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Banned
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Originally Posted by ratbastid
Host: I intended this thread to be more philosophical and non-combative in nature. Thank you as always for your rigor and thoroughness, but I request we stick more to general policy. I don't want this thread to turn into another "who's more fiscally whatever" thread, but rather to discuss the high-level view of libertarianism.
Host's post does raise an interesting point. Certainly the libertarian vote is a valuable one. With the libertarian's high valuation of personal freedom, what does that do to his view of the current administration? Personal freedoms seem to be being curtailed left and right--is that a problem for libertarians? This has been the spendiest and biggest-government administration we've seen in decades--does that trouble a libertarian?
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ratbastid....the magnitude of the change in direction and potential fate of the US, certainly influenced "the flavor" of my post. I see Powell's "Pottery Barn" analogy in the result of the effect of the vote of the majority of libertarians in contests, at least since 1988, and most signiifigantly, in the close 2000 and 2004 presidential contests.
I think that the <b>"you break it, you own it"</b>, is a consequence of voting choices made, that libertarians must now bear responsibility for.
I see libertarians, maybe even to a greater extent than Norquist republicans, showing no concern for the results of the way that they've voted. They all see the fiscal collapse of the federal government as an opportunity to sieze and control an agenda of "smaller" government, even if the collapse is the result of their own fucking complicity driven indifference, and not primarily a result of the "big government" spending priorities of "democrats".
They've hastened the inevitably of a disaster that didn't have to happen, they accept no blame, and they apparently spend little or no time contemplating how differently the fiscal course of the nation might have turned out if they had chosen to vote differently. They've drowned the government like a baby in a bathtub, just as Norquist described the goal, in order to eliminate discretionary or entitlement spending.
They show that is wasn't about fiscal responsibility, it was about ideology, and about paying little or no taxes. even if it means hanging a noose of perpetual debt around their own grandchildrens' necks.
....and, as recently as in 2001, the US did not have to end up this way....broke, with no options, and a president pandering on the eve of an important election, using his radio address to lure libertarians and Norquist republicans into voting for permanent and increased tax cuts that will result in certain default on US treasury bond debt and the demise of SSI.
It was still possible in 2000, to "reform" the existing SSI and privatize it, if that was the direction that the legislature agreed to take...... but not now....not with the mountain of new debt and the momentum for it's continuing increase.
In 2000, we enjoyed a "reformed" budgetary and taxation plan that was intentionally balanced and managed to "pay as you go", and clean up the past debt burden, as well.
This agenda was waiting in the wings:
Quote:
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=1
HAPPY WARRIOR
Republican agitator Grover Norquist on building a "leave-us-alone coalition"
Interviewed by Rick Henderson and Steven Hayward
........Over the past three years, Norquist has taken coalition building personally. Every Wednesday morning he hosts an invitation-only meeting of grassroots activists, policy analysts, congressional staffers, political candidates, and sympathetic journalists in his conference room, including 50 to 100 representatives from groups as diverse as the National Rifle Association, the Cato Institute, the Christian Coalition, U.S. Term Limits, Republicans for Choice, the Heritage Foundation, and occasionally UNITA--the political organization of Angolan anti-communists. In a typical meeting, elected officials and activist groups alert the other attendees of upcoming bills and initiatives and solicit financial or grassroots support. Soon after starting, ATR's Wednesday gathering was deemed "the hottest meeting in Washington."
Newt Gingrich (whom Norquist met in the late '70s) told The Washington Post, "He comes up with more interesting ideas than anyone I work with in terms of grassroots activism." Graduating from Harvard in 1978, Norquist soon began organizing anti-tax campaigns in California and elsewhere, combining his political activities with MBA studies at Harvard Business School. One of his MBA papers outlined a plan for the national College Republicans to switch from a resume-padding social club to an ideological, grassroots organization. In the early 1980s, he helped implement his plan with the help of the group's executive director, recent University of Georgia graduate Ralph Reed. After a stint as speechwriter and chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and some time as a Reagan administration staffer, Norquist founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 to push what would become the 1986 tax simplification plan. .....
..........Reason: <b>You have worked with the Libertarian Party in the past. When and why?</b>
Norquist: In the 1978, '79, and '80 races I ran a group called the Tax Action Coalition. Ed Clark [the 1980 L.P. presidential nominee] was the chairman. I've found that Libertarian Party activists make the best tax activists because they never get involved in the silly questions about which tax is preferable. They understand that the total tax burden is the total amount of freedom taken away from you, and it needs to be reduced as quickly and as completely as is humanly possible.
Much like the pro-life movement and the Christian right, the Libertarian Party has gotten much more sophisticated and presentable over the last 20 years. That's a tremendous asset. As a presidential candidate, Harry Browne was reasonable, non-threatening, and educated a lot of people on a lot of issues.
The Leave-Us-Alone Coalition and the American ideology are libertarian. That's what it means to be an American. Almost everyone has a little deviation from that, but almost everybody almost all the time wants freedom, which is a big step forward, say, from living in France or Germany.
Reason: Talk about your "in half" initiative.
