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Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Starving the beast
Jennifer Moses has written a prescient Op-Ed for the WP raising a important point. Isn't the disaster in New Orleans what the "starve the beast" types in the Republican party want? Isn't this what Grover Norquist wants when he says he wants to starve the federal government until it can be "drowned in a bathtub"? Louisiana, if you remember from the Relative Tax Burden map, receives about $1.49 back on each federal tax dollar they pay, and given how they can barely make ends meet for their state, a starved federal government would be a disaster for them even if their largest city hadn't been crushed by a hurricane. So why does Louisiana vote Republican? Why does it vote to starve the beast that feeds them?
The short answer is probably somewhere between gay marriage and abortion. But still, red staters should be calling these starve the beast types to task, and point out that the current and persistent mess in New Orleans is what we have to look forward to after they've crippled the federal government. Further, it won't be the blue states that suffer under a weak federal government. Check out the tax and GDP maps, they're the ones making the money. |
4 Comments:
You are correct. I live in LA and I can tell you, politics and voting is based on personalities and hot button issues. It is not uncommon to hear people say, "He is against abortion and gay marriage and that's enough for me". Recently I asked how many people in my class will be willing to pay taxes to have stronger hurricane protection..out of 25, only 3 ou agreed. This is a poor state, and the people here don't realize that the policies of Republicans, particularly the present adminsitration does nothing to help their plight. It is not the humidity, but the supidity.
8:12 PM, November 29, 2005
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8:12 PM, November 29, 2005
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
8:44 PM, November 29, 2005
To be completely accurate this administration isn't really starving the beast so much as feeding it ground beef laced with antifreeze. They don't reduce the size of departments like the NIH, Dept of Education, Dept of Energy, Justice, HUD, FEMA, etc. They actually increase the size with people who are incompetent and/or hate government. The end result is the same, except worse. Eventually the government is destroyed by a combination of debt and dysfunction. Then Katrina hits, everything collapses.
QED
10:51 PM, November 29, 2005
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