as…K-thrug:
I’d just like to quickly sum up what we now know about conservative Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future”:
- It raises taxes on 90% of Americans.
- It doesn’t explain what spending it would cut.
- It doesn’t eliminate the deficit.
And remember, this comes from the guy who’s pretty much the best the GOP has to offer. Pretty impressive, no?
Yeah, the GOP can talk a good game, but they’re boxed into a corner. They won’t really cut any federal spending programs – or announce a plan to do so – and they won’t try to get more revenue out of the people who can most afford to contribute more (read: Bush’s “base”).
So what we are left with is this gibberish. It’s not a failing particular to Ryan. There is just no way to make Republican math work at either the federal or state level.
Unfortunately, the American populace has developed an immature view of government based on that same Republican math: we want taxes to remain relatively low (especially for the super wealthy!), and we want the full suite of government services available in higher taxed, developed nations (European socialist hellholes).
On the state and municipal level, balanced budget requirements/tax aversions eventually expose the fallacy. See, ie, California, Colorado Springs and Arizona.
At least one state seems to have learned the lesson. I’m not optimistic that it represents anything like a trend though.
March 11, 2010 at 11:07 am
Unfortunately, a great many of “us” simply don’t want others of “us” to get anything from the government that “we” all (or most of us) have to pay for — even if we all benefit. But if there’s a corporation involved instead of the government, or if it’s the military, then no problem!
March 11, 2010 at 11:28 am
I think sucking at actual governance might be part of the Republican strategy. They can keep getting themselves elected by trashing the country with the sure knowledge that, if succeeded by a Democrat, they can then blame all the damage they’ve wrought on said Democrat in order to get elected in the next cycle.
March 11, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I don’t think it’s a strategy as much as all they know to do: a) suck, b) blame someone else.
March 11, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Their whole philosophy is based on government sucking. So, when they’re in charge, they make government suck, and when not in charge, they do all they can to stop all efforts to decrease the sucking.
The one exception is the military, and that’s because there’s lots of money to made there — and foreigners to blow up. Plus, flag waving always excites the rubes.
March 11, 2010 at 5:12 pm
I think you credit present morons with the vision of idjuts past. I’ve concluded the current crop are just total head-bonking chuckleheads.
I’m not sure they recognize the difference between suck and government nor there inability to govern without sucking.
I applaud your effort t find method in their madness, but I think you’re psychoanlyzing Ken&Barbie dolls.
They’re like GIJoes bragging whose dick is the biggest, unaware that they are anatomically incomplete.
Thank you for letting me rant. Your analysis makes perfect sense, and its logic infuriates me so I must protest.
Calgon! god of whiny liberals! Take me away! Away!
March 11, 2010 at 6:01 pm
I hope you’re right. But I fear that they will find another reasonably competent actor to convince the rubes once again that it’s Morning in America!
March 11, 2010 at 6:03 pm
I think the next major demagogue will be one of our major undoing. (Wow, that reads like a Churchillism. I am so cool.)
March 11, 2010 at 8:08 pm
He/she will probably come totally out of left field. Maybe someone like, well, Obama! Except, you know, an actual demagogue.
I can see it now: The 2020 GOP nominee for president is a woman born in Puerto Rico. Her mother is from Utah and her father is from Venezuela. Except she was really born in Iran, and she’s actually the grand-daughter of Ayn Rand and the Shah of Iran. She just speaks really Spanish really well.
March 11, 2010 at 8:10 pm
Shit. That’s supposed to be one reply level lower.
March 11, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Poor Ayn. The Shah told her the turkey baster was a dildo, and that he was, alas, congenitally impotent although awed be her ardent… beauty.
March 11, 2010 at 11:53 am
i think that alot of americans would pay higher taxes as long as it was fair. what oregon did is discrimination against a minority.
a flat tax is the only fair way. i think 20 per cent or so is fair. thats higher than what most ppl who want a flat tax say they want but im trying to meet u halfway.
March 11, 2010 at 1:25 pm
flat taxes are fine as long as we have flat incomes. And flat inherited wealth.
As it is the more land you own, e.g., the more value (your assets) that you possess are covered by police and fire department services. If you own a factory, you need the schools and the roads for your workers really more than your workers, who might otherwise be farm laborers, or game poachers, say, need them.
This sort of thing was bloody obvious about 1920 in the USA, and is still in most of the third world today.
