Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Beware the do-gooders 

In four short paragraphs, we get a veritable cornucopia of crap.
We tend to believe that the United States is the best place to live. And of all of these United States, Minnesota is the best of the best. Collectively, we want opportunity and education, quality health care and transportation systems, as well as readily available police and fire protection.

So why can�t we agree on how to pay for these things that we all use? Our Legislature last week presented the state with a two-year budget that is balanced and fair. It taxes those who can afford it the most and includes cuts to spending where possible. Our governor says he will veto this bill and cut spending according to his own whim.

This no tax policy favors the rich at the expense of the rest of the state.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty spends much of his time with the top 2.5 percent (by income) of the population of Minnesota. Is this why his tax policy favors them? Is it because his experience is different from the majority of Minnesotans?
Where do we start with this?
"We tend to believe"? �Why hedge this? �Are you suggesting that this might be a wrong belief?
  1. "Collectively"? �What is there about the belief in opportunity and freedom, the ability to develop your human capital (education), and quality health care, that is a collective belief? �These are things I believe in as a person, as an individual. �
  2. And yes, I know you didn't write "freedom". �I meant to ask, why not? �
  3. Is it the "collectively" meant that the writer had concluded already that the only way to provide for those things he's listed we want is to use the state to buy them.
  4. "Our Legislature last week presented the state with a two-year budget that is balanced and fair." �Well no they didn't unless you are referring to the two-hour budget on Monday night which didn't technically pass by midnight and which Times' executive editor John Bodette said "doesn't work" as a budget. �(I agree with Gary on the rest of John's column.)
  5. "It taxes those who can afford it the most" always means "it taxes those I've decided can afford it the most." �It means "we won, so we get to take your money." �(Seems I've heard this before. �Why yes, yes I did.) �By the way, 77% of Americans disagree with needing more taxes.
The rest of this column describes this leftist's visit with the local group GRIP, a long time point of discussion on this blog (here and here). �But in this article he keeps coming back to this "business leaders" and "2.5% (by income)" point like all business leaders are somehow rich. Did he ever talk to a business leader? �And who are they? �Try reading the Survey of Business Owners from the US Census and you would learn:
  • 15% of them are seniors;
  • half of them don't have a college degree;
  • almost a fifth of them are veterans; and
  • most of them don't make much money (check out this graph).
But that group is not the favored group right now. �We read for the remaining 500 or so words of the article about an "ecumenical" group that seems to have no place for 20 million or so business owners. �Isabel Paterson once noted:
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.

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