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Archive for August, 2007
August 19, 2007 at 11:44 pm · Filed under Confound Authority, Finish Ahead, Raise The Debate, Call Bullshit
It’s time to impeach Bush and Cheney.
Personally, I believed they should have been impeached after the whole secret torture prisons episode. Not only was it itself a travesty, but its execution further illustrated tis administration’s incompetence.
The first real “enough is enough” moment for me, though, has been the whole executive-branch/legislative-branch/just-go-fuck-yourself 3-card monty game being played by the white house, followed by the back-door pardon of Scooter Libby.
The last one was Cheney’s office explaining away his 1994 arguments for not invading Iraq: “He wasn’t the vice-president then.”
3,706 dead Americans.
On a more emotional level, I’m upset because I have always referred to them as President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, capitalized words like White House, Congress and Capitol; always believing that the office is above the man.
But this administration has done what Nixon and Clinton never did – brought the office low. They decimated the Justice Dept., FEMA, the FBI and other federal agencies in ways that reach down into our day-to-day lives. They go to extraordinary lengths to vigorously promote, defend and cover up torture. They have abandoned the rule of law. They consider me to be a traitor.
It’s time.
What we really need is a leader with a mandate – a landslide election. Currently, the only person that has a chance to give us that is Al Gore, and he won’t throw his hat in (yet). I thought we could wait for that, but these guys see the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill and have already started scorching the earth.
Congress wants to get rid of them, even the GOP members; but they are scared that they’ll pay for it next November. If enough people back them, they’ll do the electoral math and either do the right thing, or at least know the consequences of maintaining the status quo.
We can hope, anyway.
Either way, call your congressmen and tell them: It’s time.
August 9, 2007 at 11:45 pm · Filed under Musings
The only rule in hackey-sack is that you can’t say “sorry.” Likewise, there is a blogging rule against apologizing for tardy or lazy posting.
If there’s not one, there should be.
We are fulfilling the dreams of Irishmen everywhere — native and adopted, alike — and are opening a pub.
We’ve kicked the idea around for a decade or so, but Orlando just wasn’t the place to do it. We were waiting for the right place to present itself to us, and that’s exactly what happened.
Morton’s Pub & Grub will open October 1st, 2007. We’ll have a blog on the development of the pub, with lots of photos, on the website. So give it a look.
And stop in for a pint.
August 4, 2007 at 11:05 pm · Filed under Raise The Debate
To read about all of the furor over Delaware County’s property tax increases, I am reminded of a simple fact: All politics are local.
Having just moved back to Muncie from Florida after 10 years in a community where the property taxes on my 1,500 square foot home were $3,000 a year, I was surprised to read that people were complaining that their tax bills went up to $1,000 when their home was reassessed. But outrage is relative, as is perception of value; so while my personal feeling is one of “get over it,” I understand how a dramatic change in monthly expenses could make folks upset.
What disturbs me is who they are upset at.
I read comments like “the schools are killing us” or “downsize MITS” and just grimace. There’s nothing like a tax controversy to bring the me-monkeys out of the woodwork. After all, my house has never caught on fire, so why should I pay for emergency services, right?
The sad fact is that the blame usually rests squarely with the very people making all of that noise.
People who decry taxes will vote for anyone who promises them relief from “the tax man,” regardless of whether that person is qualified, intelligent or competent enough to hold the office for which they run. Case in point: In 2004, Hoosiers voted to re-elect President Bush (after having elected him in 2000); and in Delaware county he won by a full 14 points.
So what, you ask? Well, who do you suppose is paying for all of those Bush tax cuts?
Maybe a lot has changed in 10 years, but I always believed Hoosiers to be a fiscally careful lot. And, if I asked one what would have to happen if I suddenly cut his income by a third but none of his expenses, he’d probably tell me that he’d have to find the difference somewhere else. But change “income” to “taxes” and such common sense flies right out the window. City services still cost money. With the federal government paying less to the state, and the state paying less to the county who did you think was going to pay the difference?
Six years ago, economists warned that the President’s tax proposals were reckless and short-sighted, that they only really benefited the top 1 percent of Americans, and that the state and local governments were going to have to raise taxes to take up the slack. But the GOP media machine dismissed them all as out-of-touch “Harvard elite” party-poopers. The president talked bonnily about reinvestment and job creation, hoping that no one would recognize his plan as a re-hash of the old “trickle down” Reaganomics of the 80’s.
Apparently, enough people didn’t; but I bet they can feel it trickling down on them now.
The good news is that, compared to the national average, taxes in Indiana are still pretty reasonable. That will come as cold comfort to someone already struggling to make ends meet; but change is the way of life, and Hoosiers are up to the challenge. What needs to happen, though, is for concerned citizens to look not for ways to blame local politicians; but for ways to revitalize local economies with local business and true community reinvestment.
As always, the answer is to lead the way forward, not to look back.
