The Patricians - Part I

It'd be hard to top the Kool Aid Report's splendid (and splendidly profane) kiss-off of the "Growth for Justice" open letter to Minnesota's querulous ripe sucks in last week's Strib; whether you prefer the NC17 version or the PG13 one, it beats the 203 patrician signatories pretty convincingly to a pulp, and sums up my reaction in all particulars pretty effectively.

But I'm going to do this anyway; I'm going to go over each of the eight "paragraphs" in their ad, one per day. Then, I'm going to do a little googling to give you a little background on some of the 200-odd patrician masters of the universe who have issued this prescription for stagnation for your own damn good, peasants.

Today, the first paragraph:

We're not investing as much as we used to - as a share of personal income, state and local government is about $3 billion smaller than a decade ago, and we're not investing as much as we used to

Did you catch that?

Turn it back around; the message is "If government's take on your income doesn't rise precisely with your own, you are a bad person. If you allow that take to shrink merely because your own paltry income shrinks, you are also a bad person".

As King Banaian pointed out on Saturday's show, "a decade ago" was 1996, the height of the Clinton Bubble, by the way; when the Dotcom boom was driving incomes - and taxes - to unprecedented heights, and giving the likes of Arne "RINO" Carlson unprecedented revenue...

...to pour into more programs. Never mind that the boom was transparently transient. Never mind that the term "business cycle" means "It turns around, dumbass"; income meant spending. Period.

We have a more responsible state government now - one that doesn't believe that the first order of the citizenry's business is to make sure, at all costs, that government grows as fast as government wants to grow.

Finally, of course, look at the real numbers. Our budget zoomed for the six years after 1996; Ventura spent money like Paris Hilton at an STD clinic. Why?

Because his advisors (Penny, Barkley) and closest political allies (Roger Moe, Matt Entenza) believed as the patricians in this deeply stupid ad do; that any state revenue, no matter how transient (or indeed illusory) must be spent. Now.

Minnesota's citizens - with a few exceptions - are doing vastly better now than they were ten years ago, and certainly better than four years ago, when the hangover from the Ventura Deficit hit with a vengeance. The exceptions, of course, are those whose livelihoods depend on a state that must never justify its existence...

...and those who are addicted to the raw political power required to create that sort of an environment.

Like the 203 patricians who signed this ad.

Tomorrow - the college myth.

Posted by Mitch at June 26, 2006 05:00 AM | TrackBack