No one enjoys paying taxes, but at some point some shred of reality needs to kick in if the monies needed to provide services and needed debt service are going to be found. Both McCain and Palin whine incessantly about cutting and/or not raising taxes, yet meanwhile ignore the huge deficits piled up by the Chimperator and his enablers in the Congress which the GOP controlled up until January, 2007. Do they simply propose printing money? The sad truth is that the USA's infrastructure is crumbling, the national debt has ballooned, and huge deficits are continuing - and that's without factoring the cost of the $700 billion bailout or the decline in revenues the economic recession will bring. Thomas Friedman has a column in today's New York Times that looks at the disingenuousness of the McCain/Palin mantra. Here are some highlights:*
Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”
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I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? If it isn’t from tax revenues, there are only two ways to pay for those big projects — printing more money or borrowing more money. Do you think borrowing money from China is more patriotic than raising it in taxes from Americans?” That is not putting America first. That is selling America first.
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How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now? We are in the middle of an economic perfect storm, and we don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. People all over the world are hoarding cash, and no bank feels that it can fully trust anyone it is doing business with anywhere in the world.
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And we have not yet even felt the full economic brunt here. I fear we may be at that moment just before the tsunami hits — when the birds take flight and the insects stop chirping because their acute senses can feel what is coming before humans can. At this moment, only good governance can save us. I am not sure that this crisis will end without every government in every major economy guaranteeing the creditworthiness of every financial institution it regulates.
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But putting the country in the position where a total novice like Sarah Palin could be asked to steer us through possibly the most serious economic crisis of our lives is flat out reckless. It is the opposite of conservative. And please don’t tell me she will hire smart advisers. What happens when her two smartest advisers disagree? And please also don’t tell me she is an “energy expert.” She is an energy expert exactly the same way the king of Saudi Arabia is an energy expert — by accident of residence.
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Patriotic is offering a plan to build our economy — not by tax cuts or punching more holes in the ground, but by empowering more Americans to work in productive and innovative jobs.
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The sad truth is that by picking Palin, McCain threw the best interests of the nation under the bus in his craven desire to win no matter what the long term consequences. By doing that, McCain committed a subtle form of treason in my view.
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