March 15, 2010 at 6:07 am
Moreover tax rates in the US are marginal rates — i.e. you pay the same amount of taxes as everybody else for the first 90K, then every extra dollar is taxed a little more after that, and so on. Do people, as a rule, work JUST as hard making their first 100K as they do their NEXT 100K? I think not.
Or do you even mean flat amount? and not merely flat rate? Which would be even mroe redick. Right, some dude working in the car wash has to pay 10K in income tax, just like the lobbyist.
March 11, 2010 at 2:04 pm
A flat rate works only if everyone uses the same size tires and cleans up their nail clippings.
March 11, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Do you want two scoop coffee or three scoop coffee when you get to the office.
Fucking jelly-bellies just pour it in their cup and add fake sugar and fake milk to bring it to taste.
.
March 11, 2010 at 1:10 pm
“The taxes! The thing with the fingers means more taxes!”
March 16, 2010 at 4:14 pm
“C’mon.”
March 11, 2010 at 1:20 pm
“You can’t take up the carpet until you take up the tax.”
March 11, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Hard to think of a time in recent years when partisan polarity so clearly depicted the worst and lesser of two evils. Perhaps this is the worst flaw of a two-party system: when one goes totally to shit (Reps) the other need merely float on top like pond scum. (Democratic solidarity! Stand united for universal surface tension!)
I’m trying to think of a Republican I like in any way, even sheer entertainment value. I can’t. Closest to this is Romney, who at least can manage his physical charisma before a camera with some aplomb.
When is the last time a Repub made at least a tolerable off-the cuff joke? That we laughed with not at? When was the last time we even enjoyed laughing AT them? Tindal’s epic failure speech when we got our first brown-skinned Wonder Pony 2 Novembers ago?
Now we have a Dem, Massa (wadda name!), doing his best Larry Craig imitation, and I gotta tell ye, Massa is way funnier as Larry Craig than Larry Craig was. We can at least still laugh at Dems. Reps just make us wanna cry or puke or kill. (If we’re Kleber, all 3 at once. In a Care Bear suit in the pantry with a strap-on dildo.)
The currently prevailing Dem majority: with winners like them, who needs losers? (Yiddish [!RimShot!], which is the sound of a gefilte fish being tossed at Joe Lieberman in blackface.)
March 11, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Here’s a post I came across today that reminded me that at least intelligent, reasonable, and much more fair and equitable alternative tax schemes can be imagined, although as the author points out, he’s under no illusion that anything like it actually will be anytime soon. A fantastic overall blog as well!
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=50
March 11, 2010 at 11:05 pm
Seriously, how can you people spend energy on this when we need to confromt the PRESSING issue HILLARY CLINTON’S VAGINAL ODOR.
This is problem that is quite simply gotten out of hand and MUST be addressed NOW. For God’s sake, the President of Romania is DEAD because of this.
Not to mention that world leaders are just flatly REFUSING to meet with Secretary Clinton because of the horrible stench wafting from her so-called “cleft of Venus”. How the heck can we conduct effective diplomacy under these conditions?
Look, I know this is not a pleasant subject. And I don’t have a quick solution, absent an immediate intervention by a team of hygenists equipped with flamethrowers and boric acid. There will be casualties, probably. But this situation HAS to be addressed.
March 11, 2010 at 11:22 pm
Relax! We’ve got nukes!
March 11, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Holy Dildo
March 12, 2010 at 7:46 am
Look, Floyd, no one loves you more than me, and I know it’s been a while since you’ve come around, but please pick a new trolly topic to flog.
March 12, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Yeah, Floyd, everyone knows Hillary’s got a dick. Duh.
March 12, 2010 at 3:49 pm
A dick and the dick it’s attached to. Yo Clenis!
March 14, 2010 at 5:26 pm
It doesn’t eliminate the deficit.
But, but, but… IT CUTS TAXES FOR THE IMMENSELY WEALTHY! And of course, they need it most. There are perfectly good Bentleys sitting in car lots all across America that need to be bought….. Wait…. What’s that you say? The guy who can’t afford his mortgage payment deserves tax cuts more? Well, with the tax cuts his wealthy overlords would get, they could buy his house and use it as a make shift arena for hobo fights which he and his now homeless family could partake in, and that sir, is what fiscal responsibility is all about.