Carla and TorridJoe have posted to their respective websites part two of “Fisking Sharkansky”, an examination of the relative “discrepancy” rates in sixteen Washington counties. Their findings seriously undermine charges of gross negligence being thrown at King County by the Rossi campaign and our (un)friends at (un)Sound Politics. You can read the post at Preemptive Karma and Also Also.
Notice Spokane County. Rossi won this county easily. Total voters are fewer than one fourth of King County’s. But they have twice as many errors as King per voter. Moreover, their discrepancy represents more voters than ballots, a condition which Sharkansky claimed lacked plausibility as a type of honest error. However Spokane is apparently a Republican leaning county
Pretty pathetic that you don’t have any new news to talk about, you just regurgitate Sharkansky’s news and spin it to fit your agenda. I agree with whoever it was (I can’t remember, sorry) that you are losing more and more credibilty everytime you trash sound politics.
Sharkansky doesn’t trash your site because he doesn’t think you should have advertising, but hey if you want to advertise for him more power to you.
Adriel – you prefer to believe spin and PR —- instead of facts and data.
Go back into the cave, and enjoy that feel good — all self righous about how bad the Democrats in King county are. DON’T compare to very traditional Spokane county…..GOD, no.
Unsound drivel site is like— all right wing blather — on any topic The party line, hardcore.. Utterly boring and self serving spin. I am sure Pam Roach and Val Stevens approve.
Wacked out nut wings. Pathetic and dangerous. Mind control.
LOL –
BBY you crack me up always showing that IQ by calling names (Nut Wings?! what the hell is that?) and pointlessly ranting. I’ll take anything you have bad to say as a compliment because like anything one has to consider the source, then laugh.
I am not discounting the fact that other counties had issues also, I just want them fixedjust as bad and not blamed on “woops, oh well it’s always been that way no sense in raising the bar.”
Adriel:
If you read our treatise, you will note that we in fact say in our first paragraph that the election system should be fixed in Washington State and everywhere else.
Other counties actually larger issues than King County…yet King remains the focus, that’s our main point. Secondly, the issues the counties did have are not so out of line as to be absurd especially when put into the perspective of a very large turnout.
The most important thing is to get the real, factual information as opposed to that which has been proffered by the rightwing blogosphere.
carla- I agree with you that facts are important, but either blog you are on you get a twist one way or the other, I compare and contrast the two. The one thing that frustrates me about Goldy is that he links you to others Blogs to support his point, that’s like telling someone to ask the guy at the local photoshop to back up your thoughts on brain surgery as fact. I also think it is foolish to attack another Blogger, it only makes other guy look like he is hitting a nerve and therefore correct.
State the facts stop trashing competition; I wish, Blogs twist things, so do the media outlets and will it ever change?… my sources say no.
Wait a second, Goldy. Spokane County has 976 more voters than ballots, according to the figures Carla posted. Rossi won Spokane County by a 7.5% margin. If these missing ballots were found, it could make quite a big difference in the election. Why is Spokane County one of only a few counties with more voters than ballots? And why are they the only county with such a high ratio of extra voters?
Adriel @ 5:
You’re welcome to come over to PreemptiveKarma and read what TJ and I have put together. There’s no need to twist anything. The facts are there.
Richard @ 6:
You’re assuming that there are missing ballots.
The error could as just as easily be counting errors or reconciling errors on the part of Spokane County. The line by line poll book reconciliation is, as I’ve had it explained to me..not an error proof process at all.
It’s Goldy’s blog. Not everyone is going to like what he says.
Snark deserves criticism. He has done what the right wing media has been doing for ten years – generating false data, inapposite analogies, and noise faster than the mainstream media can process it. With blogging, and other liberal outlets like Air America, refutation will be more nimble.
Liberals need to attack the right wing propagandists by name, lie by lie. It is the only way to get them to stop corrupting democracy.
