I have not done much political blogging since the election. That's partly due to burnout and partly because the news in 'political' quarters these days seems so weird I don't quite know whether to slap on a tinfoil hat, pack my bags for Canada, or laugh my butt off. Here's a sample of what I mean:
Bush '04: it's not just about pursuing an agenda that Americans don't think you have a mandate for anymore. It's about punishing the people you *know* didn't support the mandate.Some conservative activists are urging the Bush administration to scrap the federal deduction for state and local taxes as part of a broader plan to revamp the nation's tax system.
[...]
A proposal to eliminate the deduction for local and state taxes on federal tax returns would affect blue states more than it would red states. In 2002, two-thirds of the $184 billion claimed under the deduction was in states carried by Sen. John F. Kerry. About a third of the total was in just two states, New York and California.
We've stepped past the actual pursuit of a conservative (or whatever the hell they think they are today) agenda towards an agenda that's just punitive towards "liberals". And by "liberals", we mean people who live in blue states, regardless of their income. Think of all those poor Orange County conservatives, those upstate New York Republicans...hell, think of us poor bastards in Ohio - the lynchpin to Bush's reelection, and we still get reamed by his tax plans.
I definitely agree that eliminating the deductability of all state and local taxes is a bad idea. But is it really a deliberate attack at blue states and/or liberals? Have things become that politicized?
I tend to doubt it. I suspect that this is ideology driven (if you can call BushCo's belief in "screw the 95% for the benefit of the rich" an ideology) more than some kind of attack on the liberals. But who knows? These days I don't know what to believe.
So as I said, I'm not posting as much about politics until I can get a better sense of what the hell is going on.
Comments (2)
I'm not sure why it's tinfoil hattery - the ideology is fundamentally centered around undoing liberal advances.
See, the philosophies work together! They hate liberals *and* 95% of Americans!
Posted by jesse | December 5, 2004 2:11 PM
I did not make my point very clearly. That's what I get for blogging before my coffee kicks in.
The point I was trying to make is that phrases like 'they're out to get the liberals' can sound a little paranoid. Now I do realize that even paranoids have enemies, but I think the framing should be more that the ideologues are, no surprise, trying to impose their ideology and less "they're out to get us!". One version makes us sound like we have a brain. The other makes us sound like we're wearing tinfoil hats.
But then, maybe it doesn't really matter. After all, we're screwed either way.
Posted by fiat lux | December 5, 2004 8:12 PM