God Rigs Election: It's Bush In A "blowout"

[Colleen Thomas]

Nope, my aim is truly shitty. Of course, an assault rifle helps to take care of that on it's own.

In all seriousness, it's a lot easier to be angry about gun control from New York. There IS gun control in New York. Here it's not only legal to for anyone of age to have a gun, but it doesn't take much to get a concealed carry permit either. I know many people with such permits, including the one who gave me the assault rifle to shoot about 20 minutes before I passed out drunk. They're not exactly discriminating here in the Wild West.

-Mindy

Gun control in new york is the worlds least funny joke. People have been deprived of their right to own one to protect themselves so the only people with guns are the criminals. How fair is that?

-Colly

 

[minsue]

Guns don't kill people. Children kill people.

There was an interesting episode about educating children in gun safety that ran on 20/20 or one of those TV news magazines not long after the Colombine massacre. A group of 5-and-6 year old kids were given a safety lecture of the kind recommended by the NRA for their age level. Pretty simple, really: You must never touch a gun, and if you see a gun you must go and tell an adult about it.

All of the kids enthusiastically agreed, and responded appropriately to the scary stories about the bad things that can happen if you or another child touch a gun...Then the adults left the room for a while...leaving the gun on a table. Within a few minutes, every child in the class had taken a turn holding the gun (a prop, mercifully) except for one little girl, who kept reminding the others they weren't supposed to touch it. They aimed it at each other, looked down the barrel, passed it around...And eventually, the one hold-out couldn't stand it anymore and she also held the gun and played with it.

I remember that one. My own father is always bragging about how HIS children knew not to touch his guns because he told us so. The simple fact is, I just wasn't interested. I also regularly touched the gun (loaded, mind you) he kept in his nightstand, but just to move it. He kept his Penthouse supply "hidden" under a shirt under the gun. (I might have messed with the gun if I wasn't so distracted by the porn. )

- Mindy

 

[Guest]

That's great, Min. Porn saved your life! Does your pop know?

Perdita

 

[minsue]

Unfortunately, we often get the government someone else deserves.

Min, don't worry about underfunded child protective services. We've had a string of child deaths, disappearances etc. of kids in protective state custody or otherwise under the protection of the system; the social workers have caseloads of sometimes 60 kids each, for which they are supposed to do weekly home visits.

Last year, after the third death of a child under Dept. of Children and Families supervision in just under six months, Gov. Jeb Bush called them "isolated incidents." When he ran for Gov. a big part of his campaign rhetoric had to do with reorganizing that department to keep children safer. He fired the former dept. head and replaced him with a fundamentalist Christian, whose response to these isolated incidents has been -- are ya ready?

-- prayer. Churches have been asked to each "adopt a social worker" to pray for.

If Arizona follows Florida's example, you won't need to tax people to pay for child welfare services. Prayer is free.

We're headed that way. The legislature just ended a special session the governor called to overhaul CPS. Just as negotiations between the governor & the party leaderships on both sides were finally coming to a reasonable compromise, an independant report came out stating that CPS was well within the nationally recognized guidelines of cases per caseworker and blew it all to hell. It didn't matter that it was later revealed the "auditors" were including everyone in their caseworker count such as managers with 20-30 employees who did not themselves work cases. The damage was done. They did receive a slight funding boost to replace some of what had been hacked from the budget a couple of months before, but it isn't even enough to get them through the fiscal year much less actually improve anything.

I'll be with Colly crying in the corner.

- Mindy

 

[shereads]

It is a tax cut combined with increased spending, therefore sending the country deeply into deficit. It's like borrowing 10 grand in your name and then giving you back two hundred and giving some rich CEO somewhere a grand and then keeping the rest.

Colly, you didn't 'get' anything except deeper in the hole.

And as Ken James points out, we are all paying more at the local level.

What's most tragic to me is that Dubya is able to take credit for "supporting our troops" by virtue of eating Thanksgiving dinner with some of them, while he has quietly cut funding to Veteran's Administration hospitals. Good luck when you come back with a limb missing, ladies and gentlemen. But meanwhile, you have the President's full support.

I don't consider myself financially well-off by any means; in fact, my home and the hope that it might increase in value enough that I can pay cash for a trailer someplace with the profit is what I refer to as my "retirement plan." However, I was perfectly willing to continue paying that extra $300 a year that the President gave me when he took office, if it meant that we did some good with the money. I don't know of any Democrat who sits around wishing for someone to give them an extra tax break. Most of us know that the reason we pay taxes is that we use public services. Interstate highways. Air traffic control towers. Military hospitals to care for our veterans. Schools. Healthcare for the uninsured...I bet that if most people who celebrated their tax cut (not counting the top percentile for whom it truly added wealth) had to examine the choices that are being made on their behalf - cuts at veterans' hospitals being one of the least-publicized - most would give the money back.