Adriel – Wing nut = Nut wing. Small play on words, sorry I made it difficult to follow.
it is not IQ, there are intellignet folks who buy the propaganda. That is the shame of it.
Facts and data. Factual analysis, and independant thnking. Try it. Give up the party line. You can still be Republican, just not the knee jerk far right all filled with stale and stupid and rigid impressions of the very big and ever changing world.
Adriel @ 5 , I feel what Goldy is doing with the ‘links’ is giving the people that really want to understand situations the ability to click to a more in depth dissertation. What do you want him to do? Copy all of the other blog onto his page? You for one would never read the entire thing, just make your photocopied comments and continue ‘your’ status quo
Adriel, the Snark is fair game. He has received a lot of attention to his claims in the papers and talk radio both conservative and more moderate (like the Dave Ross show). You can even see the guy on the Seattle Channel!
Only on the local, liberal blogs has anyone dared to criticize or look closely at his claims and methods. Again and again he responds to valid criticisms with ad-hominem and the most grudging of admissions.
His behavior is outrageous and obnoxious. He has called Governor Gregoire “Fraudoire”, compared Dean Logan to the Ochoa brothers (and then apologized to the Ochoa brothers for the comparison). He has draped his website in orange as if this election was even in the same universe as what happened in the Ukraine. This is so typical of the right-wing: if you raise enough bullying, agressive noise, you will be placated. Goldy’s point of view is completely justified in my opinion and is backed up by the facts.
“woops, oh well it’s always been that way no sense in raising the bar.”
That’s a total misrepresentation of just about everyone here. No one here believes that anything the government does can’t be done better. Now who’s doing the twisting?
No back it up with fact based webstites as aposed to opinion based sites.
BBY @ 10
Read some of my other posts in previous topics you’ll see that I actually have an opinion that is not a facsimile of Republicans. I would actually take things farther, I’d like to get rid of more government and institute harsher penalties for crimes. I Think that people can actually make their own decision and don’t need the government taking them by the hand (or the wallet for that matter.)
People should be held to accountability Political figures or otherwise if you kill you should die, If you cheat the Welfare system you should be imprisioned for an extremely long time, the harsher the penalty the more polite society becomes.
Call me more extreme, call me whatever but I view you as a lemming; someone who under the umbrella of social goodness and morals actually undermines everything they supposedly believe in.
Stem cell research (through embryos)- dem arguement for it- it will save lives and cure the ill and afflicted, the old, and those crippled by MS, certainly this is the merciful and good thing to do.
-my view on it- Kill one life to save another? what a hypocracy. An extremely grusome crime killing an unborn child, government should not support murder of the innocent and defensless.
Go ahead and email me if you want to debate who’s on the correct side of the moral and political fence.
Forgot to leave my email madseizon@comcast.net
Adriel @ 12
Are you still pushing those discredited Middle Ages penology theories? You know — hanging pickpockets discourages thievery? (We all know how that turned out, don’t we?) Sentimentally, I agree with you on the idea of locking up criminals for as long as possible — not for rehabilitation, but simply to keep them off our backs — but just try asking a Republican to pay higher taxes for more prison cells and guards, he’ll screech so loud you’d swear he was a Gitmo detainee being “interrogated.”
If you cheat the Welfare system you should be imprisioned for an extremely long time
Adriel, for a guy with such simplistic and puerile views you seem pretty sure of yourself. I feel sorry for you. I think you need to get your butt kicked in a debate class or something like that. Maybe it will shake you up and get you to rethink things.
“try asking a Republican to pay higher taxes for more prison cells and guards, he’ll screech so loud ” don @ 14
Seems that bby is going to have to call you out, Don. You posted a stale and stupid and rigid impression. The problem Republicans have been experiencing is that the Democrat funding priorities are different than Republican funding priorites. The “higher taxes for more prisons” would end up going to some featherbed program and the prisons would still be overcrowded. Now, if the Democrats hadn’t been playing their shell games with taxes for the last few decades, maybe we wouldn’t be at this impasse.
