Hi all.
Wow, I didn't know it was so long since I was here. Bad weather and baseball combined is a cruel mistress.
Justice Oliver Windell Holmes, a long standing Republican, once said, "taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society".
Then came Reagan.
Taxes were now wrong and "socialist". Liberals were labeled as "tax and spend", a dirty word 'liberal', Means free thinking actually.
But, now the difference is the Democrats tax and spend. Republicans just spend and run up the bill. Then blame it on the demorcrat party. Can't use the word "democratic" that would be wrong. The Democrats have never learned how to use that argument.
In Reagan's time, in Oregon, there was a revolt that led to "term limits". Unfortunately, that meant the folks that controlled the spending were the first to go-- the Republicans from Central and Eastern Oregon-- they kept the wild spending urban Democrats in check, those from the West part of the state, in the big city. Now, the committees that controlled spending in the years before Ronnie are now controlled by the large cities and counties, not the exact people that sould be in control of others billfolds. But, Reagan led the "revolution" that cut taxes and opened the doors to disasters as in the gulf of Mexico. Don't ask don't tell as far as regulations are concerned, just get er done. Yet he, and they, get a free pass. Such is being a political icon. The only thing he really did was say"don't worry, be happy", and live for two terms-the first in my life since Eisenhower.
It's all for the chase for the almighty dollar. Unfortunately, the great equalizer of wealth in this country was WWII. Pres Roosevelt and his GI bill gave those who never before had a chance at wealth, a chance to gain it. However, their grand children don't know what their grand parents lived through in the depression and WWII, they just know wealth. Now they have decided to pull up the ladders for those who don't have the means to climb. There has never been any government law, or program, that benifited the working class brought forth by the Republican party since the time of Theodore Roosevelt. Anything we have is an extention of the New Deal under FDR or Lyndon Johnson, since then our government as been skewed toward the rich, against the middle class, or poor.
My thoughts of libertarianism are that we should allow all the vices and tax them. Much like Nevada. The reality of it all is that we can't vote Republican and have hopes. You can vote Democratic and hope the Republicans win enough seats to keep them from going crazy with socialism.
