Recently I was thinking of a post I wrote back in 2008 before Obama was elected. In this post I described how the Democrats ran Illinois as a one-party state since all levers of state power were in the hands of the bluest of Democrats.
I split Democratic leaders into 2 camps:
1) stone cold 100% redistributionists
2) “don’t strangle the golden goose” just keep it barely alive
The only variable was which Democrats would fall into which of the 2 categories, above.
Amazingly, my post was TOO upbeat. Pretty much all of the democrats fell into the stone-code 100% redistributionist camp. These types:
1) ignore the impact of taxes on behavior and will raise taxes on “the rich” to the highest level they possibly can
2) shamelessly increase government, their backers, and the role of government, their patrons, at all opportunities
This is most chilling in this video as the President’s economic advisers point out all the money that they DON’T take from taxpayers as an increase in deficit spending, implying of course that the money is just there for the taking and that it doesn’t impact behavior at all.
I don’t think even the bleakest of us in our hearts thought that deficit spending would rise to such enormous levels and government would expand at a breakneck pace, taking over companies and industries and even ramming through a giant health care plan, to boot.
I struggle to find even many “don’t strangle the golden goose” Democrats. It is pretty much all bad.
The ONE positive of this whole debacle is that America, unlike Illinois (which is gerrymandered to the hilt) can take back the levers of power at the House, Senate and White House over the next few years and we can definitively answer the question, in a clear manner, of what the Democrats would do if they had power.
Run it like Illinois.
Just left Illinois this year, where I was born, raised, educated and worked for 50 years, to relocate permanently to Arizona.
Mirabile dictu—there are states that actually work, and are somewhat noncorrupt! I never knew this.
Whatever you can say about corruption in Illinois politics: it’s probably understated.
The seamless connections among career pols, and the unions, and bureaucrats, and the courts, and oily government contractors and other undesirables are a work of evil to behold. And despise.
I loved my home state. It has been ruined and bankrupted—and has metastasized to Washington.
Illinois is not corrupt. It’s socialist. The “corruption” is the way it supposed to be, if you’re a Democratic Socialist.
So… the Democrat Party of Illinois has become 100% friends of Bill (“Let’s murder ten of millions of Americans”) Ayers. Or to put it plainly, the distance between the Democrat Party and Communist Party is the walk to the Gulag. Do you really think this can be undone by voting? Will Illinois, if it can be freed from the friends of Bill, be anymore a humane polity than Russia under Putin?
Tehag,
Obviously you’re a racist, or a loony Tea Partier, or something—there’s nothing, nothing wrong with Illinois. Everything’s fine; nothing to see here, folks; move along..
Every pol on the state wanted Fitzgerald out as federal prosecutor; he has the central character flaws of respect for the rule of law, and apparent incorruptibility. “How do you work with a guy like that?”, they ask themselves in Springfield and Chicago.
Oh, we could get Illinois back. Just have to “strangle the golden redistributionists”.
Welcome, Ugg!
Most of the people on this site are really quite well informed (more so than me, certainly), and generally avoid vitriolic screeds. A free education every day. Some of them comment way too much. Like, me.