Adriel (throughout)…..Read more, watch less Fox. don’t understand links yet? The best clue I can give you about the difference between Goldy and the Snakearsky….is that Goldy tends to quote (sorry link) to Government Studies, many done by the Bushies. While snarky use studies produced by Right wing groups, that wrote their own to fit their purpose…don’t you get it? are you that obtuse? Before you going cutting off hands, and jailing those dangerous Shoreline jaywalkers for 20 years. read more.
Now I am going to send you a link, don’t be scared…
It even sounds like a right wing think joint.
But you need to know what STEM CELLS are…..
http://www.religioustolerance.org/res_stem2.htm
But I am sure you believe Bleeding is coming back, because Leaches are. Just Read and Think. I know you feel proud to be a Republican, but be proud to be a Nixon/Reagan Republican, Not A Carl Rove Republican
–
zip @ 16
Sounds to me like you don’t know squat about the state budget.
zip @ 16 (continued)
Maybe you would like to identify for us a “featherbed program”? The governor needs to find $1.6 billion in cost savings, so I’m sure she’ll appreciate your suggestions.
Dan @ 17
How could anyone in his right mind be “proud to be a” Nixon Republican?
Don @ 18, 19
You should read my post a little slower. You say higher taxes for prisons makes Republicans scream. I say higher taxes for prisons would not end up in prisons, they would end up diverted to some featherbed program. (translation: Republicans don’t trust the Demos running this state to fund what they say they’ll fund, even when they say they’ll fund something republicans want funded.) This is a hypothetical that you started. Go ahead and keep asking about the budget.
zip @ 21
Last time I checked the money appropriated by the Legislature for the Department of Corrections was getting spent on corrections. I repeat my question, what specific programs are you referring to when you refer to “featherbed programs”? Put up, or shut up.
Adriel @ 12, maybe you are right with your views. catch a pickpocket, cut off his arm, your daughter has premarital sex, kill her yourself to save face for the family. hmmmmm, then we can be a beautiful law abiding country like Iraq. But I guess that is probably like heaven for you and your ‘caring kind’
Man you are stubborn.
Here is what you said: ““try asking a Republican to pay higher taxes for more prison cells and guards, he’ll screech so loud ” How does my answer to your prediction about the future behavior of Republicans imply that I know jack about what is spent on prisons or featherbeds today?
Here is my last try: They will screech because they don’t trust the demos to actually fund prisons with the hypothetical new revenue from your hypothetical new tax for prisons out of some featherbed program. None of this has happened yet, Don, I’m discussing the reason for the hypothetical screeching.
And you missed the point of my comment #16. To paraphrase bby #10, “You can still be Democrat, just not the knee jerk far left all filled with stale and stupid and rigid impressions of the world.”
Carla–
The Poll books must be reconciled precindt by precindt.
All errors MUST be identified and attempts made to find them.
Poll workers MUST sign and attest to this.
You are attempting to minimize the accountability of poll workers and each precindts reconciliation and accountability.
SHAME ON YOU!!
All should balance before certification or differences clearly identified and made public.
KingCo tried to hide their problems.
Sharkansky & others demanded accountability and public disclosure.
SHAME ON YOU FOR MINIMIZING THIS carla.
DAMN RIGHT!!! Go Cynical
Richard @6, Carla @7
I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the Spokane County Auditor is a Dem and loosing almost 1000 votes in a county that went to Rossi might shave a few votes off of his state wide total. By the way Carla, thanks for giving us yet another example of Democratic incompetence at election management.
zip @ 24
Just as I thought — you don’t know jack about the state budget! You post a flip comment about “featherbed programs” and now you say it’s “hypothetical.” That’s the problem with Republicans — everything they say is “hypothetical,” which is of course a euphemism for lying, bullshitting, or whatever you want to call it. Wait and see, the GOPers’ complaints about a “stolen election” will turn out to be “hypothetical” too, when they get to court and the rubber meets the road (i.e., they have to prove something instead of just blowing hot air).
zip @ 24
P.S., “stale and stupid and rigid impressions of the world” is a perfect and precise description of what right-wingers look like to me. Thanks for putting into words what I couldn’t quite capture myself.
