like an idiot who doesn't know his ass from his elbow
one of my first rules for indulging my penchant for local news via my local newspaper, the lowell sun, is to never read the op-ed page, and to ever take anything found there seriously.
i've also been in a fascinating personal conversation with a friend of mine regarding media-broadcast personal disagreements. (first rule there, never get into an argument with an idiot lest a bystander have trouble telling the difference).
so here i go breaking all the rules...
in today's sun a particularly and consistently assinine syndicated columnist spouts off about a cadre of state governors petitioning washington for financial assistance, characterizing them "like pigs lining up to the trough". his particularly and strikingly ignorant arguments center around things like "democrats never worry about deficit when they spend more than the government takes in", and the emergence of a "formula for socialism" in trying to maintain current services in the face of declining revenues.
all seemingly sensible at face value, until you start to think: (and i'm saving the best for last, so skip to the bottom if you're in a hurry).
first of all, the only federal administration to achieve a budget surplus in my lifetime was a democrat's, and the obscenely enormous debts being racked up today are a direct result of a republican's administration's failed policies and no one else's. yup, in both cases they were aided by guys and gals from the other side of the aisle, but that's exactly the point--this current mess is the failure of PARTY POLITICS in general, not one party's politics in specific. using party labels in the discussion is disengenuous at best, and patently ridiculous if you think about it at all, and it only serves to perpetuate the coke vs pepsi nature of the stalemate, instead of injecting signs of healthy and intelligent life into our political soda aisle.
second of all, and this is the part that's got me steamed the most, this "trough" that these governors are lining up to "exploit" is none other than the very federal treasury that their citizens actually pay excess taxes into every year in order to cover the giant sucking welfare drain of all the other states who have always run a deficit between what they pay into the federal treasury and what they take out. here's a link to a recap of federal spending per state per dollar of federal taxes paid. of the governors asking for support, only ohio's enjoys a payment surplus, and that only marginally. every other mothers son among the group represents states who provide the engine by which all the other actual welfare states are coddled. check out new jersey: they're routinely robbed of .39 cents out of every dollar they pay in, and now someone would have us believe they're crazy for asking for a little of that back???
so who are the socialists? the folks who are asking for a little support for all they continue to do in subsidy to the government? or the bleating mindless sheep who cry "democrat" just like little boys might cry wolf in their never-ending quest never to be questioned about why they just can't seem to ever pay their own way?
i've also been in a fascinating personal conversation with a friend of mine regarding media-broadcast personal disagreements. (first rule there, never get into an argument with an idiot lest a bystander have trouble telling the difference).
so here i go breaking all the rules...
in today's sun a particularly and consistently assinine syndicated columnist spouts off about a cadre of state governors petitioning washington for financial assistance, characterizing them "like pigs lining up to the trough". his particularly and strikingly ignorant arguments center around things like "democrats never worry about deficit when they spend more than the government takes in", and the emergence of a "formula for socialism" in trying to maintain current services in the face of declining revenues.
all seemingly sensible at face value, until you start to think: (and i'm saving the best for last, so skip to the bottom if you're in a hurry).
first of all, the only federal administration to achieve a budget surplus in my lifetime was a democrat's, and the obscenely enormous debts being racked up today are a direct result of a republican's administration's failed policies and no one else's. yup, in both cases they were aided by guys and gals from the other side of the aisle, but that's exactly the point--this current mess is the failure of PARTY POLITICS in general, not one party's politics in specific. using party labels in the discussion is disengenuous at best, and patently ridiculous if you think about it at all, and it only serves to perpetuate the coke vs pepsi nature of the stalemate, instead of injecting signs of healthy and intelligent life into our political soda aisle.
second of all, and this is the part that's got me steamed the most, this "trough" that these governors are lining up to "exploit" is none other than the very federal treasury that their citizens actually pay excess taxes into every year in order to cover the giant sucking welfare drain of all the other states who have always run a deficit between what they pay into the federal treasury and what they take out. here's a link to a recap of federal spending per state per dollar of federal taxes paid. of the governors asking for support, only ohio's enjoys a payment surplus, and that only marginally. every other mothers son among the group represents states who provide the engine by which all the other actual welfare states are coddled. check out new jersey: they're routinely robbed of .39 cents out of every dollar they pay in, and now someone would have us believe they're crazy for asking for a little of that back???
so who are the socialists? the folks who are asking for a little support for all they continue to do in subsidy to the government? or the bleating mindless sheep who cry "democrat" just like little boys might cry wolf in their never-ending quest never to be questioned about why they just can't seem to ever pay their own way?
posted by kad barma at 2:50 PM
1 Comments:
Kad Barma,
Great point about the money-in, money-out equation..and on top of it all, I wonder if that very same columnist realizes that if those elected folks WEREN'T advocating for the people they represent, they wouldn't be doing their jobs at all...the whole point of politics is that we're supposed to advocate certain viewpoints, disagree with each other, and then compromise.
The system may be very broken in some ways, but I can't fault *my* Congresswoman for bringing money into the district, even if it's for something that doesn't benefit the *national interest* however that's going to be defined..
-gp
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