 

[minsue]

That's great, Min. Porn saved your life! Does your pop know?

Perdita

OMG, No! We're a good, repressed, Irish-Catholic family. When my parents found condoms in my dresser drawer in high school they never said a word. I only know they found them because they put in an article from Dear Abby or one of those columns listing the most effective brands.

They used to go through my room all the time & take various contraband. I would go through their room and take it back. To this day, we've never said a word about it.

- Mindy

 

[KenJames]

Nope, my aim is truly shitty. Of course, an assault rifle helps to take care of that on it's own.

In all seriousness, it's a lot easier to be angry about gun control from New York. There IS gun control in New York. Here it's not only legal to for anyone of age to have a gun, but it doesn't take much to get a concealed carry permit either. I know many people with such permits, including the one who gave me the assault rifle to shoot about 20 minutes before I passed out drunk. They're not exactly discriminating here in the Wild West.

-Mindy

Even with an assault rifle, aim matters, except on rock and roll, which is mostly good for suppressive fire.

It's easy to get a concealed weapon permit in Texas, too. A lot of folks have them, but most people stopped toting pistols after the novelty wore off. They're a pain to carry and illegal on state property, in bars (felony) and anywhere with a "no firearms" sign posted (most businesses).

 

[shereads]

Illegal in bars? If Americans aren't free to protect ourselves while drunk, can we truly call ourselves free?

 

[Gary Chambers]

Leave this place for a few hours and you've got all the problems solved, leaving me nothing to do but play with my weapon.

The truth is, I find it hard to get excited about politics these days because I think I've finally figured out how to beat the system. You begin by reaching an understanding that the system is all about control. Those who imagine that they are in charge live in constant fear that they will wake up one morning to find no one listens to them any more. Over centuries these deluded individuals have evolved a system that keeps everyone obedient, subservient, loyal and relatively undemanding.

Why are your ceilings eight feet high? Because statistics show that results in a cubic area you can afford to heat on the alloted average income of your social class. Social engineering.

Why is there always enough unemployment to make sure a percentage of people must sleep under bridges? Because when there's full employment, or close to it, workers can move around and negotiate better payment for their time and effort. With unemployment always a threat, workers are gateful to have a job at any rate. Social engineering.

It's all social engineering, and it depends on maintaining the status quo of a populace that never gains an appreciation for things they can't afford. If everyone demands their night at the opera the whole system falls apart, so it's important that most people remain satisfied with bread and games; cake and circuses, and therein lies the system's Achilles heel.

Political commentary merely helps convince everyone they have the ability to shape their future and manage their present, but democracy is a sham really isn't it? We are all agreed that no matter who gets elected, we lose. So my new theory is to stop worrying about it. Learn to enjoy fine wines, evocative art, polished drama, exquisite fashion, gourmet food etc. Try to pass this appreciation for life's aesthetic pleasures onto others, especially those who obviously can't afford such things. The more people gain a taste for life at its best, the harder they become to control.

Aesthetics are the most important aspect of life. The writers and artists most conveniently positioned to deliver that message are those who create images and celebrations of the sensuality and romance in life. A good revolutionary exercise would be to state aloud at least once every hour, "Nothing is too good for me," unless you happen to be in love, of course, in which case it is, "Nothing is too good for us."



P.S.- Sher, you are then related to Cotton's daddy non? Increase Mather was also a Puritan, but considerably more intelligent and honourable than his barking mad son. In his time and place Increase was a liberal. In our time and place he might enjoy roasting a slab of venison over a bonfire of his own effigy.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

And as Ken James points out, we are all paying more at the local level.

What's most tragic to me is that Dubya is able to take credit for "supporting our troops" by virtue of eating Thanksgiving dinner with some of them, while he has quietly cut funding to Veteran's Administration hospitals. Good luck when you come back with a limb missing, ladies and gentlemen. But meanwhile, you have the President's full support.

