Colorado Springs: A Teabagger Paradise

[JSojourner]

Lief,

I really think you are being hackish with this post.  No offense, but you have failed to consider some important points.

1.   The private sector will solve the problem. Now that government is out of the mix, private businesses (also known as the road and bridge fairies) will band together to pave roads, provide ambulance service and fire protection and remove trash and weeds.  That's how it always happens when we slay the beast that is big guv'mint.

2.   Churches and charities will step up to the plate and pick up the slack.  True, they already have their hands full what with sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, feeding the hungry and organizing international relief efforts.  But they can do more.  By starving big guv'mint, we'll be enabling our citizens to embrace the better angels of their nature.

3.  Along those lines -- donations, donations, donations!  Freedom-loving 'murricans don't approve of theft, which is what taxation of any kind is.  But they DO approve of generosity.  And so as soon as the taxing stops, look for the financial donations to start pouring in. Why, Colorado Springs will be so flush with cash from the donation fairies that they'll have to hand the money to other cities and counties that have killed the beast.

4.  Crime?  Feh!  Our citizenry will be heavily armed and we won't have to be content with simple handguns, shotguns or .22 rifles either.  We'll have arsenals inside our homes because, after all, the Second Amendment clearly guarantees the right to own dirty bombs, bazookas and .30 caliber belt-fed machine guns.  Those criminal bastards won't dare mess with the good people of Colorado Springs.

Please Lief.  Stop being such a hack!!

[JSojourner]

This thread is like one massive circle jerk.

Except everyone is already dry.

Wait for it.
OH YES!!!!
Okay, now everyone is dry.

OKay now...THIS post was win.  Mechaman...you better never leave.

[JSojourner]

Another paper, yet another, came out today, by two Harvard economists, that just spending more in an economic downturn, in a cross country analysis, does not work nearly as well as tax cuts. I will try to find it in due course. I don't claim to be an expert on macro economics (micro economics is my thing), but I think some modesty about this all is in order. Maybe we don't know as much as we think we know. Is that at all possible?

I'm sure that's true, Torie.  I think when you talk about tax cuts, what needs to be determined is, "whose taxes"?  Those who earn far more that you or I (you're doing really well and I am what you would call comfortable) tend not to use their tax cut savings for things that stimulate the economy.  Remember the little chart Moody's put out about a year ago?  (Let me see if I can find it.)


So if people want to talk tax cuts for the working poor, I am all over that.  Small businesses?  Yeah, I am usually in favor -- provided the company is retaining and creating good jobs. And as for the middle class, I think sometimes yes, sometimes no.  I just depends...but I can be persuaded.  The top five percent?  No thanks.  It's not class warfare (at least, not any more of a class war than conservatives have declared on the working poor)...it's just common sense.  Shoveling more cash into the Cayman Islands or a Swiss bank account is not helping our economy.

[JSojourner]

Ya, that is true, although the time horizon is important. Investment pays off in the long run, and the rich don't put their money under a mattress typically (although that SOS Powell in Illinois, put his cash bribe money in shoe boxes in a closet (about 800K), and that was well, deflationary actually. Are you old enough JS to remember that one? 

 As you know, I am not the type to bitch about my tax rate. And even when I was more conservative, I didn't bitch. In fact, I was morally uncomfortable using (although I did use), some tax loopholes that were available back when that I thought were wrong.

I am kind of an unpredictable chap aren't I? 

You're perfectly predictable, Torie.  You're a left wing socialist.  Except when you're being a right wing fascist.  See how easy that was? 

[JSojourner]

The problem, of course, is that many of the problems Detroit faces were caused by the sort of pro-free trade, anti-worker policies that most liberals oppose.

Exact-a-mundo!