Tea Party v. Keg Party. Hmmmm.
0 comment Thursday, July 3, 2014 |
Even liberal journalists are starting to realize you can hardly argue for spending when you've got a zero balance. Logic is beginning to settle in. Indeed, to read David Brooks's column today, you'd think he was channeling Ronald Reagan.
Brooks gives concrete examples of state government dysfunction, where politicians are beholden to unions. New Jersey and California, to name a few, struggle to fund education and are forced to forgo worthwhile infrastructure projects because union pensions have them in a chokehold.
"New York City has to strain to finance its schools but must support 10,000 former cops who have retired before age 50.
California can�t afford new water projects, but state cops often receive 90 percent of their salaries when they retire at 50. The average corrections officer there makes $70,000 a year in base salary and $100,000 with overtime (California spends more on its prison system than on its schools).
States across the nation will be paralyzed for the rest of our lives because they face unfunded pension obligations that, if counted accurately, amount to $2 trillion � or $87,000 per plan participant."He concludes with this:
"Many of us would be happy to live with a bigger version of 1950s government: one that ran surpluses and was dexterous enough to tackle long-term problems as they arose. But we don�t have that government. We have an immobile government that is desperately overcommitted in all the wrong ways.
This situation, if you�ll forgive me for saying so, has been the Democratic Party�s epic failure. The party believes in the positive uses of government. But if you want the country to share that belief, you have to provide a government that is nimble, tough-minded and effective. That means occasionally standing up to the excessive demands of public employee unions. Instead of standing up to those demands, the party has become captured by the unions. Liberal activism has become paralyzed by its own special interests." By George, I think he's got it. But unions are just one problem. We've got plenty more.
Here's my "epic fail" list and I'm just getting started:
* Tax hikes: We don't want our hard-earned dollars "redistributed."
* Health care: We don't want to be forced to engage in "commerce" or pay Andy Griffith to tout it. And we don't like the government hand-picking which connected companies get to opt out of the Obamacare morass.
* Fannie and Freddie: We don't want to be the "people's" bank, lending money to poor people who can't afford a mortgage. The new FinReg law does NOTHING to stop this.
* Quantitative easing: We don't want the Fed printing more money.
* Bailouts and bonuses: We don't want to give our money to failed banks and companies so they can stay in business and put our money in their pockets.

Reagan said the Democrats spend like "drunken sailors," except the sailors spend their own money. And the drunken spending in D.C. is precisely why people are so hopping mad.
If it comes down to a choice between the Tea party and the Keg party, that's an easy call.

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