I still want to know. Why is everyone convinced, or at least why are the repubs convinced, dino will win a re-vote? Is it just that their [nonexistent] god is on their side?
REVOTE. It’s time for the process and the political class to stop taking the electorate for granted. And no whining about cost, please. The state spends more on TP than elections.
Don @ 20
Nixon like Clinton, does not get credit for the good things he did, because of a disgraceful exit. Unlike Reagen who gets more Credit than he deserves. Nixon was the founder of the EPA I believe which even the Bushies find to much of a democratic Principle. Now they want the “Clean the Skies of Birds” intiative. No other President, but a staunch anti Communist, could have open the doors to China. Salt treaties, and I believe actually got us out of unpopular war, instead of trying to find another country to invade. I know he had some head issues, but he surrounded himself with bright people, and listened to them…unlike Bozo and his Neocons.
JPGEE @ 23
Way to spin everything I say, try listening! I grew up near ranches and farms, cattle or any animal for that matter wouldn’t stay in a field if there wasn’t an electric fence, even barbed wire was no match for a cow or horse that wanted out. People are no different in that way humans by nature need solid barriers (AKA solid punishment.) The more the punishment becomes “civilized” the less WE care about the consequences of OUR actions, and the more likely humans are to break through that barbed wire fence.
Your logic is flawed in saying that we need to be kinder to our criminal brothers and sisters, go hug a tree don’t touch our judicial system.
Adriel – you sound so uninformed, medieval, on capital punishment.
The opposite is true. Most of the Westen world has abolished the death penalty. Canada, Mexico, all of Europe…..the list is very long.
ALL of these countries have less murder that the US. In the killing fields of Texas, the execute and they murder at fierce rates.
The theory that hanging the peasants on the city wall stops crime is only in the far right law and order types heads. So silly and stupid, and not factual at all.
These types of social myths worked better in prior centuries when data and statisitics were not at the modern level.
DEAD WRONG —- IF KILLING THEM WORKED WE WOULD BE IN CRIME FREE UTOPIA.
Three cheers to the Pope and his anti-death penalty position.
bby@ 33
Tell the pope to pay my prison taxes. Once again man show proof to back the statement, until then I will be stuck in my “uninformed, medieval, on capital punishment” state of mind.
Maybe the other option is to create a new Australia and do what England did, export our worst commodities.
Whatever we do it has got to be better than this overcrowded cluster F*@$ we have right now.
I would once again go to my view that education or the lack thereof is to blame for alot of the problems we have with criminals and welfare babies. Too bad we can’t wipe the countries hard drive and re-install, too many problems I don’t even think a good virus/ de-bugger would take care of it(wink, wink).
33…BBY, Wrong. The death penalty works EVERY time. The felonous criminal never again commits another crime. It’s that simple, unless you live in WASH State, where the criminal, although dead, still gets to vote Democrat.
Don–@28–
Some of the major cost issues related to State Government become apparently when you look at a detail organization chart.
Too many layers of management and other administrative overhead….too much emphasis on process rather then product for taxpayers.
I have closely examined various County Budgets too. Appalling. Plenty of good old boy & girl “networking”. Same in State government.
Need to cut out management layers!!!
Example:Washington is one of 3 states that has more non-certified staff than certified teachers. We have local School District Administration AND ESD’s. We have plenty of pinheaded consultants creating more busy work for our teachers that has NOTHING to do with educating our kids. Lots of “progressive” experimenting where the “over=paid social engineers” take most of the money.
Are you saying there is no room for improvement Don????
It seems like it?
What do you think we can do to cut the cost of providing government services???
One other huge problem in local governments—PLANNERS!!!!
