Gross writes:
“In decades past, increasing Republican dominance of the House and Senate would have meant more fiscal discipline. But Republicans increasingly dominate the states that are net drains on Federal taxes—the Southern and Great Plains states—while fading in the coastal states that produce a disproportionate share of federal revenue. (It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who are sucking on the federal teat.) What Amity Shlaes quaintly identified in today’s Financial Times as the “southern culture of tax cutting” has been married to the southern culture of failing to generate wealth and the southern culture of depending on federal largesse. The offspring is an unsightly deficit monster.”
I suggest that if there is something to be done, the blue states need to disengage. We need to assert our rights as states and refuse to send our cash to Washington, only to see it distributed to the red states. We need to hold onto that money and use it at home to improve our health systems, our education systems, our environmental policies.
The Bush Tax Policies, as Gross points out, aren’t cuts. They are deferrals, a free lunch eaten now that will itself come back and bite us (or our children) when those who hold our debt decide to collect.
The only way to drive this home to the Reds and change the terms of the political discussion from one of values to one that addresses real issues is to slow the flow of our money their way.
(On a baseball note: No doubt this is the way the Yankees feel about sharing the receipts of their home games, but in general baseball’s system works for them.)
eh….
There have been a number of commetns on these lines and they are all more or less sour grapes.
YES, democrats will have to fix the fiduciary madness….as they did after Reagan/Bush I and will do after Bush II.
NO, asking people with a conscience to act as if they didn’t will not fix anything (might it discourage people from putting their money and vote where their mouth is?) – Blue states need to lead by example, not by competing to be the biggest jerks.
YES (sort of), changing the terms of the discussion is vital. But the terms of the discussion are what Nader said, there is no alternative here – but not just the terms, but the definitions….Nader contributed to the ruination of the mechanism that kept people like Clinton and Kerry from being “GOOD” as opposed to be the “LESSER OF EVILS.”
Blue people need to work to change this from bottom up…and it’s going to suck. The good thing is that the current regime will lower the bar, but it’s going to mean being slapped, rejecting people who voted to contravene the constitution by authorizing a blanket ‘declare war when you want’ and we prefer health industry rape to oil industry rape….and instead rejecting rape.
And it’s not gonna happen soon….nor without effort that extends beyond the polls (and understanding the polls aren’t going to accomplish too much).
You’re gonna have to act in ways that don’t gratify you now or during your time…but might save….a bunch of people later. You have to do it because it is good, not because it does good for you (here or in heaven). That’s the moral position.
I couldn’t disagree more. Nader, if anything, tried to pull the vacillating right-pulled Gore and Kerry to the left, to make them own up to their responsibilities to the left. His was certainly a long-term strategy, one that would suck now but yield benefits later. Maybe we’ll see later that it did.
But my point isn’t about left-right. It isn’t about acting against one’s conscience. It’s about fairness. The same fairness that argues that tax cuts for the rich are made in a spirit of fairness.
It is only fair that states that pay into the federal system get back for what they pay in. The blue states have always paid in more because the blue states is where the money is, where the wealth-making is. And in return we got a federal system that insured we had a healthy environment, an education system that was better than some communities could afford, a military that protected the nation.
If a red-state elected government is going to dismantle these federal programs in favor of constitutional ammendments that legislate morals, a justice system that impinges on individual liberties, and a welfare system that pays huge subsidies to massive corporate farms, in all fairness our only response can be to bring all our values home.
That is our leverage. To paraphrase Jim Morrison, “They have the numbers, but we have the money.”
This is the opposite of resentful revengeful politicing, and it is also the opposite of pandering politicing, which seems to be all the rage.
There is much more to be said obviously, but how we answer these questions as a country is going to determine what we become, whether we want to or not.
My Nader point is not that he didn’t try to pull these guys left…it’s that he did so in a way that not only didn’t work (it alienated the left from the party to some extent), but that also wasn’t part of the grass roots that would be neededx to reconstruct a liberal, progressive, moral party.
It’s not done through a symbolic once every 4 years tilt at a windmill, but instead through grassroots elections starting locally.
Back in the old days, party policy was built on ‘platforms’, which were made up of ‘planks’ and so forth. If you brought up a ‘plank’ to a deomcratic leader in Portland, they wouldn’t even understand what that was.
30 years ago, parties and party delgates got together locally and decided who their guy was from dog catcher up…and at each level party people HAD to deal with the locals. You aren’t gonna get your guy votes unless you keep our union, and so forth. And so you buildocal and state party structures that are beholden to the blue people…not just in ’04, but next tuesday and the third wednesday after that because alderman A is gonna be in state rep B’s office and the the governor and the senators saying WTF?
What Nader did was to offer the ‘make a wish’ alternative. We just skip ALL of that ground level organizing. And by voting for Ralph you make a ‘statement’ and ‘do your bit,’ just like the people who buy a McDonald’s burger or give ten bucks to ‘make a wish’ so some terminally ill kid can go hunt bear, you have done your bit and no longer have to worry about actually curing that terminal disease or stopping the environmental rape that may have caused it. How many terminally ill kids wouldn’t, if you asked them, forgo their bear hunt or their Ronald McDonald house party so THAT money could go to seeing if another kid might be saved. AND so that guilt ridden Americans give their donations (votes) to do something that will work.
Ralph desperately wants his bear hunt, and he doesn’t care how many kids die because he is sucking away support from real progress…those people voted for Ralph, they did their bit.
But Ralph’s message is right even though he is taking a big step away from solving the problem. There is only one party with 2 sub parties.
If we want a moral government, we have to step away from from the parties and from ralph and do another jacksonian experiment. We need to understand that the best candidates we will see for years, decades, whatever, may be Kerrys or Deans or Clintons or Bushes….and that these people will continue to rape us (despite our best resistence), but we will need to build something that may not win 20 years from now, nor ten, nor two weeks…but ultimately will win because the vast majority of people in this world believe in fair play. There aren’t 20 people you could find who placed in front of a person who didn’t look like them who would blow their head off for $5.
Those people, if given that alternative and IF SHOWN THAT IT IS POSSIBLE, will cease to be afraid of Willie Horton, or George Bush, or the darkie or the honkie and so forth and will welcome fair play and honesty.