Just kidding readers, I haven't gone Republican!
As one reader pointed out earlier today he was concerned that this blog has become another right-wing blog in town. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am fairly progressive in my beliefs overall but I encourage all viewpoints on this site. This should be evidenced by the fact I published the post by Scott Siegel yesterday although I disagree with him on many aspects of politics. What is nice from an editorial perspective is that that post has garnered opinions form many different perspectives which is exactly what I want to happen. Discourse is a blogging objective.
So without further adieu here is my rebuttal.......
Political trends and the Perils of Small Government
Many Republicans and Conservatives perhaps are feeling emboldened by the recent electoral victories of Chris Christie in New Jersey and Scott Brown's five plus point victory in Massachusetts for Ted Kennedy's vacated seat. Perhaps they should be for now but these election results in two fairly Democratic states are are as much a reflection in the weaknesses of both Corzine's and Coakley's campaigns than it is perhaps any conservative referendum. Time will tell. Historically gains made for incoming presidents are usually dialed back a bit come mid-term elections in the House and Senate. The reason for Corzine's defeat can be summed up by his own inability to bring about some of the reforms that many tax paying Democrats and Republicans alike demanded that he get done, not to mention a lackluster campaign.
Coakley's defeat from what I have read has much to do about her aloofness and laziness as a candidate as well as Scott Brown's effectivness in branding himself as the "People's Candidate" and capitalize on the health care reform issue. I think if a correct poll as done in still liberal Massachusetts, the majority of people there would still favor health care reform, just not the health care reform that they thought was recently on the table. That is a big difference. I do feel that this is a referendum more on the perception of what the current health care reform appears to be rather than the acknowledgement that reform needs to happen, at least in Massachusetts.
Barack Obama has had a failure of leadership on health care reform to date. Instead of carving out what vision he had for health care he let the House and the Senate frame the reform of health care. That was a big mistake. Many hard core Republicans have zero interest in real health care reform and Barack Obama had zero chance of getting those Congressmen and women's cooperation. Currently the Democratic leadership is meeting to see if they can even continue on with health care reform in its current state or if they need to go back to the drawing board. Perhaps that is a good thing. The current convoluted so-called reform that is on the plate is too complicated and as I read it doesn't reduce the cost of health care enough to be worthy of moving forward anyway. A much more nuanced approach would have been to simply extend Medicare to more people to close the gap on the uninsured in this country. How do you finance that? Simple, lift the cap on the Medicare tax. That is the real viable public option no one has really talked about yet.
Chris Christie's NJ Governor election win is something to be honest with you I am ambivalent about. Lets see what he gets done in 4 years. If Christine Todd Whitman's record on fiscal matters as Republican Governor in New Jersey is any indication Christie will have his work cut out for him. If he chooses the path cutting state aid to municipalities to cut income tax will just be a shell game to move the tax burden even more on local governments and homeowners from property tax collection. Time will tell.
What is not apparent to me yet is what these victories mean in terms momentum for the "Tea Bagger" movement. These small minded small government minimalists always try to dodge the following questions:
- How would the Romans have built aqueducts without taxation?
- Is having your food inspected necessary for consumer health or is it optional?
- How would roads and bridges exist if we didn't have government to plan out their construction and maintenance?
- How could businesses like UPS do their jobs without roads?
- No pesky construction codes that establish building safe buildings for residents.
- No solid transportation system in which to reliably transport goods to and from.
- No environmental regulations to prevent the country from being 98% deforested.
- No overall modern infrastructure to support business development.
- Lack of strong government to protect local industries such as rice farming.
- Lack of quality disaster planning from the government.
