Raise, call or fold
First blog this morning, haven't even scanned the news yet, was CalPundit. In his gentlemanly fashion he challenged his right-wing readers to put up or shut up:
If you want to lower taxes, fine. But you have to reduce spending too, and conservatives have been allowed for far too long to complain endlessly about big government without having to step up to the plate and tell us exactly what they want to cut back. So have at it. Then we can all take a look at your proposals and decide if they're worth it.
It's interesting to think about the comments to this post. The leftists, outside the occasional sardonic quip, are commenting about the question rather than answering it, for the most part. This makes perfect sense, because it's not the left that wants to starve the government into helplessness.
As for the right, Mark Safranski, alias
ZenPundit, says:
Ok, I'll be brave. FDR never intended that Social Security would be a twenty year income maintenance program - raise the retirement age ( for able-bodied) to 70 for the boomers and 75 for Gen X.
DAMMIT! DAMMIT! DAMMIT! A rational, well thought-out answer.
I
HATE when that happens…
ZenPundit ain't blogrolled, but I'll contribute a link toward his evolution. In the best of all worlds, he'd bump that other right-wing Pundit and we'd have some intelligent conversation.
Fortunately, he was just trying to make up for a comment made by one "not for publication."
I've been saying this for years and recently over at Andy Sullivan's.[p6: THAT is a bad sign…]
The deficit has a very important aspect to it - we must ensure that whenever a Dem gets in office there is no money availble for any new government entitlement. Moreover, it is easier for a Dem to cut the budget politically.
In the long view, the most important aspect of real politics (as I see it) is to ensure the government does no more (less if possible) to pick winners in society - even in health (note my comments on your inevitability argument).
Ultimately any form of subversive campaign that works to ensure that goal helps to weaken the concept and satisfaction of government. This is simply a march away from Europe.
You DO NOT want President Hillary Clinton gaining office in 2008 with a balanced budget.
Go read what happened 2 days after Clinton was elected in 2008 [sic]. Hint: he met with Greenspan and Alan did his job. Clinton made his choice and was allowed another 4 years.
No insult intended, Mark, but you came up short. "not for publication" just dug too deep a hole with this nonsense. It's SO stupid it could easily be posted by a leftist as sarcasm.
Hm.
Even assuming "not for publication" is jerking the right around with that response, you still have "Friedrich von Blowhard":
What's actually fairly obvious when you look at it this way is that when the economy grows quickly, money floods into the public sector and then politicians go looking for ways to spend it. The social legislation of the 60's was the obvious consequence of the economic growth of the 1950s.
As a right-winger, what I find amusing in these comment strings is the assumption that it is absolutely right and proper for politicians to buy votes with money taken from other people--the only problem, apparently, is that politicians are just too gutless to expropriate the fat cats.
Like the "fat cats" aren't the ones that benefitted from all that expenditure and deficit spending. As a wise man once said, "What-EVA!"
posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/24/2003 01:28:04 PM |
Posted by P6 at May 24, 2003 01:28 PM
| Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/547