Unbelievable process freaks. COSTLY and their salaries cannot legally be recouped from permit fees…although many municipalities charge more than Cost of Service.
Blindly and with a blanket defending Washington State’s cost and methods of providing services is foolish…unless you are a career Government Attorney.
Government Attorney’s are probably the worst blight!!!
Scum suckers
It’s that simple, unless you live in WASH State, where the criminal, although dead, still gets to vote Democrat
Nice try, but so far the only people to publicly admit they voted for their dead relatives voted for Rossi?
Adriel @ 32
If we’re going to hang petty thieves, then shouldn’t people like Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers burn at the stake? You do believe in proportional punishment, don’t you?
dan @ 31
In that case, is it okay for me to admit that I’m related to Nixon?
Adriel @ 34
Your claim that educated people don’t commit crimes is nonsense.
jch @ 35
Please provide proof that even one executed criminal “voted” in the November election. If you can’t, shut up.
Cynical @ 37
Schools are run by local school districts, so if you think there’s too much staff and management in proportion to the number of certificated teachers in the buildings, you need to take that up with the school board, an elected body.
Our state budget is distorted by the fact “basic education” costs are included in it. In most states, local school districts tax directly and school spending does not show up in the state budget. In Washington, by contrast, state government collects and distributes school taxes, but this money is still spent by local school districts, so it’s not really part of state spending. This makes our $26 billion state budget look $6 billion bigger than it really is.
Don-
Some of the “management” and overhead are forced on them by the state.
They need to consolidate school districts, do away with Terry Bergeson and the State Superintendent of public instruction dept., avoind duplication of work by ESD’s and local school districts, allow schools to outsource maintenance of facilities etc. Lots of opportunities. Also, you can’t believe some of the useless consultants making big bucks.
Teachers ARE NOT the problem.
Administration, the union thugs and scum suckers are the problem.
Don @ 41
Didn’t say they don’t, I just said there’d be less. Who are the largest group of criminals/ murderers?… what’s that you say? Welfare recipients and low income people in low income neighborhoods.
Adriel @ 41 and how do we solve that problem? Help them with education and to lead a normal life? God no, that would cost you and your bushie babies to pay a little more taxes…IMPOSSIBLE….better let them go on living in poverty and committing crimes than to try and lend a helping hand. Get real little one, the ‘normal’ world is passing you by
Jpgee @ 46
Once again you guys have a listening defficiency, does it run in the party? No, by making sure that schools are using money efficiently, not throwing more into the black hole known as public education. The school system is a Hummer (finance eating beast) on the road when we all know an economy car (better financial planning or Charter schools) would do the job.
Adriel – please provide evidence that Charter “public” schools do a better job than public schools at either providing an education or managing their money. I’ve seen lots of reports of charter school experiments in California and Texas being huge failures. Here’s a link to but one example: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/a.....94DA404482
I’m not arguing there’s no room for efficiency improvements in school management, but privatizing education has not proven a viable solution. Charter schools have largely proven subject to the same mismanagement and problems providing quality education (or worse) as public schools.
jcricket @ 48
I’ve been in both Private schools and public schools, in one year I learned more about history, science, and Literature than the 4 years previous in public education. When old Dewey himself is quoted as saying “we need to dumb down the masses” that says something about the people that believe in his product. I won’t be sending my kids through public (mis)education, maybe charter schools wasn’t the words I was looking for, school voucher is.
So there is something that we agree on, schools are broken and need fixed take out the dead weight and streamline it for success.
Menacing clouds blanket the sky,
Darkness covers every lie.
The land reverbs with resonance,
The land reverbs with resonance.
Adriel – we can trade anecdotes all day. I went to public school and learned more there than any of my friends who paid $$$ to go to private schools. Got into a better college than most of them too. Doesn’t really matter what you or I did. What matters is the data.
