In addition to having a low tolerance for the self-righteous (for example Red Planners) I don’t much care for ideologues (idea worshipers). I’m essentially a pragmatist. Pragmatists are a pretty American breed of folk and I give the idea of pragmatism credit for another Americanism the “can do” spirit. It defeated the Axis powers. It got us to the moon. It helped us run communism into the ground.
Ideologues on the other hand, especially self righteous ideologues, resent the notion that practical considerations might interfere with their fairy tale view of the world. I recall a story from a college history class of the Polish nobility which was so imbued with the ideal of democracy that they decided no decision should be implemented unless it be by unanimous consent. This was followed shortly by a vote to raise an army to fight off Russian aggression which was defeated by a single no vote. The consequence was the subjugation of Poland by Russia for many generations. Ah the joys of purity!
This is why parents often resort to the catch phrase “life’s not fair” when assaulted by their children with demands.
So the great state of Texas run by proud and fierce tax hating Republicans has been reduced to a sorry situation that the Duluth School Board would appreciate.
The man whose name is usually invoked to justify “starving the beast” is President Ronald Reagan who would have been one hundred years old this week. His centenary is being marked by a lot of stories and celebrations. I watched the first half of a PBS documentary on Reagan last night and enjoyed hearing once again about all then unReaganesque things he had to do to make government work like raising taxes and digging deep deficit holes. He’d never make the grade in today’s Texas Republican circles except for the deficit spending part. But then again with a Reagan rather than a Rick Perry in charge Texas might not be in such deep doo doo.
Today’s Republicans live in fiscal fairy tale land as these paragraphs from the Forbes article point out:
Unfortunately there is no evidence that the big 1981 tax cut enacted by Reagan did anything whatsoever to restrain spending. Federal outlays rose from 21.7% of GDP in 1980 to 23.5% in 1983, before falling back to 21.3% of GDP by the time he left office.
Rather than view this as refutation of starve the beast theory, however, Republicans concluded that Reagan’s true mistake was acquiescing to tax increases almost every year from 1982 to 1988. By the end of his presidency, Reagan signed into law tax increases that took back half the 1981 tax cut. His hand-picked successor, George H.W. Bush, compounded the error, Republicans believe, by supporting a tax increase in 1990.
There are folks like the Duluth School Board who truly merit Tea Party treatment. The Duluth Board chose to dig deep into the voters pockets without permission to build new schools with their own fairy tale promise of saving lots of money. I’ve been the School Board and Dr. Dixon’s most persistent and voluble critic (since Tea Partiers have to save all their energy to fight the pinko commie President Obama). My respect and affection for President Obama must be hard for the Partiers to fathom.
My anti Red Plan work has led some folks to conclude that I must be allied with the Tea Party. That seems to be the presumption behind the following post on the “conservative” Duluth Citizens’ Blog.
Fri Feb 4 11:39:03 2011 – [Snobama in the DNT] By: Nuts
What does Harry Welty’ latest creation mean? Is he or has he gone nuts?There was a picture of the Snobama in the DNT home page lower left.
Harry Welty’s latest snow sculpture — not yet completed — depicts President Obama holding the world in his hands. (Bob King /http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/
My chief criticism of the Red Plan was never really about Red Plan tax hikes as onerous and unjustified as I believe them to be. My objection has been with the theft of a vote to decide the issue. Every news story about the sorry trajectory of the Red Plan vindicates my early objections. Just because our school board has been bad is no reason to move to fairy tale land with Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty or Michelle Bachman.