I don't consider myself financially well-off by any means; in fact, my home and the hope that it might increase in value enough that I can pay cash for a trailer someplace with the profit is what I refer to as my "retirement plan." However, I was perfectly willing to continue paying that extra $300 a year that the President gave me when he took office, if it meant that we did some good with the money. I don't know of any Democrat who sits around wishing for someone to give them an extra tax break. Most of us know that the reason we pay taxes is that we use public services. Interstate highways. Air traffic control towers. Military hospitals to care for our veterans. Schools. Healthcare for the uninsured...I bet that if most people who celebrated their tax cut (not counting the top percentile for whom it truly added wealth) had to examine the choices that are being made on their behalf - cuts at veterans' hospitals being one of the least-publicized - most would give the money back.

In a perfect world maybe people would be willing to give it back. In this world I am willing to bet that most people are pragmatic/selfish enough to realize that the cuts would be in effect with or without thir 300$ and since the bozo's in congress would only blow it on a toilet seat or three hammers anyway I can probably do better with that 300 than they can.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

In a perfect world maybe people would be willing to give it back. In this world I am willing to bet that most people are pragmatic/selfish enough to realize that the cuts would be in effect with or without thir 300$ and since the bozo's in congress would only blow it on a toilet seat or three hammers anyway I can probably do better with that 300 than they can.

-Colly

You know better than that, Colly. In contrast to us 'tax and spend' liberals, this President and Congress are making spending cuts where nobody powerful will notice or care, in order to serve the powerful with tax cuts. If you happen to lack a powerful and wealthy lobby, you're screwed.

Isn't "tax and spend" more honest than "spend and don't tax"?

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I would prefer to see more fiscally responsible spending and a middle class tax relief package. It won't happen, so there is no need to dwell on it. Neither party has any interest in that.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Maybe, maybe not.

My point was that I don't worry much about that fact that I have to pay taxes, and I wonder at others who do. Like you, I wish I had the power to personally direct where my taxes were spent. But I consider taxation to be the price of living in a society and sharing both its benefits and burdens.

Things were pretty damn good for Americans living above the poverty level, before the Bush tax cuts went into effect. Poverty still existed, but fewer people were living in povery. Unemployment was at a quarter-century low. Who was doing all of the squawking about needing tax relief? Not me. I got that first $300 check in the mail two years ago and wondered what the hell I had gained from it that was worth giving up so much of what had been gained.

The $300 went to pay a utility bill and make a payment on the VISA bill. The deficit it helped aggravate will outlive me.


(I also wondered, and still do, why "President George W. Bush and Congress" were allowed to name themselves as the presenters of these tax rebate checks to us in the letter that arrived with them, instead of having it come from the IRS. Shouldn't that have qualified the check mailing as a campaign mailing on behalf of the Republican National Committee, in which case they should refund the price of the mailing to the taxpaying public? The money wasn't a gift from the President. It was taken from veterans and others who needed it.)

 

[Colleen Thomas]

When I graduated from college I found myself adrift with a pretty much useless degree, a depressed job market and studnet loans out my behind. I landed a job in Birmingham that was pretty decent all things considered and I could have been pretty comfortable on what my gross income was. The you take out federal tax, state tax, Medicare, county tax, city tax, thumb tax and whatever else they could manage to gouge from my once decent little check.

After rent, utilities, gas, car insurance and student loans I generally had enough to get about a weeks supply of meagre groceries out of every two week paycheck. For all that money I got what exactly? Well, I lived in a bad section of town and the only time I saw police officers was when I was on 459 trying to get to work. I ran through tires like they were going out of style driving on roads with pot holes you could loose a 20 mule team in. I had no health insurance of any kind until I had been there a year. The telephone was out more than it was on. One advantage of having no groceries was it didn't bother me when the power was out for hours at a time.

This isn't a boo hoo story, it just illustrates a point. A lot of working class people live on the edge. A tax break, even of 30$ a pay period can mean the difference in eating poor mans spaghetti (thats ragu over noodles for anyone who dosen't know) or eating real spagehtti with some meat in the sauce. I had an education, and I am pretty intelligent, within two years I had moved up to ofice manager from receptionist, had been vested and got insurance, moved to Hoover (a very nice burb) and went hungry only when A look at my hips told me I was living to high on the hog. Another happy consequence of living on the edge was I met the first woman to rock my world, an older woman who started inviting me to dinner at her place on Fridays because I looked so "thin and pale" as she put it.

A lot of people living on that ragged edge don't have my advantages. They don't have a degree, they aren't able to advance on merit often because of thier race or sex. They subsist, fighting from pay check to pay check to eek out an existance. 300$ is a visa and utility bill to you. To people in the complex I lived in three hundred dollars could be 4 months of not sweating coming home to an empty cupboard. These were not bad people. They were good folks and they were too proud to consider asking for government handouts. Many of them could have lived much better if they had just given up on their low paying jobs and gone on welfare. A tax break to them would be the equivlent of mana from heaven.

