I hate to quote Ronald Reagan, but I will do it just once:
"Here you go again," David Brooks. Mr. Brooks, on another bandwagon of spending cuts, actually wrote in the Times:
"Make Everybody Hurt". That's his plan for his so-called "unwritten austerity Constitution: a set of practices that will help us cut effectively now and in the future". He recommends that cuts be spread "more of less equitably among as many groups as possible". How nice is that? The Koch brothers get the same cuts as I do!
As usual, we of sound mind are scratching our heads at his bizarre thoughts. Thankfully, it will remain "unwritten", although many like him are trying their best to do just what he proposes. David being David, he ignores the huge elephant in the room: Raising Revenues!
Here's my Letter to the Editor:
To the Editor:
Why "make everybody hurt" when one can increase revenues? The U.S. Treasury, like Wisconsin, is in dire straits because of the loss of trillions under the Bush Administration, deregulation, banking fraud, and the financing of two wars without budgeting for their costs.
All Americans should be asking: where were the big deficit hawks then? Worse, by extending the Bush tax cuts last December for the rich, costing $900 billion over 10 years, cutting the estate tax, and protecting Wall Street with a 15% capital gains rate, the Great Recession was guaranteed longevity. This is the conservative's cynical plan to justify cries of "Cut" to all social programs.
Fears of oligarchy do not disturb Mr. Brooks. He fails to report that the billionaire Koch brothers gave Wisconsin's Gov. Walker $100,000 in campaign contributions in 2010 or that Walker signed $117 million in corporate tax breaks after he was elected that produced a budget shortfall of $137 million, conveniently used to rationalize his attack on Wisconsin's public unions. Busting the unions also increases the privatization of state assets. Buried in Walker's bill is a plan to sell the state's energy sources to a private bidder. If passed, bids would not be required, so we can reasonably assume that the owners could very well be the Koch brothers, who have large energy and timber companies in Wisconsin.
As usual, the devil is in the details. It's no wonder that the Democratic State Senators fled the state.