It Serves Us Right?

I’m out for most of this week, but something that did catch my eye was an
article the Matt Taibbi wrote for Rolling Stone (located by way of Alternet.org)
on the subject of the White House’s 2008 budget proposal.  His main point is
maybe it serves us right if we’re footing to bill for egregious corruption and
more and insider gain at public expense:

Even if you’re a traditional, Barry Goldwater conservative, the kinds of
budgets that Bush has sent to the hill not only this year but this whole century
are the worst-case scenario; they increase spending generally while
cutting taxes and social programming. They commit taxpayers to giant subsidies
of already Croseus-rich energy corporations, pharmaceutical companies and
defense manufacturers while simultaneously cutting taxes on those who most directly
benefit from those subsidies. Thus you’re not cutting spending — you’re just
cutting spending on people who actually need the money. (According to the Washington
Times, which in a supremely ironic twist of fate did one of the better analyses
of the budget, spending will be 1.6 percent of GDP higher in the 2008 budget than
in was in 2000, while revenues will be 2.6 percent of GDP lower). This is
something different from traditional conservatism and something different from
big-government liberalism; this is a new kind of politics that transforms the
state into a huge, ever expanding instrument for converting private savings
into corporate profit.

That’s not only bad government, it’s bad capitalism. It makes legalized
bribery and political connections more important factors than performance and
competition in the corporate marketplace. Beyond that, it’s just plain fucking
offensive to ordinary people. It’s one thing to complain about paying taxes
when those taxes are buying a bag of groceries once a month for some struggling
single mom in eastern Kentucky.
But when your taxes are buying a yacht for some asshole who hires African eight
year-olds to pick cocoa beans for two cents an hour … I sure don’t remember
reading an excuse for that anywhere in the Federalist Papers.

In a way, he has a good point. We The People elected these cretins, one way or another (yes, I know, there are plenty of people who insist they didn’t vote for these guys and they didn’t actually win.  Fine. While they’re technically correct, they also did not take to the streets with shotguns and torches when the Surpreme Court made its decision. If the system has been gamed , it is because lots of otherwise intelligent people have allowed it to be gamed.)

At any rate, read the article in its entirety here. And think about just
how much public funding goes into keeping hundreds of libraries in this country
open. Then imagine how many of them would stay open without it. 

As Tony Robbins might say: “Hmmm. Something to think about.”