All the data I’ve seen on charter schools fails to substantiate the hype that they’re the “big fix” for what’s wrong with our public schools. And school vouchers are what is used to pay for either charter schools or to subsidize the cost of private parochial education (which, in my opinion, is tantamount to state support of religious education). Vouchers without charter schools don’t really get you anywhere.
If you have other constructive suggestions, feel free to offer them. And you’re obviously free to send your kids wherever you think is best. But I see no reason why the public should take money out of the cash strapped schools to support failed experiments or religious education.
Don @ 29
Go back and read the posts, jerk. You post a hypothetical (“try asking a Republican to pay higher taxes for more prison cells and guards, he’ll screech so loud ” )that I respond to in the FUTURE TENSE and you give me grief about backing up my PREDICTION of the FUTURE RESULT OF YOUR HYPOTHETICAL by citing where it is in the budget. WHAT BUDGET, DON, THE 2029 BUDGET? Just like a “progressive”. Get in for your skull thinning appointment soon.
Still BORING!
zip @ 52
Here for your perusal is the state budget, thick-headed one. Now go find me a “featherbed program” — if you can.
http://www.ofm.wa.gov/budget/l.....ennial.htm
Wanna see spending, go look at the office of financial management and just look up salaries in the attorney generals office. Pay close attention to the “G” last names in the 2003 report. Very interesting.
Oh, and look how much that investigator was paid.
chardonnay @ 55
What do private businesses pay their attorneys? $250 an hour?
Don @ 54
If I had said there is a featherbed program in the budget I would be glad to point it out. Since that is not the case, kindly f**k off.
Thanks for not responding to the gist of my comments (again for the umpteenth time) which attempted to discuss your whining comment (“try asking a Republican to pay higher taxes for more prison cells and guards, he’ll screech so loud ” ). I wish I understood whether you are truly representative of the close-minded “progressives” in control of the Democrat agenda or where in the world you are actually coming from. If you are actually a reasonable person and just act like a jerk as a debating technique to support the public employee unions, so be it.
Don @ 54
Well Don looks like Goldy is holding my comment. If it ever makes it on to this post, feel satisfied that you got me to cuss in public. Not an easy thing to do. Way to go!
Ranger @28 :
In counties where the auditor is a Republican and the reconciliation is still off…how do you then toss the blame to Democrats?
If you’d actually run the numbers and paid attention…you’d know that the reconciliation issues have to do with the number of voters, not ideological affiliation.
Why must Republicans constantly avoid honest debate?
carla @ 59 , honesty is not a word generally used in their vocabularies
JC @ 51
One problem with public schools is that kids aren’t allowed to fail. The US system is set to cater to mediocrity at best. In Germany, kids are evaluated early on and the best are sent to “Gymnasium” (advanced academic school) and the rest are directed more toward VocTech, etc. — though the best of those kids can later get into Gymnasium. My brother, a solid “A” graduate of US high school, went to one year (“13th grade” or “5th year HS”) over there and said that they academically kick our butts. Whereas US kids cobble together term papers at the last minute, 13th grade Gymnasium kids take oral finals sitting before a panel.
US society no longer promotes the idea of “there is no shame in a hard day’s work.” If a kid is better at fixing cars than taking a Lit test, he should be encouraged and not made to feel like a Voc career is less noble. If Dem legislators & teachers don’t want kids to fail, they should let them gravitate toward their natural abilities and the things they want to do.
Mark @ 61
The funny thing is, you don’t get a slacker life by opting for the vocational career, either. The Germans still use apprenticeships for the manual trades, and they are very rigid and exacting in what they expect. You could be an apprentice carpenter, for instance, and not see a piece of real wood for a year–they’ll have you start by learning everything there is to know about trees and woods, first.
The very best high school class I took (not the funnest; that was 12th grade english, where we got to read a bunch of far-out books and see their movies), was Intro to Computer Science. There were about 5-6 sections of it, but mine was the only one taught by a computer teacher, as opposed to a math teacher who’d learned how to program in BASIC. (This was early 80s, by the way).
