I’m sure the subject of this post will laugh and point out the recent election results as he smugly sits in his ivory tower; however, since Issac Smith at Free State Politics linked to one of my recent posts I’m going to respond in kind.
He did have some left-handed complements for the Prince George’s County GOP, as he cited a recent Gazette piece about the party attempting to “reinvent” itself there. His comment on the piece was telling though:
No one expects Republicans to start winning in Prince George’s, of course, but it seems focusing on actual problems in Maryland is a better course than offering up the usual — and increasingly unpopular — agenda of endless tax cuts, warmongering, and anti-immigrant hysteria.
Personally I prefer to think of this agenda as prosperity, defending our freedom, and discouraging illegal immigration, but I’ll allow Issac his claims for the moment.
There is one good point Smith brings up as far as how far behind the Republicans are as far as taking advantage of the power of the Internet to influence voters. (Ok, at least some Republicans are behind. I was here before quite a few of these upstarts were, and I’m doing my best to reinvent the party for 2008 and beyond.) But appealing to today’s youth can be a problem when you hew to what’s considered a point of view that’s so like when MTV actually played videos 24/7. (Insert current teen/young adult slang for not being hip because it’s too much like being a mature adult; in my day the phrase would’ve been “lame.”)
So obviously there’s a generation gap here. But good ideas are timeless, and I write as I do because I believe that enacting the ideas I have will lead to a renewal of the Republican Party and another Reaganesque “morning in America.” Most of the under-25 set doesn’t remember it well, but the 1980’s were some very good years. And sometimes the trouble Republicans have is they hope to find a person who is the Reagan of this generation – that’s simply not possible. However, we need not stray from the principles of smaller, better government either.
But I’m not seeing a “progressive” agenda that does much besides simply roll back what they perceive as the bad parts of the last six years. Let’s use Smith’s three items as an example.
“Endless tax cuts.” I don’t know why so-called progressives have such a problem with people keeping their own money. And I don’t have a problem with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Oprah Winfrey keeping more of their money – after all they earned it. They took risks and were paid off handsomely. And the same goes for millions of other people, many of whom own businesses, managed to invest well, or even parlayed a skill they have into fame and fortune for themselves. I’ll even put John Edwards in that category for his gift of gab and playing to jurors’ emotions.
“Warmongering.” This one is where he cited my recent post, “Wayne’s world (view)”. I suppose if wanting victory over the forces of radical Islam makes me a “warmonger” I’ll gladly accept the label. Imagine we give folks like Issac Smith what they wish and withdraw from Iraq today, waving the white flag as we go. My bet is before the year would be out Iraq would become an Iranian puppet state and the bloodletting in that nation would be only beginning as the Kurds would be victims of “ethnic cleansing.” (Maybe the Democrats would want to get involved then? I doubt it.) And sometime after the 2008 elections we’d have another attack that would make 9/11 look like a day at the park.
These guys ain’t playing around – we have to fight fire with fire.
“Anti-immigrant hysteria.” Thousands of immigrants come to our country legally every year and make productive places for themselves in our society. But they come to be Americans, not just to make cash to send home, or, more darkly, come to America to victimize both the native and illegal population. In California, problems with prison overcrowding can be traced to all of the illegal immigrants locked up – not just for the offense of crossing the border illegally, but for a multitude of felonies. If there were no illegal immigrants in California prisons, the number of prisoners would be under the capacity allowed.
The fact that three of the six members of the “Jersey jihad” were in our country illegally should give us pause; however, since the “progressives” have no problem with felons voting they must see six more possible Democrat votes among these men.
Finally, it’s interesting to note that, while the Maryland GOP is thought by Smith to be at an ebb, it’s going to be interesting to see what sort of spin the Maryland Democrats will put on the higher sales, gasoline, and other taxes that Marylanders will be paying by the time the next election rolls around. One thing about Governor O’Malley delaying the fiscal day of reckoning – unlike Governor Ehrlich or the two Democrats preceding him – and adding new spending on top of it is that all of this reaching into the back pockets of Free State residents will be a bit fresher on the minds of the voters.
And, like the elephant is known for, people like me in the Maryland GOP don’t forget.
Most of the under-25 set doesn’t remember it well, but the 1980’s were some very good years.