The days when one party stood for fiscal responsibility and the other stood for waste may be gone. At least the Neo-cons are showing a propensity to spend like old style democrats. The republicans did however romise a tax break and they did come through with it. The only time Democrats will come thorugh on a tax issue is when they promise to raise them. For you now, for me before my health issues cost me my job and for a lot of americans a few more dollars in taxes are just a nuisance if we thought of it at all. For many of the people I lived around back then a few more dollars in taxes means the difference in living scantily, but happily as a wage earner or going on welfare.

You may stand fast in your belief that the tax cut was wrong. For me I know that however small, it may have made some of those people I once called my neighbors happier than I was the Christmas I got my bicycle.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

For Shereads, Coture, Mindy and my other anti-tax cut liberal freinds.


http://www.claybennett.com/pages/latest_22.html

-Colly

 

[Couture]

You may stand fast in your belief that the tax cut was wrong. For me I know that however small, it may have made some of those people I once called my neighbors happier than I was the Christmas I got my bicycle.

-Colly

I've never said tax-cuts were wrong. I'm all for tax-cuts and just like I'm all for getting paid more money.

However, all I'm saying is that if I go out and get a few credit cards and start spending money like it's going out of style, I shouldn't delude myself into thinking I got a pay raise. Sure, momentarily, my standard of living might have increased. But there will come a day when the bill is due.

Tax cuts are great. I personally think we pay too goddamn much in taxes myself. Fuck working for the governent for four or five months out of the year.

But for us as Americans to get a *real* tax cut; the government has to stop spending so damned much money and creating trillion dollar Homeland Defense departments and trodding off to unneeded wars.

Sure we can go to the moon, mars, expand medicaid, go to war, increase pork barrel giveaways to the state. But we can't do them all at once. Doing so is a sure fire way to insolvency. Go ask Brazil what its like when the IMF comes in and starts selling off government departments to foreign companies. Go ask any number of countries who must devote a third to a half of their GDP to paying interest.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Coture,

Check the link I posted, I think it will give you a smile, if a kinda sad one.

I think we are taxed too much. I think we spend way too much on crap. Tax cut or no they are going to go right on spending. Bill Clinton, Dubya or the Arnoldnator in the white house it's not going to change one thing. Let us not forget these are the same represenative who wrote checks against their house bank accounts without ever even paying lip service and making a single deposit. The majority couldn't pass a simple personal fiance cleass, much less macro and micro economics. And frankly they don't give a horses patoot.

If the federal government was dead broke and a bill was being cnsidered to force a true blanaced budget you can bet some bozo would attach pork barrel legislation to it to give his district 1.5 million to put a new porch on Historic J. Argile's log cabin.

Argueing against a tax cut in leiu of federal insanity in spending isn't fair. Despite what common sense tells you the two aren't linked in any way.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Coture,

Check the link I posted, I think it will give you a smile, if a kinda sad one.

I think we are taxed too much. I think we spend way too much on crap. Tax cut or no they are going to go right on spending. Bill Clinton, Dubya or the Arnoldnator in the white house it's not going to change one thing. Let us not forget these are the same represenative who wrote checks against their house bank accounts without ever even paying lip service and making a single deposit. The majority couldn't pass a simple personal fiance cleass, much less macro and micro economics. And frankly they don't give a horses patoot.

If the federal government was dead broke and a bill was being cnsidered to force a true blanaced budget you can bet some bozo would attach pork barrel legislation to it to give his district 1.5 million to put a new porch on Historic J. Argile's log cabin.

Argueing against a tax cut in leiu of federal insanity in spending isn't fair. Despite what common sense tells you the two aren't linked in any way.

-Colly

Colleen, do you think you pay more than your share to use the interstate highway system, air traffic control towers and the military? Are there areas that could and should be cut? Of course; you and I woud probably differ on what those are, but we would find some common ground in the more absurd areas of pork barrel spending. Regardless, you can't pretend that you are for fiscal responsibility and not see that a tax cut at a time of increased spending - necessary or not, for the war in Iraq and/or on terrorism - and at a time when massive unemployment means that more people need or will need social services - is insane and irresponsible.

You said you'd love to be alive to see a manned mission to Mars.

How should it be paid for?

