jemagee wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:Wondering how the anti-tax crowd is feeling about that bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Or is infrastructure just for The Little People?

Yeesh, I didn't think that you'd be the first to blame this on Bush.

Those of us who favor smaller government do believe in the powers of the government to do two things: defense and roads.

Show me where he blamed bush? Dear god

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:Wondering how the anti-tax crowd is feeling about that bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Or is infrastructure just for The Little People?

Yeesh, I didn't think that you'd be the first to blame this on Bush.

Those of us who favor smaller government do believe in the powers of the government to do two things: defense and roads.

TomatoPie wrote:My bad.

But for 6+ years, I've heard a lot of wailing about the "Bush tax cuts."

Nobody yabbers much about the "TP-endorsed tax cuts"

Phan In Phlorida wrote:

Some men spent their days tracking and killing animals to BBQ at night while they were drinking beer. This was the beginning of what is known as the Conservative movement.

Other men who were weaker and less skilled at hunting learned to live off the conservatives by showing up for the nightly BBQs and doing the sewing, fetching, and hair dressing. This was the beginning of the Liberal movement.

Some of these liberal men eventually evolved into women.

Albeit a joke... why do those on the starboard end of the political spectrum feel the need to over-masculinize themselves and those of kindred spirit, and emasculate (wussify) those unlike them? Is it reaffirmation to compensate for some sort of insecurity? An evangelical tactic? Superiority complex?

Just curious.

dajafi wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

dajafi wrote:Wondering how the anti-tax crowd is feeling about that bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Or is infrastructure just for The Little People?

Yeesh, I didn't think that you'd be the first to blame this on Bush.

Those of us who favor smaller government do believe in the powers of the government to do two things: defense and roads.

As others have pointed out, I didn't blame Bush.

I do, however, blame Grover Norquist, the Hair Club for Growth, and the rest of the anti-tax jihadists in and out of office who have spent the last thirty years or so hollowing out our public sector so the richest can keep more of their money--in many cases, to the point where they can totally absent themselves from the public sphere and none of this is their problem anymore.

Beyond "roads," how do you feel about water pipes? Power grids? Bridge maintenance (most obviously at issue here)? Transit stations and subway lines (an everyday concern for some of us in the blue cities)? The physical plant of schools?

You can't just say, "oh, we should pay for this, but not for that." Otherwise, the insanely expensive and mostly useless weapons systems we still pump out to deter the long-gone Soviet threat wouldn't get a dime of my tax dollar--or, I suspect, most anyone else's outside of the towns in which these toys for psychopaths are built.

Reluctant Class Warriors
Do Dems finally understand the collateral effects of taxing the "rich"?

BY KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
Friday, August 3, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

Back in the hot summer of 1990, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell proudly engineered the infamous "luxury tax," a nasty little tithe on everything from furs to jewelry to yachts. Democrats were proud: Not only were they throwing new dollars at the Treasury, they'd done it by socking it to the rich. The wealthy, in the words of then-House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, would finally pay "their fair share."

Within a year, Mr. Mitchell was back in the Senate passionately demanding an end to the same dreaded luxury tax. The levy had devastated his home state of Maine's boat-building business, throwing yard workers, managers and salesmen out of jobs. The luxury tax was repealed by 1993, though by the look of today's tax debate, its lessons haven't been forgotten. Top Democrats are working to implement a new class-warfare tax strategy, only this time they're getting pushback from those in their party who fear the economic consequences.

...the new majority is in a short-term box. They ran on fiscal responsibility, and now (bummer) are expected to live up to their paygo pledge to offset new spending with money from elsewhere....
Their approach has instead been to follow Mr. Mitchell down that seductive luxury-tax path. Tax hikes are flying out of House and Senate committees, though what they all share in common is that each is laser-targeted on some rich or disreputable industry....

As in 1990, many Democrats are feeling confident about this tax-the-rich plan... After all, they aren't giving America tax hikes, they're giving America "tax justice." If you see what they mean.

Their problem is that, at least for now, a substantial number of their own party doesn't see what they mean. ... For every liberal who fondly recalls Mr. Mitchell's initial demagoguery of the rich, it seems there's another Democrat who remembers Mr. Mitchell's tattered, lifeless boat industry. Many understand that taxes on the "rich" have a way of spreading their pain around to everyone, and they don't want their own district to be next.

Witness the pushback. .... Chuck Schumer, patron senator of Wall Street, he declared his opposition to any tax that wasn't also levied on non-finance industries. And since Mr. Schumer is the one doling out money for next year's Senate re-election races, that may well be the end of that tax idea.

...

"What Charlie Rangel is encountering--and he has found this shocking--is that within his Democratic ranks he today has parochial interests with foresight," says Dick Armey, former House majority leader and current chairman of FreedomWorks. "These folks aren't going to come back a year later with a George Mitchell revelation. They're looking forward now, to what all this could do to their districts, and it's making it difficult for those proposing taxes."