Yeah, for the very rich. The 1980s were the first time in more than a half century when the US saw its economy consistently grow without an increase in median real wages. Although real wages rebounded in the late 1990s a bit, they never made it back to their 1973 peak. The debt ratio went up 20 points, and the absolute debt’s percentage increase was higher than in the 1930s. Taxes had to stay level to fund the increased defense spending, so Reagan had to raise taxes on the poor and on the middle class to fund his slashing of the top income tax rate. The poverty rate stopped declining despite the growing economy, even though it had declined in good times ever since the end of World War Two.
I don’t know why so-called progressives have such a problem with people keeping their own money.
I don’t. I think taxes should be as low as possible while maintaining first-world status. And for that you need a functioning pension system, a public health system that isn’t the developed world’s joke, decent public education, infrastructure that can sustain a modern economy, and some measure of defense. You’re free to look for a single country that’s done it successfully without welfare and without Japan’s copout of making corporations pay welfare instead of the government.
And sometime after the 2008 elections we’d have another attack that would make 9/11 look like a day at the park.
Yeah, it’s possible. But there’s another possibility, too. The US stays in Iraq. The ethnic cleansing’s already going on; Iraq’s rate of violent death is on a par with this of the most belligerent cultures anthropologists have ever encountered.
Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad can keep blaming all of his woes on the US. The US is the elephant in the room that prevents Ahmadinejad, who has Bush-level popularity in Iran, from being accountable for his economic failure. Remove the meddling in the region and the regime in Iran is out before 2010. Keep going and not only will the US get kicked out of Iraq, which by all accounts is worse than withdrawing, but also it will ensure radical Islam’s ranks will swell. Pakistan could fall to Islamist hands; the Iranian regime would be invulnerable; Iraq would be even more chaotic than it is now.
Thousands of immigrants come to our country legally every year and make productive places for themselves in our society. But they come to be Americans, not just to make cash to send home, or, more darkly, come to America to victimize both the native and illegal population.
Thousands of immigrants come to the US to be productive. Thousands more would like to but are shut down by draconian immigration quotas, so they come in B-2 status and overstay their visas. They obey all the laws, except the ones that tell them not to stay. Sometimes they don’t, but then again sometimes US citizens don’t obey laws, either. How many of those illegal immigrants you complain are overcrowding the prisons are there because of nonviolent drug offenses that you said in the other post you’d decriminalize?
Several points:
You talk about the debt ratio in the 1980’s, but don’t forget who enacted the budgets then – a Democrat-controlled Congress. I remember Tip O’Neill annually declaring Reagan’s budget DOA. Meanwhile, thanks to those tax cuts federal receipts increased all through the 1980’s, as they have steadily since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, reaching an all-time high last month.
And I can’t figure out how our public health system is such a joke when people come here from abroad for medical treatment. Perhaps the system of insurance is a joke, but getting the government out of health care entirely and introducing more market forces would help to ease that burden.
You make the point about Iran, which has some validity, but you forget that this regime was in existence and Iran an economic basket case long before Bush took office. While Bush is the latest straw man, America will continue to be Ahmadinejad’s whipping boy regardless of who’s in office – unless they both withdraw and stop support of Israel, neither of which I favor.
As far as illegal immigrants in prison, many are there for drug offenses but I tend to doubt it’s for simple possession as I wrote about – more likely they’re either involved in one of the many Latin American drug cartels or the MS-13 gang. With what you call “draconian” immigration quotas, you have a point but that can be addressed later after our borders are secured and scofflaws evicted.
You talk about the debt ratio in the 1980’s, but don’t forget who enacted the budgets then – a Democrat-controlled Congress.
The Democrats had controlled Congress since the 1950s. And still the debt ratio went down until the 1973 supply shock. It even went down in the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson was spending money like there was no tomorrow. Then suddenly Reagan took office and the debt ratio started going up. The reason is that the spending Reagan was willing to cut consisted of small welfare programs; the big fish, Social Security, is politically untouchable (incidentally, Edwards is the same, only on the left: the tax increase he’s proposing to pay for his program is worth $25 billion a year, which I think is as insulting to the intelligence as his Iraq flip-flop).
Meanwhile, thanks to those tax cuts federal receipts increased all through the 1980’s, as they have steadily since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, reaching an all-time high last month.
