From: Joe Dees (joedees@addall.com)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 10:47:19 MDT
Unfortunately, voter bribery by politicians (as in campaign promises of tax cuts) is not illegal, and neither is bowing to contributor political blackmail by targeting most of them to those wealthiest people who may contribute to your, or your opponents' campaigns. It has been remarked that the Republican mantra is to always advocate a tax cut, whether or not one is necessary or fiscally wise, and to always target it to fat cats, while denying such targeting when they spin their cut plans to the masses. The fact that this is bad policy does not effect the fact that it seems to be good politics, for both attracting self-serving (rather than society-serving) votes and for the money to buy more through TV ads. If we have a Reagan/Bush Voodoo Redux, however, as is likely when a prescription drug benefit is added on to medicare (and it will be - just ask the AARP lobby, your massively voting Social Security hordes), we will not have the luxury of starting out with a *mere* trill!
ion in debt when we whip out the Federal charge card; the first incarnation has already maxxed that sucker out to the tune of six trillion (an additional five trillion in twelve short years). Unfortunately, we could afford a lot of really cool things (such as a superconducting supercollider and manned mars exploration acceleration) if the debt were less.
------------------------------------------------------------
Looking for a book? Want a deal? No problem AddALL!
http://www.addall.com compares book price at 41 online stores.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:11 MST