 

[shereads]

BTW, I agree with you that people living on the ragged edge ought to be cut a break. That isn't going to happen to any significant extent as long as the Republicans kowtow to the wealthy. Trickle-down economics may or may not lead to more generous tips to manicurists, but beyond that it's what Bush I called "voodoo."

 

[minsue]

When I graduated from college I found myself adrift with a pretty much useless degree, a depressed job market and studnet loans out my behind. I landed a job in Birmingham that was pretty decent all things considered and I could have been pretty comfortable on what my gross income was. The you take out federal tax, state tax, Medicare, county tax, city tax, thumb tax and whatever else they could manage to gouge from my once decent little check.

After rent, utilities, gas, car insurance and student loans I generally had enough to get about a weeks supply of meagre groceries out of every two week paycheck. For all that money I got what exactly? Well, I lived in a bad section of town and the only time I saw police officers was when I was on 459 trying to get to work. I ran through tires like they were going out of style driving on roads with pot holes you could loose a 20 mule team in. I had no health insurance of any kind until I had been there a year. The telephone was out more than it was on. One advantage of having no groceries was it didn't bother me when the power was out for hours at a time.

This isn't a boo hoo story, it just illustrates a point. A lot of working class people live on the edge. A tax break, even of 30$ a pay period can mean the difference in eating poor mans spaghetti (thats ragu over noodles for anyone who dosen't know) or eating real spagehtti with some meat in the sauce. I had an education, and I am pretty intelligent, within two years I had moved up to ofice manager from receptionist, had been vested and got insurance, moved to Hoover (a very nice burb) and went hungry only when A look at my hips told me I was living to high on the hog. Another happy consequence of living on the edge was I met the first woman to rock my world, an older woman who started inviting me to dinner at her place on Fridays because I looked so "thin and pale" as she put it.

A lot of people living on that ragged edge don't have my advantages. They don't have a degree, they aren't able to advance on merit often because of thier race or sex. They subsist, fighting from pay check to pay check to eek out an existance. 300$ is a visa and utility bill to you. To people in the complex I lived in three hundred dollars could be 4 months of not sweating coming home to an empty cupboard. These were not bad people. They were good folks and they were too proud to consider asking for government handouts. Many of them could have lived much better if they had just given up on their low paying jobs and gone on welfare. A tax break to them would be the equivlent of mana from heaven.

The days when one party stood for fiscal responsibility and the other stood for waste may be gone. At least the Neo-cons are showing a propensity to spend like old style democrats. The republicans did however romise a tax break and they did come through with it. The only time Democrats will come thorugh on a tax issue is when they promise to raise them. For you now, for me before my health issues cost me my job and for a lot of americans a few more dollars in taxes are just a nuisance if we thought of it at all. For many of the people I lived around back then a few more dollars in taxes means the difference in living scantily, but happily as a wage earner or going on welfare.

You may stand fast in your belief that the tax cut was wrong. For me I know that however small, it may have made some of those people I once called my neighbors happier than I was the Christmas I got my bicycle.

-Colly

Dear sweet Colly, the working poor didn't see a penny of the tax cuts. They just had the rug yanked our from under them by having the programs that some were lucky enough to get a helping hand from, such as the child care subsidy I mentioned earlier, cut from the budgets.

If the spending was cut in proportion to the tax cuts and it was the pork barrel spending that was cut, I'd be right there with you waving the banner of the fairly taxed. We all know that is NOT what happened and is as likely to happen as that manned mission to Mars, whose price tag was estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars about a decade ago.

- Mindy, willing to pay my way and then some

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Colleen, do you think you pay more than your share to use the interstate highway system, air traffic control towers and the military? Are there areas that could and should be cut? Of course; you and I woud probably differ on what those are, but we would find some common ground in the more absurd areas of pork barrel spending. Regardless, you can't pretend that you are for fiscal responsibility and not see that a tax cut at a time of increased spending - necessary or not, for the war in Iraq and/or on terrorism - and at a time when massive unemployment means that more people need or will need social services - is insane and irresponsible.

You said you'd love to be alive to see a manned mission to Mars.

How should it be paid for?

Since I have no income at the moment I am on shakey ground discussing taxes. Should I get disability from S.S.I. I will be on even more shakey ground.

If you wish to argue that taxes are a neccessary evil I am right there with you. Government on all levels does provide essential services that need to be funded. Government on all levels also blows moeny faster than a sailor on 48 hour leave. With even less to show for it as most sailors end up with at least a tattoo and fanciful tales of sexual adventrues.