Right… except that tax receipts went up even more in the 1990s, when the budget was balanced and the top income tax rate was 40%. The economy has grown since 2001 – that’s why tax receipts went up, even though they went down in proportion to GDP. It’s grown more slowly than the Canadian economy, despite having a lower income tax (about 40% state + federal compared with 44% provincial + federal in Canada, but the US top rate only starts at $300,000 a year compared with about $100,000 in Canada). It’s grown more slowly than it grew in the 1990s, when federal income tax was 40% and the US outgrew the rest of the developed world for the first time since World War Two. Lately US growth is even falling behind Western Europe; in 2006 the US grew more slowly than the Eurozone.
Incidentally, my own position on taxes is that there should be some fixed deduction, say at the poverty level, and above it income tax should be flat at X%, where X is what it takes to balance the budget. Right now, X = 44 if you include Social Security; if you don’t, X = 35. Politicians are going to be a lot less likely to throw money on pork when it means taxes will immediately go up.
And I can’t figure out how our public health system is such a joke when people come here from abroad for medical treatment.
If you’re talking about the “Canadians are coming here in droves,” it’s a myth. If you’re talking about rich people who come to the US to spend half a million dollars on an operation, it’s irrelevant. They can (and do) go to Switzerland; and yet the OECD rates France the country with the best health care system in the world, not the US. France also manages to do that while having a slightly lower per capita government spending than the US on health care, and a fraction of the US’s private spending.
You make the point about Iran, which has some validity, but you forget that this regime was in existence and Iran an economic basket case long before Bush took office. While Bush is the latest straw man, America will continue to be Ahmadinejad’s whipping boy regardless of who’s in office – unless they both withdraw and stop support of Israel, neither of which I favor.
Yeah, I know Iran’s been a basket case for a long time. But a country where fundamentalism hasn’t been working for 28 years is surely weaker than one where it hasn’t been working for 21. And Ahmadinejad rose to power because all the democrats boycotted the election because Khatami wasn’t reforming the country fast enough. That’s not going to happen again; the reformers realized that they should hold their nose and vote against people like Ahmadinejad, who’s so radical his favorite cleric got barred from running for being too conservative for the Supreme Leader.
In addition, what holds now far more than it did in 2000 is oil pressure. Iran’s oil demand is rising to the point that the government has to either ration fuel or cut down on exports to the point it won’t raise enough revenue. Neither option is especially popular with the people, and Ahmadinejad’s already deeply unpopular without having done either. Next Presidential election, the people are going to vote for a reformer, and if the reformer can’t change the system fast enough like Khatami couldn’t, they’ll do what the Poles did in 1989.
With what you call “draconian” immigration quotas, you have a point but that can be addressed later after our borders are secured and scofflaws evicted.
There are three basic things the US can do with illegal immigrants: deport, legalize, and nothing. Deporting them is a pipedream; political science research has repeatedly found that stricter border controls increase the number of illegal immigrants. Doing nothing has created the problem that exists today. Legalizing has a known price tag due to social welfare systems, and it’s minute (a few billions per year, which could be funded entirely out of closing a few pork barrel projects or tax loopholes).
Regarding french health care, I guess if you are ready to pay a 50% income tax on your wages and then on top of that buy supplemental insurance through your union in order to get full health coverage, the french health care system is a great idea. Further that with the claim that it has been in existence for over 100 years and just reached solvency in 1999, the french health care system is a perfect fit for dc politicians who love to spend our own money. Oh, and french corporate income taxes top out at 72%.
That said, the US system is definitely flawed. Recently we had medical bills that exceeded 60,000 (which was covered 100% by insurance). The insurance paid the hospital 10,000.
The problem is what is the real cost of the medical services provided? 10,000 or 60,000? I’m willing to bet that if the insurance companies were required to pay 100% of what is billed and hospitals were required to be honest in their billing, then the cost of medical services would go down sharply.
You know, in rereading the post plus comments not a word is said to defend the part I cited about Martin O’Malley and his lack of attention to the structural deficit ($200 million is just a nice little first step, but the GA shot down a sensible plan from Sen. Stoltzfus that would’ve made much more of a dent.)
Is the silence part of the spin?