This isn't to suggest some of these bad taxes won't go through; they will. But it's encouraging to know that, even amid this latest round of Democratic class-warfarism, the party harbors a minority who understands that taxes do have economic consequences. You can almost hear the ghost of the luxury tax past rasping away in the background.

pacino wrote:this is hilarity

dajafi wrote:TP, serious question: why do you post that right-wing tripe from the WSJ opinion page?

I don't read it. I won't read it. They start from a premise of intellectual dishonesty; they will only take up issues that confirm their pre-set beliefs. Empiricism, self-examination, and even the tiniest shred of doubt are all foreign (maybe French?) concepts to these ideologues.

(That they used my research, and cited me by name, to advance a point with which I vehemently disagree, didn't bring me around to this view, but you might say it helped confirm me beyond any question.)

Sadly, though I think you're a good human being, you increasingly read as similarly committed to your own long-held views, any evidence and argument to the contrary be damned.

The Minneapolis bridge collapse is a metaphor for our twisted national priorities.

While divers continue their search for the bodies of people who until the moment of death had assumed they were merely commuters, let’s consider these facts:

In 2005, the Minneapolis legislature enacted a hike in the gas tax, with the money earmarked for much-needed road and bridge repairs. But Tim Pawlenty - the Republican governor who has long been billed as a rising star in the conservative firmament, and who has sought to reign on a pledge of No New Taxes – decided that a gas tax hike would violate his principles. So he vetoed the bill. The lawmakers squawked, pointing out that the gas tax at the pump had last been raised in 1988, failed to override the veto.

Then, earlier this year, the lawmakers tried again. Mindful of the fact that Minnesota’s annual shortfall for road and bridge repairs had soared to $1.8 billion, they enacted another hike in the gas tax. But Pawlenty, deciding that the payment of an additional five cents per gallon constituted an undue tax burden, vetoed this bill as well. And again the lawmakers lacked the votes to override.

I’m not suggesting that this no-new-taxes governor is personally responsible for the I-35 bridge collapse; the span may well have fallen anyway, even if there had been new state money for repairs. (The states provide money for interstate repairs, but most of the tab is supposed to be paid by the feds.) But Pawlenty’s vetoes are symptomatic of a society that thinks it can survive on the cheap.

dajafi wrote:Dick Polman:

The Minneapolis bridge collapse is a metaphor for our twisted national priorities.

While divers continue their search for the bodies of people who until the moment of death had assumed they were merely commuters, let’s consider these facts:

In 2005, the Minneapolis legislature enacted a hike in the gas tax, with the money earmarked for much-needed road and bridge repairs. But Tim Pawlenty - the Republican governor who has long been billed as a rising star in the conservative firmament, and who has sought to reign on a pledge of No New Taxes – decided that a gas tax hike would violate his principles. So he vetoed the bill. The lawmakers squawked, pointing out that the gas tax at the pump had last been raised in 1988, failed to override the veto.

Then, earlier this year, the lawmakers tried again. Mindful of the fact that Minnesota’s annual shortfall for road and bridge repairs had soared to $1.8 billion, they enacted another hike in the gas tax. But Pawlenty, deciding that the payment of an additional five cents per gallon constituted an undue tax burden, vetoed this bill as well. And again the lawmakers lacked the votes to override.

I’m not suggesting that this no-new-taxes governor is personally responsible for the I-35 bridge collapse; the span may well have fallen anyway, even if there had been new state money for repairs. (The states provide money for interstate repairs, but most of the tab is supposed to be paid by the feds.) But Pawlenty’s vetoes are symptomatic of a society that thinks it can survive on the cheap.

By the way, if you ever want to really get yourself depressed, read the comments to Polman's blog. It's astounding how much the "conservatives" there are motivated solely by their hatred, their wishing-harm-on-them hatred, of "liberals." I guess this is what happens when you absorb too much Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh--all you know is hate and propaganda.

Then again, this seems to be how the right functions these days, with a few exceptions like, happily, our friend TomatoPie. (I think he's wrong, but he's still generally a mensch.) It's why I'm starting to believe, to my own amazement, that Rudy Giuliani might actually be the Republican nominee next year.

Yeah, he's a scumbag in his personal life, he knows little and cares less about "the issues," and his whole campaign is built around his good performance at a few press conferences in September 2001. But he Brings the Hate for Democrats in a way that Romney, McCain, and TV's Fred Thompson can't or won't. And that's all the majority of current Republicans seem to want from their leaders anymore. It's democracy by spite.

TomatoPie wrote:Straw men.

By any measure you like, tax revenues are up, WAAAAAAY up, in the wake of Bush tax cuts.