Norquist: It's an initiative of ATR. I am writing a book, called In Half: How and Why We Cut the Government in Half in One Generation, 25 Years. I picked 25 years because I assume setbacks, I assume bad times as well as good. Obviously if you speed up growth, you can get to government taking only half as large a percentage of the economy quicker.
But if you privatize Social Security, if you voucherize education, if you sell the $270 billion worth of airports and wastewater treatment plants, eliminate welfare, and so on, you can get the federal government, state government, and local government to basically half of its present level of costs. Instead of 33 percent of the economy, make it 16.5 percent of the economy.
I think we could do it a lot faster if we elected the right guys, but I think it's politically doable to say, here's our goal: Cut the government in half. I think it's important to have a clearly articulated goal. And I think the movement would buy into the idea that yes, we want to move toward the government's being half its present size. That's a radical enough and big enough step that it's worth the journey. Then in 25 years I intend to write a sequel: How to Cut the Government in Half Again.
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer
Sowing the Seeds of GOP Domination
Conservative Norquist Cultivates Grass Roots Beyond the Beltway
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 12, 2004; Page A01
In a noisy corner of Harry's Tap Room, two men huddled over a map of the United States. They spoke in quiet voices:
"Fabulous, Grover. Awesome," Mehlman said, scanning the book like a hungry man reading a menu. "We're going to take that energy and harness it."
The binder was Norquist's gift to the presidential race. His aspirations, though, extend far beyond the White House. Congress, governorships, state legislatures, the media, the courts -- Norquist has a programming plan, and it is all Republican, all the time. Norquist closes his letters, "Onward." He takes the mission so seriously, he has named a successor in his will. Socially, he is often introduced as the head of the vast right-wing conspiracy. He accepts the title with a faint blush.
"He is an impresario of the center-right," the president's strategist, Karl Rove, said in an interview. Rove said Norquist's activists helped President Bush push trade promotion, tax cuts, judicial nominees and tort reform, among other items. "They've been out there slogging for us in the trenches."
....... When Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, came, Norquist asked, "For those of us on the outside, when someone sticks a mike in our face and says, 'Spending is up! You guys on the right are failing,' what are the talking points?"
Bolten rattled off the budget statistics that he could use.
Yet under Bush, the largest budget surplus in history has become the largest deficit in history. <b>In the past, Norquist has said he wants to shrink government "down to the size where you could drown it in a bathtub." Now, glancing up at Bolten, Norquist ventured politely: "Is there a single agency you want to get rid of? It would be really helpful for us to say, 'This administration wants to get rid of . . . ' " ......</b>
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<b>It comes down to us or them, and they intentionally broke the last, best chance for the government to dig out of the 25 years of mounting federal treasury debt that was reversed in 2000:</b>
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/bu...rssnyt&emc=rss
June 7, 2006
A Boon for the Richest in an Estate Tax Repeal
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
<img src="http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/06/06/business/impacts_190.jpg">
Repealing the estate tax, which applies to large fortunes after death, would save a lot of money for a very few people — about one in 6,000, whose estates would each save an average of more than $800,000.
The Senate is expected to vote as early as Thursday on whether to repeal the estate tax permanently or to exempt more wealth and apply lower rates.
Under current law, the estate tax applies to single Americans and the widowed who die this year with a net worth of more than $2 million, a category that is projected to include about 5,200 people. That threshold will rise to $3.5 million in 2009, when about 2,500 estates will be taxed. The tax is repealed for one year, 2010, and then the threshold reverts to $1 million in 2011, resulting in taxes for 50,000 people. No tax is owed when the first spouse dies.
Over the last decade, 18 of the wealthiest families in the country have spent more than $200 million lobbying to repeal the estate tax, according to lobby disclosure reports analyzed by two groups that favor retaining the estate tax, United for a Fair Economy and Ralph Nader's organization, Public Citizen. The wealthy families include the Mars candy family; the Gallo wine family; the Wegman supermarket family; the Dorrance family, which controls Campbell soup; and the Waltons, who control Wal-Mart.
With repeal, the estates of the 50,000 richest Americans who die in 2011 would save $40.4 billion in taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, which is affiliated with two nonprofit research organizations in Washington, the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.
If the $3.5 million exemption that takes effect in 2009 were made permanent, the center estimated, the number of taxable estates would fall to 10,400 in 2011. The tax would raise $11.2 billion, 77 percent of that paid by 960 estates valued at $20 million or more. The Tax Policy Center is run by tax experts who have served both parties, but its leaders favor retaining the estate tax, which they describe as the most progressive element in the federal tax system because its costs fall directly on the fortunes of the richest Americans.
An analysis by the center showed that repealing the tax would offer little or no tax-savings benefit for 80 percent of Americans. The estate tax savings from repeal in 2011 would be significantly more than the total income taxes paid by the poorest half of Americans. The 65 million taxpayers who reported incomes of less than $29,000 in 2003 paid $25.9 billion in income taxes.
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IMO, libertarians are only relevant when their votes can be harnessed by Norquist. The rest of the time, they'll vote for libertarian candidates.....
Last edited by host; 10-28-2006 at 07:33 PM..
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