If you wish to tell me that government spending is irresponsible I am with you there too. If you wish to tell me that the money going back to people in their tax cuts would have stopped the cuts, stopped the war, stopped the waste I respectfully disagree. It's money the government dosen't have to waste and the people who earned have to spend on things for themselves.

If government spent responsibily, on roads, bridges, air traffic controllers, law enforcement, a military and a limited beauracracy to administer social services and that responsible spending was endangered by lowering tax revenues I would agree with you it's bad. ASlong as 2.5 million is going to Birmingham to refurbish the statue of Vulcan I have to feel people getting a chance to spend the money will do so more responsibly than the people who don't now have a chance to fritter it away.

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Mindy,

If the working class saw none of the tax cuts that were promised then I will most gladly and heartily change my opinion on it. If the cuts serve only the wealthy and those who are living comfortably and does nothing for those to I know whom those dollars mean so much I will without reservation villify it and the people who put it through.

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Bill Clinton, Dubya or the Arnoldnator in the white house it's not going to change one thing.

On the contrary, it has changed a great deal in a short amount of time.

There is no evidence for the existence of Compassionate Conservatism. Republicans are the party of the rich. The Bill Clintons of the world, who came from poverty, and even the Robert Kennedys who went to the trouble to walk among the poor and were moved to tears by what they saw, have an essentially different attitude toward the people "on the ragged edge" than the Bushes, the Cheneys, and the Kenneth Lays.

When Republicans talk about "tax and spend liberals," they're expressing their anger over seeing tax money spent to aid the poor and the powerless.

They don't apply the same fiscal standard when tax dollars are spent on projects that put money into the coffers of big business. Even this President's Medicare program does more to enrich insurers and the pharmaceutical companies than it does for the elderly poor.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

On the contrary, it has changed a great deal in a short amount of time.

There is no evidence for the existence of Compassionate Conservatism. Republicans are the party of the rich. The Bill Clintons of the world, who came from poverty, and even the Robert Kennedys who went to the trouble to walk among the poor and were moved to tears by what they saw, have an essentially different attitude toward the people "on the ragged edge" than the Bushes, the Cheneys, and the Kenneth Lays.

When Republicans talk about "tax and spend liberals," they're expressing their anger over seeing tax money spent to aid the poor and the powerless.

They don't apply the same fiscal standard when tax dollars are spent on projects that put money into the coffers of big business. Even this President's Medicare program does more to enrich insurers and the pharmaceutical companies than it does for the elderly poor.

I am sorry She, but the president has practically zero control over the spending congress does. Without a line item veto he faces the same choice of evils I face when I go to the ballot box. Is the core legislation worth the price tag for all the pork that is added?

I don't know anything about compassionate conservatism. I tend to think it's like a company having "employee empoerment". It's a catchy phrase to deny the obviousness of the opposite bing true.

My conservatism has never been without compassion. Compassionate conservatism seems to be a term created by those who believe the two are mutually exclusive. They aren't. I question if the current brand of conservatism is even conservative, much less compassionate. It seems hellbent on wholesale changes in the world at large and the last time I checked conservatives didn't like radical change.

-Colly

 

[minsue]

Since I have no income at the moment I am on shakey ground discussing taxes. Should I get disability from S.S.I. I will be on even more shakey ground.

If you wish to argue that taxes are a neccessary evil I am right there with you. Government on all levels does provide essential services that need to be funded. Government on all levels also blows moeny faster than a sailor on 48 hour leave. With even less to show for it as most sailors end up with at least a tattoo and fanciful tales of sexual adventrues.

If you wish to tell me that government spending is irresponsible I am with you there too. If you wish to tell me that the money going back to people in their tax cuts would have stopped the cuts, stopped the war, stopped the waste I respectfully disagree. It's money the government dosen't have to waste and the people who earned have to spend on things for themselves.

If government spent responsibily, on roads, bridges, air traffic controllers, law enforcement, a military and a limited beauracracy to administer social services and that responsible spending was endangered by lowering tax revenues I would agree with you it's bad. ASlong as 2.5 million is going to Birmingham to refurbish the statue of Vulcan I have to feel people getting a chance to spend the money will do so more responsibly than the people who don't now have a chance to fritter it away.

-Colly

My husband, reading over my shoulder whilst getting ready for work, wants to point out that those in the government also end up with fanciful tales of sexual adventures.

- Mindy

(I think there's something Freudian going on. I originally typed '..fanciful tails..')