I have recently received an email from Maria Cantwell in which she won't state her position on the Estate Tax.
It made me think, how can a United States Senator NOT have a position on this issue? How can a Democrat NOT have a position on this issue? How can someone who makes more than 99% of the population not make a decision on such an issue? Kind of interesting, I thought, a Democrat United States Senator can't decide about an issue like the Estate tax, an issue with a long history.
rant after the jump.
I even thought I remember Raygun carping about it, so I thought, why don't I google ... "Ronald Reagan and Estate Tax", I stumbled on this URL,
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Gippers_Economy.html, William Greider discussing Raygun's legacy, and he mentions an article I was reading in Dec. 1981 that he wrote. In the article for "The Atlantic Monthly" Greider interviewed David Stockman, Raygun's head of the Office of Management and Budget, where Stockman discussed the lies in Raygun's supply side economics.
Then I remembered some other history.
I was reading the article cuz I was home from work, reading my latest copy of "The Atlantic". I was working as a cook for about $4.25 an hour in Holyoke, a job I was lucky to be able to get back in the 10% +/- unemployment days of the early 80's.
I had quit the job to move from Holyoke MA to Providence RI to go to Culinary School.
I had arrived in Providence with the $1000 I had saved from working all summer. I knew that money would disappear fast on tuition, I knew I had supposedly qualified for the maximum in student loans, and the back of the envelope budget said if I worked full time I could get through school with maximum student loans. I no longer qualified for Pell Grants cuz I was working full time, so I made too much money, good old Raygun's budget cuts from a cowed Democrat Congress. I was living on my own cuz I had moved out of my mother's apartment cuz the welfare office was such a hassle to deal with - it seemed like every buck any of us made the man took 2 back in their always changing, always unreliable, "benefits".
I was in Holyoke cuz when I got to Providence, after moving out of my apartment and quitting my job in the era of stagflation, there was a self inflicted snafu with my student loan paperwork, so the school wouldn't enroll me, so I had no school to go to. Of course, back then you can never be sure of anything in Financial Aid until you were in line at school.
Whenever I said anything critical back then to educated liberals about the government programs I was relying on to get ahead in life, get ahead so that I could hopefully get somewhere quickly to never ever rely on programs like welfare, Medicaid and financial aid again, I was just about always treated to some flavor of condescending commentary. Commentary which was of the nature: Obviously, if I were better educated, I'd be able to understand how complex things were, and therefore I'd be more appreciative of the programs I wrongly considered barely functional and borderline incompetent. No matter how've I tried to frame my criticisms over the years, I have done such an inept job that I am usually lumped in with the knuckle dragging allies of the aristocrats, the aristocrats who want to make sure that I will always be free to be their servant. But, in defense of the always hard working, always selfless, always educated, always honest lib dems, I had not gone to college, they had gone to college, they made more money than I did, so therefore they must be smarter than me.
I now have a 4 year degree, so hopefully I am a bit smarter, but, I don't have any advanced degrees in public policy or business administration. I am still simple enough to think too much of government is too ineptly run. And, in my ignorance, I still think that people who run government, people who make more than 80 and 90% of the public, I think those running stuff outta quit making excuses and outta start making stuff work if they want public support - ya know, support from that public that takes home a smaller paycheck than the paychecks of those who are running things take home.
So, with 20+ years of Raygun and Bushes, Maria Cantwell, like lots of other Democrats, can't decide about the Estate Tax, or can barely fight against idiots who want to fight stupid wars, or won't fight for efficient health care, or might fight Dobsons in the doctors office, or can't think of how to fire and jail the criminally incompetent Katrina FEMA managers ... but, they might think and might study and might analyze some more about something else and come up with something someday.
Well, in my undereducated, simplistic bliss, I can make some simplistic decisions about Maria Cantwell and her kind of Dems. I am not going to do anything for her, or for them, forever. I will always participate, but I might be actively working for the election of Afred E. Nueman before I ever spend a second of time or one of my dimes on them.
In conclusion, I almost never take the hours it took to detail these trips through political and economic history, I am almost never the good blogosphere citizen providing supporting documentation for my points of view.
I don't detail it, cuz, after 25 years of listening to and living with bullshit excuses, I do NOT consider it to be ad hominem attacks to say these loser Dems are losers, to say they aren't leaders, to say they are only in charge and mainly in the front of the trough, and to say that the ONLY excuses for this bullshit is political incompetence, corruption, or a mix of both.
rmm
pco 36-1392 ballard wa.