We didn’t touch a computer for SIX WEEKS to start the course. Everybody else got to get hands-on immediately. By the end of the year, we blew those other kids away with what we knew to do on PCs. We went past BASIC and learned PASCAL, but also learned assembly language.
zip, are you serious when you speak of fiscal responsibility and this new breed of Rep that’s running amok nationwide? You want pork, look to the Reps. They blew past the old school free spending, big government Dems quite a while ago.
Adriel, find a way to reorganize the public schools so that all levels of learning capacity can be accommodated and you’ll have my vote. Until then, we have to work with our local schools as mentors, tutors, whatever it takes to get the slowest learners up to speed or on another track than the mainstream students. The teachers simply have to accommodate all levels and aren’t given the resources (not money, but manpower) to do so. Again, why tear apart something that works around the world rather than fix the basics of it so it works better?
That requires getting off the computer and going to your local school to volunteer or to school board meetings or better yet running for school board. Kvetching about it goes nowhere to fixing it.
I’m a public school product as is my daughter. Academically, we get out of it what we want. Both of us have serious parental involvement though, so again, maybe getting involved instead of complaining is the key.
Back to the topic…I’ve long wondered why the right isn’t focusing more on the smaller counties. I asked Stefan repeatedly when I posted there before why he wasn’t concerned with the unverifiable Snohomish vote. Seems that should have been a red county but it went blue. He never responded. Wonder why? ;0
BTW…thanks Carla and TJ for your fabulous rundowns. Lots of unthanked hours and work. Kudos.
G D
Not sure where I spoke of “fiscal responsibility and this new breed of Rep that’s running amok nationwide” but ….
Just because the Bush budgets and the Republican congress are spending like drunken sailors does not mean that all Republicans support that spending. I certainly don’t.
Why must Republicans constantly avoid honest debate?
The sad reality is that lying and mean-spirited politics WORKS. Just look at the Bush administration and all the right-wing media from Rush Limbaugh to James “Gay Porn” Guckert/Jeff Gannon and you’ll see the truth there.
zip @ 64
Neither do I support todays fiscal irresponsibility.
But aren’t you, going all the way back to comment 17, the one insisting that the Dems would be the ones to divert new found tax dollars to *featherbeds*? And that the Reps don’t trust the Dems with tax dollars?
I think we’d be hard pressed to find any political group that could surpass what recent past Reps have done, propose doing further with tax dollars. Diverting taken to a new art.
I also suspect there are very few individuals that agree with most politicians in their frivilous use of our tax dollars. So how come they keep getting away with it?
Perhaps because we individuals have bought hook, line and sinker the idea of backing our *party* to the death no matter how bad they’re raping us in private?
You seem to still hold the old *Dems are big spenders, Reps are fiscally responsible* mantra…why?
G D
Believe it or not, in this state the Repubs are fiscally responsible, at least in comparison to the Democrats. That was the basis for my shouting match with Don. The same does not hold true in Congress as we have learned.
I’d be interested in how you think the Reps of Washington don’t believe in pork, diverting dollars. Perhaps I’m missing something with them as I view them as big business friendly which costs us all in the longer run.
Or perhaps it’s just that you’re equating all Dems with the Ron Simms’ of the world. I think he just likes to spend so he can tax more. ;0
There are good politicians out there, but not many that are truly fiscally responsible on either side. There are too many bureaucrats feeding at the trough as well. Government has become big without giving us back big.
Is blaming one side or the other going to fix the machine of government? I don’t think so. I think what will fix it is you and I running for local office, seeking out and supporting truly representative persons for larger offices, running reputable blogs, raising our collective voices that we aren’t adverse to government, but loathe the pigs (elected and bureaucratic) swilling in the yard at our financial and cultural expense. It’s going to take us coming up with more equitable solutions for current day problems.
Simpering from either side about what a fix we’re in won’t do anything. We actually have to get off our cans and start working together to find a way to get it done.
Until we do, the pigs will swill on both sides don’t ya think?