Amazing
Sometimes I wonder what the world looks like through the eyes of a John Derbyshire
Disenfranchise the Public SectorI�m not the only one voting for fewer voters.
Certainly the speaker of our state assembly (the legislature's lower house) is not fooled. This is a fellow named Sheldon Silver, and he is a conservative's worst nightmare, being (a) a business-hating socialist by inclination, (b) a trial lawyer by profession, and (c) a parliamentary tactician of genius. His life's work is to destroy private enterprise in New York State, having first transferred all its assets to the pockets of his colleagues at Weitz & Luxenberg, the firm of ambulance chasers that keeps him on retainer. Silver has contemptuously brushed aside Pataki's vetoes, as has State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno. (Silver is a Democrat, of course. Bruno and Pataki are both Republicans, or what passes for Republicans in New York State. That is to say, they are a couple of millimeters to the right of Hillary Clinton.) The legislature will get its spending increases, and I and my fellow New Yorkers will get a huge tax hike to finance them.
What on earth accounts for this loony behavior on the part of my state's elected representatives? Have none of them ever read the story of the ant and the grasshopper? Don't they know that in good times you sock stuff away for when the bad times come? I suppose at some level they do, but their overriding political priority is to appease the interest blocs that keep them in office.
And then I decide I don't really want to know.
I'm not sure I
can know. That "ant and grasshopper" thing, from Conservatives whose idea of thrift is to only collect money from people who don't have it is bizarre. We cut taxes during the flush times, helping
cause the bad times, and in response cut them some more. The very image of pouring water on a drowning man.
Not to mention that the point of the article is that too many people have a say in the government.
Add to that the conflation of
selected bits of law, voting and economics, and it becomes too much for the kid.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/28/2003 12:52:25 PM |
Posted by P6 at May 28, 2003 12:52 PM
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